The Oath

by Klaus-Peter Wolf

  ‘A dangerous man. He’s spent some time in prison for aggravated assault and attempted murder.’

  ‘Well? Does he have anything to do with our case?’ asked Weller.

  The Gelsenkirchen detective shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? But he was the only one in the audience that I knew.’

  Again Weller tried to persuade the officers to hand over the footage from the cameras in the underground car park, but he was banging his head against a brick wall.

  Ubbo Heide, Ann Kathrin Klaasen and Martin Büscher stood in the glow of a street light in front of the library and were on the look out for someplace that was still open.

  ‘Back there,’ said Ann Kathrin, ‘there used to be a restaurant and a bar. Tigges. I wonder if it’s still in business. My father often went there for a beer.’

  Weller went into the car park to get the Chevy. He was dancing, even cheerfully, like a child who had a prank planned. Later on he wouldn’t remember making the decision but Ann Kathrin guessed that at this moment he was clear about what he needed to do.

  Weller took off his shirt and wrapped it around his head like a turban, buttoning it in such a way that his mouth and nose were covered. Only his eyes were still exposed. A sleeve dangled next to his left ear.

  Most of the other parking spots were already free. Weller looked around for a suitable weapon and found it immediately. There was a wheel brace leaning against a column.

  Raising the cold, silver part up high, he slammed it against the passenger-side window. The window cracked but held up astonishingly well and the wheel brace ricocheted off in Weller’s direction. He ducked, narrowly missing being hit on the head and the wheel brace clattered onto the floor.

  Weller picked it up and hit the window a second time. This time, it shattered and the alarm went off.

  Weller was pleased with himself. Tugging his shirt back into place, he walked back up to where the two Gelsenkirchen officers were still standing with Ann Kathrin, Büscher and Ubbo Heide, waiting to say goodbye. The one with the swollen cheek spat a mixture of blood and mucus onto the asphalt.

  ‘Hey,’ Weller said, ‘someone must have tried to break into our car during the reading. Luckily there are surveillance cameras. Let’s get him!’

  The Gelsenkirchen policemen looked at each other. The one with the droopy lip, who smelled of the dentist’s, thought he’d worked out what Weller had done. But in the end he didn’t care.

  ‘Would it be possible,’ Weller asked, ‘to look at the footage with you right away, or will you send us the tape and we’ll do the work for you?’

  ‘That’s not our responsibility,’ said the man with the crew cut.

  Ann Kathrin was insistent. ‘This could have been an attempted assassination. Who knows if the culprit has put something in the car or wanted to try—’

  The one with the fat lower lip raised both hands. ‘Yeah, OK, damn it, fine! For all I care!’

  *

  There was good coffee at the Gelsenkirchen police station, and Weller wrote down every single license number as they watched the footage on the monitor together. Much of the audience had come by car and not all of them were from Gelsenkirchen, just as Sabine Piechaczek had said.

  The cameras were synchronised with the motion detectors and only recorded when a car drove in or out.

  When the man strangely disguised with a shirt over his head appeared on the screen Büscher hoped that he was dreaming. He was certain that it was Weller.

  Büscher felt as if he were coming down with something. His heart was racing, his throat was dry and he felt hot and cold in waves. He looked over to Ann Kathrin and Ubbo Heide.

  People said of Ubbo Heide that he approached life with cheery serenity. Büscher didn’t think that was the case at all. First Ubbo talked all evening long about existential questions, about law and justice, castigating miscarriages of justice, and then he grinned to himself when he saw how his protégé Frank Weller had smashed a car to insight a manhunt.

  The officer with the fat lip blasted Weller. ‘You can’t be serious! You set that all up just so you could—’

  ‘Wait a second,’ Weller said. ‘Am I being accused of something here? I didn’t do that myself. Guys! Why would I? Am I crazy? Am I considered a brute? Have I ever damaged a car in all my life? That guy may have a similar build, and he’s also wearing a shirt like mine, but that shirt is mass-produced, there are thousands like it. But – as you can see – I don’t have my shirt on my head, I have it on my whole upper body. No, no, no, you can’t pin that on me!’

  Büscher was breathing so heavily that it sounded like a deep, painful sighing.

