Before It Breaks (44 page)

The next twenty-four hours were the longest of Peter's life. The bed and breakfast place was clean with pink and white wallpaper and a frilly eiderdown, presumably decorated by a woman, but it was cramped and airless so he abandoned it in favour of investigating the city's nooks, crannies and back lanes. Dortmund was a blend of new office towers and gothic spires and might normally have been interesting but he could not concentrate.

Too hyped to eat much, he stopped twice for coffee and sweet biscuits. At five p.m. he watched Wallen board the train to Applerbeck. Now it was in the lap of the gods.

He returned to his bed and breakfast and sat on his frilly eiderdown and tried to watch television but it was no use. He was up and down many times to the toilet even though he had no pee left in him. For something to do he checked and re-checked his bow, assembling it, breaking it down, reassembling. Finally it was close to eleven. He walked out again and sauntered aimlessly this way
and that until eleven fifteen. Then he returned to the little street a few blocks from the station where he had arranged to meet Wallen.

Peter built up every conceivable scenario, from Wallen failing to make contact to being strangled by Edershen. He became utterly convinced Edershen had known of Wallen's perfidy. And then as he was imagining poor Wallen sliced apart just like his grandfather had been, he looked up and saw a gangly silhouette weaving towards him out of the mist. He realised Wallen was staggering and Peter immediately assumed injury. It turned out he was simply drunk.

Wallen told his story with slurred words. He had done exactly as they planned, arriving at the station and going to the park at the same time as the day before where Edershen indeed proved a creature of habit walking his dog from seven past six to six twenty-five.

‘How busy was the park then?'

‘Same as yesterday, hardly anybody: a few dog-walkers, older women.'

Wallen had purchased a bottle of vodka and knocked on the door of Edershen's apartment near eight o'clock. He could smell some sort of cooking.

‘Klaus opened the door. He didn't recognise me. I said as much as I lifted the vodka up. Then I said, “Hamburg seventy-eight.” But I could see he still needed some help.'

Wallen dropped the name of their mutual contact, Toro, another old drug dealer, and finally the mist lifted from his eyes.

‘Wallen!'

‘Toro told me where you lived. I was in Dortmund for my niece's wedding, I thought we'd have a drink for old times.'

It was exactly what Peter had scripted Wallen to say and Wallen claimed he had carried it out to the letter. The apartment was comfortable. Two bedrooms, larger than what a single man like Edershen needed. It was neat, sparsely furnished but with good quality furniture. Edershen turned off the TV. He had just finished dinner and washed up, a good omen for what he might do with the drinking glasses after Wallen had gone. They sat and drank, talking about their lives since they'd last seen one another. Edershen had spent a number of years in Asia but was deliberately hazy on exactly what he had done there and Wallen assumed it was drugs or something else illegal. Wallen lied and said he had been dealing drugs in Italy. Eventually Wallen had steered the conversation to the last time they had seen each other.

‘Just before the shit hit the fan. That undercover cop. So many guys got picked up.'

With curiosity bordering on suspicion Edershen said. ‘Not you.'

‘I got lucky, kind of.'

Wallen adapted the true story of Pieter Gruen, claiming that after his last visit to the Emperor to get supplied he was jumped by some skinhead thugs.

‘They beat the crap out of me and took my stuff. I was wondering how to tell the Emperor. You know what he was like.'

Klaus nodded, he did indeed.

‘They never got you either?'

Edershen told him a day or two before it was all meant to go down they got word from a bent cop. Wallen threw out the name of a Reeperbahn street cop he knew was bent just to keep Edershen bubbling.

‘No, much higher than that fuckwit, the undercover guy's own controller.'

Peter had drilled into Wallen the names of all the cops on his grandfather's squad. He knew who the controller had been.

‘Schaffer?'

‘That's him. Sold out his own man to pay off a gambling debt.' Edershen shook his head in disgust. Wallen had tried to hide his excitement.

‘You still in touch with the Emperor?'

