The Oath

by Klaus-Peter Wolf

  *

  The first interrogation took place on Langeoog. Ubbo insisted on being present, and no one had any objections when it became clear that Kaufmann would open up to him before anyone else.

  Instead of taking Kaufmann to the police station, they took him one storey down into the other, empty holiday rental. They were in the living room, sitting around the table while the men from the SWAT team drank filter coffee in the kitchen, ate rolls, and Johannes Dunkel sent his beloved Vivien a WhatsApp message:

  I’m so in love with you that I can barely stand not being with you right now.

  Her answer was immediate:

  I know that you’re not allowed to talk to me about operations. But I prayed for you.

  I believe, he wrote as an unbeliever, it helped me.

  Wilhelm Kaufmann felt completely different now he was wearing fresh clothing. As if the old rules of the game were back in place.

  ‘I didn’t expect you so quickly. Have you already found the body?’

  ‘Of course we have,’ Weller said. ‘What did you expect?’

  Ubbo Heide motioned for Weller to take it down a notch and check his emotions.

  Büscher agreed completely. He was leaning against the wall and watching everything calmly. This is the heart of the gang I have to lead, he thought. Take a good look at them. This is how they are. Maybe you’ll be one of them someday. But that will be a damn long road.

  Wilhelm Kaufmann addressed Ubbo Heide, as if he didn’t take anyone else seriously. ‘I would have called you early tomorrow morning. My report would have been on your desks at the start of work.’

  ‘So you were planning on making a confession?’ Ubbo Heide asked.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t call it a confession. I wanted to make a statement. I did stab him.’

  ‘We’ve already seen that,’ Rupert muttered. Somehow he didn’t like this conversation between Ubbo Heide and Kaufmann. He was tired and irritated. He turned round and looked at Büscher questioningly. But Büscher just kept on listening.

  Ann Kathrin Klaasen considered this conversation between Ubbo Heide and Wilhelm Kaufmann to be exactly the right way to find out the truth quickly.

  ‘What kind of statement,’ Ubbo Heide asked, ‘can be made at this point except for a confession?’

  ‘It was self-defence. He attacked me.’

  ‘Sure,’ Rupert laughed and shamelessly scratched his balls, ‘You’re in the sauna when you get attacked, but luckily you have a knife with you and boom, you finish him off.’

  Kaufmann considered Rupert’s approach stupid and disrespectful and therefore didn’t react at first. Instead, he said to Ubbo Heide, ‘He thought I had murdered Heymann and Stern and believed I’d kill him next.’

  Rupert smirked. ‘Well, he sure was a smart one! Probably graduated from school.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Do you know what, Kaufmann, that’s what we all think!’

  Ubbo Heide looked at Ann Kathrin, who turned to Weller. ‘I think it’s better if you and Rupert step outside for a little while.’

  Weller grabbed Rupert by the shoulder and pulled him up from his chair.

  ‘What?’ Rupert asked, ‘What? Did I say something wrong again? Am I causing trouble at this little party?’

  Weller didn’t even allow himself to get drawn into a debate. Rupert looked at Büscher, hoping for support, but he was in agreement and didn’t react as Weller pulled Rupert to the door and pushed him out of the room.

  Ubbo Heide nodded to Ann Kathrin in thanks. Then he asked Kaufmann, ‘Why David Weissberg?’

  Wilhelm Kaufmann made a confused face and leaned back in his chair. ‘David Weissberg? Do you mean the David Weissberg?’

  ‘Yes, exactly. How did you know that I called him the Silver Fox in my new book?’

  Astonished, Wilhelm opened his hands. ‘I had no clue, Ubbo. I don’t know your new book.’

  ‘No one knows it. It won’t be published.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Now Ann Kathrin chimed in. ‘Mr Kaufmann, you stabbed David Weissberg in the sauna in Uslar and stuffed a piece of fur in his mouth.’

  ‘From a fox,’ Ubbo Heide added.

