The Oath

by Klaus-Peter Wolf

  Who would Yves Stern get, and when?

  It was getting hotter. Her mucous was beginning to dry out.

  The whole place smelled like cabbage and bacon. The floor was still covered with green stains. The slab of bacon lay shining on the white-tiled floor.

  The tap refused to produce any more water. It just made a gurgling noise. Somewhere outside her prison he must have turned off the water.

  I need weapons, Svenja thought. The plastic fork in her hand seemed ridiculous. Still, she found it encouraging that she was even looking for weapons. She told herself that it meant she hadn’t given up.

  Again the steel door opened with a whirr, as if controlled by a motor. And there he was, standing in the spotlight.

  From the crook of his right arm dangled a Kaufhof bag.

  He had bathed and changed his clothes. He must have used an apple shampoo, and something that smelled of coconut. His hair was fluffy, as if newly blow-dried. She noticed how intense her sense of smell was in this prison.

  He held a camera in his hand and now searched for the best position from which to take a picture. He came very close to the bars of the cell.

  ‘Oh wow, you’re looking so chic,’ she said, belligerently. That’s a sharp shirt. From Kaufhof? Although it’s not quite your style. Pigs should wear piggy pink, don’t you think?’

  He took a picture of her without a flash.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  She wondered what he had in the bag. Did it contain the knife he was going to use to kill her?

  The photos made her nervous. She didn’t want to be photographed like this. And whatever he was planning to do, she wanted to spoil his fun.

  She stuck out her tongue, rolled her eyes, and made faces.

  He clearly didn’t like that, and his displeasure goaded her on even more.

  She gave him the finger with both hands, holding them close to her face so that they’d show in the pictures.

  He lowered the camera. She’d managed to ruin his fun.

  Opening the shopping bag he pulled out a big sketch pad and a black marker pen.

  Does this perverse madman want to draw me now? She thought.

  ‘If this is supposed to be a drawing class, can’t you afford a professional model? The female students are queuing up for that sort of job these days. You don’t need to grab a woman off the street.’

  She noticed the strength in her voice. It was the courage of despair, the absolute will not to give up.

  He put the pad and pen in the slot between the bars, but she refused to touch them.

  ‘Take them,’ he ordered her, ‘and write: My name is Svenja Moers and I’m doing my punishment here.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes you will,’ he replied. ‘If you don’t, there will be nothing to drink and nothing to eat. I can turn the temperature up to over 120 degrees. How long do you think you’d be able to stand that?’

  So he did turn up the heat on purpose, she thought.

  She picked up the pen and pad. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and wrote. He was surprised to see her crack so soon.

  He started taking pictures again. ‘I can’t quite see it,’ he said. ‘Hold up the pad and lean your chin on it so I can get a good shot. Then I’ll turn the heat back down.’

  She sat up straight and turned the pad so he could read it.

  He took a picture, and then he lowered the camera. On the pad it said: My name is Svenja Moers. Yves Stern has kidnapped me.

  At first he could hardly breathe. Then he raised his hand to loosen his collar. He was sweating too.

  ‘You goddamned whore!’ he snarled. ‘You’re going to regret this!’

  He strode over to the door, but slipped on the chunk of bacon and landed smack on the leftover cabbage that was stuck to the floor. The camera dangled from his neck like a leash as he crawled out of the prison on all fours like a dog, dragging pieces of cabbage across the tiles.

  ‘Great performance, Yves!’ she yelled after him. ‘Hope you got good pictures!’

  Then she applauded him scornfully.

  *

  Weller almost didn’t recognise Professor Hildegard. She’d changed completely since their last meeting. Her body no longer looked fit and sporty. She had dyed her hair a deep red and let it grow longer. Her complexion had changed too, or maybe she was wearing different makeup. She had put on a few kilos and looked almost as old as she really was. Weller appreciated feminine curves.

  It did Ann Kathrin good to have Frank and Ubbo nearby. She felt secure with them.

  The rooms in Pathology were pleasantly cool, and the odour of disinfectant had a calming effect on her.

