7,19 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Orenda Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley investigates a series of arson attacks on cars across the city, which leads her to a startling and life-threatening discovery involving criminal gangs and a very illicit love story… 'Another brilliant adventure in the company of Chastity Riley, the coolest character in crime fiction. Darkly funny and written with a huge heart' Doug Johnstone, Big Issue 'Reading Buchholz is like walking on firecrackers … a truly unique voice in crime fiction' Graeme Macrae Burnet 'Caustic, incisive prose. A street-smart, gutsy heroine. A timely and staggeringly stylish thriller' Will Carver ***WINNER of the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger 2022*** ***WINNER of the German Crime Book of the Year Award*** _______________ Night after night, cars are set alight across the German city of Hamburg, with no obvious pattern, no explanation and no suspect. Until, one night, on Mexico Street, a ghetto of high-rise blocks in the north of the city, a Fiat is torched. Only this car isn't empty. The body of Nouri Saroukhan – prodigal son of the Bremen clan – is soon discovered, and the case becomes a homicide. Public prosecutor Chastity Riley is handed the investigation, which takes her deep into a criminal underground that snakes beneath the whole of Germany. And as details of Nouri's background, including an illicit relationship with the mysterious Aliza, emerge, it becomes clear that these are not random attacks, and there are more on the cards… _______________ Praise for the Chastity Riley series… 'Combines nail-biting tension with off-beat humor ... Elmore Leonard fans will be enthralled' Publishers Weekly 'Buchholz doles out delicious black humor ... interwoven in a manner that ramps up the intrigue and tension' Foreword Reviews 'A stylish, whip-smart thriller' Russel McLean 'Fierce enough to stab the heart' Spectator 'Sharp and unrelenting' CultureFly 'Simone Buchholz writes with real authority and a pungent, noir-ish sense of time and space' Financial Times 'Deeply moody, atmospheric and evocative' Blue Book Balloon 'An unconventional, refreshing new voice' Crime Fiction Lover 'Fans of Brookmyre could do worse than checking out Simone Buchholz, a star of the German crime lit scene who has been deftly translated into English by Rachel Ward' Goethe Institute 'By turns lyrical and pithy, this adventure set in the melting pot of contemporary Hamburg has a plot and a sensibility that both owe something to mind-altering substances. Lots of fun' Sunday Times 'Great sparkling energy, humour and stylistic verve and the story itself is gripping and pacey' Rosie Goldsmith 'A must-read, stylish and highly original take on the detective novel, written with great skill and popping with great characters' Judith O'Reilly, author of Killing State
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 259
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Ähnliche
PRAISE FOR MEXICO STREET
‘Reading Buchholz is like walking on firecrackers. Her prose crackles with wit and off-kilter observation. Mexico Street finds her prosecutor-heroine Chastity Riley on the brink of an existential crisis, self-medicating with fags, booze and as much human contact as she can bear. The plot, which concerns the murder of the prodigal son of a Mhallami clan, is gripping and achieves an emotional resonance that transcends the genre. It’s her finest book yet to appear in English. Truly a unique voice in crime fiction’ Graeme Macrae Burnet
‘A stylish, whip-smart thriller set in Hamburg, where burning cars soon contain burning bodies, and Public Prosecutor Chastity Riley finds herself in the midst of what could be a gang war. Go read’ Russel McLean
‘Another brilliant adventure in the company of Chastity Riley, the coolest character in crime fiction. Darkly funny and written with a huge heart’ Doug Johnstone
‘This is a heartbreaking story that is beautifully penned by Simone Buchholz. She writes in her own unique way, bringing us wonderfully quirky characters that you can so easily warm to and terrific stories’ Love Books Read Books
PRAISE FOR SIMONE BUCCHOLZ
‘Caustic, incisive prose. A street-smart, gutsy heroine. A timely and staggeringly stylish thriller’ Will Carver
‘With plenty of dry humour and a good old dash of despair, Simone Buchholz is an unconventional, refreshing new voice’ Crime Fiction Lover
‘Lyrical and pithy’ Sunday Times Crime Club
‘A killer read, original, unusual and yet I felt that a part of it, in fact a part of Chastity, lodged itself deep in my soul, it’s quite simply fabulous’ LoveReading
