The Oath

by Klaus-Peter Wolf

  ‘No thanks,’ Peter said, removing himself from the side of the van and moving towards the front door.

  ‘Hey, hey, wait a second!’ Faust yelled. He was now two steps behind Peter Grendel. ‘Are there such dark secrets surrounding Ms. Klassen that you’d rather not talk about them?’

  ‘I said no,’ Peter answered. ‘What part of that didn’t you understand?’

  Peter Grendel just kept on walking and Faust grabbed him by the T-shirt. Immediately, Faust knew that he had made a mistake; Peter stood still and turned around.

  ‘Have you completely lost your mind? Do you really think I’m going to come up with random stories about Ann Kathrin Klaasen so you can teach her a lesson?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘You know how you can tell if someone is a friend or not?’

  Faust watched and waited almost meekly for the answer. He was thoroughly intimidated by Peter Grendel’s appearance.

  ‘Well, OK,’ Peter said, as if he’d suddenly come around, ‘I’ll let you in on something: Ann Kathrin and me, we’re in the Praise Club.’

  ‘Praise Club? What’s that?’

  ‘The club members share their pure and unvarnished opinions – if they’re alone. But a member of the club would never say a bad word about another on the outside. On the outside we praise each other to the utmost. That’s the East Frisia Praise Club. You shouldn’t even try and send in an application. You’d be more likely to win the Nobel Prize than become one of our members.’

  Then Peter left him standing there and went inside. He was looking forward to having a barbeque with the neighbours that evening.

  *

  Weller was furious and failed completely to conceal the fact. Büscher had tried to change their plans at the last minute and had suggested that he would accompany Ann Kathrin and Ubbo Heide to Gelsenkirchen.

  Normally bosses in his position were more concerned with questions of personnel and the overall structure of the institution and stayed out of the day-to-day activities. This job was more of a task for a bodyguard, and Weller couldn’t imagine that Büscher had any other reason for going than to use it as a chance to hit on Ann Kathrin.

  Büscher suddenly thought of something else: Weller should talk to those people who had been on the task force for Steffi Heymann. Weller turned down that idea, reasoning that he was basically still on holiday – but he wanted to be with Ubbo. In reality, Weller was both annoyed and slightly ashamed, feeling small and stupid for needing to keep an eye on his wife rather than watch over Ubbo.

  He pictured the scene. Clearly Büscher liked to discuss a case over a glass of wine, and after the reading the two of them would sit at the hotel bar for another drink and wonder whether or not it had been worth it.

  Had this always been the plan? Suddenly Weller asked himself why there had actually been two rooms booked. He’d be sleeping in a double with Ann Kathrin. Had Büscher been planning the whole time to go along and take his place? These feelings of resentment and mistrust gnawed at him.

  Weller was driving a twenty-year-old Chevy, one of three confiscated American cars that the East Frisian Kripo used for undercover operations to save money. Rupert thought this was fantastic, but all three cars had automatic transmission and Weller didn’t like that at all. It was an insult to his left foot. Whenever the car changed gear, his foot instinctively stomped the air.

  Ubbo Heide and Martin Büscher sat in the back while Ann Kathrin was in the passenger seat.

  Ubbo was preparing for his reading, searching for the right passages in his book.

  Büscher warned Ubbo. ‘Remember, if you give an interview, think about the fact that you’re not the press representative for the East Frisian Police. That’s Rieke Gersema. No statements about the current case.’

  ‘You can’t ask that of me, Martin. I’m appearing as a writer, not as the head of the Kripo.’

  ‘But you wrote about this case, and of course they’ll ask you about it. It’ll be jam packed, and the press will rush you. Actually I wanted Rieke to come along, but she called in sick. Maybe the whole thing’s too dicey for her.’

  Ann Kathrin immediately defended her colleague. ‘Oh no, Rieke is very dependable. If she called in sick, then she is actually sick. She wouldn’t skive. We’ve been through lots of different situations with her.’

  Büscher lifted his hands in defence. ‘All right, all right. I didn’t want to say anything bad about your friend. But there are times when it’s inappropriate to be ill.’

