The Spaghetti Detectives

by Andreas Steinhöfel

  “What’s a loan?” I called out to the kitchen.

  “Money that you borrow from somebody for a while,” Mrs. Darling called back. “But in the end you have to pay more back than you borrowed in the first place.”

  I was just about to ask her if she wanted to borrow some money from me, but at that very moment the television showed a photo of the latest victim and my heart almost stopped.

  The child was a boy.

  The boy was Oscar.

  He wasn’t wearing his helmet, but I recognized him right away. Nobody has green eyes like Oscar and nobody has teeth that big. It could very well be that nobody has sticky-out ears like that, either. They stood out almost horizontally from Oscar’s head. You could easily put a small glass containing a cold drink on each one.

  “As the father of the boy explained, his seven-year-old son left home at around nine o’clock to visit a friend. But little Oscar never arrived.”

  I barely understood what the newscaster was saying. There was a strange buzzing in my ears. Now Oscar’s dad was surrounded by reporters again.

  “I don’t know why he went out without his helmet. Normally he never leaves the house without his helmet! We live in a big city. Our streets are dangerous. I was always telling him that.”

  “Why didn’t you accompany your son? Wasn’t that neglecting your parental duty?”

  “No comment.”

  “Did you know who Oscar was going to visit? Are you sure that the friend he was going to visit actually exists?”

  “No comment.”

  “At ten thirty this morning, Oscar’s father, who is a single parent, received a call from the kidnapper. That, too, is unusual: Up until now the kidnapper has always contacted the parents of his victims by letter. The kidnapper’s demand, however, is the same as always: two thousand euros. A meeting place for the handover of the ransom money has not yet been agreed upon.”

  The buzzing in my ears grew less. Two thousand euros, I thought, two thousand euros. Oscar’s father obviously didn’t have any rich friends or relatives who could lend him that much money. He didn’t have a wife, either. And Oscar almost certainly did not have a piggy bank. For somebody who was so afraid, that really wasn’t very sensible. Even I had started saving up for my own kidnapping.

  I jumped when Mrs. Darling showed up like a ghost and put the plate with the whole wheat crackers down on the table. I hadn’t heard her coming into the living room. She plumped up the soft cushion with the tassels that she always puts behind her back and sat down next to me on the sofa.

  “Maybe they’ll catch the swine now!” she snorted. “Maybe somebody saw the boy this morning and will remember.”

  She leaned back on the cushion, stuck a cracker into her mouth, and chewed it. Boiled ham with a pickled onion. I looked at her secretly from the side. She would probably believe me if I said that I not only knew Oscar but that he’d been on the way to see me this morning. And because she’d believe me, she’d drag me to the police so they could question me. Where did I know Oscar from and how long had I known him and when had we last seen each other and at what point had we arranged to meet and at what time? What had we talked about? Had Oscar mentioned anything that would suggest he knew his kidnapper? The police would take me apart the way Miss Marple treated her suspects. The lottery machine would go crazy.

  I’d die of embarrassment.

  On the TV they were now showing the picture of the first kidnapped child. I knew what was coming next; they’d done it a thousand times already: They’d show one kid after another. Sad music was playing, as though the victims had all been through a shredder instead of coming back in one piece.

  “Now they’re just trying to make us cry,” said Mrs. Darling. “I’d better put the movie on. What did I do with it? Oh yes, I think it’s in my handbag.”

  She pushed herself up from the sofa and disappeared into the hall. I just kept staring at the screen, dazed. My friend Oscar was the latest kidnap victim and he didn’t even have a mom to worry about him! She was probably dead or something like that. I couldn’t believe it. I should have been afraid for Oscar or felt sorry for him, but as the pictures of the kidnapped children were being shown, I felt like a bowl that had been completely licked clean of cake mix.

