Jakob Arjouni - Brother Kemal

‘Why would he do you a bad turn that way?’

‘Because, of course, sooner or later the question of who I was working for will come up. The court will want to know what I was doing in Abakay’s apartment, and Abakay’s lawyers will do their best to make me look like an unreliable witness — they’ll say my client paid me to smear Abakay’s reputation, and so I thought something up. Well, not many clients want to be named in a criminal case — I assume you’re not among the few exceptions — and no private detective likes it to be known that he can’t protect his clients’ names. So I’d like to ask you, if anyone comes to see you in connection with Abakay, to deny having any contact with me. If you’ve made a note of my name anywhere, or my business card is lying about the house, get rid of it.’

‘You mean someone might break into our house?’ Her tone was still cool. Maybe too cool. As if, after all that had happened, a mere burglary held no terrors for her. Perhaps it really didn’t. All the better.

‘No, but a halfway tricky private detective who knows his business could pretend to be someone from the municipality and sniff about your house, or he could invite your housekeeper for a coffee and get her to tell him everything about recent visitors. So it would be a good thing if your housekeeper doesn’t come upon my name when she was clearing your wastepaper baskets.’

‘I see … okay.’

She paused, and suddenly it seemed to me as if I were on a different line. I heard her breathing: a heavy, hasty, slightly tremulous struggle for breath. I had never heard anything like it except in people suffering a panic attack or before a very unpleasant and very important encounter. Like de Chavannes always sounded …

‘Ought I to worry about Marieke?’

‘No more than I suppose you’re worrying anyway, after what happened. Abakay’s lawyers will try to find witnesses to let him off the hook, and if all Marieke and Abakay really talked about was photography and social injustice, then of course she’d be perfect.’

‘If,’ repeated Valerie de Chavannes, pausing again. And once again I heard her breathing. But I didn’t think she was breathing so heavily because of our phone call. I had thought, once before, that underneath the various masks worn by Valerie de Chavannes there was nothing but a constant state of fear. The arrogant upper-class cow, angry and scornful, the little woman in need of help, the yearning, melting tattooed minx de Chavannes, and now the Agent 007 Mama preserving a cool head in difficult times and keeping the show on the road — all of them camouflage and attempts to stay largely unscathed. And that had nothing to do with Abakay; it had always been like that, I thought — or, anyway, for a long time.

‘You still haven’t told me what exactly the crime was that Abakay committed. Did you mean it about murder, or was that just to scare me?’

‘Both. Whether he committed the murder himself isn’t certain, but he’s certainly involved in it. However, that’s nothing to do with Marieke. Abakay is a little street mongrel who will try to pick up a few euros where and when he can. Of course drugs play a part, and probably stolen cars, weapons, forged papers, God knows what. And here we come very close to a capital crime. All the same, he did take those photos on the side, and that’s what linked him to Marieke.’

‘Of course you know that I’d love to believe you.’

‘Of course I do. But tell me a reason I’d lie to you.’

She hesitated. ‘Because you don’t want to hurt me.’ She was trying to keep the cool tone of voice going, but it didn’t entirely work. Or she acted as if she were trying to keep the cool tone of voice going, and let it slip into emotion on purpose.

‘I really would be very reluctant to hurt you, but I wouldn’t tell you fairy tales on that account.’

‘How do you explain Marieke’s behaviour over the last few days?’

‘Well, my bet would be she feels crossed in love. I didn’t say the photos were all of it. And Abakay certainly knows how to impress a sixteen-year-old. Anyway, if I were you I’d make sure Marieke doesn’t go prison visiting in the immediate future.’

‘For God’s sake!’

‘You should be glad she’s spending all day in her room. Maybe you should buy her a different CD.’

For a moment there was silence on the line. Obviously her breathing had calmed down, or she was holding the receiver to one side. Then she sighed, sounding surprisingly amused, and asked, ‘How old are you?’

‘Fifty-three. Why?’

‘Because no one buys CDs these days. They download music to their MP3 players.’

‘I even still have some cassettes.’

‘Simply Red or something like that, I expect.’

‘No, Whitney Houston. But I can’t listen to the cassettes anymore, my recorder’s broken.’

‘Whitney Houston,’ she repeated, and was about to say something making fun of me — it wasn’t difficult to make fun of people who still listened to Whitney Houston — but then something seemed to occur to her and she suddenly fell silent.

So did I. Probably we had both carried on like that because we were glad to get away from the subject of Abakay for a moment. But in no time at all we had landed in front of an open door. For instance, she went on: Whitney Houston — right, now I do believe you’re fifty-three. What else do you like? Foreigner? Münchner Freiheit? And I: You’ve never listened to Whitney Houston properly. At three in the morning, with a few beers or something else inside you, windows of the bar open, mild air, and then ‘The Greatest Love of All’ on the jukebox — you could fall on your knees with happiness. And she again: Well, okay. I have a recorder that still works … Or something like that. Anyway, we both knew that from here to a Whitney Houston evening together with wine and candlelight it was three more sentences at the most.

Finally I said, ‘Apart from which my Whitney Houston days are over.’

She cleared her throat, and her tone became friendly but objective. ‘Well, I hope so, at the age of fifty-three.’

‘You mean fifty-three is too old for Whitney Houston?’

‘Too old for Whitney Houston period, I’d say. A song now and then, why not?’

I noticed that I was baring my teeth. ‘I bet you’ve listened to a Whitney Houston song now and then on your MP3 player.’

She hesitated. ‘Could be. I don’t know. It’s a long time since I listened to any music at all.’

It was on the tip of my tongue to say: Surely a ballad or so with Abakay now and then?

Instead, I said, ‘It’ll come back. These are just phases.’ And then, more briskly, ‘Did you get my bill?’

‘Yes.’ A short pause, then back to the cool tone. ‘Do I destroy that as well?’

‘Don’t transfer the money direct to me anyway. I’ll collect it in cash sometime.’

She didn’t reply.

‘Or maybe I’ll send a friend to collect it.’

‘Yes, let’s do it that way,’ she said.

It annoyed me. I didn’t want her letting me go so quickly. And it annoyed me that it annoyed me.

‘Okay, we’ll do it that way. And please let me know at once if anyone asks you about me.’

‘Can’t I tell your friend? Wouldn’t that be simpler?’

I looked at my big station clock, behind which my pistols, handcuffs, knock-out drops and pepper spray were hidden. ‘No, it wouldn’t be simpler, because my friend has no idea what this is about.’

‘Fine, then, I’ll call you. Anything else we ought to discuss?’

I said no, we said goodbye and hung up. I was furious. With her, with myself. And briefly I wondered how, after Whitney Houston, I had gotten to Foreigner and Münchner Freiheit. Brothel music, all of it.