‘A touch of class, a superb noir’ New Books Magazine
‘With brief, pacy chapters and fizzling dialogue, this almost feels like American procedural noir and not a translation’Crime Time
‘A smart and witty book that shines a probing spotlight on society’ Culture Fly
‘A slick and stylish thriller with substance’ Mystery Scene
‘Sexy, exciting and thought-provoking … gritty, uncomfortable noir at its best … very addictive’ Crime Review
‘Short chapters, snappy sentences, witty dialogue and succinct writing have created a fast-paced read … vivid and rich’ Off-the-Shelf Books
‘Simone Buchholz has once again delivered a gripping read, which is brought together through her wonderful narrative and strong, well-developed characters who complement each other’ Have Books Will Read
‘With a brilliant title, fabulously punchy chapter headings, and a style and wit to die for, Simone Buchholz cuts a crystal-clear path into Chastity’s world view’ Live & Deadly
‘An excellent plot, brilliant writing style with some fantastic characters – I loved it!’ Donna’s Book Blog
‘It’s snappy, with short, crisp chapters, which lend themselves well to this very modern novel. It creates the perfect atmosphere … The story is strong and bold’ Books Are My Cwtches
‘Fast paced, full of delightfully diverse and lovable (and detestable) characters, all set against an intriguing and cunningly crafted story … An absolutely brilliant book’ Jen Med’s Book Reviews
‘This is a snappy, fast-paced read that you fly through … a great little nugget of crime writing which glitters like a harsh, flinty jewel’ Books Life and Everything
‘Witty, original, smart and entertaining – more please!’ Emma’s Bookish Corner
‘The language in the story is lyrical or poetic, very descriptive and often emotive, and this shines through in the storytelling’ Grab This Book
‘Dark and delicious, this slice of German noir is something very special indeed, and I can’t wait for more’ Beverley Has Read
‘A fast, gripping read’ Over the Rainbow Book Blog
‘An excellent book, deeply moody, atmospheric and evocative’ Blue Book Balloon
‘It’s criminal noir with characters who are bigger than the plot, which makes them the story. Definitely an author to watch out for’ Cheryl MM Book Blog
Mexico Street
Simone Buchholz
Translated by Rachel Ward
for Carrie Fisher
Every night we met at the fence. We fell asleep and held each other’s hands only in the morning I had a deep furrow in my wrist. But they’ve pulled down the fence and they’ve built a wall there now and every night I stand by the wall and I beat my bones on the stone.
—From Jesse James and Other Western Poems by Franz Dobler Translated by Rachel Ward Reproduced by kind permission of the author
CONTENTS
ONLY A MULTI-STOREY
Do you remember the tunnel? That endless, long stone hole?
Course I remember. We walked through that tunnel so often.
If anyone had caught us, whoa. I was scared that every time a car would stop, someone would see us, one of your brothers maybe, and then there’d be massive trouble and all the rest of it.
Huh. Bullshit. I was invisible.
But you were worth loads, all the same. Fifty thousand at least.
They wouldn’t even have got thirty thousand for someone like me.
Anyway. The way I see it now, I was just a golden goose to them.
At least they saw you.
They didn’t even know who I was. And now I’m the guy who no longer exists.
So? I’ll be killed if they find out where I am.
Sorry. Sometimes I’m an arse.
Hey, no you’re not.
Can I hold you?
Too bright here.
Anyhow, the tunnel.
What about the tunnel?
I keep thinking about it.
Why?
Well, because I always thought that one day, I’d really be able to walk through it. From school to kung fu and then just not go home. Just walk on to the station. And get away.
Which you did.
I might have got on a train at the station, but I never really went anywhere. I’m still in between, I’m still in that tunnel, and it’s dark in there.
Don’t be so melodramatic. In the end there’s a way out of the tunnel – there’s a way out of every tunnel, and then there’s the light.
As if you were anywhere. You know better than I do that it doesn’t work like that. Hell, even the light yawns when it sees me now. The light knows damn well that it can’t do anything with me anymore: he’s never getting out of there. I swear the light’s laughing at me these days. Like that scrap of light at the end of the tunnel over there, I can hear it laughing from here.
That isn’t a tunnel. That’s just a way through, under the car park.
Whatever.
I’ve got to go.
See you tonight down at the harbour?
Don’t know.
OK. Well, I’ll be there anyway.
OK.
Otherwise, back here first thing tomorrow.
Otherwise here, first thing tomorrow.
Promise?
Promise.
