In Free Fall

  “The press does not like child kidnapping cases,” she says didactically.

  “We’ll separate them,” Schnurpfeil says. “The press doesn’t need to know anything about the kidnapping right now.”

  Rita nods, her shoulders relaxing. As is often the case, the senior policeman has thought of something that calms her down.

  “Listen, Schnurpfeil. With the best will in the world, there’s no way I can look into this personally.”

  “Of course. The chief suggests that Sandström could take on the case.”

  “Sandström is a total idiot,” Rita says. “Tell him that.”

  Schnurpfeil reaches for a notebook.

  “He should drive to the professor’s home with him. Get the technical guys and the shrinks on board. Bug the telephone, the whole lot. And interrogate him for as long as he holds out. Family problems, friends, job. I’ll drop by in the evening if I can.”

  Schnurpfeil puts his notebook away. “I’ll just run down and let them know,” he says, “then I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

  “Good.”

  Rita Skura looks past Schnurpfeil at the bulletin board, on which there is a snapshot of her cat next to photographs of the crime scene.

  “Four days,” she says. “Makes you feel sorry for the man.”

  [3]

  THEY HAVE TAKEN HIS CAR. They have taken his mobile phone. They have taken his shirt and his trousers and put them in plastic bags. He is wearing a suit made out of paper, which rustles with every step and makes him feel like a cross between a clown and a corpse. Right this minute he would have nothing against being laid out in an aluminum drawer with a tag on his toe, and being shoved into the wall. Cool at last. Quiet at last. To sleep at last.

  They have taken the keys to his apartment from him, and now they are taking the apartment. Three plainclothes officers are on the street watching to see if the house is being watched. In the hall, a man wearing headphones is lying on his stomach, a black box by his side, fumbling in the telephone socket with a tiny screwdriver. Another man is leaning against the wall, making suggestions and flicking cigarette ash onto the parquet floor. In the kitchen, Sergeant Sandström is sitting at the table making himself a ham sandwich with gerkins and mustard. He had asked if he could “borrow” the Prosciutto di Parma. On the sofa in the living room, which Sebastian will always associate with the worst days of his life, a small woman shrouded in moss-green wool is crouching on thin legs, sticking her aristocratic-looking nose into the family photo album. A bird dressed in human clothing could not have looked stranger than she does. This is the experimental film that this apartment and I have been waiting for the whole time, Sebastian thinks.

  When he had stepped into the Heinrich-von-Stephan-Strasse early this morning, the thought of letting the proper authorities deal with the situation made him nauseous with relief. The statement he’d feared making had turned out to be the simplest bit. He had been required simply to tell them what had happened (the grabber machine, pathetic stuffed animals, Vera Wagenfort); he’d kept only one sentence back from them: Dabbelink must go. After that, one thing had led to another. There was a practically endless stream of questions about anything and everything. Except whether he had killed a man.

  But now what the proper authorities are doing is making him nauseous. They seem to be doing a great deal, but none of it seems to be directed at trying to get Liam back. Every time he tells himself that the police are following a tried and tested routine, the same retort sounds in his head: They are only human beings and can do nothing.

  He stands in front of the open wardrobe in the bedroom, tearing the paper suit off his body as if unpacking an enormous present that he never wanted in the first place. He wants to lie down on the bed and lose consciousness, hand over the rest of his life to someone else who will know how to do something useful with it. As he gets dressed, he sets himself an ultimatum. He will give the police until midnight. Then he will tell them what the kidnappers really wanted from him. Tell them that they should ask Medical Director Schlüter where Liam is.

  In the hall, the technician gives the thumbs-up—the interception circuit is almost ready. When Sebastian walks into the living room, the psychologist smiles at him, a horizontal gap opening beneath her bird beak. She has not said that Sebastian must be hiding a nasty family secret, but she is watching his every move from the corner of her eye and has been looking through that photo album for ages. Liam’s first years are thoroughly documented. After that, there are only a few photographs of him here and there, in which Sebastian—who took the photos—is practically never to be seen.

