Forty Hours: A breath-taking thriller Page 5

  Faris nodded, choosing to keep to himself the fact that currently, he wasn’t actually a detective. “This morning, I got a phone call that prompted me to come to this location.” He ignored Andersen’s questioning eyes. There would be time for details later on. He left out the story of the altercation with the gang members and gave a brief summary of how the train had exploded.

  Andersen’s jaw tightened. “You’re saying that you received a call that prompted you to come here. What does that mean?”

  “The caller sent me something that you should see.”

  Before he could play the video, one of the politicians Andersen had been speaking with joined them.

  “Marvin?” The man’s face was gray. Faris had seen him somewhere before, perhaps on TV. The man was probably from one of the senate departments.

  Andersen turned toward him.

  “The Senator of the Interior is on his way.” The man rubbed his eyes as if he could wipe away what all he had already seen.

  Andersen nodded and then turned back to Faris. “Did the caller provide any clues that could help us classify what happened here? Islamist terrorists? Radical right-wingers?” Since the NSU case, which had initially been dubbed the Döner Murders and later turned out to be one of the biggest cases of right-wing capital offenses in the history of the BRD, the state police always considered the possibility of neo-Nazi terrorists.

  Faris shrugged. His head and shoulders still hurt, and the persistent ringing in his ears hadn’t subsided. “You really need to see the video.”

  “Marvin – the Senator of the Interior,” the man from the senate urged.

  Andersen looked thoughtful. “I’ll be right there.” However, he didn’t immediately follow the man to the dark limousine that had just come to a stop at the end of a long row of rescue vehicles. Instead, Andersen turned back to Faris. “I have to go justify myself to the Senator. Arrange for a ride to Tempelhof so you can answer more questions about this unknown assailant.” Tempelhof was the internal nickname for the building on Tempelhofer Damm that held the offices of Department 5. “I’ll watch your video later. Show it …”

  Faris raised his hand to interrupt Andersen. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to join my colleagues on Keithstraße and start working on the investigation.” Keithstraße was the location of State Police 1, the department in charge of personal crimes under whose auspices SURV fell.

  “What makes you think this is an SURV case?” Andersen asked.

  During the interruption caused by the man from the senate, Faris had forwarded the video to the point that showed the man nailed to the cross. He now held his phone out to Andersen. “This is what I received right before the explosion.”

  Andersen’s expression was inscrutable. He glanced up silently, watching as the Senator of the Interior climbed out of the limousine where he was instantly engulfed by a crowd of people. “Understood,” he decided. “You seem to be right. This really does look like an SURV case. Go ahead and go! I’ll follow as soon as I can.”

  *

  Jenny woke up because someone out in the hallway was shouting, “Dieter!”

  She remained lying where she was without moving – on her side, one hand under her face, the other behind her on her back. This was how she often slept, ever since the pediatrician had advised her, six years ago, against sleeping on her stomach. The guy out in the hallway yelled “Dieter!” again.

  Jenny hollered: “Dieter, get out there, or I’ll drag you out myself!”

  She then glanced up.

  The underside of another mattress was hanging above her head. A sagging metal frame composed of numerous iron rings, intertwined like the mesh of a chainmail shirt Jenny had seen several months ago in Rothenburg. When she and her best friend Pia had arrived at the youth hostel the day before yesterday, all that had still been available was this bunk bed. The two girls had argued for a while about who would sleep in the upper bunk, but Pia won out in the end.

  “Dieter, don’t be an asshole!” The voice rang out a third time. “Just get out here!”

  Jenny held back a grin. Besides the dozens of church conference attendees, the hostel was currently lodging quite a few young men who were obviously going to some rock festival. Most of them were wearing ripped jeans and leather jackets. At supper last night, Jenny had caught sight of one guy with long, pitch black hair, whose biceps and neck were covered with tattoos. He had smiled at her over the salad bar, and for some reason, Jenny thought he looked sweet. Perhaps she would run into him again today.

