I wanted to get back, quickly, to the wine bar and my unsentimental Jewish Frisian girlfriend. Deborah took life as a learning curve, or rather a learning staircase. Once she was up one step she climbed the next, and she never went back. Why learn something twice? She would have spotted a pimp at first sight, never mind his disguise as a photographer and a man out to improve the world, and would have chased him off with her broom. Valerie de Chavannes’s neediness made me nervous.
‘Oh, there you are. Could you please bring a couple of cartons up from the cellar, twelve bottles of Foulards Rouges in each?’
Deborah was kneeling behind the bar in her short blue denim skirt, checking on the provisions in the fridge. It was just before five, and the wine bar would soon be filling up.
I inspected her bare legs. ‘Are we going to empty one of those bottles ourselves?’
She looked up, shot me a quick glance to see if I was drunk, then smiled her clever, mischievous smile, which said clearly: Listen, you, I’m at work! And she added, for fun, ‘Your place or mine?’
‘Yours, dear heart. You know what my wife is like …’
‘Sure, she’d get on anyone’s nerves. Coming home in the middle of the night, wanting to tell you what her day in the bar was like, dropping off to sleep at once on the sofa or in an armchair, and then she has to be undressed and put to bed. I can tell you, my old man is quite a handful too. He’s been going to bed earlier and earlier since he stopped smoking. And when we want to cuddle or at least see the nightly news on TV, he’s snoring fit to burst our eardrums.’
I shook my head. ‘What rotten luck. Well, nothing to be done about it. All the same,’ I added, jerking my chin at her legs, ‘nice skirt.’
‘Thanks. Will you pick me up later?’
‘I’ll set the alarm.’
‘And I’ll have a double espresso last thing.’
She winked at me and turned back to the fridge. On my way through the backyard and down a damp flight of brick steps to the cellar, I thought about those ghosts of the past conjured up for me by Valerie de Chavannes. And how seductive such ghosts could be. I wasn’t Deborah, I knew I could go down those steps again at any time, all the way to the very bottom, and then, at the age of fifty-three, start all over again: spirits, cigarettes, sleepless nights, anger, the light on the horizon.
I decided not to keep my promise. I wasn’t going to deal with anything or anyone for Valerie de Chavannes next week, not even if Sheikh Hakim’s entire congregation were to come up Zeppelinallee on their knees. And the danger of being suspected of a contract killing in the true sense of the term? Well, I thought I now knew who had killed Rönnthaler. I didn’t have the evidence yet, but I’d soon find it. And then Valerie de Chavannes could tell the police anything she liked.
I wanted to think not about her but about Deborah and our Christmas holidays. Over Christmas the wine bar would be closed for a full week, and Slibulsky had told me about a good spa hotel in Alsace.
Here we go, I thought, picking up the two cases. Twenty-four bottles of Foulards Rouges, Frida — my favourite wine, and not just mine; it was excellent. I had learnt a lot from Deborah about wine, and other things too. But I also still knew: beer with a chaser of spirits and Whitney Houston on the jukebox could be a lot of fun.
Chapter 10
On Friday I met Malik Rashid and Katja Lipschitz in the midst of a dreary dance of colour. The lounge of the Harmonia Hotel had yellow and pink chessboard pattern carpeting, Rashid was sitting on a lime-green sofa, and Katja Lipschitz in a faded blue wing chair. In front of them stood a table with a black top and a metal frame, and on it were orange half-litre mugs with milky white foam rising from them.
Katja Lipschitz, legs crossed and arms folded, sat leaning back, with her head almost horizontally to one side, as if to disguise the difference in size between herself and Rashid like that. Or maybe she was just dozing off.
Rashid, upright, legs apart, was talking to her and gesticulating wildly. He was wearing bright white trainers, jeans and a beige T-shirt bearing the legend The old words are the best, and short words are the best of all. He had a thin face with fine features, lively eyes always moving around and an amused expression, as if to say: Yes, my dear, what a crazy, confused world, what luck there are fellows like me around to keep on top of it.
Rashid didn’t look up until I stopped a couple of metres in front of him, and his expression of amusement instantly turned to a certain reluctance. Perhaps he thought I was a member of the hotel staff.
‘Yes?’
‘Hello, my name is Kayankaya.’
‘Oh,’ said Katja Lipschitz, raising her head. Now she clearly towered above Rashid. ‘I didn’t see you coming.’
And Rashid cried, ‘Aha!’ and switched instantly to an expression of radiance. He rose from the sofa, spreading his arms wide in a theatrical manner. ‘My protector! Greetings!’
Katja Lipschitz didn’t seem to know whether to stand up too. On the one hand there was civility to me, on the other she was probably thinking of Rashid’s feelings. I noticed at once that she was wearing flat-heeled shoes, but if she stood right beside him Rashid was still going to look like a gnome. Or she was going to look like a giant — perhaps it was that more than anything that she wanted to avoid.
‘Don’t get up,’ I said to Katja Lipschitz, offering Rashid my hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Herr Rashid.’
‘Oh!’ He lowered his arms and ironically mimed disappointment. ‘So formal, my friend! How are we to spend three days cheek by jowl like that?’
I glanced at Katja Lipschitz, who was smiling as if her boss had just put a farting cushion on her chair.
I left my hand in midair. ‘Cheek by jowl.’
‘Or bristle by bristle.’ He grinned, glad of his little coup. ‘Because, aren’t we all little pigs somewhere deep down inside? Or sometimes big pigs. Maybe that’s why we don’t eat them, it would be a kind of cannibalism.’ He grinned a little more cheerfully, before turning apologetically to Katja Lipschitz. ‘Excuse me, Katja, by we I meant us Orientals. I’ve no objection to eating pork, but I don’t eat it. And that’s nothing to do with religion. The Jews — and Jews are Orientals too, right? A fraternal people. And what are the bloodiest wars?’ He pointed his index finger questioningly at me. I withdrew my proffered hand and put it in my trouser pocket.
‘Wars between brothers! Anyway — the Jews don’t eat pork either. Nor do Christians in the Orient — and many of my best friends are Christians,’ he added, laughing. ‘At least, they’ve never served me ham hock!’
Katja Lipschitz joined in his laughter, whether out of professionalism or because she really thought it funny I couldn’t tell.
I said, ‘Herr Rashid, I am to be your bodyguard for three days. We shall probably be sitting in the same restaurant several times, maybe at the same table. Please let me know whether it will bother you if I order sausage.’
For a moment his eyes rested on me as if he were wondering whether it had really been a good idea to pick me as his bodyguard.
Then he shook himself, his mouth stretched in a smile, and all at once he was my new best friend again, beaming radiantly. ‘I’ve already heard that you have your own opinions and’ — he nodded approvingly — ‘defend them in your own original way.’
Once again I glanced at Katja Lipschitz. This time she was smiling as if her boss had put a board studded with nails on her chair.
‘Well, Herr Rashid, if eating sausage is an opinion — yes, I have opinions. Shall we discuss the rest of your day? I assume you’ll have to turn up at the Fair to meet your fans and carry out your engagements.’