The Lie (39 page)

“I'm not in the mood for silly jokes, either,” she said. “I may have become a bit of a cabbage during the six years I lived with your mother, but I'm not that stupid that I'd try to pass myself off as a dead woman voluntarily. I made up stories for my mother because I didn't want her to worry about my situation.”

He gulped, screwed up his eyes and murmured, “I don't believe it. It really is you, isn't it?”

“Not any more,” she said. “Now I'm Nadia Trenkler.” She showed him her ID card and driving licence.

He examined them. “How did you get these documents? Do they belong to the dead woman?”

She nodded and started a detailed report - at the lift in Gerler House, as she had when she'd written it down. Now there was a lot to be added. Dieter listened, flabbergasted, several times he shook his head but he didn't interrupt. Only when she got to the end did he comment that that was exactly what he'd just been saying. It was typical of her - any reasonably sensible person would have been suspicious after the
increased fee offered following the disaster with the garage door. And no woman with a modicum of sense would have agreed to do it a second time, especially after such a dramatic danger signal as the encounter with Zurkeulen in the bank.

“I didn't have much choice,” she said. “I may be lacking up top, but something down here's more important.” She pointed at her belly.

For a moment Dieter forgot who he was and cursed and swore like any builder's labourer, at the same time giving her unacceptable pieces of advice. Get an abortion, go straight to the police, that kind of thing.

“I've not come to hear a sermon from you,” she broke in and went on to explain what she wanted him to do.

He shook his head vigorously. Telling her mother he considered the craziest idea she'd ever had. “She couldn't keep it up. Christ, just think what you're expecting from an old woman, Su—” He broke off in the middle of the word and quickly glanced at the sliding door, which was open. The landlady couldn't be seen, the clatter of pots and pans came from the kitchen.

Dieter categorically refused to go to the police and name Zurkeulen and Ramon as Susanne's murderers. The things she'd heard in Hardenberg's office might well suggest that, but Dieter absolutely declined to go along with her proposal that he change his statement and say that in the last few weeks his former wife had passed incriminating evidence as well as the keys to the Alfo Investment offices on to him.

“OK,” she said, “forget it. I didn't imagine I could expect much from you. But at least you can tell me where I can brush up my English quickly. There must be special courses.”

He tapped his forehead. “You can't stay with her husband. How do you think that's going to work out?”

She didn't think it was going to work out. Since Michael was talking about a divorce, it would be a waste of time. She just wanted to be equipped to survive a short get-together with Phil and Pamela at the Sorbonne. If Michael suggested it again, she was going to agree. It couldn't do any harm to get away to somewhere safe.

 

Dieter broke into laughter, loud enough to bring the landlady out of the kitchen for a moment. “You? At the Sorbonne? And what are you going to do there? Give a lecture on castles in the air?”

At least she learned where Phil and Pamela were staying and that French was indispensable there. Dieter's amusement quickly subsided. He sighed. “You haven't got a cat's chance in hell.”

“I've managed so far.”

“Yes.” He nodded for a change. “And how long have you been managing? For one weekend?”

“I got by in September as well.”

“Perhaps you could survive for two or three days, but that would be it. Knowledge can be withheld, lack of knowledge comes out automatically.”

The landlady finally brought her toasted cheese and mushrooms, and asked if they'd like anything else to drink. Dieter ordered another coffee, plus a cognac to help him digest all the revelations. After the landlady had returned to the kitchen, she pushed the laptop and envelope across the table to him.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” he asked.

“Keep the envelope safe and show me how this thing works.” She told him about the lead that had been kept in the house, which suggested that Nadia didn't want Hardenberg looking at the laptop. While she was explaining this, Dieter took the printouts out of the envelope, leafed through them and quickly read the fragmentary letter to Jacques. “What's this about?” he wanted to know. “It sounds like a highly personal matter.”

“I know,” she said, “but it's not important at the moment. Jacques's in Paris.”

“Is that where he lives?”