  When the second victim popped up, I looked more closely. They’d gotten a new photo of Sophia. Her parents finally seemed to have realized that the TV kept showing the same terrible picture of their daughter, and had given the evening news a better one. Sophia was standing in a playground next to a rocking horse on springs. The photo must have been taken in the playground in front of her grade school, because in the background you could see a big building with colorful pictures stuck to the windows, probably from the inside.

  Unlike the old blurry photo, this one was really clear. Sophia didn’t look much prettier in it than she usually did, but she did look much nicer. She was smiling. Her hair was washed and she was no longer wearing the wrinkled pink T-shirt with the big fat strawberry jam stain on the chest, but an ironed light blue one instead. However …

  I leaned forward. It was hard to believe, but Sophia had stained her light blue T-shirt in almost exactly the same place! The camera zoomed in on the picture. And for the second time that evening my heart stood still. It wasn’t a stain, I could see that now.

  It was a small, bright red airplane with a broken-off wing.

  WEDNESDAY

  looking for sophia

  Dear Mom,

  I have left the computer on on purpose so that you’ll find my diary right away when you come home. I don’t want you to worry, but I have to help Oscar. The boy with the blue helmet. If something happens to me, you can break into my piggy bank to pay for the funeral. If Uncle Christian has died, you can put me in his coffin. If I’m dead, I won’t mind.

  Love,

  Rico

  P.S. Mr. Haven will take care of you. He’s very nice and has a beautiful living room, especially the ceiling. I love you!

  It was eight thirty in the morning and the day was fresh and wet. I stood in front of 93 Dieffe Street and looked into a dirty puddle that the rain had left behind on the pavement the night before. Seeds from the trees with the peeling-off bark were raining into the puddle, hundreds and hundreds of them. They looked like tiny parachutists.

  I was well equipped. Mom’s A to Z map of Berlin was in my backpack. I had the money that she’d left me, too—twenty euros. And when I patted the front pocket of my jeans, I could feel the red airplane that I had fished out of the trash can.

  One thing was clear: Sophia must have given Oscar the airplane as a present—this very airplane with the broken-off wing. I couldn’t imagine that he’d stolen it.

  But why had he visited Sophia?

  What had she told him?

  Though on the one hand it was sort of difficult to believe, on the other I couldn’t help suspecting that Oscar had tried to track down Mr. 2000 all by himself. I didn’t know where he had got hold of that crazy idea and why his search had brought him to Dieffe Street last Saturday. But he must have been following a clue that he had gotten from Sophia. A really important clue that Sophia had either not told the police or that nobody had believed when she had told them.

  My head was spinning so much it hurt. Maybe Mr. 2000 hadn’t chosen Oscar, but had kidnapped him because Oscar had been on his trail. Had Oscar been planning to catch Mr. 2000 by offering himself up as bait? And if that was the case, why hadn’t Oscar let anybody in on his plan?

  The thoughts were flying wildly around my head, like chickens squawking because they’re being chased by somebody with a meat cleaver. The night before, I had fallen asleep in the thinking chair from all the effort, but before I did I had the idea of looking for Sophia. Now here I was, trying to set out to find Sophia but rooted to the spot, staring at this stupid puddle.

  Oh God, oh God!

  I’d never been out of my street by myself. I’d been with other people, though. Irina has a fast car, and on nice summe
r days Mom and I go for drives with her. We cruise from Alexander Square to the radio tower and back, past the Brandenburg Gate and then into the center of the city, listening to cool music. If we like the look of a street, then we get out and sit at a trendy sidewalk cafe. The sun shines on Irina’s golden ankle chain and on Mom’s fingernails with their pink shimmer or whatever else is on them, and Mom and Irina drink champagne and laugh themselves silly, and I drink Coke and I’m happy that so many people think Mom is great. Everybody looks at her, but Mom never asks any of them if they’d like some of her champagne.

  But getting around Berlin by myself is another matter. The very idea of setting off to find Sophia without really knowing which way to go froze me to the sidewalk. I wasn’t brave enough to open Mom’s large A to Z of the city. All those lines and bright colors and then the tiny letters and all those funny symbols. Not for Rico!