  The heads had been cleaned and forensics had treated them with chemicals for analysis, which Ann Kathrin noticed at once. Thanks to the clinical mode of presentation the decapitated heads no longer looked horrific. They looked like they had been prepared for a medical lecture and might not even be real. They could have been made of plastic.

  ‘I can tell you something about these men,’ said Professor Hildegard.

  Ubbo Heide stopped his wheelchair. ‘So can I.’

  His remark had the impact of a balloon bursting. Even before Professor Hildegard could start her remarks, Ann Kathrin had lost all interest in what she might say. Instead she turned to Ubbo. ‘You know them?’

  He pointed to the head that had been found in the boot of his car. ‘That one. I know him.’

  Ann Kathrin said to the professor, ‘Please send me the results. We have no time to waste. I’m sure you understand.’

  The professor nodded, looking a little piqued. Generally she enjoyed these performances, when she had the chance to explain everything to police officers. She liked being the scientist. She liked to pepper her remarks with medical terminology, so that some Kripo officer inevitably had to ask her to translate it into layman’s German. She always waited for that moment, and then she would revert to language that was generally understandable.

  That moment, she thought, was sometimes better than sex.

  She now felt that her expertise had been subverted, but she knew that to protest was pointless. Then Ann Kathrin Klaasen would start lecturing her and she’d have to listen to that old adage: most perpetrators are apprehended shortly after the crime is committed. The longer it takes to arrest the first suspect, the more difficult the case will be, because emotions cool and the suspects have time to work out a story.

  In Professor Hildegard’s opinion that was about the only thing anyone learned at the police academy.

  She watched as her three colleagues headed for the door. She was pleased when Weller suddenly turned around, because he had another question that he absolutely had to ask. ‘Tell me, Professor, did either of these men have skin cancer?’

  Astounded, she stared at Weller. ‘Yes, but only on the left side of the nose.’ Even though she loved to give lengthy answers, she had to ask: ‘How did you know that?’

  Weller back-pedalled. He whispered, ‘I can’t tell you that. It might jeopardise the investigation.’

  Then he strode off after Ann Kathrin and Ubbo, leaving a frustrated pathologist behind.

  *

  Weller drove while Ubbo Heide sat in the back, talking nineteen to the dozen. Ann Kathrin twisted around in the passenger seat so she could look at Ubbo, as if she wanted to read his lips. She couldn’t fasten the seat belt, so a red light kept blinking, accompanied by a shrill beeping that was driving Weller crazy. It was making his head ache, like biting down on a cherry stone with an infected tooth.

  Ann Kathrin didn’t seem to hear it. All her attention was focused on Ubbo, who was thinking out loud.

  ‘It’s an old case from fifteen or twenty years ago. Little Steffi Heymann, barely two years old, disappeared on Langeoog, where she was camping with her mother. The girl was never found. Her father, Bernhard Heymann, had been involved in a terrible divorce battle with his wife. She was in the stronger position, and the court had award
ed her custody of the child. For a long time the father was my prime suspect. He had moved to Switzerland, I think it was Appenzell.’

  ‘This is driving me crazy!’ Weller shouted, banging his hand on the steering wheel.

  ‘Me too. Somebody is decapitating people in East Frisia.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Weller clarified. ‘That beeping sound is too much. It reminds me of going to the dentist.’

  Without a word Ann Kathrin took hold of the seat belt and let it zip back without fastening it. Now she was kneeling on the passenger seat with her arms around the headrest and her back to the windscreen.

  ‘And why would anyone put Heymann’s head in your boot fifteen or twenty years later? That makes no sense.’

  ‘No,’ said Ubbo, ‘it definitely does not. But it’s him. I recognised him. I interrogated him three times and made him sweat. Sometimes he got tangled up in contradictions. I saw him protest and then flip out with rage. I put him through the wringer, the whole programme. Believe me, I know this guy.’