She just said, “Yes,” to stop him giving her another sermon. He switched on the laptop. Even while she was explaining that it didn't work without the lead, he'd loaded up the program, rolled his eyes pityingly and muttered, “Oh, Susanne.” He offered no explanation.

She set about her cheese and mushroom toast. It was excellent. “Wouldn't you like to eat something?” she asked. “On me.”

He took no notice of this, nor of her assertion that she'd only have to get through a few weeks as Nadia at most; that as soon as possible she intended to find a flat somewhere where no one knew Susanne Lasko or Nadia Trenkler. His fingers were scurrying round the mouse pad. He interrupted her explanations with a curt, “What was the name of the file with your neighbour's name you found on the computer?”

“NTA,” she said.

“There's an SLA here.” With that, he turned the machine round so she could see the screen. It showed a list with figures, dates, series of numbers and sets of letters. There were no names, but the figures spoke for themselves. The first was 5,530,000. Combined with the date given - 12 September - and the letters MZ, there was only one possible answer.

“But on the torn-up piece of paper it was five million seven hundred and thirty thousand,” she said. “If she'd only paid in five hundred and thirty thousand, then Zurkeulen's not lost anything.”

“But these guys are always creaming off a percentage for themselves,” said Dieter. “The gals, too, apparently.”

She couldn't believe Nadia had taken money for herself. On 12 September Jo had been celebrating a rise of thirty points. And at Lilo's party she'd picked up a number, two hundred, but not been able to make any connection because her head had been full of other things. The Deko Fund was just window dressing after all. And Joko Electronics. It sounded somehow Japanese, a bit like John Lennon's wife. Yoko Ono. Joko equals Joachim Kogler, she thought. If you're going to lie, keep it simple. How had Ilona Blasting put it? “As long as you butter her up, you're allowed to have a finger in the pie.”

Dieter ran his finger down the columns on the screen. All the other deposits corresponded exactly to the amounts on the Alfo Investment sheet. NTA - SLA. It was simple really: Nadia Trenkler - Susanne Lasko, the A presumably standing for account. And worst of all were the dates of the initial investments. After the twelfth and eighteenth of September - that was the Wednesday when Nadia had been so angry she'd cancelled her stint as stand-in - they corresponded to her days off from the shop.

“It looks as if this is her personal account book,” Dieter said. “No wonder Hardenberg wasn't to get a look at it. But there's one thing I don't understand. Why didn't she make up Zurkeulen's supposed loss? I wouldn't risk my life for two hundred thousand when I'd got twenty million to play with.”

“Perhaps she couldn't get at it. Michael said that the previous time she'd used the money to speculate on the stock exchange. Perhaps it's all gone.”

“No,” Dieter said. “There are regular increases, that must be interest coming in. The money's been profitably invested somewhere.”

The landlady brought him his coffee and the cognac. After she'd gone again, he came to a decision. “I'll take this thing, but I don't think it's going to help you.”

He assumed one set of letter combinations referred to banks, he went on. The series of numbers must be reference and account numbers. There were no sort codes, which made him think it would be impossible to work out where the money was. “But even if I do find that out,” he said, “you can't get at it as Nadia Trenkler. I suspect everything's under the name of Lasko and you won't be able to get your old ID cards back. The police have them.”

“I can get replacements,” she said.

“Are you crazy?” Dieter hissed. Then, speaking in an undertone, he said he wondered how Nadia had managed to get replacement documents in the name of Lasko without the police finding out. Applying for them was no problem, but the council registration office would have sent notification.

“Getting them out of my letter box wouldn't be a problem either,” she said. “I was at the confectioner's all day.”

The landlady was at the bar now, making a show of wiping up. With a quick glance in her direction, Dieter pointed at the screen again. He spoke so softly even she had difficulty hearing. “For the moment you do nothing.” No question of going to the police now. His finger tapped a column of pairs of letters. AR, she read, PR, DL, RL, LL.

It was presumably these initials alone that had made him change his mind and dissuaded him from leaving her to deal with the situation by herself. Agnes Runge, Peter Runge, Dieter Lasko, Ramie Lasko, Letitia Lasko. He was very angry that his wife and daughter had been drawn into this. Not knowing Johannes Herzog and Herbert Schrag, he couldn't make anything of the other sets of initials. And Nadia was the only one she'd told about her crush on Richard Gere.

