Blood Relative (30 page)

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Think so isn’t good enough. I need you to be alone …’

I remembered Wahrmann’s warning and my blithe refusal to accept it. Maybe I’d been wrong. ‘What, so your men can kill me?’

Tretow sighed. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Mr Crookham.’

‘Really? Was I being melodramatic when they were shooting at me this afternoon?’

‘You keep accusing me without the slightest evidence, Mr Crookham.’

‘How about the threatening email you sent my brother? I’m assuming it was you, or one of your people, that sent it.’

‘Presume what you like. The fact is I had nothing to do with your brother’s death. That much is certain. Right now, my only desire is to pursue my business interests undisturbed by unnecessary distractions. I would far prefer a peaceful agreement between two reasonable men. So, can you get out of the hotel?’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘Then I need you to do so in precisely fifteen minutes. Leave through the service entrance at the back of the hotel. Turn left on Chausseestrasse and start walking. What will you be wearing?’

‘Black overcoat, jeans. I’m tall, a metre ninety-one. You won’t miss me.’

‘OK,’ Tretow said. ‘Fifteen minutes.’ And then the line went dead.

I spent the next thirteen minutes looking at every Google Earth and Streetview image I could find of the hotel, making sure that I knew exactly where I was relative to the rest of the building and the exit onto Chausseestrasse. Then I put on my coat, came out of my room and told the sentry I was heading down for a nightcap at the hotel bar. He spoke into a wrist-mike, listened to the response then gave me a nod of approval.

I took the lift down to the basement, then made my way at a jog through the corridors linking all the various storerooms, offices and services that a hotel hides in its underbelly. I was expecting to find a staircase at the back of the building that would take me back up to the ground floor, almost certainly somewhere near the kitchens, and sure enough – there it was. Up I went and emerged within sight of the rear exit. That opened onto a tarmac-covered yard where a couple of cars and a large van were parked. The yard was entirely surrounded by buildings, but on one side there was an arch that led to the street. I walked through it and there I was on Chausseestrasse.

I turned left, as instructed, and started walking. Barely ten seconds later a black VW Passat pulled up beside me, coming in the opposite direction. The front passenger window slid down and a man leaned across from the driver’s seat. His hair was grey, his face as drawn and wrinkled as a headhunter’s trophy. This was the man from the airport.

His smile seemed to say, ‘Yes, you’re right. You do recognize me.’ But the only words he spoke were, ‘Get in.’

47

The Passat pulled up in a side street just a few hundred yards from the Reichstag, the German parliament building. Across the road stood a mini-mall of shops and cafes, all closed for the night. But when we got out of the car the driver led me in the opposite direction, across the pavement and along a narrow path, slippery with half-melted snow. It led between two rows of rectangular concrete slabs, the first couple barely higher than my knee, but the rest rising in size until they towered to almost twice my height. Other paths crossed the one we were on at right-angles, the slabs marching away in every direction, rising and falling with the contours of the ground in an apparently limitless grid. The only light anywhere came from the faint ambient glow of the city, and the slabs cast deep, impenetrable shadows across the path. This army of great dark monoliths looming to either side acted like huge concrete blinkers so that all I could see was the path ahead, unrolling without any visible end.

There was hardly anybody else about. Occasionally a figure or two flitted across my line of sight as they passed between stones far in front of me, moving unheard and only half-seen, like ghosts in a giant’s graveyard. But for the most part there were just the two of us, walking wordlessly as we made our way through a sinister, foreboding world of darkness and half-light.

Then a flame dazzled briefly from an impenetrable shadow up ahead, followed soon after by the sharp orange glow of a lit cigarette.

The driver stopped and I did the same but he shoved me in the back and grunted, ‘Move.’

I walked towards the burning cigarette and then its owner stepped forward a pace, out of the blackness and, though he was still half lost in shadow and smoke, I saw the face of the man on the poster: the face of Hans-Peter Tretow. Tonight it had none of the prosperous, convivial salesmanship of that image. Tretow’s eyes were wary and calculating as they observed my approach, and his mouth was set in a grim downward curve between ponderous, fleshy jowls. He was shorter than me, but bulkier, and though he must, I reckoned, have been somewhere in the region of sixty, there was still a sense of physical power, even menace, about him. He reeked of money, too. His overcoat had a heavy fur collar, and as he came closer to me I caught a whiff of a rich, spicy aftershave.

