Jonas Erlenbach sat at the bar with a strong filter coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other and the morning edition of the Berliner Morgen-Posten laid out in front of him. He was looking up at the TV screen and reading the scroll bar on the news channel. Morgen-Posten had run off the press too late to catch the day’s biggest scoop. According to the plastic-faced newscaster, the body had been found at 5 a.m. Erlenbach had been woken up at six by the light coming through the broken blinds on his east-facing bedroom window, and had been unable to get back to sleep. He had been in the Party-House Bar and Club just after it opened at eight.
He was waiting for his mobile to ring, but he knew it wouldn’t. Kripos would already have launched an investigation, five hours after the body had been found, and of course it wasn’t going to be his case. The city’s Tiergarten district wasn’t off his patch, but if what the news channels were reporting about the identity of the deceased was true, the case would be a political tightrope. A big fish. Embarrass you if you couldn’t solve it, force you to commit institutional suicide if you uncovered something unpleasant. The detective who cracked it, though, might just have their career made, which is why it would go to the Murder Squad’s most eager arse-licker. Probably Elias Schroeder, Erlenbach reckoned.
His phone rang.
Let it be her, he thought. If not her, then let it be anyone but him.
It wasn’t her. It was Bernard Lembke, the bald man who led the Murder Squad. Him, betrayed by his nasal, schoolmaster’s voice.
‘Jonas? You’re not in yet.’
‘I’m not,’ said Erlenbach. ‘It’s ten o’clock. I was on the night duty until four.’
‘Well I need you here,’ Lembke said. ‘Now.’
Erlenbach looked up at the TV. They were showing images of Schüpos, the uniformed police, and forensic officers pacing around a cordon at one of the entrances to the Tiergarten. He could think of only one reason that Lembke would give him the case. It must stink so strongly of shit that whoever took it on could kiss goodbye to anything resembling a career. Maybe the conservative MP they’d found dead that morning had been strangled by his drug-dealing Turkish gay lover. Something of that ilk, Erlenbach thought. And he’d be the perfect sacrificial lamb.
Someone who couldn’t fall any further.
‘Lindemann?’ he asked. He heard his voice, echoing out the side of the phone. He sounded reluctant, like he was asking his ex if she’d cheated on him.
Lembke laughed. Erlenbach realised he’d been sweating.
‘God, no! Schroeder and Ebner are already there.’
Vicki Ebner, one of two female detectives in the Murder Squad and Schroeder’s equally arse-licking girlfriend. The perfect people for the Lindemann case.
‘So what else, then?’ Erlenbach said.
‘Junkie found on a building site in Friedrichshain,’ Lembke said. ‘No ID so far. Right outside the velodrome on Landsberger Allee.’
Erlenbach knew it. There was a swimming pool there, too. At a great stretch of the imagination it could even be called a leisure centre.
‘Cause of death?’ he asked.
‘Shot. Two in his head, one… well, somewhere else.’
Lembke was the most senior detective in the Kripos who had never attended a post-mortem examination. There was a reason he worked as an office manager rather than in the field, with corpses and bloodstains and women’s bruised bodies.
‘What?’
‘The poor gentleman had his bollocks shot off, Jonas.’
Erlenbach drained his coffee and winced.
‘Do you want me in the office or at the scene?’
‘Head there,’ Lembke said, ‘You know where you’re going?’
‘I’m familiar with the area.’
How appropriate, he thought. The shithole heap of wasteland where I’m going and the luscious green woodland that the others are right now.
‘You’re with Metz and our new recruit, Alberto Rossi,’ Lembke said.
‘Alberto Rossi? What kind of a name is that?’
‘An Italian one.’
‘Alberto Rossi?’ Erlenbach repeated. ‘He sounds like a porn star, not a policeman.’
‘Who said they were mutually exclusive?’ Lembke said, ‘Anyway, he’s come to us from Vice and Organised with a five-star rating. He’s good.’
Erlenbach’s silence betrayed his cynicism.
‘And Jonas?’ Lembke said.
‘Boss?’
‘You don’t need me to tell you that you’re to stay in control of your emotions, do you now?’
‘No,’ Erlenbach said, ‘I don’t.’
He hung up.
The Partei-Haus in Prenzlauer Berg was owned by Felix Ivarson, the establishment’s name a subtle double-entendre. The party alluded to both the alcohol-induced celebration and the SED, the former East German ruling dictatorship. Ivarson was dressed perpetually in what had once been a military jacket from the Volksarmee, adorned with medals and an old Soviet fur hat, even in the heat of July. The bar was clad with knick-knacks from the republic that no longer existed, from the tins of low-grade coffee stacked up against the back wall to the propaganda posters, long-since graffitied and vandalised, that papered every visible surface. Erlenbach, among the nostalgic Ossies who inhabited the bar, had got used to the ridiculous appearance of both venue and proprietor, so it didn’t faze him one bit when Ivarson leaned forward from behind the bar, pulled the cigarette from Erlenbach’s mouth, and spat on it.
