The Last Temptation (22 page)

He’d hoped for her study. But as he walked into the kitchen, he could see it was ideal for his purpose. A scarred pine table stood in the middle of the floor, perfectly positioned for the ceremony that lay ahead. Later, he would find her study and leave his calling card in her files. For now, though, the kitchen would suffice.

He turned as Margarethe followed him, offering a smile. ‘This is very comfortable.’

‘I spend most of my time in here,’ she said, passing him

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and heading for the stove. ‘Now, would you like a drink? Tea, coffee? Something stronger?’

He measured the distances. The fridge would give him the best chance. ‘A beer would be good,’ he said, knowing this meant she’d have to turn her back on him.

And so it began again. Hands and brain moved in a smooth sequence, following the practised routine without a stutter or stumble. He was bending down to fasten her left ankle to the table leg when the sharp chime of the doorbell made him jerk upright, the cord falling from his startled fingers. His heart thudded in his chest. He felt the choke of panic close his throat. Someone was there, only twenty yards or so away from him. Someone who expected Margarethe Schilling to open the door.

She couldn’t have made an arrangement, he reasoned. She knew he was coming, so she wouldn’t have invited anyone round. It must be someone selling religion or household goods door to door, he told himself, fighting for calm. Either that or one of the neighbours who’d seen Schilling’s car on the drive and expected her to be home. It had to be. Didn’t it?

The doorbell pealed out again, this time for longer. He didn’t know what to do. He stepped away from the table where Margarethe lay spread-eagled, still fully clothed. What if the caller was persistent enough to come round to the back of the house? All it would take would be one glance in the brightly lit kitchen windows. He scrabbled for the light switch. Just as his fingers closed on it, he heard a sound that chilled him even more than the doorbell. The unmistakable click of a key in a lock.

He froze, dry-mouthed, wondering about escape. The front door opened and a man’s voice shouted, ‘Margarethe?’ The door closing, then footsteps heading for the kitchen. ‘It’s me,’ he heard.

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Grabbing a heavy cast-iron pan from the stove, he flattened himself against the wall by the door. It opened without a moment’s hesitation and a tall, male shape appeared, crossing the threshold and stopping in his tracks. Enough light spilled in from outside to show the shape of Margarethe’s body lying on the table. ‘Margarethe?’ he said again, reaching for the light switch.

The pan crashed down on the back of his head and the man dropped to his knees like a felled steer. His upper body teetered for a moment then collapsed face down in an untidy heap.

He dropped the pan with a loud clatter and turned the light back on. The interloper was sprawled on the floor, a trickle of blood coming from his nose. Dead or unconscious, he didn’t mind which, just so long as it would give him time to finish what he’d started. He kicked him savagely in the ribs. Bastard. Who did he think he was, barging in like that?

Hurrying now, he returned to his task. He finished the bindings, then hastily ripped the tape from her mouth. He had to keep checking the man was still out cold, which slowed him up even more. He didn’t bother explaining to the bitch why he was making an example of her. She’d fucked up his routine, ruined his pleasure in a job well done, and she didn’t deserve to know that there was good reason for what was happening to her.

It pissed him off more than he would have believed possible that he was having to rush things. He managed to do a neat enough job with the scalping, but it wasn’t as precise as he liked. Cursing with the vigour of the boatman he was, he finished up in the kitchen, wiping every surface his hands could possibly have touched, and giving the stranger a brutal kick in the kidneys as he passed, just for good measure.

All that was left was the placing of the file. He ran upstairs and started checking the rooms, unwilling to turn on the

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lights in case it drew more attention to him. The first room was clearly hers, dominated by a king-size bed and a wall of fitted wardrobes. The second looked like a kid’s room, with its posters of Werder Bremen footballers and the Playstation on the table by the window.

He struck gold with the back bedroom, which was fitted out as a home office. He dragged open the drawer of the old fashioned wooden filing cabinet and thrust the file into place. He was past caring if it was in the right slot. He just wanted to be done and out of there before things got even worse.