  “Almost done. Then we’ll be off.”

  The psychologist has persuaded him that Maike should be the first person to be told about all this. If he refuses to tell her, the psychologist herself will ring Maike in Airolo. Their keenness to get the line bugged before this phone call suggests that they suspect Liam is with his mother. Sebastian knows that there are countless cases in which parents abduct children from each other. But he does not know how to make it clear to his guests that this is not the situation.

  “All working now,” the smoking technician says, as if his colleague has just repaired a broken toilet.

  He beckons Sebastian over and passes him a telephone receiver with a spiral cord ending in the black box. Sandström brings his ham sandwich into the hall and smells of mustard. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand, pushing it upward at the same time, turning his face into a porcine grimace. The psychologist leans against the door frame, pushing her thumbnail between her incisors, constantly nodding at Sebastian in a friendly manner. If it were possible, he would ring Oskar instead of Maike and ask him to repeat what he had said the night before: Do you want me to come to you?

  This time Sebastian would reply, Yes.

  The old-fashioned receiver feels heavy in his hand. The policewoman’s gaze bores into his back as he dials the number of the sports hotel in Airolo.

  This was only to be expected. Maike is not there. She didn’t go to the Alps to sit around in her room. She’s on a cycling tour, isn’t she? A hundred kilometers, right? No, definitely no mobile phone—true luxury is being out of reach. Isn’t that right? A forced laugh. Yes, by dinnertime at the latest. She will return the call.

  Sebastian asks the psychologist to let him have the sofa. He does not want to answer any more questions. He tells the technicians that they are not allowed to have music or the television on. Sighing, the policemen take books and magazines off the shelves and start leafing through them. The psychologist opens a window and listens to Bonnie and Clyde, who are in the stream below quarreling over the way things are progressing. Sandström’s mobile rings in the kitchen. There’s no news from the A81, where two police officers are questioning truck drivers, toilet attendants, and restaurant employees at the service station that Sebastian told them about.

  Waiting. Sebastian has had so much practice waiting that it takes only a few minutes for him to lose awareness of everything around him. He lies with his head thrown back and stares at the ceiling—its white surface seems pleasantly in tune with his state of mind. His body seems to be sinking into a warm sand dune while his consciousness rises, circling gently around itself. Sebastian has the palpable sense of time becoming disjointed. The chain of seconds breaks down into tiny particles. His self dissolves, though leaves something behind that he can identify with. It is a kind of observation post outside body and soul. From this vantage point, Sebastian can think about why he held on so long to a theory that did not reflect in the least his feeling for space and time. They are not many, the worlds in which he moves. He is in a single cosmos, a great roar in which he feels the presence of other entities aside from his own. Names can be put to them—Maike, Oskar, and Liam—and they form a weave in which energy and matter are really the same thing: information. A human consciousness that consists of nothing besides memories and experiences is pure information. The observation post called Sebastian thinks that he could
sit down at a desk and make notes. He should find out if Oskar’s attempts to extrapolate from the big bang through the quantization of time are ultimately aimed at comprehending the world as one big information machine. Have they not been working on the same idea for years but from different sides: that time, not only in the philosophical but in the physical sense, is a product of consciousness and also identical to it? He should speak to Oskar straightaway, find common ground… he should… When the doorbell rings, Sebastian’s daydreams collapse and leave a single sentence: Man is a hole in nothingness.

  Someone enters the apartment. A female voice calls Sandström an idiot and asks what has happened that afternoon. It is a good question. Sebastian’s watch indicates that he has spent five hours staring at the white surface of the ceiling. The woman comes in and bats the TV magazine out of the hands of the smoking technician. Sebastian has seen the woman before, that morning, when she was running up the stairs in the police station. He found her unsympathetic even from behind. Now her gaze flickers through the room as if she once lost something here and has come to get it. When she walks toward Sebastian, her curly hair is like a symbol of permanent agitation around her head. Under the tightly buttoned cardigan, the large breasts protrude more than is strictly necessary. With a paw of surprising dimensions, she crushes Sebastian’s fingers.

