The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin (30 page)

“Right. But when the police showed up and checked this place, all they found was that it was empty.”

“That’s the way it looked.”

“So the body must have been moved somewhere else.”

Victoria stared at me for a moment. “Assuming there ever
was
a body.”

“There was. There had to be. And it occurred to me that the body couldn’t have been moved very far. After all, the killer didn’t have long between closing the blind and the police showing up. He probably heard the sirens approaching. He had to think fast.”

Victoria sucked air through her teeth. “Risky,” she said. “Who’s going to want to drag a dead body along a corridor?”

“Not as risky as leaving the body where it was. And see? The corridor is empty right now. It could have been just as empty on the night of the murder.”

Victoria’s face twisted itself into a scornful knot. “But that’s not something anyone could possibly predict. People could be coming and going at any moment.”

“True. But if the body was only moved a short distance, there’s a fair chance the killer wouldn’t be spotted.”

“Huh. And I assume you’re suggesting that the body was moved into that apartment over there?”

I nodded.

“May I ask why?”

“Couple of reasons,” I said, trying to rise above her skepticism. “First, I’ve already been back here once and checked a few possibilities. Storage closets. Stairwells. That kind of thing.”

She reared back. “When was this?”

I waved my hand. “Not important. Point is, I didn’t find anything. But then I got to thinking. Why were they even here? Why did the murderer and his victim meet in an empty apartment?”

“We don’t know that.”

“No, but we can guess. Let’s say they wanted to meet on neutral territory. Somewhere private, but not in one another’s homes.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. And what better place than an unoccupied apartment?”

“Hmm.” Victoria folded her arms across her chest and tucked her chin into the raised collar of her tracksuit. She peered toward the door to apartment 213. “So why do you think the body was dragged over there?”

“The mailboxes,” I told her. “I got to thinking that if the murderer or his victim knew that there was one unoccupied apartment in this building, perhaps they also knew that there were others, too. And when I checked the mailboxes downstairs there were only three that had no nametag attached.”

“Let me guess. This apartment, apartment 213, and”—Victoria lifted my hand and read the pen scrawl on the back again—“number 310.”

“Bingo. And apartment 310 is up on the third floor. The murderer would have had stairs to contend with. Or an elevator. Neither of which would be very attractive.”

Victoria groaned. She gestured with her chin toward the apartment door across the hall. “Why do I get the feeling you want to go and take a look inside?”

“Because you know me too well.”

She groaned again. “I’m really not comfortable with this, Charlie. What if you’re wrong? What if there’s somebody living inside that apartment? We’re meant to be hiding out here. We’re meant to be keeping a
low profile
.”

“Hey, don’t worry. That’s why I always knock before I enter.”

I rested a hand on Victoria’s shoulder, then ambled along the hallway and knocked on the door. I waited. There was no response.

I gave Victoria a quick thumbs-up, then slipped my customized surgical gloves back on, taking care not to tear my right-hand glove as I eased it over my taped fingers.

I went down on one knee and glanced at the security challenge I was facing. The locks were just as unremarkable as the ones on the door to the murder apartment—in fact, they were exactly the same. I removed my spectacles case and began with the dead bolt lock, probing away with a raking tool and a torsion wrench until the pins clicked into place, one after the other, like a line of cascading dominoes. Then I shimmed the snap lock with a flick of my wrist and nudged the door open.

The apartment was unheated and unlit. Not a thing to be seen. I slipped inside and was just closing the door behind me when it bounced back against my hand.

“Wait for me,” Victoria said, bundling through.

“Sheesh.” I covered my heart with my hand. “What are you trying to do to me?”

“I didn’t want to be left on my own,” she whispered. “If anything happened to you, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get in here.”

“And what about Buster?”

She shrugged. “I closed the door on him. He’ll be fine.”

I paused for a moment, waiting for my heart to start beating again. It came back online with a thump. I sucked air through my nose. Long, deep breaths. Long, slow exhalations.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Victoria asked. “We can’t just
stand
here, Charlie.”

