‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are now starting our descent to Stuttgart airport.’
The BA plane touched down quietly and efficiently in the state capital and Hanlon, carrying only her handbag, was quickly through passport control and immigration. She strode down to the S-Bahn and then she was on her way to a morning meeting that she felt sure would clarify exactly what was happening with Schneider.
Ever since she had taken the phone from the anarchist thug, her view of Eleuthera’s role in things had changed. There had been information held in its memory that simply hadn’t added up to the narrative as she had perceived it up until now.
She had always felt that there was something missing from the bigger picture and now she was tantalizingly close to putting her finger on it.
This had all started in Germany. She felt sure that the key to it all lay in Germany.
In particular it led her to query Marcus Hinds and his claims of what had been happening. She had also checked again with Forensics. While it was true that Jamie Kettering, the anarchist who had died on the stairs, had died because of a loss of blood, the injuries to his head that he had suffered prior to that would probably have killed him anyway. The idea that Hinds had been some innocent bystander seemed increasingly unlikely. Hinds was a killer whichever way you looked at it.
She got out at the main station in the centre of the city. The view from the street outside was that of a gigantic building site, traffic and a plethora of Mercedes-Benz stars on top of buildings. Stuttgart is Mercedes-Benz’s home and also that of LBBW, the gigantic investment bank, whose logo seemed equally ubiquitous.
Hanlon took a cab to her appointment with Meyer, who had been suggested to her as the best source of information for the Gunther Hart investigation. As the car drove her through the prosperous Stuttgart streets she caught the occasional glimpse of Schneider wearing a sober suit and concerned expression on posters for his Neu S party. The taxi driver spoke good English and she asked him what Was zu viel ist. Ist zu viel – which was the slogan on the poster – meant.
‘Enough is enough,’ he said.
I can go along with that, she thought.
The taxi pulled up outside a formidable-looking building. You could have almost guessed its function. Hanlon walked up to the front desk.
‘Landeskriminalamt Department, Claudia Meyer,’ said Hanlon to the handsome man on reception in the blue uniform as efficient-looking police streamed past.
Five minutes later Hanlon was sitting with Meyer in a pleasant open-plan office, more or less identical to the ones she was used to, except the ambient background noise was in German and she noticed that the keyboards attached to the monitors were subtly differently configured and had symbols such as the double ‘s’, ß, and umlauts, that didn’t feature in English.
Meyer looked at her colleague who she guessed slightly outranked her rank of Kriminalkommissar, not that it mattered. Her eyes took in Hanlon’s strong face, her easy, graceful, athletic build.
She was impressed with what she saw.
‘So how can I help?’ Her English was impeccable.
‘Wolf Schneider,’ said Hanlon. ‘Wolf Schneider. Christiane Hübler, Frank Muller.’
‘Ja, stimmt.’ Meyer had thought that would be the case. Over coffee, she explained Schneider’s rise from poster boy of AfD, the largest right-wing party, to heading his own breakaway movement which was challenging his former right-wing party for supremacy in the polls.
‘AfD’s vote, the anti-Muslim vote, had doubled from four prozent, sorry, per cent, to eight per cent but Schneider’s party is polling at ten to twelve in some places, maybe more. He’s the coming man.’ She clicked on her PC and Hanlon was looking at Wolf Schneider. There was a slogan underneath.
‘Germany needs a real man,’ translated Meyer.
‘What about Hübler? Are they an item?’ Hanlon couldn’t think of a reason why it mattered but still, somehow, she felt it did.
Meyer shrugged. ‘Christiane Hübler had a record for shoplifting. She claims, claimed, it was a Turkish shopkeeper who had framed her, she hates Turks.’ She clicked away at the keyboard, found what she was looking for. ‘Yes, here we are: “Filthy, kebab-munching rapists”, she described them to Bild.’
Unless of course they were good-looking and in her bed. ‘Well,’ said Hanlon, ‘that’s fairly clear.’
‘It was rumoured she was a member of a swingers’ club here in Stuttgart,’ said Meyer.