  What a great start.

  I turned around as the door to the building opened behind me. Mr. Kirk isn’t as good-looking as Mr. Haven, but he’s not much worse-looking. Mrs. Darling says he’s always neat as a pin, and she’s right. He wears extremely cool clothes and shoes and he has a huge collection of sunglasses. Mrs. Darling is always asking herself how he pays for all that stuff on his salary. Mr. Kirk also goes to the hairdresser’s once a week, and he owns the coolest car on all Dieffe Street, an old Porsche where you have to wind the windows down by hand. The car was right on the other side of the street. Mr. Kirk had the key in his hand as he came out of the door.

  Sometimes, when you have a good idea, it’s almost as though you can’t breathe for a moment. Unfortunately everybody notices because of the color of your face. Mr. Kirk could see it even through his dark glasses.

  “Everything all right, Rico?” he said.

  I forced myself to breathe in and nodded. We don’t know each other that well. Mr. Kirk hadn’t been all that impressed when I wanted to look at his apartment, and when we meet in the stairway, we almost never talk.

  “You’re up early,” he said. “Aren’t you on summer break?”

  “I was waiting for you,” I said.

  He pushed up his sunglasses in surprise. “For me?”

  “I’m going in your direction,” I said. The dental laboratory where he works is in the part of town where Sophia lives, Tempelhof. I should have realized that a lot earlier.

  “Tempelhof? What are you up to over there?”

  “Visiting a girl.”

  “Oh yeah?” He always looks like a bit of a show-off when he grins. “I thought nights were for visiting girls.”

  “Not a going-out-with kind of girl!” I said, though it’s really none of his business. “So will you take me with you?”

  “Be my guest!” he said, and pointed to the Porsche. “But if you get the car dirty, I’ll throw you out right then and there!”

  We crossed the street and he opened the passenger door for me. As soon as I was sitting in the car, I dug the A to Z out of my backpack, opened it, and ran my finger over it. Mr. Kirk got in on the other side, put his seat belt on, and glanced at the map.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “The school.”

  “Which school?”

  “The one where I’m going to meet my friend on the playground.”

  “I thought you wanted to go to Tempelhof. Why are you looking at a page with a forest on it?”

  It was one of the few double pages in the A to Z that didn’t have many roads marked. Everything was nice and green because of all the trees, although up until a minute ago I’d thought they were fields. Most of the paths that were drawn in had very simple names, and the Havel River was flowing on one side, nice and blue. I stuck the A to Z under Mr. Kirk’s nose.

  “Could you look for me? I’m a bit lost,” I admitted reluctantly.

  “Because of your learning difficulties or what?”

  I had to bite my lip to stay calm. The way he said it just like that, and the grin on his face! If I shouted at Mr. Kirk now, he’d never take me with him. It’s annoying when people think you’re totally stupid just because your brain works in a different way from theirs.

  “I’m not a child proddity on purpose, and anyway I’m only a little bit of one,” I said angrily, and pointed at the A to Z. “Sometimes I just don’t know where front and back is and things like that.”

  “Really?” said Mr. Kirk. “Well, welcome to the club.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I never said it was.”

  “And I’ve got a really good memory.”

  “All right, all right!” He put both his hands up in the air as though I was threatening him with a pistol. “I’m sorry if I offended you. So, what’s the name of the school?”

  I leaned back in my seat. “I’ve forgotten.”

  He sighed impatiently. “Listen, kid, we won’t get anywhere like this. There are God knows how many grade schools in Tempelhof; I can’t possibly drive past all of them.”

  I wrinkled my nose. Mr. Kirk rolled his eyes.

  “All right, then, listen. There’s a school I drive past on my way to work. I’ll drop you off there. After that you’ll have to figure it out by yourself. I can’t be late for work because of you.”

  I opened my mouth to reply.

  “No ifs, ands, or buts!” He put his key in the ignition and mumbled so I could hardly understand, “I had enough problems on Monday for taking the afternoon off.”

