got a problem with supplies. With the river being^ closed, there's a shipment still en route.' }
'Is it far from home?'
'Koln. I can get there in four, five hours,' Krasic said.
Til come with you.'
'There's no need. I can manage.'
'I know you can manage, but I'd like to come along. The last couple of days have given me a taste for seeing what goes on in my business.'
CI thought you were doing a live TV interview tonight on Business Berlin? Krasic objected.
'That's not till ten o' clock. We'll have plenty of time to get there and back, the way you drive.'
'What about your new business partner? Aren't you supposed to have a meeting today?' Krasic said, trying to keep the sneer out of his voice.
'She could come too. She likes to see how things work.'
'No way. This is too close to the bone. Telling her is one thing, showing her is another. You come, if you must. But she stays away.'
He heard Tadeusz sigh. 'Oh, all right. Pick me up in half an hour, OK?'
Krasic replaced the phone in his pocket and headed for the door. 'Let me know when you have what I need. Call me, OK?'
'OK, Darko.' The hacker looked up from his screen. 'I love working for you. It's never the same thing twice.'
Tony clicked on his e-mail in-box again. He'd been checking every fifteen minutes or so, trying to fool himself that he was pursuing the investigation. The truth was he wanted to hear from Carol. But still there was nothing from her. He wondered what she was doing. She'd said nothing about her plans for the day, other than that she was waiting to hear from Radecki about the arrangements for their Rotterdam trip. Oh well, at least Marijke had got back to him.
Hi, Tony
I have some very interesting news. No point in copying it to Petra, because she's on surveillance today, and Carol is of course involved in her undercover. But I wanted to talk to you about this.
We have a speeding ticket issued to Wilhelm Albert Mann on the date of de Groot's murder, just after nine in the evening. It was a camera that caught him, not a cop, and we have a photo of the car, a black Volkswagen Golf with Hamburg plates. Mann's address is a boat. The Wilhelmina Rosen. I checked with someone in a shipping registry and this is a big Rhineship, they go all over Europe. What do you think? Is this worth checking out? I am reluctant to call the police in Koln, they will think it's crazy. If you agree it is worth checking out, I have a list of possible places in and around Koln where a Rhineship could be waiting for the river to subside.
You can call me, I think.
She was right, he should call her, but first he needed to check something. He reached into his bag and pulled out the papers from Schloss Hochenstein. Of course, if Mann was their killer, it was possible that the person who had made him suffer didn't share his surname. His maternal grandfather, for example, would probably be called something completely different. But if his luck was running, there might be an illuminating correlation in there somewhere.
He hastily looked down the alphabetized^ists. It was a fairly common name, and he found eight/children whose surname was Mann. Five he dismissed at once. 'They had been euthanased on the grounds of either mental or physical handicap. A sixth, Klaus, had died of pneumonia within a couple of weeks of being admitted to one of the feeder hospitals in Bavaria. Gretel, the seventh, had been admitted to Hohenschonhausen, but the records said nothing about her. The eighth name was the one that leapt out. Albert Mann, from Bamberg, had been taken to Schloss Hochenstein aged eight, diagnosed with chronic anti-social behaviour. The only comment under his treatment regime was Wasserraum.
Tony grabbed the phone and rang the number Marijke had given him. 'Marijke?'
7a?'
'It's Tony Hill here. I got your email.'
'You think it is something?'
'I think it's a huge something. It ties in very neatly to a discovery I've just made in the Schloss Hochenstein records. Can you send me a list of places where I should be looking in Kohl? I'm going to see if I can get on a flight and I'll hire a car at the other end.'
'OK, I will e-mail you the directions immediately.'
'Don't you think you should get your German colleagues on to this now?' he