  ‘Now I have to defend Weller as well,’ said Ann Kathrin. ‘The car once belonged to a well-known pimp and drug dealer from northern Germany. We confiscated it. There were four kilos of heroin under the back seat. It’s a distinctive vehicle. It’s possible that some former victim recognised the car and wanted to take revenge on the owner. After all, nobody can tell that we have converted this criminal’s car into a police car in the meantime.’

  ‘Well,’ Weller said. ‘That’s what you get if our funding constantly gets cut and we have to improvise.’

  The fellow officer, who smelled like a dentist ’s office, groaned in Büscher’s direction. ‘This has truly been a shitty day. And your goddamn squad has topped it off. My dentist only wanted to drill or nail an implant into my jaw and something went wrong so now I’m up to my neck in painkillers. I should really be in bed. And then these clowns from East Frisia come over and do something like this!’

  Before Ubbo Heide left the building with his people, the one with the crew cut asked him to sign his book and whispered in his ear, ‘I revere you, Mr Heide. We all wish we had a boss like you.’

  *

  They had a nightcap at the bar in the Intercity Hotel. They all needed one after such an evening. They leaned back against the bar and looked at Ubbo Heide, who was sitting in his wheelchair facing them and drinking a Pilsner.

  They were the only guests and now Büscher vented, ‘You were all in that together! How could you pull a stunt like that?’ He patted the sweat from his neck.

  ‘You smashed up a police car to set off the alarm!’

  ‘No,’ said Weller, ‘not to set off the alarm, just to get at the number plates.’

  ‘Do tell,’ said Ann Kathrin with a smile, ‘that was really you, Frank? I wouldn’t have thought it of you.’

  He grinned. ‘Yes, dear, sometimes I can be a damn bad boy.’

  Ubbo Heide held his hand in front of his mouth to stop himself laughing.

  ‘What is this all about?’ Büscher ranted. ‘Legal, illegal, who cares? People! We’re the Kripo!’

  ‘Precisely,’ Ubbo Heide said. ‘We’re here to solve the case.’

  Büscher made a helpless gesture. ‘Yes, damn it, what does that mean?’

  ‘If you want to make an omelette, you have to break a couple of eggs,’ Ann Kathrin said, and Weller interjected: ‘By the way, I’m really hungry now. Can’t we get anything to eat around here?’

  Weller remembered that Rupert once claimed one of the best currywurst stands in the world was located in Gelsenkirchen, and Rupert really knew his way around things like that. But Weller couldn’t remember where. He seriously considered calling Rupert and asking him for the address.

  Then Wilhelm Kaufmann hesitantly entered the hotel. He walked over to the group at the bar and asked, ‘Can I join you?’

  ‘Sure, Willy,’ Ubbo called with delight.

  *

  Svenja Moers had lost all sense of time. She could no longer trust her internal clock. How long had it been since she’d last seen Yves Stern?

  Had he been away for a couple of hours or a couple of days?

  She had actually begun to miss him. Ridiculous though it seemed, the prison was more tolerable with him than without him.

  She hoped that nothing had happened to him. Maybe he had gone shopping. Possibly taken the autobahn. He was probably e
xcited and in an emotionally difficult situation. Perhaps he hadn’t been paying attention to traffic and had an accident.

  What would happen to her, damn it? She’d simply starve to death.

  She, who had lost her faith in God long ago, began to pray that Yves Stern was OK.

  Perhaps, she thought, he’s travelling and getting a prisoner for the other cell. She caught herself wishing him all the best.

  ‘Please, dear God,’ she begged, ‘let nothing happen to Yves.’

  Without him she had no chance of getting free from this prison.

  Once she had realised that, she began to make a plan. She had to win over Yves Stern. She’d be lost without him.

  She drank a sip of water from the basin. It was hard for her to look into the mirror. She looked terrible.

  She slapped her cheeks.

  I have to clean myself up. I have to try to make something of myself. I have to capture him. I can’t look like a pile of compost.

  She licked her index finger and wiped her smeared mascara.

  She looked at the empty cell next to hers. She truly did not want to be alone anymore. And at the same time she was ashamed because she was wishing her fate on someone else.

  She just needed someone she could hold tight.

