‘I want to talk to her anyway.’
‘And Martina?’ Kaminski grinned and cast a look across at Werner and Anna Wolff.
‘And Martina. What about the new CCTV system we’ve installed in the Kiez? Will we have got anything on that?’
‘No,’ said Kaminski. ‘Westland’s attacker was either lucky or very clever — there are no cameras on that street or anywhere near the courtyard. As you know, the compromise we had to make on having cameras in the Kiez was that we had to be selective where we put them — none in a position that could reveal the honourable citizens of our fine city nipping into a peep-show or a sex shop. It means we’ve got a hell of a lot of black holes. But I’ve put a call into the ops room at the Presidium for the recordings from an hour before until an hour after the murder to be collected and analysed. We might get something from the surrounding streets… the attacker making their way to or from the scene. In the meantime, I’m flooding the streets with uniforms…’ Kaminski nodded towards the assembled officers in the lobby. ‘We’ll question every hooker, pimp and club owner in the area. Business isn’t exactly good in the Kiez these days and Westland was hardly an anonymous victim… Something like this is bad for business. Maybe we’ll get lucky.’
‘Thanks, Carstens.’
‘Well, if you don’t mind, Jan, I’ll get back to briefing this lot.’ Kaminski nodded towards the uniforms he had gathered. ‘Unless you want to talk them through what we should be looking for?’
‘No, Carstens, this is your patch,’ said Fabel. He knew that no one knew the Kiez better than Kaminski.
Fabel hung his raincoat up in the station cloakroom, first of all patting his pockets.
‘Lost something?’ asked Anna.
‘Bloody MP3 player…’
Fabel made his way with Werner and Anna through to the rear of the station. Until 2005 Davidwache had been an exclusively uniform-branch station: to keep pace with changing times a new extension had been built onto the rear of the protected architecture of the original station. It was in this newer part of the building that the detective branch was now based. Kaminski had put the conference room at their disposal for carrying out witness interviews. Fabel looked out of the window over Davidstrasse and part of Friedrichstrasse. He could see the green riot-police vans being driven down to the traffic lights, transporting back to the Police Presidium those protesters whom Davidwache’s tiny cell block could not accommodate.
‘Anna, I think you should lead the questioning of this witness,’ he said. ‘The girl who found Westland, I mean. It sounds like she might be in a pretty bad way.’
‘Why me, Chef?’ asked Anna. ‘Because I’m a woman?’
‘I just think she might respond better to you.’ Anna had been on Fabel’s team for five years, but he still found her difficult to handle. To understand. Anna Wolff was much younger-looking than her thirty-one years; she had shortish black hair, was no bigger than one-sixty-two centimetres, and strove for a punky look with her dark mascara, firetruck-red lipstick and oversized biker’s jacket. And, despite Fabel doing his best not to notice, she was very attractive. But, most of all, Anna Wolff was by far the toughest, most aggressive member of his team. As well as the most insubordinate.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Anna with an expression of mock enlightenment. ‘Obviously I’m going to be more understanding. Being female, that is. I’m sorry — I forgot that having a dick presents an insuperable obstacle to sympathy.’
‘I’m not being sexist, Anna. I’m being practical, that’s all.’ Fabel sounded annoyed despite himself. ‘Forget it. I’ll talk to her myself.’
‘I was just saying…’
‘Yes, Anna. You’re always “just saying”. I’ll conduct this interview.’ He looked at his watch. It was two-thirty a.m. ‘Werner, you sit in. Anna, you can go off duty.’
‘Oh, come on… all I said…’
‘I’ll have a team briefing at two p.m. tomorrow. I want to see you in my office first, Anna. Be there at one,’ said Fabel. Anna grabbed her leather jacket from the back of the chair and stormed out.
‘You were a bit rough on her, Jan,’ said Werner when she was gone.
‘She goes too far, Werner. You know that. I’m fed up with every order being challenged or commented on. And I’m sick of complaints coming in about Anna.’
‘We used to call it robust policing, Jan.’
‘Those days are gone, Werner. Long gone. This is the twenty-first century.’
‘You know she has a point, Jan.’ Werner looked unsure of himself. ‘I mean, about the male-female thing. You do tend to get Anna to do the female interviews.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Just that, well, don’t take this the wrong way, but you do tend to treat women like they’re a different species.’
‘How can you say that, Werner? My team has always been balanced. Well, maybe not now. Not since…’
Both men became quiet. The name Maria Klee hung unsaid in the air.
‘Forget it, Jan,’ said Werner a second too late. ‘I just think you should go easy on Anna.’
Fabel’s reply was cut off by a uniformed officer conducting a girl in dark jeans and a navy-blue quilted ski jacket into the room. She clutched a woollen hat and scarf in her hands. Fabel guessed that she was not a street girl: the hookers who worked the streets around Herbertstrasse dressed in bright colours and would stand in groups, holding pastel-coloured umbrellas above their heads whether it was raining or not as a sign to potential customers that they were available for business. Their contrived cheerfulness was so that their customers felt less sordid about the trade they plied.
Fabel kept his smile in place but noticed how young the girl was: she looked to Fabel not much older than his own daughter, Gabi. He asked her to sit and tried to do what he could to put her at ease. Christa Eisel was pretty — very pretty — with shoulder-length fair hair. From the plainness of her outfit and her obvious attractiveness, Fabel worked out that she must have been a Herbertstrasse window girl who would have changed into a provocative outfit once she was at work. As they talked, Christa kneaded the hat and scarf on her lap, but there was something approaching defiance in her eyes.
‘We’ll need to take that, I’m afraid,’ Fabel said, smiling. Christa looked down at the bloodstained jacket.
‘It’s no good to me now. I’ve left my gloves downstairs. They’re finished too.’ She slipped the jacket off and handed it to Fabel. Werner placed it into a large plastic forensics bag.
‘How long have you been working the area, Christa?’ asked Fabel.
‘Six months. Just weekends. And not every weekend. I have a slot in one of the windows and I do some escort work occasionally.’
‘Are you supporting a habit, Christa? Sorry, but I have to ask.’
The girl looked genuinely taken aback. ‘No… no, of course not.’
‘What do you do? I mean when you’re not working here.’
‘I’m a student. Uni Hamburg.’
‘Oh really? That’s where I went. I studied history. You?’
‘Medicine.’
Fabel stared at Christa for a moment. ‘Medicine? Then why…?’
‘Money. I want to earn extra money.’
‘But this way?’
‘Why not?’ Again defiance glinted in Christa’s eyes. ‘A lot of students do it for extra cash.’
‘You’re clearly a bright, pretty girl with a lifetime of opportunity ahead of you, Christa. I just don’t understand why you would choose to do what you’re doing. Is this what you think it means to be a woman?’
‘Are you disappointed that I’m not some exploited junkie? You’re right, I choose to do this. It’s my body and I can do what I want with it. And anyway, it’s relatively easy money. A few hours each weekend and I make more than most people do in a month. Trust me, it makes medical school a whole lot easier.’
‘That’s not the point, Christa. God knows in this job I know what the dark side of human nature is like. I just don’t understand why someone like you would seek it out and immerse themselves in it. Believe me, maybe you think you can do this for a year or two and then get on with your life. You can’t. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. Every relationship you have will be coloured by it. You’ll find it impossible to see the good in people.’
‘What’s it to you, Herr Chief Commissar? You trying to save my soul?’
