The Namesake (35 page)

‘OK, now . . . I have some notes,’ Weissmann was saying. ‘You are aware of course that Italian organized crime in Germany is considered a new phenomenon? I talk of the press, not of us in the BKA. We have been following it for years. But the Duisburg killing on the Feast of the Assumption interested the press, and now they write articles. But of course we are not as expert as you Italians.’

Blume heard Massimiliani say, ‘Thank you.’ He was not sure if Massimiliani’s English stretched to sarcasm, but it might.

‘The Ndrangheta was established well before we began to investigate it properly,’ said Weissmann. ‘I am talking about very recently. The late 1990s, you understand? And resources are still not . . . well, that’s not your problem. But the phenomenon is still underestimated, I believe. This is because what we have in Germany are only branches of the main organization, or . . .’ Blume heard the rustling of papers. ‘Offshoots. That is the word.
Ableger, oder?
They are offshoots of the main tree, which is in Calabria, in a town called San Luca. And so we have hoped that the Italians will someday cut the tree down. But what has happened is these offshoots . . .’

‘
’ndrine bastarde
,’ said Massimiliani.

‘
Wie?
Bastards?’ Weissmann sounded delighted.

‘That’s what the Ndrangheta calls its offshoots,’ said Blume, ‘
’ndrine bastarde
’, bastard units. A
locale
is a set of various
’ndrine
. If one of them gets too big, it might split and give birth to an
’ndrina bastarda
. Sometimes a bastard unit grows up to become larger than the whole
locale
. It often happens, in fact, because the new Ndrangheta is more powerful and wealthier than the old. Each generation gets stronger. Maybe
Seitentrieb
in German?’

‘No! They must be bastard units,’ said Weissmann. ‘That is a very good name. And that is what has happened in Germany. Now even without Calabria, the Ndrangheta in Germany has its own base of power.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Blume. ‘But without Calabria as a home base, I think they mightn’t be as strong as all that. I thought you were going to talk about Konrad Hoffmann.’

‘Commissioner Blume?’ It was Massimiliani’s voice sounding formal and concerned.

‘What?’

‘Hoffmann has just disappeared from the network. He must have shut down his phone, taken the battery out and everything. Have you still got him in your sights?’

‘I was backing off like you told me to. So he’s got a bit far ahead. I can try to catch up.’

‘We’ve decided to intercept you at Atrena Lucana. That’s about seventy kilometres ahead of you. You’ll need to make sure Hoffmann doesn’t turn off before then, but there is no reason he would. He’s headed for Locri, San Luca, Africo or Polsi. The Locride zone for sure.’

‘I need to know what you have found out about Hoffmann,’ said Blume.

There was a pause and Blume could hear someone nearby speaking to Massimiliani. Eventually the DCSA captain said, ‘Look, Blume, I only learned about all this just now from the BKA. I’ll let Weissmann fill you in, then we need to talk.’

After a few moments’ silence, Weissmann’s voice came through, clearer than before, as if he had picked up a receiver and was speaking directly into it.

‘Commissioner?’

‘I’m here,’ said Blume, ‘and listening.’

‘OK, I must tell you this is what we have found out . . . In 1992, a young woman named Dagmar Schiefer was working in the Finanzministerium in the Nordrhein-Westfalen region. She was highly
begabt
, you understand? She was a clever, gifted young woman who had a good eye for data analysis, which was even more important in those days before we started to use good database abstraction layers. Dagmar, who was twenty-five years old and just out of a specialization course at university, became interested in what turned out to be what we call
Karussellgeschäft
, which in English is . . .’ He paused, presumably to look at his notes.

‘Carousel fraud,’ said Blume. ‘Almost the same as the German.’

‘You are wrong. Here it says the English translation is “missing trader intra-community fraud” . . .’

‘Let’s just call it fraud. Dagmar discovered fraud,’ said Blume. He thought he had glimpsed a familiar orange-and-white slow-moving vehicle disappearing over the crest of a hill. Cones and barriers had turned the autostrada back into a one-lane highway with a surface that ripped at his tyres.

