Then they started kicking me with their paratrooper boots. They kicked me in the stomach, in the face, everywhere. I could sense their huge shadowy shapes looming above me. I had to puke.
“You leave Ahmed Hamul alone, once and for all! You understand, darkie? If you don’t, we’ll snuff you!”
They went on driving their boots into my body. The gas settled on my cracked skin and I tried to scrape the burning goo off with my fingernails. That didn’t work. Now they were kicking me in the back, aiming for the kidneys. I was almost numb.
“If you wake up alive, you leave town. Understand?”
I forced myself to wrap my arms around my legs. I was afraid I might scratch my eyes out. At some point, they stopped. They’re gone, I thought, and started crawling around the desk. I tried to get to my feet but kept sliding back down on my stomach. At last I managed to raise myself up.
They were still there. They shouted something I didn’t understand. They were standing by the door, and the one with the gas gun raised it again. There was a horrendous explosion right next to me and I mustered all my remaining strength to throw myself in the direction of the door in order to avoid a direct hit. This second grenade will kill me, I thought, but at the same time I realized they had left. I fumbled around in total desperation, completely blind, until I reached the door. I threw my whole weight against the door handle. They had locked it from the outside.
I realized I was running out of air. There was no oxygen left in the room. I felt my lungs contract, reeled back the other way, to the window, and rammed my head through the glass pane. Oxygen poured in, despite the drawn blind.
After a while I was able to open my eyes. Still halfblind, I managed to find my spare key and unlock the door.
I called a doctor, gave him my office address, and passed out.
“Easy, Mr. Kayankaya, easy. You mustn’t exert yourself.”
I sat up carefully. I had been lying on a white cot.
“Where am I?”
“In my clinic. And you’ll stay here for a while.”
Two warm old eyes scrutinized me through gold-rimmed spectacles.
“I can’t do that.”
I heaved my legs over the edge of the bed and planted my feet on the floor.
“Well, try to get up, if you insist. You’ll see what happens.”
I tried, and crashed to the tiles.
“Now you want me to help you. Right?”
“No.”
Slowly I dragged myself up, hanging on to the frame of the cot. I felt as if someone had extracted my spine. Nevertheless, I managed to make it to the wash basin.
“Oh my God!”
“Well, I don’t know what you used to look like, but …”
What I saw in the mirror was a shapeless, pinkish-brown mess. My left incisor was broken and one of my eyes had swollen completely shut.
“You were lucky to be able to make that call. The stench was incredible. Just a couple of minutes in your office almost laid me low. But who in God’s name did this to you?”
I let cold water run over my face. It felt good.
“As an emergency doctor, I see a lot of this kind of thing, but I must say they really did a job on you. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“I see you’re a private investigator. That seems to be a strenuous profession.”
“Uh-huh, today was pretty strenuous.”
He went to his desk and started typing something. He might as well have planted the typewriter on top of my head.
“Excuse me … but as long as I’m here, would you mind terribly if I asked you not to pound that machine?”
He smiled. “You see? You better admit that you’re in terrible shape.”
“Oh, go ahead, finish your typing.”
I made my way back to the cot.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette?”
“As a physician …”
“Do you have one or not?”
He smiled again. “Just a moment, you had some in your clothes.”
He went to the corner where my pants and coat were hanging, extracted a pack, and tossed it to me.
“Thank you. A light?”
He handed me a matchbox. I lit a cigarette. For a moment I thought I’d pass out again, but then I felt better. Hungry and thirsty, in fact.
“There wouldn’t be anything like a beer or a sandwich around here?”
“I’m sure we can find something. But you’ll just throw up again.”
“I’ll risk it.”
He left the room. I managed to reach my clothes and started putting them on. It wasn’t easy, but not as hard as I had anticipated. The door opened and the doctor came in again. “Ham, liver sausage, cheese—whatever you fancy …”
He paused, looked at me. “Now, now. How am I supposed to take this?”
“Any way you want.”
“I don’t care, as long as you sign a statement saying that you take full responsibility for your actions.”
“I’ll sign, no problem.”
“If I may make a suggestion, it is this: go home and stay in bed for two or three days. That would be best.”
“Will do. Starting the day after tomorrow.”
I shambled over to the desk and took a small openface cheese sandwich. I bit into it, and felt just fine.
“No beer?”
“There’s just one left, and that one’s for me.”
“All right.”
I chewed my sandwich and palpated my stomach.
“No serious injuries?”
“You may have cracked a rib. If so, you’ll notice. I want to see you again, in any case, within a day or two.”
“Where do I sign?”
He pushed a preprinted form across the desk. I signed, and helped myself to a small ham sandwich.
“All right, then. See you later.”
“You come see me the day after tomorrow.”
“Will do.”
