Tretjak (27 page)

‘I am Fiona Neustadt. And I work here. Could you please tell me what this is all about?'

The rest of the conversation can be summarised as follows: the woman at the desk became friendlier when she heard that Gritz was from the police; a sort of colleague, she felt. She became a little nervous, however, when she started to comprehend that there was another woman who called herself a tax inspector and, what is more, who called herself Fiona Neustadt. And the woman became slightly hysterical, and asked her persistently silent bearded colleague for a glass of water, when she realised that the other Ms Neustadt might be involved in a series of murders.

‘Do you have any idea,' Gritz asked, ‘why somebody has assumed your identity? Do you deal with special tax cases?'

‘I have no idea,' she said, ‘I deal with bog standard cases. Nothing dramatic. When it becomes dramatic, we hand over the cases to the appropriate people in the Commission for the Investigation of Suspected Tax Evasion.'

‘Ms Neustadt,' Gritz said, then corrected himself, ‘the fake Ms Neustadt was dealing with the tax affairs of Gabriel Tretjak. At least that's what she claimed she was doing. Could you have a look at whether you have an open file dealing with that tax investigation?'

‘Yes, of course.'

Gritz had already sat down on the visitor's chair in front of her desk.

‘Gabriel Tretjak, St-Anna-Platz. No, there is no current tax investigation dealing with him. Nothing. He has never been suspicious. From a tax point of view, the man is completely clean.'

 

When Gritz left the Inland Revenue building, he couldn't wait to make the telephone call. He dialled Maler's number, which was saved under
Boss
in his speed-dial.

‘Yes, what's up?' Maler answered.

Gritz ignored Maler's somewhat subdued voice and immediately launched into it: ‘There is something new, Boss. This Fiona Neustadt is not a tax official. She has to be somebody completely different.'

‘Come again?' Maler asked.

Gritz told him about his visit to the Inland Revenue, about the real Ms Neustadt, and about the fact that there had never been a tax inspection of Tretjak's affairs. He ended his report with the question: ‘What do we do now, Boss?'

 

Do you know how many times I asked after you? Suddenly you didn't come to us anymore and they all pretended you didn't exist. Nobody talked about you anymore, at least not in my presence. I was only briefly told that you had gone abroad. Once, through an open door, I heard a man, a Russian, who spoke with an accent, ask my father: ‘Could it be that Gabriel has deceived us all?' I couldn't hear my father's answer because he closed the door.

 

She walked down the path which led from the church to the Piazza Roma and consisted partly of steps. The church clock tolled twice; it was half past six. A metallic thunderclap announced the evening train from Luino to Locarno. The tracks ran, like the road, along the lake shore, and here in town just above the Piazza between the church and the steep mountain slope which rose above the lake. She stopped in the square, for a moment hesitating, and then finally sat down on a bench underneath a palm tree diagonally across from the entrance of the hotel. The train had now reached the height of the square and made a lot of noise. It must have been the third time that she checked in the pockets of her anorak to see whether she had everything that she would need in the coming minutes. She thought of her father and had to smile. In the end, he had been the winner, even back then. And it would turn out the same way for her. She was the best, she knew that. Again she had to smile. She had that in black and white. It was official.

 

You brought fear to my family. I had never seen my father so afraid. Do you know that I had a scarf of yours? You had forgotten it and I snatched it. Cashmere, with your smell on it. Believe me, I sniffed every molecule of your scent out of it until only a distant echo remained, and I so loved the material and hated it so. Each night I fell asleep with it, not for just for a few days, but for a few weeks. For years, do you understand? Love can build bridges, so the saying goes. Bullshit. Although... it is building one right now, isn't it? You do love, as you say. You do believe me, don't you? I have delivered the murderess to you. The evidence. That's why you have asked her to come here. What are you doing with her right now? Do people change their smell during their life time? I often asked myself that question, when we met. I didn't find your smell again. But then in your bathroom at the St-Anna-Platz, there it suddenly was again, it hung in your towels, in your wardrobes, in your bathrobe – and I almost fainted.

