Jakob Arjouni - Brother Kemal

He blinked. ‘Oh, my God!’ and looked round in confusion. Then a smile spread over his face, suddenly he laughed out loud, flung his arms round me, kissed me on both cheeks and cried, ‘Thank you, many, many thanks! It was hell! Those bastards!’

He hugged me. When he let me go, he was still smiling, but he also looked slightly unsure of himself. ‘Excuse me, but — do you stink like that or is it me?’

‘I think we both need a shower. One of the kidnappers kicked me in the belly a couple of times for fun.’

‘And hit you in the face — it looks all swollen.’

‘Hmm-hmm. How did they treat you?’

‘Oh …’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, they didn’t mistreat me, at least not physically. Except for hitting me over the head outside your wife’s restaurant. I had enough to eat and drink, a bed, a TV set. However … their faces were covered up, and when they said anything it was in Turkish, and however often I told them I didn’t understand their bloody lang — oh, sorry!’

‘No problem.’

‘And then the prayers. They kept coming into my room to pray, and made me pray too. Once, when I refused, at pistol point — oh, it was horrible! However … well, I never felt it was really about religion. Do you understand? I mean, about some kind of religious re-education. Of course that was my first thought, because of the novel. But then … in all those five days no one talked to me about my work. Or not in any language I could understand. But I suppose that’s why they kidnapped me …’ He seemed to be thinking, and then he shook his head and said, in a loud and contemptuous voice, ‘Such assholes!’

I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Well, you made it. I told Frau Lipschitz this morning that if all went well, you’d be free this evening. She’s booked you a room in the Frankfurter Hof, and she’s waiting for us there with your publisher. It’s just round the corner. Shall we go?’

He looked a bit surprised. ‘That’s nice of them.’

On the way I said, ‘And in the hotel we’ll have to discuss the text being released to the press.’

‘What text?’

‘It was the condition for freeing you. The group that kidnapped you wants, first and foremost, for the world to know that they exist. They call themselves the Ten Plagues.’

‘What? Like Breitel?’

‘Yes, well.’

‘Imagine that! And I was sure he’d just made the whole thing up!’ He thought about it. ‘But now I’m free … I mean, why would we go along with what the kidnappers want?’

‘Think about it.’

He did, and we walked on side by side in silence.

Just before the entrance to the Frankfurter Hof, he said, ‘You know what I don’t understand? The girl, the decoy — how does a strictly religious group come by a super-Lolita like that?’

‘Well, they probably hired her.’

‘You mean she was a whore?’

I nodded.

‘A whore! Damn it all … I write about that milieu but, to be honest, I just hate …’

‘Careful,’ I interrupted him. ‘No need to insult my wife.’

‘What? How do you …’

We reached the steps up to the entrance. Two uniformed pageboys inspected us, horrified: two men with filthy trousers, stinking of vomit, one with cheeks torn and bleeding, the other with a swollen nose.

‘Good evening,’ I said. ‘We’re expected. Maier Verlag, Emanuel Thys.’

I spent the following week waiting. For the police, for Hakim’s people, for anyone who put two and two together and thought: if Abakay found himself in jail because of a false statement made by Kayankaya, then presumably he wanted revenge, and presumably Kayankaya would defend himself — so let’s ask him where he was on Thursday evening. But obviously no one wanted to put two and two together. The police were glad that arresting Abakay did not, in retrospect, seem such an unfounded notion — the newspapers and the local TV soon agreed that he had died in the course of a drug deal. And Hakim was rid of a troublesome accomplice and blackmailer — family or not.

In the end, I suppose too many people profited by Abakay’s death for there to be any serious investigations. And where the police were concerned, that also seemed to close the Rönnthaler case for the time being. By now, at police headquarters, they were probably laying the blame on Abakay after all. If only for a better rate of cases solved.

On Saturday several newspapers printed the press release from Maier Verlag, along with comments and leading articles: Malik Rashid, author of the novel Journey to the End of Days, has been released unharmed after his five-day abduction by a group calling itself the Ten Plagues. The group justified its actions by charging that Rashid’s novel insulted people of the Muslim faith. The Ten Plagues wanted to send out a signal. The author’s abduction ended, without bloodshed, on Thursday evening .

One comment pointed out: However, there is food for thought in the name of the group. Is it just a coincidental prank, or was there a clever mind behind it? Are we dealing with a Muslim combat group whose members read the works of Dr. Breitel? That would explain why the abduction went comparatively smoothly: it involved intellectual young men, devout Muslims, probably students, who wanted to distinguish themselves from the image of the primitive bin Laden disciples who murder indiscriminately. Are we facing a cross between guerrilla warfare for fun and serious discourse?

And so on. The Ten Plagues were initially featured in the news sections of the papers, then the comments, and almost all the papers published interviews with Rashid.

On Monday Slibulsky dropped in and brought me the money from Valerie de Chavannes.

‘Wow, what a lady!’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

‘I’m to tell you that she very much wants to see you.’

‘Is her husband back?’

‘No idea. Kind of a big black man?’

‘Big, I don’t know.’

‘He passed me in the hall, but we weren’t introduced.’

‘Thanks, Slibulsky.’

‘Tell me’, he said, looking at me curiously, ‘is there something going on between you two?’

‘Am I crazy?’

‘I should think she could drive a man crazy.’

On Tuesday Octavian called.

‘You’ve probably heard or read that your friend Abakay was shot shortly after his release from custody.’

‘Saw it on Hessen Nightly .’

‘Ah — I didn’t know it was on Hessen Nightly …’

‘Would you have wanted to see it too?’

He sighed. ‘Listen: there was very probably a fight between Abakay and his killer before the fatal shots were fired. There was vomit all over the dead man, and it wasn’t Abakay’s.’

‘Oh? How interesting.’

‘Well, my colleagues are more or less agreed that Abakay got what was coming to him on account of quarrels of some kind on the drugs scene, and there’s a lot to suggest that they’re right. But out of pure curiosity I asked for a list of the components of the vomit.’

‘Oh yes?’ I began to sweat slightly.

‘And then I called the wine bar and asked what was the dish of the day last Thursday. It was goat ragout with white beans.’

I said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say.

‘Well, I just wanted to advise you not to attract any attention in the city for a while. Best if my colleagues forget you exist.’

There was a pause. It cost me an effort, but I said, ‘Thanks, Octavian.’

When we had hung up, I went into the kitchen and drank a schnapps. On Friday I went to see Edgar Hasselbaink.

It was just after seven in the evening when I rang the bell at the garden gate. Warm yellow light shone from the windows of the de Chavannes villa and a faint aroma of fried onions wafted through the front garden.