‘So for her to look for a one-night stand wouldn’t be unusual?’ Hanlon asked.
‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Meyer. ‘How could it be? Not if you’re a member of a sex club.’
‘And how about in a relationship with Schneider?’
Meyer scratched her head; a heavily built officer brought them more coffee. He was bald and tough-looking. ‘Danke schön, Lucas. Oh, Lucas, hier ist DCI Hanlon, Metropolitan Police.’
‘Angenehm!’ said Lucas gruffly and shook a hairy, leathery hand with Hanlon. He smiled at her and she smiled back with genuine warmth. He was like a German version of Enver. Lucas put the coffee down and moved away. That was another Enver trait – he never felt the need to offer his opinion of what was happening or try and add his presence to encroach on what she was up to. The same could not be said of many of her male colleagues.
‘In a relationship with Schneider?’ mused Meyer. ‘I doubt it. Even if he was, he wouldn’t let on. He’s a big female following and he’s a genius at stage-managing things. He’s like a boy band member – girls want them to be single so they can dream that they have a chance.’
‘Would Hübler’s sex life be a problem politically?’ asked Hanlon.
Meyer considered the question. ‘If she were involved with ethnic minorities, refugees, say, then yes, it would surely be a problem. It would be a gift to Schneider’s enemies.’
Hanlon nodded and asked, ‘Muller?’
‘A cheap, violent thug. I’m sure you’ve got lots of them. He’s got a record, violent this, violent that. Pretty much what you’d expect, really.’
‘Good, I thought so. Now, Al-Akhdaar?’
She cut Meyer short after a couple of minutes; it was plain she had little to add on the shadowy Islamic death cult. A German ISIS. As sinister and as mundane as that.
‘Of course,’ said Meyer, ‘they made their name here with the murder of Gunther Hart.’
She showed Hanlon a photo of Hart. She caught her breath; Hart was stunning. He had a mop of curly hair and the same kind of innocent–depraved face as Robert Mapplethorpe. The Fallen Angel look. He was lying half-naked on a chaise longue, wearing a pair of ripped, skinny jeans. The outline of his cock and balls was high definition.
‘I would,’ said Claudia Meyer, catching Hanlon’s eye, ‘wouldn’t you? Even Lucas said if he was a bit pissed he might.’ She sighed. ‘And he did good works, made lots of money in real estate development. He was incredibly popular round here, one of those businessmen who are actually cool, which is such a rarity. His funeral brought Heidelberg to a standstill. After that killing and the YouTube video, Schneider’s Neu Schicksal shot up in popularity.’
‘He was on the same hit list as Schneider?’
Meyer nodded. ‘Yes, the Rhein-Neckar Enemies of Islam.’ ‘That’s a very specific geographical area.’ Not just the Enemies of Islam, but the equivalent of the Thames Valley Enemies of Islam. Very German, Hanlon thought, and it seemed Meyer agreed with her.
‘Al-Akhdaar are a German terrorismus organization. Of course they’d be specific, Germans are. It’s a national trait. This is Stuttgart. Gottlieb Daimler and Robert Bosch weren’t vague.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Hanlon.
‘Any more questions?’ asked Meyer.
‘Just one.’ Hanlon took her tablet out of her bag. It was really for this that she had come all the way here.
They were almost an afterthought in the photographs section of the phone she had taken, but it was a folder that its owner had seen fit to keep locked, although not safe from Albert Slater’s prying fingers.
The fact that they had been so carefully hidden had aroused her attention in the first place.
Three photographs, all colour. The images clear, startling, dreamlike.
The first one a door, darkness, at night, an alley in a city, off a wet street, the black tarmac slick with rain. Puddles reflecting the crimson light. A red and white neon sign over the door. The glare of the neon made all but two of the letters illegible. The last letters were… ub.
Whatever kind of club it was, it certainly wasn’t classy or the kind of place you would take your mother.
The second, the same as above except shot at a slight angle to take in the bonnet and number plate of a black Mercedes E Class containing the letter S, denoting Stuttgart.