MAYBE ONE DAY PLASTIC BAGS WILL BE BETTER THAN GULLS
It’s as if the buildings are breaking over people. One, two, puke: big chunks, everyone dead. A couple of architects on speed wanted to play Tetris against each other, and then everything got out of hand. Brutal boulders in washed concrete and steel stand around the place; they were white once, in the sixties and seventies of the last century; they used to gleam, but now the light is peeling off in great flakes.
There are cracks everywhere.
In between there’s mirrored glass, merciless. The few open windows might also be smashed or broken or be missing in some other way, you never know exactly what’s caused the black holes in the façades. The streets are canyons, and although lonely trees and brave squares of grass have been planted here and there, this is no place for any kind of life.
Lying at my feet, in the middle of a heap of fallen plaster, is a sky-blue lighter; it strikes me as sad and comforting in equal measure; I pick it up. The warm wind whirls a plastic bag through the air, and a second flies behind it. Maybe one day plastic bags will be better than gulls after all.
Sometimes I hold fast on to things that just drift past like that; it postpones facing the big stuff a little, but of course it doesn’t mean I don’t have to deal with the thing I’m here for, so I shove the lighter into my trouser pocket and the flying plastic bags out of my mind, and approach the almost-dead man in the half-carbonised car.
It was one of those early-morning calls that send you out on the trail without a pause for breath. Could I head over there? A burning car. Again. Apparently we really need to get a grip on these burning cars.
I’m not particularly interested in the burning cars. You know exactly why your cars keep burning, Hamburg.
But this time it wasn’t just a car set on fire. There was also a person. Setting people on fire in cars – bugger that, it’s not right.
I went without coffee, just slipped hastily into my boots and then into a taxi. When I reached the north of the city, a fireman was cordoning off a wide area around the scene of the fire. He said that the black Fiat hadn’t been ablaze for long, they’d got here quickly. They’d been busy in this neck of the woods anyway because, you know, every morning since last summer there’ve been cars burning round here left, right and centre. The cheek of it, and besides, sheesh, our lovely cars.
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, this car business gets on my tits.
‘…And this morning’ – he just kept on talking – ‘they were burning here in City Nord.’
But there are fires all over anyway, I think as I stand around, still a bit out of sorts because I’m so knackered. Everyone keeps getting worked up about the fires, and everyone keeps getting worked up about the helicopters searching the city for hotspots at dawn. Obviously you can’t help hearing them, but they shouldn’t be getting worked up about the helicopters, or about the burning cars either. They ought to be getting worked up about the things that cause people to set stuff on fire. The anger, the rage, the stupidity. We close our ears to it as if we could muffle our brains at the same time.
The fire has only affected the front of the Fiat; from behind the car looks almost new. But there’s still smoke inside it, the poison must have crept in through every crack.
The driver’s door has been cut open.
‘Was the car locked?’ I ask the emergency doctor who’s kneeling beside the man on the asphalt, getting ready to insert a drip. His colleague pumps oxygen into the unconscious man’s lungs.
‘All the doors were locked,’ says the doctor. ‘And I was a bit surprised that he didn’t call for help, given that everyone carries a phone these days. Or that he didn’t just open the door – that’s usually possible, isn’t it?’
‘Perhaps he was asleep,’ I say.
‘Perhaps he was drunk,’ says the doctor, and it sounds like an accusation.
‘But he’ll survive, won’t he?’
Shrug. ‘I can’t say. Depends how long he was in there for. And on the exact mixture he inhaled. The fire brigade say they were here ten minutes after receiving the call, but of course the car will have been burning for a few minutes before that, so you never quite know.’
‘What are his chances?’
‘After twelve minutes in the smoke, not so good.’
The man on the stretcher has one of those faces that look older than they are. Finely cut features, heavy stubble, but his skin looks soft and smooth, his eyebrows and lashes are thick and dark. He’s not even thirty. His black curly hair is almost chin-length.
He’s wearing a dark suit, not particularly expensive-looking. They’ve ripped open his pale shirt so that they can revive him quickly if necessary. That doesn’t seem to have been needed yet, though, so his heart must still be beating.
All around us is dawn.
‘The guy’s got a good constitution,’ says the doctor, standing up. ‘Pretty strong.’
To me, though, he looks delicate, but I don’t say that. I can’t even think it properly, I’m afraid that the mere thought could weaken him.
He seems to be taken care of for the moment – the drip is in; the oxygen mask is on. Two paramedics carefully raise the stretcher and push it into the ambulance.
