The Oath

by Klaus-Peter Wolf

  Rupert rode the bike past the racks of paperbacks and headed straight for the post office window.

  Daniela Stöhr-Mongelli didn’t like it when people parked their bikes or shopping trolleys inside her space. She politely but firmly informed him that this was a post office and not a cycle path. But that was where everything went wrong.

  The petite dark-haired woman was precisely the type who triggered a complete vacuum inside Rupert’s head. He began to act like a computer with a hard drive that’s been erased. Only a few functions still ran flawlessly. He was able to maintain his equilibrium and breathe normally, and he could tell colours apart. But although he still knew his name and address, he both felt and looked like some kind of idiot.

  He stammered out the words: ‘Aurich Kripo. Homicide division. The name is Rupert.’

  He attempted to smile, but his facial muscles seemed to have forgotten how.

  ‘You’re from the homicide division?’ Daniela Stöhr-Mongelli said with an incredulous laugh. ‘I would have thought you’d show up with flashing blue lights, not on a Dutch touring bike.’

  At first Rupert wanted to explain his problems getting hold of an official car, but that made him feel even smaller. He didn’t want to stand there and reveal that he didn’t even have an official car to drive.

  ‘I just arrived. I didn’t want to be obvious.’

  ‘From Wangerooge? On your bike?’

  ‘No, I flew in and then . . . it doesn’t really matter.’ He leaned forward. ‘No one can know that we’re talking to each other. You might be in danger – mortal danger!’

  She smiled, pointing to the queue that had formed behind Rupert, and asked: ‘Do you want to let these customers go first?’

  Rupert looked around. Four people were standing behind him. One waved his Lotto ticket and gave Rupert a friendly greeting. They knew each other from the Mittelhaus. Occasionally they diced for a round at the bar.

  ‘Hello, Rupert.’

  ‘Hello, Manni.’

  With a generous gesture Manni indicated that he had all the time in the world. The others also nodded and crowded in closer so they could hear better.

  Rupert held out the mobile phone photo to the young woman and asked: ‘Can you remember who sent this? It’s very important.’

  She gave him a disarming smile. ‘If you want to know who sent it, the return address is written right there.’

  Rupert groaned. ‘Yeah, but we can’t really read it. What we can decipher is impossible to check. It says Ruwsch or Rumsch, from . . . it might be Hude. Then 277. The rest we can’t read at all. Hude is in the Oldenburg administrative district, and there’s nobody named Rumsch or Ruwsch living there.’

  ‘Let me take a look,’ said Manni, Rupert’s pal, taking Rupert’s mobile. He passed it around, and in the general hubbub Ms. Stöhr-Mongelli said: ‘It was an Express Easy National package, weight limit up to 20 kilos, insured for 500 euros, which cost 29.90 euros. I think I remember now.’

  Rupert was excited. ‘And do you remember the man who sent it?’

  ‘It wasn’t a man. It was an old lady with a frame. She could hardly carry the package on her own. I think she was wearing those orthopaedic shoes, as if one leg was shorter than the other. She was standing right where you are now. I came out from behind the counter to help her put it on the scales. She also bought a small pouch of tobacco and rolling papers. Plus a copy of The Courier, if I recall. A lot of people post parcels here, and I don’t remember all of them.’

  ‘But you remember this one?’

  ‘Yes, because she didn’t look like she’d be rolling her own cigarettes. She bought an aromatic fine cut, almost more suited to a pipe than rolling papers. I think it had a vanilla or mango flavouring, but I’m not sure.’

  Rupert scratched his chin. ‘So if she didn’t look like someone who rolls her own cigarettes, what exactly did she look like?’

  Without pausing to think, Daniela Stöhr-Mongelli replied: ‘more like someone who smokes filter cigarettes, or more likely a non-smoker. You see, when you work here you learn to read people. She didn’t seem like somebody who would play the numbers. Just a simple Lotto game.’

  ‘She bought a Lotto ticket?’ Manni asked, and Rupert waved his hand as if he wanted to take over this line of questioning.

  ‘No, she didn’t. I don’t really remember. But she looked like the type who would play the same numbers every time.’

