Grave Intent (25 page)

Jan leaned forward. “Let’s sum this up. You and Yuri didn’t only use your diplomatic immunity to smuggle organs to Germany, you even used the embassy’s private jet to do it. Are you aware of the repercussions for relations between our two countries?”

Galina kept her head lowered. This was the decisive moment. Either she was going to cave and start talking, or she’d retreat back into her shell and say nothing.

Jan leaned back without taking his eyes off his subject. He was under hellish pressure, time-wise, but the ball was in her court now.

“What do you want from me?”

Jan stifled a triumphant smile. “If I’m in need of an organ, how do I reach Yuri Petrov?”

“We have various contacts in Berlin and the vicinity. These can be anything from caregivers to hospital staff to well-regarded doctors. Whenever they’ve got a customer who’s sufficiently desperate and able to pay, they turn to me or to Yuri. They get a finder’s fee.”

“How much money are we talking about?”

“Up to seven thousand euros, depending on the organ.”

“Not bad for a tip. Then?”

“Yuri has the patient’s records sent to him so he can find a donor organ the patient’s system can tolerate. He sends the info on to his contacts in Ukraine. As soon as an organ becomes available, the wheels are set in motion.”

“Who are his people in Ukraine?”

“No idea.”

“Wrong answer.”

“I was just the courier. When Yuri didn’t have time. He was the brains behind the operation. I smuggled the packages through customs and collected a commission.”

“And you have nothing on the people behind it all? Faces? Names? Addresses?”

Galina raised her head, her eyes welling up. “Even if I did know the people, I wouldn’t talk. If I did, I’d be dead before I even made it back to the embassy. A human life means nothing to these people.”

“Which is why you went out of your way to help them?”

Galina looked at the floor again. “Sometimes, a person has no choice.”

“My heart’s just melting with sympathy.” Jan paged through his notes. “What happens once the package is inside Germany?”

“I hand the organ over to Yuri. He takes it directly to the person who requested it. With most organs, the window is really short. Often under twenty-four hours.”

“Were German officials involved in the smuggling?”

“That wasn’t necessary. We had no reason to need them.”

“So how was the organ transported? You’d need more than a secluded back room and a nurse for that. It’s not like a municipal hospital is using illegal organs.”

“Yuri had connections to doctors in Berlin. Not many. Maybe four or five. But each of them is capable of doing an organ transplant. A few falsified documents and the staff doesn’t notice that the organ didn’t come via the donor registry.”

“What kinds of organs are we talking about?”

“Livers, lungs, kidneys, and corneas.”

“A wide offering. Who are the doctors?”

Galina shook her head at the floor. A tear might have dropped there. “Again, I was only just the courier, Herr Tommen. Yuri kept all the rest from me. I received three thousand euros per smuggle. You don’t ask questions.”

“How many deals were you involved in?”

“Just forty.”

“And Yuri?”

“Twice that.”

Jan shook his head. At least eighty cases. He could guess the organs weren’t obtained legally. The previous owners were probably lying buried somewhere in Ukraine.

“How long has this been going on?”

“Three years.”

“Are others in the embassy involved?”

“I don’t think so, but this is not exactly a topic for the coffee break. I wouldn’t rule it out.”

“In those three years, has anything gone wrong with any of the deals?”

“How do you mean?”

“An unhappy customer who got the wrong organ? An unexpected death? A delivery arriving too late?”

“Yuri told me so little. I think the operations always went well. Sometimes an organ is rejected despite all pre-exams and medications. Few survive such a thing, except when it’s eyes.”

“Was there ever a deal that failed completely?”

“No.” She wiped away tears.

“Did Yuri ever get death threats?”

“No one knew who he was or where he lived. It was all done by phone. Most handoffs were managed by the doctors, not the customers. As far as I know, they kept their mouths shut.”

“But why did Yuri deliver those corneas personally when the operating doctors usually get them?”

“Some customers have their own doctors. They just want the organ, and they take care of all the rest.”

“So how could the grave murderer have learned about Yuri?”

“No idea.” Galina’s lips quivered, her eyes wet again. After a moment she said, “Two days ago I got the assignment to travel to Ukraine under some pretext and pick up the corneas. There were no difficulties. I handed over the package to Yuri last night. Eyes aren’t generally a rush, so he waited until morning, took the cook’s car, drove to meet his contact. I don’t know anything more than that.”

“Did Yuri keep any records of his business?”

“He was too clever for that. If he got caught, he could only be linked to one or two cases. Yuri wrote down the most important info, kept it in a safe, then burned it once the organ was handed over.”

Jan sighed. He’d been hoping for a list he could use to match with the other victims.

“What about his contacts?”

“He wrote them down somewhere. In his address book, on his phone—that or they’re lying in his safe. This list alone would not look suspect.”

“You know any of them?”

“No. But I’m sure you’d find some doctors in there.”

Jan observed the woman. The events clearly were hitting her hard. He couldn’t tell whether Galina was so despondent because of the lost business or the death of Yuri Petrov. He figured she’d be back to her old self in a few hours. In which case the ambassador would either send her back home or take her under his protective wing.

Jan grabbed his files and stood. He’d gotten everything he could out of Galina. It was time to find out what the others had found out.

“Welcome, everyone!” Max gushed. He sat in the police conference room before a telephone and speaker. Jan was pinning the latest photos of the dead Yuri Petrov on a bulletin board. The shots showed head wounds in all their graphic detail.

