The Oktober Projekt (34 page)

‘So,’ she said swinging past him. ‘I’m still waiting?’

‘I’m trying to get some information on Sabine. Someone told me
she came here for help, said it was a refuge? You are Anke?’

‘I’m Anke and this is a refuge, well one aspect of it. The
girls come here expecting confidentiality and that’s what they get. I’m busy,
you’ll have to find your own way out.’

With a flick of her head she climbed over the basket leaving
Nick no option but to follow.

‘Wrong way,’ she said, removing costumes from twisted rails
with one hand, the other dropping them into a basket.

‘Sabine’s dead, an overdose,’ Nick said.

‘Shit, no way.’ She sat heavily on a backless chair and her
upturned face had a startling clarity. ‘Christ… I mean. Hey Körbl, you there?’
she called to a thin shadow outside. ‘Go find Emmerich, tell him it’s urgent.’

They shared a moment of reflection together. Nick and Anke, a
woman he barely knew; as though Sabine was their best friend, someone they’d
known for a lifetime at least.
 

‘Did she come here for help?’ Nick wondered.

‘Sure she was here. We got to know her pretty well. I don’t
know the date, we get so many coming here for their last chance. Most of the
women are sex workers, strippers, showgirls, this place allows them to get
involved with drama as a form of therapy,’ Anke explained. ‘Did,’ she added.
‘They do workshops here in their spare time and when they think they’re ready,
move on to a hostel where their pimps and dealers can’t touch them. If they’re
desperate, scared or in danger, they sometimes sleep here.’

‘Who are you anyhow?’ Anke asked, as though it was an issue she
should have dealt with sooner.

‘Someone interested in why Sabine died,’ Nick said.

Without revealing what she made of him, Anke took a tobacco tin
from a pocket in her bib and braces and set about rolling a cigarette with slim
fingers that had no colour, each nail bitten square. She struck a match,
touched the paper until it flared as the flame hit the seam of tobacco.

‘You didn’t like her?’

Anke took a long smoke her brown eyes unblinking, scanning
Nick’s face all the while.

‘Sabine was Sabine, I don’t have to like everyone,’ she
explained, the rancour twisting her lip.
 

Nick watched Anke give a benign smile as if this information
was something she preferred not to share.

‘She was lost,’ put in a deep voice from the door.

‘Emmerich,’ Anke called, but Emmerich dragged away the basket
and Nick concentrated on Sabine.

‘You don’t think she had the nerve to leave the Brazillia?’ he
asked, wondering if she might have made it to the refuge if Nick hadn’t crossed
her path.

‘We all lack courage,’ said Anke. ‘Look at us here. We’ve all
been together a lot longer than we’d like to think, idealists who want to
escape.
We’re not exemplary
citizens.’

‘Did she ever talk about herself?’

Anke trapped the cigarette between her fingers, took one last
draw and put it out with her heel.

‘You mean how that caring family of hers threw her out? How she
began working as a prostitute at fifteen? Yes, she talked about that in some of
her lucid moments.’

‘What about her boyfriend?’

Abruptly she rose to her feet, her expression wary, her fists
clenched tight pressed rigidly to her sides.

‘Just who are you?’ she snapped. ‘You ask a lot of pretty sharp
questions. You ask them, you ask them…’

‘In a very professional style,’ offered Emmerich’s deep voice.
Barely thirty, a couple of days’ stubble clinging to his strong jaw his head
rested languidly on the door; a symbol of confidence or a posed piece of
performance kept as evidence of a creative soul.

‘Meet Emmerich,’ said Anke. ‘Our sometime artistic director,
our inspiration, our biggest bore.’

‘Our mysterious visitor,’ he said with a sneer. ‘What is it you
do? Ah, you never told Hans outside did you?’

‘I find people,’ stated Nick. And to prove it he handed Anke a
card, printed that very morning in a fast print shop selected from its
inexpensive range.

After reading the card Anke passed it over to Emmerich who
batted it away, a man not used to inconvenience or unnecessary and
insignificant distractions. ‘What has poor little Sabine done this time?’
Emmerich asked with a brilliant smile, spreading his arms in a mock stage
display of horror.

‘I didn’t have chance to ask her, she’s dead.’