‘Smoking ban!’ he snapped.
Erlenbach sipped at his coffee and tried his best to look pissed off.
‘For God’s sake, if we had the police in here they’d have me for that!’
Ivarson was alone in the raucous explosion of laughter he produced at his own joke. Even Heinz, one of the more loyal drunks who counted the Partei-Haus among their watering holes, remained serene behind his glass of scotch whiskey.
‘You owe me a drink for that,’ Erlenbach said, ‘Perhaps I should get some of our detectives to go over your books in their spare time. Or just take a look upstairs. I’m sure that Thai girl you had here the other night had her papers in order. And that she was sixteen.’
‘Piss off,’ Ivarson said, ‘I’ll owe you a drink once you and that bastard Jerska pay your fucking tabs.’
‘I get paid on the thirtieth. The tab will be paid on the thirty-first.’
Erlenbach often judged his financial situation by when the tab started behind the bar at the Partei-Haus. This July had been a bad month - the eleventh.
‘Anyway, I was earwigging earlier,’ Ivarson continued, an eager smile on his face, ‘Someone loves you again, Jonas.’
‘Someone does.’
‘Get going, then! Second day back at work and you’ve caught the Uwe Lindemann case!’
Erlenbach laughed, trying to imitate the laugh that Lembke had produced upon realising that Erlenbach had actually thought he might have landed such an important duty.
‘I’m not. I’m going to Landsberger Allee to pick bullets from a dead junkie’s balls.’
Ivarson shrugged.
‘It’s what we pay you for, isn’t it?’
‘Well, it’s better than sitting here and picking dead flies from my social-democratic coffee.’
Either the velodrome or the accompanying swimming pool and gymnasium could have been a prison. But then again, this was the East, so everything could have been a prison. Graffiti adorned the grey concrete and half the windows on one side were boarded up. Opposite the road, a multi-storey block that was the most penal of the buildings in the immediate area advertised itself as Germany’s largest youth hostel, with a subterranean nightclub whose toilets Erlenbach suspected supplied the condom wrappers strewn across the ground. It was the best place to sneak off to for a tryst, he mused. Youth hostellers couldn’t exactly bring their catch back to a six-bed dormitory.
All in all, it looked like a terrible place to die. Erlenbach approached the cordon, where a man in a badly-fitting suit stood, one he didn’t recognise. He seemed tanned and far too young and fresh-looking to be a detective. Frankly, he looked like he was about to shit himself.
‘Alberto Rossi,’ Erlenbach said. The two Schüpos standing next to the man in the suit turned around.
‘Who’s asking?’
‘Inspector bloody Erlenbach, your bloody superior officer is who’s asking.’
Rossi grabbed his tie, pulled it straight and took a step back.
‘Sorry, sir. I, er… I didn’t recognise you.’
‘It’s ok,’ Erlenbach said. ‘Ciao.’
‘I don’t speak Italian, if that’s what you think.’
Erlenbach stood and nodded slowly.
‘Show me what we’ve got.’
They ducked under the cordon and walked over a knoll of yellow grass to a concrete pit full of broken beer bottles, cigarette butts and fast-food papers. The body was on its side, dried blood all over the concrete, a small pool under the head and a larger, sliding patch under the legs. Half of his skull was missing. There was matted, dried blood all over his trousers, on his jeans, on his leather jacket. A forensic officer in white overalls was taking swabs.
‘Pretty grim, isn’t it?’ Rossi said.
‘Have you ever been to a murder scene before?’ Erlenbach said.
‘On my third day in Vice I was cleaning up a double-stabbing in Kreuzberg. That good enough for you?’
Erlenbach looked across at Rossi and held his eyes for just too long.
‘Where’s Lena?’
Rossi pointed over to a black Renault parked opposite Erlenbach’s car.
‘One of the Schüpos recognised the stiff,’ he said, ‘Apparently he’s a bit of a frequent flyer. She’s booted up her laptop, seeing if we can get a file off the database.’
‘Any forensics so far?’
‘Three shell casings, found on the lip of the pit, over there,’ said Rossi, pointing to one of the steel markers the crime-scene people used to locate significant findings, ‘Hans, the forensic guy, says they look like nine-millimetre to him.’
‘Excellent. Initial conclusions, Mr. Rossi?’