 

She looked over at the hotel. Except for the entrance hall and the empty restaurant only one room was illuminated, at the very top, on the fourth floor, at the corner of the building. The curtains had been drawn. Obviously the two inhabitants were not interested in the view of the lake, which shimmered, pale in the fading light. It took her a while to realise that the noise which lay in the evening air and mixed with the engine noises of the passing cars was her mobile phone. This number had not yet existed for very long, very few people had it, and she was not accustomed to the ringtone yet. She rummaged around for the phone, looked at the lit-up display and frowned. The hospital in Munich? Now? Why?

‘Hello?' she said.

 

The nurse had taken his temperature this morning. At seven, it had been 38.5 degrees Celsius, a fever, and by nine it had risen again to 39.0. Maler knew what a fever meant: the body had assembled its defences – if he were still a healthy normal man that would be no reason for alarm, just a sign that his immune system was fighting bacteria or an infection. But in the case of transplant patients, fever was feared, as it was always possible that his body's defences had identified the foreign organ as the enemy.

The nurse had just noted down 39.0 degrees and shot him a worried glance when Gritz called with his news. Shortly after that, the ward doctor had shown up in his room and told him that, unfortunately, the blood tests had shown that the rejection level had increased. 2a. Still no reason to panic, but they would have to do some more tests, and this evening they were going to transfer him into an isolation ward where, with less risk of an infection, they could close down his immune system for a while. The doctor also said that he had informed the professor, who would probably visit him later on in the isolation ward.

August Maler was afraid. He didn't want to be isolated, didn't want the whole thing to start again, the nightmares, the passage. And he was afraid, because he clung to his life, to his wife, to his family and even to his job. How far would the fever rise? He felt his heart beat, which was not a good feeling as his heart was beating irregularly; it stumbled. Please, body, he thought, leave my heart alone.

But he knew he should not surrender to fear. Maler still had to do something and he had to find the right moment for it, between the tests and the transfer to the isolation ward.

 

It was already evening when the right moment finally arrived. Maler felt exhausted and weak, and in the meantime the fever had risen to almost 40 degrees. He didn't have a lot of time, a few minutes max, before the male nurse was supposed to arrive to take him to the other ward. Maler put on his bathrobe and raced out of his room down the hall towards the lift. He was lucky that no nurse saw him. He went up two floors and then turned left towards oncology, the cancer ward. Maler knocked on the door of the nurses' room. A Sister Judith opened and looked at him inquisitively: ‘Yes?'

Maler had thought up a story which he now recounted: he had played chess in the cafeteria with a patient who had terminal cancer, who had come to the clinic to die. And now he wanted to enquire after him, but he had forgotten his name. A nice man, not very old yet, maybe 60 or so. Maler was lucky with Sister Judith, who was known to be quite talkative. She said she had four patients on the ward at the moment who were dying, two women, two men. But the men were much too ill to play chess, and had been that ill for a long time. Mr Leucht and Mr Braun, no, no, neither could be the man he was looking for.

‘Has one of them got a daughter, who comes to visit him regularly?' Maler asked.

‘No, Mr Leucht is always visited by his son. And Mr Braun has no visitors. But hang on, you are right, there was a patient, also terminally ill, who might have been able to play chess. He used walk about the ward, and he had a daughter who came to visit him a few times. But he is no longer here, he was moved to a hospice in Solln yesterday. Shall I give you the address?'

Maler nodded.

‘Well,' Sister Judith said, ‘the patient was called Martin Krabbe, and the telephone number of the hospice is...'

Krabbe, Martin Krabbe. Maler didn't listen to the nurse any longer. This was the man that Dimitri Steiner had said he should talk with. The man who had been spoken of with a mixture of fear and respect by Steiner. And that had meant something with a guy like Steiner. Gritz had tried to interview Krabbe, but he had already been too ill, the police had been told. Should he have just acted? Maler knew that all this was not good for his heart, but he heard himself ask: ‘That's him, Sister, the one I'm looking for. Do you have a number for the daughter, so I can call her directly?'

