The Oath

by Klaus-Peter Wolf

  ‘So you’re on first-name terms now.’

  ‘Well, as colleagues.’

  Weller turned on the light and turned towards her. In that moment, her beauty hit him like toothache, as if he’d bitten into a bar of chocolate that unexpectedly contained a slightly too hard nut.

  There’d been something caustic on the tip of his tongue but was glad that he hadn’t said it. He just looked at her and knew that he was not the only man that she had that effect on.

  ‘Martin is a very sensitive person. He thinks about so much and—’

  ‘Well, congratulations,’ Weller said, ‘then he must have quite a head start on all of us.’

  Even while the words were floating in the air he already regretted having said them.

  Ann Kathrin laughed out loud. ‘You’re jealous!’

  ‘No I’m not,’ he grumbled, ‘I’m just tired,’ and turned his back on her.

  Ann Kathrin ran her fingers through his hair and scratched his scalp.

  ‘I’m tired,’ he lied, ‘I don’t feel like it,’ and he buried his face deep in the pillow.

  What an idiot I am, he thought.

  *

  Rupert had brewed himself a pot of the strong local-blend tea. The scent filled the office. The white rose-patterned pot sat on a silver tea warmer, heated by a small flickering candle. Rupert drank his tea in his mother’s honour, without sugar and cream, just as it was, black. She had come to East Frisia from the Ruhr region for love. His father had needed sugar and cream in his tea, but his mother had claimed it was fattening, to which his father had always answered by saying, ‘Cream in tea isn’t fattening, after all, the sugar dissolves.’

  Rupert had generally felt closer to his mother than his father.

  When Rupert saw the list of guests whom Ubbo and Carola could remember being at the Reichshof restaurant, he knew two things: first, the place was booming, and second, that checking each guest would be a hell of a job and would take up to a couple of days.

  ‘How are we supposed to manage?’ he asked Rieke Gersema. ‘We need some help. And what are they supposed to tell us anyway? You think anyone will raise their hand and say, sure, I saw who stole Ubbo Heide’s car keys that evening, but back then I just didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to ruin the excellent atmosphere?’ He tapped the list. ‘This here,’ he prophesied, ‘is pointless. We could get a couple of schoolkids who want to do an internship in to question the guests or—’

  Rieke had brought along homemade apple cake that Rupert liked. He didn’t mind helping himself.

  He offered Rieke a cup of tea but she declined. She stood next to his desk, oddly distracted. He didn’t have the slightest clue what she was doing in his office in the first place. Normally she kept her distance from him and didn’t bring him any cake. The tray was enough for the whole police station and she said there was more to come.

  Rupert wondered if it was her birthday and if he was the idiot who had forgotten again. Maybe he should give her something.

  He hated games like Secret Santa, where you have to draw lots and then get a present for some random person. He had the habit of forgetting to do things like that.

  ‘Super Rupert,’ Rieke said, ‘guess who asked me out?’

  Rupert spoke with his mouth full. ‘Probably one of those incredible guys who’s been doing bodybuilding, has a six-pack, and rides a Harley, right?’

  She poked him. ‘Good grief, no! Joachim Faust!’

  ‘But isn’t that—?’ the priggish pansy, Rupert was about to say, but swallowed his words just in time because he saw from the glimmer in Rieke’s eyes how much she admired the man. I must be doing something wrong, Rupert thought. Why do women go wild for such phonies?

  Was it really enough to have been on TV a couple of times to be attractive? Didn’t anything else count?

  ‘And what does he want from you?’ Rupert asked. ‘Probably not your apple cake recipe. Although I think you can be proud of that.’

  Rupert grabbed a second piece. His desk was covered with crumbs now, but it didn’t bother him in the least.

  She seemed to be getting her hopes up over being asked out, and he didn’t mind helping her get that idea right out of her head.

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘he’s not that interested in you personally, Rieke. He wants some information on the case. He’s already grilled me. On the beach, when we were there with the search and rescue dogs.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied. ‘Apparently you were very insulting to him.’

