The Mammoth Book Best International Crime Read online

  A thin hiss of steam rises from a hose. Ulrich grips the radiator cap with the rag and turns it. The cap jumps from his hand. Steam spurts out and envelops him. He emerges dancing and swearing, blowing on his arm.

  I shake my head. “End of the line.”

  I go to the trunk and open it. “We’re in luck; we’ve got everything here.” I take out the heavy wire cutters. Bicycles are leaning against the fence around a building. I pick out two and cut through the locks.

  “It’s not far,” I said. “Is it?”

  2

  The cool shade of the woods lines both sides of the road. It’s too warm for Ulrich. He’s riding in his shirtsleeves, his jacket rolled into a bundle on the bicycle’s back rack. “Why do you have gears on your bike and I don’t?” he shouts.

  “Because you weigh more,” I say. “That means more pressure on the pedals.”

  The district called Möllen is just along here, after the woods. It belongs to Voerde. There are houses on both sides of the street. But no people.

  “We’re too late,” says Ulrich.

  “We’re also not invited.”

  My backside hurts. When you’ve spent four years in prison, you’re not used to riding a bicycle. I stop, get off, and pull my pants out of my crotch. Ulrich leans his bicycle against a fence. He gasps for air, the corners of his mouth turned down, like a fish on land.

  “All this just because of your car,” I say. “Even though you had four years to get it fixed.” It’s supposed to be a joke. Ulrich growls. “If Heinz doesn’t have the money, I’ll kill him.” He shows me his arm. The scalded spot is swelling into a red egg. As he climbs on the bike again, his foot slips off the pedal and his toes ram the asphalt. He flings the bike away and hops around on the other leg, his teeth clenched.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” he hisses, and climbs on the bike again. I ride ahead. After a while he catches up. “God help him if he doesn’t have the money,” he says, his eyes small and red.

  3

  We find City Hall and push our bicycles into a bike stand.

  “Have you ever noticed that everything’s purple here?” asks Ulrich.

  “Sure,” I say, and point to the scalded spot on his arm.

  “Nonsense,” he says. “I mean the streetlights, the signs, the bike stand. That’s purple, isn’t it? Or is it dark violet?”

  A woman comes out of the building. I ask where the registry office is. She laughs, tilts her head and looks us up and down. “A friend of ours is getting married today,” Ulrich tries to explain. I think she thinks we’re gay.

  The registry office, we learn, isn’t in Voerde’s City Hall, it’s in “Haus Voerde,” which is a castle with a moat. The woman tells us how to get there. Then she takes a little town map out of her bag and gives it to us. Meanwhile Ulrich is sitting on a bench and has taken off his right shoe and sock. The nail of his big toe is swimming in blood.

  “Have you hurt yourself?” asks the woman.

  “He’s always bleeding from somewhere or other,” I say.

  Ulrich taps carefully on the nail and sucks in air through his teeth. “That hurts right down to the bone!”

  The woman walks slowly away across the plaza and turns to look at us.

  “Do you have to tell everyone why we’re here?” I smack my forehead with my hand. “It’s a small town. By tomorrow everybody’ll know. That’s why everything’s purple. It’s a warning color. The gossip zone.”

  Ulrich dabs at his toe. Then he tries to put on his sock and shoe again. Everything’s too small, too tight, his arms are too short. Sweat oozes from his hair. “I want my money,” he whines. “And then we’re outta here.”

  4

  “We’ve gotta be careful,” I say.

  The castle glows whitely between the trees lining the road. We can hear voices and loud laughter. We push the bicycles into the shrubs on the side of the road and walk toward Haus Voerde. There are several wedding parties there. A large group is having a photo taken in front of the castle as a smaller party makes its way up the path.

  “Out of here, move!” I push Ulrich back toward the street.

  He limps and groans with every step. “The pain’s making me crazy,” he says.

  We hide behind a tree. The bridal couple poses for a photo on a bridge over the moat. The bridegroom is Heinz. With his gray face and black suit, he looks just like a waiter from a basement nightclub that never sees the light of day. Next to him is his blond bride in a yellow dress. She probably tends bar in the same nightclub. Someone hands her a white bouquet of flowers. Just for the photo.