“And take it easy. Another escapade like that, and you won’t get off so easily.”
“I’ll do my best to remember that. Have a nice evening.”
“You too. The bus stop’s just round the corner. We are in the Westend. I don’t know where you want to go.”
“I do. Thank you.”
8
“Schöller.”
“Good evening, Mr. Schöller. My name is Kemal Kayankaya. I work for the Public Prosecutor’s office. I am researching a case that you were involved in some time ago.”
I had some difficulty speaking. My tongue kept hitting the broken tooth. I was holding a wet washcloth over my right eye.
“You are Erwin Schöller, correct?”
“That’s me.”
“Do you remember the events of the twenty-fifth of April, nineteen-eighty?”
“Not offhand, I don’t. What happened then?”
“You were on patrol with a certain Harry Eiler. On that day, you reported an accident near Kronberg. Does that ring a bell?”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Yes, yes it does. It does ring a bell.”
“Please try to remember what happened, to the best of your ability. Tell me how you came across this accident and so on.”
He cleared his throat and took his time.
“Well … You work for the Public Prosecutor?”
“That’s right.”
“Let me tell you something … I can’t really give you any details. You see, I wasn’t really there …”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“You see, I don’t want to level any accusations, and …”
“It’s not a question of levelling accusations.”
“All right, then. This is the way it was. Back then, I had a little girlfriend in the city, you know what I mean? And Harry and I, we went on patrol together a lot of the time, and we had this agreement where he would sometimes just go on by himself while I paid my friend a visit. In return, I would type up his reports for him … Y
ou see, I have a wife and kids, and it wasn’t easy to get away …”
“I understand. And on that day, you were visiting your friend?”
“Well, as a matter of fact … I hadn’t been planning to … but after we got in the car, Harry asked me if I wouldn’t like to take a little time off. He said he wouldn’t mind, and he pointed out that I was going on vacation the following week, with the family … and so on. So I said, sure, why not.”
“Can it cause problems if your superiors find out you do these things while you’re on patrol?”
“Oh sure it can. But my girlfriend lived in the same district we covered, and whenever anything serious happened, Harry would call me, and I would just dash off … That was the strange thing, that day. It even struck me as strange. Harry had no business being in Kronberg, and we had to go through all kinds of contortions to keep that from getting out.”
“Did Harry tell you what he was doing in Kronberg?”
“He told me it had been such a pretty day, and he had just felt like getting out into the green belt.”
“Did he describe the accident to you?”
“Just that it was a bad one. Nothing else.”
“Thank you for talking to me Mr. Schöller. Have a nice day.”
“Is there going to be trouble because of this?”
Oh no, don’t worry, Mr. Schöller. Goodbye.”
I hung up quickly, before he could frame another question. I went to the sink and soaked the washcloth in fresh water. One more call, then it would be bedtime. I dialled the number I had for Albert Schönbaum. It took a while before anyone answered.
“Hello?”
“Good evening. Is this the Schönbaum residence?”
“Yes, it is. Who is this?”
“You don’t know me. My name is Kayankaya. I would like to speak to Mr. Schönbaum. Are you Mr. Schönbaum?”
“No, not me. Just a minute, I’ll call him to the phone.”
I heard him shout “Albi”. It took Albi almost five minutes to get to the phone.
“Schönbaum here.”
“Good evening, Mr. Schönbaum. My name is Kemal Kayankaya. I’m a private investigator. If you don’t mind, I would like to ask you a couple of questions.”
“A private investigator? There’s no such thing.”
“Oh yes, there is. Believe me.”
“All right, all right. So?”
“On the nineteenth of February, nineteen seventy-nine, you were involved in an automobile accident. Is that correct?”
“You working for an insurance company?”
“So you know the accident I mean?”
“Uh huh.”
“I am not working for an insurance company, Mr. Schönbaum, so don’t worry about that. All I want to know is whose fault that accident was.”
“Not mine.”
“But that’s what it says in the police report.”
“I know. That was the official story.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“See, this fellow banged into my left hand door. No two ways about it. Then drove to the precinct to make the official report. But first the cops talked to the guy for a while. He was a Turk. I waited until they were done with him. Then a cop came to me and asked me if I had proper insurance, and then he wanted to know if I would agree to say that it had been my fault. At first I thought, hey, what kind of a deal is this, but then the cop explained it to me. That Turk didn’t have insurance, so he would have to go to jail or would be deported, the whole sad rigmarole. And the deal was that he’d just slip me two thou, and I’d get my insurance to pay for the damages. I was pretty surprised by that offer, as you may well imagine. But who was I to complain when these cops wanted to act like human beings—for a change? End of story. The next day I went and picked up the Turk’s money, and my insurance paid up. And that was it.”
I too was pretty surprised.
“When you saw the Turk and he gave you the money—what did he say?”
