More Beer kk-2

by Jakob Arjouni

  “So one might say-from a purely economic point of view-that Mr. Bollig’s sensational assassination was not such bad news for the firm?”

  His voice turned almost falsetto.

  “I beg your pardon! I did not imply anything of the kind! Please don’t misunderstand me.”

  I copied the addresses of the children in question.

  “Will Mrs. Bollig take over as director of the firm?”

  “No decision has been made about that. During the transition period, I am in charge.”

  There was pride in that statement. He must have been seeing himself in that position for quite a while. I wondered how well he was getting along with the widow. Rich, decadent, and lazy, she was bound to irritate the ambitious Meyer. I got up.

  “Many thanks, Mr. Meyer. I hope I haven’t taken up too much of your time.”

  We shook hands, and I walked through the door. The princess was smoking, waiting for Meyer. She looked at me anxiously as I walked past her. I proceeded down the dark, empty hallways, in the throes of a nicotine fit.

  5

  It was half past six. I passed through the foyer and crunched across the wet gravel to my car. The road was lit by yellow fluorescent lights. Fifty meters to the left stood the firm’s refreshment kiosk. Its red neon lottery sign flickered restlessly. I walked over and knocked on the window. Through the rain-splattered pane I saw a small figure approaching with a limp, like an old boat in rough seas. She squinted hesitantly through the window before she slid it aside.

  “What is it?”

  This female Hunchback of Notre-Dame was only a little taller than the counter. It occurred to me that people might set their beers down on her head, by mistake. Her nose was running, and her chin and upper lip were covered with an unruly, goatlike beard. She had a hard time looking up at me. I put a twenty-mark note in the tray.

  “Two packs of Luckies and an Asbach.”

  Her crooked fingers took the money and shoved it under the counter. Then she limped over to the cigarette shelf and then to the other, the cookie and alcohol shelf. It took a while, but she found everything. She rummaged in the cash box and pushed my change across the counter. Through the open door in the back I caught a glimpse of an old iron bedstead.

  “Do you live here?”

  “None of your business.”

  “It was just a question. Maybe you heard something, the night of the attack.”

  “I heard the big bang. Like everybody else.”

  “No gunshots?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “When did you hear those?”

  “Before the bang.”

  “Before the bang?”

  “Yes. So?”

  “How much time passed between the shots and the big bang?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have a watch.”

  “Five minutes, half an hour, an hour?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Is that all you want? I closed up quite a while ago.”

  She started sliding the window shut.

  “Did you know Mr. Bollig?”

  The window had a couple of centimeters to go. She hesitated. “Yes. You could say I did.”

  The window closed. Her shadow receded slowly through the door in the rear. I lit a cigarette, sipped some Asbach, and trotted back to Riebl’s Rabbit. A Renault Five was parked right behind it. I got into the Rabbit and drove down to the main road. Just before the entry ramp to the freeway, I noticed the Renault right behind me. I slowed down to take a look. The driver was alone in the car. On the freeway, I passed four trucks, swooped back into the right lane, and slowed down to eighty. The Renault zoomed past me on the left. I speeded up and caught up with it. It was crawling along at seventy. I had hardly passed when it picked up speed again and stayed on my tail. I changed tactics and tested the Rabbit’s top speed. At a hundred and seventy, I visualized Riebl’s face if I brought his car back minus its doors. I slowed down to a hundred and thirty and tried to ignore the headlights of the Renault.

  At the Frankfurt West Exit, I turned toward the trade fair buildings. I knew of a dead-end street near there. The Renault stayed with me as unobtrusively as a police escort. The driver was either a pro who wanted to scare me, or else an amateur. I charged down the street at seventy, slowed down at the corner, and made a sharp left turn. When I saw the Renault come around with similar bravado, I accelerated briefly and then braked to a complete stop. The pavement was wet and covered with slippery leaves. I skidded to the right and stopped at right angles to the street. My pursuer slammed on the brakes and came to a screeching halt, banging into the driver’s side door. I scrambled over the passenger seat and out into the street, ran around the Renault, and yanked the driver’s door open.

