‘I’d like to have you with me. But I’d rather know you’re here, ready to start. Do you have a flashlight I can use?’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
I clambered up the ladder. I was shivering. The knitted jumper, some American label, I was wearing beneath the old leather jacket to match my new jeans didn’t warm me. I peered over the quay wall.
In front of me, parallel to the banks of the Rhine, was a narrow road, behind it tracks with railway carriages. The buildings were in the brick style I was familiar with from the Security building and the Schmalzes’ flat. The old plant was in front of me. Somewhere here was Schmalz’s hangar.
I turned to the right where the old brick buildings were lower. I tried to walk with both caution and the necessary authority. I stuck to the shadows of the railway carriages.
They came without the Alsatian making a sound. One of them shone a torch in my face, the other asked me for my badge. I fetched the special pass from my wallet. ‘Herr Self? What part of your special job brings you here?’
‘I wouldn’t require a special pass if I had to tell you that.’
But that neither calmed them nor intimidated them. They were two young lads, the sort you find these days in the riot police. In the old days you found them in the Waffen SS. That’s certainly an impermissible comparison because these days we’re dealing with a free democratic order, yet the mixture of zeal, earnestness, uncertainness, and servility in the faces is the same. They were wearing a kind of paramilitary uniform with the benzene ring on their collar patch.
‘Hey, guys,’ I said, ‘let me finish my job, and you do yours. What are your names? I want to tell Danckelmann tomorrow that you can be relied on. Continue the good work!’
I don’t remember their names; they were along the lines of Energy and Stamina. I didn’t manage to get them clicking their heels. But one of them returned my pass and the other switched off his torch. The Alsatian had spent the whole time off to one side, indifferent.
When I couldn’t see them any more and their steps had died away I went on. The low-slung buildings I’d seen seemed ramshackle. Some of the windows were smashed, some doors hung crooked from their hinges, here and there a roof was missing. The area was obviously earmarked for demolition. But one building had been rescued from decay. It, too, was a onefloor brick building, with Romanesque windows and barrel vaulting made of corrugated iron. If Schmalz’s workshop was anywhere round here, then it had to be in this building.
My flashlight found the small service door in the large sliding gate. Both were locked, and the big one could only be opened from the inside. At first I didn’t want to try the bank-card trick, but then I thought that on the evening in question, three weeks ago today, Schmalz might no longer have had the strength or the wit to think of details like padlocks. And indeed, using my special pass, I entered the hangar. Next second, I had to close the door. Energy and Stamina were coming round the corner.
I leaned against the cold iron door and took a deep breath. Now I was really sober. And still I knew it was a good idea to have come looking in the RCW grounds. The fact that on the day Mischkey had had his accident Schmalz had hurt his hand, had had a brain haemorrhage, and forgotten to play chess wasn’t much in itself. And the fact that he tinkered with delivery vans and the girl at the station had seen a strange delivery van was hardly a hot lead. But I wanted to know.
Not much light shone through the windows. I could make out the outlines of three panel trucks. I turned on the flashlight and recognized an old Opel, an old Mercedes, and a Citroën. You certainly don’t see many of those driving about round here. At the back of the hangar was a large workbench. I groped my way over. Amongst the tools were a set of keys, a cap, and a pack of cigarettes. I pocketed the keys.
Only the Citroën was roadworthy. On the Opel the windshield was missing, the Mercedes was up on blocks. I sat down in the Citroën and tried out the keys. One fitted and as I turned it the lights went on. There was old blood on the steering wheel and the cloth on the passenger’s seat was bloodstained, too. I took it. As I was about to turn off the ignition, I touched a switch on the dashboard. Behind me I could hear the humming of an electric motor, and in the side-mirror I could see the loading doors open. I got out and went to the back.
