3

Dombrowski, Klaus. Late fifties. Judging by his voice, stature and demeanour, he was still the furniture-mover he started off as more than thirty years ago. In the meantime he’d turned businessman, master of more than 350 more-or-less legal employees. His empire comprised fourteen moving trucks and teams, thirty-one street-cleaning and salting vehicles, twenty-three crews of cleaners and the countless day labourers under his rule, whom he still had line up at five in the morning in front of the employment agency at Nordhafen to personally pick them out as required. He knew every one of them by name. He had an attitude that would have seen him out on his ear at any normal job, even the army, effective immediately. He led his company like a berserker, but he worked like one too. He appeared unexpectedly everywhere to check, curse, insult, rampage, but he had also hauled more than one of his troops out of detention at the last minute before they were deported. The way in which he had got expired papers extended could only be called ‘cutting through red tape’ if one was very generous (not every house move, not every service for civil servants’ cottages on the edge of the city had to be on the books), and there was a recurring rumour that he had even paid bail money and stood as security for employees from time to time.

Dombrowski himself had no comment. Perhaps he might have said something if he was asked. But people didn’t talk to Dombrowski; at most they talked about him. His curly, shoulder-length hair was greying and thinning significantly. On special occasions he wore it down, and otherwise tamed it with a rubber band. He cultivated a reputation as a former hippy who in his long march through the institutions had always carried the moving boxes of others to higher and increasingly more elegant offices and now swept the back steps of the powerful. Perhaps he also took care of other kinds of dirt, but that was just a rumour. He paid permanent employees twelve months’ pay instead of the thirteen or fourteen common in Germany, squeaked past the minimum wage by just a few cents, but then once a year, at Christmas, added a bonus in the manner of a pre-revolutionary Russian feudal lord – provided you had been able to drag yourself to work with a temperature of 105 and work unpaid overtime for the sheer joy of working and being needed. With him, something wasn’t bought because it was new or modern, but only when its predecessor had simply fallen apart. He had got the office furniture for a bargain when the contents of the GDR Ministry of Foreign Trade had been sold off for pennies on the dollar. It was said that the head of the ministry, Schalck-Golodkowski, had personally sat on the chair that now groaned under Dombrowski’s massive body. The computer monitor on the shabby desk belonged in a museum. When he turned in Judith’s direction, because naturally she had been compelled to follow him and listen before she rejected his doubtless outrageous request, the joints of the chair squeaked pitifully.

‘Here. Look at the roster. No one’s here.’

‘Then call someone.’

‘On Friday evening? Anyone still in their right mind wouldn’t pick up.’

‘Then how stupid do you think I am?’

Dombrowski gave her a smile that would have frightened anyone else. It was as wide as the grin on the wolf that had just eaten your grandmother. She stood still. Pure curiosity: how far would he go? Maybe more than that – she was unable to draw a line in the sand.

‘Judith, my dear Judith.’

No. Just say no. She began to visualise the two letters. A precautionary measure. A jagged, clear, N – a barrier. An emphatic O – like a zero. No.

‘A cold starter. You know what that means. I can’t send just anyone.’

The term actually came from heating oil specialists, and described people whose heaters stopped working in the middle of winter because they had run out of oil. Emergency cases, for which quick delivery could bring in exorbitant fees. No one knew why Dombrowski had adopted this phrase, of all things. Perhaps because you needed specialists who had the brains to turn off their hearts and sense of smell the moment they were confronted with something that was worse than letting your own mother rot for six weeks. There were only a very few specialists who fit the bill. Judith was one of them.

‘I don’t have anyone else. So don’t act that way. Kastner is on holiday. Josef is on the crew at the IHK.’

‘And Dieter?’

‘Dieter is sick.’

He wanted to hand her the keys to the car. Judith crossed her arms.

‘Maybe I have something planned?’

A dark spot in Brandenburg wasn’t what people generally understood under the word date. But it was still a plan. And it had something to do with her personal life, a phrase that Dombrowski had erased from his vocabulary.

He gently waved the set of keys, like a piece of meat to a dog.

‘You don’t have anything planned, Judith. You know what the industry is like. If this works out, then we’ll get a city block. If not, it’ll go to MacClean.’

They had lost Friedrichstrasse to MacClean last year. After that, Dombrowski had cut the Christmas bonus for the first time ever.

‘Please.’

Her no evaporated. She took the car keys with an angry sigh.

‘What’s the issue?’

‘Like I said before, murder.’

He motioned to the chair in front of his desk, steel pipes with burst foam cushions, left over in the furniture truck during some move. Judith reluctantly took a seat.

‘The corpse will be picked up soon. So no de-putrification, just disinfection and cleaning. However, and this is the problem, forensics took ages. The entire apartment is a wreck. The painters are coming on Monday. Tuesday is the first of the month. On Wednesday the next renters will already be sitting there on their new couch from social services. That’s the way it is. And now you’re on board.’