‘Where are you taking him?’ I ask.
‘Barmbek hospital,’ says the emergency doctor.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
The doctor gives me a somewhat perplexed look and says: ‘Don’t mention it.’
Then they drive off.
IT’S STILL NOT REALLY DAYTIME
The CID are here too, taking care of the car.
‘Presumably it was the old classic,’ says a young cop in a black shirt and a grey flying jacket. ‘Firelighter on the front tyre and away we go.’
His short, stray-dog-blond hair lies on his head with an air of bewilderment; some of it is even pointing in a different direction altogether. He looks at least as tired as I am – he’s either on the nightshift or he’s only just fallen out of bed.
Come on, I think, let’s get a bit more kip.
Right here, just lie down on the street.
Close our eyes and get away.
He stands there valiantly.
Holds a small folder out to me.
‘The car documents were in the glove compartment. You should have a look at them.’
‘What’s up with them?’ I take the papers.
The pilot-policeman tries to focus on me. It won’t work. I’m fundamentally out of focus at this time in the morning.
‘The name,’ he says, not giving up: he’s still looking into my face and concentrating hard.
I can’t help him out there, though, so I leaf through the file. The Fiat Punto was registered to a Nouri Saroukhan in 2014.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Saroukhan.’
‘Uh-huh,’ says the policeman.
I stare at the folder in my hand, the cop stares at me for another few seconds, I still won’t come into focus, for Pete’s sake, and then he seems to get fed up with it. He looks slightly miffed: his mouth turns down, as if he’d asked me a very important question and not got an answer.
‘Did you find any other papers on the man?’ I ask.
‘We haven’t searched him, the doctor wanted to get him stable first. The papers aren’t going to run away.’
I nod, can’t take my eyes off the name Saroukhan, and say: ‘Could you call the Barmbek hospital right away? If the man has any papers on him, get them to stash them away for us. If that really is Nouri Saroukhan, this business might be rather bigger than it seems.’
I press the folder of car stuff into his hand. Then I pull out my phone and call Stepanovic, because I reckon that this will definitely be of interest to him. I could have called the organised-crime squad directly, but Stepanovic is something of that sort anyway, and we haven’t talked for a day or two.
He picks up quickly, after the second ring or thereabouts, but then has a highly ostentatious coughing fit. He says he’s at home and he’ll get cracking ASAP. But when he briefly stops coughing, there’s retro music and a young woman’s voice fluting in the background.
I explain what it’s about and exactly where he needs to come, then I hang up without saying goodbye.
At home, my arse, I think. Idiot. It doesn’t bother me if he’s formatting his heart with some woman, he can clown about with anyone he likes, and wherever he likes, for all I care. What annoys me is him telling me he’s at home when I know that he never goes home at night. He only goes home in the daytime. And it’s still not really daytime, the light is only just creeping over the horizon. Stepanovic better not start taking the piss, not now we’re friends or whatever we are.
My colleague from the CID has hung up too and is giving me that confused look again.
I know it’s a bit much so early in the morning, and it is early, but hell, young man, that’s how it is when you meet old ladies at ungodly hours, old ladies who can’t sleep and are always, always tired. Then they are just out of focus and then they might not have had any coffee and then they’re always easily pissed off.
But, of course, he can’t help that.
I uncrease my brow, defrost my expression and look at him. The kid is really horribly dishevelled. Something’s come along and taken him apart, but perhaps it was just last night. He looks away from me and at the phone in his hand.
‘They’ve found his papers at the hospital,’ he says. ‘Nouri Saroukhan, German citizen, twenty-eight years old, born in Bremen, currently living in Eimsbüttel in the Grindel high-rises.’
‘OK,’ I say, ‘thanks.’ And I attempt a smile that probably looks as though I’ve got drawing pins in my mouth. ‘Did they find a phone?’
He shakes his head. ‘The doctor I just spoke to said he didn’t have one on him.’
No phone.
Locked doors.
Most likely not a mistake then.
‘So,’ I say, ‘don’t talk to any strangers in the next ten minutes and take good care of things here till Chief Inspector Stepanovic from SCO44 gets here, OK? I’ll go and get some coffee.’
A nod, the corners of his mouth twitch quietly.
As I go, he calls after me, says it would be great if I could possibly bring cigarettes too. I raise my left fist in the air and stick up my index and little fingers.
