Kriminalkommissar Claudia Meyer of the Baden Württemberg Landeskriminalamt strode out of the foyer of the baroque building just off Karlplatz in the historic Alt centre of Heidelberg.
It was incredibly noisy. Horns were beeping in the narrow mediaeval streets where traffic had backed up. Sirens wailed, police were shouting commands at a vociferous crowd that had gathered.
The red sandstone castle on the hill above looked down on the small, picturesque town below. The scene that she had just witnessed in the first floor drawing room was as gruesome as any the castle had seen in its long history. There had been an eye-opening amount of blood.
There were a couple of blue and silver VW squad cars from the cop shop on Eppelheimer Strasse parked on the narrow cobbled street outside, and the front door of the large, detached town house had been sealed off. The blue uniformed police on the door watched her as she passed. She nodded at the driver of the van that she recognized as belonging to Forensics which was pulled up on the pavement.
The street where all this commotion was occurring was in one of Heidelberg’s most fashionable quarters. It was university land, but the house she had just left was startlingly expensive, even by Stuttgart standards. Prices had risen steeply in latter times. It was the kind of place that only fairly recently had become gentrified and was now increasingly being colonized by non-German investors. It lay in the heart of the city, near the exclusive Hauptstrasse. It wasn’t the kind of place you associated with violent death; more expensive shopping and a Kaffee and a slice of Sachertorte.
A sign of the times, she thought. Her father would be angry, as usual. ‘What is this country coming to, Claudia!’
Mind you, she thought, women in the police force made him angry too. Global warming, GM crops, refugees, transsexuals, Austrians, it was a long list that encompassed practically everything modern.
‘Hey, DI Meyer!’
She groaned. So the papers in the form of Bild, the bestselling national red-top, were already here.
Jurgen Flur, biggest sleazebag in the Rhein-Neckar area, and face to match. Late forties with long, stringy, greying hair and industrial-size pouches under his eyes, resembling an over-the-hill porn actor. He was accompanied by a tough-looking photographer in a leather jacket.
‘Is it true that’s Gunther Hart up there with his throat cut?’ His voice was eager. He so wanted it to be true, thought Meyer.
The photographer shot several images of her. ‘No comment, Jurgen.’
‘Then it is true.’ She rolled her eyes. She could really do without the press intrusion from Bild.
‘And it was Muslim extremists; they say the concierge is missing, and he’s a Turk. Is it true he’s the main suspect?’
A crowd had gathered to watch what was going on. Soon more TV stations would be arriving. Gunther Hart was a prominent member of the community. His murder by Muslim terrorists would make headlines on national news, and this at a time when racial tensions were heightened by the refugee debate.
‘Go away, Jurgen.’
‘Is it the work of Al-Ansaar al-Akhdaar?’ This new terrorist group had recently posted a death list of Germans online. Prominent among them had been Gunther Hart.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ His voice was eager, insistent, he waved his phone in front of her face, recording her voice, probably her image as well, while the cameraman clicked away. She turned her back to them and moved away.
She reached her police car, a 220 Mercedes, and got in, careful of the positioning of her legs. She was wearing a skirt and any second now, she suspected, Jurgen would fling himself on the floor and try to photograph up it. She’d known him a long time. He’d done it before.
She slammed the door shut. Lucas, her sergeant, started the car.
Jurgen Flur banged on the car’s roof and pressed his face up against the window.
‘What about Wolf Schneider? Our readers love him, or does Berlin want him dead?’
‘Drive,’ she growled to Lucas. Jurgen Flur was tapping on the window, the camera behind him was poised. She could see that her irascible subordinate’s front teeth were resting on his lip to produce the ‘ver’ syllable of verpiss dich. Not a good move to actually tell Bild to fuck off. Not with a circulation of two and a half million.
‘He’s on the hit list, when are you lot in Stuttgart going to act?’
As they drove off she could see Jurgen shouting, ‘You’ll have blood on your hands, you Saxon, Commie-loving, fag hag!’
She rolled her eyes.
Lucas said, ‘It’s a shame it had to be Gunther Hart, he was one of the good guys.’
Al-Ansaar al-Akhdaar. The Green Companions.
Green from the colour of Islam, and the Companions, named after the earliest followers of Muhammad. It was rumoured they were formed from hardened ISIS terror fighters who had joined the stream of Flüchtlinge, the refugees from Syria that Merkel had invited in. It was rumoured the group contained German-born Muslims, rebelling against the land that had sheltered them and brought them up. It was rumoured… It was all rumours really, although the death of Gunther Hart wasn’t a rumour, it was a blood-soaked reality.
She sighed irritably as the car roared off through the cobbled streets of the old town. The quiet, art deco buildings mocked the turmoil in her mind. What a bloody awful day this was turning out to be.