  She sat up with a yawn. Thanks to their other four roommates, who had stayed up chatting until way past midnight, she hadn’t slept well. Two of them had transitioned to snoring so loudly that it had almost been comical. Fortunately, the four graces had dragged themselves out of bed before six this morning and were long gone. Jenny and Pia had taken grateful advantage of the opportunity to snatch a little more sleep.

  Jenny now reached for her watch, which she had cautiously stashed underneath her pillow; the result of being a long-time veteran of hostel stays. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and peered at the time. Eight twenty-five. Perfect!

  She swung her feet contentedly out of bed.

  “Dieter!” The voice in the corridor shouted again. This time, it sounded farther away and muffled as if it had rounded several corners.

  “Dieter, Dieter,” Pia mumbled sleepily from the upper bunk. “Hopefully, nothing bad’s happened to you.”

  Jenny grinned. “He might be lying dead in the Landwehrkanal.” Yesterday, she and Pia had visited a Rosa Luxemburg exhibition, and afterward, the two of them had discussed the labor leader’s death for some time.

  The bed springs above Jenny creaked, and Pia’s tousled blonde head appeared over the edge. “Sleep okay?”

  Jenny yawned again. “After the bears left the forest, yes.” She stretched. “A little short, but that’s alright.” They had a full day ahead of them. They wanted to attend two Bible studies, a worship service at the Gedächtniskirche, and a few other events.

  Jenny’s thoughts drifted back to the long-haired guy from last night. Why in the world hadn’t she introduced herself?

  Standing up, she walked over to the window and stretched again. The sky looked gray. It was too bad really, since apparently, until yesterday, it had been fairly warm and sunny here. “The good Lord could’ve sent us better weather, especially considering that his two great church bodies are reuniting for these few days.”

  Pia’s hand slid out from under the covers. “Watch your mouth!” she warned, mimicking her mother’s tone of voice. “That’s blasphemy you be saying!”

  With a grin, Jenny stuck out her tongue. She thought back to the long campaign she had waged to get permission to travel to Berlin on her own with Pia. In the end, the only reason her parents had agreed was because the church conference was their destination – and above all, because she promised that they would attend the papal Mass. Jenny once again felt slightly guilty about the arguments they had had. After taking off her yellow pajamas, she stuffed them into her backpack, and slipped into her jeans and a sweater. It looked cool outside.

  But all that didn’t matter, did it? She was here. In Berlin. Together with Pia. She would see the Pope. She pulled on her sneakers, then slid her arms into the denim jacket her father had bought her for the trip. Something that felt like a finger poked her into her side, and she rummaged around in her pocket for it. It was the glow stick she had bought, right after her arrival, from a souvenir shop. She wanted to use it tomorrow during the massive concluding service. She repositioned it in her pocket so that it was more comfortable and wouldn’t bother her. Her thoughts then turned to the nice guy with the tattoos.

  Would he be at supper again tonight?

  She swore that she would speak to him this time.

  *

  Shortly before nine-thirty, Faris found himself back in the so-called War Room, the large office on the upper floor of the State Police building on Keith
straße.

  This was the headquarters for Department 119, which hadn’t existed until a few years ago. At that time, the city had witnessed a series of brutal honor killings. In their aftermath, the head of the state criminal division had managed to pry funding for a new murder division from the Senator of the Interior. And, since this commission was always summoned whenever a crime had any connection with religion, it had been unofficially dubbed SURV: the Special Unit for Religious Violence.

  “Andersen doesn’t know anything about your suspension. You know that, right?” asked Paul, who had driven Faris over to the office.

  Faris was sitting at the desk that had been his until recently; before the explosion and, more importantly, before his suspension. The desk pad was still the same, the one he had brought from home. It was some old paper thing he had received as an advertising gift from an auto shop. Besides that, not much else remained from his earlier time here. His old coffee cup had been replaced by some expensive-looking, matte black vessel. In place of his photo of Anisah, his sister, now stood a stylish plexiglass cube containing snapshots of various attractive young people.

