Tretjak (16 page)

 

County of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen, Upper Reaches of the Isar River, 3pm

She let her fingers wander down his spine. And up again. Step by step, from one vertebra to the next, until they reached the neck. It was not a determined movement, but a hesitant one, a tender one. He was lying on his stomach, his arms folded under his head, his face turned away from her. She lay on her side beside him, resting on her elbow. His swimming trunks were black, his hair was black, his skin tanned, the colour of a Southern European, she thought.

Just now she had kissed him, in the middle of a sentence on the power of water, and how it could grind stones... It had been one of these sentences, which you utter just to say something, anything, sometimes simply in order not to say something else. Her first boyfriend had once described her accordingly: ‘You wrap yourself in words, you hide behind sentences.' She had been 15 at the time and had become very angry. But from that day forward, she realised that she had an instinct for such sentences. The kiss had been soft, very soft. And now there was only the sound of the flowing water. The Isar in its upper reaches was a rapid river and could flow really noisily.

Fiona Neustadt had brought along two towels, with big red and white stripes, which she had spread out on the gravel not ten metres from the water's edge – this nice gravel of round and flat polished stones. The dinghy with the two paddles and the bag with the bottles inside it were pulled up beside them, and their clothes lay on the big air hose facing the sun. The green water with the white caps was still far too cold to swim in at this time of year. It never really reached a very pleasant temperature, but now it was 14 degrees Celsius max. They had only freshened up and cooled their feet in the water.

She had already told Gabriel Tretjak a lot about herself as they had paddled the dinghy on the river. It had been a pretty picture she had painted, like an old picture postcard. She had spoken of herself as a little girl who goes down the river in exactly the same dinghy with her father, who leads the dinghy to water at the same spot near the Tattenkofer bridge. And exactly here, in the great bend and before the tributary of the Loisach channel, they stop for a break and the little girl jumps on shore. The mother appears in the picture, in her flowery dress, and their white bungalow at the edge of the forest, and a dog named Aki, a salt-and-pepper-coloured schnauzer, who later gets run over by a truck. It's these kind of paintings, Fiona Neustadt thought, always these kind of paintings one shares, when one is about to fall in love.

The man who had sat opposite her in the dinghy for an hour had been a patient listener. Or at least he had mastered the art of appearing to listen. Sometimes she got the impression that his perspective turned inward. After all that was not surprising since the man had quite a few problems. She wondered how she would have interpreted this inward look if she hadn't known about these problems. Maybe it would have made her suspicious.

Her hand was now stroking his neck. He turned on his back to face her, squinting against the sun. She kissed him again. Again the kiss was soft, but this time it lingered longer, and his hands were soft as well, so soft in fact that she hardly noticed how they were progressing underneath the material of her white bikini. The beach they were lying on was a great wide shingle bank which could be seen from all around, especially from across the river. She felt her nipples harden, and she felt something hard in his trunks. But she also felt that something was taking hold of her, which she hated: her body was beginning to contract as if it had been thrown into ice-cold water, her pulse had shifted entirely into her wrist, where it was hammering from the inside against the walls of her veins, and the air she breathed tasted of iron. She knew that state from her childhood, and it always came when she had suppressed a wish – another run on the merry-go-round for example – later simply when she was particularly excited. Twice in her life she had fainted in this state.

She let go of him, got up and walked with well-practiced steps barefoot over the stones towards the river. She bent down, and held her wrist under the flowing water for a while. Then she turned around. Tretjak had sat up. A good-looking man on a red-and-white striped towel.

‘I am not going to tell my friends about you,' she shouted against the roar. ‘They're going to tell me off. A successful businessman with a BMW, 15 years older, that's not on!'

He laughed and shouted back: ‘But I'm a good badminton player!'

‘That's what you say!'

Later, when they had pulled the dinghy out of the water near the dam in Icking and were letting out the air by stamping on the tubes, she asked him about his parents, his childhood. She was interested to see what pictures he was going to paint. But he didn't do her that favour. ‘It's not the stuff for so beautiful a moment,' he only said. Then he kissed her and shouldered the heavy wet pile of plastic. It had to be carried at least another kilometre, steeply uphill through the forest to the parking lot of the riding school. She had told him that when she was a child her family had only had one car and that therefore her mother had waited for them there.

