Jakob Arjouni - Kismet

After a second cup of coffee I took the racketeer’s phone out of my breast pocket and looked first for stored numbers, which it didn’t have, and then for the redial button. Who would the gang members have called last? My Hessian friend of last night? Some boss or other? The lady who ran courses for mutes on how to use the phone? If speaking had really been impossible for them, of course the Hessian would have suspected something straight away. Perhaps he’d been trained to expect whistling or tapping. On the other hand he’d asked where they were, and it seemed to me that conveying an address by whistling was a trick it would be almost impossible to learn.

I tried to concentrate and pressed the button. A six-digit number beginning with an eight came up on the display. An Offenbach number. When it began ringing I quickly thought up a couple of things to say: whoever answered had won a car in the new phone-number lottery, for instance, and where could we meet to deal with the formalities? But no one did answer, and after the phone had rung twenty times I switched the thing off. I’d find the address that the number belonged to on the computer in my office. Until then I must content myself with the redial button.

I picked up my own phone again and called a cop who could hardly refuse my request. He was head of the Frankfurt immigration police squad, he had a family, and he’d once been filmed on video playing around with underage boys. I knew about the pictures.

‘Hottges here.’

‘Good day, Herr Hottges. Kayankaya speaking.’

Silence at the other end… a long, indrawn breath… footsteps… a door closing, then a voice hissing in my ear. ‘We agreed you wouldn’t call me at the office!’

‘But if I call you at home it’s usually your fourteen-year-old son who picks up the phone, and that always sets off certain associations in my mind.’

Another deep breath, another silence. ‘What do you want?’

‘I need the name of someone who owns a BMW.’ I gave him the registration number. ‘And I also want all the information there is about new Mafia-style gangs in the station district.’

He hesitated. ‘I’d have to ask around. As you know, it’s the immigration police I’m with.’

‘Then ask around. And don’t try to fob me off with rubbish. I want the names of the gang bosses, their addresses, roughly the number of members and so on — by tomorrow afternoon.’

‘But I can’t get hold of the information just like that, most of it’s secret.’

‘You’ll find it. After all, not everything can stay secret: videotapes, Mafia organisations — it all has to come out sometime…’

Even as I spoke he rang off. But I knew he’d work his socks off to get me the information I wanted by tomorrow. This had been going on for over eight years. In fact I’d deduced the existence of the videotapes only incidentally, during a case of forged passports and refugees, and they’d probably been binned long ago. But for one thing, Hottges didn’t know that, and for another the whole business wasn’t just obscene, these things always are, it was obscene with metaphorical knobs on, you might say. A mere rumour, carefully dropped into the ear of certain newspaper and TV editors, would probably have been enough to get the head of the Frankfurt immigration police hunted first out of his job, then out of his family, and finally, when his photo had been in the press, out of town. Hottges, who as regional dogsbody was responsible to the Minister of the Interior for letting practically no one who lived outside the area that could receive Radio Luxembourg into the city, and throwing out as many as possible of those who had made their way in all the same — unless they had an income of over a few thousand net, of course — Hottges had been messing around with Arab boys of fifteen at the time. You could just imagine the headlines. Head of deportation fits rent boys in’, or Gay Commissioner responsible for residence permits — kids had to line up for him. The fact that the boys and their pimp had of course set the whole thing up and had fleeced Hottges mercilessly themselves wouldn’t be any excuse for him in the eyes of either the public or his family. On the contrary, to the public he would look not just a pervert but also a fool. To me, Hottges was a real stroke of luck. As a source of information and a direct means of leverage in police HQ, he must have helped me to earn one-third of my fees over the last few years.

I pressed the redial button on the mobile again, counted up to the twentieth ring tone once more, undressed and got under the shower. When I was in my dressing-gown, sitting in front of some crispbread and a can of sardines, the first thunder rolled over the city. Soon after that Slibulsky rang. We told each other how we were, and he said that apart from the fact that he’d had hardly three hours’ sleep, and he’d been racing around town since ten in the morning after stuff of some kind, he wasn’t too bad. It was only when he shook hands with one of his ice-cream vendors, and the man’s hand was wet with sweat, that he’d felt sick for a moment at the thought of packing those bodies up, he said.

‘I’m eating sardines out of the can at this moment and feeling glad they don’t have their heads on,’ I said, contributing my mite to the conversation. ‘Normally I prefer them whole.’

‘Hm,’ said Slibulsky. ‘Looks like we’ll survive it. Do you still want to find out who that couple were?’

‘Of course.’

‘Did Gina tell you to take a look at the sweets?’

‘She did. But she didn’t know what sweets, or where they were.’

‘The sweets in the BMW, of course.’

‘What’s so special about the sweets?’

‘They’re not a brand I know.’

‘Fancy that.’

‘Oh, come on, Kayankaya, you know I started sucking sweets when I stopped smoking. And I’ve tried every brand and every variety in Germany — but I don’t know these. So when you find out where the sweets come from… get the idea?’

‘I get it. Doesn’t it happen to say where they’re from on the packet?’

‘That’s the funny thing. It says they’re made in Germany.’

‘What’s so funny about that?’

‘Because they’re not from here. Or maybe for export only, but I don’t believe that either. I think it’s like with my Italian ice cream that doesn’t come from Italy. But who wants ice cream from Ginnheim?’

‘Germany, home from home for confectionery?’

‘Makes no difference. If you want to sell something in a place where Germany has a good reputation, even if it’s bananas you’re selling, you stick a label on your stuff saying it comes from the German provinces.’

‘Bananas grown in the German provinces — OK. But where would Germany have this wonderful reputation?’

‘How do I know? Maybe Paraguay? You’re the detective. If you want to take a look at them, I’ll be home from eight onwards.’

We rang off, and I went on eating sardines. The storm was beginning outside, thunder rolling and lightning flashing, the first drops were falling, and soon there was a waterfall cascading down outside my windows. When the storm moved away an hour later it left a grey, dripping dishcloth above the city.

Around five I rang the only client I had at the time. A woman academic, an expert on Islam, whose German shepherd dog had gone missing. I told her I’d spent all day visiting animal rescue centres in Kelkheim and Hattersheim, no luck, but I’d go on searching tomorrow, and I was sure I’d soon be bringing Susi home. I’d been telling her that for a week, and so far there’d been cheques and no complaints. That was the way I liked my clients, very rich and very crazy.

Then I put on a raincoat for the first time in weeks and set off for the station.