‘Last time I saw him he was about three months after. He was boarding a freighter to Rotterdam, false papers and identity. I never heard from him again. I heard from Tank that he was supposed to be in Thailand back in the pussy trade: bars, clubs; less heat than drugs. You're not on that shit still are you?'

Wallen explained he had been long off it. They talked another hour or so before Wallen took his leave. He'd held up the vodka bottle to Edershen.

‘You mind if I take the last bit for the train?'

This had been another of Peter's ideas to make sure Wallen left no prints around. Edershen waved him off. They talked about catching up. Once outside Wallen wiped his fingerprints off the bottle and dumped it in a bin at the train station, then had an uneventful trip back to Dortmund on the train.

A deep sense of release washed through Peter. They knew the name of the traitor: Dieter Schaffer. Finding Donen in Thailand, with his new identity would be very difficult. Not that this would
discourage Peter. He would keep looking whatever the chances, but Dieter Schaffer, well he could almost taste his blood.

He said, ‘You need to return to Hamburg tomorrow.'

Wallen shook his head. ‘No. You have your whole life ahead of you. I'll do it.'

‘Don't you want justice for my grandfather and father?'

‘Of course.'

‘The only way the police get me is through you. You want to help me, go back. I can do this. I am meant to do this. I'll see you in Hamburg in three days.'

He had turned on his heel, giving Wallen no chance to argue.

The next day he hired a car and drove to Applerbeck making sure he stayed away from anywhere there might be CCTV cameras. He wore a generic cap and rain jacket and had the dismantled bow in a rucksack exactly as it would be the next day. He wanted to make sure there were no surprises. He spent most of his time in the park looking for the best location for the shot, settling eventually for a copse of trees that he could access directly from an adjoining road. He assembled his bow, then disassembled it. For nearly two hours he hid. The park was near deserted when Edershen appeared walking his dog, a little later this time, closer to seven. Edershen walked up a small rise directly towards the copse, placing himself in range for a substantial time. Though the light was poor by this time, the distance was less than twenty metres, which more than compensated.

Peter returned to Dortmund, enjoyed an Asian meal from a small café and turned in early. The next morning he bought a pair of grey overalls from a shop in the backwaters of the city for he thought somebody might remember his outfit from the day before. He retrieved the car but because he could not afford to be lurking in the park for any length of time with a weapon on him, he did not leave for Applerbeck until nearly five p.m. The traffic was dense but he arrived in plenty of time and parked in a shopping centre carpark about a kilometre and a half away.

He walked briskly to the park with everything he needed in his backpack, crossed the narrow road and strode directly into the copse. The breeze was stronger this evening, making the shot more difficult, and the park was busier but to his relief it began thinning rapidly. At six twenty he removed his weapon from his backpack and began assembling it. He was ready to fire by six twenty-four. Of course he had no way of knowing if Klaus Edershen was even
in the park, maybe this was the day when he went to the movies or played bocce. Fifteen minutes in, the exercise threatened to turn into a disaster. An unleashed dog, a beagle he thought, came charging up the incline, ran directly into the thicket where he was hiding and stood staring at him wagging its tail. The owner, a slim straggly blonde of forty or so followed behind a moment later and cast about for the animal.

‘Jensen?' She called several times in slightly different tones.

Jensen was torn between his new find and his owner's voice. Finally Jensen pulled himself away and ran to her. She scolded the dog playfully before continuing. The archer took a deep breath. He had decided on a throat shot. It was his best chance to kill Edershen but the wind was picking up making it more difficult. While he was debating whether he should aim for the heart instead he saw Edershen's head appearing over the rise. He quickly drew an arrow and took aim. The bow he was using was not a tournament bow. It had been chosen for portability but though it was less accurate, up until now the archer had not seriously considered the possibility he might miss, not at short range. He paused, his arm extended taking the weight of the bow. Edershen's dog must have found the beagle's scent. Instead of continuing he sniffed in a tight circle. Should he fire now? It was tempting: the target was less than twenty metres away.

He held his nerve.

Finally the pooch lost interest and began moving forward fast, perhaps picking up the old scent. Edershen's mind was elsewhere. He had had no idea that less than just a few metres in front of him a deadly arrow was pointed at his throat. Peter felt a great calm as if the anointed hand had laid itself upon his shoulder. He let the arrow go.