  “Let’s just walk in,” says Ulrich.

  “And if it gets serious? There are too many of them.”

  Down by the street, Heinz’s wedding party gets into three cars.

  “Let’s go.” I grab my bike. “We can’t afford to lose them.”

  Ulrich turns to go and promptly runs into a tree.

  5

  “Stupid bikes,” I say. We’re riding through a field, directly into the wind.

  “I want my money,” moans Ulrich. I turn to look at him. A drop of blood from the scrape on his forehead is running up into his hair, driven by the wind.

  We find the cars on a parking lot in Götterswickerhamm, in the next part of town. The wedding party is sitting in a restaurant with a view of the Rhine. We put the bikes in a rack. Heinz is just coming out of the restaurant with another man. They light cigarettes. When they inhale, their faces become bony, their eyes seem to recede in the sockets.

  “Let’s go get the money,” says Ulrich, his face like a puffer-fish. He limps toward the restaurant. Heinz recognizes him and his eyebrows shoot upward. He leaves the other man standing there and comes toward us.

  “You’re out?”

  “We want the money,” Ulrich sings out.

  “Sure. You’ll get it.”

  I shake Heinz’s limp hand. “Congratulations.”

  “How do you know about the wedding?”

  “Some people got a wedding announcement.”

  “I didn’t know . . .” Heinz spread his arms. “Well, I’ve got to get back.” He shows his yellow teeth.

  “We’re coming with you,” says Ulrich.

  Heinz curls his upper lip. You can see the narrow stumps of his teeth. They have cavities.

  “Nope,” he says. “It’s a wedding party. If I’d known you were out, I’d have sent you an invitation, honest.”

  6

  “If he doesn’t have the money, I’m going to kill him!” Ulrich is behind me, sweating. We’re pedaling through the fields again. I let him catch up with me. The noises he’s making sound just like the bicycle seat squeaking and the chain scraping.

  “You could have used those four years to lose a few pounds,” I say.

  “I want my money,” he says, as if he’s drunk with the exertion. On the little town map, Heinz has marked the neighborhood where he lives. Friedrichsfeld am Markt. By the time we get there, Ulrich is completely exhausted. He drops heavily into a chair at the café and orders a cherry ice cream sundae. He eats it, choking and coughing. I order espresso.

  “You get stomach cancer from that – and those deep lines from your nose to your chin,” says Ulrich, pointing at the tiny espresso cup.

  “I’ve had those lines all my life.”

  Ulrich eats another ice cream sundae, this time with strawberries. I order cappuccino. Heinz doesn’t turn up.

  “Let’s go, we’re going to his place,” says Ulrich. “I want my money. And then I’m going to kill him.”

  “It’s his wedding day.”

  “So what.”

  We get up and walk to the bikes. The front tire on Ulrich’s bike is almost flat. I give him my pump. His hand slides off the valve and he catches his little finger in the spokes. I pump up the tire for him.

  Heinz emerges from one of the apartment buildings. So that’s where he lives. He waves us over to the middle of the plaza. He looks a
round him and talks softly.

  “Listen, I can’t get my hands on the money right away. It’ll take a while. Can’t you come back in a few days?”

  Ulrich shakes his head and sucks on his little finger.

  I explain to Heinz about the car trouble. We follow him to an ATM. Five hundred, the machine won’t give him any more than that.

  7

  “Why didn’t I just kill him?” Ulrich’s little finger is swollen. He spreads his fingers on the handlebars as he rides.

  “It’s his wedding night,” I say. “We’ll get the money.”

  We’re on our way through the fields again, pedaling back to Voerde. There’s a hotel at the train station there. Heinz called and booked us a room. Ulrich rides slower and slower. He says he ate too much ice cream. He begins to weave and wobble and his face glows in the twilight as if it’s sunburned. He says his stomach is pulling him from one side to the other. I let him ride ahead and set the pace, but just then his front wheel runs into a pothole and gets stuck. The bicycle tips over and Ulrich sails, arms outstretched, into a cornfield. I help him up, dust him off. His shirt has pulled out of his pants.