“Zoe is on the line from Forensics and Chandu from home. So we’re looking good.”

Zoe’s voice droned from the speaker: “Looking good? With a fourth victim and no sign of the killer? Have you been downing energy drinks again?”

Max straightened. “No. What makes you think that?”

“That’s just swell,” she growled.

“Listen up,” Jan started in. “Even if the murderer slipped out of my grasp, I’m beginning to see a pattern.” He pinned one last photo to the board. “Yuri Petrov didn’t seem to fit the other victims at first because he looked like an embassy staffer rather than an organ dealer. Now the picture does fit, and we’re getting closer to a motive.”

“Which would be?” Chandu asked.

“Revenge.”

“Now there’s a new one,” Zoe remarked.

“When the murderer killed Yuri Petrov, he spoke about getting revenge for his daughter. That’s the one piece of the puzzle that was missing.”

Jan went over to the board and pointed at Bernhard Valburg’s photo. “Dr. Valburg was a pulmonologist who specialized in lung diseases. This will become important later. His eyes were gouged out. There’s some room for interpretation, but I’m going with the obvious. Dr. Valburg didn’t see something that he was supposed to see.”

“A misdiagnosis,” Zoe offered.

“Exactly. The murderer went to see the doctor to get treatment for his daughter.”

“Sometimes there’s nothing to be done, and people die even though the disease was treated correctly,” Zoe said.

“Whether Dr. Valburg was guilty or not is irrelevant. Maybe he did all he could, maybe he failed. We still don’t know.” Jan pointed to the car salesman’s photo. “Let’s turn to Moritz Quast, when he was working for the health insurer. His tongue was cut out. We can assume from this that he said something he wasn’t supposed to say. But what? Look at it from another angle—when he was doing his job as an administrator.”

“He rejected a treatment or a medication,” Chandu said.

“For pulmonology, it could be a lot of things,” Zoe explained. “Ranging from naturopathic remedies and breathing exercises to antibiotics, oxygen therapy, thoracic drainage, and on up to partial lung resection.”

“We don’t have any details on this,” Jan said, “but we don’t need them for our investigation. The murderer believes that Moritz Quast, in his function as a health-insurance administrator, was somehow responsible for his daughter’s death.”

“Not too hard to figure out Robin Cordes,” Zoe said. “Robin was supposed to get the medication the insurance rejected, but on the black market.”

“But either the medicine didn’t work,” Jan continued, “or he wasn’t able to get it.”

“Thus the fingers cut off,” Chandu said.

“Which brings us to Yuri Petrov, the organ dealer.”

“He was supposed to get the murderer’s daughter a new lung,” Zoe said.

“That failed,” Chandu added. “So Yuri was murdered, and his lung was cut out as a symbol.”

Jan sat back down. “Now we not only have the murderer’s motive, we also know why he mutilated his victims.”

“But why go to all that trouble with the grave?” Max said.

“His daughter died,” Jan said. “Her burial unleashed not only his urge to kill but also his desire to put them six feet under.”

“How does that get us any closer to the murderer?” Zoe asked.

“We can take a better look at the names we have,” Max said. “For Dr. Valburg, we’d be looking for young female patients who were with the insurer that Moritz Quast worked for. The daughter leads us to the name of the father, and then we have our murderer.”

“The daughter is also deceased, which should help us narrow down the list,” Chandu said. “You know his stature, and we have his voice. Identifying the murderer from there is easy.”

Jan turned to Max. “How long do you need to work this out?”

“Two hours,” he said. “Tops.”

Jan folded his arms behind his head and set his feet up on the table. “Ladies and gentlemen, in two hours we’ll know who the grave murderer is. Start chilling the champagne.”

The operations room had filled up. Chairs had been removed to make space for more people. It was crowded, stuffy. Jan and his fellow cops fixed their gaze on the loudspeakers playing the SWAT team’s radio communications. The raid was about to start.

The sound of the team leader’s voice suggested he was used to giving commands. “We’re at the location. Schwanenallee one-one-four. Begin securing possible exits.”

The drumming of heavy boots sounded.

They had finally identified their man. After a week of investigating, the sleepless nights would soon be over. Jan looked forward to having a weekend again and a normal work schedule. No more stress from the media. Once he questioned the killer and finished up his report, he would be ready to party.

“Doorbell reads Elias Dietrich. Fifth floor confirmed.”

It had taken Max less than an hour to track down the name. Elias Dietrich. An unassuming name. A spotless record. Nothing that could connect him to serial homicide. No irregularities.

Until June 23, 2013. That date would soon describe the murder of Bernhard Valburg. And in the days that followed, those of Moritz Quast, Robin Cordes, and Yuri Petrov. Four murders. The reasons, vile. Planned in cold blood. Elias Dietrich would die in prison.

The drone of a drill sounded. Something metallic hit the floor.

“Reached the stairwell.”

More drumming of boots. SWAT must be storming up the stairs. No panting could be heard over the speakers. Apparently sprinting up four flights wasn’t too strenuous for these men. Even in protective gear.

“Reached target residence.”

A bang sounded. The front door being knocked open with a battering ram.

“Accessed.”

Jan dug his fingernails into his palm. The room was deadly still. Everyone was staring at the speaker. Patrick pursed his lips.

“Clear,” one of the men shouted.