Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘But there’s nothing here about a satellite.’

‘No. Looks like it has nothing to do with the satellite. It’s about some other pay-load.’

Tu nodded. ‘I took the opportunity to talk to some people who my people have helped out in the past. I couldn’t get any definite information, but they gave me some well-founded supposition. Apparently, the Chinese government has never launched its own space projects from foreign soil. That story about wanting to avoid the insurance treaties is as threadbare as Chairman Mao’s shroud. The whole thing must have been dreamed up for Mayé’s benefit; at any rate it doesn’t accord with current practice to shuffle the risk onto other states like that.’

‘So it could have been something that Zheng was doing on his own account?’

‘There’s no record of the Zheng Group having been active in Africa anywhere but in Equatorial Guinea that one time. It looks doubtful that they were acting for Beijing. My informants don’t think so. So did the Chinese government have anything to do with the Equatorial Guinea space programme, or with the coup against Mayé? Yes, if you are working on the premise that people like Zheng Pang-Wang are the government. Not if we’re talking about the government as such.’

‘Which proves again that the Party is just a pretext, a phantom,’ Yoyo said contemptuously. ‘There’s no dividing line between politics and business any longer, the State can’t be trusted to act in State interests. China’s oilmen putsched Mayé into power, the Zhong Chan Er Bu helped them, and the whole Party knows it. Could be that Zheng putsched him out again afterwards. He’s our biggest industrialist, a power in his own right.’

‘And the Party wouldn’t have known about that.’

‘Quite so.’ Yoyo tapped the page. ‘And then further down: Nobody there suspects – what? Something or other. The everything turns out to go with the next bit of the sentence. Everything is under way. They sit there and debate whether it’s even worthwhile getting rid of Vogelaar at this stage. I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds as though the balloon’s about to go up.’

‘Any ideas about the bit before that?’

‘Vogelaar didn’t know about the timing any more than the nature of the operation.’ Tu shrugged. ‘I don’t think any of it gets us anywhere.’

‘Well, that’s great,’ Jericho said. ‘We’re stuck.’

Yoyo toppled backwards onto the bed, her arms spread wide. Then she sat up suddenly.

‘How does that work with Vogelaar, exactly?’

‘What do you mean?’ Jericho blinked, confused. ‘How does what work?’

‘Well, right now.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Or let’s go back an hour. Twelve o’clock. Blam. Blam! Vogelaar’s shot, he’s lying dead in the museum. What happens next?’

‘A specialist police team arrives. The scene of the crime is secured, then forensics get to work.’

‘What happens to the corpse?’

‘Right now, it’ll still be there. Forensics work takes time. Then it’ll be on the autopsy table at, say, two o’clock at the latest, then they’ll cut him open, snip snap.’

‘And the eye?’

‘Depends. The forensic surgeon isn’t an investigating officer himself – it’s a bit different from how you might have seen it at the movies. He just makes a note of everything worth handing over to the investigating team. Assuming that he notices anything odd about the eye, he’ll put it in his report. Maybe he’ll put it back into the socket; maybe he’ll put it aside as evidence.’

‘How long does an autopsy take?’

‘Depends on the case. There’ll be no doubt here about the cause of death. Vogelaar was shot, so it’ll be quick. They’ll be done in two or three hours.’

‘And then?’

‘The forensic surgeon will sign the corpse over.’ Jericho gave a wry grin. ‘You can pick it up, if you bring a hearse.’

‘Good. We’ll fetch it.’

‘Great plan.’ Tu stared at her. ‘Where are you going to get a hearse?’

‘No idea. Since when have we been scared of a challenge?’

‘We’re not, but—’

‘Why do we even need a hearse ?’ Yoyo sat up straight now, all vim and vigour. ‘Why not go and fetch him in an ordinary car? What if we were next of kin?’

‘Well, sure,’ Tu said mockingly. ‘You could easily be his sister. The hair, the eyes—’

‘Hold on!’ Jericho raised a hand. ‘First off, we wouldn’t get anywhere without a hearse. Secondly, if they’ve taken the eye, Vogelaar’s corpse will be no use to you at all.’

Yoyo’s burst of energy melted away. She folded her arms and frowned despondently.

‘Thirdly,’ Jericho said, ‘that’s still a good idea you had there.’

Tu narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you thinking of doing?’

‘Me?’ Jericho shrugged. ‘Nothing. Probably I daren’t even show my face any more in Berlin, they’ll pick me up on the spot. My hands are tied.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Yours aren’t though.’

Around three o’clock, Jan Kees Vogelaar was looking fairly good. Granted, his face was waxy and he was dead as a doornail, but he wore a proud sneer that seemed to say, kiss my arse . A few hours ago he had been lying in a pool of his own blood, his eyes wide open, his limbs twisted, looking more like the Ides of March. Fallen like Caesar beneath a Roman temple. A death that may sound romantic in the textbooks, but in fact it was a bloody mess. The bald man lying next to him, likewise dead, did little to make the picture any prettier.

Once he had been photographed from all angles, and the dead man next to him with the pencil jutting from his eye, they zipped him up into a plastic bag and drove him across to the Institute of Forensic Pathology at the Charité Hospital. Here he was weighed and measured, his identifying features noted down, and he was put into cold-storage. He didn’t stay there for long, however, but was taken out and X-rayed several times. This showed where the flechettes had lodged or broken apart in his body, as well as revealing old bone breakages, mended now, and a titanium knee. It also showed that his left eye was artificial. He was wheeled into the autopsy theatre, along with the bald man, where they were just about to slice him open when Nyela was brought in as well. This meant that three of the five dissection tables were occupied by as yet unidentified corpses. The surgeons removed Vogelaar’s organs, examined them, weighed them, drained off bodily fluids and measured the volumes, noted down all their procedures and findings. Meanwhile a case team was hastily assembled, and the investigating officers compared photographs of the corpses with pictures from the city police files. It was soon established that the female corpse had been found in a car registered in the name of Andre Donner, resident in Berlin since a year ago. He was a restaurant owner, married to Nyela Donner, and photographs from the records left no doubt as to the dead woman’s identity, or that the man with the glass eye was her husband.

The bald man’s name, though, was not so easily established.

Just as Donner (alias Vogelaar) was being sewn back up, the pathology lab got a phone call from the German Foreign Office, saying that Donner’s murder had caught the attention of the Chinese authorities. Chinese and German police working together, so the civil servant on the phone said, had been investigating a gang of technology smugglers for some time. Perhaps the restaurant owner’s death had something to do with a failed handover, and Donner might well not be Donner at all, but somebody else entirely, an alias. The Berlin government was very keen to do what they could to help the Chinese investigators, two of whom would be arriving in a few minutes to take a quick look at the body. Could the autopsy team please treat them as guests of the government?