The Child (18 page)

It was only just after half past eight, but on a day like this, when out-of-towners were thronging the capital, their under-age quarry patrolled the pavements from early morning onwards. Most of the punters weren’t bums or anti-social elements eager to buy themselves a whore with their last few euros. They were prosperous business or family men who relished the sense of power it gave them to be able to demand the most unspeakable services from juveniles too hung up by withdrawal pains to think straight.

‘I was once asked to represent a paedophile,’ Stern said as he looked for a place to park. ‘He wanted to found a political party dedicated to legalizing sex between adults and children of twelve and over. The youngsters were even to be allowed to take part in porn films.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Afraid not.’

Stern indicated right and pulled into a gap beside the kerb. A girl in ripped jeans and a bomber jacket slid off a junction box and sauntered over to them.

‘Before I refused the brief and told him to go to hell, I discovered where he liked to spend his weekends.’

‘Let me guess.’

‘Exactly. You can get anything here. Drugs, guns, contract killers, under-age whores …’

‘And babies.’

Stern and Borchert got out. He hissed something to the prostitute in the bomber jacket, who jabbed her middle finger at him and returned to her perch.

‘Drug-addicted prostitutes have even been known to thrust their newborn babies through the window of a punter’s car,’ said Stern, who had also got out. ‘Not here, admittedly, but on a stretch of road near the Czech border. Still, that may make our job a bit easier.’

‘Why?’

‘Selling babies is still something of a rarity, even in Berlin. If Simon has heard about it, so must the people round here. All we have to do is knock on the right door. Someone behind it may be able to give us some information.’

‘Which door do you plan to try first?’

‘That one.’ Stern indicated an entrance across the street. The grimy illuminated sign above it, which looked as if none of its bulbs had worked for ages, read ‘JACKO’S PIZZA’ in carelessly applied self-adhesive black capitals.

‘It’s supposed to be in the inner courtyard. A private bell, first floor right.’

‘An unlicensed brothel, I know.’ Borchert slapped his fleshy neck as if a mosquito had just bitten him. In fact, the beads of sweat trickling down it were making him itch. ‘Don’t look like that, you know the kind of movies that used to keep me in groceries. A man gets to know more about this scene than he cares to.’

‘Good, then you’ll realize why I need you with me. I hope you’ve come armed with something apart from your fists.’

‘Sure.’ Borchert eased the butt of the 9mm automatic out of the pocket of his Bayern Munich tracksuit bottoms. ‘But we aren’t going in there all the same.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’ve got a much better idea.’

‘Like what?’

‘Over there.’ Borchert had already set off for the supermarket on the next corner.

‘Oh, sure,’ Stern called after him sarcastically. ‘I’d completely forgotten. Around here they even sell babies in supermarkets.’

Borchert paused on the traffic island and looked back.

‘You better believe it.’

His expression, body language and tone of voice made something crystal clear: he wasn’t joking.

It was a question of fourth time lucky. The first supermarket proved to be shut, although recent changes in the law permitted shops to trade on Sundays, especially when a major sporting event was in the offing. The second was open for business, but its small ads were unremarkable: piano and Spanish lessons, a lift to Paris in return for a share of the cost of petrol, a rabbit hutch, buyer to collect, et cetera. The blackboard outside the drugstore across the street was dominated by furnished flats, two fridges, and offers of private tuition. Borchert’s eye was caught by a photo of a second-hand baby buggy on sale for thirty-nine euros. He tore off one of ten perforated slips bearing the vendor’s phone number but uttered a dissatisfied grunt when he saw the area code, and they moved on.

On the way to their last port of call, the biggest and most modern supermarket in the district, they attracted jeers from a Hertha fan driving past.

Stern, who was also in costume, had exchanged his suit for a long-sleeved goalie’s shirt. Like Borchert’s, his face was hidden beneath a ridiculous football cap that made him feel like a fairground attraction.

A plastic penis on my head would look less conspicuous
, he thought, conscious of being stared at by an old woman who was stowing her purchases in a linen shopping bag.

‘I’d never heard of this method, Andi.’