20
Not just a silly womanizer
This time I didn’t get such a fright. But the effect was still impressive. Now I knew what had happened on the bridge. Both inside surfaces of the rear doors of the delivery van, and the rear opening itself, had been covered with reflective foil. A deadly triptych. The foil was spread smooth, without creases or warps, and I could see myself in it like on Saturday in the mirror that hung in my stairwell. When Mischkey had driven onto the bridge, the delivery van had been parked there with its back doors open. Mischkey, confronted suddenly with the apparent headlights on his side of the road, had swerved to the left and then lost control of his vehicle. Now I recalled the cross on the right headlight on Mischkey’s car. It wasn’t Mischkey who’d stuck it on, it was old Schmalz, who’d thus been able to know, in the darkness, that he had to open the doors because his victim was coming.
I heard thumps on the door of the hangar. ‘Open up, security!’ Energy and Stamina must have noticed the beam from my flashlight. Apparently the hangar had been so much Schmalz’s sole preserve that not even security had a key. I was glad that my two young colleagues didn’t know the bank-card trick. Nonetheless I was sitting in a trap.
I took note of the number on the licence plate and saw that the plates themselves were tied on in a makeshift fashion with wire. I started the engine. Outside the door was being pounded with ever-increasing energy and stamina. I parked the vehicle just a metre from the door, its mirrored rear opened. Then I grabbed a long, heavy spanner from the table. One of my pursuers hurled himself against the door.
I pressed myself against the wall. Now what I needed was a lot of luck. When I estimated the next assault on the door would come, I pushed down the handle.
The door burst open, and the first security guard fell through it, landing on the ground. The second one stormed in after him with raised pistol and raked to a halt in fright in front of his own mirror image. The Alsatian had been trained to attack whoever was threatening his master with a raised weapon and leapt through the tearing foil. I could hear him howling in pain in the cargo area. The first security man lay dazed on the ground, the second hadn’t cottoned on yet. I took advantage of the confusion, zipped out of the gate, and raced in the direction of the boat. I’d made it over the tracks and cleared maybe twenty metres down the road, when I heard Energy and Stamina in renewed pursuit: ‘Stop or I’ll shoot.’ Their heavy boots beat out a fast rhythm on the cobblestones, the panting of the dog was getting closer and closer, and I had no desire to grow acquainted with the application of the regulations on usage of firearms on the plant’s premises. The Rhine looked cold. But I had no choice, and jumped.
The dive from a headlong run had enough momentum to let me bob to the surface a good distance away. I turned my head and saw Energy and Stamina standing on the quay wall with the Alsatian, directing their flashlight at the water. My clothes were heavy, and the current of the Rhine is strong, and I could only make headway with difficulty.
‘Gerd, Gerd!’ Philipp let his boat drift downstream in the shadow of the quayside and called to me in a whisper.
‘Here I am,’ I whispered back. Then the boat was next to me. Philipp hoisted me up. At that moment Energy and Stamina saw us. I don’t know what they planned to do. Fire at us? Philipp started the motor and with a spraying bow wave made for the middle of the Rhine. Exhausted and shivering with cold, I sat on the deck. I pulled the bloodstained cloth from my pocket. ‘Could you do me another favour and test the blood group on this? I think I know, blood group O rhesus negative, but better safe than sorry.’
Philipp grinned. ‘All that excitement over this damp cloth? But first things first. Go below, take a hot shower, and put on my bathrobe. A
s soon as we’ve made it past the water police I’ll make you a grog.’
When I came out of the shower we’d reached safety. Neither the RCW nor the police had sent a gunboat after us and Philipp was just in the process of manoeuvring the boat back into the Altrhein channel by Sandhofen. Although the shower had warmed me, I was still shivering. It was all a bit much at my age. Philipp docked at the old mooring and entered the cabin. ‘Jeezus,’ he said. ‘That was quite a fright you gave me. When I heard the guys hammering against the metal I thought something had gone wrong. I didn’t know what to do. Then I saw you jump. Hats off to you.’
‘Oh, you know, when you have a killer dog on your tail you don’t stop to consider whether the water might be a little on the cold side. Much more important was that you did exactly the right thing at the right time. Without you I’d probably have drowned, with or without a bullet in my head. You saved my life. Boy, am I glad you’re not just a silly womanizer.’