  ‘Well, if the truth is an insult, then lies quickly become flattery.’

  She took a step back, tilted her head and looked at him from that angle.

  ‘Something wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, if the truth is an insult, then lies quickly become flattery; that’s not yours, Rupert. It’s a quote, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Rupert said, ‘from my mother.’

  Rieke Gersema half laughed, almost as if she was surprised that someone like him could once have had a mother.

  She took her remaining apple cake and walked to the door.

  ‘Don’t get taken in by him,’ Rupert warned. ‘He’s too stupid to tell the difference between a teabag and loose leaf.’

  She turned around and stared at Rupert. She really wanted to say, ‘You’re not my father. I don’t need that kind of advice from you.’ Instead she just repeated what he’d said, ‘Too stupid to tell the difference between a teabag and loose leaf?’

  Rupert nodded, satisfied with himself, and took a sip from his rose cup.

  ‘Sure,’ Rieke Gersema said, as if that settled it. ‘What kind of woman would get involved with someone like that? It’s the minimum of what can be expected: that a chap can tell the difference between a teabag and loose leaf.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Rupert said.

  Rieke closed the door.

  *

  Ubbo Heide was glad he’d listened to his Carola. Ten years earlier, while the two of them were still fit and he was famous for his swinging throw in road bowling, she’d pushed him to have her parents’ old house in Aurich, full of nooks and crannies, renovated to make it senior-friendly.

  Senior-friendly, how that’d sounded to him back them. He had only agreed so he wouldn’t cause an argument. Now he was reaping the benefits. He could move around all the rooms on the ground floor. Renovating the bathroom had worked out particularly well.

  Peter Grendel, the bricklayer, who was something of friend of the family, had carried out all the work quickly, professionally, and inexpensively, and had enhanced the project with his own ideas.

  The first-floor rooms were basically of no interest to him, but Carola had insisted on having a lift installed so that he could reclaim his own space.

  He thought that maybe she needed these activities and he went along this scheme; just as he had her ‘senior-friendly’ planning.

  Something completely different was occupying his mind. He thought he knew who the other head belonged to, the one Carola had unpacked at the breakfast table on Wangerooge. Everything fitted together and at the same time it didn’t.

  He was surprised at himself that he hadn’t confided in Ann Kathrin and Weller. He thought he knew himself so well but something inside was challenging his usual professionalism. He was ashamed of having been so wrong back then and feared becoming a victim of his own imagination again. He didn’t want to leave the realm of logic and once again put together a puzzle made up of ideas, possibilities and speculations that produced a distorted, incorrect picture in the end.

  He decided to take matters into his own hands. At least the initial investigative steps. First of all, he needed a sense of certainty before raising his suspicions again, and he hoped very much he wouldn’t be right. He was retired. He’d never been very interested in the higher-ups’ opinions, even when he was still acting in an official capacity. Now he couldn’t care less. They’d lost all power over him. They wouldn’t be able to shame him into resigning.

  But
he couldn’t stomach the idea of looking bad to Anna Kathrin and Carola. He knew that for them he was a kind of monument to candour and criminalist expertise and he wanted it to stay that way.

  Presumably his daughter Insa no longer, or never had, thought of him like that. She was his shining star and it hurt him to hear so little from her and to be such a small part of her life. While he wished her all the luck in the world, oddly enough he wasn’t afraid to make a fool of himself in front of her. It was more about Ann Kathrin and Carola.

  He tried to set aside these thoughts, so he wouldn’t be in his own way with the work that lay ahead of him.

  His usual box of tools wasn’t at his disposal, with no access either to the computer with the picture files, or to the current list of people with warrants out for them. He still got the Detective magazine published by the police union. He had even written for it. But that wasn’t any help to him now.