“He was real nice to me and kept thanking me every minute. Nothing else. I had no problem understanding that. Who wants to be sent back to Anatolia?”
“Thank you, Mr. Schönbaum. Can I reach you at this number in the near future?”
“Sure. Why do you ask?”
“I may call you again. Until then, take care.”
“Yeah, likewise.”
I turned the radio down low, on the classical station, switched off the light, and went to bed.
DAY THREE
1
Four grey concrete pillars rose up against the sky. They didn’t make any sense. A couple of birds seemed to be using them as a rest stop, but that was all. At some time they must have been intended as supports for a bridge. The bridge had never been built.
I dragged myself out of the Opel and walked over to the pillar on the far right. Traces of the paint job of Vasif Ergün’s red car were still visible on it. The ditch lay two metres to the side, and immediately behind the pillars stood the first houses of Kronberg, facing vast potato fields. I walked a hundred metres to the first bungalow and pressed the bell button next to the garden gate. A curtain moved, and the front door opened a moment later.
“What do you want?”
“My name is Kemal Kayankaya. I am a private investigator. I would like to ask you a question. Just one.”
She stood there, undecided. I did not look all that inviting. My face was still quite swollen, and half of it was covered with a dark crust. My chest also hurt like hell, but she couldn’t see that.
“A private investigator?”
She was wearing a dark blue jogging suit and looked to be around forty.
“It’s an odd profession, I know.”
She came to the gate, slowly, her clogs clattering against the flagstones.
I smiled. I’m sure I looked horrible. She leaned against the gate.
“And it is?”
“What?”
“Your question?”
She was quite heavily made up. She looked at me with suspicion.
“Four years ago an accident happened here, or about a hundred metres from here, over there by those concrete pillars. Do you remember?”
“When that Turk ran into one?”
“That’s right. Did you happen to be at home that day?”
“Yes, I was. But I didn’t see anything. I was in the backyard gardening.”
“Do you know anybody who lives here or used to live here who saw exactly what happened?”
“No … those things happen so fast. We heard the explosion, all of us … but as for the rest—wait a minute.”
She raised her index finger to her lips and thought for a moment.
“There was somebody who saw it. The eldest daughter of Hornen the farmer over there.”
She pointed at a farmhouse across the way.
“But she died.”
“She died?”
“Yes, yes, I remember now. Very soon after the accident, a roof tile fell on her head and killed her. She was accident-prone, she was.”
“But she had seen the crash?”
“Yes, she saw it. And she got a lot of mileage out of it too.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, she just started acting important, the way farmgirls like to do. In places where nothing ever happens, whenever something does, like that accident, right in front of your doorstep, people tend to make a big deal of it.”
“What did she say about it?”
“Oh, it was just crazy talk. She claimed it hadn’t been an accident. She said there had been another car that ran the Turk off the road. Something like that. It sounded like complete nonsense. The police got to the scene very soon after, and they checked it all out. They would have noticed if there had been any signs of foul play.”
“And the girl was killed very soon after that?”
“The next day, in the evening. It was tragic, all right.”
I looked over to the farmhouse. “Do you think Mr. Hornen is in?”<
br />
“Oh, I’m sure he is.”
“I think I’ll have a word with him. Many thanks for your help. Have a good day.”
“ ’Bye.”
She clip-clopped back to her bungalow.
Hornen ran a clean farm.
There wasn’t a single piece of kindling, no pile of straw, not even any dog shit on the swept flag stones of the yard. The stable sported a new door, and the shutters were freshly painted. Some kind of wrought iron emblem hung above the front door. Blooming flowerboxes adorned the windowsills.
I knocked on the door. A dog started barking.
“Who’s there?”
I repeated my little spiel, and soon the farmer stood before me.
“Mr. Hornen?”
“The same.”
“I would like to ask you a question about your daughter. The one who passed away four years ago.”
“Go ahead.”
“How exactly did she die?”
“Roof tile fell on her head.”
“Where?”
“Two houses down, to your left.”
“When exactly did it happen?”
“February twentieth, nineteen hundred seventy-nine, seven o’clock at night.”
“Did she die immediately?”
“Yes, she did.”
“What did the doctor say?
“Roof tile killed her.”
“Could you tell me the name of the doctor?”
“Langner. To your left, third street on the right, second house on the left.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He closed the door.
I walked back to the pillars, got into my Opel, and drove over to Dr. Langner.
“Private investigator?”
I pocketed my license again.
“That’s right.”
“Please come in.”
He led the way across his waiting room to the office. After I had given my card to the nurse who opened the door and she had taken it to Dr. Langner, he had come to the door himself. While we passed through the waiting room his patients gave me sympathetic looks. My face indicated that I was an urgent case.
Happy Birthday, Turk! Page 10
