Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

When the picture came back, the tall soldier was standing at the bodies lying around the water trough.

He moved a man’s head with his boot.

The man was alive, he lifted his arm, his fingers moved.

The soldier shot him in the head, gestured to the other soldiers in the background.

Niemand watched the rest of the film, another two minutes, rewound it and watched it again. He retrieved the cassette and left without seeing Jackie, drove to his place and packed his one bag.

Two hours later, he was in a British Airways business class seat. Johannesburg fell away beneath him, the flat, featureless townships smoking as if bombed, smoking like the village on the film.

Could be Mozambique, he thought. Could be Angola, could be further north.

…HAMBURG…

Inskip loomed in Anselm’s open doorway. ‘Your friend called,’ he said. ‘The one who won’t give his name.’

David Riccardi was his name. Presumably it was the call to tell him about Alex Koenig. Many hours too late. Anselm closed his eyes at the thought of her visit.

He had known Riccardi for ten years before they were taken hostage. They’d worked together a few times, run into each other in odd places. Then they spent thirteen months together, close together. Manacled, chained to walls and beams, in the dark or half-dark, the last four months in a damp cavity beneath a cold-storage plant where they could not fully extend their legs. That was where his knee trouble had started. His knee trouble and his hip trouble.

‘When?’ said Anselm.

‘Oh, two-fifteen, two-thirty.’

The wrong side of the night. But Riccardi’s circadian rhythms were permanently disturbed, so was much else of David.

‘Why doesn’t he ring you at home?’ said Inskip, stretching, reaching up, hands embracing, his ribs showing against his T-shirt. He was about two metres tall and thin.

‘He doesn’t want to wake me.’

‘I see. So he rings you where you aren’t.’

‘Not everyone who phones you wants to talk to you.’

‘I’ll ponder that,’ said Inskip. ‘The Frogs are happy about the Indonesian, happy as Frogs can be. May I ask you a question?’

‘You may ask .’

‘What exactly is Bowden’s business?’

‘Debt collection.’

‘Debt collection?’

‘Say the Ukrainian government owes you five million dollars, they won’t pay, you’re desperate. You go to Bowden. They offer ten, twenty cents in the dollar for the debt, it depends. For you, that’s better than nothing, cut your losses. Now Bowden’s the creditor.’

‘That impresses the Ukrainians, does it?’

‘Bowdens wait until they find a Ukrainian government asset to target somewhere, maybe a Ukrainian Airways plane in Oslo, something like that. Something valuable. They bring up the legal artillery, get a court order impounding the asset. Now the Ukrainians have to fight a legal action in a foreign country to get their plane back. That or pay up the million. Bowden’s bet is that they’ll want to talk a settlement. Say sixty cents in the dollar. And they usually do.’

‘I see. What a sheltered life I’ve lived.’

‘All that is changing.’

Anselm went back to reviewing the logbooks. Every file had one, all checks, results, speculations, actions, all recorded in writing. As behoved parasites who lived off other people’s computer systems, professional prowlers of the cyber world, W amp;K kept no electronic records of their own, worked only through proxy computers, and otherwise sought tirelessly to erase the traces of their electronic trespasses. If W amp;K was interested in you, the safest thing was to ensure that your name or names and the names of anyone near you, did not appear on the electronic record: no bank accounts, no vehicle registrations, no passport or visa applications, no customs records, no credit-card transactions, no plane tickets, no car hire, no hotel bookings, no bills from public utilities or department stores, no electronic commerce, no emails, no accidents, no hospital admissions, no court appearances, no nothing.

It was safe only to have your death recorded.

W amp;K was not the only company providing this kind of service.

What set W amp;K apart was that, when their own efforts bogged down, Baader could ring some faceless secret servant in Munich or Moscow or Madrid or Montevideo. Then there was a chance they would get moving again. That came from fourteen years with German intelligence, the BND, the Bundesnachtrichtendienst -ten years in Department One, Operations, and four in Department Three, Evaluation.

Most of W amp;K’s work was commercial, companies spying on each other, on themselves, trying to find out where executives went, who they saw, who visited companies, what people said, what they wrote. But the firm took on missing persons, anything it could handle.

Just before ten, Carla Klinger knocked and came in. She used a rubber-tipped aluminium stick to walk. She was in her late thirties, thin and angular, a scar on her nose where it had been broken. The BND had sacked her because she was found to have had an affair with another female, possibly once a STASI person, Baader had been vague about the details. Then she had a car accident, broke one side of her body, arm, ribs, hip, leg. Someone told Baader about an expensively trained talent going to waste and he offered Carla a job.

‘Serrano,’ she said, taking the logbook out from under her left arm and offering it. ‘He rang this man and they’re meeting tomorrow. At the Alsterarkaden.’ She always spoke to Anselm in English.

Anselm looked at the log. The man’s name was Werner Kael. He lived nearby, off Sierichstrasse, in the millionaire belt, a wide belt.

‘What shows on him?’ said Anselm. Carla wasn’t much for volunteering information, a trait she shared with Baader. Possibly something nurtured in the BND.

‘Calls himself an investment consultant, holiday house in France, four weeks in the Virgin Islands in winter. He used to travel a lot, short trips. Not for a few years. Four tax investigations in the past twelve years, no action taken.’

‘Tell O’Malley,’ said Anselm. ‘It may have meaning for him.’

She nodded, put the logbook under her arm and left.

Anselm waited, then he went down the passage. Baader was staring at his big monitor, figures.

‘Werner Kael,’ said Anselm from the doorway.

Baader didn’t look at him. ‘What’s he done?’

‘Arranged to meet O’Malley’s man, the money man.’

Baader touched his chin with a long index finger. ‘Arms, drugs, slaves, body parts. Israel, Palestinians, Iranians, Iraqis, Sud-Afs, Tamil Tigers, everyone. Sold the IRA half a container of Semtex. Then there’s a fucking shipload of ethyl ether to Colombia out of Hamburg. Five thousand per cent profit.’

‘What’s his secret?’

‘Party donor. Learned the trade from one of Goebbels’ cocksuckers. Dieter Kuhn. Dieter only died last year, the year before, about ninety, the old cunt. Fascism is good for health. Hitler would still be alive. Plus Kael’s got American friends, a big help in life.’

Baader swivelled. ‘O’Malley’s chasing money?’

‘As far as I can tell,’ said Anselm.

‘Well, there’s no knowing. Kael’s got to put his dirty money somewhere, could be this man does it for him, what’s…?’

‘Serrano. You don’t know the name?’

‘No. Tell O’Malley that as far as I know Kael doesn’t talk to his clients. He’s got cut-outs for that. So Serrano isn’t buying or selling. Which probably means he’s doing something for Kael.’

Anselm went back to his office, tried to concentrate on the task, focus on the logbook. He had to work at concentration. His mind wandered, wanted to go back to dark places, drawn as a dog was to old buried bones, rotten things, just a layer of earth on them.