The Oath

by Klaus-Peter Wolf

  Was it the big eyes that were reminiscent of a startled deer that already sensed danger just before the hunter fired the decisive shot from his hide? Or her narrow hips? Would she drive me less crazy if she was fifty pounds heavier?

  At any rate, he preferred questioning a beautiful young lady to an ugly old man.

  Besides, Merle Ailts could remember that evening at the Reichshof restaurant. She raved about the food and described exactly to Rupert how the items were distributed on the plate. She made it so real that he could practically smell it, even though she looked like she lived off salad without dressing, mineral water, air and presumably a whole lot of love.

  She probably jogs, Rupert thought, and has a sexy arse. Unfortunately he couldn’t see it right now because she was sitting on it.

  She wasn’t wearing a bra under her tight T-shirt. Rupert hoped this fashion trend would soon go viral, and he had difficulty looking elsewhere because her nipples under the thin fabric were like sweet, ripe cherries that he would have greatly enjoyed trying.

  He had summoned her to Reichshof, hoping that the guests would remember the evening better when on location. He ate and drank at Reichshof, putting it on his expense account, and labelling the whole thing ‘site visit.’

  ‘So, I was sitting over there, with my grandpa.’

  ‘Why does a beautiful, young woman like yourself go out in the evening with her grandpa?’

  She smiled and Rupert just melted. ‘My grandpa is eighty-five and lives in a retirement home up north on Schulstrasse. He’s no longer able to cope alone and he is well taken care of and enjoys himself . But once a month he takes me out to eat.’

  Rupert had a measure of respect for how she dealt with her grandpa.

  ‘And then,’ he said, ‘you listen to all the old stories, which you probably know by heart.’

  She shook her head, making her gloriously messy hair fall across her face. She kept on running her hand through it to tidy it or sweep it off her face. She looked tousled, as if she were sitting on top of the dyke, not in Reichshof.

  ‘No, on the contrary. He doesn’t say very much. After all, not much happens to him. But he’s interested in me. He wants to know what’s going on in my life. You know, when we’re sitting here, I talk all night. Sometimes I can hardly find time to eat.’

  ‘You can tell,’ Rupert grinned.

  She looked at him, irritated, and smiled coyly.

  So you were sitting there, your grandpa over there – and where was Ubbo Heide?’ Rupert asked.

  Merle Ailts pointed to exactly the right spot. Just as it was drawn on the plan.

  ‘So you could see him the whole time?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. I even heard how he talked with his wife. That table over there was fairly loud, a birthday party or something. He and his wife were very quiet, but all at once he exploded. He slammed his car keys on the table. My grandpa and I were shocked into silence, we thought there was a fight. But that’s not the way it was. Basically it was a very tense situation. He said something like that from now on he could always have a beer because she’d be driving in the future.

  ‘Did you know the two of them?’

  ‘No, but I liked the look of them. I get along with older people. Sometimes better than with younger ones,’ she said and lowered her gaze.

  Rupert realised that she carried scars. She’d probably had a couple of terrible experiences with young guys in the past. Rupert liked that because it improved his chances.

  He pegged her at middle, maybe late thirties, but he knew that he wasn’t good at guessing.

  ‘So you saw the keys lying on the table?’

  ‘Yes. Definitely.’

  ‘You know, for us right now it’s all about these keys.’ He leaned forward and spoke quietly, ‘They are very important for us. Did you see anyone take them?’

  She folded her arms across her chest, much to Rupert’s disappointment.

  She rubbed her upper arms, as if she were trying to warm herself up. ‘No. If I’d seen that, I would have intervened. I mean, no one just watches as someone else gets something stolen from them.’

  ‘Right,’ Rupert said. ‘But maybe you didn’t recognise the theft as such. Do you remember anyone walking past, close to the table, or maybe stopping at the table? Possibly to exchange words with Ubbo Heide.’