It was hard for Nick to tell if Emmerich’s flinch, his sudden
movement was shock at an unforeseen loss or an actor disguising another reason
why Sabine was so well remembered.

‘How well did you know her?’

‘Meaning?’ demanded Emmerich.

‘Relationships, they can be very messy. But I don’t suppose
that you had….’

‘Show him where she kept her things,’ said Emmerich. ‘He’d
better talk to Gottfried.’

‘Gottfried and Sabine… they were friends,’ explained Anke,
showing Nick down the corridor to a plain door that someone had laughingly
painted a star on. As soon as Anke swung back the door Nick saw a room stripped
to the bare essentials, nothing belonging to Sabine left for the curious to tag
and label, no more artefacts dropped on her rush through life.

‘I’d warn you that Gottfried is very sensitive about Sabine,’
she said. ‘Love can deceive us all.’ And with a smile she closed him in, her
voice lifting in an order as she went back to the packing.

The room had three metal bunk beds giving it the air of a cell.
Bare mattresses, a couple of them badly soiled held no blankets or sheets, just
rolled or folded sleeping bags for women desperate to escape men. A sink
stained from coffee dregs had a threadbare towel hanging from a tap. Beside an
arrow slit meshed window, a tall wide chest with nothing but newspaper as
lining in any of its drawers. Upending a cabinet Nick discovered nothing more
exciting than a manufacturer’s stamp, worn, unintelligible with age. Not
hearing the footsteps, he spun far too quickly for his ribs when a gentle cough
came at his back.

‘Anke said Sabine is dead,’
began Gottfried sadly. ‘An overdose?’

Nick read the hesitation as Gottfried came further into the
room. He saw too a flash of recognition as Gottfried glanced at one of the
bottom bunks; memories either good or bad and the discomfort of having to face
them.

‘Someone gave her a pure fix. I’m sorry.’

‘She promised me…’ Gottfried approached a different bunk with
reluctance, his stiff shoulders buckling under a shiver. He picked a piece of
mattress clear of stain and sat down.

‘She wouldn’t be a user again?’ Nick finished for him. And
Gottfried nodded, holding one hand tightly in the other. ‘Was she your first
lover?’ asked Nick bluntly.

‘And if she was?’ Gottfried, said, disgusted by Nick’s seedy
assertion. ‘What business is it of yours? What we had meant something to both
of us.’

‘I’m sure it did. I’m only here to help. I want to find the
person who betrayed her, who killed her.’

Turned to the window, Gottfried presented a narrow silhouette
against the bright haze cast by the snow. He dragged his feet against the bare
floorboards, a tiny piece of grit trapped under one sole scratching the dull
varnish.

‘Emmerich says that you might be police, you might not. You
could be undercover or something else?’

‘Don’t you ever make up your own mind?’ asked Nick. ‘You seem
to take a lot of what Emmerich says as fact. Has it always been like that? He make
all the decisions for you? How long have you known him?’ Nick wondered
naturally, totally relaxed.

Consoled by Nick’s change of direction Gottfried shook his head
and turned from the window, his suspicions momentarily discarded.

‘Three years give or take,’ he said sensing Nick’s willingness
to listen. ‘It was good in the beginning before Emmerich came on the scene,’ he
said under his breath, his face hardening. Gottfried prepared for another push,
another question but Nick, content for Sabine’s part-time lover to recount his
story unhurried, made no other sound. And after this depressing silence,
Gottfried drew out his first meeting with Sabine, forced to talk away the pain.

‘She walked in off the street one day. Flashed a smile at
everyone and gave me a pat on the head. They all thought it a great laugh, the
baby of the company gets the right show of affection. Emmerich made it last for
weeks, patting my head whenever he got the chance.’ His face dark, consumed by
the shadow from the wall, he muttered something to himself and got off the
mattress.

‘And when she left, you ceased to be lovers?’

Lashing out with a foot Gottfried sent an empty plaster box
skidding away.

‘That’s something you need to know? For what? What does it
matter?’

‘It will help me find her killer.’

‘Sabine didn’t leave me,’ he announced, the anger rushing up
into his eyes. ‘She left this place and Emmerich. She added me to her list of
clients that first night she walked in if that’s what you need to know. Only
she didn’t make a charge, did it for herself and me. I must have been lucky
okay. I was maybe the first man that she let make love to her for free. You got
enough now?’