  Weller’s mood lifted slightly. Was Büscher filling in for Rieke Gersema because he was concerned that the situation in Gelsenkirchen could get out of hand? Or was he just emphasising that he was filling in for her to distract from the suspicion that he actually only wanted to come along because of Ann Kathrin?

  Under normal circumstances, Weller thought, Ann Kathrin and I would be sitting on Langeoog right now, looking at the sea and drinking espresso. Holidays could wait, but this couldn’t.

  If Büscher had had his way, I wouldn’t be sitting here in this car right now, Weller grumbled inside. He would be on his way to a witness hearing, but Rupert had taken that over.

  On the autobahn they got caught in a traffic jam caused by a construction site.

  ‘We’re cutting it fine,’ Büscher said, and Weller barked back at him, ‘We can’t really put flashing lights on the roof and clear the streets just so Ubbo will make it to his interview on time.’

  Ubbo Heide received a phone call. It was the journalist Silke Sobotta from the Stadtspiegel newspaper. She sounded sad and regretted that she had to call off the interview. She’d caught a stomach flu and wanted to keep her distance, so she wouldn’t infect others.

  ‘That’s very good of you,’ Ubbo said.

  ‘I’m so very sorry. I really would have enjoyed talking to you. I was fascinated by your book. I like East Frisia and I could come up your way sometime, or if you’re in the area again . . . Postponed isn’t cancelled, even though I would have liked to report on this evening.’

  *

  Rupert would rather have interviewed a couple of brazen bees on Langeoog than the sacked Kripo man from the former special task force, of all people.

  Twice now he’d half-heartedly tried to get hold of Wilhelm Kaufmann. When no one picked up the third time he rang, Rupert wrote: Unsuccessful attempt to establish contact.

  Rupert didn’t want to go home. His wife Beate was meeting up with her reiki friends, and there was so much ‘good energy’ in the room that Rupert could hardly stand it.

  Rupert had a feeling that one of the reiki women was someone he’d once tried to seduce, and he would prefer not to run into her. That could be unpleasant, as he’d been married to Beate at the time. But it was possible that it wasn’t her. He didn’t know exactly. He had only seen her once on the balcony with his wife and, my God, there were dozens of women like that in his life. Rupert had trouble telling them apart. The differences blurred even more in his memory.

  He would have liked to go to Gelsenkirchen as well. Not so much because he loved overtime or didn’t want to miss a reading by Ubbo Heide, but because he believed the whole thing could become quite exciting. It could culminate in the arrest of a double murderer, and he really would like to be there for that. Although the longer he thought about it, he realised the whole thing could become nothing but an expensive business trip.

  Because he wasn’t making progress with Wilhelm Kaufmann, he decided to talk with Roswitha Wischnewski next. He’d googled her. She ran a massage practice in Oldenburg. Perhaps, Rupert thought, I could get a massage out of the deal. Could that be classed as undercover research?

  He phoned her and was immediately intrigued by her voice when she answered.

  Yes, he would like an appointment! Definitely better than with that former Chief Inspector Wilhelm Kaufmann.

  Roswitha Wischnewski had significantly incriminated Yves Stern with her deposition. She had claimed she had seen him on the ferry from Langeoog to Bense
rsiel on the day in question, that he had travelled to the mainland and had been carrying a child.

  Yves Stern swore solemnly that it hadn’t been the little Heymann girl, but a tourist’s child. She had asked him to hold the child because she wanted to be photographed leaning against the railing and the child had been fussy.

  Unfortunately he couldn’t remember the woman’s name and subsequent efforts to find out whether she really existed came to nothing.

  In the file Stern’s statement had been evaluated by Ubbo Heide in a personal, hand written note, to be a lie.

  Rupert drove to the massage practice in Oldenburg.

  *

  Ann Kathrin was lost in her thoughts. Ever since she had been confronted by the body parts, she had frequently thought of her mother, even though she had died peacefully in her bed at the nursing home.

  At first, Ann Kathrin had visited her mother’s grave almost daily. It was as if she still had something to tell her. Something she hadn’t been able to during her lifetime. But whenever she stood by the grave her head was empty and she couldn’t find the words.