  So, he went back to the notebook, squared, without lines, no larger than a postcard, so he could quickly make it disappear into his pocket, and a pencil. He always broke the pencils in half because they were too long for him otherwise. Then he sharpened them and put both halves in his jacket pocket. The tools he had started off with, long ago.

  There were still a couple in his desk drawer. I can’t drive everywhere so I’ll just have to try to take care of some of it by phone, he said to himself. A phone call would be hard enough but he was happy to be able to excuse himself from having to meet Sophie Stern in person, although he knew that it wouldn’t make his work easier.

  He did it. Just now, while Carola was out shopping.

  He retrieved an image of how he remembered her. A feminine woman, whose ideal weight was forty pounds over the official guidelines. A warm type. A passionate elementary school teacher.

  She had no children of her own, a cause of regret to both her and her husband. Everyone who ever had anything to do with her knew her mantra: ‘I have many children. I need an entire classroom if I want to greet them in the morning.’

  He liked this woman and had immediately sensed that she herself had no involvement in the case but he didn’t trust her husband for a second.

  Yves Stern, son of a French mother and a German father, had something inscrutable, something shifty about him. His jokes were false, his laugh humourless, his grin fake.

  Ubbo Heide’s mother had called people like that ‘fake fifties’. As a child, he’d frequently heard her use this expression and hadn’t really understood it. It must have something to do with forged money, and when he saw Yves Stern, he thought he knew what his mother had meant.

  Maybe, he thought, that was wrong and I’d just fallen into the trap of suspecting him to please my mother, who had already died at that point. Sometimes things from your childhood catch up with you. They may lead to the right conclusions or can cause people to make devastating mistakes in their otherwise normal, everyday lives.

  He’d always been moved by his mother’s fundamentally correct Christian values even though much of it had felt too parochial and small-minded.

  In the case of Yves Stern, it was as if he had fallen into a pit his mother had dug for him without meaning him any harm. She had hoped to plant a tree there, but for some reason had never got round to it and in the end he had tripped.

  He shook himself and massaged his face. He had to get rid of the ghosts of the past now and proceed with clarity.

  He picked up the pad of paper and the pencil.

  Ubbo Heide found the defensive tone of her voice when she answered even more difficult.

  He asked again, ‘Am I speaking with Sophie Stern?’ To reassure himself that it was really her.

  ‘Yes, and who is this?’

  He cleared his throat. If someone clears their throat during an interrogation, pay attention to that point in their statement. Maybe they only want to gain time, to cobble together an excuse, maybe it’s embarrassing, or they have something to hide. Clearing one’s throat is infrequently just clearing one’s throat.

  ‘Perhaps you remember me. My name is Ubbo Heide. We were in touch about the disappearance of Steffi Heymann.’

  She cut him off, taking a deep breath and hissing, ‘I know who you are! And you have the gall to call me now? What are you thinking?’

  ‘Mrs Stern, please calm down. Believe me, I don’t want to bother you. But events have occurred that cast a new light on the case.’

  ‘Well, how nice for you,’ she grumbled. ‘So now you can make trouble and ruin someone else’s life. There have already been enough victims!’

  ‘Please, Mrs Stern, I just have a simple question: may I talk to your husband?’

  She laughed bitterly. ‘You want to talk to my husband? Well, thanks a lot. Do you need someone to blame again? You’ve already destroyed his life. I don’t wish you any harm, but if there’s any justice, then you’ll be in the pillory one day, and I wonder how many friends you’ll still have then!’

  As mean as her words were, Ubbo Heide was relieved to read between the lines and realise that Yves Stern was still alive.

  ‘Mrs Stern, I really don’t mean you any ill will. I just—’

  ‘Go to hell!’ she hissed and hung up.

  Ubbo Heide looked at his notepad. What should he write down?

  He noted the name Yves Stern and put a question mark after that. As head of the Kripo, he could have found out if Yves Stern was still alive in a couple of minutes. It was fundamentally more complicated as a private individual. But he tried to use his old knowledge.

