Self's Deception

  single big projects and also the small projects of a given year. It was quite straightforward. Under the heading number 15, Peschkalek had filed away his big features, the first about Italian contrabass makers, the second about closed steelworks in Lorraine, and the next three about football, alpine-horn blowing, and child prostitution in Germany. Binder number 15.6 was dedicated to the Viernheim attack.

  Before I sat down on the toilet in his bathroom with the binder, I called Brigitte and told her about traffic jams and construction. “Is Ingo there yet? I won't make it before ten— don't wait for me with dinner.”

  They had finished the soup already and were about to start on the monkfish. “We'll keep a plate warm for you.”

  As in the other binders, in this one, too, were pictures first and then the text. It took a while till I realized what the photos showed. They were dark, and I was at the point of judging them failures. But they were night shots. A car, disguised figures in a forest, dug-up mounds of earth that the disguised figures were doing something with, uniformed figures, and an explosion with two bodies flying through the air, a fire, people running. The Viernheim attack in pictures.

  The texts began with a letter to the local and regional press, in which the group After Fall Comes Winter took credit for the attack on the poison-gas depot in the Lampertheim National Forest and made threats against capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. In a later letter, Peschkalek wrote about a terrorist who wanted out, had confided in him, and had handed him a confession and a video recording showing the Viernheim attack. Peschkalek praised the material and enclosed stills as proof of the video's quality, and excerpts from the confession. He wanted a million marks for it. The letter was to the ZDF television network. The next page in the binder listed who else he had contacted: the various broadcasting corporations, a Hamburg magazine and weekly, the serious press, the tabloids, and finally the gutter press. Then came the responses. At best they were surprised: The material looked interesting, but nothing was known about an attack on a poison-gas depot in the Viernheim Meadows. Some of the replies were curt, saying that the police knew nothing of such an attack—someone had spent time looking into it and was angry. More often than not, the replies were form letters thanking him, but unceremoniously turning him down. Finally I found in the binder the confession of the terrorist, an eighty-page manuscript, obviously printed on the same printer as Peschkalek's letters, and, in a plastic cover, the American file. I did not look at the video marked 15.6—the stills were enough.

  I needed a breather before I could head over to Brigitte's place. I put a few photos in my bag, turned out the light in the bathroom, put the binder back, sat down in the Venetian chair, and looked out the window. On a balcony across the way three men had settled down to a game of Skat. I heard the bidding and calling of suits and sometimes a fist banging on the table along with a card. A red light blinked over the harbor, warning airplanes of a crane.

  Had Lemke and Peschkalek mounted a spectacle for the media? I ought to have figured out much earlier that Lemke no longer believed in political battles or waged such battles anymore. A fanatic, a terrorist—that didn't pan out with him. He was able to slip into the role and play it convincingly. But that was all. Lemke was a player, a strategist, a gambler. He had staged a terrorist attack with a few foolish youngsters, staged it in a way that ought to have pitched the media into a feeding frenzy. There were even casualties, presumably unplanned, but heightening the worth of the spectacle and the price of the material. But nobody played along: not the Americans, not the police, not the media. None of the million marks they had intended to rake in had materialized.

  25

  That's strange

  I didn't call Nägelsbach. I drove over to Brigitte's place, where I found her, Peschkalek, and Manu having chocolate, espresso, and sambuca over a game of Risk. I had a hard time responding to their cheerfulness. But I'd had a long drive and could plead tiredness. I ate the leftovers and watched them play.

  It was a heated game. After years of living in Rio, Manu conquered and defended South America tooth and nail. His strategy was to occupy North America and Africa in order to secure South America—he didn't care about the rest of the world. Brigitte had only joined in the game because she didn't want to be a wet blanket. She had captured Australia, was fantasizing about harmonious coexistence with aborigines, and was not interested in further conquests. So Peschkalek managed to capture Europe and Asia without effort. But his mission was to free Australia and South America, and unlike Brigitte or Manu he took his mission seriously, got entangled in a hopeless war on two fronts, and didn't rest until he was utterly defeated. Manu and Brigitte were overjoyed, and he laughed along with them. But he was rankled. He wasn't a good loser.

  “Time to go to bed!” Brigitte clapped her hands.

  “No, no, no!” Manu was in high spirits and ran from the living room to the kitchen and back to the living room, and turned on the TV. Yugoslavia was falling apart. Rostock was bankrupt. A baby had been abducted from a hospital in Lüdenscheid and found in a phone booth in Leverkusen. The Frenchman Marcel Croust won over Viktor Krempel in the Manila chess tournament, establishing himself as the challenger to the world champion. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office announced the arrest of the suspected terrorists Helmut Lemke and Leonore Salger in a village in Spain, from where they were to be extradited to Germany. The TV showed them being led in handcuffs to a helicopter by policemen in black-lacquered hats.

  “Isn't that…”

  “Yes.”

  Brigitte knew Leo from the picture leaning against the small stone lion on my desk. Brigitte shook her head. Leo, with her unwashed, stringy hair, bleary-eyed face, and grubby checked shirt, did not meet her approval.