I clicked on my penlight and shone it into her eyes.

“Ow!” She squinted and raised her hands in front of her face.

“Quiet,”
I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Ssshhh.”

Now, if there’s a noise that lingers more in a darkened apartment than an urgent
ssshhh,
I’m afraid I’ve yet to find it.

I cringed.

I waited.

No response.

I yanked my penlight away from Victoria and cast it about the blackened room, trawling across patches of bare wall and floor as if it were a weak spotlight on a stage. There didn’t appear to be any furniture. There didn’t appear to be anything at all.

I reached past Victoria and flipped the switch on the wall behind her shoulder. The main ceiling bulbs buzzed into life. They revealed a mirror image of the apartment we’d just been in. Acres of exposed timber flooring. Three doors to our right. One to our left. A large window ahead of us with a slatted Venetian blind.

I tucked my penlight away, moved over to the window and peered out through the slats. I guess I’m a sucker for punishment, but I didn’t see anything I’d have preferred not to. The apartment offered a view out over a central courtyard, and no one appeared to be looking our way. I closed the blinds just to be sure, and then I told Victoria to shut and lock the door behind her.

“See?” she said, her white training shoes echoing dully as she paced across the floor toward me. “It’s empty. There’s nobody here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s no
body
here, either.”

I ignored her and approached the single door on our left. In the ambient light from the living room I could see that it opened onto a kitchen. The counters and cupboards were bare.

“Charlie, this is a waste of time.” Victoria spread her arms wide in the middle of the vacant living room. “There’s nothing here. I bet there’ll be nothing upstairs, either. You just have to accept that you saw something you can’t explain. It’s a mystery you can’t solve.”

I lowered my head and marched across to the doors on the other side of the apartment. The first one opened into a bedroom. I flipped on the lights. There were indents in the carpet from long-gone pieces of furniture, plus a built-in closet with mirrored doors. I watched my reflection approach the wardrobe. I watched my double slide the doors to one side. I disappeared from view and found myself staring at an interior that was empty aside from a few metal hangers.

“Can we go back now?” Victoria asked. “I’m worried about Buster.”

“In a minute. I’m not done yet.”

“You are. You’re just too stubborn to admit when you’re wrong. And we have enough on our plates already, Charlie. We really don’t need any extra hassle.”

I brushed past Victoria and entered the second bedroom. It was almost identical to the first. All it lacked was the built-in wardrobe.

I stepped back out and faced up to the final door. I flipped the switch fitted to the wall outside. An extractor fan whirred to life. I’d been braced for it this time.

“Charlie, come on.” Victoria tugged my arm. “This is getting ridiculous.”

I shook her loose and pushed on the door, but it only budged a short distance. I pushed again. The bottom of the door scuffed against something. The something was inert.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“What now?”

I prodded the door with my gloved finger. It was definitely stuck.

“Oh, Christ,” Victoria said, and raised her hands to her head. “Look, let’s get out of here. Let’s just leave whatever happens to be behind that door alone. This really doesn’t involve us. Right, Charlie?”

I waved Victoria back and lifted my foot in the air.

“Oh, crap, no,” she said. “You’re not listening to me.”

I kicked out hard. The door shunted backward a few inches.

“Stop it, Charlie. Please.”

I screwed up my face in concentration and rammed the door with my shoulder. It juddered back some more. I leaned my weight on it and drove with my feet and forced the opening a shade wider.

Then I got down on my knees and poked my head through the gap and sneaked a look at the obstruction.

“Oh, hell,” Victoria said. “What is it? Is it her? Please tell me it’s not her.”

“It’s not her,” I said, over my shoulder. “It’s just a towel.”

I grabbed for the towel. It was slightly damp and it had been rolled up tight and wedged against the base of the door. I yanked it free. Then I pushed the door fully open.

“Thank goodness for that,” Victoria said, raising her hand to her forehead. “You had me worried. For a minute there, I really thought…”

But her words trailed away into nothing as she stepped up alongside me and saw precisely what I’d feared we might find. There was a woman propped up inside the bath. She was fully clothed. She was blond. And she was about as dead as it’s possible to get.

