Blood Relative (12 page)

The task, after all, had already been defined for me by Samira Khan and Tony Wray: save Mariana from jail by uncovering the truth about her past. Of course Yeats, the policeman, had also defined the big problem: no one knew anything about that past. And Mariana was in no state to discuss it, even if she’d been prepared to meet with me in the first place. But architects spend all their lives finding ways round financial, technical and bureaucratic limitations. I’d find a way round this one.

I’d start the same place Yeats had: Andy’s computer. Just as soon as I could get hold of it.

The facts of the case had been agreed to everyone’s satisfaction, so there was no need for the police to hold Andy’s body and possessions any longer. I’d already arranged undertakers to deal with the body. The possessions, however, were my responsibility.

There wasn’t much to deal with, just the black nylon case containing Andy’s laptop and an overnight bag. A list that was handed to me with the bag informed me of its contents. The bag itself reeked of some disgusting institutional odour that reminded me of that morning-after smell of fag ends floating in stale beer. I didn’t bother even opening it, just dumped it in a black plastic bin-liner, tied as tight a knot as I could and slung it in the back of the Range Rover.

It was the computer I was interested in. I took it back to the hotel room where I’d been living for the past couple of nights, plugged in the power cable and asked myself where Andy had put all his research.

Like a lot of people who appear to be chaotic, Andy was very well organized whenever he wanted to be. Dirty plates piled up in his sink for days, carpets disappeared under dust and rubbish, and his desk was invisible beneath the trash scattered all over it. But the things he really cared about – his books, magazines, CDs and DVDs – were always kept perfectly dated and alphabetized, so that he could find anything he wanted in an instant. His laptop, which was essentially his brain in microchip form, was just the same: everything sorted into logical, clearly defined categories. His journalism, for example, was split into folders for each of the publications he worked for. Inside those folders, each finished story had its own file, within which Andy kept all his drafts, copy he’d cut from the finished piece, notes, and so on.

But whatever he was planning to do with Mariana’s story, it didn’t sound like he was close to a finished product. That meant he’d still be working on it in Scrivener. This was a program that allowed one to collect written documents, notes, pictures, web pages and any other media relating to a given project in one folder called a ‘binder’. All the research materials contained in a binder, irrespective of their format, were displayed in the form of cards, pinned to a virtual corkboard. That made it easy for anyone working on a project to see precisely what they’d got … and it also made it simple for me to realize what Andy had been up to.

I looked down the list of Recent Projects in the program’s File menu and there it was: a binder he’d called MC, for Mariana Crookham. I opened it, clicked on the Research icon and up popped a corkboard on which there were a dozen cards and one photograph. It was the biggest single item on the board, pinned at the top left – the start of the page – where one’s eye naturally rested.

The photo showed the blown-up, slightly blurred, image of a little girl, about six or seven years old. She wore a dress with short, puffed sleeves made of a pale-blue checked fabric, with a little white collar and a blue satin bow. Her golden hair was gathered in two long bunches, held by elastic bands, over which big blue bows, darker than her dress, had been tied. She had clear, tawny eyes, which were looking directly at the camera, and her mouth was caught in a slightly tentative expression, as if deciding whether to smile.

Even as a child Mariana had been ravishingly pretty.

19

Minutes went by as I stared at her face, absorbing every scrap of it, hoping that if I only concentrated hard enough, I would hear what the little girl who’d grown up to be my wife had to say through those half-opened lips. ‘Tell me who you are,’ I whispered at the screen. ‘What happened to you? What did they do to you? Just tell me …’

I sent the picture as an email to myself, planning to use the hotel system to print it up. I wanted to be able to carry that image of Mariana with me, like an icon, a totem of faith. In order to send the email I simply opened Andy’s Microsoft Entourage application, created a new message, attached the picture and sent it as if from him to me. But once I’d opened Entourage it automatically got to work downloading new incoming messages. I scrolled with guilty fascination through the posthumous mail that had arrived on his electronic doormat. Almost all of it was spam. There was a cheery message from a friend who was on holiday Down Under, with a picture attached of his latest hot blonde conquest. And then came the final unread message.