  ‘You certainly have excellent powers of observation,’ said a woman who had come in to buy a TV guide. ‘And you seem to have a good psychological sense too!’

  Rupert appreciated her input. Playing the big boss, he now said: ‘If you’re ever looking for a new job, Ms. Stöhr-Mongelli, we can always use good people like you.’

  Rupert’s old drinking buddy Manni misinterpreted his remark. ‘Oh, are you the new Kripo chief? It’s about time.’

  Flattered, Rupert puffed up his chest. ‘Well, not exactly, but—’

  Manni gave him a conspiratorial nod. ‘So you pull the strings in the background as the real expert and leave the grandstanding to the others?’

  Rupert smiled, hoping he was impressing the young woman.

  ‘Why, is my life in danger?’ asked Daniela Stöhr-Mongelli.

  Rupert turned to her as he said to the others: ‘Please keep back. This is a police investigation. I have to speak with the lady in private.’ Then he whispered to her, ‘You’re the only person who saw the perpetrator. If you give me your address, I’ll send a patrol car by occasionally to make sure nothing happens.’

  Daniela Stöhr-Mongelli swallowed hard, gazing at Rupert with her big brown eyes.

  *

  The samurai sword had proved to be a bitter disappointment. He didn’t want a repetition of such a disaster. It was a fine weapon, a katana from Gifu, forged of 420 stainless steel, the blade 70 centimetres in length. It felt good in the hand and looked wonderful, but he hadn’t been able to sever the head with one blow. The blade got stuck and he’d had to pull it out and strike again, which had completely interrupted the flow.

  *

  Ann Kathrin couldn’t stand the noise of the aeroplane engines and had to cover her ears. But she liked looking out of the plane window. The crows on Wangerooge were strutting across the runway as if they owned it. They didn’t fly off until the plane was almost upon them. Clearly they had practised this a thousand times before, with nonchalance and composure.

  Ann Kathrin smiled when she saw the crows hopping along the runway again as soon as they had landed. They kept an appropriate distance from the planes parked on the grass but had been disturbed by the noise of the plane landing and angrily cawed after it. A lone seagull was perched on the wing of an island-hopper, as if waiting for the pilot.

  Ann Kathrin climbed out. The wind ruffled her hair, and she took a deep breath.

  Ravens and crows, she thought, symbolise wisdom and knowledge in Nordic mythology. The god Odin always had two ravens that, like spies, informed him of everything that was going on around him. Apparently witches and sorcerers could morph into crows . She abandoned herself to that idea.

  Weller glanced at his mobile phone, which he hadn’t turned off during the brief flight. He didn’t doubt that even during visual flying there were technical instruments that could be disturbed by a mobile phone. He’d simply forgotten.

  Weller read the text from Rupert on his iPhone:

  We’re looking for a frail old woman with a walker. The type who always plays the same Lotto numbers, and either doesn’t roll her own cigarettes or is a non-smoker.

  ‘Well then,’ Weller grumbled, ‘we might as well put out an APB on her, with all this information.’

  Ann Kathrin looked at him as though she’d just woken up from a deep sleep. ‘What did you say?’

  Weller waved her away. ‘Nothing.’

  *

  Ubbo Heide sat in his wheelchair and held out his arms to Ann Kathrin like a drowning man reaching for a life belt. She bent down to
him, and he hugged her hard, as if he’d never let her go. And she felt a bit the same way. A strange symbiosis. Since her father’s death, her mentor had become a sort of surrogate father, although they never discussed the matter. She could turn to Ubbo with all her cares and worries. He had always watched over her and patiently steered her along the right path.

  Now the situation was reversed. She felt she had to protect him. He needed her advice. He had clearly suffered a huge shock.

  Wangerooge was his retreat. The island that in some incomprehensible way had managed to defy the hectic pace of the world and preserve its innocence. Now, this perpetrator had desecrated that innocence.

  And Ubbo felt responsible. Ann Kathrin could see it in his face. He believed that he had brought evil to the island. He felt guilty. Something inside him was refuting his right to keep living here because he had mysteriously introduced evil.