That sounded like a dry run. Nothing damp, sticky, black, no gluey mattresses, no bugs, worms or insects that fled in every direction as soon as you turned on the light, no stench. Maybe it had even been a ‘clean’ murder – poison, strangulation, suffocation. Or a shooting – small calibre, instantaneous death, little blood. Then she would only have to erase the outline of the body and clean thoroughly. On Monday the painters would be puzzled by a couple of faded tomato juice spots on the wall paper.

‘The perp?’

This was important. Once, a cleaner had been attacked by a mentally ill man who had stabbed his wife in a state of delusion and had disappeared. On the day the apartment was cleared, the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The colleague survived. But since then, Dombrowski maintained even closer connections with the police.

‘At large. No leads yet.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘Then take the gun along.’

Dombrowski pulled open the desk drawer, removed a pistol and held it out for Judith. ‘It’s an apartment building. The janitor will let you in, neighbours are watching, you have a phone. The police know we’re sending someone over. Nothing will happen.’

‘But something did happen.’

‘OK. I can’t force you. I can only ask you to.’ All the while, he stared unwaveringly at her with the innocent look that he only risked in rare moments of true helplessness. Judith asked herself where her no was. Why did it always disappear when she needed it most?

‘What about the furnishings?’

‘As far as I know the apartment is furnished. That’s a job for . . .’

He rummaged through his stacks and pulled out a slip of paper.

‘Fricke. That’s the janitor’s name. He’s expecting you in exactly twenty minutes at the front door of Marzahner Promenade 48.’

Bewildered, Judith accepted the note. ‘That’s right around the corner from my place.’

Dombrowski leaned back in relief and removed a half-sucked cigarillo from the ashtray. Since his second bypass he only occasionally stuck it between his teeth, without lighting it.

‘Then you don’t have far to go once you’re done. The police cleared it this morning. If you do your job properly they can rent it out without a loss.’

He noticed her hesitation.

‘Don’t show me up. You can do it. There’ll be something extra in it for you at the end of the month. When we get the whole city block. And take the smock with long sleeves.’

He looked at her arms. She stood up and went to the door. He bellowed after her: ‘I’ve got a box for you.’

‘Professor’s estate from the Free University. Josef told me that’s your kind of thing.’

It sounded like they had cleaned out a dominatrix’s secret chamber. Judith took the box and carried it outside. Books. The leftovers from estate sales rejected by antiquarians, which could only be got rid of at flea markets with grinding effort. When she pushed the box onto the floor of the van she opened the lid and took a quick look inside. There were picture books and tour guides, mostly from the sixties. She pulled one out. Mountains, the sea, serpentine roads, colourful houses. The Amalfi coast. It could be Italy. But Judith wasn’t completely sure.

Fricke was a small man. He paced back and forth impatiently in front of the entrance to the apartment tower and peered in all directions instead of opening the boom gate to the car park. Judith repressed a curse and drove twice more around but didn’t have a chance with the bulky van. It was thirty-three degrees, Hertha Berlin, the local football team, had a home match – a lazy weekend. Everyone was home, barbequing on the balcony.

Finally she parked the vehicle half on the sidewalk, hazard lights on, twenty metres away and got out. The promenade in Marzahn was an example of poor eighties urban planning: anonymous residential hives, fast-moving streets, battery humans. But in summer, at night on her balcony on the tenth floor, with a bottle of ice-cold white wine beside her and a quiet rustling in her ear when she lowered the pickup arm into the groove and listened to the last of Johnny Cash’s American Recordings, then the Marzahn Promenade was the perfect place for aliens like herself. You had to love feeling physically out of place, but at home in music. Only then could you love this glittering view of endless building façades.

Judith opened the back doors of the van and looked indecisively at her equipment. The sealed hazardous materials container. The bucket with scouring sand, laundry soap, brushes and scrubbers. The heavy blacksmith’s hammer they sometimes used to knock apart beds or rusted window catches. The toolbox with a side compartment for the skeleton keys that could open any apartment door. Gently swinging yellow rubber gloves, hanging from diagonal lines with clothes pins: her work gloves. The stack of blue smocks, ‘Dombrowski Facility Management’ stitched on the front and back in white lettering. Two lay scrunched up in a cleaning bucket. She had forgotten to tell Kai where the laundry basket was. She tried to remember his face under the fringe, but she had forgotten it already. He wouldn’t return on Monday. It didn’t even pay to remember his name.

Her gaze wandered up the front of the tower block. Horizontal purple stripes made counting easier and helped with orientation. The building opposite had yellow stripes, others were blue, red or green. She felt the throbbing nervousness in her ribcage. A crime scene. In contrast to Gerlinde Wachsmuth’s quiet solitude. She slowly turned back to the cargo bay of the van and took a deep breath. City air, with that slightly metallic taste on the tongue: worn tyres, sun on asphalt and rotting compost.

‘Peppi!’ someone screamed. ‘Stop it!’