‘Yes, we always have the telephone numbers of the relatives.' She leafed through the card index and wrote the mobile phone number on a note pad. ‘Nora Krabbe is her name.'

It was a professional reflex which made Maler ask whether he could just briefly use the telephone here on the table. He dialled the mobile number.

It rang a few times before she answered.

‘Hello?'

He immediately recognised her voice. ‘Good evening,' he said, ‘this is Inspector Maler from the hospital. Good evening, Ms Neustadt, or no, Ms Krabbe, which is the correct name? And what is your correct job title?'

It clicked and the line went dead. Maler redialled, but it was dead again. She had turned off the mobile. August Maler said good-bye to the stunned Sister Judith and went back to his own ward. In the lift he noticed that he felt faint, just for a moment. He had to call Gritz immediately. When he arrived at his room, there were already two doctors and two nurses waiting in front of the door.

August Maler wanted to say something, apologise somehow, but he couldn't anymore. He heard the excited words of the medics, then it went black in front of his eyes.

 

Charlotte Poland felt her knees knock while she was standing at the reception desk of the Hotel Torre Imperial. She tried not to show it. She didn't hear what the receptionist was talking about, the most beautiful corner room, view of the lake and so on. The air around her felt like cotton or wool. Everything was somehow muffled. Her left hand was still in her coat pocket and clutched the telephone on which she had received the message a few minutes ago. It felt hot. She saw Gabriel Tretjak walking towards the lift, but she didn't have the strength to follow him. But when he turned around, looked at her with his black eyes and said ‘Come', she also didn't have the strength not to follow him.

The human brain hates nothing more than sheer happenstance or coincidence, an event which is unpredicted and unpredictable. That is why the human brain always looks for hidden rules, laws and messages. The unpredictable is dangerous. If the event continues to occur, the brain immediately sets the priorities and concentrates totally on the processing of the event. It may be, for example, some awful sight or bad news. Researchers call it a new stimulus, a new experience which forces the brain to react in an unusual way: it cuts itself off completely from any new information until the new stimulus is processed. Doctors know that patients who find out that they have been diagnosed with cancer cannot absorb anything else after that, and later cannot remember what was talked about.

Charlotte Poland could not have said what colour the walls of the hotel room were, what material the floor was covered with, how many pictures hung on the walls, whether there was a mirror in the lift. Presumably she couldn't have even answered the question at that moment of why she was here. Tretjak's call, saying that he wanted to meet her, that he had a new plan which concerned her son, all that was far, far away. Also the time last summer, when he had finally found Lars and repeatedly offered to help, as if he had sensed a certain commonality with him, even a closeness – everything was expunged. Her brain was concerned only with processing the text message, and forbade any distraction.

While Tretjak, in his black cashmere coat, unlocked the door to Room 405, turned on the light, walked to the window and drew the curtains, and still in his coat sat down on one of the two armchairs, unfolded a piece of paper and started to ask her questions, Charlotte Poland's brain repeated the text message. Again and again.

Under no circumstances should you meet Gabriel. I've found out something dreadful. Paul Tretjak was innocent. Your life is in danger. Don't believe one word Gabriel tells you.

And Charlotte Poland's brain also repeated again and again the name of the person who had signed the message:
Fiona Neustadt.

The furniture of Room 405 consisted of a big bed, a wardrobe and a small corner seating arrangement with two armchairs. The bed was covered with a dark green throw. The wardrobe was made from dark wood, as was the floor. The armchairs were dark green as well, the colour of the walls was ochre, the curtains white. Above the bed hung a framed black and white photograph. It showed the small harbour of Maccagno, as it had been a long time ago, maybe a hundred years. Slowly, all of this crept into Charlotte Poland's perception. She saw that the piece of paper Tretjak had unfolded was some kind of parchment with colourful decorations in the margins, and that coats of arms could be made out. And she also heard what Gabriel Tretjak was saying.