Conor Fitzgerald - The Namesake

‘This is the sort of information we hope to get by comparing notes with you Italians,’ said Weissmann, ‘but that is not the subject of this conversation, Commissioner.’

‘We were talking about Megale’s arrest.’

‘ Genau. It was a very long time ago. His arrest was important, because it was one of the very first, and the authorities finally became interested in the invisible new Italian Mafia. A colleague of mine wrote a special report on the Ndrangheta in Germany. Also, just after my arrival in the BKA, a major inquiry was launched into the Ndrangheta investments in Russia and, in particular, Gazprom, but you know who one of the top managers in Gazprom is?’

‘No,’ said Blume.

‘Gerhard Schroeder, our former Chancellor. So that investigation did not go very far. Then it was discovered the Ndrangheta was funding some politicians. There was a funding scandal with Thomas Schauble, a regional minister, brother of our current Minister of Finance in Merkel’s government. These are complex and delicate matters, and it is very difficult to find out the truth. In fact, most of the accusations are false, but it slows things down and makes it difficult for us to proceed.’

Now it was Weissmann’s turn to stray off topic.

‘Welcome to the world of Italian organized crime,’ said Blume. ‘Its three weapons of choice are confusion, intimidation and corruption. But it will always choose confusion first. Nobody really knows who’s on whose side. Everything is infiltrated.’

‘They cannot infiltrate the BKA,’ said Weissmann in definitive tones.

‘That is a very comforting thought,’ said Blume. ‘We were talking about this young woman Dagmar?’

‘Yes. Three months after testifying, Dagmar Schiefer, who had just turned twenty-six, disappeared, like the earth had swallowed her. This is 1993. She was still living with her parents in Dusseldorf at the time. One Friday evening, she did not come home. They thought she must have gone to a party or something and did not report her missing until Sunday. But they never saw their girl again. No one saw anything, heard anything. The local police had nothing.’

‘ Lupara bianca is what we call it in Italy. It means “white shotgun”. When the Mafia disappears a person for ever, leaving no trace. Usually, they dissolve the body in acid. Sodium hydroxide, I think.’

He managed to pass a line of cars and move up about twenty places, but the van he had spotted had disappeared from sight.

‘We think Agazio Curmaci killed Dagmar Schiefer. He was working closely with Domenico Megale at the time of the disappearance. In those days Curmaci was Megale’s driver. It is the closest we can get to associating Curmaci with an act of violence in Germany, but there was never enough to prosecute. A few days after Dagmar vanished, he was questioned and released within hours. Megale was in police custody at the time.’

‘So, you’re saying Curmaci killed this Dagmar back in the early 1990s. Has the investigation been reopened?’

‘We do not close cases such as these, but they do eventually lose priority. Last week, a former colleague in the BKA, Sebastian Eich, a man who has since retired, received a call from Dagmar’s mother. She called the BKA and asked to speak specifically to him, saying it was of the utmost importance. They put her in contact because she was so insistent. Eich and Dagmar’s mother had met many years before, you see. When the BKA finally intervened to explain to Dagmar’s parents — and to her fiance — that their daughter might have been killed by a new Mafia organization, Eich was the person who did it. That was in 1994, more than a year after Dagmar disappeared.’

‘I suppose they heard Megale had been released from jail, and all the old pain resurfaced. Is that what this is?’

‘Yes, they knew he had been released from jail, and that is connected. Before she disappeared, Dagmar Schiefer had been planning to move out of her family home to live with her fiance. He was a student, doing a post-graduate degree in archaeology. After Dagmar’s disappearance, he quit university, promising her parents that he would find out what happened and bring them proof that she was dead, find out who killed her, discover where she died. But he never did. At least not yet.’

‘That boyfriend will have forgotten now. It’s a lifetime ago. Unless he’s unable to let go… Oh, God. Wait — ’

‘I have no time to wait. This boyfriend has not forgotten. He visited Dagmar’s mother the day before she called Eich. He even asked her not to mention his visit to anyone, but she was worried he was about to do something stupid, which is why she called Eich.’

‘And federal agents in Germany are at the beck and call of old women with presentiments?’

‘ Unterbrechen Sie mich bitte nicht, Kommissar.’

‘Then get to the point, because I think I’ve already reached it.’

‘So you will have realized that Megale received a visit from Dagmar’s boyfriend, and that this visit had been observed by us.’

As Weissmann said this, the faded pictures of the young woman in the camper, the sad postcard pictures of journeys past flashed into the front of his mind, the torn Madonna, Konrad’s pale blue eyes, his personal quixotic mission.

‘Konrad Hoffmann,’ said Blume. ‘The boyfriend is Konrad Hoffmann. He wants the man who killed his girlfriend, and he has waited until now.’

‘Yes,’ Weissmann was saying, ‘Konrad Hoffmann. He quit his degree, joined the Deutsche Hochschule der Polizei and then the BKA a few years later. At this time, a few people did notice his career choice, also because for a brief period he was under suspicion as a fiance always will be in these circumstances, but then as the years went by and he carried out his work very well, no one on the force thought about his past, and he never spoke of it.’

Hoffmann distracted everyone with the idea of the Camorra and the Ndrangheta cooperating in toxic dumping, because that is a real phenomenon and part of a real investigation. There was a lot of sides to consider, and that is why no one looked into the deep past. We kept looking at what he does, not at what he used to be.’

Bullshit, thought Blume. The BKA had an agent with a grudge who had decided to set out on a mission against Curmaci; the Italians had the perfect idiot counterweight, him, who had also set out on a personal quest against Curmaci. Two loose cannons, each used to cancel the other out. He could appreciate the elegance of the solution, but felt humiliated at being played in this way. At least Konrad’s quest was noble.

‘Massimiliani, are you still there?’

‘I am, but Weissmann’s gone.’

‘Why now? Why am I learning this only now? Answer me honestly for once.’

‘No one knew. We are all learning this now.’

‘OK, why now for Konrad? Why is he acting now, after all these years?’

‘Honestly? Your guess is as good as mine,’ said Massimiliani. ‘But the most likely answer is Konrad needed confirmation from Megale that Curmaci was the killer, and perhaps permission to act. Maybe he just wanted to know where Dagmar’s body was. But he can’t have approached Megale and demanded any of these things without giving something back. He has something on them. So that is what the BKA want to talk to him about now. Finally, they have a strategy.’

‘He built up his own investigative file on Megale,’ said Blume. ‘He told me. He used it to coax information from the old man.’

‘I hope he planned for his investigation to be made available posthumously, if he thinks he can go down to Calabria, single out Curmaci, and revenge himself.’

‘Maybe he’s looking for information instead of revenge,’ said Blume.

‘He won’t survive. He is completely and voluntarily on his own. Megale sent him down to where he could be killed without the BKA being able to do anything about it, nor even investigate afterwards. Meanwhile, Megale himself stays in Germany with a perfect alibi.’