One final check that the stranger was still unconscious, then he warily opened the front door a crack. Nothing moved. He saw a VW Passat parked in front of the house, but thankfully it wasn’t blocking the drive. Head down, he hurried out of Margarethe Schilling’s house and into the car.

His hands on the wheel were slippery with perspiration, his fingers antsy and trembling. Sweat trickled down his temples and into his hair. He had to force himself to keep his speed down in the quiet suburban streets. His brain kept replaying the terrible sound of the front door opening, and every time his heart constricted in panic again. Fear was staking out its familiar territory inside him, and he struggled against it, moaning as he drove. He was on the dock road before he felt his breathing return to normal. For the first time since he had started his campaign, he had been directly confronted with the dangers of his chosen path. And he didn’t like it one bit.

Not that that was any reason to stop, he told himself. What he needed now was to take his mind off his panic. What he needed was a woman. He slowed down as he approached a row of bars, their dim lights yellow against the night. He’d find what he wanted here. He’d take some bitch and fuck her till the light came back.

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Case Notes

Name: Margarethe Schilling Session Number: 1

Comments: The patient has a god complex. She believes she has the divine right to undermine and destroy the legitimate beliefs of others in the interests of furthering her own status. She lacks all sense of proportion.

Her value system is hopelessly skewed by her erroneous belief in her own infallibility. Nevertheless, she seeks to impose her own world view on others and refuses to accept the possibility that she is wrong.

She is clearly overcompensating for an unacknowledged sense of inferiority. Like many professional females, she fails to recognize her innate weaknesses compared to males and reacts to this by seeking to castrate them psychologically.

Therapeutic Action: Altered state therapy initiated.

Tadeusz crossed the pavement and climbed into the back seat of the black Mercedes. If any of his neighbours had seen him, they might have wondered at his appearance. Instead of his usual immaculate and expensive surface, he was dressed in old moleskin trousers, battered work boots, an ex-army parka covering a thick fisherman’s sweater. But nobody wore Armani for an afternoon’s rough shooting, which was exactly how he planned to spend the rest of the day.

Darko Krasic lounged in the opposite corner of the rear seat. He wore a scarred leather jerkin over a padded plaid shirt whose tails hung over corduroy trousers so old the raised wales were rubbed flat on the surface of the thighs. ‘Good day for it,’ he said.

‘I hope so. I feel like killing someone whose disappearance would make the world a better place,’ Tadeusz said. He spoke with the distaste of a man who has bitten into a fruit and found decay at its heart. Apathy and cynicism had been his alternating companions since Katerina’s death. Everything he did now was an attempt to break free from their suffocating grip, and everything so far had failed. He had no conviction that this afternoon would bring anything different. ‘And since we’ve no traffic cops to hand,’ he continued with a wan attempt at humour, Til have to settle for something small and defenceless. Furry or feathered. You bring the guns?’

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‘They’re in the boot. Where are we headed?’

‘A nice bit of forest on the edge of the Schorfheide. That’s the great thing about nature reserves. The wildlife doesn’t recognize the boundaries. An old friend of mine owns a piece of land that butts right up against the protected area. And the ducks from the wetland don’t know any better than to fly over his woodland. We should bag some good stuff. He’s lending us a couple of his gun dogs so we can do the thing properly.’ Tadeusz reached inside his jacket and pulled out a burnished pewter hip flask. He unscrewed the top and took a swig of Cognac. He held the flask out to Krasic. ‘Want some?’

Krasic shook his head. ‘You know I always like to keep a clear head round guns.’

‘Speaking of guns and clear heads, what’s the news on Marlene?’

‘Some bitch from Criminal Intelligence has been sniffing around her. She spoke to her in the GeSa, and she’s been back to see her in jail. Marlene’s playing dumb and keeping her mouth shut, but it’s winding her up.’

‘You’re sure we can trust her?’

Krasic gave a lazy smile. ‘As long as we’ve got the kid, Marlene won’t put a foot wrong. Funny how women get about their kids. You’d think they could only have the one, the way they go on about them. They seem to forget that all they’re going to get from them is heartache. Especially someone like Marlene. She should have the sense to realize that any daughter of hers is going to grow up using, or selling herself. But it doesn’t seem to matter to her. She still thinks the sun shines out of the kid’s arse.’

