The autopsy room had since emptied out, and I was relieved. Presumably my intrepid forensic pathologist was now sitting at his desk, nibbling on a baby carrot (he actually did that on occasion to fend off hunger in between meals) and writing whatever boring reports again. I whooshed out to find him.
He wasn’t at his desk, maybe…I hesitated. On his computer that program was running that he uses to dictate reports. I was already quite familiar with the icon showing his mic wasn’t turned all the way off but was just asleep. That means you just need to speak a command to reactivate it, and you can start chattering on again. I proceeded to the mouthpiece on the headset and intensely thought: activate microphone.
Nothing happened. I thought the command several times more, sometimes slower, sometimes faster, but always very clearly and distinctly. I don’t know exactly how to express it, but I was phrasing it at Martin’s pitch, so to speak. Still nothing happened. I was frustrated. All those famous electromagnetic waves or pulses, or God only knows what those nasty little things are called, they just did not seem to want to do what I wanted them to. That’s how it used to be in chemistry class, or when we would do physics experiments—and let’s just not even talk about gym at all. Presumably the deep-seated trauma from gym class was the only thing that really connected Martin and me, because the way he looked and moved I was sure he was always the last guy chosen for a team, too, and there was no way he ever earned more than a couple of event ribbons at school during the annual National Youth Games. The difference was: he had not only graduated from school (I had too, mind you) but also stuck around for another couple of years and then spent a few years doing his medical specialization and was now an esteemed member of the academic clique that, in my view, had always been the other part of the world’s population, the middle class. By contrast, I had dropped out of school because the guy I was doing my vocational apprenticeship under kept pissing me off, and the apprentice-level pay (that expression alone makes clear that we’re not really talking about money but at most alms) wasn’t anywhere near enough for my basic monthly alcohol and drug consumption—to say nothing of duds, wheels, and girl-related outlays.
Somehow I found myself on the verge of falling back into the schmaltz again. First the compassion routine with the dead girl, now regret about screwing up my career track—maybe I was on some path of knowledge, with atonement waiting for me at its end, and then paradise? I pulled myself together, forced myself away from the screen, and started looking for Martin.
I lucked out in the break room. Standing next to Martin were Katrin and their colleague Jochen (the guy with the old city maps), along with a man in a suit and tie, who I already knew was the boss and who was noisily slurping some steamy liquid. They were chatting about their upcoming move. Move???
My heart sank to my boots, figuratively speaking. That whole wing of the building was going to be cleared out. Only the bodies would still be lying alone in their morgue drawers, all life was going to be removed, to live on somewhere else. Here would dwell death, and it alone. The employees would stop by to do their autopsies, and they’d wash their hands and disappear. I felt like bawling yet again. Today was definitely not my day. I perched on Katrin’s shoulder, imagining being able to feel her satiny hair and touch her silky skin, and I gradually calmed back down. Slowly but surely, I started trying to establish contact with her. I whispered “Katrin” and “Kitty” and things like that, focusing my imagination on her hot high beams and blazing chassis and sending her a fiery look from my eyes and hot breath from my mouth, which I blew into the neckline of her tight-fitting sweater. I mumbled a whole litany of dirty comments into her ear, imagining her naked skin and quivering body materializing before me.
Nothing. No reaction. I was getting pretty tired of the whole thing, myself, because of course nothing was getting excited on my end, either. I was overcome with the memory of a time when my face was covered in zits and I had to regularly change my pajamas—and it wasn’t because of ring around the collar, if you know what I mean. Yet another maudlin tailspin into deep, emotional darkness.
Now I’d had enough. I hadn’t suffered as much as I had today for a very long time. If this was the road to paradise, then to hell with it.
“Martin,” I yelled, and he winced as expected. “Can we please talk about continuing my investigation now?”
He mumbled “excuse me” to the others and hastily left the break room. I followed him but not without quickly blowing Katrin one more imaginary kiss.
We had hardly stepped out of the break room when I asked, “Who killed her?” Martin was moving toward his office.
“No one,” he said, rushing down the corridor. I don’t know why he was in such a hurry, but I had no problem following him.
“Are you trying to bullshit me?” I asked less than obligingly, but I apologized immediately to avoid putting Martin’s willingness to cooperate to too hard a test.
“She died of anaphylactic shock.”
“I see.” My basic understanding of medicine consists of a fairly narrow list of topics. Colds, headaches, the runs, withdrawal, things like that. “Anaphylactic shock” doesn’t rank among them, as I’m sure you’ve already surmised. Martin apparently couldn’t conceive of someone having so large a knowledge gap because only after multiple inquiries did he deign to tell me the woman had kicked the bucket from an allergy. Up to that point I had always thought people with allergies were posers. They’re not actually sick, properly speaking, but they have a totally exaggerated response to things that to normal people are just normal things. Like pollen. Or hazelnuts, as in the case of the body under discussion here. It was news to me that someone could die from such a made-up-sounding story. It was presumably news to that woman, too, although her advance in knowledge couldn’t have lasted long since it was interrupted—indeed, ended—by her abrupt death. Shit happens, you might now say, and that would describe her manner of death quite aptly. However, the cause of her early demise did pose one compelling question.
“Why in the hell does someone try to get rid of a body that died from a hazelnut?”
Martin shrugged.
“Are you sure someone didn’t actually coax her along?” I probed.
“Of course, the chemical toxicology results have not come in yet.”
For once I understood his answer right away—and was somehow proud of that.
“But, by and large, I am sure, yes.”
Neither of us said anything for a little while. Martin stared at his screen.
“OK, don’t make me squeeze every word out individually,” I said, repeating the exact words my mother used to say to piss me off.
“She is approximately in her mid-twenties, height one hundred fifty-two centimeters, and weight forty-two kilograms. At the time of her death she was fairly healthy, apart from a slight cold. She had taken a nonprescription over-the-counter medicine for the cold. In addition, her last meal consisted of cookies with hazelnuts.”
“Hmm.”
“Her teeth had been subject to dental efforts that fall short of German standards.”
My God, sometimes he expressed himself in such a ridiculously complicated way.
“And shortly before her death she had sexual intercourse.” Ah ha, now we were getting to the interesting bits.
“Who with?” I immediately asked, naturally, since that is one of the most important sex-related questions. Who did it with who?