Grave Intent (5 page)

Jan raised his bottle. “We’d better enjoy our evening, because our manhunt starts up again first thing tomorrow morning.”

Jan shuffled wearily up the stairs to his apartment. He got a strange feeling every time he passed Father Anberger’s apartment. The priest had been the final victim of Jan’s girlfriend, Betty. Jan missed their casual conversations in the stairway, the priest’s unshakeable optimism, his faith in Good.

The apartment door opened, and Jan leapt aside as if expecting the deceased father to greet him. Instead, a small young woman came out. She had short dark hair, a dark complexion, and lovely almond-shaped eyes. Jan guessed she was in her early twenties. She carried two books under one arm and had a cloth tote bag hanging off the other shoulder.

She came over to Jan and held out a hand. “Hello. My name is
Lan.”

Jan shook her hand. After a stupid-sounding “Hello,” nothing more came out of his mouth. He hadn’t realized Father Anberger’s apartment had already been rented.

“So do you have a name?” she asked.

“Tommen. Jan, I mean. Tommen is my last name. You can just call me Jan.” He was still holding on to her hand.

He pulled back his fingers as if he’d burned himself and stole a glance over the young woman’s shoulder into the apartment, still half expecting the priest to come out.

His new neighbor caught him looking in the apartment and furrowed her brow.

“Sorry about that, Frau Lan,” he muttered.

“Lan is my first name.”

“Oh—then, sorry, Lan. Speaking of which: what kind of name is that?”

“Vietnamese.”

“Ah. You’re from Vietnam.”

“No. Potsdam.”

“Oh,” Jan said, and added, by way of apology, “I only thought, because you’re so . . . I meant, you look like you—”

“My dad’s Vietnamese.”

“Ah.” Jan squeezed out a tortured smile. “Vietnam is awesome. I could die for some
bami goreng
.”

“That’s Indonesian. Maybe you mean some
báhn mi
?”

“Right.” Jan coughed in embarrassment and changed the subject. “Anyway, sorry for peeking into your apartment—it’s just that I knew the renter who lived there before you.”

“The priest who was murdered?”

“You know about that?” Jan was surprised. The tenants’ association had asked the residents to keep it quiet so as not to scare away potential renters.

“Sure I do. That’s the reason I got the apartment so easily.”

“I didn’t think anyone knew about it.”

“The Internet helped. I followed the case online, Herr Detective,” she said with a wink. “I posted in apartment-seekers’ forums that the victim had lived here. Once I did that? All the potential renters bailed. Apart from me.” She shrugged. “Made up a few extra-bloody details, and the pad went down two hundred euros.”

Jan had to cough again. His new neighbor was nobody’s fool. Plus, it was pretty ballsy admitting to a detective that you’d run what basically sounded like a con.

“Well, have a good night, Jan. A little sleep would do you good,” she said, gazing into his eyes.

“Thanks.” Jan wasn’t sure what he was thanking her for.

“I have to go to my study group.” She held up her books. “Number theory.” She smiled at him, shut the door behind her, and went down the stairs.

“Good night,” Jan said, still confused, and waved after her.

Today was just not his day.

Jan had lain awake thinking about the case half the night and only fell asleep around two a.m. Now he sat at his desk in the police department, rubbing at his eyes, exhausted. He was badly in need of caffeine, and he could read up on the facts just as well over in the police department’s coffee lounge. As he was leaving his office with his notes, he nearly collided into Bergman, the head of detectives.

“I was looking for you.”

Jan sighed. Those words were never a good sign.

Bergman pointed a thumb at the woman next to him. “Let me introduce you to Dr. Kerima Elmas. Clinical psychologist.”

Jan shook her hand. She was a petite woman with a friendly smile. Her brown locks matched her dark eyes. Only her large nose and old-fashioned glasses detracted from her attractiveness. Jan put her in her late thirties.

“Kerima will be spending the next hour with you.”

“I thought we agreed I’d be spared all that.”

“We did?”

“You gave me your word.”

“Then I must have been lying.” Bergman flashed his radiant smile.

“Nothing to be afraid of, Herr Tommen,” Kerima said. “So far? No deaths or injuries have resulted from my little conversations.”

“It’s not that. I’m in the middle of an investigation, and I don’t have the time to talk about my childhood or my relationship with my mother.”

“You must not have a very high opinion of psychologists.”

Jan stuttered, “Well, I wouldn’t put it like that—”

“In any case,” Kerima went on, “we always hold these conversations during work time. Possible post-traumatic stress disorder occurs during situations of stress, not while golfing.”

“What post-traumatic stress disorder?”

Kerima briefly glanced behind them, down the hall. Some of Jan’s fellow cops just happened to be leaning in doorways, trying to look busy. “I’m not sure we should be discussing this here.”

Jan turned to Bergman. “I have to get over to Dr. Valburg’s office.”

“You’ll have to take a short detour first.”

“There’s a murderer on the loose out there.”

“He’ll still be there in half an hour.”

“I’m really not up for this.”

“Tough luck. I’m the Chief of Detectives. So you’re going with Dr. Elmas right here and now. Don’t come back out until a half hour’s up.”

The psychologist turned to Bergman. “Afterward, we should talk about your management style.”

“Hey, I’m not the patient here, Jan is.”

“It’s no problem,” Kerima said. “I don’t have anything else scheduled for this morning.”