It didn’t mean that it had to be Stuttgart, of course, but the car was almost posed there as if it had been Photoshopped to indicate the location of the premises. That was, of course, the point of the photos. The premises.
The third. The car was gone now, the door ajar. Open for business.
The picture had a message. Come inside… all earthly delights await you in here… all your erotic dreams can come true, no matter how strange… Nothing, but nothing, is forbidden…
The pictures were tantalizingly close to forming a narrative.
Come inside…
The Something Club, in Stuttgart.
The passage behind the door was womb-red, an almost universal signifier of sexuality. Standing in the half-open doorway was a dwarf girl in a miniskirt and fishnets. She was like a parody of the girls Hanlon had seen the night before in the boxing ring.
She wasn’t simply a midget, or short, she had the classically configured dwarf physique. It was this that made Hanlon believe she would be eminently traceable. There couldn’t be that many dwarf prostitutes in one town.
‘Do you know where this is?’ she asked. Meyer looked at it and shook her head.
‘It’s obviously the something or other Club and that’s a Stuttgart plate on the Merc. I guess it’s a brothel. Hang on. Lucas!’ she called.
Her colleague wandered over from where he’d been chatting to an attractive policewoman. Meyer spoke to him in German. He looked at the photos and spoke to Meyer who translated, ‘He says it’s the old Oskar’s Klub, in the Bohnenviertel. It closed down years ago. That area has all been sanitized for tourism now.’ She looked at Lucas. ‘Was habt du sagt? Langsamer, bitte… Ja… genau… ganz schon… The girl is Lottie, a dwarf prostitute. Oskar’s was a club where you could have sex with freaks, like overly pierced whores or really hard-core S&M, golden showers, that kind of thing, and it catered to fetishists too.’
‘Is Lottie still around?’
Lucas said something to Meyer who nodded. He got his phone out, spoke to someone. She caught the word Bahnhof.
‘She’s got a place near the station,’ said Meyer. ‘Do you want to go and see her?’
‘Very much,’ said Hanlon. ‘Lottie’s the key to all of this.’ She looked at the photo one more time before she put her phone away. The small dwarf girl. The half-open door of the brothel.
A world of secrets. A world of lies.
Come inside…
Hanlon sat in the back of the police BMW as Lucas drove skilfully through the streets of Stuttgart.
‘Tell me more about Oskar’s?’
Meyer directed the question at Lucas in an awkward three-way conversation. Hanlon gathered it was a members’ club for the experimental or deviant, certainly not for the faint-hearted. It was also exclusive, they had sky-high membership fees, a six-month waiting list, and a reputation for utter discretion.
Those few paparazzi brave or foolish enough to try and get photos of clients had a habit of having their equipment and fingers smashed. The message soon got around.
‘Who owned it?’ asked Hanlon.
Meyer asked Lucas, who grunted a reply. ‘Out-of-towners,’ said Meyer.
‘Russich Mafia,’ elaborated Lucas. There’s a surprise, thought Hanlon.
‘Is it the kind of place Gunther Hart might have belonged to?’
Meyer said, ‘It’s exactly the sort of place that Hart would have belonged to. He’d have found it funny, he liked to shock.’ Up until now they had been making reasonable progress through the streets of Stuttgart but as they drew near the station, they came to a grinding halt. The station, as Hanlon had realized when she had arrived, was undergoing a major rebuilding programme. Lucas swore irritably as several roads he took or tried to take were closed, sometimes just ending in enormous man-made canyons. The chaos, which one would have expected in London, seemed slightly un-Germanic to Hanlon.
Eventually they hit upon a road that seemed acceptable to Lucas and about five minutes later they parked up outside an anonymous apartment building.
Lucas said something and Meyer translated for Hanlon’s benefit.
‘He says he’ll wait with the car.’
The three of them got out and Lucas leaned against the bonnet and lit a cigarette. Meyer rang the bell marked C. Schwartz and a voice answered. She said something and the door buzzed open.
Hanlon and Meyer walked up the concrete stairs, their footsteps echoing in the well of the building.
