In the Evil Day (8 page)
‘I’m sure we can agree on price when we know what we’re getting. I’ll give you an address to bring the package to. You do that soonest, say in an hour, thereabouts, soonest. Then we look at it, we authorise payment. How’s that?’
‘Forget it. You’re not the only buyer. How’s that?’
‘That’s quite persuasive. Can you give me time to discuss this with my colleagues? I’ll recommend that we do it your way. I’m sure they’ll agree. Call me at ten tomorrow morning?’
Niemand didn’t reply for a moment. He needed to think. ‘Okay,’ he said.
‘Good. Excellent. There’s no need to look elsewhere, I assure you.’
Niemand sat for a while, not easy in his mind.
ANSELM TOOK the firm’s BMW and drove to Winterhude. He found a parking space in Barmbeker Strasse, went to the
Konditorei
and bought a small black chocolate cake, walked to the apartment in Maria-Louisen-Steig to see Fräulein Einspenner, whose service to the Anselm family began in 1935.
She came to the door in seconds. She was just bone covered with finely lined tissue paper but her eyes were bright. She seated him in the stiff sitting room on a striped chair, took the cake to the kitchen and came back with it, sliced, on a delicate plate, on a tray with cake plates and silver cake forks.
They talked about the affairs of the day. She knew about everything, watched the news and current affairs on television, her eyes not up to reading the paper.
‘How is Lucas?’ she said.
‘Well. He’s well.’
‘When is he coming to live in his house?’
‘I don’t know. He has a house in London.’
‘Then he should give the house to you.’
‘Perhaps his son will live in it one day.’
Fräulein Einspenner thought about that for a while, nodding. Then she said, ‘Your German is very good.’
She always said that to him at some point. She had said it to him for thirty years.
Fräulein Einspenner separated a tiny piece of chocolate cake with her fork, put it to her mouth slowly. There was no perceptible chewing movement. She was ingesting it.
Anselm waited until he thought she had swallowed.
‘Moritz,’ he said. ‘Do you remember much about him?’
She was looking at her plate, making another incision in her thin slice of cake with the side of her fork.
‘Moritz?’
‘My great-uncle.’
‘I was a servant,’ she said.
‘You do remember him?’
She finished the cut, didn’t impale the fragment, didn’t look up, began another separation.
‘I saw him, yes. He came to the house.’
‘What became of him? Do you know?’
More work on the cake.
‘Became of him?’
‘What happened to him?’
She rested the fork on the plate.
‘The war,’ she said, looking up.
‘He was killed in the war?’
‘A lovely cake. When will you come again? I so look forward to seeing you. I see your father and your grandfather when I look at you.’
This meant she was tired. She walked to the front door of the building with Anselm, holding his hand, two fingers of his hand, and there he stooped to kiss her papyrus cheek.
She smelled as she had thirty years before, when she had stooped to hug him, kiss his cheek.
‘Remember when we used to go to Stadtpark together?’ she said.
‘The birds. You loved them so much.’
He walked back to the car, stopped to buy cigarettes, drove down Dorotheen Strasse and into choked Hofweg. Turning down to Schöne Aussicht, he saw the last light of day on the silver lake. Three small boats were tacking towards the Pöseldorf shore, on their sails a colour the palest rose.
In the building, Baader was gone, returned to his child bride, and the shifts had changed. Inskip was back.
‘There may be life outside this place,’ he said in his languid English voice, not looking at Anselm. ‘Have you considered that?’
‘Movement, yes,’ Anselm said. ‘Life is another matter.’
‘I’ll settle for movement,’ said Inskip. ‘Up and down. You may or may not be pleased by some initiative I’ve shown. A Ms Christina Owens came up on the Continental database. The Campo woman checked in as C. Owens at a hotel in Vancouver six years ago. Someone in Canada found that out for the client.’
‘Yes?’
‘Christina Owens is staying at a hotel in Barcelona. The security man’s given me some pictures.’
‘Let’s see.’
Inskip tapped, they waited, the screen began running a jerky hotel lobby surveillance film, four cameras: entrance, reception desk, seating area, lifts.
A couple came in the door, a woman with shoulder-length hair and a man walking just behind her. They saw him at the desk collecting a key. At the lifts, waiting, she turned her head to him, a younger man, said something, curt, impatient. He shrugged, raised a hand. The lift doors opened and they entered.
‘Again.’
The couple came into view walking through the doors from the street.
Anselm raised a finger.
Inskip froze the film. She was head-on to the camera.
Anselm made the enlarge sign.
It was a taut-skinned face, perky nose, eyebrows pencilled in, full lower lip.
‘Save it.’
The box file was at Inskip’s elbow. Anselm opened it, took out the top photograph: a woman, mid-twenties perhaps, hair pulled back, long nose, glasses. She had the face to play a librarian in a Hollywood film and she bore no resemblance to the woman in the Barcelona hotel surveillance video.
Anselm looked at the name and date pencilled on the back: Lisa Campo, October 1990.
‘What’s the nature of her malfeasance?’ said Inskip.
‘She’s an accountant. Worked for Charlie Campo, a Midwest pizza prince. She became Mrs Campo, stashed around six million dollars offshore for Charlie. Skimmed money. Then she took off. Our client says there’s five million moved, vanished. And all Charlie’s got is this old driver’s licence shot.’
‘Sad, really.’
‘Send the pic and the whole video to the Jocks, marked Rush. They may still be upright, capable of responding today.’
The firm sometimes used people in Glasgow, experts in facial recognition, academics making a buck on the side, putting taxpayer-funded research to good use.
Inskip said, ‘You’re suggesting that these totally different women might be the same person?’
‘I’m just running up the bill.’
He nodded. ‘How uncommercial of me. What do the Jocks do? Apply haggis-fuelled intuition?’