  Suddenly, just as she needed to be in Gelsenkirchen and couldn’t turn around, Ann Kathrin knew what she wanted to say. She wanted to ask her mother for forgiveness and, although she didn’t know exactly what for, she felt the urgent need to drive to the grave immediately.

  Her thoughts was interrupted by Ubbo Heide addressing Weller, whose face he was observing the whole time in the rear-view mirror. ‘My God, you look like you’ve eaten a dead cat. Are you felling all right, Frank?’

  Weller cleared his throat. ‘Sure, everything’s great.’

  Ann Kathrin explained her plan one last time. Everyone already knew the details but she did this not for them, rather to bring herself back to the present.

  ‘So, this is what I was thinking: our fellow officers in Gelsenkirchen have pledged their complete support. Everyone who parks in the city library’s underground car park will be recorded. Beyond that, there are two or three cameras in the room, meaning we’ll have an uninterrupted overview of the guests afterwards.

  ‘Mrs Piechaczek, the bookseller, has promised to send me a list of the addresses of all the customers who have booked tickets. She said on the telephone that there were also a surprising number of people coming from outside the city, people who weren’t regular customers of hers. She’d received calls from Essen, Duisburg and Wanne-Eickel, but of course she didn’t know if the addresses were correct.

  ‘Ubbo will be sitting on a stage with two entrances. Frank will be on his left and I’ll be on the right. I want to have pictures of everyone who goes into or out of the room later on. Together with the video analysis from the underground car park we’ll have a fairly good overview.’

  ‘Are you really so sure that he’ll come?’ Büscher asked, doubt in his voice.

  Ubbo answered for Ann Kathrin. ‘Yes, she is. And I am too. He tried to tell me something, and now he wants to know if I understood the message.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Ann Kathrin said. She exchanged a brief look with Ubbo. The deep level of understanding touched her so much she had to fight the tears for a moment.

  She looked out of the window.

  Ubbo placed a hand on her shoulder from behind and said, ‘I know.’

  *

  Weller parked the Chevy directly in front of the Intercity Hotel behind the old post office. Next to the entrance stood a tall man who looked like a long-distance runner training for his next marathon. But he was taking a drag on a thin filter cigarette that would have been more at home in a woman’s hands than in his athletic fists, strengthened by weightlifting.

  Weller helped Ubbo Heide out of the car and saw that the man was walking directly towards them. Ann Kathrin watched him react very cautiously. Weller was still standing behind the wheelchair and immediately positioned himself so that he stood between Ubbo Heide and the approaching man, like a human shield.

  The man tried to get past Weller by sidestepping him, but Weller was faster, ready to stop him with a punch or a kick. Wordlessly, the man conceded that he now had to explain himself if he didn’t want to end up flat on the pavement with his hands cuffed behind his back.

  He showed his open hands. ‘Kowalski. I’m here to interview Mr Heide.’

  Ubbo called out, ‘It’s fine, Frank! He’s from the Stadtspiegel. Mrs Sobotta fell ill.’

  Weller looked the man over critically, not speaking, just nodding and allowing access. Kowalski and Ubbo Heide shook hands in greeting.

  ‘If you’d have a little time for me before or after the reading, Mr Heide, my readers would surely be very grateful, and I would too, of course.’

  Ubbo Heide answered cordially. ‘Why of course. I don’t believe it would be possible to get a proper East Frisian-style tea, but I’d be glad to treat you to a cup of coffee.’

  Kowalski nodded and proceeded to push the wheelchair. Ubbo didn’t want to be pushed so he turned on the motor. Weller had actually been planning to walk alongside the two of them, but Ann Kathrin held him back. She didn’t think it was necessary to be too obvious as a bodyguard here.

  Ubbo went ahead with the interview while Büscher, Ann Kathrin and Weller discussed the evening’s strategy up in the hotel room with their colleagues from Gelsenkirchen.

  It wasn’t comfortable, but Ann Kathrin had insisted that the meeting take place in the hotel, not in the Gelsenkirchen police station next to city hall, because they didn’t want to be far from Ubbo. They all sat together in Büscher’s room, safe from unwanted listeners.

  The hotel room wasn’t exactly suitable for a team meeting. Büscher and Weller sat next to each other on the edge of the bed while Ann Kathrin took the only chair in the room. The two police officers from Gelsenkirchen stood around slightly awkwardly.