  ‘Yes. My grandpa.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They know each other. And because Mr Heide was sitting in a wheelchair, my grandpa went over to him. But I don’t know what they talked about. While they were talking,’ she was slightly embarrassed, ‘I was checking my phone. I was in the middle of a crisis with my boyfriend. He was crazy jealous and kept texting me every couple of minutes.’

  ‘Of course,’ Rupert laughed, ‘a silly young chap has to be jealous when a beautiful young woman like you goes out to eat with her grandpa.’

  ‘The two of them drank a Klötenköm together.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Klötenköm. Egg liqueur. That’s what my grandpa calls it. Until recently he made it himself. His mother’s recipe.’

  ‘OK, sure,’ Rupert said. ‘So the two of them had a couple of shots. And were the keys still on the table when your grandfather left?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I can tell you something for certain: my grandpa didn’t steal the keys. First of all, he doesn’t drive anymore, and second, if he wanted to drive a car, he’d just buy one. My grandpa isn’t poor. He gave me a VW Golf for my eighteenth birthday and has taxed and insured it for years, even though it’s not really necessary because I—’

  As nice as this conversation was for Rupert, he sensed that he wouldn’t get very much further here. He would have liked to ask her for a date, but Merle Ailts looked at her phone and asked if it would take much longer because she had a – yes, Rupert even thought that she blushed at the word – date.

  ‘Is there actually a difference between a date and a rendezvous?’ Rupert asked.

  She looked at him with eyes wide.

  Rupert explained his question. ‘Does date mean that you hop into bed the first time, while with a rendezvous you just drink lattes together and chat about the beauty of the landscape?’

  Her lower lip sagged involuntarily. ‘Do you want dating tips from me now or what?’ she asked.

  Rupert passed her his card. ‘You can call me any time – in case you think of anything.’

  ‘Now do you mean about dating or if I remember anything related to that evening? You know what, there was something else.’ She looked back at her phone, as if she had to check if there was even time to tell the story.

  ‘Someone from that table back there, from that birthday party, stumbled. I mean, I think he was already pretty drunk. He walked past Mr Heide’s table with a glass of red wine in his hand, like he wanted to go to the bathroom, or was looking for his seat. Then he stumbled, grabbed the tablecloth, and pretty much pulled everything off the table. Anyway, Mr Heide’s food landed on the floor. Waiters arrived immediately, everything was cleaned up, people apologised, and there was a new tablecloth. Things go like clockwork here. And Mr Heide didn’t make a scene either. His wife was briefly upset because a shrimp had landed on her top. Anyway, I thought it was more funny than awful.

  A shiver ran down Rupert’s spine. Was this one of those moments that Ann Kathrin Klassen sometimes talked about? The instant when everything happens – when a story flips, a case is just about to be solved, the accused about to confess?

  Now it all came down to asking the one right question. And Rupert did that. ‘Were the keys back on the table afterwards?’

  Merle Ailts shrugged her shoulders. ‘No idea.’

  The young woman didn’t shake his hand when bidding farewell. Instead, she hugged him briefly and pulled him close. It was an electric moment for him.

  That’s the way they do it these days, he thought. After all, that’s how we used to do it as well. When did we stop doing that? The brief hug, embracing the other before you parted ways?
Instead, we just shake each other’s hands.

  His thoughts made him pause briefly. And in doing so, he did what his wife Beate had suggested. ‘Sometimes it’s better if you just keep your mouth shut, Rupert.’

  Maybe this was one of those moments.

  Martina Haver-Franke, the manager at Reichshof, was very helpful and was able to give Rupert a couple of important pieces of information. ‘I know exactly which birthday party you mean.’

  She couldn’t remember the names of the people, but found everything in her notes. ‘The table had been reserved by a Mr Kaufmann. The entire bill was paid with a credit card.’

  She was able to tell Rupert the amount of the bill, the credit card number, and the holder’s name. It had been a party of six and one of them, the birthday boy, Wilhelm Kaufmann from Brake, had paid for a wellness weekend at Reichshof for all six people and even paid for the meal.

