Private Berlin (Private 5)

I shake my head angrily. “I get call to come fix toilet leak on third floor.” I pat my pockets. “I got number and name here somewhere, but I supposed to meet Banter.”

The young man shrugs. “Banter’s a worthless piece of shit. It’s just like him not to hang around when someone’s toilet’s leaking. I’m in two twelve. It’s not above me, is it? My ceiling could be falling in.”

“No,” I say. “Three forty-seven, or something. Can I go in?”

The young man nods absently, stopping at the mailboxes.

By the time he’s got one open, the elevator door is shutting on me.

I get off at the third floor, find the stairwell, and climb to the fourth floor.

I find apartment four twenty-nine and knock. I look right at the peephole, and a shiver of excitement passes through me.

“Yes?” I hear her call in that unfamiliar voice. “Who is it?”

“It is plumber, Frau Amsel,” I say. “Herr Banter called. He says tenant in three twenty-nine is complaining of water from the ceiling. He wants me to check toilet.”

There’s a long pause.

And then I hear a chain slide and a dead bolt thrown.

CHAPTER 60

“WHO REPORTED HER missing?” Mattie asked, studying the PDF of a document carrying the letterhead of the police department of Frankfurt am Main.

“Her sister, Ilona,” Dr. Gabriel said, tapping the section that identified the concerned relative.

Mattie felt a chill. “Ilona was also one of the children who entered Waisenhaus 44 with Chris. She give an address?”

“Just a cell number,” said Katharina, who was also looking at the document.

Mattie whipped out her cell and dialed just as Tom Burkhart entered. He went straight to her. “I think I’ve got something.”

She held up her finger, hearing Ilona Frei’s phone ring. A synthesized voice answered, telling her to leave a message and a callback number.

“Hi, Ilona. My name is Mattie Engel. I am a friend of Chris Schneider’s. He and I work together at Private here in Berlin. If you could call me, I’d appreciate it. Any time. Day or night. Please, it’s important that I speak with you.”

“Here’s a Greta Amsel, Mattie,” Dr. Gabriel said when she hung up. “She lives out by Falkensee. That’s twenty minutes, tops.”

Mattie jotted down the address and moved toward the door. Again Burkhart said, “Engel, I said I think I’ve got something.”

Mattie hesitated and then replied, “Come with me. Tell me on the way.”

CHAPTER 61

WHEN MY DEAR old friend Greta Amsel opens her door, she’s wearing an apron and I smell bacon frying. She studies my plumber’s disguise and then stands aside. “Down the hall on the right. You don’t suppose it’s a burst pipe?”

I shrug, smile, and respond cheerily, “Who knows? I look, okay?”

The smell of bacon surrounds me as I walk down a hall with bare walls. When I go into the toilet I notice she does not have the array of cosmetics, lotions, and soaps you’d expect.

Greta Amsel lives a simple, austere life.

I set the toolbox down and pull on rubber gloves. I look over my shoulder. She’s watching me. I smile again. “You cooking, yes? I knows in a minute if this is problem. If no, two minutes I be gone.”

She hesitates, and then moves out of the doorway.

I wait until I hear dishes rattle, and then a radio sputtering with news. I fish in the toolbox and come up with my flathead screwdriver and a clipboard with blank paper on it. I flush the toilet, and then, holding the screwdriver beneath the clipboard, I walk toward the smell of the bacon.