In spite of his considerable hacking skills, Inskip pretended to technological bewilderment, an upper-class English attitude of puzzlement and disdain.
‘This’ll be over your head, old fruit,’ Anselm said, ‘but they use something called PCA, principal component analysis. You establish a person’s eigenface, then you compare any other face’s eigenvectors, beginning with eyes, nose and mouth. It’s well established but the Jocks have come up with a few tricks of their own.’
Inskip rolled his chair back, ran fingers through his hair. ‘Eigenface? Why do the English think a German word is more serious than an English one? I mean, really, what has
Doppelgänger
actually got going for it?’
‘Didn’t register anything except the one word, did you? Send the pics.’
Anselm was reading the logs when Inskip loomed in the doorway.
‘John. The sporran-swingers say 100 per cent positive.’ He wrinkled his brow. ‘I cannot believe that.’
Anselm looked at him for a while. ‘Her eigenface. Plastic surgery couldn’t hide it. Nothing they can do about the distance between her pupils. Her eye sockets. Booked in for how long?’
‘Didn’t notice.’
‘Notice, James. Check it.’
Inskip sniffed, disappeared. Anselm signed a logbook, went back to the big room.
‘It’s three nights, two to go,’ said Inskip.
‘The man to ring is called Jonas. Campo’s lawyer. The emergency number’s in the file. If I remember, Charlie Campo offers twenty-five grand if he gets to confront her. Half for us.’
‘My God.’ Inskip was looking for the number. ‘Who gets it?’
‘Our policy,’ said Anselm, ‘is to give half of our cut to the finder.’
‘The other half ?’ He was dialling, tapping on his keyboard.
‘Distributed to the needy. For example, to someone who needs a new wife or a new Porsche.’
‘Vulgar vehicle,’ said Inskip. ‘Do you want to speak?’
Anselm shook his head. You didn’t want to deny people the pleasure of bearing good news. Inskip put on his headset. Anselm listened to the crackling from space, the crisp sound of a phone being picked up.
‘Jonas.’ Vague voice.
‘Weidermann & Kloster in Hamburg, Mr Jonas. Sorry about the time. It’s the Campo file.’
‘What?’ A cough, cigarette cough.
‘The airline’s found your client’s luggage.’
‘What, you found the name?’
‘No, we’ve identified the actual luggage.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘No.’
A cough. ‘Listen, fuck this spy shit, it’s Lisa?’
Inskip looked at Anselm. ‘We believe a hundred per cent positive,’ he said.
‘The face?’
He looked at Anselm again. Anselm nodded.
‘The face. One hundred per cent.’
‘Christ. Where?’
‘Barcelona. Last night. Booked in for two more nights.’
‘Barcelona, Spain?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a hundred per cent?’
Inskip raised an eyebrow. Anselm nodded again. The Scots were never wrong. Eigenfaces didn’t lie.
‘Yes.’
‘Ten years,’ Jonas said, ‘Charlie’ll come in his pyjamas. Listen, Barcelona, some cover there, local knowledge, you can get that?
Inskip looked at Anselm, opened his hands. Anselm took the headset off him, put it on. ‘Mr Jonas, John Anselm. We can arrange that but it’s expensive.’
Jonas cleared his throat, not a sound to wake up to. ‘Fuck expense, John,’ he said. ‘Lose this fuckin fish, I’ll die. Do it now.’
‘Can you transfer fifteen thousand US immediately?’
‘Check your balance in thirty.’
Anselm said, ‘Give us your flight details when you have them and you’ll be met.’
‘Tonight,’ said Jonas. ‘We fly tonight. Barcelona, Spain. Some place quiet, we need that, you with me?’
‘The person who meets you will have arranged that.’
Jonas made a sound like a snore. ‘This works, I’m comin around, drinks, dinner. Fucking breakfast. For days.’
‘And lunch?’
Jonas laughed. ‘For wimps, man. Remember that movie?’
Anselm reminded him about the bonus and said goodbye. Inskip was looking at him, mouth open a little, teeth showing. He was more than interested, a little excited. ‘Cover?’ he said, no sign of languor now. ‘What’s that mean?’
‘Make sure she doesn’t vanish again.’
‘We can do that?’
‘We can do anything. Record this in the log.’
Anselm sat down at the workstation next to Inskip and rang Alvarez in Barcelona, exchanged pleasantries in Spanish, told him what was needed.
‘Expensive,’ said Alvarez.
‘Within reason, Geraldo.’
‘In advance, a thousand? Perhaps.’
‘Because this is short notice, yes. I’ll send it tonight.’
Anselm was heading for the door when Inskip said, ‘What’ll happen to the woman? Lisa?’
Anselm looked over his shoulder. ‘What do you think? Charlie gets his money back, they fall in love again, go on a second honeymoon. Eat pizza.’
Inskip nodded a few times, licked his lips, turned back to his screen.
NIEMAND OPENED his eyes, out of sleep instantly, disturbed by something, some irregularity, some change in the background noise he’d listened to as he drifted away on the too-soft bed.
Listening. Just the night-city sounds: wails, growls, whines, grates, squeals.
It had been a sound from inside the hotel. Close by.
Listening. Thinking: a hard sound, metallic, like a hammer strike. What could make a harsh metal-on-metal sound?
He knew, threw the sheet and blanket aside, was out of bed, wearing just his watch and running shorts.
Someone had opened the fire-escape door.
He was at the back of the building, last room in the corridor, a door away from the short passage that led to the fire-escape exit. Someone had pushed on the lever of the steel fire-escape door, found it reluctant to come out of the latch, applied more force, too much. It had come out, hit the restraining pin above it hard. That was the sound, a ringing, metallic sound.