Embarrassed, Philipp clattered about in the galley. ‘Maybe you want to tell me now what you’d lost at the RCW.’
‘Nothing lost, but found some things. Apart from this disgusting wet cloth I found the murder weapon, probably the murderer, too. Which explains the wet cloth.’ Over the steaming grog I told Philipp about the corrugated van and its surprising refit.
‘But if it was as simple as that to chase your Mischkey off the bridge, what about the injuries to the veteran who was the Works’ security guy?’ Philipp asked when I was finished with my report.
‘You should have become a private detective. You’re quick on the uptake. I don’t have any answers, unless . . .’ I remembered what the owner’s wife had told me at the railway restaurant. ‘The woman at the old station heard two bangs, one right after the other. Now it’s getting clear. Mischkey’s car was hanging from the railings on the bridge, Schmalz senior, with a great deal of effort, managed to dislodge it, injuring himself in the process. And the effort killed him two weeks later. Yes, that’s how it must have been.’
‘One bang as it broke through the railings, the next as it crashed down on to the railroad bank. It all fits together medically, too. When old people strain themselves too much, it can easily cause a haemorrhage in the brain. It goes unnoticed until the heart gives out.’
I was very tired all of a sudden. ‘Still, there’s a lot I’m hazy about. Schmalz senior himself didn’t come up with the idea to kill Mischkey. And I still can’t see a motive. Please take me home, Philipp. We’ll have the Bordeaux some other time. I hope you won’t get into any trouble on account of my escapades.’
As we turned from Gerwigstrasse into Sandhofenstrasse a patrol car complete with flashing light but without siren went tearing past us towards the harbour basin. I didn’t even turn round.
21
Praying Hands
After a feverish night I called Brigitte. She came immediately, brought quinine for my temperature and nose drops, massaged my neck, hung up my clothes to dry that I’d dropped in the hallway the previous evening, prepared something in the kitchen that I was to heat up for lunch, set off, bought orange juice, glucose, and cigarettes, and fed Turbo. She was professional, industrious, and worried. When I wanted her to sit for a little on the edge of the bed, she had to leave.
I slept almost the whole day. Philipp called and confirmed the blood group, O, and the rhesus negative factor. Through the window a rumble of traffic from the Augusta-Anlage and the shouts of playing children drifted into the twilight of my room. I remembered sick days as a child, the desire to be outside playing with the other children, and simultaneously the pleasure in my own weakness and all the maternal pampering. In a feverish semi-sleep I kept running from the panting dog and Energy and Stamina. I was making up for the fear I hadn’t felt yesterday where everything had happened too quickly. I had wild thoughts about Mischkey’s murder and why Schmalz had done it.
Towards evening I was feeling better. My temperature had gone down and I was weak, but I felt like eating the beef broth with pasta and vegetables that Brigitte had prepared, and smoking a Sweet Afton afterwards. How should work on the case proceed? Murder belonged in police hands, and even if the RCW, as I could well imagine, pulled a veil of oblivion over yesterday’s incident I’d never find out anything more from anyone in the Works. I called Nägelsbach. He and his wife had finished dinner and were in the studio.
‘Of course you can come by. You can listen to Hedda Gabler, too, we’re in the third act just now.’
I stuck a note on the front door, to reassure Brigitte in case she came to check on me again. The drive to Heidelberg was bad. My own slowness and the quickness of the car made uneasy companions.
The Nägelsbachs live in one of the Pfaffengrunder settlement houses of the twenties. Nägelsbach had turned the shed, originally meant for chickens and rabbits, into a studio with a large window and bright lamps. The evening was cool and the Swedish wood-burning stove held a few crackling logs. Nägelsbach was sitting on his high stool, at the big table on which Dürer’s Praying Hands were taking shape in matchstick form. His wife was reading aloud in the armchair by the stove. It was a perfect idyll that met my eyes when I came through the garden gate straight to the studio and looked through the window before knocking.
