the crowd began to make room and the big Mercedes moved through the gap.
In the block behind the church, at Gorner’s direction, Schmidt illegally parked the car before a PARKEN VERBOTEN! sign at the main entrance to the hospital, between a somewhat battered silver-and-white Opel Astra police car and an apparently brand-new, unmarked Astra that bore a magnet-based police blue light on its roof.
[TWO]
There were two men sitting on a bench in the corridor of the hospital. One was a stout, totally bald, decently dressed man in his fifties, the other a weasel-faced thirty-something-year-old in a well-worn blue suit that had not received the attention of a dry cleaner in a very long time.
When they saw Gorner, they both rose, the older one first.
“Herr Gorner?” he said.
Gorner nodded and perfunctorily shook their hands.
“Where is he?” Gorner said.
“You wish to see the victim, Herr Gorner?”
Gorner shut off the reply that sprang to his lips, and instead said, “If I may.”
“The ‘mortuary,’ using the term loosely, is down that way,” the older man said. “But I was ordered to have the body moved here from the coroner’s morgue.”
Gorner nodded. He had been responsible for the order.
When the security duty officer at the office had called Herr Otto Gorner to tell him he had just been informed that Herr Gunther Friedler had been found dead “under disturbing circumstances” in his room in the Europaischer Hof in Marburg, the first thing Gorner had done was to order that his wife’s car be brought to the house with a driver to take him to Marburg. Next, he had called an acquaintance—not a friend—in the Ministry of the Interior. The Interior Ministry controlled both the Federal Police and the Bundeskriminalamt, the Federal Investigation Bureau, known by its acronym, BKA. The acquaintance owed Otto Gorner several large favors.
Gorner had given him—“And yes, Stutmann, I know it’s Christmas Eve”—two “requests”:
One, that Gorner wanted a senior officer of the BKA immediately dispatched to Marburg an der Lahn to “assist” the Hessian police in their investigation of the death of Gunther Friedler, and, two, that while that official was on his way, Gorner wanted the Hessian police to be told to move the body out of the coroner’s morgue; Saint Elisabeth’s Hospital would be a good place.
“What’s this all about, Otto?”
“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Your line is probably tapped.”
There was no blood on either the sheet that the weasel-faced plainclothes policeman pulled from the naked corpse of the late Gunther Friedler or on the body itself. There were, however, too many stab wounds to the body to be easily counted, and there was an obscene wound on the face where the left eye had been cut from the skull.
“Merry Christmas,” Otto Gorner said, and motioned for the plainclothes policeman to pull the sheet back over the body.
The completely bald police official signaled for the plainclothes policeman to leave the room.
“So what is the official theory?” Gorner asked as soon as the door closed.
“Actually, Herr Gorner, we see a case like this every once in a while.”
Gorner waited for him to continue.
“When homosexual lovers quarrel, there is often a good deal of passion. And when knives are involved . . .” He shook his bald head and grimaced, then went on: “We’re looking for a ‘good friend’ rather than a male prostitute.”
Gorner just looked at him.
“But we are, of course, talking to the male prostitutes,” the police official added.
“You are?” Gorner asked.
“Yes, of course we are. This is murder, Herr Gorner—”
“I was asking who you are,” Gorner interrupted.
“Polizeirat Lumm, Herr Gorner, of the Hessian Landespolizie.”
“Captain, whoever did this to Herr Friedler might well be a deviate, but he was neither a ‘good friend’ of Friedler nor a male whore.”
“How can you know—”
“A senior BKA investigator,” Gorner said quickly, shutting him off, “is on his way here to assist you in your investigation. Until he gets here, I strongly suggest that you do whatever you have to do to protect the corpse and the scene of the crime.”
“Polizeidirektor Achter told me about the BKA getting involved when he told me you would be coming, Herr Gorner.”
“Good.”
“Can you tell me what this is all about?”
“Friedler worked for me. He was in Marburg working on a story. There is no question in my mind that he was killed because he had—or was about to have—come upon something that would likely send someone to prison and/or embarrass someone very prominent.”
“Have you a name? Names?”
“As far as I know, Polizeirat Lumm, you are a paradigm of an honest police officer, but on the other hand, I don’t
“With all respect, Herr Gorner, that could be interpreted as refusing to cooperate with a police investigation.”
“Yes, I suppose it could. Are you thinking of arresting me?”
“I didn’t say that, sir.”
“I almost wish you would. If you did, I wouldn’t have to do what I must do next: go to Gunther Friedler’s home on Christmas Eve and tell his widow that her thoroughly decent husband—they have four children, Lumm, two at school here at Phillips, two a little older with families of their own—will not be coming home late on Christmas Eve because he has been murdered by these bastards.”
[THREE]
3690 Churchill Lane
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1610 24 December 2005
After carefully checking his rearview mirror, John M. “Jack” Britton, a somewhat soberly dressed thirty-two- year-old black man, turned his silver Mazda MX-5 Miata right off Morrell Avenue onto West Crown Avenue, then almost immediately made another right onto Churchill Lane.
Churchill Lane—lined with clusters of two-story row houses, five to eight houses per cluster—made an almost ninety-degree turn to the left after the second cluster of homes. Britton followed the turn, then pulled the two-door convertible (he had the optional hardtop on it for the winter) to the curb in front of the center cluster. He was now nearly right in front of his home.
Britton got out of the car, looked down the street, and then, seeing nothing, walked around the nose of the Miata, pulled open the passenger door, and accepted an armload of packages from his wife, Sandra, a slim, tall, sharp-featured woman who was six days his senior in age.
They had come from a Bring One Present Christmas party held in a nearby restaurant by and for co-workers. Jack Britton had changed jobs, but he and his wife had been invited anyway. They came home with the two presents they had received in exchange for each of theirs, plus the door prize, an electric mixer for the kitchen that
