“What on earth is wrong with you?” the boss asked.
“The dead man we were autopsying downstairs was here in this building yesterday,” Martin said, returning to a somewhat steady voice. “I wanted to know what he was doing here and who he is.”
“That is not something a professional interrupts an autopsy for,” his boss said sternly, the way bosses can get when their employees fuck up.
“In addition, that body is linked to another murder,” Martin added defiantly.
“Which murder?”
“Sascha Lerchenberg.”
“If I recall correctly, that was not a murder,” the boss said.
“Yes, it was. Sascha was pushed,” Martin explained. “And shortly before his death, and possibly even after it, he saw that man who is lying downstairs on the table.”
“What do you mean, ‘and possibly even after it’?” his boss repeated.
Martin realized his error. “Well, you know,” he mumbled. “When someone dies and his spirit floats up over the body…”
His boss nodded. “You’re referring to reports of near-death experiences,” the boss coaxed.
Martin nodded.
“But the people who have those are not really dead,” the boss said. “They have been to the threshold of death, but they come back to life and can talk about the experience afterward.”
Martin nodded.
“But Lerchenberg is dead, isn’t he?”
Martin nodded again, although no longer quite as convincingly.
“When would he have been able to make such a statement?” the boss asked. He was wording his questions very carefully.
I could sense the conflicted feelings in Martin. He knew that he could not explain the way things really were to his boss. So he was searching for an explanation that his boss would accept, but he just couldn’t find one. His spirit was depleted, exhausted, and he didn’t have any creativity left to invent anything. He capitulated.
“He only just now remembered seeing this man again,” Martin said. “When he saw the body on the autopsy table.”
“About whom are we speaking?” the boss asked.
“Sascha Lerchenberg,” Martin mumbled. “Incidentally he goes by ‘Pascha.’ Although his body is dead, his ghost is buzzing around here in the Institute.”
It was dead quiet in the room for rather a long time.
“I hereby approve the leave of absence that you are applying for right now. At least through the end of the week.”
“But…” Martin’s objection was only mild.
“No buts,” his boss made clear. “If you want to extend your leave on Monday, then that will also be approved. But on condition that you go and visit the Counseling Services Unit.”
Martin nodded.
“I’ll get the paperwork ready. Please stop back by here on your way home and sign it,” his boss said, standing up. He patted Martin on the shoulder. “Get yourself a little rest,” he said, sounding friendly but concerned. “Get a few good nights’ sleep, take some walks, go out to dinner with someone.”
Martin nodded.
“And please take only the most important things with you from your office.”
We crept back to Martin’s desk. Martin collapsed into his chair, put the cordless headset back on, and stared into space for a moment. Then he lapsed back into a frenzy of activity, waking his computer back up with a voice command, accessing the internal forensics database, and printing the photo of the dead man that he had taken at the start of the autopsy and saved nice and proper under—for want of the actual name—the ID number along with the date and time. Then he opened his dictation program. But before he could get blabbing, Katrin burst into his office saying, “Have you heard? That good-looking guy from yesterday who came in wanting to arrange international transportation to bring his sister’s body back home? Now he’s dead, too. Run over by a train.”
Martin looked at her as though he were only just now waking up.
“His sister?” he asked.
“Yes, that anonymous body who died from anaphylactic shock,” Katrin said. She was suddenly talking the way you do to a child who’s a bit slow.
“What’s the man’s name?” Martin asked.
“Sjubek Laringosch,” Katrin replied without hesitating but rolling the R nicely. “Sounds mysterious, huh? It’s Moldovan.”
“Moldovan?” Martin asked back. “The guy is…”
“Yes, from the far-flung regions of Eastern Europe that the EU has not yet assimilated and that reject the blessings of both standardized European condom sizing and even the euro itself, which I understand people are now calling the yoyo,” Katrin confirmed, batting her eyes and smiling. “A well-hewn representative of a mysterious steppe people, with eyes as shiny and black as the polished obsidian of a signet ring.” She sighed and became serious. “At least, that’s what I thought yesterday. Today he’s just some poor bastard who committed suicide far away from home, presumably consumed by grief for his dead sister.”
“Murdered,” Martin said absentmindedly. “Not a suicide.”
“Sorry?” Katrin asked. “Murder?”
Martin nodded. “What was the sister’s name?” he asked.
“Semira,” Katrin said. “I was actually surprised that he would come to the Institute at all and open himself up to trouble with the police just so he could bury his sister appropriately back in Moldova, only then to throw himself under a train. It doesn’t make sense somehow.”
“What was his trouble with the police?” Martin asked.
“He doesn’t have a visa or an entry stamp in his passport.”
“What does that mean?” Martin asked. His brain was really light-years away from its normal performance level.
“He’s here illegally, and I assume not just since yesterday,” Katrin said.
Martin’s boss popped in through the door. “Dr. Gänsewein, I have signed your application here.”
Martin silently stood up, removed his headset, took the paperwork, added his signature to the bottom, and grabbed his duffle coat.
“See you,” he said, and he left the office without turning around once.
“This is great! Now that you’ve got some time off, you’ll have more time for the investigation,” I said on our way to the car.
Martin’s response left much to be desired: he didn’t respond at all.
“I’ve been giving some thought to the best way for us to proceed,” I said. “I think we should resume our investigation by focusing on Semira.”
“The police will do that; we don’t need to get involved,” Martin murmured.
“But they aren’t going to come up with anything,” I said.
We were already sitting in the trash can, but Martin showed no signs of turning the ignition.
“The detectives on the case—or to be more precise, my friend Gregor—have apparently also been told that I was walking around door to door the other night, showing people a drawing and telling some completely wacked story that I assume absolutely no one believes.”
“Yes, but we were on the trail of something completely different then,” I said impatiently.
“And the police were able to figure out where that woman lived,” he hastened to add.
“Also something completely different,” I said even more impatiently.
“I see,” Martin said, and I thought he sounded a bit sarcastic.
“First of all, the bouncer was a rat who didn’t pass on any relevant information about Semira’s identity, just an observation to his control officer in the police.”
Martin winced when I said “control officer,” but I didn’t let him mull that over at all. “Plus, now we’re trying to get hold of information that it is a crime to even know, information about an illegal immigrant. No one can pass that information on to the police here because then you’d be admitting to harboring an illegal.”