‘That’s why it works.’

They were standing beside the containers in which shoppers could dump unwanted packaging and old batteries. Immediately above these was another typical pegboard adorned with a forest of small ads.

‘I always thought people used the Internet for things like this.’

‘They do, but mainly when they’re trying to sell pictures, videos or used panties.’

Stern grimaced. As an experienced defence lawyer he knew that the authorities always lagged far behind the professional computer experts of the child pornography industry. There was no special unit with nationwide coverage, no team of computer freaks permanently employed to monitor websites, news groups or forums. Some police forces counted themselves lucky if they possessed a DSL connection at all, and even when they did pull off a coup the laws were insufficient to put the perverts behind bars.

Only a week earlier several child abusers had been caught after detectives had traced thousands of credit card transactions on the Internet. Unfortunately, the tracing of those payments had infringed data protection laws, so the evidence obtained was worthless. The ‘bestseller’ on the confiscated hard drives was a shot of a newborn baby being abused by a man of pensionable age. Those who took pleasure in its unimaginable sufferings were doubtless exercising their sick minds right now in some Internet café.

‘The Net has become too dangerous for actual meetings,’ said Borchert, lifting a picture of a motorcycle with an index card hidden beneath it.

‘Why?’

‘There’s a field trial currently in progress. Detectives enter a suspect chatroom posing as an under-age girl. When some perv takes the bait, they make a date with him. The bastard turns up expecting to see a sixth-grader with braces and winds up in handcuffs.’

‘Good idea.’

‘Yes, so good that paedophiles are now trying something new. Like this.’ Borchert detached a sheet of sky-blue A5 paper from the pegboard.

‘Wanted: bed as illustrated,’ Stern read out. The accompanying picture, which had been cut out of a mail order catalogue, showed a child’s wooden-framed bed occupied by a little boy grinning at the camera. Laser-printed beneath it in 12 point Univers were the words:

Stern felt a cold wave of nausea steal over him.

‘I can’t believe it.’

Borchert raised his eyebrows. ‘Be honest, when was the last time you stuck a small ad on a supermarket’s pegboard?’

‘I never did.’

‘And how many people do you know who’ve answered one?’

‘None.’

‘But the pegboards are full of them, right?’

‘You don’t mean …’

‘Sure I do. Some of them function as a marketplace for this city’s sick and perverted individuals.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ Stern said again.

‘Then take a closer look. Ever seen such a long phone number?’

‘Hm. Unusual.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? I bet it belongs to some Lebanese prepaid card owner or something. A throw-away mobile – not a hope of getting at the name behind it. And look …’ Borchert pointed to the caption. ‘That’s definite paedo jargon.
“Comfortable”
means “cooperative parents” and
“clean”
means ‘A virgin or Aids-tested”. As for
“COD”
, that’s obvious. Cheques not accepted.’

‘Are you sure?’ Stern wondered if it would blow his football-fan cover if he threw up into the nearby waste-paper bin.

‘No, but we’ll soon find out.’

Borchert groped in his pocket and produced a mobile phone Stern had never seen before, then dialled the eighteen-digit number.

‘Yes, hello?’

Stern was completely thrown by those first two words. He’d been expecting an oldish man whose degeneracy could be detected from his voice alone – a man who combed his greasy hair forward over his balding scalp and stared at his fungal toenails while answering the phone in a string vest. Instead, Stern heard the melodious, friendly voice of a woman.

‘Erm, I, er …’ he burbled. Borchert had simply handed him the phone as soon as it began to ring. Now he didn’t know what to say.

‘Sorry, I think I’ve got the wrong number.’

‘Are you calling about the advertisement?’ asked the nameless woman. She sounded polite and well educated. Not a trace of a Berlin accent.

‘Er, yes.’

‘I’m sorry, my husband isn’t here at present.’

‘I see.’

They had left the supermarket and were on their way back to the car. Stern had to concentrate hard, or her words would have been drowned by the traffic in Potsdamer Strasse and the noises on the line. The connection was poor.

‘But you have what we’re looking for?’ she asked.