  “Rita Skura, detective.”

  At least she leaves him in peace and asks her colleagues questions instead. Sandström and the police psychologist are apportioning Sebastian’s statement among themselves. They have barely finished speaking when Rita Skura tells them that that bastard of a medical director has not appeared in the hospital all day, and that the staff continue to protest their innocence. So there is basically nothing new in the case of the murdered senior registrar, and therefore the suits are having their asses kicked. While she is still cursing, the telephone rings.

  The scene freezes, then chaos ensues. In the midst of the scuttling and chattering, Rita Skura takes control. She sends a technician to the black box, Sandström to the balcony, and the police psychologist to the phone with Sebastian.

  “Pick up when I give the sign. Stall for time. Play dumb. Ask questions. Understood?”

  “That will be my wife,” says Sebastian.

  Rita shakes her head impatiently and leans back against the wall with her arms crossed, maintaining eye contact with the technician. Sebastian is overcome by a desire to put a giant glass over her, push a piece of card under it, and throw the detective out into the courtyard like a twitching insect. When she clicks her fingers, the technician hands him the telephone receiver.

  “Dad?”

  Liam’s voice is coming not only from the telephone receiver but from a box on which a spool of tape turns.

  “Hang on, Dad. Hey, stop that!”

  Liam is speaking to someone else. A giggle is heard in the background, and there is a bump and a bang. Then he’s back.

  “Sorry,” he says, laughing. “There’s only one telephone here and it only takes fifty-cent pieces. Philipp and Lena keep tugging my arm. They think it’s funny or something.”

  “Liam,” says Sebastian.

  “Dad? Are you angry because I haven’t called for so long? I really couldn’t. We went off straightaway with rucksacks and tents. I was put with the oldest group from the start, because I talked about how to make a fire and about the bundling effect and exceeding the ignition temperature. And about how it’s not flint but pyrite that you need, and then they took me with them on the hike right away—”

  “Liam! Are you OK?”

  Sebastian’s broken cry interrupts Liam’s stream of chatter. There is a hesitant pause, stretching out of the phone and wrapping itself around everyone in the room, filling the hallway like an invisible gelatinous mass.

  “Of course. I’m great,” Liam finally says. “Is something wrong, Dad?”

  “No,” Sebastian says quickly. “Everything’s all right. I was simply… worried.”

  While Liam thinks about this, Sebastian pushes his fist toward his mouth and bites into the white knuckles to stop the heaving in his gut from producing any unwanted noises.

  “Some of the kids are homesick,” Liam says. “Maybe you’re homesick for me?”

  This is too much, Sebastian has to get off the phone. He covers the receiver, bashes his forehead against the wall, and takes another deep breath.

  “Yup, you’ve got it!” he says in just the right cheerful tone. “Listen, Liam, I’ve got to go. We… I’ll call you later, or tomorrow. I mean, I’ll come to see you.”

  “No!” Liam’s horror is unmistakable. “You can’t do that! Tomorrow we want to…”

  “OK, Liam, have fun! See you soon! Bye, Liam! Bye!”

  The receiver falls and Sebastian with it. The technician presses a button and click, all is dark. A softness comes over his eyes, a jacket he doesn’t recognize, it smells male. Someone allows Sebastian to slide slowly to the ground. The heaving in his gut forces out a scream.