  *

  Büscher kneaded his face. He was dog tired. ‘Let’s meet down here for breakfast at seven thirty. I want us to get an early start. We have a whole lot of work ahead of us in East Frisia.’

  Weller looked at his watch. ‘It’s fucking late. I think we should give Ubbo a little more sleep.’

  Büscher made a face. ‘Fine. Eight thirty.’

  ‘But we,’ Weller said sheepishly, ‘still have to repair the window before that. Otherwise there’ll be a draught all the way back.’

  ‘You’ll think of something,’ Büscher claimed. ‘It’s not my problem.’

  He stood up from the bar with difficulty, almost as if it weren’t easy to let go of the stool, and shuffled sleepily towards the lift. He looked as if he might fall asleep on the way there.

  Ann Kathrin watched him go before looking indecisively at Weller and Ubbo Heide. Ubbo was engrossed in a conversation with Wilhelm Kaufmann and appeared to be uninterested in going to bed.

  Ann Kathrin considered whether there was any reason why she should not leave him with Kaufmann down here at the hotel bar. Basically no, she thought. To her mind, Ubbo wasn’t in the least danger, and alone, he would be sure to get more out of Wilhelm Kaufmann than if she and Weller stayed.

  Ubbo winked at her as she said goodnight. She had the feeling that the reading had been good for him. The audience’s adulation had made him euphoric.

  Weller would have liked to have another beer, but Ann Kathrin motioned that he should come with her, leaving Ubbo and Kaufmann alone at the bar.

  ‘Will you be OK on your own?’ Weller asked.

  Wilhelm Kaufmann gave the answer. ‘I’m not driving back tonight. I’m staying here too so don’t worry, I’ll get your boss back to his room.’ He added with a grin, ‘And I’ll tuck him in tight.’

  Ubbo Heide gave Weller a sign that it’d be safe to pull back.

  They had hardly disappeared into the lift when Wilhelm Kaufmann pushed Ubbo and his wheelchair to a table off to the side, away from the bar, ordered two more beers and said conspiratorially, ‘Finally we’re alone and can talk, man to man.’

  ‘It’s good that you came.’

  ‘I thought I had to see you now, after what happened, Ubbo. We were both thinking the same thing back then. Heymann and Stern were up to their necks in it.’

  ‘Yep,’ Ubbo said, ‘and now one of them is cleaning up.’

  Then he produced the tin he’d been given from his wheelchair bag and put it on the table.

  ‘Mints from Bochum. Want one?’

  Wilhelm Kaufmann nodded and took one. They chewed while they were waiting for their next round of beers.

  ‘I thought,’ Kaufmann said, almost a little disappointed, ‘you would talk more about the case. You did a proper poet’s reading instead. My goodness!’

  ‘I left out the case deliberately. I didn’t want people to accuse me of profiteering.’

  Kaufman threw his head back, tossed a peppermint bonbon high in the air and caught it with his lips. He cracked it loudly with his teeth, looked at Ubbo Heide and asked, ‘Are you relieved because someone has got those two scumbags now? We failed back then. Although, if I think about it, we were actually pretty good. It was the fucking judge who shut us down.’

  Ubbo Heide patted his wheelchair. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t me. And I can’t say that it sparks joy when people are decapitated. Although I would have wished that on those two if anyone. The thought of someone abusing children is somehow so unbearable; all those years, I was living in fear that they’d do it again. Coordinated somehow. Maybe they were just the tip of an iceberg of child abusers. I prefer the thought that Heymann only kidnapped his own child — and then maybe something went wrong.’

  Wilhelm Kaufmann got upset. ‘Don’t get started with that “He had an accident and the child died” theory. I never believed that bullshit! Yves Stern is the key. Heymann was maybe even his victim. Or he sacrificed his daughter to Stern to get out of some kind of shit. What do you think – did Yves Stern blackmail Heymann?’

  Ubbo Heide waved dismissively. ‘What do I know?’

  The waiter brought the two beers and the men each drank a big gulp. Ubbo’s throat was dry from talking and reading aloud. He groaned with pleasure and placed the beer glass loudly on the cardboard coaster.

