Private Berlin by James Patterson; Mark Sullivan

Author:James Patterson; Mark Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781455521753
Publisher: Grand Central
Published: 2013-01-21T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 62

BURKHART PARKED THE Private car down the street from Greta Amsel’s apartment building just as an older man in a blue jumpsuit and matching cap left by the front door, carrying a toolbox.

Mattie was trying Greta Amsel’s number for the third time. No answer. The workman climbed into a dark-blue panel van.

Mattie was barely conscious of him. She was running through the information Burkhart had given her on the way over.

The counterterrorism expert had discovered no other documents regarding the auxiliary slaughterhouse in Ahrensfelde. He’d looked in the Berlin city archives and in records repositories in Ahrensfelde, and there was nothing more than what they’d found already.

People in the area immediately surrounding the blasted abattoir told Burkhart that they’d already spoken to Risi Baumgarten’s agents and knew nothing about the place other than they’d thought it represented a hazard to their children.

Then Burkhart had stopped for lunch at a café not far from the slaughterhouse and met a retired shopkeeper and his lady friend.

The shopkeeper grew up on a farm that used the slaughterhouse. He said a man he knew only as “Falk” ran the place, and he described Falk as an alcoholic with a bitter and gloomy attitude.

Falk had a son who worked at the abattoir too. He couldn’t remember the younger Falk’s name, but he remembered that he was in his late teens the last time he saw him, and very smart despite limited schooling.

The shopkeeper’s lady friend told Burkhart that she walked by the abattoir in the late seventies, late at night, and thought she heard a woman screaming, but it could have been a pig squealing. Pigs are smart, she told Burkhart. They know when there’s killing going on. She told her late husband about the incident, and he’d told her to plug her ears from now on.

The blue workman’s van began to pull out.

“You want to knock on the door?” Burkhart asked.

“We’re here, right?” Mattie said, climbing out.

The van drove past them. They barely gave it a glance.

They tried the buzzer to Greta Amsel’s apartment twice. No answer.

“Let’s come back tomorrow,” Burkhart said.

An older gentleman walked up behind them. “Who are you looking for?”

“Greta Amsel,” Mattie said.

The man looked around. “That’s her bike. She’s here.”

“She’s not answering her buzzer.”

“Lots of the buzzers don’t work. But if her bike’s here, she’s here.”

Burkhart flashed his Private badge. “Mind if we go upstairs and try her door?”

“Hell, I don’t care,” he said, and let them in.

They went to Greta Amsel’s apartment on the fourth floor, knocked, and got no answer. Then they noticed a strange smell coming from inside, a mix of bacon smoke and the acrid taint that lingers after hair catches fire.

“Something’s wrong,” Mattie said.

“I agree,” Burkhart said. He crouched and proceeded to pick the lock.

Guns drawn, they entered the hallway. The smell was worse here, crossed with human feces.

The light was on in the bathroom. The toilet seat was up. The fan was running.

So was the one in the kitchen where Greta Amsel’s corpse lay, sprawled on her belly.

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