“Yeah, you should definitely talk to Herr Bergman here about his management style,” Jan added, grinning. He might just get to like this woman yet.

“Shut it, Jan, or I’ll use your Christmas bonus to bet on horses. And as far as you’re concerned, Dr. Elmas? When I feel the need to interpret inkblots, I’ll give you a call.”

“Doesn’t work that way—in my position, I can suggest a consultation and all the staff have to comply.” She allowed herself a smile.

Bergman looked at his watch. “Oops, got a meeting.” He turned and left them standing in the hallway.

“He does that a lot,” Jan told Kerima.

“Does what, exactly? Insults, threats, appears unwilling to learn?”

“All of that.”

Max came around the corner. He was riding a chrome kick-scooter, leaning into it like a race driver in an aerodynamic stance. He pushed off with his right foot to gain speed and whooshed by them. “Morn-eeeng,” he called out in a childlike voice, drawing out the
ee
until he reached the end of the corridor.

Kerima peered after him. “Maybe I should set up a permanent office right here in the station,” she muttered. “Lots of work to be had here.” She steered Jan into to the conference room and shut the door behind them.

“What do you want to hear?” Jan grumbled.

“I’m interested in how you’re doing.”

“Me? Pretty well.”

“You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“What makes you think I’m having any problems?”

Kerima took a file folder from her bag. “Let me go over it. In your last case—just a few weeks ago—you were suspected of murder, were hunted by your colleagues, and had to go underground. It was finally revealed that your girlfriend was the murderer and she was using you as the fall guy. She tried to kill you, so you had no choice but to shoot her dead.” The psychologist folded her hands in her lap. “Even if you’re the toughest cop in Berlin, Herr Tommen, no one recovers from all that in just a few weeks.”

“What was I supposed to do, take time off, go into a monastery and meditate?”

“I want to know how your life has changed since this case. How you’re getting through the day, if you’re having trouble sleeping, things like that.”

“I have nightmares. I had to get rid of all photos of Betty and me, and yet I drive by all the places in Berlin that remind me of her.”

Kerima nodded. “I’ve never heard anyone be so open the first time we talk.”

“What do you expect? Of course it’s stayed with me. But the worst thing I can be doing is nothing at all. Working helps. Hanging out with friends helps. Sitting in front of the TV watching a good soccer game helps too. What doesn’t help is always having to think about it.”

“Talking about it helps too.”

“Who am I supposed to talk to? My buddy? He was there. He saw my girlfriend pointing a shotgun at my head. He saw me putting a bullet in her, her life flowing out of her. He nearly bought it too, that day.”

“You can talk to me.”

“But you don’t understand,” Jan said. “You might well be a capable psychologist, but you don’t know a thing about everyday life as a cop. You’ve never aimed a weapon at someone, and I highly doubt that you’ve shot your lover.”

“If I don’t know how all that feels, then why not try and explain it to me?”

“What is there to explain? Betty had a shotgun in her hand and was about to blow my head off. If I hadn’t shot back, I’d be dead now.”

“So you had no choice.”

“You might have that impression, but it’s cold comfort. I live through that moment again and again and keep asking myself whether I handled it right. If I had just wounded Betty, she’d still be alive.”

“She wasn’t the first person you’d ever killed.”

“The other ones deserved it.”

“You don’t think that a serial killer who tried to murder you deserved it?”

“It might look that way when you describe it like that. But she was my girlfriend and I loved her. In my dreams I saw us as an old married couple, sitting together on a veranda, watching the sun go down.” Jan looked at the floor. “I might have acted according to protocol, and I probably had no other choice, but I still won’t ever forgive myself for killing her.”

Kerima observed Jan a moment as if hoping he would continue. Then she paged through a folder. “Has your relationship to your colleagues changed in any way?”

“What do you mean?”

“To the Berlin police, you were the main suspect in the George Holoch murder case for several days. Your colleagues, one Herr Patrick Stein in particular, basically became your worst enemies overnight.”

Jan leaned back in his chair. “It’s complicated.”

“Try to untangle it.”

“Patrick and I could never stand each other. I thought he was a conformist, always going by the book. He categorized me as this trigger-happy maniac who didn’t care about the rules. Not the best conditions for working together. But with this last case, it was different. Patrick was downright obsessed with catching me, ignoring all clues pointing to other suspects and focusing entirely on the evidence that incriminated me. Only after our little encounter did he finally start to have doubts.”

“And this impressed you?”

“To understand what I’m telling you, you’d have to know Patrick better. For him there was only the proper, by-the-book way of doing things. He ignored anything outside the box. He was obstinate and refused to learn and got stuck on the completely wrong track in pursuing George Holoch’s killer. But eventually, Patrick’s intellect won out over his obsession with getting one over on me. He was man enough to own up to his mistakes and apologize. That’s when I understood that for Patrick, it’s not about his ego but about the cause. I hadn’t thought him capable of operating like that.”

“So you’re good friends now?”

“That might be taking it a bit far. But we respect each other and are learning to work together. I appreciate his preoccupation with details and precision work, and he admires my unconventional methods.” Jan shrugged. “If anything good came out of the last case, that was it.”

Kerima eyed him, then stowed the folder in her bag. “Thanks a lot for your time, Herr Tommen.”

Jan blinked at this abrupt end to the conversation. “That was it?”

She nodded. “I just wanted to talk with you.”

“So what’s your evaluation? Can I go back to work?”