‘So, you are Peter Crookham,’ he said.

I gave a nod of acknowledgement.

‘And you are married to my sweet little Mariana … the murderess.’

‘She didn’t murder anyone.’

‘Nevertheless, a man died. You know where we are?’

‘Sure, this is the Holocaust Memorial.’

‘Quite so. A place where the German people say sorry for the sins we are supposed to have committed. We did that a lot, you know, for many years. But there is only so long that one can say sorry and only for so many things. Now we are sick of apologies. We have had enough of the past. That is why no one gives a shit about what happened here during the years of the DDR. They want to forget all about it. Understand?’

‘If you say so …’

‘Good, because then you will also understand that your threats to me are empty. All your talk of exposing these things I am supposed to have done, of making people ashamed to buy my apartments, forget it.’ He threw his cigarette stub to the ground and started grinding it into the slushy ground to emphasize his words. ‘No one would print your story. No one would put you on TV. So do not expect me to apologize. Why should I? The ones who should say sorry are Wahrmann, and his dumb bitch of a wife, too.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. They didn’t abuse their daughter …’

Tretow opened his eyes in exaggerated surprise: ‘That is what you think? I disagree. They were the ones who left their pretty little girl in a state orphanage, deserted and all alone, when she should have been safe at home. I took care of a lonely, unhappy, frightened child. I was her friend. I looked after her when her father did not. I let her know that even though he didn’t love her and was happy to desert her, I would always be there for her. So don’t you come here telling me that it is my fault she is now crazy. I did not do that to her. And, by the way, I did not “abuse” her, as you say. Ask her father. Ask how she was made to spread her legs for a doctor.’

Tretow’s voice had been rising, his tone becoming more aggressive as he pursued his theme of self-justification. His self-proclaimed role as Mariana’s protector made me want to wring his neck. But that last line hit home.

A slow, hungry grin crossed his face.

‘Yes, you know about that, I can tell just by looking at you … so screw you if you think I hurt that child.’

His refusal to accept any responsibility was getting to me, and the provocation was entirely deliberate. Tretow was waiting for me to lose control, I could feel it. Fighting to keep my voice level, I answered him back: ‘You hurt Mariana all right. And not just her, either. I’ve seen the damage you did. More than twenty years later and those kids are still wrecks …’

‘Ha! You mean Heike Schmidt?’

‘How do you know I met her?’

‘The same way I’ve known everything you did since you arrived here in Berlin. That fool Haller was too trusting. Old loyalties die harder than he supposed … But Heike …
ach
, I could tell you things about that girl. I could tell you about Mariana, too. But I am a businessman. I must have something in return.’

‘Such as …?’

‘Well, you are seeking information. So you should give some information to me. It has been a long time since I saw Mariana. I used to care for her very much and it would please me to know about how she is now and about your life together. For example … do you have children of your own?’

Of all the questions to ask, how had he known that would be the one that would hurt me most? He could not possibly have known about Mariana’s operation … could he? It had to be blind luck, or just a psychopath’s intuition for the best means to cause pain.

Tretow shrugged: ‘Oh well, if you will not answer me, our meeting is at an end. Goodnight, Mr—’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We don’t have any children.’

‘Hmm, you surprise me. Do you not want any, or is it Mariana?’

‘She can’t have children.’ I was damned if I was telling him why. ‘So, I’ve answered your question. Your turn. Let’s start with Heike Schmidt.’

Tretow sighed like a man who has just had a sip of a particularly fine brandy. ‘Ah Heike, she always had a plain, sour face, but she was a natural, just a dirty little bitch. It was in her blood, in her bones …’

I thought of the shattered woman alone behind her apartment’s locked front door: ‘How can you say things like that? She was a child, a little child!’

Tretow leered at me: ‘And you think children have no interest in sex? You think they don’t enjoy it? Well, you didn’t see Heike the way I did, entertaining all those Western politicians and industrialists as though she was born to be a whore. I have films, if you’d care to watch.’