  His wife Carola lay on the bed, dazed from a sedative and staring at a woodcut by Horst-Dieter Gölzenleuchter that Ubbo had given to her on her sixty-fifth birthday. It was from her father’s estate, one of the woodcuts from his collection. Depending on how you looked at it, it depicted either a tree with branches stretching towards heaven, or a nude woman raising her arms in lamentation.

  Today Carola saw the woman. In fact, she thought she could hear her sobbing.

  She had spent all these years with this man, who, surrounded by the world’s filth, had remained a good father and a kind man. She knew that images of victims often tormented him at night and kept him from sleeping. Sometimes she too had sensed the horror he’d witnessed. Here on Wangerooge, after his retirement, he had hoped to leave all that behind. But now, lying motionless on the bed, Carola realised that the images never ever cease.

  Just as the Devil and God needed each other, her husband and crime belonged together. He was the antidote.

  A tear spilled from her right eye and ran across her temple to her ear like an insect leaving a moist trail.

  She heard Ann Kathrin and Ubbo talking in the next room. The wall was little more than a screen made of thin fabric.

  ‘Do you have a hunch about this, Ubbo? Do you know this man?’

  ‘No, I have no idea who the head belongs to.’

  ‘Somebody is trying to get you involved in something,’ said Ann Kathrin. ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘You’re wrong, Ann. I am involved. Maybe someone can’t accept that I’m no longer the police chief. Maybe he wants me to keep investigating.’

  ‘Who even knows that you two have a summer house out here? Or that you’re actually here at the moment?’

  ‘I could make you a list. Most of them are part of the firm.’ He liked to say ‘firm’ when he meant their police station. ‘My daughter Insa, of course, and a couple of friends.’ A little sourly he added: ‘But I don’t think Insa actually knows where we are right now. We last talked to her about six or seven weeks ago. And a few of my wife’s friends know about this place.’

  Carola couldn’t suppress a loud sob. As Ann Kathrin went to her, Weller’s mobile played ‘Pirates Ahoy!’ He had stayed in the background, not wanting to interfere with Ubbo and Ann’s conversation. He gazed out of the window at the sea while he took the call.

  A TV journalist wanted an interview. His name was Joachim Faust, and it sounded like he expected people to know who he was. He was a bit put out when Weller didn’t instantly express his awe.

  ‘I don’t watch much TV,’ Weller said in apology. ‘I prefer to read books.’

  ‘We’d like to invite you and your wife to the studio so we could hear more about the severed head. She’s in charge of the investigation, isn’t she?’

  ‘You must have the wrong number,’ said Weller. ‘My wife’s name is not Ann Kathrin Klaasen, and she’s not in charge of any investigation. She’s a former kindergarten teacher who now works in St Pauli as a stripper. But only temporarily.’

  Ubbo gave Weller a flabbergasted look.

  ‘But I’m sure she wouldn’t mind doing an interview with you.’

  Weller listened for a moment. The journalist said no thanks.

  Weller shrugged and said to Ann Kathrin: ‘Too bad. Not interested. Since you have an unlisted number, all the press freaks try to reach you through me.’

  ‘That’s why we have a press agent,’ Ann Kathrin snapped. Then she turned to Ubbo Heide and asked: ‘Is the head still on the island? I’d like to have a look.’

  Ubbo hunched his shoulders, and then nodded.

  Weller groaned. ‘I can go check with our local colleagues—’

  ‘No,’ Ann Kathrin said firmly, ‘you’re going to come with me and have a look.’

  ‘But we’ll be getting a report, Ann.’

  ‘We have to know what we’re talking about. There’s a difference, Frank, between reading a recipe and tasting the food.’

  He found that comparison extremely inappropriate, but gave in.

  *

  Marilyn and her brother Justin, who was two years older, kept digging deeper. Standing in the hole, the sand came up to their chests, but it still wasn’t quite wide enough.

  Today was a super day, Marilyn thought. It was here in Cuxhaven-Duhnen that her parents had met ten years before on holiday. She must have heard the story a hundred times, but she still never tired of it.

  Mama and Papa first saw each other in a fish restaurant. They still intoned its name like it was some kind of miracle. Mama was sitting alone at a table eating her dinner. She was sad because the friend who’d come on holiday with her had gone home after a quarrel. Papa always told the story the same way. He said the sight of Mama had struck him like a bolt of lightning, dazzling him with her beauty.

