The killer reappeared on the recording for just a few seconds, moving through the lobby to the stairwell. Then he was gone again, and that was the last time he appeared on the footage. One body had been found in the kitchen, so to Alvarez it was a reasonable guess that the killer had left that way instead of the tradesman’s, where the second camera was located. Then, more people had been killed in the building opposite, and another in the street itself.
Alvarez stood without moving as the rest of the recording played on, hoping for something else that might help. He was dog tired. His eyes stung. He was sure Kennard was feeling the same. He guessed the tech geek was used to staring at screens all day and didn’t have a problem with it. He probably found this kind of crap exciting. Freak.
After another thirty minutes Alvarez finally pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘We’re not going to get anything more from this.’
Kennard nodded. ‘Agreed.’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘You think they do Chinese chow in this town? I don’t know about you guys but I could do with some crispy duck. I’m sick of this frogfood crap.’
The tech found his voice. ‘There’s a good place a couple of blocks west with some damn fine Asian ass waiting tables. I’ll show you.’
‘Good.’ Kennard slapped his stomach. ‘I’m starved.’
Alvarez was in no mood to eat. He spoke, half to himself. ‘One guy murders Ozols, then two hours later he goes back to his hotel where seven shooters try and kill him, but instead he kills them all.’
‘Yeah,’ Kennard said, eyes on the door.
‘We’ve got a description from the receptionist for a tall or average-height Caucasian with brown or black hair. But it could be dyed. Can’t remember the eye colour. Maybe glasses. Some age between twenty-five and forty. He’s got a beard but that’ll be shaved by now if it wasn’t stuck on, so what we’re left with implicates pretty much every other white guy out there.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Kennard agreed. ‘This is bullshit. We’ve got nothing.’ He picked up his jacket.
Alvarez couldn’t argue. He pushed his palm against the grain of his stubble as he thought about what to do next. He was drained but didn’t want to sleep. There was still too much to do. His cell phone rang and he was quick to answer it. When he had hung up he smiled at Kennard.
‘You were saying?’
CHAPTER 14
Munich, Germany
Tuesday
01:12 CET
It was raining when Victor left the train with fourteen other passengers. The station was mostly empty at that time of night and the amount of open space around Victor gave him some cause for concern. He did his best to exit quickly but without looking like he was he trying to do so. Outside the station there were no taxis waiting so he set off on foot. After sitting down on the train for several hours he was glad of the chance to stretch his legs.
He found a fast-food place that was still open and took a seat by the window to eat his meal. Substandard even for junk food, but he needed the calories and there was no quicker way to get refuelled. At least the milkshake wasn’t too bad. Vanilla.
He hailed a taxi, telling the driver the name of Svyatoslav’s street, acting as if he didn’t speak German so he wouldn’t have to talk inanities during the journey. The building was a four-storey apartment block in the east of Munich. The area was affluent, a nineties development of expensive river-view apartments and spacious housing.
The building’s main door was dead bolted, and a security camera and light made it too risky to pick, so he spent the night sampling Munich’s all-night bars, allowing himself no more than one drink an hour. He used his time eyeing members of the opposite sex like the other single men. He stayed a maximum of two hours per bar to avoid people remembering him too easily. At six he took breakfast in a small cafe before heading back to the building, a takeout black coffee in hand, steam clouding in the frigid air.
He stood on the opposite side of the road to the building, shielded from the drizzle by a bus shelter. The shelter also gave him a reason for waiting on the street should anyone notice him. Svyatoslav lived in apartment 318 according to the hotel records, but there was always the chance he wasn’t really Mikhail Svyatoslav. Victor was pretty confident this wasn’t the case. Svyatoslav’s passport was too well used to be a random identity and so was either genuine or his only cover. It contained numerous stamps for trips to countries outside the European Union, mostly old Soviet states — Estonia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, among others. He either travelled frequently for work or had been a keen tourist with an unimaginative taste in destinations. In any case, the address the identity corresponded to would be worth investigating.
Victor took a sip of the coffee. It was typical German fare. Awful. They made world-class firearms but seemingly couldn’t brew a good cup of coffee if the survival of their nation depended on it. Assuming they’d run out of guns.
Victor watched four people leave the building but no one enter. They were all dressed in suits, long coats, carrying briefcases. City drones on their way to service the hive. Between sips of coffee he watched people walking in the direction of the building, trying to gauge who intended to enter.
The morning was cold, damp, the sky above invisible beyond slate grey clouds. In summer Germany could be beautiful, but more so than any other European country Victor found it oppressive in winter. The Viking hell was a cold realm called Niflheim, and Victor imagined the Northmen had feared something not dissimilar to Germany in November.
He took another sip of coffee and saw a man with a woollen coat hurrying into the street, a metallic briefcase in hand. He had a long, pale face, dark hair. Victor recognized him, had seen the man leave the building ten minutes before. Better than perfect.
Victor waited until the time was right, threw the coffee cup into a trash can, and headed across the street. He controlled his pace to reach the steps at the same time as the man. He glanced Victor’s way, but Victor’s gaze was averted, his hands fumbling in his pockets for keys that weren’t there.
Victor allowed the man to reach the door first, who opened it with his key.
‘Danke,’ Victor said, taking the door before the man had a chance to question whether Victor lived in the building or not.
‘Kein problem.’
The hallway was brightly lit, clean, and spacious. Victor took the stairs, noting from the unblemished banister and spotless steps that the elevator was hardly ever out of use. The resident hurried to his apartment on the ground floor, disappeared inside. Victor hoped he got back to work in time.
Reaching the third floor, Victor opened the stairwell door and stepped out into the corridor. There were three locks on 318. Definitely an assassin’s place.
It took two minutes to pick the locks, and he went inside. It looked as if Svyatoslav had just moved in, not lived there for any length of time. There were just the bare essentials of furniture, a couple of photos, no real personal possessions to articulate his personality. It reminded Victor of his own residence. It was not a reassuring comparison.
There were two bedrooms, one of which was fitted out as a gym with a selection of free weights and an exercise bike. There was a large TV in the gym, positioned so it could be watched while the exercise bike was being used.
The master bedroom was as empty as the rest of the apartment, with just a bed, neatly made; dresser; wardrobe; and another TV fitted so the assassin could watch it in bed. There was a stack of films against one wall, console games against another. The ingredients of a sad and lonely life. The kitchen was modern, clean, almost straight out of a brochure. An old television set stood on one counter.
Victor searched every room, every drawer, every cupboard. He found nothing. No evidence of who Svyatoslav had been. Nothing that even hinted at the fact that he had murdered people for money.
