But when he saw that the car was empty, the pills had a hard time with him, of course. The double espresso stepped right into the foreground now because as he walked from the gas station to the BMW and didn’t see Helena’s head through the rear window, his heart stood still a moment, and then started pounding like he’d gulped down not just a double espresso but the contents of the entire coffee machine.
Interesting, though. His heart wasn’t beating where the heart’s supposed to beat, but in his head. Because his jugular must have been thicker than the fuel hose he’d gassed up the BMW with- unbelievable, what a car like this guzzles, but he told himself, why should it bother me, I don’t have to pay for it, and I’m too old for climate change.
The blood was pumping so hard through his arteries and into his brain now that his entire head was throbbing like the time he’d held his ear right up to the speaker at a Jimi Hendrix concert in Stuttgart, 1969. They fit seven people in an old Citroen on the drive from Leitner’s house to Stuttgart and back-eight of them, considering Leitner’s girlfriend was already pregnant by the drive home. But she told them all it wasn’t Hendrix’s, no, it was Helmut Kogelberger’s.
The hammering in his head was so loud that he didn’t even hear the truck thundering down the street. And I do believe, even to this day, that it saved his life. Because he only noticed the truck after it had driven past him, i.e., too late to throw himself in front of its wheels. And maybe, given how much blood was shooting into his head, maybe that much more of the pills reached his brain. Because suddenly there was a straw to grasp at again, a glimmer of hope again, a silver lining again, in other words- maybe I’m deceiving myself. Just because I can’t see Helena’s head through the back window when I’m fifteen feet away doesn’t mean that she’s not in the car anymore.
Maybe she fell asleep and is just a little slouched down in her car seat, and that’s why I don’t see her, Herr Simon told himself. Which was complete nonsense, of course, when he knew for a fact that he should be able to see the child from here. Nor can a child really slouch if she’s buckled correctly into her car seat, and Herr Simon never drove three feet without buckling Helena in according to the letter of the law-that you can’t fairly accuse him of.
But by the next step, direction BMW, the blood in his head was already floating that last straw out to sea. Who knows, maybe it’s just a reflection in the back window. There are so many cars today with tinted windows you can’t even see through. And now he really did see something, or so it seemed. Helena had turned herself around in her car seat and was staring at him, deathly pale and with panic-stricken eyes. But it was only the reflection of his own face and the panic in his own eyes that caused Herr Simon to barely recognize himself. Now with conviction, another step and another step, but even from two steps away, still nothing of Helena to be seen. And as he stood directly beside the car, still nothing of Helena to be seen, not even through the side window. And when finally, with trembling fingers, he pressed the button on the car’s key fob, it was of no use.
He kept pressing it, but the doors just unlocked and locked and unlocked and locked themselves, making that damned noise. Just once I’d like to understand how this remote-keyless-system actually works, because technology: a world of magic. Herr Simon was less interested in these sorts of things, he’d never had much of a grasp of technology, he used to get criticized for that all the time on the police force. A certain interest had awoken in him more recently since he’d become a chauffeur, because he’d counted himself fortunate a few times now to be living in an age when there are things that nobody would have dreamed of before, for example, unlocking a car from a distance like a magician. But now he had to accept that there was nothing magical about the key he was holding in his hand, because he could press and he could wish all he wanted, he could lock and unlock a thousand times, and he’d still only produce this knocking sound, like a drummer in a funeral march, driving the tears from the eyes of the mourners at the grave site. But for all that, the little girl, who the Frau Doctor had placed in his care, didn’t pop back up.
Interesting, though. He must have blacked out at this point-missing footage, if you will. Because later he had no memory of how he had run around the gas station. He didn’t remember running through the car wash. He didn’t remember stumbling out of the lot and running up and down the street. He didn’t remember running a second and then a third time around the gas station and through the car wash. Or better put, he did in fact remember it. But in reverse! Now how is something like this possible?
Watch closely. His forward-recollection kicked in only at the point when he ran back into the gas station. He doesn’t mention a word about the child having disappeared, instead: something’s been stolen from my car. Because otherwise the gas station attendant is going to call the police right away if he says what has been stolen. The police gave Herr Ex-Detective hell for that one. Why didn’t you call the police immediately, close off the streets, crackdowns, raids, the works! And I do have to say, with something like this, you’ve simply got to call the police. Personal history with the police notwithstanding. Herr Simon made a big mistake there. Maybe the pills had him feeling a little too sure of himself. Even if afterward you can say ten times over, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, there would’ve been no point in calling the police right away, because already far too late to close off the streets. But he couldn’t have known that. And at least he would have spared himself a little trouble. In hindsight. Above all he would have been spared those smartasses at the newspaper, because they managed to dig up from some channel or another his ancient police academy photo, and beneath it they put the caption: BODYGUARD SIPS SLOW DRIP BEFORE CALLING COPS.
Here I feel the need to add: that’s not quite right, either! Because he only ordered his second cup of coffee in order to strike up a conversation with the gas station attendant now. Whether anything might have shown up on the surveillance monitors. The gas station attendant was very sociable, or really I should say cash register attendant, because attendants don’t attend to the gas anymore these days, just the cash register. His name tag said Milan, and the young man explained to his customer in flawless German that the fuel pumps were surveilled, entrance surveilled, cash register surveilled, but over by the air pump, where Herr Simon had of course moved the car, not surveilled. But I have to say, this makes no sense, because an air pump can be stolen faster than a gas pump. But that’s just how it was, and really, Herr Simon already knew as much, the first thing he’d done outside was look to see whether there was a camera in range.
“Can I maybe have a quick look anyway to see whether one of the other cameras picked up the thief getting away?”
“I’m afraid that’s not allowed,” Milan said and set his espresso down in front of him.
I don’t know why, but-did he simply take a liking to Herr Simon, was he hoping for a good tip, did he have a guilty conscience that a theft had occurred on company property, or did Herr Simon just have a look of sheer desperation? — the attendant gestured for him to come behind the counter, and he showed him the flat monitor that hung above the cash register. Ten small cameras, if you can believe it: pump 1, pump 2, pump 3, pump 4, pump 5, pump 6, pump 7, pump 8, entrance, cash register.
Milan rewound the video and after just a few seconds you could see Herr Simon staggering backwards out of the shop, then running backwards around the gas station-you’ve got to picture this for yourself, you see yourself doing something that you just did five minutes ago but don’t remember anymore-backwards into the car wash three times and backwards out three times, the greatest distress of his life looking ridiculous backwards and lasting just a few foolish seconds until, backwards, Herr Simon froze into a pillar of salt, as though Milan had paused the image. And a moment later, an entirely different Herr Simon walked leisurely backwards into the shop.