  Like many others who had at some point been suspected of something terrible, Stern had anonymised his address, and his telephone number was ex-directory. Ubbo thought it was a miracle that his wife could still be reached at the old landline number.

  After a little thought, he called Rieke Gersema. This young woman had been the spokesperson for the East Frisian Kripo and Ubbo was of the opinion that she was good at her job. He had supported her from the start.

  She addressed him as ‘boss’ and asked pleasantly how she could help him.

  ‘I need some information on Yves Stern. His current residence.’

  ‘Of course,’ Rieke answered, ‘Straightaway. Completely confidential of course. No one will find out.’

  ‘Rieke, what makes you think that’s necessary.’

  ‘Well boss, I could hear it in your voice. It was always like this before every press conference: you told me precisely what all the journalists were allowed to know and what only Holger Bloem should hear.’

  Rieke felt honoured that he had called her and not confided in Ann Kathrin and didn’t concern herself with why he needed the information. She just gave him what he wanted.

  *

  Things had gone downhill for Yves Stern since the investigation had been concluded. Although nothing could be proved against him, he had still become a liability for schools. After parents had protested against his continued employment at the elementary school, he had initially been put on leave and ultimately granted early retirement ‘due to illness’. Psychological problems prevented him from entering a school or leading a field trip.

  His marriage to Sophie didn’t survive the stress and he moved to the Früchteburg neighbourhood of Emden, first to a place on Schützenstrasse, then to Steinweg.

  The report specifically mentioned that both of these main streets had cycle paths that were used daily by schoolchildren, while he himself frequently used the 502 bus.

  Ubbo asked himself who could have gathered the information about Yves Stern. It surely wasn’t him. Or had he simply forgotten it?

  He felt very perturbed at the thought that his memory was slowly starting to go.

  Or had there been further investigations against Yves Stern later on? If yes, why hadn’t his colleagues in Emden kept him informed?

  Yves Stern had survived a suicide attempt and Sophie apparently had stood by him for a very long time. The divorce had only been finalised five years ago, although they hadn’t lived together for many
years.

  Yves Stern earned a living as a part-time taxi driver in Emden. He had appeared twice on the authorities’ radar. Once when he was involved in an accident and an examination of the taxi company had revealed that he’d been working off the books there for a while. The second time he’d verbally abused and ultimately assaulted an officer in Emden who was carrying out a traffic check.

  If the information from Rieke Gersema was correct, and Ubbo Heide didn’t doubt it for a second, then Yves Stern was now renting a place on Steinweg in Emden. His landline and mobile phone were both ex-directory.

  Ubbo Heide pictured a life completely destroyed, and he blamed himself. No surprise that Sophie Stern was so furious at him.

  Ubbo Heide cursed his wheelchair. His hand cramped around the pencil, as if he planned to slam the tip into his thigh to reactivate the nerves through pain.

  He thought about his Christian childhood, which was full of stories about the lame walking again, the blind being able to see, and all of it without the assistance of modern medicine, but he was tied to this damned wheelchair.

  How was he supposed to investigate all by himself? How would he get up the stairs to Yves Stern in Emden?

  No, he couldn’t ask colleagues, that would cause them a conflict of loyalties. That’s not how it worked. He was already regretting that he’d called Rieke and somehow he had to take care of the rest himself.

  And he wouldn’t get his daughter and his wife involved either. He needed someone who was sufficiently curious but could simultaneously hold his tongue. Someone he trusted implicitly.

  He called up Holger Bloem and said, ‘Holger, I have a problem.’

  ‘I can get away in about half an hour and could come straight over.’

  ‘Thanks, Holger. If my wife comes back you don’t necessarily have to tell her that we—’

  Holger immediately reassured him, ‘Got it.’

  *

  Svenja Moers could no longer tell if the heat from outside was wearing her out or if a fire inside her was causing fits of fever. She turned the tap fully on, but not a drop came out, and the hope that he would have mercy and turn the water back on diminished with every minute.