  ‘There’s nothing better,’ Mrs Haver-Franke said, ‘than orderly bookkeeping.’

  Rupert agreed. He drank another Pilsner while standing at the bar, and then he drove away with the feeling of having taken a step forward.

  *

  Rieke Gersema stomped into the bathroom, grabbed the silver tissue box, pulled out two tissues and blew into them, before taking the fastest route to bed. On the way, she passed three mirrors. The one in the bathroom, the one in the hall, and the dressing mirror in the bedroom.

  She went to great lengths not to look in any of them. She knew exactly what she had now: her therapist called it post-coital depression.

  She felt dirty and useless. Maybe that’s why she only used each tissue once, and when she’d blown into it or used it to wipe her eyes, she threw it far away, as if there could be deadly germs stuck to it.

  She took the box with her under her arm when she got out of bed to get herself something from the refrigerator, and spread the white paper clouds all around herself, like overgrown snowflakes marking her path through the house.

  Sometimes ice cream helped. Straight out of the carton, with whipped cream from a can, piled high, making big mountains on the ice cream.

  She thought it tasted disgusting, and that’s exactly what she needed right now.

  She was alone and could scream her thoughts out loud. ‘It’s never about me! Never!’

  Joachim Faust had hit on her the whole evening, but he just wanted her to tell him secrets about Ann Kathrin Klaasen.

  He makes a date with me, and the whole evening it’s actually just about Ann Kathrin.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ she screamed and threw tissues at her unbearable image in the mirror.

  That’s the way it always was, she thought. Even at home. It was never about me. Not even with my parents. It was always only about keeping my father’s violent temper under control so that he wouldn’t beat up my mother again. Everything was directed towards preventing him from drinking too much and becoming a brute again. Looking ahead, we planned every evening. The television programme was selected based on what we hoped he would like the best. The apartment was cleaned so that he wouldn’t find anything that could turn my mother or me into slobs in his eyes.

  But he always found something, and in our attempts to placate him, we basically only humiliated ourselves and in the end still felt like failures because once again we hadn’t succeeded. And then when he’d given my mother a black eye or had broken her arm, I was supposed to feel guilty about that, damn it. Yes, I was, because I thought that my mother was taking the beating that was actually for me, and that my parents would have been much happier without me.

  And then I go to bed with that famous scumbag, that B-list guy. Or should I say C-or D-list?

  Enraged, she bit herself in her left forearm. It felt good to feel the pain. At least that way she knew that she still existed.

  What a terrible evening she had had! Right from the start, she had felt that it wasn’t about her. Faust was charming, attentive. The wine was at the correct temperature. The way he had set everything up; all of it was spot-on. And yet the whole time she sensed: it’s not about me.

  And then – she especially hated herself for this – she didn’t send him packing. Instead, she did everything so that he would think of her as an independent person.

  She gave him what he wanted to know about Ann Kathrin, so they could finally change the subject, and in the end she openly offered herself up to him. She was ashamed of that now.

  No, she hadn’t gone to be with him because she found him so attractive. No, she didn’t want to have a relationship with him. She merely wanted to play a role for once, to be seen.

  When he was with her in bed and not with Ann Kathrin, when he felt her skin and she felt his, she sensed for a moment that she was really alive. Just a short moment.

  Even as he pushed inside her, and his face contorted, making him look like he was on drugs, she would have preferred to stop and run away, but she didn’t manage that. Now she somehow had to bring it to an end and forget it as quickly as possible.

  Why do I do it, she thought. Why do I fall for guys like that? He just used my body, to pleasure himself! Did I get anything from it?

  Not even then had it been about her!

  In bed she could have been any one of the hundred others he’d been with. And she shuddered at the thought that he was now comparing her to them.

  She jumped out of bed and stomped across her apartment again, feeling clumsy and moving awkwardly, the box of tissues stuck under her arm. She pulled out the last one, then went into the bathroom. There were another twelve boxes there; she’d bought two six-packs.