  “Hey, what a surprise!”

  Carla Reedermann stared at her knees. I grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the car.

  “Now let’s hear what you have to say.”

  She tried to wriggle out of my grip, and when I didn’t let go, she started yelling.

  “Let me go, you asshole! Take your paws off me, you …”

  I slapped her.

  “Calm down. Not everybody knows how to play detective … You were doing that this morning, at the courthouse! You knew that Anastas wanted to hire me. Then there was all that playacting in the wine bar … your moon-faced friend thought he was being clever, faking surprise-‘What, you two know each other?’ I don’t mind if people feel like acting like idiots. But I do get bothered having the same set of headlights in my mirror.”

  I let her go and lit a cigarette. She rubbed her wrists. After a while she opened her mouth.

  “I-all right, you’re right, but-”

  “But?”

  She raised her head.

  “You have no idea what’s at stake in this case!”

  “No? I don’t?”

  “No! If you had an idea, you wouldn’t have acted so cool this morning. Do you know how many people were pleased that Bollig was killed by Greens? Not because he was a competitor-his little firm is quite insignificant-but because the chemical industry had found its martyr. And it needed one. Lately people have become altogether too interested in the environment. There are increasingly massive demands for measures to protect it-just think about the Rhein Main plant. Everybody was against its relocation in Vogelsberg. Now, after Bollig, it can be built there. And do you know who’s a shareholder in Rhein Main Farben? The Mayor of Frankfurt. That’s news to you, isn’t it?”

  “And how. They don’t write about stuff like that in the sports pages.”

  For a moment she looked confused.

  “So you see who is interested in having those four convicted without any more ifs and buts! We wanted to know if we could trust you. I have no experience with private investigators. We need someone who is on our side. For all we knew, you might have been in cahoots with the police. Checking us out for them. That would have been the end, for us. What do we know about you? True, you once got three police officers thrown into jail, but that may not mean all that much. I’m helping Anastas with the case, and it was my idea to test you first.”

  “By totaling my car?”

  “I’m sorry. I never tailed anyone before. And you didn’t have to slam on the brakes.”

  “I see. And what results did you expect?”

  “Maybe you would have driven directly to the police … or something. And besides …”

  “Yes?”

  “All right, I wanted to find out more about you. We hardly know one another, and yet we’re supposed to collaborate in such an important case. You haven’t told me anything about yourself. I’d like to know where you live, what else you do. And you’re a Turk. That’s a different culture, and we may not be able to communicate … Perhaps it was foolish, but I didn’t want any surprises. For instance-whether you would accept a woman as a co-worker. I mean, that’s unusual where you come from, isn’t it? Do you see what I mean?”

  I stared down the
wet street and considered dropping the case.

  “I don’t have the faintest idea.”

  She looked lost. I walked slowly to my car.

  “My job is to get four people out of jail. If the murderer is still at large, I’ll find him. Maybe I’ll ask you to brew me a cup of coffee one of these days. Maybe not. I’ll just do my job. I’ll see you at eight, at Anastas’s place.”

  I slid across the passenger seat, started the engine, and steered the car slowly past the Renault. I stopped briefly next to Carla Reedermann and leaned out of the window.

  “Besides, it isn’t the mayor who holds those shares. It’s his wife.” I drove off. I could still see her in the rearview mirror. Her dark hair shimmered under the streetlights.

  Riebl gazed sadly at the dent.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Riebl. It was slick. Someone skidded into me.”

  I gave him Anastas’s address, telling him to collect there.

  “Anytime you lend anything to anybody …”

  He ran his fingers gently over the dent. I walked over to my Opel. Once again, Riebl had managed to fix it. Two blocks down the street I parked and went into a restaurant. It was ten minutes to eight. Three large guys sat in a comer, playing skat.

