How had Magda Kouzmin found out about the method before March 1999?
There was only one way. Through Professor Ernst Herschel’s research group.
Arto Söderstedt had been given a list by Herschel. He fished it out of his laptop bag. What had Elena Basedow said in Weimar? ‘There were plenty of volunteer students, right up to autumn 1998. Unpaid history and archaeology students.’
Magda had left her life as a prostitute in August 1997. She could hardly have become an unpaid history and archaeology student that quickly. Her circumstances must have been chaotic. She had been on the run from a terrifying mafia organisation and needed to keep her head down. Besides that, she would have needed to detox and come to a decision about her future. That probably wouldn’t have been possible until somewhere around the new year, 1997-1998. Unpaid history and archaeology students had been involved until autumn 1998. That narrowed things down to roughly the first half of 1998.
Söderstedt worked through the list. According to Herschel, the voluntary students hadn’t been given access to a particularly large amount of information, but there must have been ways of getting round that. She could hardly have pretended to be an established historical researcher.
Which workers had joined during the first half of 1998?
There were seven names listed as having started in spring 1998, disappearing when the building was closed for renovation in the autumn of that year. Of those names, five were women. They were: Steffi Prütz, Maryann Rollins, Inka Rothmann, Elena Basedow and Heidi Neumann.
Arto Söderstedt looked through their names one by one.
He had met Elena Basedow, of course. She was still working on Herschel’s so-called ‘assistant staff’. The alert young woman who had come to meet him on the platform in Weimar Hauptbahnhof.
‘Herr Söderstadt.’
He could cross her off.
But as he looked through the four remaining names, something happened. It was her forename. Magda, after her paternal grandmother. But there were, of course, two grandmothers. The Kouzmin woman, who had taken care of the orphaned Franz Sheinkman in Buchenwald. What had her name been?
Elena Kouzmin.
Arto Söderstedt was motionless.
Elena.
He had met her.
Only a few hours earlier, he had met her.
A wave of ice ripped through him.
The leader of the Erinyes had given him a lift in her car. A Volkswagen Vento. In Weimar.
Elena Basedow was Magda Kouzmin.
The woman who fed Nikos Voultsos to the wolverines, heaved Hamid al-Jabiri like a wheelbarrow across the platform in Odenplan and hung Anton Eriksson aka Leonard Sheinkman upside down from an oak in Södra Begravningsplatsen.
He dialled Ernst Herschel’s number and asked: ‘Elena Basedow, who met me at the station – has she been working for you long?’
‘She doesn’t work for me.’
‘What?’
‘I came to Weimar yesterday, to go through a few things in my office. I was staying in a hotel overnight. We happened to meet in the evening, and I remembered her from our work on the Pain Centre. In the morning, I asked her whether she couldn’t pick you up from the station in my car, since I had a couple of errands to run.’
‘How was she?’ Söderstedt asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘How was she in bed?’
‘My God.’
‘I’m serious,’ said Söderstedt. ‘How was she in bed? It’s important.’
There was a moment of silence.
‘I’ve never known such pleasure,’ said Professor Ernst Herschel.
Söderstedt thanked him and hung up. He sat there for a moment, wallowing in his thoughts.
What had she been doing there?
What additional information had she needed?
He recalled all that had happened between them. It was less than five hours ago. Her gaze on the platform. That first look? A quick, sharp, shy look.
If she – like di Spinelli and Herschel – had recognised Pertti Lindrot in Arto Söderstedt, she had managed to hide it very, very well.
And of course she had.
What was the next step?
It came to him via an agitated woman’s voice.
‘We’re really starting to get tired of asking you now.’
Arto Söderstedt looked up and saw a furious air hostess with her hands clamped on her hips.
‘Sorry?’ he said in confusion.
‘The plane landed half an hour ago,’ the hostess replied.
37
ARTO SÖDERSTEDT WAS wearing sturdy climbing shoes and a thick jumper with reinforced elbows. In addition to that, he had on a pair of military-green trousers with a large number of pockets.
He had checked in to a hotel in the immediate vicinity of Palazzo Riguardo. Now he was sitting in his room, looking at his watch. 4 a.m. He set out into the Milanese night.
Outside, the sky was black. The people of Milan were still enjoying their beauty sleep. He could hear no more than a car or two in the distance. The stars were gleaming from the depths of the heavens; the moon was nothing more than a thin slice.
He crossed a small park and found himself at the end of an alleyway. On one side, the smooth outer wall of a building. On the other, the rear of Palazzo Riguardo, its few solitary windows set high up in the wall.
Söderstedt could see a circular vent with a heavy-looking cover. It was sunk into the thick pink wall of the building.
He watched the two surveillance cameras slowly, slowly rotating on their axes. He waited.
When the cameras reached the outermost points of their motions, he rushed into the alleyway and pressed himself up against the wall opposite the palace. He glanced at his watch and waited. The cameras turned and began to move back, each turning in a different direction.
The key dangling from his hand was trembling slightly.
His eyes were fixed on his watch. Four, three, two, one.
Zero.
He ran. Straight over the alleyway. Key quickly into lock. Vent lid quickly opened. And in he jumped. Into the unknown.
He heard the lid slam shut in the alleyway as he was transported into the palace through a pitch-black, downward shaft. Then he landed in a container with a bang.
He was surrounded by a terrible stench. Rotting fish. He couldn’t see a thing and the air seemed thin. He lay on the rubbish like a shapeless lump, desperately trying to breathe calmly. He put the key into a pocket which he fastened shut with Velcro. He groped after another pocket and made out the contours of the small pistol he had found in the envelope from Marconi. ‘A purely hypothetical pistol, I assume,’ Söderstedt had said. He let go of it and allowed his hand to wander to yet another pocket. He pulled a small torch out of it and switched it on.
He really was lying on a pile of rubbish. Ants were running back and forth over the remnants of old fish. A couple of small, black worms were wriggling in and out of the eye sockets of a fish head. He could feel a rising wave of nausea he simply had to force back. He had no alternative.
He pointed the bright beam of light up at the roof of the rubbish container. Sure enough, he could make out the mouths of four chutes, each around half a metre in diameter. He found the shaft he had come in through. It was behind him. Slowly, he got to his feet. He could stand, provided he hunched right over. He moved past the first of the chutes in the left-hand corner of the container. At the second, he paused and put his head into the hole. He grabbed the torch and shone it upwards.
The chute turned into a shaft which sloped off to one side at an angle of sixty or so degrees. Beyond that, he could see that it turned sharply upwards. From there, it would be a seven-metre vertical climb.
He just hoped no one would throw anything out from the little kitchenette at four in the morning.