Voices reached them from the corridor heading towards them, low
then high. Anke and Hans the mechanic paused at the door.

‘You okay, Gottfried? You want Hans to throw him out? See if
he’s a cop by the way he lands?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said waving them away.

‘She’s the boss is she?’

‘Anke is the Numa,’ said Gottfried. ‘It was her idea, she hires
and fires, makes all the moves.’

‘She choose who gets a second chance, who gets to escape their
problems?’

‘Better you ask her yourself.’

‘Sabine grateful for the chance?’

Gottfried glanced at him, unsure where he was being led.

‘She never said,’ Gottfried answered in a sulk.

‘Did Sabine ever speak of other friends?’ asked Nick, making
another long approach. ‘Particular friends such as girlfriends, best friends,
maybe even boyfriends? Someone that she thought she could really trust? A good
friend to talk to?’

‘She spoke of no one.’

‘Tell me,’ insisted Nick helpfully, ‘there must have come a
time when you discussed the past? A mutual liking for something that let her
talk about her friends?’

‘Sometimes, when she was down we’d talk about her life before
here,’ Gottfried retorted sullenly. ‘We slept together, had a few good times to
remember. Does that make me responsible for her?’

‘But enough for her to return when she needed help perhaps,
when she was desperate, or in trouble? If she had no one else she could trust,
or who cared about her, is that when Sabine came to you?’ Nick asked quietly.
‘When would that have been? When did Sabine come back here?’ Outside in the
snow the bus backfired, spluttered then finally died all together.

Thrown, caught unprepared, Gottfried did a number of things
with his hands none of them a success. His eyes lingering on this hard stranger
broke away as Nick returned his stare.

‘She told you about being in trouble didn’t she? Didn’t she,
Gottfried? She came back here and wanted you to give her advice, a place to run
to. Or was it to collect something? Pick up an item that she had given you to
take care of for her?’ said Nick, glancing at the space in the dust under a
clothes rail, a space that Nick knew would match the base of Sabine’s imitation
vanity case.

Gottfried feigned disbelief. His body squared away from Nick
revealed nothing of his face, but Nick knew of the misery from the pull and
downturn of his shoulders.

‘And which side are you on?’ he asked, facing up to Nick,
though the fight had already gone out of him.

‘Sabine’s.’

Gottfried dwelt for a terrible couple of minutes on Nick’s
answer. At one point he made to put up some resistance only to change his mind,
and perhaps of the options that he considered in that cold disheartening room,
the one he had less to fear was placing his trust in Nick. Which he did, in a
gentle conciliatory voice that compounded his innocence.

‘Sabine came to me, scared, frightened, two months ago,’ he
said, distracted, far away, listening to Hans bellow for help.

‘That would be?’

‘Sometime in October,’ said Gottfried as though Nick was
stupid.
 

‘I’d heard nothing, nothing from her since the time she asked
me to look after her cosmetic bag. Then in October she turned up in a real
state, in tears, yelling, asking for the bag back.’

‘Did she tell you what the problem was?’
 

‘Some friend of hers had got into a mess. But it was going to
be okay, made right in a couple of days, no problems, no worries. This friend
is in big danger and only Sabine can do this. This friend has to be saved and
Sabine’s just met someone who can help.’

‘Who was going to help?’

‘Some woman, okay, I don’t know and I didn’t ask.’

‘What was in her bag that was so important?’

‘Said it was a key to unlock the gates to the magic kingdom. I
asked her if she’d been using again because she was going through the bag as
though her life depended on finding something.’

Which it had done thought Nick, but Sabine wasn’t to know.
‘What was she looking for?’

‘One of those protective postal bags and I asked what’s in the
bag, asked her to let me help, take care of things. But she said she didn’t
want me involved. I must have looked like I thought she had a stash in the bag,
so she showed me. It was a DVD and she said it was a private film. I thought
she was crazy, but she took it with her bag and told me not to worry, Sabine
was going to save her friend.’
 

‘You know this friend?’

‘She never gave me the details,’ said Gottfried. ‘But I guess
it was Franziska.’