  The proprietor brought me a plate of ribs with sauerkraut. One of the skat players went to the jukebox and played “Ninety-nine Balloons.” I have never been able to figure out the words. The proprietor coughed and hummed along.

  A short while later I got up and paid.

  “Say, Fritz, since when do you serve guys like him?”

  One of the drunken cardplayers gave me a challenging stare.

  “No politics,” growled the proprietor.

  I turned and went out. Maybe I should have tossed his glass of schnapps in his face.

  6

  Anastas’s office was in a stylishly renovated old building. I walked up the red-carpeted stairs to the second floor. Anastas stood in the doorway, smiled, shook my hand.

  “I was afraid you weren’t coming.”

  “Why?”

  “Miss Reedermann told me about your encounter.”

  “Encounter is funny.”

  He led the way to his office through a mirrored entrance hall. Several stacks of files covered his desk, in front of which stood four worn leather armchairs. Except for one cheap lithograph, the walls were bare and white. Carla Reedermann stood leaning against a radiator, perusing the daily papers. She looked up briefly and gave me a nod. Anastas asked, “Coffee, beer, wine-what would you like?”

  “I’ll take a beer.”

  While he went to get it, I stared out the window.

  “That Rabbit I was driving belongs to the owner of my auto repair shop. I gave him Anastas’s address. Is that OK?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The little lawyer returned, handed me a glass and a bottle of beer, and sat down on the edge of his desk, his legs dangling.

  “Now, Mr. Kayankaya, I have to apologize, and then I have to explain a few things to you.”

  He folded his hands solemnly. I sipped my beer and listened to things I already knew. Then he cleared his throat and looked at me expectantly. Carla Reedermann was also watching me, her eyelids lowered.

  “Have you found the camping enthusiast and his friend?”

  A brief pause.

  “Oh, I see, ha, ha …” His laugh sounded silly. “Mr. Kayankaya, I’m so glad you’ve decided to stay with the case.”

  He jumped down off the desk and shook my hand again. After he had calmed down and seated himself behind the desk, even Carla Reedermann granted me a smile. I asked myself if anyone except for me was at all interested in who had shot Bollig, and whether Anastas’s clients didn’t deserve their time behind bars. I lit a cigarette.

  “Well, is he coming here or isn’t he?”

  “He said he’d be here at nine o’clock.”

  “Good. Let me take a look at those files until then.”

  I went up to the desk, and Anastas explained the contents of the files. First I looked at the autopsy report. Four nine-millimeter bullets. Two in the stomach, one through a lung, one grazing the top of his head. Fired from a distance of circa ten meters. The assassin must have been a beginner, or else drunk out of his mind. Time of death, between midnight and half past. I copied the doctor’s address, and went on to study the defendants’ dossiers. All four of them were in their mid-twenties and had made an early start working for one cause or another in various groups, without attracting particular attention. One of them came from Doppenburg, the other three from Frankfurt. I copied their addresses. According to their statements, they had grown tired of handing out leaflets in vacant pedestrian malls, knowing that no one read them anyway. Then came the idea of a big bang to wake up the people, and they obtained explosives from a chemistry student. They refused to answer questions about the fifth man. When, on the morning after their act of sabotage, they heard about Bollig’s murder, all of them wanted to leave the country and go to Greece. After prolonged discussion, they discarded that idea and waited for further developments. Three days later, the police arrived. They didn’t look like killers to me.

  “Another beer?”

  “Yes, please. None of them gave a more detailed description of how they got the idea to blow up that pipe?”

  “No.”

  “One of them must have thought of it first.”

  “They claim they developed the idea collectively.”

  “Developed the idea! Bullshit. I have to talk to them.”

  “They don’t want to do that under any circumstances.”

  “Then think of something. You’re the attorney. Put pressure on them. How am I supposed to get on with my job?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Kayankaya, but I don’t want to put any strain on my relationship with my clients. You must understand that.”