In the car he asked her: ‘Do you have any plans for tomorrow evening? We could grab a bite to eat.'

‘Tomorrow? Oh, I thought, we might do that now... I am hungry...'

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘I am busy tonight. There is something... I have to...'

‘Don't worry,' she interrupted. ‘Osteria?'

For a moment he was surprised, then he smiled.

She said: ‘I checked off the monthly bills. So many cheques.'

At the beginning of their little excursion, she had revealed that the tax inspection was complete, everything was in order, and that he was going to receive a report in the next few weeks. She found the timing of this statement to be perfect, because it added to the relaxation. Not only for him but for her as well. Tretjak was a man with all sorts of connections after all, and if he felt pressured he might begin to think about poking around in the affairs of the Inland Revenue to take control of his inspection. That would have made everything unnecessarily difficult.

‘I want to go to another restaurant tomorrow, not to the Osteria,' she said, while Tretjak turned onto Highway Number Eleven. She pulled her straw hat low over her face.

 

Munich, St-Anna-Platz, 6pm

The message on her voicemail this morning was the last thing she needed right now. It was the electronic female voice of a messaging service: the message it conveyed was from Gabriel Tretjak, and it asked whether it would be at all possible for her to make an exception and stand in for her mother, who was still away, and come to clean the flat. It had become rather dirty due to a small accident. The key to the flat could be picked up at the Italian restaurant at the St-Anna-Platz. Of course everything would be paid for generously and in addition to the normal remuneration. A sincere request, warm greetings, Mr Tretjak.

Carolina Lanner had a small café in Agnes Street, a good location, in the middle of Schwabing. Ten tables inside, three small ones outside. She served homemade cakes, fresh sandwiches and a soup of the day she prepared herself at home. ‘Homemade' meant that Carolina baked, prepared, cooked. The café opened at 8am and closed at 6pm. Carolina arrived at six in the morning and never left before nine at night for six days a week; they only closed on Sundays. In a good month, she made 2,000 euros, in a bad one only 500. She had a student, who occasionally helped out for a couple of hours, but she couldn't afford more staff.

Only her mother helped out, whenever she could. Her mother was always there when she needed her. A life without her mother? Unthinkable. She was not the type to ponder what kind of relationship she had with her mother. She also didn't mind that she was starting to look like her mother. Mother was Mother and she was her daughter. That's it. And she couldn't imagine not drinking her first cup of coffee of the day with her mother in her café. And with that cup they ate a piece of homemade cake, one piece each, sometimes two.

It was now almost a week since her mother had left for Argentina. The first time she had called, her mother had seemed blissfully happy. Her cup had literally overflowed, and she had said again and again: ‘Carolina, I'm at home.' And then her mother had started to cry, at least that's what Carolina thought, and she had started to cry as well, of that she was sure. In the end they had agreed that they wouldn't speak again on the phone because it was much too expensive. And that Carolina was going to meet her at the airport, when her mother returned on Sunday.

Just after 6pm she locked the door of her café. She walked down the Agnes Street towards the underground. It had not been a bad day, she had sold 22 pieces of blackcurrent cake, 24 bacon sandwiches and 12 cheese rolls. She changed trains once to get to St-Anna-Platz. As arranged, the key to Tretjak's flat was waiting for her in an envelope at the bar of the Italian restaurant. Her brown coat was much too warm. She was sweating. The sun was still powerful on this early evening in Munich.

Carolina Lanner was not the kind of woman who pondered where her life was leading her.
Que sera, sera
. But tonight there were a few thoughts swirling through her head. Maybe she should also go to Argentina one of these days. It was, after all, her native country, even though she had no recollection of it. She only spoke Spanish with her mother. She was definitely looking forward to the stories her mother would have to tell. The most important thing now, however, was not to run into this man, this Gabriel Tretjak. He had been so strange on the phone. First he organises this trip, and then he seems so cold. Hopefully I'll be gone quickly, Carolina thought, when she unlocked Gabriel Tretjak's flat at 6.22pm.