  Faris folded his hands on top of the desktop as he stared blankly ahead. In the room’s silence, the ringing in his ears sounded even worse. “Let’s just keep it that way for the time being,” he suggested. He thought about the phone in his pocket. The caller had had some particular reason for calling him, of all people, and he wanted to find out what it was.

  “Where are the others?” he asked.

  The SURV team was composed of seven permanent investigators and a contact person at the forensics institute. Of these eight staff members, at least half should have been on duty, but the War Room was deserted except for Faris and Paul.

  “A briefing,” Paul surmised. “I bet they’re being filled in on what has happened.”

  Faris forced himself to breathe deeply. His shoulder throbbed from the collision with the subway station wall. Standing up, he walked over to the sink in the corner of the room. He leaned heavily against the sink edge and stared into the mirror. His eyes were reddened, and his skin was unnaturally pale from the fine concrete dust that had settled, like a veil, across his entire body. His black hair had a gray shimmer to it, which made him look like an old, hunched man. And this was exactly the way he felt.

  He turned on the water and held his hands under the cold stream. All of a sudden, a wave of memories washed over him. He heard a child weeping. Scenes he had witnessed stood out sharply in his mind – not as vague and threatening as those that came at night in his nightmares, but garish and painful, like a fresh wound. He saw a finger with a red polished nail but didn’t know if it belonged to the dead woman in the museum or the woman in the red dress. He then envisioned the subway train vanishing into the dark gullet of the tunnel. Fire spewed from it and enveloped him. He could smell burning flesh. His own flesh. Voices and screams echoed through his skull. He heard the girl over and over again, sobbing Papa! He heard the shrill accusing words of the woman.

  What did you do?

  He sluggishly splashed water onto his face and ran his damp hands through his hair. Dust and pieces of concrete fluttered down, landing with a faint clattering sound in the sink. Glancing past his lower arm, his gaze fell upon the dark blue carpet. From the door to his seat and from there to where he was now standing, a trail of light gray footprints were visible. His footprints.

  He shook his head. “What did you do?” he murmured.

  Seeming to sense that Faris needed a little time to pull himself together, Paul had busied himself with the task of getting the coffee machine to work. He now turned around. “What did you say?”

  Faris realized that he must have uttered the words out loud. He straightened up. “What did you do?” he repeated. “A woman at the scene asked me that. The people thought I was the bomber.” He moved his shoulder, trying to interpret the pain. Just a bruise. He couldn’t shake the image of the injured man with the abdominal injury, the horrified, bewildered look on the daughter’s face. He shut his eyes and inhaled as much air as he could.

  His old chest wound twinged with pain, and he had to cough. In the distance, he heard the door open, and when he opened his eyes again and turned around, a young man he didn’t know was standing in the room. Dressed like a civilian, he was slender and darkly tanned. His legs were clad in designer jeans, and his shirt was adorned with a discreet logo on the left-hand side of the chest.

  Paul nodded at him. “Faris, this is Marc Sommer.”

  Faris knew that Marc was new to SURV. He held a degree in psychology, and within the group of case analysts who had completed their police training over the past three years, he was considered one of the best. However, Faris also knew that Paul hoped that Faris would soon return to the team, and this had resulted in tension between him and Marc.

  Faris smiled at Marc, who looked relieved. He had very light, watery-blue eyes. “Hello, Faris,” he said in greeting as he extended his hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you.” His eyes darted over to the desk with the black cup and the plexiglass cube. Both things fit so well with Marc’s appearance that Faris knew instantly who had received his desk. Clenching his jaw, Faris gazed at his own damp hands. After cutting off the faucet, he reached for a paper towel and dried his hands before taking Marc’s hand. “Hello, Marc.” He turned back to Paul. “I looked Arabic, and that was more than enough reason for their assumptions.” His thoughts wandered back to the museum bomber, and for a moment, he didn’t move as his mind weighed the various possibilities.

