Tretjak (3 page)

There was only one sensible way to manipulate a person in the future: go back to the past. Tretjak had learned this from a CIA psychologist. ‘If you fly to Mumbai tomorrow you are definitely leaving the centre of the court, in fact you would be moving to the furthest-most corner,' he had told Schwarz. ‘You shouldn't do that, if everything is supposed to go according to our plan. You have to return to your headquarters tomorrow...'

Tretjak turned down the meal, only drinking a glass of water, placed the back of his seat in a horizontal position and fell asleep with the reassuring feeling that things were developing just the way he had planned them.

When he unlocked his flat's door in Munich, the next morning (local time), he noticed a small change. The pile of read newspapers on the floor in the hallway was still there. That meant that his cleaning lady, the reliable and faithful Frau Lanner, had not shown up. But there could be a thousand different reasons for that. Tretjak did not pay any attention to this small change in his daily routine.

 

A8 Motorway, Berlin–Munich, 6pm

Max Krug had been on the road for almost eight hours. He had driven exactly 611 kilometres in his black horse-box – Krug had bought himself the most modern one of all – a twin-cabin with electronically secured doors and inside walls which could be moved remotely at the touch of a button. To the left of the steering wheel there was a small monitor, on which he could observe what was going on inside the transporter. He had installed the highly sensitive webcam himself. It was a brand of high security transporter and that was precisely what Krug wanted; after all he was ferrying around a golden treasure. The best racing horse in the whole of Europe, just four-years-old. What a future lay ahead of this horse. Nu Pagadi was its name, a Russian saying roughly translated as ‘Just you wait.' Krug had come up with the name himself.

Many moons ago, as a soldier of the East German Volksarmee he had studied at the Military Academy in Leningrad. Even back then, he had loved to hear these words, a phrase uttered in a slightly mocking way: ‘Nu pagadi.'

The horse had already won almost half a million euros for Krug. He was too superstitious to think about what money was still to come. Anything could happen to a horse. And that's why he had insured it well, just in case, and invested over 100,000 euros in this transporter.

Nu Pagadi always travelled alone; the left-hand box remained empty on the trips. The camera was focused only on the right-hand box. This is why Krug did not see the thick grey blanket which had been lying on the floor of the left box since the last service station stop and which was covering up something big, which wasn't moving.

 

About 20 kilometres down the road, Krug noticed for the first time that Nu Pagadi was getting nervous, unsettled. He snorted, scraped the floor with his hoofs and danced around. Krug was getting nervous as well, as Nu Pagadi was normally calm on these trips. Was the drive just too long this time? Or what was the matter?

Krug was well aware of the stories about the little quirks of great racehorses while travelling. The French super stallion Ourasi would only into the horsebox if a little white goat entered the wagon before him. Others calmed down only when a certain other horse accompanied them; their best friend, so to speak. Was Nu Pagadi now also starting to display such airs and graces? Krug saw on the monitor that his horse was getting more fidgety by the minute. It become clear that he had to stop. There was a sign for the next rest area in 5 kilometres. Maybe Nu Pagadi was just hungry. Krug was well prepared for that eventuality. He had brought all his favourites: carrots, bananas and his sweet milk pudding.

The exact location of the small restaurant where Max Krug turned off the motorway was 22.6 kilometres north of Munich city centre. He was going to consult a psychologist there, a trauma specialist, who was going to chase away the images of those few moments at the rest area which had been haunting him ever since and robbed him of all his sleep.

After stopping, Krug got out, walked around to the back, entered the security code and the back door of the horsebox opened. He immediately saw the blanket, which did not belong there, which he had not put there. He was the only one who had access to the box. Krug lifted up the blanket and saw the man, brown suit, white shirt, no coat. The man was lying on his stomach; he did not move. A slim, bald man. ‘I don't know the man,' Krug immediately thought, ‘this is a stranger.' Maybe one always thinks that when faced with a dead man. Dead men always look like strangers.