‘Just as well for us,’ Tadeusz said. ‘Where are we keeping her?’ ‘I’ve got a cousin who has a smallholding on the outskirts of Oranienburg. The nearest neighbour is half a mile away.

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He’s got a couple of kids of his own, so he knows how to deal with the little buggers.’

‘And Marlene is convinced this isn’t just a bluff?’

Krasic curled his lip in a sneer. ‘Marlene believes I’m capable of anything. She’s not going to play games with her child’s life. Don’t worry, Tadzio, it’s all boxed off.’

‘I wish I could say the same about the English end of things. The people who are trying to fill Colin’s shoes, they’re nothing but a bunch of clowns. They’re too small-time to run a competent operation. I don’t trust them to deliver. Meanwhile, we’ve got a bottleneck in Rotterdam. We can’t go on warehousing illegals indefinitely.’

‘Can’t we just take them over to England and dump them?’ Krasic sounded like a petulant child who can’t understand why the world doesn’t turn to suit him.

‘Not in the sort of numbers we’ve got stockpiled. It’d be far too obvious that something on a large scale was going down. The last thing we want is to attract the attention of the immigration authorities. I’ve been successful for so long precisely because I haven’t done things like that,’ Tadeusz pointed out. ‘We had such a convenient arrangement with Colin. I can’t believe he was stupid enough to get caught in some minor league gangland shootout.’

‘It should be a warning to you,’ Krasic said. ‘That’s the kind of thing that can happen when you get too close to the action. You shouldn’t have made that trip the other week. I don’t like it when you’re exposed like that.’

Tadeusz glowered out of the window. He knew Krasic was right, but he didn’t like being told what to do by anyone, not even his trusted assistant. Now he felt mean. ‘It doesn’t hurt sometimes to remind people who’s in charge,’ he said.

‘Tadzio, it could have blown up in your face. If they’d got Kamal to talk… Well, we might not be so lucky next time.’

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‘There was no element of luck there. We’ve got all our bases covered.’ He turned and gave Krasic a hard stare. ‘We do have all our bases covered, don’t we?’

‘Of course we do. That’s why we keep cops on the payroll.’

‘And speaking of the cops on our payroll, why haven’t we heard anything more about the investigation into Katerina’s accident? This has been goingnftn far too long. I want to know about that fucking motorbike. Lean on them, Darko. Don’t let them think they can ignore me on this.’

Krasic nodded. Til chase them up, boss.’

‘Do that. And remind them that whoever pays the piper calls the tune. I want the man who killed Katerina. I don’t give a fuck about the legal process. I want to make him pay in a way he’ll remember for the rest of his life. So tell those bastards to stop fucking around and produce some results.’

Krasic sighed inwardly. He had a feeling this was one investigation that was going to hit a brick wall sooner or later. He didn’t relish the moment when he would have to report that fact to Tadzio. For the time being, he’d just have to keep going through the motions. Til talk to someone tonight,’ he promised.

‘Good. I’m tired of problems. I could use some solutions. Whatever it takes.’ He leaned back against the soft leather and closed his eyes, signalling that the conversation was over. Playing the bully didn’t come naturally to him, but he’d found himself slipping into the role depressingly often since Katerina had died. He couldn’t bear the thought that the rest of his life was going to be like this, a constant succession of crises and problems. It felt as if her death had taken all the ease from his life, and he wondered if he would ever again feel relaxed and comfortable in his own shoes. Perhaps vengeance would help.

It was the only thing he could think of that might.

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It was Petra Becker’s first visit to Den Haag, and she was surprised by its lack of flamboyance compared to Amsterdam. The canal houses were models of understated classical demureness, with few of the ornate flourishes that gave a walk in central Amsterdam so much visual richness. This was an expense account city, with none of the bohemian colour that provided Amsterdam with its variety. Here, there was an air of sedate prosperity, speaking of a prim propriety that made Petra’s Berliner soul feel stifled. She’d been here less than a day and already she was craving the disreputable.