It had been sent at 09.36 on Thursday morning, just as Mariana’s case was being discussed in the magistrates’ court. The subject of the message was, ‘Good advice for Andrew Crookham’, sent by ‘[email protected]’. I opened the message: ‘You are investigating matters that are none of your concern. These investigations must cease immediately. Do not return to Berlin. Consider your own personal safety and that of those you love. Remain at home in England. Only bad things can happen if you disregard this advice.’

The message was not signed. I wanted to be able to dismiss it as a sick joke, like one of those round robins that come with instructions to pass them on, or else. But the heavy, nauseous chill that was spreading through my guts said something else. This was a genuine threat. Andy had stumbled onto something in Berlin: something that someone else badly wanted to keep secret. And whatever it was, it surely had to do with Mariana: events in her past, or family connections that could not be exposed to the light. The belief in Mariana that had been snuffed out in court flickered inside me again. This message clearly suggested that there were people out there willing to use violence to stop Andy exposing their activities. Didn’t that provide, at the very least, a reasonable doubt that Mariana was the only person who could possibly have killed him? I picked up my phone and called DCI Yeats.

‘Very interesting,’ he said, when I’d read him the message. ‘But it has nothing whatsoever to do with my investigation.’

‘What do you mean? It’s a threat. Andy’s dead. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be investigating?’

‘Yes, that’s right. I’m investigating a murder that took place more than thirty-six hours before this message was sent. Whoever sent the message did not know that your brother was dead. So they can’t have killed him, can they?’

‘No, I realize that … but the point is, this message establishes that Andy had made enemies in Berlin. Whoever sent this message was obviously one of them. But what if he wasn’t the only one? What if there were others?’

‘But there weren’t, and you know it. Still, I will grant you one thing …’

For a moment my hopes rose, only to be dashed by Yeats’ next words: ‘There appears to be someone in Berlin who very badly wants to prevent your wife’s past being uncovered. This person has issued an anonymous threat of violence. So my formal advice as a police officer to you is to take this threat seriously. I daresay you are curious to find out what your brother discovered. But limit your enquiries to his computer. Don’t do anything else. Don’t go anywhere else.’

‘What, because it might not be good for my personal safety? You’re making exactly the same threat as the person that sent that email.’

‘No, I’m not. I have no intention of doing you any harm. But I’m prepared to believe that someone else just might. Your brother got into some very murky water, Mr Crookham. Don’t go in after him.’

I put the phone down and stared blankly into space. Another door had seemed to open, only to slam back in my face. Or maybe it hadn’t … Whatever else had just happened, it was now obvious that Andy was on the right track, even if he didn’t know it. So there was something real out there that might explain what had happened to make Mariana lash out: something I could still search for. And even Yeats had said I could start my search in Andy’s laptop. So that was what I did.

Next to Mariana’s little-girl picture on Andy’s Scrivener corkboard were a number of cards, several of which contained links to websites. The first took me to a page on a site called StayFriends, whose logo had the slogan ‘
Schulfreunde wiederfinden
’, which I could work out meant, ‘Find schoolfriends again’. So it was a German version of Friends Reunited, and it was open on a page dedicated to a Berlin primary school called Grundschule Rudower.

According to the data on the page, this school had 987 pupils listed on StayFriends, from 59 graduating classes, with 740 profile photos of individual pupils and 161 class photos. One of the latter had also been attached to the corkboard. And there, at the right end of the second row of children, was Mariana, standing between a boy with a fierce crewcut and an earnest girl with dark-brown hair whose pinched expression gave an unnerving suggestion of an angry, resentful adulthood to come.