Krug tried to feel a pulse. But there was no pulse, and then Krug made the mistake of turning over the body. There was only a tiny bit of blood, an insignificant amount. But something awful had happened to the face. Something horrible. Again and again Krug would repeat this scene to his therapist. Again and again he would have to relive this moment. That was the only way, according to the therapist, that these images would ever leave his brain.

Everything else, everything that had happened at this rest area that night, was pretty much a blank in Krug's mind. Obviously the police had arrived at one point. At another point a second horsebox had arrived, into which he had led Nu Pagadi. He must have left a sorry impression all around, he thought later, as he had explained to everybody how precious this horse was. And in the face of a dead body... Oh, yes, he could also remember the name of the police inspector who had taken his statement. He could not really recall what he looked like except for a noticeable scar on his cheek, but the name had stuck: Inspector Maler, August Maler; Maler had been the name of a famous racehorse, who had won the German Derby many moons ago. Krug told his therapist that he really hoped he had not blubbered that bit of trivia at the time as well.

Nu Pagadi did not show any signs of post-traumatic stress. Krug had him checked, because you just never know. But everything was in order, physically as well as psychologically. Only two days after the horrible experience Nu Pagadi won his next race at Munich-Daglfing, convincing as usual. It was the fourth race of the evening. Krug's therapist would later repeat the well-known saying that a seriously insensitive person was as unfeeling as a horse.

12 May

St-Anna-Platz, Munich, 2pm

August Maler was wearing grey corduroy trousers, a beige shirt and his light, beige canvas jacket. Beige and grey, those were his colours, and no matter what clothes he bought they always ended up being grey or beige. His wife had bought him a red shirt for a change, but he did not wear it very often.

St-Anna-Platz No. 9, that was the address of Gabriel Tretjak. On this warm afternoon August Maler afforded himself the luxury of sitting down for a few minutes on a green park bench just outside one of the churches, the big one, and opposite the other, the little one. August Maler had no special relationship with churches, but St-Anna-Platz was his favourite square in Munich. The two churches, the mighty chestnut trees, on the right the button shop, next to it the bakery run by the fat Turkish lady and her even fatter son. The school, the café, the gallery and the butcher. Maler often passed by the butcher and bought himself two sausage rolls. Not today though. This morning a cursory glance at the scales left him a little disillusioned.

On the corner of St-Anna-Platz there was a restaurant, which once upon a time had been a rotisserie, then had been taken over by Italians and then became a café. Now it was an Italian restaurant again. But the real significance of the place lay in the fact that it had been the backdrop to a cult TV show called ‘Münchner Geschichten', but that was a long time ago. August Maler had loved that show, and still did today: he owned all the episodes on DVD. A group of young people, specialists in the lightness of being, big dreams, no rules – that was roughly the plotline. Thinking about the dialogue from the TV show made August Maler smile: Charley, the main character, gets into a taxi. The driver asks: ‘Where to?' ‘Anywhere,' Charley answers. ‘Anywhere,' the driver retorts, ‘that's tricky.'

Sitting on his bench August Maler thought again: one should live here, on the St-Anna-Platz, that would be a dream; but the Lehel district was one of the most expensive ones in expensive Munich. How would a policeman ever be able to afford that? But he also thought something else, and he surprised himself by that thought: if that guy with his horse had decided to pull in and stop 40 kilometres away, his colleagues from Ingolstadt would have had to deal with the gruesome murder. With the body in a horsebox. And a mobile phone. And he could stay seated on the bench, now lit by a beam of sunlight, which had come up behind the little church's dome. Inspector August Maler, 51 years of age: had somebody grown a bit tired prematurely?

*

A few minutes later August Maler rang the doorbell. The response came quickly over the intercom: ‘Who's there?'

‘My name is Maler, I am from the police. May I have a word?'

Maler had become used to introducing himself as an ordinary policeman. The acronym CID always sounded so dramatic.

Tretjak was standing in the doorway when Maler came up the stairs to the second floor. A good-looking fellow, dark, an almost southern European type. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt. And he was grinning. ‘What a day. Inland Revenue is already here. And now the police...'