  Kaufmann shook his head. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘I’ve never been to Uslar in my whole life. I came to Langeoog for a holiday. I come here every year for two weeks. And I always rent the flat above this one. But this time Birger Holthusen was on the island. He attacked me on Flinthörn. He wanted to kill me. He confessed to having killed Steffi Heymann and Nicola Billing and two other children.’

  Ubbo Heide collapsed as if he’d taken a punch to the stomach. For a moment Ann Kathrin feared he could be suffering a heart attack as Ubbo grabbed his chest in a way she’d never seen him do. Then his hands slid up higher to his neck.

  ‘Does that mean Heymann and Stern were innocent?’

  ‘Yes, Ubbo, that’s what it means. You and I – we were both barking up the wrong tree.’

  Ubbo Heide said nothing more. He looked to Ann Kathrin, begging her for help.

  ‘Where,’ she asked, ‘is Birger Holthusen?’

  ‘At Flinthörn. He couldn’t get away. His own knife is in his chest. A dagger.’ Kaufmann motioned with his fingers, ‘This long. Almost a sabre.’

  ‘My God,’ Ubbo Heide said, ‘we destroyed the lives of Heymann and Stern by false suspicion. And then in the end they were killed.’

  ‘The courts,’ Ann Kathrin said, ‘had acquitted them.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ubbo groaned, ‘the courts.’

  Büscher pushed away from the wall. It was as if he’d only now entered the room. He straightened up in front of the others and said, ‘Did I understand that right? There’s another body? This Birger Holthusen?’

  ‘Yes,’ Wilhelm Kaufmann said. ‘I caught Steffi Heymann and Nicola Billing’s killer after all.’

  ‘Can I have a glass of water?’ Ubbo Heide asked. He looked pale as a ghost.

  *

  He had brought her a bucket so that she could relieve herself. What he viewed as a generous privilege he had given her, to her felt like a further means to humiliate and control her. She imagined how he would obtain urine and faeces samples in an improvised laboratory to analyse her condition precisely.

  Was she part of an experiment? Was he one of those mad scientists that she remembered from the B-movies of her youth, when a trip to the Apollo Theatre represented the high point of a Sunday afternoon?

  She felt heavy, as if she’d swallowed stones. She was suffering from constipation and stomach cramps. She kept on burping loudly, as if she were drunk. She felt embarassed, even here, alone in her cell, but she couldn’t hold it in. The air came up out of the depths of her body like a scream and pushed its way out.

  He brought her scrambled eggs with prawns, bacon and ham, accompanied by a thermos flask of filter coffee. He’d even provided milk and sugar, as if they were sitting out on the harbour in Greetsiel enjoying the view of the historic ships while eating.

  He looked like he was in a good mood, but she knew how quickly this could change.

  He demanded her notebook. She passed it through the bars and was surprised her hands wasn’t shaking.

  ‘It’s impossible,’ she said, ‘for anyone to gain weight that fast. A body isn’t a vessel you can just pour food into for it to become heavier.’

  He smiled and spoke to her as though she were a child. ‘But, my dear, that’s exactly how it is.’ He pointed to his open mouth. ‘Things go in here and come out down there. If you put more in than comes out, then you gain weight.’

  She didn’t touch the food, but hoped that the coffee would help her digestion, although she would have prefered some herbal drops and a peppermint tea to help her with the stomach cramps.

  ‘What you put into your body,’ he said, ‘also has to stay in there. You understand? There are two ways that happens. Either it can turn into fat or muscle tissue. The way you’re hanging around here – just look at yourself – it’ll turn into fat, if anything. But we’ll chan
ge that. Look what I’ve brought you.’

  He held up a rope.

  Her first thought was that he was planning to hang her. But this wasn’t the case.

  ‘This is how every boxer prepares for a big fight. You coordinate balance, speed, body control, muscles from your calves up to your back. You must have liked doing it as a child.’

  He began to skip in front of the bars.

  My God, she thought, a child’s game had never seemed so terrible.

  He passed the rope through the bars. ‘Now it’s your turn. Get started! Go! The calories I bring you have to be transformed into muscle.’

