Unfortunately the hotel made use of only two CCTV cameras, one in the lobby and one at the rear entrance. Cameras on every floor would have made Alvarez’s life a whole lot easier. With only two lots of footage to go on, Alvarez had to rely on what the police report told him to piece together what had happened. That report was, however, still frustratingly brief and full of holes. It would be a while before those gaps were filled.
‘Here he comes,’ Kennard said. ‘Walking to reception.’
Alvarez looked at the report. ‘Mr Bishop, room 407.’
On the screen Alvarez watched the mystery man move from the reception desk to the elevator, where he seemingly waited for it to arrive before suddenly standing to one side. Obviously hiding from the two men who stepped out.
Both he and Kennard had watched the relevant parts at least twenty times, and it still amazed Alvarez what he was seeing. As one of the soon-to-be-dead guys stood in the lobby, the killer moved right past him, coming so close it looked as if they were touching, before slipping unnoticed into the elevator.
‘Smooth,’ Kennard whispered.
Alvarez found himself nodding. ‘Fast-forward a moment.’
The tech worked the controls and a whizzing sound accompanied the scrambling picture for a few seconds.
‘That’s enough,’ Alvarez said.
On the screen there were now two men, clearly anxious, frantically stabbing at the elevator buttons before rushing to the stairwell and disappearing.
Kennard shook his head. ‘And a few minutes later they’re both corpses.’
‘They came to the hotel for him, not the other way around,’ Alvarez said. ‘Okay, let’s skip until the other guys come in.’
Alvarez loosened his tie for perhaps the tenth time, while Kennard stared at the screen. The tech worked silently on the fast-forwarding. The room was stuffy. There were no windows and the air conditioner was on its way to machine hell. Outside it was bitterly cold, but Alvarez, Kennard, and the tech geek had been in a ten-by-ten box full of electrical equipment for several long hours. The air was practically poisonous.
‘Here we go,’ Kennard said.
The man who had to be Ozols’s killer stepped out from the elevator and sat down in an armchair. Infuriatingly he kept his face hidden from the camera at all times, not overtly so, but with a gentle angling or inclination of the head ensuring the camera didn’t pick up his features. It was too much to be just luck.
He couldn’t have known where the camera was positioned before he arrived at the hotel, but he had checked in several days before, and the hotel only kept recordings for forty-eight hours. After that they were reused. Alvarez couldn’t see the point of that. The hotel might as well not have any cameras at all. He’d told the manager as much.
The killer reappeared on the recording for just a few seconds, moving through the lobby to the stairwell. Then he was gone again, and that was the last time he appeared on the footage. One body had been found in the kitchen, so to Alvarez it was a reasonable guess that the killer had left that way instead of the tradesman’s, where the second camera was located. Then, more people had been killed in the building opposite, and another in the street itself.
Alvarez stood without moving as the rest of the recording played on, hoping for something else that might help. He was dog tired. His eyes stung. He was sure Kennard was feeling the same. He guessed the tech geek was used to staring at screens all day and didn’t have a problem with it. He probably found this kind of crap exciting. Freak.
After another thirty minutes Alvarez finally pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘We’re not going to get anything more from this.’
Kennard nodded. ‘Agreed.’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘You think they do Chinese chow in this town? I don’t know about you guys but I could do with some crispy duck. I’m sick of this frogfood crap.’
The tech found his voice. ‘There’s a good place a couple of blocks west with some damn fine Asian ass waiting tables. I’ll show you.’
‘Good.’ Kennard slapped his stomach. ‘I’m starved.’
Alvarez was in no mood to eat. He spoke, half to himself. ‘One guy murders Ozols, then two hours later he goes back to his hotel where seven shooters try and kill him, but instead he kills them all.’
‘Yeah,’ Kennard said, eyes on the door.
‘We’ve got a description from the receptionist for a tall or average-height Caucasian with brown or black hair. But it could be dyed. Can’t remember the eye colour. Maybe glasses. Some age between twenty-five and forty. He’s got a beard but that’ll be shaved by now if it wasn’t stuck on, so what we’re left with implicates pretty much every other white guy out there.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Kennard agreed. ‘This is bullshit. We’ve got nothing.’ He picked up his jacket.
Alvarez couldn’t argue. He pushed his palm against the grain of his stubble as he thought about what to do next. He was drained but didn’t want to sleep. There was still too much to do. His cell phone rang and he was quick to answer it. When he had hung up he smiled at Kennard.
‘You were saying?’
CHAPTER 14
Munich, Germany
Tuesday
01:12 CET
It was raining when Victor left the train with fourteen other passengers. The station was mostly empty at that time of night and the amount of open space around Victor gave him some cause for concern. He did his best to exit quickly but without looking like he was he trying to do so. Outside the station there were no taxis waiting so he set off on foot. After sitting down on the train for several hours he was glad of the chance to stretch his legs.
He found a fast-food place that was still open and took a seat by the window to eat his meal. Substandard even for junk food, but he needed the calories and there was no quicker way to get refuelled. At least the milkshake wasn’t too bad. Vanilla.
He hailed a taxi, telling the driver the name of Svyatoslav’s street, acting as if he didn’t speak German so he wouldn’t have to talk inanities during the journey. The building was a four-storey apartment block in the east of Munich. The area was affluent, a nineties development of expensive river-view apartments and spacious housing.
The building’s main door was dead bolted, and a security camera and light made it too risky to pick, so he spent the night sampling Munich’s all-night bars, allowing himself no more than one drink an hour. He used his time eyeing members of the opposite sex like the other single men. He stayed a maximum of two hours per bar to avoid people remembering him too easily. At six he took breakfast in a small cafe before heading back to the building, a takeout black coffee in hand, steam clouding in the frigid air.
He stood on the opposite side of the road to the building, shielded from the drizzle by a bus shelter. The shelter also gave him a reason for waiting on the street should anyone notice him. Svyatoslav lived in apartment 318 according to the hotel records, but there was always the chance he wasn’t really Mikhail Svyatoslav. Victor was pretty confident this wasn’t the case. Svyatoslav’s passport was too well used to be a random identity and so was either genuine or his only cover. It contained numerous stamps for trips to countries outside the European Union, mostly old Soviet states — Estonia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, among others. He either travelled frequently for work or had been a keen tourist with an unimaginative taste in destinations. In any case, the address the identity corresponded to would be worth investigating.
Victor took a sip of the coffee. It was typical German fare. Awful. They made world-class firearms but seemingly couldn’t brew a good cup of coffee if the survival of their nation depended on it. Assuming they’d run out of guns.