Tretjak by Max Landorff Read Free Book Online

understand,’ Tretjak replied, and for a brief moment started to get annoyed, ‘what are you thanking me for?’
    â€˜What for? My mother told me everything. How a driver picked her up and took her to the airport and put her on a plane, first class. And how she flew to Buenos Aires. My mother. For the first time, back to Argentina. For the first time, back to see the family. My mother was crying with joy. And all that you made possible – and paid for it as well, Mr Tretjak. You are such a good man, such a good man!’
    It was dawning on Tretjak that it was useless to try to clear up this misunderstanding. Because it had to be a misunderstanding. What else could it be? Who would come up with the idea of sending his cleaning lady half-way around the world, and in first class? Gabriel Tretjak was experiencing a wave of anxiety rising up his spine. He asked the daughter when she expected his mother to return and when she would come back to work.
    â€˜Next week, Mr Tretjak, but you know that better than anybody. Next Monday she will be with you, like always.’
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    Munich, Institute of Forensic Medicine/CSI (Criminal Investigation Services), 12 noon
    The pathologist was a friendly, stocky lady with the distinctive accent of the Swabian region of south-western Germany. Inspector Maler had known her for a long time, and every time he saw her he was struck by the contrast: on the one hand this MD with her pleasant femininity, and on the other hand the brutal reality of the bodies which she investigated.
    In the case of the murder of Harry Kerkhoff the forensic scientist had not found any traces that would have offered up any clues about the identity of the killer. Cause of death: stabbing of the liver. There were two more knife wounds: one had hit the kidney, the other the right lung. The knife had been thrust with precision, and only a little blood had seeped out. Somebody had known what they were doing. A professional hit. The murder weapon had been a pointed, thin, extremely sharp blade, like a dagger. That was it for the moment – more details later.
    Time of death: about six to ten hours before the body was discovered in the horsebox. Harry Kerkhoff had being drinking, his blood alcohol level had been 1.2 millilitres. ‘That’s about three glasses of wine where I come from,’ the doctor added helpfully.
    What made this murder particularly gruesome was the fact that the perpetrator had removed both of the eyes of the victim with a round instrument, something like a spoon. It could also have been a sort of scoop similar to the ones used in ice cream parlours to scrape the ice cream from the tubs, the pathologist explained. One could assume that the scooping had not damaged the eyes, leading to the conclusion that the murderer had taken them along as a souvenir. As the removal had been done with great precision one could further assume that this was not the first time the perpetrator had done this. Maler looked for a reaction in the face of the doctor, but could find none. Madame Doctor had herself totally under control.
    An ice cream scoop. When Maler heard this word, he knew that it had started. Again. Whenever he worked on brutal murders he was plagued by day-mares, as he called them. Suddenly, in the middle of the day, these images would appear in his mind’s eye. Always following the same pattern: he would see the scene he was just living but arranged as a catastrophe. The waitress in the coffee shop, for example, was suddenly covered in blood and her right arm was missing. Or he was driving along a street and saw a horrific accident with many fatalities. It always only lasted for a split second. Then the image was gone. As if a picture editor had inserted a brief clip into a scene.
    Maler had always imagined that these day-mares functioned as a transformer of his over-worked police brain. All those horrible experiences which he had to live through in his line of duty were spat