  “What for?” I asked, interested. Monday was the day I’d seen him in the stairway with Mr. Haven and Mr. Marrak.

  “That’s of no interest to little boys.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s got something to do with big boys.” I pushed myself even lower into my seat. “Are we going, then?”

  “As soon as you’ve put your seat belt on, boss.” Mr. Kirk pulled his sunglasses back over his eyes and turned the key. “And if you promise me that you’ll keep your mouth shut while we’re driving.”

  I was very lucky that the school where Mr. Kirk let me out turned out to be the right one. Who knows what would have happened otherwise? I recognized the building right away from the new picture of Sophia on TV—the red bricks, the decorated windows; I even discovered the rocking horse on springs in the playground.

  Behind me Mr. Kirk drove off with screeching tires. I watched him go. Riding in the Porsche was awesome! It didn’t feel like driving; it felt like floating over the ground. The motor had purred like a happy cat, and Mr. Kirk had barely needed to turn the steering wheel. True, that was because we had driven straight ahead for quite a while in the beginning, had only turned off once at a crossroads, and then driven straight ahead again for ages. But it had been cool. Mr. Kirk had put his foot on the accelerator impatiently at every traffic light. The engine had revved up and everybody had looked at us. It was great!

  It was only the last part that was difficult: a little turn here and a little turn there, more crossroads, more traffic lights, and in between, the lottery balls in my head banging into each other and saying the same thing over and over again: You’ll never find the way home, you’ll never find the way home….

  We’d see about that!

  I looked around. The playground in front of the school was empty. Almost nobody goes to a playground at nine thirty in the morning in the middle of summer. I was expecting that, but I knew that the longer I stayed here, the more chance I had of meeting somebody who could help me—a kid who went to school here, too, and knew Sophia, the famous girl who had been kidnapped.

  I stomped around a bit. The seats on the swings glistened with water. The sand in the sandbox was dark gray and sticky. Fat drops of rain clung to the metal of the monkey bars. Off to one side, on the way to the school building, there was a bench. Two boys were sitting on the back of it. One of them had blond, stubbly hair and was about as tall as Oscar. The other one had untidy brown hair, was a lot bigger than I was, and was talking to stubblehead. If he was used to younger kids, he pr
obably wouldn’t tell me to get lost if he didn’t like the look of me.

  I wandered over to the two of them. The big one was so busy talking that he didn’t notice me until I was only five feet away. The little one had been watching me the whole time without moving an inch.

  “What?” said the big one as I stood in front of them. He didn’t look mean or unfriendly, just annoyed at being disturbed.

  “Do you know your way around here?” I asked him.

  “Why?”

  “I’m looking for someone who lives nearby.”

  I was only guessing, but most kids don’t live far away from their school. Sophia might be only a few streets away in her room, organizing her T-shirts.

  The big one didn’t answer.

  “Her name’s Sophia and she goes to this school,” I went on. “I don’t know her last name. She’s the girl who was abducted by the ALDI kidnapper.”

  He nodded as though people asked him about Sophia every day. “And if I do know where she lives?”

  “You can tell me.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name’s Rico.”

  “Felix.”

  “No, Rico.” Hadn’t he heard me?

  “I’m Felix. So, what do you want from Sophia?”

  “She’s my friend.”

  “You don’t know her last name and you don’t know where she lives?” He laughed quietly. “You can’t be friends.”

  “I can’t remember addresses and things like that. I’m a child proddity.”

  Felix scrunched his eyebrows together. He didn’t understand the word. It only took a second for me to battle with myself and say that other thing I hated: “I have learning difficulties. But only sometimes,” I added quickly.

  The blond stubblehead kept on looking at me without making a sound. He probably wasn’t even breathing. He had light blue, somehow watery eyes that looked as though ladybugs could take a bath in them. I found him a bit freaky.

  “So, assuming you are nice, just a bit weird,” said Felix, “why should I tell you anything about Sophia?”