  Now she looked at that stockpile and began to cry.

  ‘I bought all these because I knew precisely what would happen,’ she sobbed. ‘I bought them even before I knew Faust. It could have just as well been another guy.’

  She took two boxes off the shelf at once, and glanced at her phone on her way back into the bedroom. Was there anyone she could call? Isn’t that what you had girlfriends for?

  She even toyed with the idea of calling Ann Kathrin and yelling into the phone: ‘I was with him as a replacement – because you weren’t there!

  But she didn’t do that. She became very sad as she realised that she didn’t even have a girlfriend who she could call.

  Maybe, she thought, other people just talk to their mothers in this situation. But she hadn’t done that in a long time. Her mother already had enough to deal with: with her difficult husband and her own life. She didn’t want to add more fuel to the fire.

  She’d always had the feeling that her mother could collapse under the weight at any time. If anything, she was the one who took her mother’s problems upon herself. And for her mum she played the role of an uncomplicated, cheerful daughter who put people in a good mood, had a steady job, and who no one had to worry about.

  She fell back into bed, yelling, ‘Fuck’, and chucked the box of tissues against the wall. ‘It’s all a fucking lie! My whole life is one big lie!’

  *

  Büscher, who had resolved to watch what he ate while he was up north, was already nibbling away at his second banana. The peel from the first one lay on his desk.

  He was part of a generation of police officers who hadn’t just learned to set up files, he also read files. Inside the interrogation records he not only discovered the suspect’s personality, but also the officer who sent the conversation in the right or wrong direction. He worked his way through the files not only to become better acquainted with the people around him, but also perhaps because he had to feel occupied.

  He immediately sensed something strange: Ubbo Heide had ordered that everyone from his team give a personal assessment of their conversation at the end of each interrogation. This wasn’t of any interest in court and could even support the prejudice of an officer under some circumstances. But it was very helpful to the ongoing investigation when another person continued a colleague’s work.

  He hadn’t given up this East Frisian habit during the short phase whe
n Chief of Police Diekmann had been in charge there.

  For instance, Ann Kathrin Klaasen wrote under the interrogation records:

  Although the suspect wasn’t inconsistent, the whole time I had the feeling I was being lied to. – Chief Detective Inspector Ann Kathrin Klaasen.

  Büscher had never seen file notes like these, and in Bremerhaven they would probably have disciplined him or at least suggested that he was crazy if he’d done this.

  Ann Kathrin had added the following sparse sentences under another interrogation: This all sounds so unbelievable and it simply can’t have been that way. The witness contradicted herself again and again. Despite this, I think she’s an honest person who is in no way trying to lie to us, but truly believes what she says. – Chief Detective Inspector Ann Kathrin Klaasen

  Martin Büscher kept on flipping through the pages.

  This individual is very narcissistic and likes the sound of his own voice. Although his statements agree with those of other witnesses, I assume that he didn’t see anything, was possibly not even at the crime scene, but just wants the attention and enjoys the interrogation like a minor star enjoys being interviewed in the gutter press. – Chief Detective Inspector Ann Kathrin Klaasen.

  The banana just didn’t make Büscher feel full. He had the feeling that the mush in his mouth was expanding. One banana was fine, but another one on top? He needed a fried herring, pickle, or even better, a big spread of fish with sautéed potatoes. They could leave off the salad for all he cared.

  Now he was leafing through Rupert’s files and was flabbergasted. He’d recorded the conversation with Merle Ailts very precisely, even meticulously, and then added the following personal note:

  Merle Ailts would like nothing better than to be a mountain.

  Büscher called Rupert in to find out what was behind this sentence, pregnant with meaning.

  Rupert came in carrying a burger. There was mayonnaise and ketchup in the corners of his mouth, and he looked as though he enjoyed nothing more than eating a Big Mac with double cheese. Shamelessly, he continued to eat while he stood in Büscher’s office.