‘You sick bastard.’

‘Heike didn’t complain. She had pretty dresses. She had Barbie dolls. All the other girls envied her. That was how Mariana persuaded her to do it in the first place … Ha-ha! You should see your face, Mr Crookham. Such a look of surprise. And yet, you must be desperate to know more. Sadly for you, that will require you to answer another question. More than one, actually. So … Mariana, is she still beautiful?’

‘Not the last time I saw her. Right now she’s a wreck. And it’s thanks to you, I know it is …’

‘Calm yourself, Mr Crookham. Just tell me what Mariana looks like. You know, when she is not committing acts of murder. Tell me, or I walk …’

‘She’s very beautiful, just like she always was. In my eyes, she’s the most beautiful woman on earth.’

‘And charming?’

‘Yes, very charming.’

Tretow nodded affably. ‘Good, good, I am pleased to hear that she is still the Mariana I remember. After all, that is how she was able to recruit the other girls. They all worshipped her because she was so pretty. She was the princess of the orphanage. Fräulein Färber probably told you that already, no? So when she invited them to come on a little trip, an expedition to Potsdam, or maybe a picnic out in the countryside, of course they were happy to say yes. The girls, and some boys too, would go to play with their nice, kind new uncles and Mariana would stay with me.’

I thought of the ease with which Mariana had recruited the clients that had made our architectural practice so successful and wondered whether she’d had any idea at all of the pattern she had been repeating. The stain of her childhood was seeping into my own memories of her, tainting everything it touched. I was having to breathe deeply now, slowly and deliberately, just to keep my rage in check: ‘Did she know? Did she know what was happening to the other kids?’

Tretow looked delighted by the effect he was having on me. ‘I don’t know … what do you think? The children were always under strict orders not to talk about what happened, even to each other … but you know how children are. It is hard for them to keep a secret. But I can tell you this for sure: we spent so many hours together, Mariana and I. She helped me when I worked in my vegetable garden, also. And because she was so special and so useful, I never touched her. A little kiss, maybe, sometimes, but that is all. And photographs, of course. She loved to have her picture taken. Such a vain little creature and so proud of her beauty – perhaps you have noticed that? Well … have you?’

‘Not really, no … I don’t think she’s particularly vain.’

Tretow did not seem pleased by that reply. ‘I think you are just trying to defend your wife, Mr Crookham. Very noble, to be sure. In any case, I knew that Mariana was very, very precious. I was saving her for a special moment, a special client. There was a minister in your own government, a very senior minister indeed, whose tastes … well, let us just say that he had seen Mariana’s photograph. He would have done anything, given anything, to spend even an hour with her. With a girl like Mariana, you understand, it is the first time that really counts. After that …’

I took a pace towards him, raising my fist.

Tretow backed away, both hands up in front of him: ‘Whoa! Control yourself. My colleague Mr Meyer, the one who brought you here, is still watching us. Do not be deceived by his appearance. He may look a little old but he is still a very dangerous individual. Also he has a strong sense of civic duty. So when he happens to be walking by and sees a respectable man such as myself being attacked, well, of course he will come to my rescue and then who knows what might happen. So, let us not argue …’

Tretow’s hands dropped and he stepped forward again, forcing me to back away to give space. ‘You should be grateful to me,’ he continued. He wasn’t bothering to ask me questions now. He wanted to tell me everything about Mariana, all the grisly details, knowing that every word he said, every new revelation, was cutting me like the lash of a whip.

‘I treated your wife very well, even when she begged me to let her have a nice uncle like Heike and the other girls did … She felt left out, you see. She wanted to be like them. She was worried that maybe it was because she was not pretty enough, after all. That is why she was so keen to pose for photographs and films. She wanted to please me, to prove that she could look pretty if she really tried. Here, I have some pictures …’

Now my temper snapped. As Tretow reached into his coat and momentarily looked down to see what he was doing I stepped forward, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him hard against the monolith behind him. His head snapped back and hit the bare concrete with a clearly audible crack. Tretow staggered forward with a howl of pain, lifting his hands to his skull, and at that moment I heard the sound of running footsteps just behind me.