  [4]

  SOME DAYS, DETECTIVE SCHILF KNOWS as soon as he wakes up that he will not be leaving his apartment through the front door. Quickly and quietly, he slips into the army-green cargo pants that he buys in a work-uniform shop, and which he wore long before they became fashionable with young people. He pulls his travel bag out from under the bed and leaves the room, holding the door handle with both hands in order to close the door quietly. He stands at the breakfast bar for a few moments with a glass of Coke that is much too cold, and looks around his own apartment as if he is seeing it for the first time. For fifteen years these rooms have been somewhere for him to stay, but not a home. He feels especially out of place in the kitchen, as if some prankster has plonked him in an advertisement for modern living. He is surrounded by brushed steel and expensive kitchen equipment that he cannot operate. Even as a young lout sitting on a bar stool seemed laughable to him. A real single person’s kitchen, his landlord had declared when he moved in; and the rent is very reasonable for Stuttgart. Schilf had stuck a couple of postcards onto the fridge out of a sense of duty. They show Majorca, Lanzarote, and Gran Canaria. He had gotten them on vacation. The backs of the postcards are empty. He puts his Coke down, takes the bread bin, the unused fruit bowl, and a pile of newspapers from the windowsill, and opens the window.

  To the east, the retreating night splashes the eastern sky with color, interspersed with graffiti made of clouds that the sun will soon have washed from the walls of the dawning day. Through a gap between buildings, Schilf sees a road junction. It is empty, as if cars have not been invented yet or have already been consigned to history. A lone pedestrian is creeping along by the buildings. A shift worker or a sleepless artist, the collar of his jacket turned up even though the nighttime temperature has not fallen below seventy degrees.

  The detective turns his wrist: four thirty on Saturday morning. Perhaps he should take out a patent on this time of the day. Getting up early has long ceased to bother him. He can open his eyes at any given time and get out of bed as if nothing has happened, as if sleep does not exist, nor dreams, in whose corridors human beings waste a third of their lives. Rising early without difficulty is one of the few things that gets easier with age. When he was young, Schilf liked to claim that he would never grow old. The only thing old people had left to wait for was their meals.

  He smiles and puts both feet down on the metal grating of the fire escape, which starts clanging like a large gong even though he has been careful. Why he leaves the building in this way on certain days, climbing like a burglar into his own life, he cannot explain. Sometimes it seems to make sense to slip around reality and all its preposterous vagaries and take it by surprise. He looks into the apartment one more time before he pulls the window closed from the outside. All is still. The apartment looks as if the detective were alone.

  When Schilf looks back on his life, he thinks he was a perfectly normal person about twenty years ago. He had a job and a roof over his head, he had passions, possibly
even family. Then came the fracture. While on duty, the young Schilf shot a man who was only reaching into his pocket to get his car key. Or perhaps Schilf had been driving out to wine country one weekend when a suspect forced him off the road—his wife and young son had been in the backseat. The detective insists that he cannot remember. “The fracture” is the name of a catastrophe that his bad memory conceals.

  The fracture called for an entirely new person. From the remnants of his life, Schilf picked out the bits that were still functioning. This included his work, which he was good at, better than most in equivalent positions. He got up in the morning. He ate at regular intervals, availed himself of public transport and the small pleasures of life, and he knew where his bed was. But he waited in vain for these things to make him into a new, complete person. His problem was that he could not find it in his heart to end his life simply because the man leading it had reached the end. At some point, he realized that it was a matter of carrying on. The detective became a master at carrying on. Until, barely a month ago, two things happened that upset his mastery: a woman and a death sentence.

  He received the death sentence on the obscenely squeaky, sweat-inducing leather of a Chesterfield armchair. This armchair stands in a study decorated in the English style, to which Schilf’s doctor leads his patients after he has shone a flashlight into various orifices. There is a thick rug on the floor and the walls are paneled with dark wood. In a gesture of ludicrous excess, gold-tooled volumes of the classics can be reached by means of a mobile librarian’s ladder.

  The woman whom Schilf met is to some extent the opposite of this study. She has lightly permed dark hair, a snub nose that seems quite implausible, flat eyes that reflect the scene around her, and a build more like a girl than a forty-year-old. The detective met her in the pedestrian zone of Stuttgart city center shortly after the fatal visit to the doctor. To be precise, she walked straight into him because he had come to a sudden standstill. The ground had opened right in front of him, a common occurrence of late. He looked down into a dizzying abyss, a state outside of space and time in which everything was connected.