‘The shot to the genitals, sir,’ Rossi said, indicating with an open palm like he was a museum guide pointing out an exhibit. ‘That’s personal. Whoever did this knew this man, and had something against him. Metz is the psychologist, she said that attacking the genitals almost always indicates either a sexual deviance or a deep-seated personal animosity.’
Erlenbach wrote a few notes in his pad and said nothing. He was looking over at Metz’s car, wondering how on earth you accessed the internet in the middle of a building site.
‘Well?’ Rossi said after a while. ‘Do you agree?’
‘So,’ Erlenbach said, checking his watch, ‘You’ve been at this crime scene for no less than thirty-five minutes and you’ve managed to conclude that the fact this man was shot in the balls means that someone was angry with him. Remind me, Alberto Rossi, how much did your training cost the police force? Or was it just a one-day course at the Educational Institute for the Stupidly Fucking Obvious?’
Rossi looked at him with a face flashing red, almost purple.
‘No offence, boss - ’
‘Offend me all you like,’ Erlenbach cut in, ‘I just offended you.’
Rossi stared straight at him.
‘Well?’
Erlenbach crouched and surveyed the body.
‘There’s blood all over the jeans,’ he said. ‘Lot’s of it, it’s everywhere. One bullet in there and two in his head, but there’s more blood down there than up on his face.’
‘So?’
‘So, his heart was still beating when the killer shot him in the balls. And by the time he finished him off, he’d almost bled to death already. The amount of blood there, I reckon at least five minutes between the one to the eggs and the coup de grace.’
‘Which means it was more than a post-mortem fuck-you,’ Rossi said, ‘It was torture.’
‘Why do you torture someone?’ Erlenbach asked, but cut Rossi off before he could answer. ‘Either for sexual gratification or for information.’
‘So which is this?’
‘No signs of sexual assault. I can’t imagine anyone getting their rocks off over a shaven-headed junkie in his fifties.’
‘So this man knew something?’
‘At least his killer thought that he did. And shot him in the balls to find out.’
‘And shot him in the head once he had,’ Rossi finished.
Erlenbach heard footsteps behind them. He turned and saw Metz, dressed like the murder victim, in a brown leather jacket and jeans.
‘Long time no see,’ Erlenbach said.
‘Good to have you back,’ said Lena Metz. She was about five years younger than Erlenbach but had only just transferred to the force from the Rhein-Westphalia state police when his unfortunate incident had prompted his three-month suspension.
‘How were your holdiays?’ Metz asked.
‘Just brilliant. You can see, I’ve been working on my tan, but Mr. Rossi is still way ahead.’
Metz laughed.
‘Well, here’s your welcome-back present,’ she said, ‘An ID on your first corpse.’
‘Yes?’
‘Dieter Waldemar. Born right here in Berlin on March 2nd, 1969. Registered at an address in Storkower Straße, not far from here at all.’
‘Lives alone?’
‘Apparently so. No-one to miss him.’
Erlenbach saw the forensic officer coming back with two stretcher-bearers and a private ambulance.
‘Hey, forensic man! Hans, whatever your name is!’ Erlenbach yelled.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Erlenbach staggered over, jumping over a suspect pile of what was either curry or vomit or both.
‘I need to know the time of death,’ he said.
The forensic officer was slightly overweight and had greasy hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
‘Do I look like a pathologist?’ he protested.
Erlenbach lit up a cigarette.
‘Bah! Do I look like a jury? Guess!’
‘Maybe twelve hours ago, maybe eighteen.’
Erlenbach looked at his watch. It was approaching midday. Their victim had died between six the previous evening and midnight.
‘Who found him?’ Erlenbach asked Rossi.
‘Some of the hostellers were getting up early to catch their flight from Schönfeld,’ Rossi said. ‘They spotted it from the S-Bahn platform.’
‘Shit.’
The forensic officer went to walk away.
‘Hey,’ Metz said. ‘Can I touch the body?’
‘Depends what you want to do!’
‘The right shoulder. I want to take a look.
Erlenbach looked across at Rossi. He shrugged his shoulders.
‘The forensic officer pulled the brown leather jacket off the corpse and revealed an off-white vest underneath. He put the jacket in a plastic evidence bag and rolled the vest to expose the shoulder flank. There was an old tattoo, a flame with a melted hammer and sickle, both superimposed onto a blue fist, three golden initials at the hilt. B. F. F.
‘On his rapsheet,’ Metz said, ‘It’s him.’
‘Good work,’ Erlenbach said, ‘Rest in peace, Mr. Waldemar.’
To the forensic officer: ‘You can take him wherever you like.’
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