Tretjak (29 page)

 

In Munich, you tested a girl and said she was a genius. In Antwerp, you tested the same girl and said she was crazy. That's how far you were, so hopelessly far you all were from understanding one another, from understanding me, the truth about me. In a moment we'll ignite a few fireworks. After that the world will look a bit different, at least my world will.

 

She didn't take the lift, but the stairs. Almost without making a noise, she glided down the carpet on the steps. The stairs led into the entrance hall just behind the reception desk. She paused and observed the back of the receptionist. He was the only person in the hotel with whom she had had any dealings. He was a doughy sort of guy, today wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt. She wanted to make sure, even though he had no reason to leave his post right now. With her eyes she followed the stripes of his shirt on the right side of his back from the shoulder downwards. She reached into the inside pocket of her anorak – the stiletto needle was inside its sheath, sown into the lining, with the knife beside it. It was fast, it was soundless. Then the doughy guy was lying on the floor, spread out behind the reception desk and staring up at the ceiling with a fixed, surprised look on his face.

 

Unable to find my place in reality? Incapable of adjusting my own expectations to the actual circumstances? Sorry, but I can't agree with this expert report. That's what you emailed my father, Doctor Know-it-all Kufner. And you groped my ass which was also an interesting way to adjust expectations to actual circumstances. What kind of a game was that, Gabriel? Yes, maybe we are cut from the same cloth. But you have to die now.

 

She went through the entrance door into the Piazza. Just to the right, in the archway, was the delivery van. In front of the bar someone was smoking. She sensed a sudden craving for a cigarette. She hadn't smoked for a long time. She toyed with the idea of asking the guy for one. But then she remembered the inspector's call. One could locate a mobile phone. She would have plenty of time to smoke a cigarette later, she thought and continued on her way. She first crossed the Piazza, then the main street, then walked along the Promenade to the ferry dock, stopped and turned around.

A quiet picture, a beautiful composition of light, shadow and the contours of the buildings. To the right and above, the discreetly-lit church, from where she had watched everything a short while ago. In front of her, the Piazza with the palm trees, the street lights, the bar, the two stone benches. To the left, the Hotel Torre Imperial. Above all of this, the roofs of the town, which hugged the steep slope of the mountain and melted into the darkness. The air was fresh and crystal clear.
BR69Q345
. She heard Gabriel Tretjak's voice in her head, as it enunciated these letters and numbers. Suddenly her brain translated the voice into written symbols. Symbols she had written herself. Symbols written today. Symbols which had been filled in on a form.

And now she knew what it was. It was the code for the transaction by which she had transferred 1.2 million euros, Tretjak's cash, to Brazil this morning. She felt herself become hot all of a sudden, and her thoughts started to race.

 

Back then, during the test at the Ministry, this also happened, my thoughts were racing, there was a whirlpool in my mind. Then I looked at you, Dad, and it was over. Look, I am calm. I am totally calm. And I am the best.

 

She took out her mobile phone, and punched in on the display the word
end
. She let the view of the Piazza sink in, and then she pressed the key which triggered the detonation.

 

Mario Facchetti had dispersed his men around the Piazza. The police vehicles had been parked out of sight on the hard shoulder inside the tunnel under the church. One of the men stood outside the bar, smoking, and had thrown a civilian coat over his uniform. Two had taken positions in the courtyard behind the hotel, one more up at the church.
Il Maresciallo
himself and another of his men stood in the open waiting room of the ferry port. Everything was dark here, because after seven in the evening no more ferries were scheduled to land in little Maccagno.

He had seen the woman leave the hotel and ordered his man to duck. He himself had stepped behind a pillar. That had to be the suspect coming towards him, finally stopping and then turning around. Facchetti stood not five metres away from her. He opened the leather holster of his service pistol. He had been told that although the woman didn't look it, she was extremely dangerous. He observed how she was pushing buttons on her phone and decided: now. He nodded towards his colleague, and together they crossed the few metres very quickly, simultaneously drawing their weapons.