This cub hasn’t quite got his head around the old vixen he’s working with as of today.
DYING IN HAMBURG
There’s no functioning café to be found in the wilderness of high-rise offices at this time in the morning, but I’ve got hold of a twenty-four-hour kiosk. There are various trashy papers lying in heaps in front of the till, and then there are the super-serious, grown-up newspapers people hide their tabloids inside. There’s a shelf of sweets and a shelf of crisps, there’s a fridge with beer and lemonade and stuff, there are endless cigarettes, and behind the counter there’s a fully automatic coffee machine with any number of buttons. But there’s nobody who could sell or serve me any of it.
‘Hello?’
Again: ‘Hello?’
Nobody there.
I walk out of the door and light myself a cigarette. I’m surrounded by insurance companies, but that doesn’t necessarily make me feel any surer.
I feel a bit sick. The idea occurs, not for the first time, that in future I should only start smoking after nightfall; but three seconds later I abandon the idea, smoke the cigarette at least halfway down and go back in.
‘Hello?’
Still no answer.
Fine. Then the prosecution will just have to brew her own. According to my observations over the last two decades, you just have to press a couple of buttons. I tank up four paper cups of brown brew, one after another, without anything going wrong. If only everything in life was this easy to fill up.
I put twenty-five euros on the counter, leave the shop with two boxes of cigarettes, a lighter and the full cups on a cardboard tray and make my way back to the burnt-out car. A cherry tree drops its last petals as I pass. Even the wallpaper’s coming down. Out of the corners of my eyes, on either side, I see office-worker prisons.
The Fiat stands in a cast-concrete clearing behind the multi-storey car park, the ground floor of which is more like an underpass, and parked at the end of this semi-tunnel is the brown Mercedes belonging to Ivo Stepanovic. Both car and chief inspector have seen better days. One has sagging eyelids and the other has sagging headlights. But when it comes down to it, everything still works.
Stepanovic and the young police officer have cigarettes in the corners of their mouths and their hands in their trouser pockets. So the kid isn’t afraid of scrounging off the old man. Stepanovic is scanning the crime scene, his tired colleague is talking to a second detective: I’d evidently been too tired for him because I hadn’t even noticed him till now. He is now holding Nouri Saroukhan’s vehicle documents in his left hand. He holds out his other hand to me as he sees me coming with the coffee, but only takes the tray from me.
‘How kind of you to get coffee for us all.’
OK, he’s boring me already.
And I haven’t got anything like coffee for us all, because another two officers in uniform have now arrived and are cordoning off everything that the fire brigade have already cordoned off, before taking a whole heap of photos. I can’t decide whether to apologise for the missing coffee or duck away. Stepanovic settles it for me.
‘I know the team.’ He’s slipped over to me and is speaking quietly. ‘That guy only drinks tea. And the other can have mine.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, and I’ve immediately forgotten the phone routine from earlier. Over the last six months, Stepanovic has become a reliable solver of problems great and small, and you can forgive that kind of person a lot. I walk over to the uniformed policemen with the two remaining paper cups.
‘Machine coffee?’
‘Thanks, that’s nice of you,’ says one, ‘but I had litres of the stuff at the station last night – any more and I’ll keel over.’
The other says: ‘I’m a tea drinker.’ And he twinkles as if we were on breakfast TV.
‘Yes, no,’ I say, ‘uh, then … that’s fine.’
They carry on doing their stuff with mind-boggling levels of motivation. I rejoin my plain-clothes colleagues, press a coffee into Stepanovic’s hand, and he takes it gladly after all. The deep furrows on his face suddenly soften completely.
‘Sugar for anyone?’ I ask, digging in my coat pockets. ‘There wasn’t any milk.’
The young cops watch Stepanovic and me with mild revulsion as we stir far too much sugar into our coffee. They take hasty sips and lick their lips as if the gnat’s piss tasted of anything but metal and cardboard.
We remind ourselves: fully automatic coffee machine. Button-pressed by me personally.
‘So, Saroukhan,’ says Stepanovic.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Saroukhan. Your colleague here picked up on that.’
‘Very good, Rocktäschel,’ says Stepanovic, clapping the young man – who is apparently called Rocktäschel but whose name I completely forgot to ask – rather too vigorously on his narrow shoulder blades. The coffee slops over. ‘Interesting family.’
‘Interesting family from Bremen,’ I say.