  Using the back of his hand, he wiped the foam from his mouth, and then he shot his question like a poison dart, ‘Did you take my car keys last time we met, at the birthday party in Reichshof?’

  Wilhelm Kaufmann raised his arms as if he wanted to surrender. Then he laughed. ‘Sure. I stole your car keys and then placed a head in your car boot. Believe me, I’ve frequently played with the thought of taking those guys out. I thought if the criminal justice system can’t handle them, then maybe we have to do it. But I never did.’

  ‘You lost your job back then because you were too rough with him.’

  Kaufmann didn’t look as if he was exactly proud of this, but then he said with a shrug. ‘I smacked Heymann in the face. He didn’t make a big deal out of it. But Yves Stern’s lawyer was a crafty devil. He threatened to make me into a torturer in open court, just because I—’

  ‘Did you punch him too?’

  ‘No. I threatened him, saying if he didn’t tell the truth I’d take him for a little ride and—’

  ‘Then you choked him.’

  ‘No, I just roughed him up a bit.’

  Ubbo snapped at him. ‘We’re not in court, it’s just the two of us.’

  ‘Yeah, damn it, you’re right. I completely lost it.’

  ‘If I remember correctly,’ Ubbo Heide said, ‘at the time you went to see his wife and told her that he had confessed to the murder of Steffi Heymann.’

  ‘Yes, damn it, I rolled the dice. I thought it would make her tell the truth. I wanted to break through that wall of silence, and then they made a huge deal out of it afterwards. Well, it cost me my badge.’

  Ubbo Heide spoke quietly. ‘And now you’ve taken revenge on both of them?’

  ‘You really believe that?’ asked Kaufmann, staring at him. Ubbo Heide couldn’t hold his gaze for very long. He looked first at the sweets and then the tin and closed it. He placed it in his lap. ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘I’m tired. I have to get to bed.’

  ‘I’ll help you.’ Kaufmann stood up and pushed Ubbo towards the lift. His voice was hoarse. ‘It changed all of us, Ubbo. You wrote a book to deal with all that shit; and I always go to Langeoog. At least two weeks every year. Always to the same place. I convince myself I’m on holiday there but in reality I’m not making any progress.’

  Ubbo stopped the wheelchair so that Wilhelm Kaufmann had to stop too. As if he’d had enough of the heavy topic, Ubbo said,
‘Everyone needs his own island. My island is Wangerooge. I’m there whenever I can be, sitting in the window and looking at the sea.’

  ‘And you also try to do more than just get rid of the old demons there, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ubbo Heide, ‘perhaps.’

  Wilhelm Kaufmann pressed the button and the lift door opened immediately.

  Ubbo Heide saw his own face in the mirror. He was shocked. The man he saw there seemed old, fragile and tired.

  *

  When she was in the corner next to the basin the angle was such that she could peer into the hallway as soon as the steel door opened. That’s exactly where she was headed now because she heard sounds. There was the clatter of metal on metal. Then wheels rattling over the uneven floor.

  She even toyed with the thought of seducing him. Yes, she was able to play the role of slut, the cock-hungry maid. That’s how she had wrapped each of her two husbands and the other temporary guys around her little finger.

  It was a role that she played. Nothing more. Copied it from television, down to the last ridiculous detail. Licking her upper lip with her tongue, a coy look, it was so easy to drive men crazy.

  Perhaps, she thought, she’d be able to lure him into her cell. And then fight him to the death.

  She pictured him kneeling on the ground, howling in pain because she had kicked him between the legs. Then she would punch his Adam’s apple.

  In her mind’s eye, she could already see him lying in front of her on the floor. Then she had to be able to land a couple of kicks. She had to be tough. She only had this one chance, if any, she said to herself. She was ready to earn her freedom.

  The steel door opened with a whirr. The lights blinked on after flickering briefly, and illuminated the entrance like a stage.

  She stuck out her chest and positioned herself as lasciviously as possible.

  I look terrible, she thought. If only I could have a shower at least, shampoo, a hair drier. A bit of makeup!

  But what was this? She held up a hand because she was blinded by the light. He pushed something into the space. No, it wasn’t him. A woman entered.

  She was stooped and had straggly hair tied in a bun. Her skin was wrinkly and she had thin lips. Her shoulders were bent.