In Maresciallo Facchetti's report, it would say later that Nora Krabbe, aka Fiona Neustadt, had not resisted her arrest. She had seemed confused and surprised, and had repeatedly pushed a button on her mobile phone until it had been taken away from her.

 

From far away, he had seen Sergeant Rainer Gritz standing outside the gate. He had to be over two metres tall. Like a small lighthouse he was standing there, with the collar of his blue raincoat turned up. Gabriel Tretjak told the taxi driver to stop near the figure standing there, it would not be necessary to drive into the clinic compound.

He had landed at 13.20 at Munich's Franz Joseph Strauß airport. Lufthansa LH 701 from Bordeaux. From the airport, one could reach the Haar district by using the motorway for almost the entire distance, and at midday there was hardly any traffic, so it had taken the taxi only about 30 minutes. It was an overcast November day, a Tuesday, wet, cold, unpleasant.

Six weeks had passed since Fiona's arrest in Maccagno. Gabriel Tretjak found that they had passed quickly. He had moved into the new apartment but it would only be a temporary move – that much he knew already. This flat was a transition – from a highly unpleasant phase of his life into a hopefully better one. He knew that he was going to move out again soon, even though Stefan Treysa often said during their sessions: ‘You have to build deeper foundations in your life, not always such shallow ones. That's important.'

The trip to France had also been Treysa's idea. A crackpot idea, as it turned out. Tretjak had told him about his memory of a holiday. It had been the only holiday that the Tretjaks had ever spent together as a family. Father, mother and two children. All in one big orange tent, directly by the sea, the Atlantic, behind a big sand dune, in the middle of the pine forest. Lit-et-Mixe, the town had been called, that was still its name. The sea was also still there, and the big waves. Even the camping ground still existed, slightly more landscaped but fundamentally the same. Of course, it was closed in November. Tretjak had taken a room in a
pension
. It had rained cats and dogs, but he had still gone to the beach a couple of times, totally alone on this mass of sand several kilometres long. But he had felt nothing. How old would he have been back then? Seven? He remembered a volleyball game the four of them had played. And a terrible thunderstorm, when lightning had hit one of the pine trees. That's about it. The call from Sergeant Gritz had come as a welcome reason to cut short his stay.

‘How is your boss, by the way, Inspector Maler?' Tretjak asked, as they walked side by side across the grounds of the Haar District Hospital. Top security wing, that's where they were heading. House N0. 10. Room 34/B. Nora Krabbe. Two men in white coats came towards them in hurried steps. They looked very cold.

‘Not well, I'm afraid,' Gritz answered. ‘The doctors still haven't been able to get the effects of a serious organ rejection under control. He is back in the ICU.' The young policeman sighed. ‘I went to see him yesterday, but there was no point, he was talking complete gibberish.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' Tretjak said.

For a short while they walked on in silence. Rainer Gritz had called Tretjak because the police were about to close the investigation. He wanted to share with him what they had found out. And maybe discuss with him a few last outstanding questions.

Nora Krabbe, Gabriel Tretjak was told, had rummaged through her father's computer. And had put in Gabriel Tretjak's name. That's how she had come across an email in which her father had asked him for advice. That had been three years ago. Tretjak remembered well. He had been surprised that Krabbe had made contact with him – after all that time and everything that had happened. His daughter was worrying him, the email said. He had written about huge psychological problems. In his answer, Tretjak had given him two names: Harry Kerkhoff and Norbert Kufner, one a brain specialist, the other a psychiatrist. And he had made appointments with both of them. He hadn't done any more than that.

‘You know,' he said to Gritz, ‘I couldn't even remember the daughter's name.'

‘It was the complete opposite on the other side,' Gritz said. ‘Our experts talked about an abnormal obsession with you.' He looked at Tretjak sideways as if expecting a commentary. But Tretjak felt no urge to comment. ‘With regard to the experts,' Gritz eventually continued, ‘Kerkhoff and Kufner came to the same conclusions back then as our experts today: schizophrenia, symptoms of a multiple personality disorder, a completely dislocated value system, self-harming behaviour. The reports were, of course, meant for the father. But the daughter secretly read them.'