  Could the caller have been the attacker from back then? Could he actually have survived the devastating explosion?

  Faris sighed. Looking into the mirror, he saw that his hair was still gray. His efforts to clean it had only resulted in short strands sticking out jaggedly in all directions. He smoothed them flat before returning to the desk and settling heavily into the chair. If it bothered Marc that he was claiming his old seat, his younger colleague didn’t let it show.

  “You’re thinking about the museum bomber, aren’t you?” Paul asked, cautiously.

  Faris didn’t reply. There was no reason to. He and his partner had always understood each other without saying a word, and it was a good feeling that over the past ten months, none of that had changed.

  Marc seemed to sense that there was some kind of exchange between his two colleagues that he wasn’t in on. He cleared his throat awkwardly as he crossed his arms. “The museum bomber? What does he have to do with this?”

  The ringing in Faris’s ears grew louder and muffled Paul’s attempt to bring the new guy up to speed on the caller and the video.

  “Faris?” Paul’s voice startled him.

  Faris blinked. A glance at the clock above the door revealed that several minutes had lapsed. Paul’s face was expressionless. “Everything alright?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Faris nodded.

  “You two are wondering if the caller was the same man who blew up the Klersch Museum?” Marc picked up the plexiglass cube and turned it over in his hands. “Didn’t the explosion destabilize the building so much that they had to tear it down? And the death count was high, right?”

  “Yes,” Paul confirmed somberly.

  “Seventy-five.” Faris declared, his voice sounding rough. The explosives unit had run all sorts of analyses, and in their final report, Faris recalled that they had documented seventy-five bodies. But had they been able to definitively identify any of the body parts they had located as belonging to the attacker? He couldn’t remember and would have to check.

  “My knowledge about what happened is fairly general,” Marc admitted.

  Paul searched Faris’s gaze, waiting on his mute permission before starting his account. “The whole thing started as a run-of-the-mill hostage situation. Faris just happened to be in the area when a call came in that a man had entered the museum and taken seventy-four people hostage. Faris was the first one on the scene, and he was able to get the man to talk abou
t himself. He learned that the hostage-taker was Syrian. He had married a German woman, but they were divorced. He had assembled a bomb belt after his wife denied him visitation rights with their child. After abducting his son, he took the child to the museum in order to demand his parental access.”

  Paul’s eyes never left Faris as he spoke. Faris felt as if he were being stretched on the rack.

  A man with dark skin, a belt, ten kilos of explosives. What would that lead to?

  “Let’s talk,” he had said to the man. “I was born in Alexandria. I’m a Muslim like you …”

  And then the bomb on the other side of the door went off, sending the hostage-taker, his son, and seventy-three other people to their deaths.

  All because he, Faris, had made a mistake and completely misinterpreted the situation. More than that – because he had jumped on the same bandwagon as every other crappy racist out there. An Arab? Of course, he had to be an Islamist fundamentalist. Faris hadn’t wasted even one second questioning his assumptions about the man’s motive.

  His stomach rebelled as he thought about the bodies, about the red-painted fingernail.

  He rubbed his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “You couldn’t have done anything.” Paul’s voice roared in his ear.

  Faris began to shake his head but froze mid-movement. “Let it go,” he murmured. He knew Paul’s opinion on this matter, just as Paul knew his.

  “God, Faris!” he heard his partner curse. “You still act as if you were the one who pushed the button, not that bastard!”

  Faris didn’t reply. What could he say, anyway?

  “After the explosion, you were put on sick leave for a while,” Marc said, a few moments later. “But you’re recovered now, aren’t you?”

  Faris moved the arm that had been seriously injured in the explosion. The burn scar across his bicep tightened. He could guess the next question, and he wasn’t wrong.

  “Why aren’t you back at work yet?”