  “Just look at that,” he says, and pulls the shirt up higher. He has blood on his belly.

  “I want my money,” he says.

  I wipe his belly clean with a Kleenex. A sliver of glass from a broken bottle is still sticking out of his skin. I pull it out.

  “You should be glad you’re so fat,” I comfort him. “This was just stuck in a layer of blubber.”

  Ulrich sits by the side of the road, his hand pressed on the wound. I kneel down in front of him and look directly at him.

  “I’m going to die,” he says. He looks almost as if the beads of sweat are tears.

  “Heinz is just bullshitting us,” he says. “We should go back right now and demand the money.”

  “Tomorrow,” I say, and point to the sky. “It’s getting dark.”

  “No. Now,” says Ulrich. “Tomorrow I’ll be dead.”

  He braces himself and gets to his feet.

  “You know what, we’re going to kidnap him and extort the money from his wife. She knows where it is, I’ll bet. That’s why she married him. I mean, a guy like that, he looks like death. Why else would anyone marry him?”

  8

  “We had an accident,” I say into my mobile phone. “Ulrich’s hurt. We’re down here in front of the building.”

  “I’ll come down,” says Heinz.

  There are four apartments in the building. Heinz’s name isn’t on any of the buzzers, just his wife’s. We station ourselves on both sides of the door to the street. When Heinz comes out, Ulrich hits him on the forehead with a flat rock. I catch Heinz, and together we pull him back into the house, to the door to the cellar. I search through his pants pockets for the key. I can tell he’s gotten thin. Just skin and bones. The pores in his face are much larger than they used to be.

  “You killed him,” I said. Heinz’s eyes are open, but he doesn’t say anything or move. I try all the keys in the cellar door until I find the right one. Ulrich tips Heinz over his shoulder. There’s an old sofa in the cellar. We lay him down on it and tie him up with an extension cord.

  “I’ll go upstairs,” says Ulrich.

  “Let me do that,” I say. “You’ll just scare her.” I point to his belly. It hasn’t stopped bleeding. His whole shirt is bloody.

  “Hurry up,” he says. “I don’t have much blood left.”

  9

  “Congratulations,” I say. “I’m a friend of Heinz’s.”

  “My husband will be right back.” She laughs. “That sounds strange: ‘my husband’.”

  She asks me to come in. In the living room there’s a bottle of champagne with two glasses. She laughs again. For no reason. Up close, she’s older than I thought. Giggling, she introduces herself as Elisabeth and gets a third glass from the kitchen.

  “I used to work with Heinz,” I say.

  “You mean when he was with the security service?” She laughs again. “I’ve never had a job,” she laughs.

  I tell her the story of the armored car. The whole story of the heist; of Ulrich, Heinz and me. And then I say: “We’ve kidnapped Heinz. If you don’t give us the money he owes us, then . . .” I drew my hand across my throat.

  She smiles, bends forward and asks, “Another glass?” And then she just pours. I think she wasn’t even listening, or maybe she’s not right in the head and doesn’t understand what I’m saying.

  “Did you understand what I just said?”

  “Yes. No.” She laughs. “Heinz, that is, my husband, will be here in a minute.”

  “No, he won’t.” I stand up and bend over her, so close that I can feel her breath. “We’ve kidnapped Heinz,” I shout. “We want our share. One hundred thousand euros. There’s got to be that much left. And if you call the police, I’ll tell them all over again about the armored car. Because we’ve done our time. Heinz hasn’t.”

  She kissed me on the nose.

  “You’re sweet,” she says. “But I don’t know where he gets his money.”

  10

  “She doesn’t know anything,” I say.

  In the dim light of the cellar, Ulrich and Heinz look Chinese.

  “She doesn’t know anything,” says Heinz.

  “I want my money,” says Ulrich. He’s holding his left hand.

  “What happened?”

  Heinz tries to sit up. “He mangled his fingers in that cabinet over there,” he says. I go over to the cabinet and open it. There’s wine in a rack inside.