  “Are you going to see her again?” she asked me casually. Even when I had told her about my trip with Leo to Locarno, she had not made much of a fuss. Even then I hadn't fallen for it.

  “I don't know.”

  Peschkalek stared at the television screen without a word. I couldn't see his face. When the news was over he cleared his throat and said, “It's amazing what the teamwork of the European police can pull off nowadays.” He turned to me and launched into a minilecture about Interpol and the Schen-gen Treaty, the investigative role of the computer, Europol, and the new European forensic database.

  “You'll try to get to see those two …” I began.

  “I guess I ought to, don't you think?”

  “… and you'll try to talk them into playing the role I didn't want to play?”

  He weighed which answer would trigger what question, wasn't sure, and dodged. “I'll think about it.”

  “What can you offer them?”

  “What do you mean?” He seemed uncomfortable.

  “Well, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office can drop charges, apply for a lower penalty, or even grant pardons in order to salvage its story of the Käfertal attack. What can you offer? Money?”

  “Me, money?”

  “For a good feature article there's always good money, wouldn't you say?”

  “Things aren't that good.” He got up. “I've got to get going.”

  “Things aren't that good? There should be hundreds of thousands of marks in something like this, and with the real photos and documents even more. What would you say to a million?”

  He looked at me, vexed. He was trying to figure out whether I'd just hit on that number or if I was hinting at something. His flight-instinct won. “Well, so long, then.”

  Brigitte had listened to us annoyed. When Peschkalek had gone, after kisses on both cheeks, she asked what was going on. “Are you fighting?” I dodged her question. As we lay in bed, she rested her head on my arm and looked at me.

  “Gerhard.”

  “Yes?”

  “Is that why they let you out of prison? I mean, did you tell them where to find the two of them?”

  “For God's sake …”

  “What would be wrong with that? I don't know the g
irl, but she's on the run with him, and he did assault you, after all. That was him, wasn't it? The one I met at the door when I found you in terrible shape and covered in blood.”

  “Yes, but I had no idea they were in Spain. Leo called me once or twice, and it sounded far away—that was all.”

  “That's strange.” She turned around, nestled her back against me, and fell asleep.

  I knew what she found strange. How would a policeman in a godforsaken village in the Spanish provinces come upon German terrorists? Not without a tip-off. I conjured up the image of a German tourist abroad going to the police to make a statement that he recognized the inhabitants of a neighboring bungalow as the terrorists for whom there was an alarm out. Then I remembered the tip-off that had led Rawitz and Bleckmeier to me, not to mention the tip-off that had landed me in prison. These had not come from a tourist. Nor had the tip-off that had brought Tietzke to Wendt's corpse. I might have been pointed out by someone who happened to see me, someone from Mannheim who had been drawn to the Oden-wald and Amorbach by the warm summery day. But the tip-off about Wendt's corpse had come from Wendt's murderer.

  26

  A pointed chin and broad hips

  Philipp wasn't in his hospital room.

  “He's out in the garden.” The nurse followed me to the window. Philipp, in his dressing gown, was walking around a pond, every step as cautious as if he were treading on thin ice. This is how old men walk, and even if Philipp were able to walk normally again, there would come a day when this would be the only way he could walk. A day would come when this would be the only way I could walk, too.

  “This is my third round already. Thanks, but I don't need your arm. I'm not using the cane they've been trying to foist on me either.”

  I walked beside him, resisting the urge to tread as cautiously as he did.

  “How long are they going to keep you here?”

  “A few days, perhaps a week—just try pinning one of those doctors down. When I tell them they really don't have to treat me with kid gloves, they just laugh. They tell me I should have operated on myself, then I'd be fully up-to-date on my condition.”

  I wondered if that was possible.

  “I've got to get out of here!” He waved his arms. The pretty young nurses were unsettling him. “It's crazy! I've always liked them, the sweet ones as much as the mean ones, the firm ones, the soft ones. I'm not one of those guys who need big breasts or blond hair. It used to be, if they were young and had that look in their eyes, that blank look where you can't tell if it sees through everything or is utterly clueless, when they have that scent that only young women have—that was it. And now”— he shook his head—”now a girl can be sweet and flutter her eyelashes at me all she wants, but I no longer see the young girl she is, just the old woman she will one day turn into.”

  I didn't understand. “You mean, a sort of X-ray vision?”

  “Call it whatever you want. In the mornings there's Nurse Senta, for instance—the cutest face, soft skin, a pointed chin, small breasts, and broad hips. She acts stern, but loves to giggle. In the past, the air would have been charged. Now I look at her and see that one day her stern act will crease her mouth with scowling lines, blood vessels will spot her cheeks, and love handles will bulge over her midriff. Have you ever noticed how all women with pointed chins have broad hips?”

  I tried to conjure up the chins and hips of the women I knew.

  “Then there's Verena, the night nurse. A hot-blooded woman—but what looks wild now will look ravaged soon enough. In the past I wouldn't have given a damn. Now I see it, and it's like a bucket of cold water.”

  “What do you have against ravaged women? I thought you saw Helen of Troy in every woman?”