‘Dagmar was brilliant,’ said Weissmann. ‘It is always easy to spot a fraud afterwards, when it has already been exposed, but Dagmar managed to identify profiles and models of behaviour. She created a sort of checklist of suspect actions so that fictitious companies set up to steal VAT from the government could be caught while still in the act. Even now, with all our computer power, it is hard to do this. This is also because everything is legal until one of the companies disappears. Also, we have to operate in different jurisdictions with different police, and that is very difficult, especially with the Dutch and the Spanish. The Dutch can be very unhelpful.
Ein schwieriges Volk
. We have good relations with the Italians in this area.’

‘Delighted to hear it,’ said Blume.

‘Yes. Of course it’s not just police but also tax officers, finance ministries, bureaucrats and accountants . . . In 1993, thanks to Dagmar, who also testified as an expert witness, we arrested thirty people, your colleagues in the Carabinieri arrested ten in this country, and there were more arrests in Spain and England. It was a very successful operation, but it was like a raindrop on a hot stone. In Germany, one of those arrested was a man called Domenico Megale.

‘More serious charges came later. That is why he stayed in jail from back then until now. Anyhow, we have been observing him for years, because it is clear that he still commands, or it was clear. In the last year of his imprisonment, he had few visits. Agazio Curmaci was one. Then, as you know, Domenico Megale was released a few weeks ago, and remains in Germany. So it seems he will not participate at the general meeting of the bosses in Polsi, but his son will. Also this Curmaci, whose role is hard to understand.’

‘It sounds like you are not sure if Megale is still the boss of the Dusseldorf colony, or if he has passed the command on to his son, or if someone else – Curmaci – has stepped in between them,’ said Blume.

‘This is the sort of information we hope to get by comparing notes with you Italians,’ said Weissmann, ‘but that is not the subject of this conversation, Commissioner.’

‘We were talking about Megale’s arrest.’

‘
Genau
. It was a very long time ago. His arrest was important, because it was one of the very first, and the authorities finally became interested in the invisible new Italian Mafia. A colleague of mine wrote a special report on the Ndrangheta in Germany. Also, just after my arrival in the BKA, a major inquiry was launched into the Ndrangheta investments in Russia and, in particular, Gazprom, but you know who one of the top managers in Gazprom is?’

‘No,’ said Blume.

‘Gerhard Schroeder, our former Chancellor. So that investigation did not go very far. Then it was discovered the Ndrangheta was funding some politicians. There was a funding scandal with Thomas Schäuble, a regional minister, brother of our current Minister of Finance in Merkel’s government. These are complex and delicate matters, and it is very difficult to find out the truth. In fact, most of the accusations are false, but it slows things down and makes it difficult for us to proceed.’

Now it was Weissmann’s turn to stray off topic.

‘Welcome to the world of Italian organized crime,’ said Blume. ‘Its three weapons of choice are confusion, intimidation and corruption. But it will always choose confusion first. Nobody really knows who’s on whose side. Everything is infiltrated.’

‘They cannot infiltrate the BKA,’ said Weissmann in definitive tones.

‘That is a very comforting thought,’ said Blume. ‘We were talking about this young woman Dagmar?’

‘Yes. Three months after testifying, Dagmar Schiefer, who had just turned twenty-six, disappeared, like the earth had swallowed her. This is 1993. She was still living with her parents in Dusseldorf at the time. One Friday evening, she did not come home. They thought she must have gone to a party or something and did not report her missing until Sunday. But they never saw their girl again. No one saw anything, heard anything. The local police had nothing.’

‘
Lupara bianca
is what we call it in Italy. It means “white shotgun”. When the Mafia disappears a person for ever, leaving no trace. Usually, they dissolve the body in acid. Sodium hydroxide, I think.’

He managed to pass a line of cars and move up about twenty places, but the van he had spotted had disappeared from sight.

‘We think Agazio Curmaci killed Dagmar Schiefer. He was working closely with Domenico Megale at the time of the disappearance. In those days Curmaci was Megale’s driver. It is the closest we can get to associating Curmaci with an act of violence in Germany, but there was never enough to prosecute. A few days after Dagmar vanished, he was questioned and released within hours. Megale was in police custody at the time.’

