Before It Breaks (43 page)

‘You can reduce it by eliminating those under thirty-five and over forty-five. Also please check for a Manfred Bourke.' He could have adopted his stepfather's name.

‘I'll email you a list as soon as we have it, shouldn't be long.'

Michael Wallen had been in contact with Manfred when he was a boy. Perhaps they had stayed in touch? Once you accepted that Wallen was not lying and the photo shown of Donen was fake it was a short step to put Dieter Schaffer in the frame. He was the only one who could have substituted the photo. If Clement could see that, Manfred Gruen may have also.

‘Look for anybody with first name Manfred up here, caravan parks, vehicle hires.'

He stood in the centre of the room firing off orders. Mal Gross emerged from the AV area and Clement stabbed the question.

‘How's Manners going?'

Gross shook his head. Ryan Gartrell slammed down the phone and called out from his desk.

‘It's not Manfred Gruen, boss.'

What did he mean? It had to be Gruen, everything fitted.

Gartrell continued. ‘The Hamburg Police have records of sympathy cards they sent to Hilda Gruen. Manfred Gruen suicided twelve years ago.'

‘You're sure?'

‘They're definite.'

The room shrank.

‘What about Hilda Gruen?'

‘The cards were sent to an address near Manchester in England. They still haven't found her current address.'

‘Wallen might have told somebody else.' It was Whiteman.

‘Probably, but his son was only aware of that one parcel going off to Manfred.' Clement sucked it up. ‘Keep doing what you're doing. Let's find the owner of that white SUV. I'm going out to clear my head.'

Clement fought the temptation to head up to AV and hang over Manners' shoulder again. The guy was under enough pressure already. He climbed into his car and drove back out where the media crews had been assembled a little earlier. None were left. The streets of town were eerily quiet, the footpaths spare of café furniture that could become lethal weapons in a cyclone. A shop-owner was drilling and fixing ply boards over his windows. Clement passed only two cars heading into town as he cruised out, his mind a jumble between the case and the humiliation of being shifted from leading it. On autopilot he turned along the coast road. Sand was whipping across from the beach.

When he saw the entrance to the more northerly track he turned down towards the beach, just as the abductor must have done. Halfway down, crime scene tape, straining and rattling in the increasing wind, blocked his path. There were no vehicles in sight.

He switched off the engine and sat, the increasingly awesome wind emphasising his insignificance and by extension that of any one human being. Yet he was not totally despondent. Hopefully if Manners couldn't crack that plate, Perth would. They were prepared too, roadblocks up, police and emergency vehicles on the alert for white SUVs.

He had been so confident about Manfred Gruen.

He climbed out into the gale, ducked under the chequered tape and walked towards the beach. As if hurled by an angry fist, sand stung his cheeks. He was forced to squint to keep it out of his eyes. Hunching his body he tried to scan the miles of white sand with not a soul on it. The ocean was foaming, angry but not yet psychotic, the sky a grey purple. How had the abductor got close enough to subdue Osterlund? Was he working with an accomplice?

No, Clement felt a single intelligence here. It would be perhaps another trick, more sleight of hand as he had used with the biker. Who are you? You have a beginning like everyone, like me. You were born somewhere, you had aspirations, maybe of being a
famous soccer player, maybe that was the thing with the t-shirt, but somewhere along the way they disappeared, didn't they? The only thing that became important was punishing these men for the wrong they did to Gruen, you, or both. That is what sustains you, emboldens you. Nothing can happen to you because you are righting a wrong. That's what you believe isn't it?

His phone rang. He felt it more than heard it in the wind. Automatically he began to retreat to the shelter of the car, the wind blowing him along so his legs had to move to catch up. He pulled the phone from his pocket expecting Manners but it was not a station number. ‘Mathias? Hold on.'

He had to yell above the wind. It was a battle to pull the door open. He flopped into his seat feeling more secure out of the gusts. The usual impish tone had drained from the German.

‘Hello Daniel. Sorry I missed your calls. We got your message, Heinrich and I. We couldn't believe it. But it had to be Dieter, right? The fingerprints he couldn't get rid of because they came direct to Heinrich but the photo, they just film some schmuck in Belgrade or Prague with a newspaper and they know poor Pieter will never have a chance to contradict them. I can't believe none of us saw through it. I guess we didn't want to.'

Another spray of sand hurled itself at the windscreen.

Clement said. ‘I'm sorry, mate.'

‘You know why Dieter did it?'

‘Just a guess. He got in over his head gambling, it was his way out. I need to speak to Hilda, if you have her number.'

There was a deep, regretful sigh. ‘There's something Heinrich and I have been debating. I won't bullshit you, man, this has been very hard for us. Kurt Donen murdered our friend and ruined the lives of Pieter and his boy. He gassed himself, the boy, Manfred, you know that?'

‘Yes, I thought … I thought he might be the one.'

Clement oughtn't feel guilty but he did.

‘Tragedy,' was all the German offered before another substantial pause. Clement fought impatience and waited. ‘Heinrich remembered something. You asked me about this Klaus Edershen.'

Clement was suddenly thrown back to the clipping of the crime scene in some German park. ‘That's right.'

‘I looked up the article. It said the victim was a soldier. And I'm thinking, why did Dieter have the article? There was a rumour passed onto us from Gruen via Dieter, maybe before he went bad,
that one of Donen's bodyguards was an ex-mercenary.'

Clement's gaze had automatically turned back to the beach. He was still listening but thinking too about that article. An arrow could have stopped Osterlund, no noise, no shell casings.