  “I did. That's the way I liked it, and that's the way I'd like it to be again.” He looked at me sadly. “But it doesn't work anymore. Now I only see a shrew in every woman.”

  “Perhaps it's just because you're still under the weather. You've never been sick before, have you?”

  He had already weighed this explanation, too, but brushed it aside. “I used to fantasize about being a patient in a hospital and being spoiled by the nurses.”

  I wasn't able to cheer him up. On the way back to his room, he steadied himself on my arm. Nurse Eva helped him into bed. She wasn't just called Eva, she also looked the part, but he didn't grace her with a single glance. As I was about to leave, he grabbed my arm. “Am I paying now for having loved women?”

  I left. But I left too late. His morose brooding had gotten to me. Here was a man who had made women the center of his life. His passion had not been for anything fleeting like fame or glory, nor for something external like money or possessions, nor for deceptive erudition, nor vain power. But it didn't help. The brooding and the life crisis still came, as they did for everybody else. I couldn't even think of a crime with which Philipp could salvage his life's illusion.

  I called Frau Büchler. “I know who the murderer is. But I don't know his motive, nor do I have proof. Perhaps Herr Wendt knows more than he realizes. I really must speak to him at this point.”

  “Can you please call back in a few hours? I'll see what I can do.”

  I went to the Luisenpark and fed the ducks. At three o'clock I spoke again with Frau Büchler. “Could you please wait at your office tomorrow morning,” she said. “Herr Wendt doesn't know yet when he will come by, but he will.” She hesitated for a moment. “He is a man used to having his own way and can be somewhat imperious and gruff. But he is also sensitive. Whatever painful things you have to say to him about his son or his son's death, please say them carefully. And please don't hand him the invoice—send it to me.”

  “Frau Büchler, I—”

  She had hung up.

  27

  If we had put our money where our mouth is

  At nine o'clock I was at my office. I watered the potted palm, emptied the ashtrays, dusted the desk and filing cabinet, and neatly laid out fountain pens and pencils next to one another.

  The phone rang. Herr Wendt's chauffeur informed me over his car phone that Herr Wendt would be at my office in half an hour.

  A Mercedes pulled up. The chauffeur opened the car door. Before Herr Wendt got out, he eyed the building and my office, the smoked glass and the display window of the former tobacconist's, and the golden letters GERHARD SELF, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS. He got out of the car with difficulty and hesitated, carefully steadying himself, as if with his heavy body he had to find his balance: an elephant swaying his rump, head, and trunk, and one is uncertain whether he has forgotten how to use his power, or if he will stampede and flatten everything in his path. He approached my door with heavy steps. I opened it.

  “Herr Self?” His voice boomed.

  I greeted him. Despite the summer temperature, he seemed chilled and kept his coat on.

  We sat down at my desk facing each other, and he immediately came to the point. “Who killed him?”

  “You wouldn't know him. He and your son used to be friends, then for years their ways parted, but their paths crossed again and the two of them clashed. I am not yet sure whether he put pressure on your son, or whether your son put pressure on him; in other words, if he wanted something from your son or if your son wanted something from him. Were you in touch with your son in the days or weeks before he died?”

  “I resent that question, we are father and son! He is a man of letters. He has his master's and a doctorate, and I'll be the first to admit that what he does and says is sometimes beyond me. And more often than not he simply doesn't understand how things are done in my world. But he has always respected me! Always!” Old Herr Wendt was blustering, but his face remained set. The bones of his temples were strong and his cheeks and chin square despite the considerable fat, and his eyes peered from beneath a wide forehead and profuse eyebrows, his pupils not vacillating, his eyelids not twitching. Only his mouth moved, letting the words drone out.

  “Do you know the area between Viernheim and Lam-pert
heim, Herr Wendt? The forest where the Americans have a depot.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Your son was involved in the attack that was perpetrated there. To be precise, he was involved with the people who perpetrated the attack. There was a map of the region in his briefcase. Didn't the police tell you about that?”

  He shook his head. “What map?”

  “Nothing special. It was a map of the autobahn triangle near Viernheim and a few kilometers around it, with boundary or section numbers. It was a letter-size black-and-white photocopy.”

  “Rolf …” He didn't continue.

  “Yes?”

  “I would have liked to have done more for my son. You know where he lived and how. Ah, Herr Self, the apartments he could have had! Why did I work my fingers to the bone all my life?”

  I couldn't tell him why, so I waited.

  “I would have given him everything, everything! But that map …”

  “What do you mean?”

  He stared down at the desk between us, reached for a pencil, and turned and twisted it in his gnarled hands. “I didn't want all of that to start again. Not that I know how deeply involved he was back then. Be that as it may, he didn't break free from it easily, let me tell you. When he started working, all that nonsense caught up with him, and now, when he was on the brink of making something of himself, with his own practice or his own hospital, he couldn't get mixed up in all that again!”

  “What's the connection between the political things your son was involved in during the early seventies and the map you mentioned?”

  The pencil snapped, and Herr Wendt slammed the two halves onto the desk. “I didn't hire you to cross-examine me!”