  ‘You thought he’d kidnapped his daughter in violation of the court order? So that she could live with him in Switzerland?’ Ann Kathrin asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s how it looked to us back then. At least for a while. But we couldn’t prove it. He had cast-iron alibis and besides, the girl was never seen with him. A few days after the kidnapping – or maybe it was a couple of weeks, I don’t know exactly anymore, but we still have all the documents – anyway, he was involved in a serious accident in Switzerland. His car rolled over a couple of times and was written off.’

  ‘Had he been drinking?’

  ‘No, he was sober as a judge. He said the accident was due to the highly stressful and tense situation, which was understandable. But they found traces of little Steffi’s blood in the car. He explained that by saying he used to drive around a lot with his daughter. The funny thing was, though, that the blood wasn’t in the back of the car, near the child seat, but in the boot. He even had a reason for that. Apparently the little girl had hurt herself and the first aid kit was in the boot. He claimed he had put her down in the boot, opened the first aid kit, and bandaged her hand.

  The mother dismissed the whole story as a lie. The two of them could not agree on anything.

  Some of my colleagues theorised that Heymann had decided to take Steffi to a mountain cabin owned by his fiancée, and to keep her there until the fuss died down. Then he had the accident, and out of guilt he buried his daughter’s body in the mountains.’

  ‘What did you think of that idea, Ubbo?’

  He shook his head, as if not sure what to think after so many years. ‘It’s possible. He had applied for Swiss citizenship. After marrying his new wife – I think she was from St Gallen – there was no real impediment. Maybe he hoped it wouldn’t be considered a kidnapping case. Maybe he thought the Swiss courts would grant him custody of the child or in any event prevent her from returning to Germany. Then what started as a family drama turned into a criminal case with a missing child. Still, it’s possible. But he steadfastly denied everything.’

  Now that the beeping had stopped, Weller at last felt he could think clearly. He began speculating out loud. He knew Ann Kathrin didn’t like him doing this, but the words just kept pouring out of him: ‘Maybe in the meantime the mother takes a lover, and he decides on some kind of act of revenge, to show her what a great guy he is.’

  Weller realised that he was babbling and refuted his own theory. ‘But then he probably would have presented the head to his wife on a silver platter instead of stowing it in your boot.’

  ‘And what did the second dead man have to do with the case?’ asked Ann Kathrin.

  Ubbo swallowed hard, as if not wanting to admit his bewilderment. ‘No idea.’

  *

  Büscher was standing at his office window on Fischteichweg in Aurich, looking down at the street. He felt as if he’d fallen overboard on the high seas and now would have to try and survive among the big waves without a life jacket.

  He didn’t even know in which direction to swim to reach the mainland. He saw no rescue boats and his own ship was sailing around near Bremerhaven. Out of reach.

  He liked to think of himself as a tough guy, a lone wolf. But right now he was depressed. He didn’t want to admit it, but he’d clicked on his wife’s Facebook page. She had changed her profile.

  He felt old, stupid and sleazy doing it, but damn it, what was so bad about checking up on his ex?

  She looked good, and that was especially painful. Unlike him, she hadn’t aged at all. She’d lost a few kilos and had stopped dyeing her hair. She was sunning herself in a bikini on a chaise longue.

  Not a wicker chair on the beach by the North Sea. A chaise longue. Apparently somewhere in the Caribbean.

  She and her new guy obviously could afford trips like that. She had uploaded a whole photo gallery to the Web. The two of them smooching, or laughing at beachside cafés, with foamy latte macchiatos in front of them.

  Büscher tried to persuade himself that he was glad to be rid of her at last. Her capricious nature had simply not suited him. But when he saw Frank Weller and Ann Kathrin Klaasen being lovey-dovey, his heart ached.

  His friends, if he’d ever had any, all lived in Bremerhaven. Here he had to struggle through things alone.

  It was warm, so he opened the window. The wind made his shirt flutter and he held out his arms to feel the gusts caress his skin.

  He wasn’t toying with the idea of jumping, but at this moment he understood people who ended their lives that way. Instead of continuing to bear the burden, they chose a brief and easy flight.

