335‘What did that dildo say to you at the end?’ Sasha asked when we stood in the outside play area twenty minutes later. He was smoking a roll-up, I was drinking the organic apple juice Toni had scoffed at. Carla had gone to the loo. Walter and Stanislav were in the office, stocking up on promotional material for their sister and girlfriend.

‘Exactly what you’d expect. He gave me until Monday to set up a meet with Dragan or I’m dead.’

‘That craven cunt. But everything else went brilliant, don’t you think?’

I was glad Sasha brought it up himself. I knew he couldn’t have spoken to Dragan on the phone, but I didn’t know whether Sasha knew that I knew. Why had he lied? Just to spite Toni? Or did he know the truth?

My curiosity won out.

‘So you spoke to Dragan this morning,’ I said neutrally.

Sasha gave me a piercing look before he spoke. ‘Björn, I have no idea what you’re playing at with all this. All I know is that we’ll all benefit more from your game than from Toni’s. So don’t ask that type of question and I won’t either.’

‘Understood, Officer Sasha. Then I’d finally like to officially congratulate you on your promotion.’

‘Thank you, Counsellor Björn. And by the way: the 336others think you’re a hero for coming up with that finger thing. I do too. Making the police think Dragan is dead is a genius move.’

That was good. I needed everyone’s support, because there was a lot to support: Toni had to be eliminated, Boris had to be reassured, Möller had to be silenced, Malte had to be scrapped – and all of it by Monday. A lot for me to do alone, and a lot even for Sasha and me together. In all mindfulness, I didn’t know how I would do it without the support of the rest of the officers.

Fortunately, mindfulness doesn’t mean doing only what you’re willing or able to do. Mindfulness also means dividing what you need doing into things you are capable of doing and things others are much more capable of. Those things can then be confidently handed over to people you trust.

I had already discussed with Sasha how we wanted to divvy up the tasks, promising him I’d discuss it with Dragan. And Dragan had miraculously agreed to the distribution of tasks and even suggested one or two improvements.

‘When do we tell the others?’ Sasha asked, stubbing out the ember of his rollie against the tile floor but holding on to the butt.

We had decided to show Carla, Walter and Stanislav the footage of Malte’s interrogation once Toni had left. The three of them had already witnessed how far out on a limb Toni had gone when it came to blaming Boris. It wouldn’t take too much effort now to push him off the limb entirely, especially not after his last freak-out.337

Sasha and I stood next to the fire pit over which the founders probably made the preschoolers cook campfire twists in the autumn. I made a mental note to order proper sausages for the same occasion next autumn. When Carla, Walter and Stanislav joined us outside, Sasha was just burning the signed newsprint in the fire pit.

‘Too bad we always have to burn them,’ Carla said. ‘In a few years, they’ll be historical documents.’

‘That’d get you banged up for historically long sentences if they ever end up in the police archives,’ I couldn’t help noting. ‘But I still haven’t read out tonight’s most important historical document.’

I waved around another newspaper page.

‘But what about Toni?’ Carla enquired. ‘Doesn’t that buzzkill officially have to be here too?’

‘He’s what it’s about. Listen up.’

I unfolded the newspaper signed with Dragan’s thumb. The date confirmed it was from today’s edition, meaning it was a whole day fresher than the instructions from earlier. The page was almost illegibly cluttered with squiggles and strokes.

I read aloud: ‘If Toni, as expected, left the meeting early, please watch the video Björn sent me this morning.’

The three looked at each other, unsure. On my iPhone, I showed them a recording of Malte’s interrogation from the previous evening.

The footage caused an uproar. Not because of the electric shocks, but because of the information they’d revealed: that it was Toni who was a traitor, that Toni had also wanted to 338eliminate Dragan, Sasha and – with Malte’s help – Murat and me too. That he’d succeeded in Murat’s case, not in mine. Yet just half an hour earlier, in front of the assembled officers, Toni had put his hand in the fire for Murat, the colleague he’d had shot. He had blamed Murat’s death on Boris because he wanted to start a gang war.

He had betrayed us all.

‘I was the one who got the prick those hand grenades,’ Walter said, giving me a sad look. ‘But I had no idea what that traitor was planning to do with them.’

‘Let’s drive down to his dive right now and take the wanker out on the spot,’ Stanislav fumed.

‘We should clip those electrical clamps to his tiny brain,’ Carla suggested.

I raised my hands in a placatory gesture. ‘Let’s first hear what Dragan has to say about this.’ With that, I unfolded another newspaper page.

It was a lengthy text with specific instructions, delegating various tasks to various officers so that together we could achieve the perfect result.

We spent another half-hour discussing the details of Dragan’s plan. Once each of us knew what to do, Sasha burned this last newspaper page too, and the meeting was over.