‘Exactly,’ says the guy I find so boring. ‘So why the hell are they suddenly dying on us here in Hamburg?’
‘Hey,’ I say, ‘nobody’s died here yet.’
‘Give it a rest, Lindner,’ says Rocktäschel, getting his smoke in his own eye.
I look at him, discreetly blow the smoke away and say: ‘I can’t help wondering: the name rang a bell with you so quickly … but the Saroukhan clan’s patch is a long way away from Hamburg.’
‘I grew up in Bremen,’ he says, stepping from one foot to the other and shivering slightly.
‘You a Werder fan then?’ asks Stepanovic.
Rocktäschel looks at him, and his neck muscles tense under his flying jacket. He throws the cigarette away. ‘Is that a problem?’
All Hamburg sees HSV everywhere, and you really have to wonder how they managed to cling on for so long when they were serving up such dross for years.
Stepanovic holds up his hands and puts his head on one side. ‘Hey, I’m from Frankfurt, no worries.’
‘Pff, that’s not much better,’ says Lindner, probably because he wants to say something too. He earns himself a look from me, but as a straight right to the chin.
‘Watch out,’ says Stepanovic quietly. For a moment, everyone thinks he’s still talking about the football; it takes a moment before we realise that it’s about something completely different. ‘Don’t look now, just carry on.’
‘What’s up?’ I ask quietly.
‘There’s someone on the car-park roof, watching us. A young woman. Flaming red curls. We’ll keep talking, I’ve got my eye on her. When I give the sign, you all look too.’
Stepanovic is capable of seeing things from the corners of his eyes that other people wouldn’t notice even if they hit them in the face. It’s one of the skills that got him to SCO44. All the guys there have a dead-straight CID career path – obviously – as well as something special in the mix. They’re interrogation specialists, techies, extremists of the senses. Stepanovic has eyes like nobody else, and he can immediately classify the stuff he sees.
We talk somewhat erratically back and forth, and I fidget about with one of the fresh cigarette packets. It’s always extremely difficult not to look when someone’s just asked you not to look now.
‘Now,’ says Stepanovic.
We turn our heads towards the car-park roof.
I’m just in time to see the fiery red hair as it vanishes below the parapet.
‘Go,’ I say to Rocktäschel, as I reckon he’s the sportiest of the three men here, and I press my coffee into Lindner’s hand.
Instantly, Rocktäschel is wide awake, for the first time this morning, but hey, it’s at the right moment. He drops his cup, and we run together towards the car park entrance.
‘You take the lift, I’ll take the stairs!’ he hisses to me, and we do it that way, but when we reach the roof, there’s no red hair anywhere to be seen.
‘Crap,’ he pants, his hands on his knees.
‘Too many options,’ I say, looking around. The low concrete walls to the next-door buildings are easy to climb, she could have fled anywhere.
We sprint round every side of the roof, and check every possible escape route – nothing.
She’s got away.
I stop for a moment and stand at the edge of the car-park roof, on the corner of Mexico Street and Überseering, and take a look at City Nord from above. What a crime to house people here, I think, how could they, and then my phone rings. Stepanovic.
‘That was a woman who knows how to get away,’ I say, and Stepanovic says: ‘Nouri Saroukhan is dead. The hospital just rang the station.’
LET ME SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU, LINDNER
Stepanovic has organised a large, bright office for us on an upper floor, immediately between his colleagues from the SCO and the organised-crime squad. The light that comes in from outside is almost dazzling; a North German morning in early summer can sometimes have a hint of Scandinavia about it. The four of us sit around a large table, Rocktäschel and Lindner, Stepanovic and me.
‘You were the first on the scene,’ he says to the two younger guys. ‘I want you on the team. And,’ with a glance at Rocktäschel, ‘I need you too, for Bremen. You must know your way around there pretty well, huh?’
Rocktäschel nods cautiously; something about the business seems to unsettle him.
Stepanovic writes our names on a sheet of paper and rests his right hand on my forearm, but only very briefly.
‘Have you spoken to the attorney general’s office to see if you’re staying on the case?’
‘I have,’ I say. ‘I am.’
He nods, leans back and looks at me. ‘Which of the murder guys shall we bring in?’
‘Are we sure that it was a murder?’ asks Lindner, chewing on a pencil and looking clever-clever. Someone must have told him that it’s vital always to chew on a pencil if you want to be listened to.