An elderly lady two doors down was desperately trying to drag her mutt out of some shrubs by its collar. The dog, a knee-high, dark mongrel, growled and drooled over a pile of rags someone had thrown into the bushes. As small as the dog was, the woman was simply overwhelmed.

‘Aren’t you going to do anything?’

The woman looked outraged, as if Judith was responsible for all the rubbish in the world.

‘Everyone just throws their rubbish around. And the administration doesn’t take care of anything!’

She noted the car with the open window.

‘Are you from the housing administration?’

‘No.’

The dog suddenly bolted, letting a slobbery, indefinable bundle drop directly in front of Judith’s feet, as it had been trained to do.

‘Wait a minute!’ Judith demanded.

The problem was solved as far as the woman was concerned. She simply kept walking. The dog raced behind her, passed her and jumped around the next corner.

‘Hello? What’s the going on here?’

Fricke looked over to her briefly. It wouldn’t make a good impression if she just kicked the thing against the curb now. Furious, Judith retrieved a rubbish bag from the car and lifted the bundle with fingers splayed. She didn’t even want to know what it was, so she simply let it fall into the sack and tossed it far back on the ramp.

She pulled on a fresh smock and smoothed her hair. Then she made her way to the janitor, who was rattling his keys and peering back down the street. The path to the glazed entry hall was neatly swept. The man took his job seriously.

Fricke only noticed her when she stopped directly in front of him. The small eyes in his owl-like face spread wide. Perhaps he had been expecting the allied power of ten veiled martial artists. Or perhaps a cohort of Turkish cleaning ladies. She was familiar with this reaction and extended her hand towards him, which he shook hesitantly.

‘Judith Kepler,’ she said. ‘I’m the cleaner.’

Fricke seemed to have had something else planned for the evening. He concealed his bad mood inadequately beneath a silence that lasted eight storeys. Then the elevator doors opened, and without looking back at Judith, he led the way into a bright, well-lit hallway painted pale violet with matte beige PVC flooring. Judith counted six apartments: three to the left and three to the right. At the end of the hall there was a large sealed window. Fricke headed towards the last door on the left side and cut through the seal with a key, as if he did it every day. The nameplate read ‘T. Borg’. When Borg opened the door he would have seen the residential tower opposite and Landsberger Allee to the right. He could also have seen her – Judith’s – apartment. A tram rolled by. But Borg wouldn’t be opening the door. Fricke did that now. He held it open and waited for Judith to walk past him inside.

‘You have to dispose of the rubbish yourself.’ He motioned towards two blue sacks standing in the hallway. ‘They probably thought I would take care of it all. But they were mistaken.’

He stood in the doorway, fumbled with his key ring and then deposited three security keys in Judith’s hand.

‘This one is for downstairs, that’s for upstairs. And this here’s for the mailbox. There’s still a seal there, which also has to go. Will you take care of it from here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your boss has a lot of faith.’

The elevator doors opened. The elderly lady with the dog appeared. She was frightened, and wanted to move past them quickly to the apartment opposite, but the dog had other plans. Quick as a flash, he ran towards her, sniffing and waving his tail.

‘Peppi!’ the woman called. ‘Heel.’

Fricke grabbed the animal by the collar. It squeaked indignantly and began to yowl.

‘Dogs belong on a leash!’ He snapped.

The woman dared three steps forward and reached for her darling. She cast a curious glance into the apartment where her neighbour had lived until recently, then retreated without a word.

‘OK then. The rubbish has to go. All of the woman’s possessions. Wasn’t much. You dispose of it, OK? Any questions?’

So it was a Ms Borg who had lived here.

‘Were the relatives already here?’

‘No relatives. No inheritors, it appears, but she didn’t have anything that would have been worth saving. It was like she was passing through. Hardly moved in and already dead. So make sure that you’re finished quickly. There are parties interested in the apartment.’

Judith kept a straight face. It was really easy when you maintained an invisible wall between you and other people.

‘Yes.’

‘And don’t just put the rubbish behind the house. You’ve seen how the dogs just roam around here. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘And by Monday it’ll be spotless here.’

Judith didn’t say a word. Fricke looked at her with irritation. Judith nodded.

‘All right then . . .’

Fricke tapped his forehead and went back to the elevator.

‘The keys in the mailbox.’

‘Aye, aye, boss.’

‘And do a proper job. I don’t want the painters vomiting. They’re pals of mine.’

‘Will do, master.’

Fricke thought for a second. But he couldn’t think of anything else, so he pressed the button and the elevator doors opened.

‘I don’t want the sacks in here either.’

Judith cast a glance down to the car park through the window in the hallway. The cars looked like toys from up here.

‘All right.’

The elevator doors closed. She waited until she heard the jolt from the lift on its way down, then she clicked the keys onto her karabiners and removed the rest of the official evidence sticker from the doorframe. She wanted to steel herself against what awaited her. But that hadn’t ever worked. It was different every time. Just as every murder was different and distinct from those that came before.