Pulling at his lower lip, lost in thought, a gesture she remembered from earlier times, Dieter asked if she had the office key on her. Then, quite happy to let her pay, he followed her out to the car park. Next to the Alfa was a dark-green estate with a child seat in the back. Dieter put the envelope and laptop on the rear seat and asked her to go on ahead; he would follow as he didn't know the way.

“And if there's someone in the office?” she asked.

“I hope very much there is,” he said. “It would be useful to know if Hardenberg has access to the money. If he does, you've one worry the less. If he doesn't, you'd better find a good plastic surgeon.”

 

It took them just under an hour to get to Gerler House. As ever, the dark-blue Mercedes was in its parking space; the other three spaces were empty. In the lift Dieter took the leather holder from her, also demanding the keys to her flat in Kettlerstrasse. If she was caught, he said, it would be better if they weren't found on her.

He went on ahead, opened the door and strode swiftly across the lobby to the upholstered door. It was locked. Nothing could be heard. Instinctively she held her breath when he went in. He called out, “Don't worry, the coast's clear.”

By the time she'd entered Hardenberg's office, he was already sitting at the desk, had started up the computer and set a search in motion. After only a few seconds he exclaimed triumphantly, “There it is!”

SLA. The next moment a spreadsheet poured over the screen. It only had Zurkeulen's investment account, split up into several smaller amounts. “Where are the others?” Dieter asked, telling her to have a look to see if there were any CDs around. “I'll make a copy of this.”

She couldn't find any disks, neither in Helga's office, nor in Hardenberg's filing cabinets. All she came across there was a spring file which a firm of private investigators had sent to Hardenberg. Heller had been right, the opinion pollster was a snooper. And the funny object that, when she'd been running a temperature, she'd assumed was part of the table, was a bugging device. Both she and Heller had been under surveillance for several weeks. Dieter had also had a visit.

“What's that you're messing about with?” he asked irritatedly. He took the file from here and muttered, “The bastards.”

The idea there might be a bug in his house drove him wild. He started rummaging through the filing cabinet himself and established that none of the documents he leafed through quickly hinted at dishonest transactions. Given their haste it was, of course, impossible to check every sheet, but Dieter still calmed down. He was no longer bothered about a CD. He took the private investigator's file then had a quick look at Helga's hard disk, dismissing the correspondence of Hardenberg's
partner as harmless letters. Apart from that, there was only a small kitchen and a washroom. Nadia hadn't had an office at Alfo Investment, but then freelancers didn't need one.

They got back to the lift and down to the underground car park unseen. Dieter intended to have a look at the computer in the study and - if necessary - free up some memory. Then he was going to go back to Hardenberg's office and send all the material that seemed important by email, to give him time to examine it undisturbed. The way he put it, it sounded like child's play.

But she didn't think he'd find anything of significance. Hardenberg had spent too much time and effort on his computer after Zurkeulen's visit. And the papers he'd burned suggested he'd destroyed anything that might give him away. Apart from that, she remembered that Michael was going to come home early. “Let's do it tomorrow,” she suggested.

“I'm having lunch with my publisher tomorrow,” Dieter said.

“Then the day after tomorrow.”

“No,” Dieter insisted. He'd drawn the same conclusion about Hardenberg's actions as she had. “We'll get it done today. Hardenberg was panicking when he cleared up, he might have missed something. Once he has time to think, it might occur to him that a specialist can retrieve deleted files. If he wipes the hard disk or removes it, we won't find anything. And if they get onto you in a couple of days, I want to have as much evidence as possible to hand. Are you clear about what you might be faced with? How do you think Trenkler's going to react when he realizes who it was they found in the waste bin? You had nothing to lose when his wife met you. That she engaged you as a stand-in is about the most stupid argument you could use when there's twenty million lying around. You worked in a bank, you know about finance, remember? Which of you was it who saw it as her big chance?”