Private Berlin (Private 5)

He looks pissed off, but he goes to a hiker’s pack against the boathouse wall. He retrieves a disk and hands it to me, saying, “All of Schneider’s work files.”

“Did you look at them?” I ask in a super relaxed manner.

“That would be against my ethics,” he replies.

But his body language says otherwise.

Once he hands me the disk, I play along and give him the bag of money.

He opens it and checks several packets of fifty-euro notes.

“Nice doing business with you,” he says, zipping the bag up.

“Yes,” I say, pocketing the disk and finding the handle end of a flat-head screwdriver. “Need a lift to the bus stop?”

“That would be great,” he says, turning back toward his knapsack.

I take two quick steps behind him, grab his hair, and drive the sharpened blade of the screwdriver up under the nape of his skull.

CHAPTER 8

MY YOUNG GENIUS friend never has the chance to scream.

But as the blade finds the soft spot where spinal column becomes brain, his entire body goes electric and herky-jerky.

When at last he drops my money and sags against me, I’m panting, spent and rubber-legged, as if I’ve just had the most explosive sex imaginable.

What a thrill! What an amazing, amazing thrill!

Even after all these years that rush never gets old.

I stand there for several moments in the aftermath of a great death, calm, drained, sated, and yet hyperaware of everything around me: the rain, the clouds, the forest, and the whistling of ducks out there in the fog.

With his body in my hands, with the sense of his life force still vibrating in me, it’s like I’m here and not, hovering on the edge of the afterlife, you know?

At last I roll him over on his belly and draw out the screwdriver. I get out a tube of superglue and use it to seal the entry wound at the back of his neck. No more blood. It’s done in seconds.

I chuckle as I drag my young genius friend toward my van, thinking how strange it is that there are people out there in the world, people far deeper and more philosophical than me, who spend their lives wondering if a tree falling in woods like this makes a crashing sound if there’s no one around to hear it.

What a stupid goddamn thing to spend your life thinking about.

Don’t they know they would be better off pondering whether a man like me can exist when he’s never been truly seen?

CHAPTER 9

HAUPTKOMMISSAR HANS DIETRICH was a living legend inside Berlin Kripo, an investigator with low-key, unorthodox tactics that nevertheless resulted in the highest solve rate of any detective in the department’s eight divisions.

The high commissar was a tall crane of a man, early fifties, quiet, moody, and extremely private, rarely fraternizing with other cops. He was even said to resent the fact that he had to work with a second detective on homicide cases.

Mattie had heard about Dietrich during her many years with Berlin Kripo, of course, but she’d never had the chance to work with him directly.

Still, an hour after their initial call to Kripo she was more than relieved when she saw him walking toward her beneath a black umbrella in a gray suit, his somber face revealing nothing.

If anyone could find out what had happened to Chris, it was this man.

Mattie and Burkhart moved around the uniformed officer now guarding the front of the slaughterhouse and went to meet Dietrich. They showed him their Private badges and identified themselves.

“I know who you are, Frau Engel,” Dietrich said, his eyes flickering toward the abattoir. “Your reputation precedes you.”