  “They’re facing fifteen years in prison, and you’re talking about relationships? Once they’re convicted of murder, you’ll have to find another outlet for your interpersonal horseshit … How did the cops find out so quickly? Someone must have squealed. As soon as they realize that, they’ll denounce that someone. If they don’t, they’re idiots. But if they aren’t, and they still won’t talk, I can stop playacting the clever detective. Because if that’s the case, they did snuff Bollig. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  Anastas paced about with a furrowed brow.

  “You may be right. Let me get you that beer.”

  I looked at Carla Reedermann.

  “And what do you think we should do? Collect signatures? Print up a leaflet? How about a hunger strike? We could shackle Anastas to the courthouse fence for a week.”

  She smiled. It was a pretty smile.

  The doorbell rang. A moment later, Anastas returned with a young man wearing jeans and a sports jacket, followed by a knock-kneed blonde with no ass. Both of them looked as if this was their first time away from home after nine in the evening. We shook hands, and Anastas made introductory remarks. Alf Duli and Anita Weiss had been engaged for a year and planned a wedding for next summer. Alf Duli was finishing his apprenticeship as a bank clerk. He guided his fiancee to the window, sat down in an armchair facing me, leaned forward, and beamed. I asked Anastas and Carla Reedermann to leave the room.

  “On the night of the twenty-second of April, you put up a tent on the factory grounds of Bollig Chemicals?”

  “Next to the factory grounds, not on them.”

  “All right. By the lake. Tell me what it was like.”

  Alf told me that his parents had discovered that lake a long time ago, opined that it was surely all right to spend a night together in a tent without a marriage certificate, and went on to explain how many cans of provisions they had been able to fit into his Rabbit. I interrupted him.

  “Mr. Duli, what woke you up in the middle of the night?”

  “The explosion, of course …”

  “Any gunshots?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Before
or after the explosion?”

  “Ah … More or less at the same time … No, right after. Bollig came running after he heard the bang, didn’t he?”

  “I’m asking you if you heard any gunshots, and when you heard them. I’m not asking you for your conjectures.”

  “Well, I’m really not totally sure, but it stands to reason …”

  I turned to the little blonde.

  “What about you?”

  “I can’t remember anything except for that explosion.”

  “But Anita-”

  “Please! So, Ms. Anita, you heard no gunshots?”

  “No. I didn’t hear any.”

  “What did you do after you heard the explosion?”

  Duli made a fist. “I grabbed my knife, and then I-”

  “I’m talking to your friend.”

  His Boy Scout smile froze. He leaned back, clenched his jaw, and looked offended.

  “Yes, Alf rushed out, and I followed, and we could just still see those four running away.”

  “Those four? Not five?”

  “Oh yes, a little while later one more ran across the field.”

  I lit a cigarette.

  “Could it be that one of the four had turned around, and that you just saw him twice?”

  “If so, he must have been running damn fast.”

  “All right. And then?”

  “We waited there, by the tent, for about fifteen minutes. Then the police came.”

  Duli couldn’t stand it any longer. He demanded center stage.

  “I wanted to go after them right away, see what they were up to. I knew they were up to no good. But Anita, you know how women are, she got scared, and so-”

  “Yes, all right.” I turned back to the girl. “Did they take statements from you?”

  “They took our names and addresses, and the next day we had to go to the station. Two weeks from now we have to appear in court as witnesses. That’s all.”

  “Did you know the Bollig family?”

  “No.”

  “That’s all. Many thanks.”

  I got up and shook hands with them. Alf Duli demonstrated one more time what a guy he was by almost crushing my hand. I called for Anastas, and he escorted the couple to the door. Carla Reedermann came in and sat down on the edge of the desk. In her tight skirt, she did that really well. Her long legs swung gently. I watched her and pondered what kind of a test this might be.