‘My word, what a sight you are!’ Frau Nägelsbach vacated the armchair for me and took another stool for herself.
‘You must really have something on your mind to come here in this state,’ was Nägelsbach’s greeting. ‘Do you mind if my wife stays? I tell her everything, work-wise, too. The rules of confidentiality don’t apply to childless couples who only have one another.’
As I recounted my tale, Nägelsbach worked on. He didn’t interrupt me. At the end of my narration he was silent for a little while, then he switched off the lamp above his workplace, turned his high stool toward us, and said to his wife: ‘Tell him.’
‘With what you’ve just told us, maybe the police will get a search warrant for the old hangar. Maybe they’ll find the Citroën still there. But there’ll be nothing remarkable or suspicious about it. No reflective foil, no deadly triptych. That was pretty, by the way, how you described that. Right, and then the police can interrogate a few of the security people and the widow Schmalz and whoever else you named, but what is it going to achieve?’
‘That’s it, and of course I could prime Herzog in particular about the case, and he can try to use his contacts with security, only it won’t change a thing. But you know all that yourself, Herr Self.’
‘Yes, that’s where my thinking has brought me too. Nonetheless I thought you might have an idea of something the police could do, that . . . oh, I don’t know what I thought. I haven’t been able to resign myself to the case ending like this.’
‘Do you have any idea of a motive?’ Frau Nägelsbach turned to her husband. ‘Couldn’t we get further that way?’
‘I can only imagine from what I know thus far that something went wrong. Just like that story you read to me recently. The RCW is having trouble with Mischkey, and it’s getting more and more bothersome, and then someone in control says, “That’s enough,” and his subordinate gets a fright and in his turn passes the baton: “See to it Mischkey is quietened down, exert yourself,” and the person this is said to wants to show his dedication and prods and encourages his own subordinate to think of something, and it can be unusual, and at the end of this long chain someone believes he’s supposed to knock off Mischkey.’
‘But old Schmalz was a pensioner and not even part of the chain any more,’ his wife offered.
‘Hard to say. How many policemen do I know who still feel like policemen after retirement?’
‘Dear God,’ she interrupted him, ‘you’re not going to—’
‘No, I won’t. Perhaps Schmalz senior was one of those who still thought of himself as being in service. What I mean is there needn’t be a motive for murder in the classical sense here. The murderer is simply the instrument without a motive, and whoever had the motive wasn’t
necessarily thinking about murder. That’s the effect, and indeed the purpose, of commanding hierarchies. We know that in the police, too, and in the army.’
‘Do you think more could be done if old Schmalz were still alive?’
‘Well, to begin with, Herr Self wouldn’t have got as far. He wouldn’t have found out at all about Schmalz’s injury, wouldn’t have looked in the hangar, and certainly wouldn’t have found the murder vehicle. All traces would have been removed long before. But, all right, let’s imagine we’d come by this knowledge in a different way. No, I don’t think we’d have got anything out of old Schmalz. He must have been a tough old nut.’
‘I can’t just accept this, Rudolf. Listening to you, the only person you can get in this chain of command is the last link. And the others are all supposedly innocent?’
‘Whether they’re innocent is one question and whether you can get them is another. Look, Reni, I don’t know of course whether something really went wrong, or whether it’s not the case that the chain was so well-oiled that everyone knew what was meant without it being spoken out loud. But if it was oiled like that, it certainly can’t be proved.’
‘Should Herr Self be advised to talk to one of the big cheeses at the RCW? To get a sense of how that person conducts himself?’
‘So far as prosecution goes, that won’t help either. But you’re right, it’s the only remaining thing he can do.’
It was good to watch the pair of them, in this question-and-answer game, making sense of what I was too groggy to work out for myself. So what was left for me was a talk with Korten.
Frau Nägelsbach made some verbena tea and we talked about art. Nägelsbach told me what appealed to him in his reproduction of Praying Hands. He found the usual sculpture reproductions no less sickly sweet than I. And that very fact made him want to achieve the sublime sobriety of Dürer’s original through the rigorous simplicity of the matches.