  ‘I can’t, I have a stomach ache. Constipation. I—’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure. That’s what comes from lazy living. But that’s over now. In a few weeks you’ll be fit as a fiddle. You’ll see just how much you can improve your performance.’

  She took the rope and let it slip between her fingers. It was made out of hemp and had bright handles.

  With this, she thought, I could do more than just skip. I could tie you up or strangle you.

  ‘Start,’ he demanded. Otherwise your food will get cold. First you jump a little, then there’s breakfast. And you’ll be astonished what I’ve got for you then. We’ll make your jail into a real little gym. Don’t look so glum!’ he screamed at her. ‘This is the way it is. And remember to smile for the camera! After all, you know the show must go on. When I send the next pictures of you, you don’t want to look like a cheap bitch, do you? Your pictures will be sent to the press throughout the whole country. What am I saying, you’ll be an international star! Don’t you want to look your best?’

  She began to rotate the rope and hop as she had as a child. She had already stumbled by the second turn and almost fell.

  ‘You’re out of practice,’ he grinned, ‘but you’ll get there. Look at it like this: you have the opportunity to atone for your sins here and become a better person. I’m a kind of personal trainer for you. Out there in real prisons they have people like that too. But at least I don’t chatter on about social programmes or re training .Those things don’t matter because you’re never getting out of here anyway.’

  *

  Weller was really looking forward to the appointment. He, who’d spent some of the most pleasant and relaxing hours of his life with a thick crime novel in hand, was visiting a publishing house for the first time. He pictured it as a magical place where the rooms were drenched with artistic creativity the way other places smell of cleaning materials and photocopiers.

  Ubbo Heide had become subdued and seemed broken to Weller, not at all as if he could at any moment get up out of his wheelchair and say: ‘I’ve had enough, I’m back to being the old Ubbo.’ No, today he even let Weller push him. He was silent in a dogged way and seemed introverted and self-tormenting.

  Weller was almost embarrassed because he was so excited. He knew several books by the crime novelists who were published here.

  When the door opened Weller took a deep breath and briefly closed his eyes, like he used to do upon entering a bakery, in joyful anticipation of the delicious treat. The publishing director and an editor were able to spare some time to see them. For Weller they exuded intelligence in a sympathetic way. He was impressed.

  They could be involved with fictitious crimes, with the possibilities, with language, but yesterday they surely hadn’t stood in front of a paedophile who had bled out on the beach, Weller thought. He felt the desire to immediately swap places with these people, become part of this company. Learning from the bottom up.

  Yes, why not stand at the photocopier or brew coffee for everyone? Here no one was in danger of landing in a wheelchair because of a knife, as had happened with Ubbo Heide. Weller tried to shake off these thoughts.

  The publishing director looked like an ageing hippy. He wore a light blazer with the elbows worn thin; his formal shirt was open to the second button and he had curly grey chest hair. Everything here seemed easy and light, even superficial .

  Although Weller had requested this conversation as a homicide detective, the talk now seemed to focus more on Ubbo Heide and his new book.

  Weller drank his coffee black, and it tasted unusually good for filter coffee. The publishing director mentioned that he could also have a ‘real’ coffee from the espresso machine.

  Ubbo Heide waved him away, and his editor said in a warm, empathetic voice, ‘Naturally we completely understand the fact that you want to hold back your second book for the time being.’

  ‘Although we regret it greatly in the light of the outstanding pre-orders and the importance of the topic,’ the publishing director chimed in, and then handed back to his editor with a gesture.

  The editor smiled and continued, ‘Of course we hope we can publish the second volume as soon as the culprit has been caught. Which is why you can expect any and all support from us.’

  ‘Of course not just because of that,’ the publishing director corrected. ‘We love crime in a literary way – we don’t need it in the real world.’

  Ubbo Heide remained silent, only looking at Weller, giving him the floor.

  ‘I want to tell you how much I value what you do. I’m familiar with several books from your publishing house,’ Weller said. ‘I’m a real fan of crime fiction. But we have a problem. It’s extremely important for us that we find out everything about the people who know the contents of Ubbo Heide’s second book or somehow have obtained knowledge of it.’