‘Page four.'

Wallen slapped down a newspaper on the bench. This time they were at a coffee shop on the other side of Hamburg, a more bohemian place where would-be film directors and the like might hang out. It was five days since he had killed Edershen. Peter scanned the newspaper article. Police were ‘baffled by the killing of an elderly man by an arrow through the neck'. Klaus Eldershen was described as a ‘former soldier', a ‘quiet man who kept to himself'. Police thought it may have been inadvertent and requested whoever had fired the arrow to come forward.

He looked at Wallen. ‘They haven't called you?'

‘No.'

‘If they had found prints they would have don't you think? I'd say Klaus washed up the glasses you drank from. They are dead-ended. They think it's a psycho or an accident.'

Wallen was inclined to agree but cautioned that they should stay alert.

Caution was foreign to Peter. ‘Next, Dieter Schaffer,' he declared.

‘He's disappeared.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I've made enquiries. He's quit his apartment, no forwarding address. If you believe his drinking cronies he's in Turkey, Australia or South America.'

‘His old police buddies might know.'

‘They might but no way am I going near them.'

‘Fuck Schaffer. Edershen said Donen was in Bangkok. We'll go there. We'll find the bastard and kill him over his tom yum soup.'

But poor Wallen wasn't up to it. His health was failing and in the end Peter had to go alone, traipsing from sordid bar to bar, through the strident clang of traffic, the petrol fumes and the
sticky heat, acting hale and hearty with arsehole ex-pats. He'd had an artist do up a sketch of how Donen might look and he'd worked his way through sleazy bars showing it to bar girls, drug dealers, paedophiles. A couple of older German guys claimed to recognise the man but not as Kurt. ‘Gerd' he was calling himself. Three weeks he'd done this until his money had run out and he'd been forced to return.

He had just one slim hope left. His oma. He had not wanted to involve her but what choice did he have now? He played on her sentiment, suggested they do something for grandad's anniversary, contact his old friends. All this took time. Poor old Wallen went into hospital on his last legs. Then from an ex-colleague of Dieter Schaffer she learned he had moved to Australia. She even got an email address.

‘But you don't want to push and ask for a physical address because when he's found dead, when the wasp stings the spider, someone remembers, especially old cops. But Australia is a big place, he could be anywhere. How was I going to find him? He wasn't in any phone book, he wasn't on Facebook. How, how, how?'

Peter Bourke paraded back and forth along the lip of the trench. He was shouting only to get his voice above the wind. He was in control, a fundamentalist preacher playing to a congregation of one.

‘You know how?' he continued, slyly. ‘What obsesses all men? Come on, give it a shot?'

Bourke smiled, it was important his foe appreciated his guile. ‘Football. Schaffer was a huge fan of Hamburg Football Club. So, I contact them and say, “I have a friend of my late grandfather moved to Australia, Dieter Schaffer but I don't know where he is and I'm going there for a visit. Is he on a mailing list or something?” Sure enough, next thing I know I am here where the gods intended me all along, part of the earth, and the sky and the wind.' This last word he did shout into the brooding vault above that seemed to grow lower every few minutes.

‘See, I play the spider when I need to be the spider, and the wasp when I need to be the wasp. Three weeks I am watching Schaffer, the dog. I sit behind him at the coffee shop, I watch him park his car, offer weed to young women. The wasp is almost ready to sting … and then one day he calls out to somebody in German and I look across the road and it's fucking you, the Emperor.'

He directed his gaze down at the loathsome one who had ruined his life. Still those eyes appeared to be laughing at Peter, though like the stung spider, Osterlund was inert.

‘This isn't the end. The spirits aren't finished with you. They will eat your gizzards from the inside and even when they are done, when there is nothing left, not one glob of fat or sliver of bone they will make you say his name, the last words you will ever hear: Pieter Gruen.'

The wind was picking up every second, rocking his car on the exposed coast road so fiercely Clement's forearms ached from fighting the wheel.