Gritz continued to talk: he spoke of the connection between the expert reports and him, Tretjak, of an investigation and an increasingly focused idea, an obsession becoming a fixation. ‘In the end she sent you an email. She had your address, of course. But she changed the name of the sender. Inland Revenue Munich I.'

‘Yes, I should have questioned that,' Tretjak said. ‘Despite emails, the Internet and everything else, the Inland Revenue still sends everything via snail mail.'

They had reached House N0. 10. Gritz paused and opened his briefcase. ‘I've brought something for you,' he said.

He took from it a file containing about 200 pieces of paper. Tretjak recognised the kind of paper – even in black and white, the decorations were visible.

‘This is a copy of the notes Nora Krabbe took,' Gritz said. ‘From the moment she sent you the email as your tax inspector, she kept a diary, containing all the minutiae. Granted, it is sometimes not at all easy to understand the entries. They follow their own peculiar logic, if you understand what I mean, and they are the expression of a pretty pathological emotional world. But I thought you might be interested. After all, you were...' Gritz blushed slightly and then didn't finish the sentence. He was holding the file in his hand a little uncertainly. ‘Do you want to have them?'

Tretjak was thinking of Stefan Treysa. Your past is important, Gabriel. You have to take an interest in it.

‘No,' he said. ‘Thank you, but I'm not going to read that.' And he watched as Gritz stashed the pile in his case again.

They entered the building. Tretjak followed Gritz to the left towards the reinforced glass gate. They had to endure a series of security checks: an x-ray similar to that at the airport, a metal detector, filling in two forms, emptying pockets. Gritz continued talking while all this was happening. Tretjak knew how difficult it could be to collect information, and he got the impression that Gritz wanted to shine a bit with all he knew.

Nora Krabbe, Gritz told Tretjak, had been brought up by her father, the ear, nose and throat specialist physician Martin Krabbe. No siblings. And no mother. According to the research done by the police, Dr Krabbe had paid off the mother, a Ukrainian, immediately after Nora's birth. When she was a young girl, Nora Krabbe had been enrolled in a series of tests run by the Bavarian Ministry of Culture, which studied highly gifted children. At the end of the tests, they had determined that she had an extremely high IQ and some kind of extraordinary talent, which needed a particularly supportive educational environment. In fact, her results were the best in the whole of Bavaria. However, according to Gritz, the tests had been pretty questionable. They had never been repeated.

‘That was a time when they believed they should identify and study gifted children. The thesis was that the education system destroyed such exceptional talent and should be reformed.'

‘Yes,' Tretjak replied, ‘the consequences can still be seen today. Every mother whose child causes problems suspects that it is gifted.'

He had to think of Lars Poland. Was this Gritz aware that here, in House N0. 10, in a different part of it, but House N0. 10 nonetheless, a second person also connected with the case was incarcerated?

They now stood at the beginning of a long hallway with several broad white doors on the left and the right of it. They were supposed to wait for an official.

‘Is she in a state...', Tretjak was searching for the right word, ‘... a fit state to be interrogated?'

Rainer Gritz seemed to also have to think about how to answer: ‘I would put it this way: she
was
in a fit enough state for some of the time. There were several statements which have cleared up a few things, especially about the crimes, very concrete things.'

Gritz spoke of the perfect handling of the stiletto, which she had learned from her father, and of Kerkhoff's body, which she had loaded from the boot of her car into some horse box which she had seen at a motorway service station, purely by chance and on impulse. She had liked what had been written on the outside of it:
Nu Pagadi
. Just you wait. After all, she did know a little Russian. Gritz said that Nora Krabbe had been to Tretjak's flat and murdered the cleaning lady just before going on her excursion to the Isar River. But Tretjak was interested in something different. He looked at the officer.

‘What do you mean by: she
was
in a fit enough state to be interrogated?'