“Aw, crap,” Victoria said.

“You know,” I told her, “sometimes it really sucks to be right.”

A sweet, rotten odor filled the room. My eyes began to tear. I pressed the towel against my face and approached the blonde.

There was a shallow pool of water in the bath. It just about covered the blonde’s legs and arms and backside. Beneath the water, her fitted skirt and the sleeves of her white sweater were drenched. Her flat shoes were still on her feet. Her hands and her ankles were bloated and wrinkled and pale as a fish belly. I dipped a gloved hand inside the tepid water and seized her wrist. Her wrist was stiff with rigor. Though I knew better, I checked for a pulse anyway.

“Her throat.” Victoria moaned. “The poor woman. It’s awful.”

Her throat was badly swollen. The skin was broken and grazed. It was livid with bruising. The bruising ranged from pale mauve to deep purple where the blood had collected beneath her skin. It hadn’t been a pleasant way to die. It had been about as brutal and remorseless as it gets.

I released her wrist and withdrew my hand from the still water. I stepped back and considered the tiled floor. A metal bucket was positioned next to the bath. The bucket contained a shallow pool of liquid in its base.

“Ice,” I mumbled, into the towel.

“Excuse me?” Victoria said. She was covering her nose and mouth with her hand, backing away from the scene.

I toed the bucket with the tip of my shoe. “He used ice. He packed it around the body. I found an ice machine in a communal room downstairs when I came back to take a look around. There was a bucket just like this one.”

“So?”

“So he must have waited in here until after the police had gone. Then he must have sneaked down to the ice machine and come back up several times. It would have taken four, maybe five trips.”

“Why would he do that?”

I motioned toward the bath. “He must have reckoned it would stop the smell getting too bad. That’s why he wet the towel and packed it around the door as best he could when he left. Look, the crack at the bottom is just big enough for somebody to squeeze their fingers through. He must have reached beneath and grabbed hold of the towel to pull it snug after he shut the door. He was being careful. He wanted to buy himself as much time as possible before the body was discovered.”

“You really think so?”

“I really do. There’s a nasty odor now. No question. But we didn’t notice it until I forced my way in.”

I looked again at the woman in the bath. At her arms and her legs, floating on the thin, grimy layer of water.

Victoria let go of a ragged breath. “Whoever this brute was, he must have known the building well. He knew about the ice machine. He knew about the empty apartments.”

“Too right. But there’s something else. Unless he happens to know how to pick locks in a hurry—and forgive me, but there aren’t all that many of us about—he must have had a set of keys. Keys to the front door of this building. Keys to at least two apartments inside it.”

Victoria blinked. “So what are you suggesting? You think maybe he owns these apartments? Maybe he rents them out?”

“It’s possible, but I doubt it.” I shook my head. “As soon as her body was discovered, he’d be the first suspect the police would speak to. And if he planned to kill her and hide her here, that would be a really stupid move.”

“Perhaps it is that simple. Perhaps he’s really that stupid.”

I shook my head and reached inside my coat pocket. “It’s not that simple,” I said.

“No? How can you tell?”

I pulled two photographs from my pocket and looked at each in turn, taking my time until I was sure. Once I had the one that matched, I showed it to Victoria. She peered hard at the image, her eyes screwed tight with concentration. Then her eyes widened. She glanced between the photograph and the woman in the bath. She checked two times. Three.

“But I don’t understand,” she spluttered. “Where did you get her photograph?”

“From Freddy,” I said, and my voice was thick with regret. “I asked to see the personnel files for the four people he suspected of stealing from the ambassador’s office.” I studied the photograph again. It was of a young, blonde, smiling to the camera. She looked confident and professional. Very much alive. “This poor woman is Jane Parker,” I said. “Suspect number two on Freddy’s list.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

We closed and locked apartment 213, leaving Jane Parker’s body and everything else just as we’d found it, and then we returned to the apartment where she’d been killed. Buster was pleased to see us. He whistled and twittered and flapped his wings.