  The publishing director spread his arms and crossed them behind his head before stretching out in his chair. ‘Our authors’ manuscripts aren’t exactly state secrets, but we do treat them with a high degree of confidentiality. We only ever have a few months’ head start over our competition. Then everyone else can imitate us. Series, even entire programmes are copied. if you publish a successful book with the title Monster Ships, you can be sure that soon similar titles with similar contents will appear that could be called Ships Monster, Monsters over Ships, Monsters in Ships, and so on. So there’s only a very small circle of people who know exactly what we’re doing. I’d never tell you what book your favourite author is writing right next, for example.’

  Weller levelled with him: ‘Someone has read Ubbo Heide’s manuscript and committed a murder for which knowledge of the contents is necessary. It even seems as if he committed the murder to demonstrate that he already knows the new book, although it hasn’t even been published.’

  The publishing director slapped the arms of his chair and exhaled. ‘Wow. That’s a bit much!’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Weller confirmed. ‘I need a list of all the people who—’

  The editor addressed Ubbo Heide. ‘There aren’t many people. I didn’t send the manuscript round, or share it with any critics, or offer any galleys or anything like that.’

  The publishing director coughed. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘we hire freelance editors.’

  It sounded like an apology. But the editor shook her head, ‘Oh no, not in this case.’

  The two employees of the publishing house looked at each other, and the boss asked, ‘Then you’re the only one who is familiar with the manuscript?’

  At first she nodded, but she seemed uncertain to Weller. ‘This is enormously importantly to us.’

  ‘Well, of course I wrote a short summary for the press, advertising and marketing.’

  ‘I want to see that!’ Weller demanded.

  The publishing director raised his right hand conciliatorily. Under no circumstances did he want the tone to get combative. ‘We’ll cooperate fully and completely. One moment, please.’

  He typed away at his computer and activated the printer behind Weller that he’d not even noticed. The editor handed Weller a piece of paper.

  Weller registered that Ubbo Heide was called a ‘bestselling author’ and in the picture he looked ten years younger than in real life, but Weller couldn’t find anything in the piece to give away the crime. Words like ‘fox pelt’ or ‘silver
fox’ didn’t appear.

  He passed the paper to Ubbo, who held it with both hands, as if it were very heavy.

  Weller decided to reveal more than he’d intended. Sometimes, if you were sitting around with good people it made sense to put all the cards on the table, show your hand to motivate them to play along.

  ‘A man was stabbed in Uslar. He appears in Ubbo Heide’s book as “Silver fox” and the killer left a piece of fox fur in his mouth as a message for us.’

  The publishing director sank deeper into his chair. The editor held her hand in front of her mouth and exhaled. ‘Oh my God! That sounds like the plot of a horror novel.’

  ‘But it’s the damn truth,’ Weller said, ‘and the killer has another victim in his clutches. He knows the manuscript. He can’t have got the information,’ Weller pointed to the paper that Ubbo Heide held in his hands like a heavy brick, ‘from this text here.’

  No one said anything for a while. Weller considered it a kind of pause for thought. Sometimes things had to sink in before they could continue.

  ‘Where do you keep your manuscripts?’ Weller asked.

  The editor answered. ‘On my computer. There’s no print out of Ubbo’s second bookd.’

  ‘Well great,’ Weller grumbled. He only now realised how ironic it was to be referring to a manuscript, literally hand written, while everything was digital these days.

  ‘Who has access to your computer?’

  ‘Well, me and—’

  ‘Basically everyone in our publishing house,’ the publishing director said and sat down again. ‘Everything is password protected, but good Lord – anyone who works here can quickly get each others’ passwords. It’s all so . . . I mean, who expects something like this to happen?’ He suddenly slammed his fist on the table, as if trying to kill an insect. ‘Damn it, we had that hacker attack!’

  Weller was on alert. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, we didn’t know exactly what was going on, but our systems were knocked out. We couldn’t get on the Internet. An issue with the router or something. I studied humanities; don’t ask me things like that.’