‘So, you’re saying Curmaci killed this Dagmar back in the early 1990s. Has the investigation been reopened?’

‘We do not close cases such as these, but they do eventually lose priority. Last week, a former colleague in the BKA, Sebastian Eich, a man who has since retired, received a call from Dagmar’s mother. She called the BKA and asked to speak specifically to him, saying it was of the utmost importance. They put her in contact because she was so insistent. Eich and Dagmar’s mother had met many years before, you see. When the BKA finally intervened to explain to Dagmar’s parents – and to her fiancé – that their daughter might have been killed by a new Mafia organization, Eich was the person who did it. That was in 1994, more than a year after Dagmar disappeared.’

‘I suppose they heard Megale had been released from jail, and all the old pain resurfaced. Is that what this is?’

‘Yes, they knew he had been released from jail, and that is connected. Before she disappeared, Dagmar Schiefer had been planning to move out of her family home to live with her fiancé. He was a student, doing a post-graduate degree in archaeology. After Dagmar’s disappearance, he quit university, promising her parents that he would find out what happened and bring them proof that she was dead, find out who killed her, discover where she died. But he never did. At least not yet.’

‘That boyfriend will have forgotten now. It’s a lifetime ago. Unless he’s unable to let go . . . Oh, God. Wait –’

‘I have no time to wait. This boyfriend has not forgotten. He visited Dagmar’s mother the day before she called Eich. He even asked her not to mention his visit to anyone, but she was worried he was about to do something stupid, which is why she called Eich.’

‘And federal agents in Germany are at the beck and call of old women with presentiments?’

‘
Unterbrechen Sie mich bitte nicht, Kommissar
.’

‘Then get to the point, because I think I’ve already reached it.’

‘So you will have realized that Megale received a visit from Dagmar’s boyfriend, and that this visit had been observed by us.’

As Weissmann said this, the faded pictures of the young woman in the camper, the sad postcard pictures of journeys past flashed into the front of his mind, the torn Madonna, Konrad’s pale blue eyes, his personal quixotic mission.

‘Konrad Hoffmann,’ said Blume. ‘The boyfriend is Konrad Hoffmann. He wants the man who killed his girlfriend, and he has waited until now.’

‘Yes,’ Weissmann was saying, ‘Konrad Hoffmann. He quit his degree, joined the Deutsche Hochschule der Polizei and then the BKA a few years later. At this time, a few people did notice his career choice, also because for a brief period he was under suspicion as a fiancé always will be in these circumstances, but then as the years went by and he carried out his work very well, no one on the force thought about his past, and he never spoke of it.’

Hoffmann distracted everyone with the idea of the Camorra and the Ndrangheta cooperating in toxic dumping, because that is a real phenomenon and part of a real investigation. There was a lot of sides to consider, and that is why no one looked into the deep past. We kept looking at what he does, not at what he used to be.’

Bullshit, thought Blume. The BKA had an agent with a grudge who had decided to set out on a mission against Curmaci; the Italians had the perfect idiot counterweight, him, who had also set out on a personal quest against Curmaci. Two loose cannons, each used to cancel the other out. He could appreciate the elegance of the solution, but felt humiliated at being played in this way. At least Konrad’s quest was noble.

‘Massimiliani, are you still there?’

‘I am, but Weissmann’s gone.’

‘Why now? Why am I learning this only now? Answer me honestly for once.’

‘No one knew. We are all learning this now.’

‘OK, why now for Konrad? Why is he acting now, after all these years?’

‘Honestly? Your guess is as good as mine,’ said Massimiliani. ‘But the most likely answer is Konrad needed confirmation from Megale that Curmaci was the killer, and perhaps permission to act. Maybe he just wanted to know where Dagmar’s body was. But he can’t have approached Megale and demanded any of these things without giving something back. He has something on them. So that is what the BKA want to talk to him about now. Finally, they have a strategy.’