The girl with the dark-brown hair was called Heike Schmidt, and she was a registered member of StayFriends, as was the crewcut boy, whose name was Karl Braun: a German Charlie Brown. It went without saying that the blonde girl in the middle, the girl who became Mariana Slavik, was not listed as a member.

I always carry a Moleskine notebook with me wherever I go, along with a couple of sharp pencils with erasers on the end. I like to take brief notes of what’s been said with clients and contractors and make drawings of any changes to the plans. On a building site, a quick sketch is worth a lot more than a thousand misunderstood words. Out of habit I started jotting down a few of the names and places Andy had come up with, taking notes of his notes. Whatever quest he had been on, it had become my quest now. Putting things down in my own writing felt as if I were taking possession of it all, grabbing the relay baton he was holding out for me from beyond the grave.

Going back to the corkboard I followed the trail of Andy’s meticulous research. One card was a link to a complete list of Berlin primary schools, divided by districts of the city. The site was open at a page covering the Köpenick district, in which the Grundschule Rudower lay. Another card took me to a website for amateur genealogists, which gave information on all the administrative areas of Berlin, dating back more than a century. Among other things, it specified which districts had ended up in East Berlin and which in West.

Andy had taken the eastern districts and cross-referenced them with the districts on the list of primary schools. Then he’d gone onto StayFriends and searched school after school, looking at the years when Mariana would have been there, scanning every class photo for anyone who resembled her.

I was astonished at the obsessive effort that must have taken. But as Andy used to joke, ‘It’s not always easy to tell the difference between an investigative reporter and a stalker.’ Plenty of girlfriends had left Andy when they realized there was no date so important that he would not cancel it at a moment’s notice if he got a promising lead. Nor was it easy for women to accept that he would remember every last detail of the story he was working on but forget anything and everything about them.

The search for that photo had only been one small part of his effort. Another card contained records of all his travel expenses: the easyJet flight from London Gatwick to Berlin-Schönefeld; the two-night stay at a hotel called the Mercure an der Charité, on what was once the eastern side of the Wall; assorted cash payments for meals, cab fares, metro tickets and so on. He’d taken an early-morning flight out and an evening one back, giving him three full days’ work. But that, as would soon become clear, had not been nearly enough.

All the notes Andy had jotted down as he was working were filed on another card: notes that included his own commentary on what he was doing or discovering. It felt as though Andy’s dry, sarcastic voice, given a low, rasping edge by the cigarettes he was always trying (not very hard) to give up, was whispering in my ear, like a kind of haunting as I read:

Leads 1: School

– Braun: Only two listed in online Berlin phonebook: odd, expected more.

– Braun 1: away in Mali on UN humanitarian work, the do-gooding twat.

– Braun 2: no idea what I was talking about, barely spoke English but swore never heard of Grundschule Rudower.

– 8 Heike Schmidts, plus half-dozen Heike Schmidt-Somethings … NB: woman could be married by now. Prob’ly not, face like that!

– Schmidt UPDATE: third HS I called v. edgy. Said yes had gone to GR school, but denied knowing any girl called Mariana. When I described kid in pic, HS refused to talk. Quote: ‘You must not ask me about these things!’ Slammed phone down. GOTCHA!!

– Schmidt UPDATE 2: went to home listed for HS in phonebook. Apartment building. HS answered buzzer. Threatened to call police.

– QUESTION: there’s definitely something going on … but what?? And what still so scared of 25 years later??

How I wished I could talk to Andy. I wanted to show him the email and ask the next obvious question: had Heike Schmidt been frightened by the same person who’d threatened him? And was it just coincidence that the threat against him had followed his contact with Schmidt?

I jotted those questions down in my notebook, feeling the thrill of the intellectual chase, understanding for the first time in my life why Andy had become so obsessed by the stories he worked on.

The next section of his notes was headed:

Leads 2: Birth Certificate

Unbelievable! No central records office for Germany. So much for Kraut efficiency!! So …

– Birth certificates are issued at the place of birth.