‘So Heinrich and me work it out, maybe this Klaus Edershen was Donen's bodyguard. Maybe that was why he was killed. The bodyguard, then the informer; somebody is taking them out, right?'

Still Clement did not interrupt. He sensed something was coming.

‘Over the years Heinrich was writing to Hilda on and off. In one letter she told him the boy was a junior champion, archery.'

‘Manfred was a top archer?' Clement was trying to calculate ages.

‘Not Manfred, Manfred's son Peter, named after his grandad. That's why this is so hard. We think you're looking for Pieter's grandson. To be honest we never even thought about him. Last time we saw his father, Manfred, he was just a little kid himself, you forget. Manfred had the boy when he was only nineteen or something—junkie mother shot through. Hilda raised him. This is going to break her heart.'

The woman had lost her husband, son and now maybe her grandson. Clement hated this part of it but could not deny the euphoria building in his veins.

‘Peter Gruen or Bourke?'

‘Bourke. As a junior he represented his country in archery.'

‘England?'

‘No, after Manfred died they moved. To Ireland.'

They were in a different café this time, by the river, and spring was stirring. It was two years on from that first time when he'd caught the train up from Munich and Wallen's health seemed decidedly worse. It was an effort for him to negotiate the chairs. In this café there were no men in vinyl jackets but women with babies in prams and men with silver hair in suede jackets studying cake menus through their glasses.

‘I'm going to kill the men who killed my grandfather.'

Wallen tried to dissuade him. ‘You can't do that. If you are caught it will finish your oma.'

‘I won't be caught.'

‘The only way you won't be caught is if you don't do it.'

The emphasis was on the word ‘you'. Wallen had looked at him through watery eyes. Peter understood Wallen was offering to do it himself.

Instead of arguing with Wallen he said, ‘I have some money. We could hire a private detective to find Donen.'

‘He'll be using a different name. He may no longer even be in Germany. We have no photograph.'

‘I thought about that. We could get a sketch artist like the police use to draw him how he looked then and how he might look now.'

Wallen nodded slowly as if this were a credible idea. ‘I have an artist friend who could do it. But save your money. The only way we'll find him is through one of the old associates.'

‘Good. If they killed my grandfather I want them as well.'

Wallen suggested Peter return to Ireland.

‘No. I'll stay.'

Wallen accepted this without argument. Wallen's intelligence was that Donen's two bodyguards had been present holding Pieter Gruen when he had been sliced to death by their boss. The one
known as Tank had died of cancer but the other, Klaus, was living in Dortmund.

‘I'll find out what he knows and then kill him.'

Klaus Edershen had retired to Applerbeck, a quite pretty area in the south-east of Dortmund, where the retired killer blended in with ex-schoolteachers, factory workers and bankers. He was still a powerfully built man and as Peter and Wallen watched him from the shadows on his ritual evening walk with his small dog, Peter could see the fear in Wallen's eyes. Wallen may have had ten years on Klaus Edershen but he was a thin ex-junkie with hep C. Klaus Edershen looked like he could still be manning a machine gun in the Congo.

They had followed him from the small apartment block where he lived alone in one of six units.

‘You don't have to do this,' he'd said to Wallen.

‘I can handle him. I'll get him drunk and take him from behind.'

The dog, some sort of cocker spaniel, cocked its leg against a tree.

‘The dog will make a racket. People will come looking. We'll be stopped before we start. Just find out where Donen is. Find out who the leak was.'

Wallen agreed to do that. ‘But if I see my chance, I'll take it.'

‘No.' Peter was surprised with the clarity with which he now saw everything. ‘You will have to drink with him. They will find your prints. I suppose you are in the system?'

‘Maybe. It was a long time ago. Nineteen seventy-five, a dope bust in Hamburg.'

‘Assume you are in the system. I'll handle him.'

‘You're just a boy.'

‘And you're an ex-junkie with a stuffed liver. I prefer my chances.'

Wallen had eventually given in. They had caught a train from Hamburg to Dortmund and hired a car to drive to Applerbeck. They spent the afternoon and evening watching Klaus Edershen's movements, which were those of the retired man: a walk with the dog, a trip to the bar, some shopping and back home for a bachelor dinner. It was pleasant weather though a little chilly in the evening. They waited until nine p.m. and then drove back to the city where they bought bratwurst from a street vendor. The plan was already clear in Peter's mind.

‘From here on we can't be seen together or call one another. I'll catch the train tomorrow and kill him.'

‘No, wait on.' Wallen held up a hand like a traffic cop. ‘Not so fast. He might know who the leak was. It had to be one of the cops worked with your grandfather.'

Peter had already considered that. ‘And whoever he was probably told them you turned up.'

‘No, I was thinking about that. I didn't go to the police for a month or two. Donen, Klaus, they were all gone by then. When I saw Toro, he clearly had no idea.'

‘Toro wasn't so high up.'

They argued. Peter said it was too big a risk to take. Wallen refused to budge.

‘You can't have it both ways. We want the men who murdered your father to pay. You can do the shot, I'm getting the information.'

And that was that. Peter gave in.

‘You catch the train tomorrow evening, visit him and find out what you can. I'll meet you back here, eleven-thirty.' Peter felt no qualms about giving orders to a man forty years his senior.

‘You're like your grandfather,' said Wallen.

‘And don't get yourself killed.'

They split up, booking in separate bed and breakfasts a couple of blocks apart.