  “Open a bottle,” says Heinz.

  I use a screwdriver to push the cork down into the bottle, and drink a few mouthfuls. Then I give the bottle to Ulrich. He drinks and then holds the bottle up to Heinz’s mouth.

  “You’re gonna knock out my teeth,” Heinz complains.

  “Where’s the money?” I ask.

  “Come on, tell us. You can see I’m dying,” says Ulrich. “Shot in the gut. You can see. But first you talk.” The wound on his belly looks like it’s still bleeding.

  “I changed the money into small notes, just a little at a time, and then I buried it. There’s a transformer station behind the water tower. With three big fat insulators.” He laughs. “A hundred thousand volts for a hundred thousand euros. Easy to remember. It’s lying a couple of feet underground. But you can’t get to it. It’s live, see. They only turn off the power once every three years to inspect the place. And you can only dig it up then. So you’ll have to come back in three years.”

  “Nice story,” I said. “Okay then, we’ll do that. Of course, you won’t mind if we take your sweet little wife with us. We’ll bring her back in three years, just a little the worse for wear.”

  “That’s enough!” says Heinz. He closes his eyes and presses his lips together.

  “You can kill him now,” I say to Ulrich.

  Heinz begins to tug against the extension cord. “Okay. I took all the money and bought a snack bar. Honest. Ask Elisabeth.”

  11

  Heinz has a lump on his forehead. It’s getting bigger.

  Elisabeth opens the garage door in the dark. Inside, a black station wagon gleams faintly.

  “No money, you said? So where’d the car come from?” I ask.

  “We got it for picking up supplies,” says Elisabeth. “We buy the sausages directly from the factory.”

  Ulrich wants to drive, but as he walks around the car his pants get caught on something. The fabric tears.

  “Not you,” I say. “Get in the back with Heinz.”

  “I’ll drive,” says Elisabeth.

  “Let me smell your breath,” I say to her. She puts her arms on my shoulders and licks the tip of my nose. “Do you know today’s my wedding night?” she asks. She tries to kiss me but I pull away from her.

  “I’ll drive,” I say.

  Ulrich pushes the still-tied-up Heinz onto the back seat and climbs in next to him. Elisabeth guides me onto a fede
ral highway. After a short while we turn back toward Voerde.

  “You’re already past it,” laughs Elisabeth. “You should have turned off back there.” I turn around and drive back. A dark road.

  “Stop,” says Elisabeth. Through the windows of a car we can see the snack bar on the other side of the road. Closed. Dark except for a neon tube twitching faintly over the counter.

  “You have to see it by daylight,” says Heinz. “It’s a super place.”

  Paint is peeling everywhere. There’s grass growing in front of the entrance. I look at Heinz, my mouth fallen open. “This dump?”

  “It’s lots bigger inside,” he says.

  “I’m going to kill him,” says Ulrich.

  12

  I don’t want to get out. We all stay in the car, and Heinz tells us that he bought the snack bar a year ago from an old couple.

  “They’re only turning it over to me now. Next week,” he says. “And there’s a snack wagon, too. The old man used to take it to the farmer’s markets. But then he went and died. And the old lady’s sick and doesn’t have anyone else. That’s why it’s been closed for two months now. I mean, what can you do? But we’ll get the place into shape.”

  I look at Ulrich. He sits sunken into a heap on the back seat, his too-short arms and legs dangling from his body. Slowly he closes his eyes.

  “You can make a first-class eatery out of it,” says Heinz. “I’ll hire a cook and the thing is practically the golden goose.”

  “It’s a dump,” I say.

  “Bad location,” says Ulrich. He shakes his head.

  “They took you for a ride,” I say.

  “Shitty,” says Ulrich.

  “No, no, it just looks that way. I’ll take the wagon to the markets and Elisabeth will run the snack bar here. In three years you’ll have your money. With interest. It’s really a good investment.”

  Elisabeth has gotten out of the car and is standing in front of the snack bar, arms outstretched, turning slowly in circles. We follow her and look through the windows. It’s filthy.