Jakob Arjouni - Kismet

‘You’ll know him when I buttonhole him. I only need a moment after that.’

‘Good.’ He gestured to the cars, and next moment half a hundred heavily armed men were there in the street. There were a few nervy, chain-wearing characters among them, but most looked as cool and reliable as a military special unit.

The Albanian said something in Albanian, five men stepped aside to stay with the cars, then the unit started moving. While the majority stopped at a part of the wall that couldn’t be seen from the brick building and put up a ladder, I, the small fat man and the two big toughs went quietly to the entrance. The three of them were really impressive. It took them less than two minutes to break the necks of the Hessian and his two companions, drag them into the street outside the half-closed front door, take the suits and caps off the bodies and put them on themselves, and then stroll back into the yard chatting as if nothing had happened.

I was probably simply inured to it after the events of the last week. At the latest since I’d seen all those burnt bodies outside the New York, killing Ahrens’s men had seemed to me inevitable, almost natural. But without thinking about it I distinguished between those who were biting the dust or about to bite the dust here and now, and the protection money racketeers from the Saudade. Whether it was because the racketeers had died at a time when I wasn’t yet used to the idea of all these warlike confrontations, or because I felt solely responsible for their deaths — well, anyway, in my mind they had faces, whereas even while they were alive the Hessian and the two hulks hadn’t been much more than a mass of grey armed with pistols.

As I reached the ladder the last men were just climbing over the wall. I hurried so as to get to the Albanian at their head. We went into the building and up the stairs without a sound. A vanguard of two men stabbed another guard who had been sitting by the door to the first floor playing with a Gameboy. Then we filed quietly into the corridor, and heard confusion of voices and the clink of glasses.

The Albanian gave a sign to stand still, took me by the shoulder and indicated the open door ten metres away. ‘The field’s yours. Get the woman and Ahrens and take them into the next room. You have a minute.’

I must have looked surprised, and if there’d been time I’d probably have thanked him.

‘Right, off you go!’

I set off, putting my pistol in my trouser pocket on the way, and entered the conference hall. For about twenty seconds no one really noticed me, and I had time to get over the shock of seeing that the black-haired woman with the pearl necklace had a fat nose and dark eyes.

Someone asked me something in Croatian, and at the same moment I spotted Ahrens. First he just looked surprised. Then he frowned, probably wondering how I’d got past the guards. Then his face muscles set, and he came towards me with slow, menacing strides, his head lowered.

‘Do you want to die?’ he asked quietly. Obviously he wasn’t keen on having any fuss during the party.

‘No, but you probably do. Or you wouldn’t have left such idiots on guard.’

His eyes automatically went to the door.

‘Don’t look that way. And keep your mouth shut. There are forty heavily armed men out there. Men whose mates were blown up this morning and…’

‘What?’

‘I said keep your mouth shut. The Albanian survived.’

‘Survived?’

‘Didn’t you hear what I said? Anyway, there’s about to be a bloodbath in here, and either you come with me and answer a few questions, and then maybe I can put in a good word for you, or you take a last look at this world. I’ll count to three and then I’m going. On the count of five you’ll be dead.’

All the hardness had gone from his face. Nothing was left but a pale splodge with a slack hole in the middle of it. I grabbed his arm and pulled him out into the corridor. As I drew my pistol and propelled him forward, I heard a hissing from the other end of it and thought I felt the building begin to vibrate.

We were at the door of the first office when I heard the Albanian’s voice and the sound of glasses breaking as they fell. Someone answered in a placatory, almost friendly tone. Obviously they knew each other.

I pushed Ahrens into the room, closed the door behind us, and while all hell broke loose in the conference hall next door I shouted in his ear that I wanted him to give me the names of the two dead racketeers and tell me where to find the mother of the girl I’d taken out of the refugee hostel three days ago.

‘What?’

‘Surely Gregor or the two clowns with the broken legs will have told you about it?’

‘Yes, sure, but…’

And then a whole lot happened almost at once. First, Ahrens suddenly began to laugh. Hysterically, in view of the situation, but also with entirely inappropriate and malicious glee. Piqued for a moment, I heard, too late, that at least part of the fight had moved into the corridor. The door burst open, and Zvonko’s uncle, streaming with blood, made for me with a long kitchen knife in his hand. Of course his main idea was to get away from someone, but that didn’t make much difference where I was concerned. Without hesitating, I fired a few more bullets into his belly, and the man literally burst apart. Behind him, eyes wide open and frenzied, face covered with dark splashes, came one of the chain-wearers. By now Ahrens had reached the window and was pulling at the catch. In this situation, it was unlikely that I could have got many of those here today, wanting revenge, to be quick to grasp the fact that the windows wouldn’t open fully, but with a jittery chain-wearer I wasn’t even going to try. I lowered my pistol and watched almost indifferently as he emptied his entire magazine into Ahrens. While he was firing away, and Ahrens, lying on the ground, was looking more and more like a suit stuffed with sausage-meat, I couldn’t shake off the picture of his gleeful smile. I turned my eyes away from the horrors and looked out of the window. The setting sun was reflected in the junk-dealer’s shop sign. Something about that bothered me.

Soon afterwards the operation was over, and a torrent of footsteps clattered down the corridor to the stairwell. The chain-wearer had taken his leave a few minutes ago, giving the thumbs-up sign, and when the Albanian came into the office I was sitting at the desk alone, smoking. He was holding the black-haired woman’s thin arm. Her blouse was torn, tears and saliva gleamed on her pale face with its broken veins, her mouth was trembling, and her eyes were moving like pinballs shooting around at speed.

The Albanian cast a glance at what was left of Ahrens and then nodded to his side. ‘Didn’t you forget something?’

Perhaps he’d have let her go, but I wasn’t sure of it. And since she could hardly have played a greater part in the whole business than that of Ahrens’s latest safari partner, I said as convincingly as I could just now, ‘I didn’t have time.’

‘Didn’t have time. So you preferred to take him?’ He pointed to the floor, looking at me with a touch of contempt.

‘Oh, leave me alone. It’s the wrong woman, OK? But she’s only some tart, she won’t have anything to do with all this.’

‘Right.’ He let go of the woman, took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and wiped his hands. ‘All things considered,’ he said, putting the handkerchief away again and nodding to me, ‘thank you.’ Then he turned and went out.

I looked at the open door and listened to his footsteps. At some point a shadow flitted by, but only when I rose and moved slowly to the corridor did it strike me in passing that it must have been the woman.

‘… What did you mean when you said your mother had been gone since last Sunday? Sunday as in Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or the last time it was a sunny day?’