6
As we stood outside the door of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, I began to feel queasy. Kollek and Barbara Bollig were both dead, and if Kessler stuck to his story that he had had no idea about any of it, his calendar was my only piece of evidence. And that didn’t seem like a whole lot.
Kessler knew this. He gave me a threatening smile.
“Kayankaya-mark my words, you’ll regret beating me up.”
“I only regret that I didn’t snuff you.”
Slibulsky had preferred to stay in the car. He said he had met enough magistrates to last him a lifetime.
It was almost ten o’clock at night. Lubars had been reluctant to come to his office at such a late hour. I knew him well, and he rather liked me, whatever that was worth. He was a public prosecutor, first and foremost. As soon as I mentioned Kessler to him on the phone, he regretted that he had agreed to come.
Finally he arrived, his hair none too well combed, and not wearing a necktie. He was of average height, bloated, and red-faced. He greeted us, briefcase in one hand, a bunch of keys in the other. “Good evening-good evening, Mr. Kessler. Please excuse my getup. But I thought I was done for the day …”
Kessler laughed tolerantly.
“Right, right. I could think of more pleasant ways to spend an evening too, but …”
He cast a withering glance at me. We entered Lubars’s office. A handsome desk, two visitors’ chairs. While I planted myself in one of them, Kessler said, “Tell me, Mr. Lubars, how is your wife? I heard she was ill?”
At the word “ill” he looked at me and showed his teeth.
“Thank you, thank you, she is doing better. Please be seated.”
Kessler sat down in the chair facing me. Lubars slid behind his desk, put on his glasses, and folded his hands.
“I hope we can clear this up as quickly as possible. Both Mr. Kessler and I have had a strenuous day.” They nodded to each other.
I asked myself how much influence Kessler had in the system. Perhaps it was due to his friendship with “M”?
“Now then, Mr. Kayankaya, when you called you said that you would bring in a murder suspect.” He coughed discreetly, glanced at Kessler. “But surely that was some kind of joke?”
Kessler said, with an impassive expression, “Sometimes my young colleague tends to hyperbole. It does get him into a lot of trouble.” When he said “trouble,” he wasn’t looking at me, for a change, but at Lubars, whose smile was pained.
“Please tell me about your suspicions, Mr. Kayankaya.” Then he mustered his courage and said to Kessler, “There’s got to be something to it-otherwise you wouldn’t have volunteered to come, Mr. Kessler.”
The detective superintendent waved his hand in a gesture of magnanimity. He said, in a low, paternal voice, “I thought it would be best to get the matter cleared up once and for all, in the presence of a higher authority. So the young colleague can return to the firm ground of reality.”
Lubars nodded and gave me a questioning look. I cleared my throat and tried to marshal my thoughts. I was in a lousy situation, and it didn’t help that I knew it. Three hours ago I had been sitting pretty, holding a trump card: Kollek. Now I had nothing but trash cards, and it was time to lay them on the table. To stave off defeat, I decided to start out by bluffing. “Kessler, you’ve lost this game, and you know it. And I would like to ask you to kindly keep your mouth shut, and give Mr. Lubars a chance to listen to me in peace and quiet.”
Kessler made an astonished face and looked at Lubars.
“Do I have to-”
“Please, Mr. Kayankaya, let’s hear it!”
Lubars was desperately moving things around on his desktop and avoiding both our eyes. The blotches on his face had turned a deeper red. I started my tale. I told him about Anastas, about the mysterious fifth man, the ice-cold widow, Schmidi, and so on, finishing with my theory of what had happened on the night of the murder.
Kessler sat in his chair looking cool, with a faint smile on his face, his head cocked to one side. Once in a while he scratched the back of his hand. Lubars seemed immersed in thought. Only his eyes kept darting glances at Kessler and me. Now he came to attention. “So you are saying that five people participated in the plot?”
“Six, to be exact. What alerted me at first were the statements given by one of the camping couple, the woman, and by old Mrs. Bollig, who runs the refreshment concession of the plant. Both of them said they had heard shots, and they confirmed that the shots were fired at Bollig before the explosion. Against these statements, we had Barbara Bollig’s claim that her husband left the house only after the explosion. If one assumes that Kollek’s accomplices had no interest in snuffing Bollig, and that it was impossible for Kollek to sprint back to the house just before the explosion in order to take Bollig out into the factory grounds and shoot him there, only one possibility remains: Barbara Bollig herself lured her husband out of the house on some pretext, and shot and killed him in a spot close to that pipe.”
“If one assumes …,” said Kessler.
Once again I told him to be quiet. Lubars took the ballpoint pen he’d been chewing on out of his mouth and asked, “Why would Barbara Bollig shoot her husband?”
I told the tale of Oliver Bollig, explained how long it had all been in the making. While I was doing so, I remembered that Kliensmann was still in that straitjacket in his office. Served him right. Finally I said, “There is a witness to my version. The night watchman saw a lot of it happen, and Barbara Bollig and Kollek bought his silence with fifty thousand marks. Which he is now spending in Paraguay.”
With a glance at Kessler, I added, “As Superintendent Kessler informs me.”
Kessler studied his fingernails and remarked casually, “Fred Scheigel was summoned to court as a witness. Since he wanted to leave the country, he had to ask for special permission. I just happened to hear about it.”
“What if he decides he’d rather stay in Paraguay?”
“It’s not my job to worry about that.”
Lubars, wide awake now, adjusted his eyeglasses. After a moment’s silence, he said, “All right. And where is this Barbara Bollig?”
Kessler looked triumphant.
“She is dead,” I said.
The public prosecutor shuffled his feet under the desk and shook his head in disbelief. “Tell me more.”
“She was poisoned. As we speak, the guilty party is turning herself in to the police authorities in Doppenburg. But that’s another story. I’ll save it for later.”
Lubars shook his head again, but before he was able to respond, I went on to talk about Schmidi.
“Like the other conspirators, Schmidi believed that Kollek was a true comrade. Only after I pointed out to Schmidi how strange it was that the fifth man was still at large while his four buddies had been tracked down and arrested in only three days, he got suspicious. Obviously Schmidt had been a party to the plot, and he also knew how to get in touch with Kollek, He probably asked Kollek what was up, and Kollek had an idea. He realized that he had to get rid of Schmidi, and decided that the best place to do so would be in my apartment. Kessler must have told Kollek that I was trying to track him down. So he lured Schmidi to my place. Then, by a stroke of luck, he found my gun, shot and killed Schmidi with it, and was pleased with himself. Here’s the gun.”
I tossed my Beretta on the desk.
“The corpse is still sitting on my couch. A flyer that was distributed in Frankfurt that evening, stuck under the windshield wipers of Kollek’s car, proves that he was in the city that night.”
Carefully, with both hands, Lubars picked up the Beretta and looked at it as if it could whisper something into his ear.
Then he asked, “Fingerprints?”
“I’m sorry, but I still had a lot of errands to run, the kind where I look to have that thing on my person.”