  He shook off the thought and closed the window.

  I have to talk to the real chief of Kripo, he thought. Ann Kathrin Klaasen. If I can win her over to my side, then everything will go well. Maybe we could work together on an equal footing.

  He sat down in the black leather easy chair, trying to find the most comfortable position. This office still didn’t feel like it belonged to him. Would he ever feel truly at home here? Was he the wrong man for the job? Or could this be the start of a new, perhaps even better life for him?

  He’d remove a few pictures from the wall and hang up some new ones. Naturally he couldn’t start by removing the framed article about Ann Kathrin Klaasen from the East Frisia magazine. His colleagues wouldn’t appreciate that.

  But what sort of personal photos could I hang up? he wondered. A picture of my biggest success as an angler? The 6.2-kilo perch? Or the picture of me standing proudly next to the blue marlin that I caught in the Hemingway Cup on Mauritius?

  Would that impress Ann Kathrin or scare her off? Every step he took could be wrong. He was on unfamiliar territory.

  I have to talk to her in private, he thought. Just the two of us.

  He decided to invite her out to dinner. He balled his fist and rapped three times on the desk.

  All right, all right, all right! I’ll invite her out to eat.

  But then new problems presented themselves. Any restaurant he considered would instantly reflect on him personally. If they went to Schickimicki’s, that would put him in a snobby corner, from which it would be hard to extricate himself later. Yet the place couldn’t be too simple or too cheap. Above all it had to show her how much he valued her.

  Büscher wasn’t familiar with this area. If she had a favourite restaurant he might be able to find out what it was. Through Rupert, perhaps. But wouldn’t that undercut his position? Wouldn’t it send a signal that from now on everything would run according to Ann Kathrin’s dictates and at her discretion? Wouldn’t it be better to impress her with something new? Perhaps a restaurant she had never tried?

  In Bremerhaven he would have known where to go. To Natusch. But here in East Frisia? Did she even like fish? Would it be correct to select local cuisine, to show her how down-to-earth his taste was? Or should he present himself as a man of the world by choosing a Chinese, Thai or Greek restaurant?

  He
was stumped by which restaurant to choose. The situation made it clear to him how difficult it was to get a foothold here.

  Maybe, he thought, it’s best if I let her decide, and just invite her to a restaurant of her choice. Yes, that seemed to be the best solution. And if everything goes well, he thought, we’ll end up on a first-name basis and drink a toast to that.

  He dialled Ann Kathrin’s number.

  In Bremerhaven he’d always used an aftershave that smelled like incense, but he hadn’t brought it with him. Now he asked himself whether it was time for a change. Or maybe he should simply try to smell like himself. But he could hardly believe anyone would find that pleasant.

  Women discussed such things with each other. But men? Could he really picture himself asking one of his co-workers: ‘Tell me, what kind of aftershave do you use? Do you use cologne or skin creams?’

  No, that was impossible.

  *

  He turned the heat all the way up.

  I’m going to turn you into a prune, he thought grimly. Don’t think you’re going to get through this with your monkey business.

  The floor had to be washed. Not a pleasant task, but the dirt interrupted his flow. He needed a clean, even clinical atmosphere to know that what he was doing was right and good.

  Order. Clarity. Bacteria and viruses had to be fought. He loved disinfectants.

  And he could hardly hire a maid to clean the anteroom to the cell.

  He pondered how he could force his prisoner to wash the floor. Humiliation might be the very thing to break her resistance. But he expected her to throw the water at him. When he tried to imagine what would happen next, he pictured her attacking him with the cleaning products, lunging at him with the mop and trying to fight her way to the exit.

  No, she wasn’t that desperate yet. He had to leave her in the cage. The anteroom wasn’t secure enough. Not yet. Soon he would make her clean it with a toothbrush, but they hadn’t reached that point yet. Her pride, her stubborn will, her defiance, must first be broken down by humiliation, fear and pain.

  No matter how much it annoyed him, he had no choice but to wash the floor himself. To get rid of dirt, he would have to come in contact with dirt.