On the first floor there was a door open and a sardonic dwarf woman stood regarding them with an unfriendly expression. It was a pose that almost matched the one on the phone, except this was no luridly, explicitly sleazy nightclub. She too smoked, a cigarette was burning between her fingers. They walked into her apartment. Meyer started making introductions in German and Lottie cut her off. ‘I speak English well enough,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
She was wearing a housecoat, slippers and an unfriendly expression. Hanlon looked around her apartment, which was studiously anonymous. Everything, floor, walls, furniture, was magnolia, fawn or tan. She suddenly realized that it was almost certainly Lottie’s workplace and that she would want to screen her private life from her clients. There had to be another place that Lottie lived, even if it was only a room, rather than this sterile, beige environment.
One patch of brilliant colour did exist in the apartment. On the glass coffee table in front of the sofa was a pack of tarot cards laid out as if for a reading. They were old-fashioned and well-used, the evocative pictures archetypal forms familiar to everyone. Lottie looked at Hanlon almost knowingly.
She pointed at two cards that were turned up. One was a card of a stern-faced woman sitting between two pillars. There was a large brass-bound book open on her lap, in her hand a quill.
‘The Book of the Law,’ said Lottie touching the card, indicating the open volume. Then she pointed at the twin pillars. ‘Jachin and Boaz; Security and Strength.’
‘Who is the woman?’ asked Hanlon. There was something about the cards that made you want to ask questions. That was partly their function, she supposed.
Lottie looked at Hanlon.
‘The High Priestess, I guess that’s you.’ She paused. ‘She represents Love and Hatred.’ She closed her eyes and, as if quoting from memory said, ‘Furtherance of the ends of destiny.’
‘Did the cards tell you why I was here as well?’ asked Hanlon with polite scepticism.
‘I don’t need the tarot for that,’ said Lottie, pointing at a MacBook. ‘I’ve got the real news on a variety of feeds.’
The flat was small, just the lounge, bedroom, galley kitchen and bathroom. The bedroom, through the open door, had been fitted up as a kind of sex dungeon.
‘Still turning tricks, Lottie?’ asked Meyer, as if expressing polite interest.
‘I’m moving into tarot readings now,’ she said, ‘but, yes, I’m still hooking. I’m still very much wanted. Do you find it odd that men want to fuck me, Kriminalinspektor, a misshapen hag like me?’
‘Takes all sorts, Lottie.’ Meyer shrugged.
‘I’ve always been in demand from men, the richer and more successful the better,’ said Lottie, proudly. ‘Stuttgart’s very good for me. I must have fucked the boards of Germany’s largest industrial Konzerne.’ She cupped her generous breasts in her hands. ‘God alone knows how much coke they’ve snorted off my tits and ass. I’m surprised they haven’t dropped off.’
Hanlon took the tablet out, the photos. ‘Remember these?’
She leaned over for a better look. ‘Oh, yes, DCI Hanlon, natürlich.’ She looked at Meyer. ‘My readings are private, you can wait outside.’
Meyer nodded. ‘I’ll be in the car with Lucas,’ she said to Hanlon. She stood up and left the room. They heard the main door close, the echoes dying away in the hallway.
Lottie leaned forward and turned over the rest of the cards. The Devil. The Lovers. Death, a grinning skeleton mounted upon a horse. The Tower Struck Down and lastly, the vain, gaudily dressed figure walking with carefree steps towards the waiting chasm, the Fool.
‘So, would you like to hear about Al-Akhdaar and Wolf Schneider and Gunther Hart?’ Lottie’s voice was sarcastic and unfriendly, she was about to hurt someone and she had been relishing the prospect of doing so. Whores don’t have hearts of gold, or at least not for their clients.
‘Oh, yes, Lottie,’ said Hanlon. ‘Natürlich.’ Half an hour she left the apartment.
An elaborate web of deceit uncovered by Lottie.
She had just one more thing to do in Stuttgart and then she could go home.
Now she knew for sure that more or less everything that Marcus Hinds had said had been a lie.