  Then Mama would always interject that she hadn’t looked very good. She was sad, her eyes puffy from crying, and she was much too fat. She’d weighed at least five kilos more than she did today.

  But Papa denied all that. At any rate he sat down at her table and announced: ‘You are the woman of my dreams. We’re going to get married and bring children into the world together.’

  At first this had given Mama the creeps, and she had asked Papa to leave her alone and find somewhere else to sit.

  This evening they wanted to have dinner at that same restaurant. So romantic. And Marilyn and Justin had promised to stay in the cabin and watch TV.

  Today they really ought to bury Papa all the way. Of course they had to leave his head sticking out so he could breathe.

  They always did this at least once every holiday, and each time they took a picture of Papa’s head jutting out of the sand, flanked by Marilyn and Justin. They were usually holding ice creams, and Papa had beads of sweat on his forehead.

  Marilyn thought that the hole was deep enough, but Justin wanted to keep digging. He liked to pretend he was a mole. Sandcastles were his passion.

  He was using a blue tin shovel with a wooden handle. Marilyn had a little red trowel, which meant that she dug much more slowly.

  Marilyn hit something hard. It made a funny sound. Squeaky. The trowel bent.

  ‘There’s something here, Justin.’

  ‘Yep,’ he said with a laugh. ‘A pirate ship sank somewhere around here. If we find it we’ll be rich because it had plundered gold on board.’

  Marilyn always knew when her big brother was telling the truth and when he was trying to fool or scare her. His voice would change. He tried to sound like a grown-up, and his eyebrows settled into stern lines.

  But then she saw something, like a naked beast, but without a pelt. A fat, dead, white worm or – no – worms didn’t wear rings. And that looked like a dirty fingernail.

  Marilyn shrieked, ‘I found a hand!’

  ‘Oh, sure!’ Justin said with a grin and then leaned down to examine the object more closely.

  Then he yelled: ‘Papa! Mama!’

  Marilyn had a feeling this was going to ruin her parents’ romantic dinner. Suddenly she had no desire to watch TV alone with her brother in the unfamiliar holiday
cabin.

  *

  A fat fly buzzed above their heads like a mini-drone sent by a foreign power to listen, observe, and maybe even frighten the people in the room.

  Büscher’s first official meeting as head of the department took place under extreme pressure. There was no time for everyone to get to know him, or for him to slowly exert his authority. He had to start from zero and proceed immediately to one hundred. They didn’t even pause to introduce themselves.

  He sat at the table next to the highly strung Rieke Gersema, who kept fidgeting with her glasses. Büscher didn’t think they suited her. She wanted to set a time for a press conference, because apparently there were a zillion reporters waiting for news. The first rumours about jihadis in East Frisia were making the rounds.

  Rieke Gersema, Büscher and Sylvia Hoppe had taken out their smartphones. Sylvia’s had a touch screen, while Büscher and Rieke still typed on Blackberries with a keyboard.

  Rupert referred to Büscher’s message: ‘The boys from forensics managed a real quickie this time. The victim was a man of about sixty. Blood type A positive. He still had all his hair. Medium blond sprinkled with white. General conclusion, a central European. When Ubbo unpacked the head, the man had already been dead for at least sixty hours. He was decapitated by two sword blows, so the perpetrator must have been an amateur. A beginner, in other words.’

  Ann Kathrin could barely stand to listen to Rupert. She leaned her head on her hand in such a way that the others couldn’t see her eyes.

  ‘We have his teeth,’ Rupert went on, ‘so we’ll probably be able to identify him eventually. But it’ll take a while, of course.’

  Sylvia Hoppe swatted at the fly and interjected: ‘We’re going over the missing-persons list, but haven’t found him yet. In this past year alone, 125 men who match the description have vanished from the face of the earth. These include tax evaders and guys who’d rather go underground than pay child support.’

  Rupert plopped his documents on the desk: ‘That’s all we know about him at the moment.’

  ‘In Ubbo Heide’s day there was always tea and krintstuut’ – East Frisian raisin bread – ‘or at least some cookies at meetings like this,’ Weller complained. His stomach was growling.