 

Munich, Restaurant Osteria, 8pm

When the Volvo turned into Schelling Street, the image of the puppet flashed up in her mind's eye again. She was hanging on Paul Tretjak's strings. Nothing more, nothing less. She didn't mind. She was happy to follow a script.

Gabriel Tretjak was sitting at the same table as the first time. But this time she sat down at that same table, directly opposite him. She was suddenly very excited, surprisingly excited. Her heart was pounding. She thought of his father waiting in the car outside in the street, only a few metres away. This thought didn't really calm her down.

There were two bottles of mineral water on the table, one sparkling, one still. He had a glass of champagne in front of him.

‘Would you like a glass as well?'

‘Yes,' she answered, ‘that would be nice.'

That was the end of the friendly part of the conversation.

‘Let's not waste any time, Mrs Poland,' Gabriel Tretjak said, ‘I have two questions. You are going to answer them and then I will leave. I will contact you again one more time tomorrow by telephone.'

She nodded and remained silent.

‘First question: why did you want to talk to me several days ago? What was your concern?'

Charlotte Poland began to tell the story of her son, of all the problems, of Paul Tretjak's idea that his son, ‘meaning you', could help. ‘I know you are not a Samaritan. Far from it. But I have a high opinion of your father, and if he says that you are really good at what you do, then I believe him. I want to believe him, because I am afraid for my son. It would be nice if you could help. I will pay, of course, I am a wealthy woman. But beyond that I am also willing to do what ever you say in this matter.'

Gabriel Tretjak listened without uttering a word. He didn't take any notes, didn't type anything into his mobile lying in front of him. He appeared to be concentrated, interested. She didn't feel that she was talking too much. He was a good listener, she thought.

‘Second question,' Gabriel Tretjak said. ‘Back then you said that I was making a mistake not talking to you. That sounded like a threat. What did you mean by that? Why were you threatening me?'

‘It wasn't a threat,' she said. ‘By “mistake” I meant that this might be a chance for a rapprochement between you and your father. I like your father, he is a great support for me.'

He looked at her but remained silent. Did he believe her? Just then, his mobile phone lit up briefly; he had received a message. And now she saw a reaction – he appeared terrified. She noticed that he was briefly deliberating. He called the waiter, and ordered another glass of champagne. He didn't ask whether she wanted another one.

Maybe this was the moment she was supposed to have waited for. Paul had imagined a pause in the conversation, this way the sense of drama was more intense. ‘Mr Tretjak,' she said. ‘Now I have a question, a question about your father: what really happened ten years ago, on the evening of 11 May?'

She got up, excused herself by saying that she had to powder her nose. That, however, was a ruse. She didn't turn left towards the toilets, but right to the exit. She left, got into the Volvo and they drove off.

 

Munich, Osteria, 9pm

Gabriel Tretjak sat at the table and was still trying to come to terms with the image on his mobile, which had just been sent to him. He wondered what was keeping Charlotte Poland and looked searchingly in the direction of the toilets. Exactly at that moment, Inspector Maler entered the restaurant, with two policemen in uniform behind him. He stepped up to Tretjak's table and said: ‘Mr Tretjak, you are under arrest. Please come with us.'

Gabriel Tretjak sensed the unease spreading in the restaurant, the worried looks of the waiters. He looked at Maler and asked: ‘Am I allowed to know why you are arresting me?'

Maler nodded. ‘A few minutes ago, the body of a woman was discovered in your flat. And you are the prime suspect in her murder.'

Tretjak got up. ‘Can I settle my bill before we leave?'

Maler said: ‘You don't seem to be surprised.'

Tretjak noticed that he was shaking his head nervously as he showed the inspector his mobile phone. ‘I received this image a few minutes ago,' he said. The image showed Tretjak's flat, like the one he had been sent that afternoon. But this time there was blood everywhere, on the walls, the floor, the table.