  One storey below, in the breakfast room, Ubbo Heide felt flattered because Kowalski had read his book, was well informed and actually even interested. Over the previous six months, Ubbo had often encountered journalists who wanted to interview him, but hadn’t even read his book, and weren’t interested in crime novels, but had to write the article. By contrast, a conversation like this one with Kowalski did him a world of good.

  They were sitting at a small table not far from the bar. A lone drinker sat at the bar, staring into his beer. A couple, in the furthest corner of the room so as not to be disturbed, were cuddling and whispering together.

  The woman from reception brewed coffee for Ubbo Heide and Kowalski.

  ‘I’m actually a sports journalist,’ Kowalski said. ‘To tell you the truth, I wanted to play basketball, but there was a back problem standing between me and the Dallas Mavericks.’

  Ubbo Heide smiled. ‘I used to play road bowling with a passion. Are you familiar with it? It’s a northern German, well, an East Frisian game.’

  ‘You throw a ball on the road?’

  ‘Yep,’ Ubbo Heide laughed, ‘exactly. But you didn’t come here to talk sport with me.’

  ‘No, certainly not. I’m fascinated by your book, My Unsolved Cases. Mr Heide, I wonder what kind of person you are. At the end of your career, you don’t publish a volume of your successes – of which there undoubtedly were many – but rather your failures. You experienced all of these as defeats, am I right?’

  ‘Yes, you could say that. If I was convinced I knew who the culprit was and I wasn’t able to prove it, then I did consider this a personal failure. Sometimes it kept me awake at night. In some ways, the book was a kind of release, finally being able to speak freely and openly about these cases.’

  ‘Isn’t the whole thing more a failure of the justice system? I mean, you provided all the proof, and then they acquitted the criminal?’

  Ubbo Heide shook his head and emphasised his words with an index finger lifted high. ‘You’re confusing proof and evidence. In each case I had evidence that pointed towards someone being the wrongdoer. Sometimes I was able to string together a chain of circumstantial evidence. But evidence is not proof. I
t’s more than a hunch, it’s a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood. But not more.’ He tried to explain further. ‘If your car was parked on the street, then it could be evidence that you were at the scene of the crime. But it isn’t proof. If a lighter is found at the crime scene, that’s initially evidence. But it’s not proof. The lighter could have been stolen from you, maybe you lost it.’

  Kowalski listened closely, but didn’t take any notes. Instead, he placed a silver, Olympus-brand Dictaphone on the table. It blinked and he asked, ‘Would you allow me to—’

  ‘Of course.’

  The couple in the corner giggled. The solitary drinker at the bar emptied his glass and requested ‘another Pilsner’.

  Now that he had turned on the Dictaphone, Kowalski spoke a high German that was particularly accented, as if the interview wouldn’t be printed in the newspaper, but broadcast on the radio instead. ‘So Mr Heide, your story is about unsuccessful trials based on circumstantial evidence.’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of principle, it’s a good thing that there are high standards in trials based on circumstantial evidence. There has to be a chain of evidence that suggests causality. But in the end, it comes down to how a judge evaluates it. Naturally it’s easier if you have five witnesses who say I saw how Karl killed Eva. And then you have the knife with his fingerprints on it, and scratches on his face. And Eva has skin particles from Karl under her fingernails. That’s it for Karl, he’s not getting out of it. But it’s seldom so simple.’

  *

  Things weren’t as harmonious up in Büscher’s hotel room as in the breakfast room of the Intercity Hotel. Ann Kathrin was almost breathless with indignation, and Büscher shook his head in disbelief. ‘So basically we can call everything off, then?’

  ‘The reading will take place without all that,’ Weller interjected. Ann Kathrin could see that he was growing more and more resentful and was about to lose his temper completely.

  What Ann Kathrin did then was something she had learned from Ubbo Heide. She summarised the conversation they had had so far, so that the others could have the chance to correct or retract something. She wasn’t able to remain seated, falling into her interrogation mode. Three steps, turn, three steps. Instead of glancing at the suspect during the last step, she stared at the two officers from the Gelsenkirchen Police Department every time, making them feel increasingly uncomfortable.