The inspector was led into a big room, a kind of kitchen-living room. He saw a stove, a big fridge, a bar and in front of that a black table on which lay a few files, one of them open. A young woman was sitting at the table, whom Tretjak introduced as a tax inspector from the Inland Revenue, Division Munich II: ‘Ms Neustadt is doing a complete investigation of my tax affairs. We are right in the middle of it, so to speak.'

‘Maler,' he introduced himself, offering his hand to Ms Neustadt. Then he turned to Tretjak: ‘you must be tired. You had an exhausting flight, only landing this morning. How long is the trip from Colombo exactly?'

‘How do you know that?' Tretjak asked.

‘That's why I am here,' Maler answered, ‘but I must speak to you in private.'

‘Understood,' Ms Neustadt got up and gathered her things. ‘Then let's draw a line here and continue where we left off the day after tomorrow as discussed. I'll give you my card.' She laughed and also gave her card to the inspector. ‘Who knows, maybe one day you'll need the Inland Revenue.'

 

After she had left, Tretjak put a bottle of mineral water and one glass on the table. ‘Well...?'

Inspector Maler opened an envelope, took out two photographs and placed them in front of Tretjak. Both showed the same man. ‘Do you know this man?'

‘No.'

‘This is Professor Harry Kerkhoff from Rotterdam, a well-known brain specialist. I should add: this
was
Professor Kerkhoff. Yesterday he was murdered.'

‘My God,' said Tretjak, ‘but I don't understand. What has all that to do with me?'

‘We found a mobile phone on the body. A very strange mobile, I would have thought. Nothing on it, no saved numbers. In fact it was only used once, to place a call yesterday. The call went to Colombo, to your hotel. With this mobile phone a message was passed to you, that much we have been able to piece together.'

‘That's right. I was at dinner and the guy from reception came over to say that a man had left an urgent message for me.'

‘And what was that message?'

‘It was weird, total nonsense. I didn't understand a thing. It alluded to a racehorse, a tip off that it had won some race or other. I have never in my life been to the races. I thought the whole thing was a mistake, a mix-up.'

Maler took a sip of water. ‘Do you remember the name of the horse?'

‘As a matter of fact I do: Nu Pagadi. Once upon a time I knew what that meant, something Russian. A strange name for a horse, I thought. That's why I remember.'

‘Nu Pagadi. That means: “Just you wait.”' Maler paused. ‘Mr Tretjak, we found the body of the professor in a horsebox at a motorway service station. The dead man was lying in the left box, and in the right stood the horse. Nu Pagadi. A very special horse, by the way. Worth a lot of money.'

The conversation between the two didn't last very much longer. Maler asked who knew that Tretjak was in that hotel in Colombo and enquired after the purpose of the trip. And then he added: ‘you have to think about what this message could mean.'

 

The big church bell on the St-Anna-Platz tolled half past three when Inspector Maler left the house. Two chimes, as always, every half hour. Maler had had a great teacher in the police, his long-time boss, who had taught him a lot. One lesson was: try to avoid, as far as possible, judging people who you are investigating. Don't evaluate, hang everything in the balance, don't decide whether you like them or not, whether you find them credible or not. Because every judgement narrows the perspective, limits the observation. A good policeman hasn't got any drawers for thoughts like that, his boss used to say.

Maler climbed into his car, a beige BMW, and for once listened to that inner voice: don't jump the gun about Tretjak. Only one observation registered in his memory: normally people who are given such dramatic news ask questions. How did the man die? How was he discovered? Are there any leads the police are following? These kind of things interest people. With Tretjak it was different. He listened and responded. Nothing else.

When Maler turned into the Mittlerer Ring he could not help passing one tiny little judgement. It concerned the slim blonde tax inspector whose hand he had shaken in Tretjak's flat. He remembered his roommate in the cardiac clinic who had shared his two-bed room for weeks. They had thought up a little game. With every woman who entered the room or who they met in the clinic they connected profession or nationality with looks. Clichés like ‘nurses are prettier than cleaners' were predictable, but nevertheless interesting, but more fun were remarks such as ‘for an English girl she is pretty, but not for a physiotherapist.' Maler was certain that his roommate and he would have agreed about the lady from the Inland Revenue: for a tax inspector, she was damn good looking.