‘Possibly.’

‘How old?’

‘Ten,’ said Stern, thinking of Simon.

‘That would suit. You do know we’re looking for a child’s bed?’

‘Yes, so I read.’

‘Good. When can you deliver?’

‘Any time. Today, even.’

They passed the grey junction box on which the prostitute had sat waiting for customers. The scrawny creature had disappeared. She was probably on the passenger seat of some car in a side street.

‘Fine. Then I suggest we meet to discuss terms at four this afternoon. You know the Madison on Mexikoplatz?’

‘Yes,’ Stern said mechanically, although he’d never heard of the place. ‘Hello, are you still there?’ Receiving no answer, he handed the phone back.

‘Well?’ Borchert asked eagerly, but it was a moment before Stern could compose himself enough to reply. He drew several deep breaths.

‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually, in a kind of daze. ‘It sounded like a normal phone conversation. All we really talked about was a bed.’

‘But?’

‘I sensed all the time that something else was at stake.’ Stern repeated the conversation almost word for word.

‘You see?’ said Borchert.

‘No, I don’t see at all,’ Stern lied. The fact was, his view of the world in which he lived had just undergone a radical change. At the supermarket Borchert had raised a curtain and enabled him to see the dark side of life behind the stage. That was where people removed their carefully cultivated masks of morality and conscience to reveal the true faces beneath.

Stern wasn’t naive. He was a lawyer. Of course he was acquainted with evil, but until now it had hidden itself behind writs, judgements and statutes. He could no longer view an abomination of this kind, which threatened to swallow him like a black hole, through the neutralizing filter of a professional brief. He would have to make out the bill for this case himself, and he felt sure the hourly rate would break his emotional budget.

Borchert opened the driver’s door and was about to get in, but Stern stopped him in his tracks.

‘Where did you get your information?’

The big man scratched his head without removing his cap, then took it off. ‘I already told you.’

‘Come off it! Shooting adult porn is far from the same as knowing all about the latest trends in child abuse.’

Borchert’s face darkened. He got into the car.

‘I’ll ask you again: How come you’re so well up on the subject?’ Stern got in beside him.

‘Believe me, you don’t want to know.’ Borchert turned on the ignition and glanced in the rear-view mirror. His neck was mottled with red patches. Then he looked at Stern with his lips pursed in resignation. ‘All right. We’d better pay a visit to Harry.’

‘Who’s Harry?’

‘One of my sources. He’ll give us a reference.’

Borchert pulled out of the parking space. He kept to the speed limit rather than get pulled up for a minor violation.

‘A reference? What the hell do you mean?’

Borchert looked genuinely surprised. ‘You don’t think you can breeze into that café this afternoon without some form of proof that you’re one of them?’

Stern swallowed hard.
One of them …
Nervously, he took hold of one end of his Bayern Munich scarf and tugged, heedless of its increasing pressure on his throat. The thought of having to demonstrate membership of a community of perverts had taken his breath away as it was.

Hundreds of tourists drove daily through the district where Harry led a miserable existence. They passed within a few metres of his abode, tired after their journey but filled with nervous anticipation at the prospect of what Berlin had to offer them in the next few days. Eager to plunge into the city’s night life, visit the Reichstag building or simply luxuriate at their hotel, they certainly had no plans to make an excursion to the eleven grimy square metres where Harry was waiting for death.

His camper van was situated immediately beneath the flyover, a kilometre at most from Schönefeld Airport. Stern was afraid the suspension of Sophie’s Corolla wouldn’t withstand the potholes when they turned on to the track that led to it.

Borchert eventually saw sense. They parked just short of a sagging wire-mesh fence and covered the last stretch on foot. For the first time, Stern was grateful for the boots Borchert had compelled him to wear. The rain, which had started again, was turning the ground into a quagmire.

‘Where is it?’ All Stern could see was a chaotic rubbish dump flanked by two massive ferroconcrete columns. The sound of cars thundering past overhead was almost as intolerable as the smell. A throat-catching amalgam of dog shit, rotting food and stagnant water, it grew stronger the further they went.