“Do you believe in God?” Martin asked.
“Which one?” I asked, because I had gotten into the habit of giving that answer at some point, and I still thought it was clever. Plus, I haven’t seen any cause to change it, for the reasons I’ve already given you. If there is some kind of chief overlord for the whole ball of wax, he had not introduced himself to me yet, in any case.
Although Martin had stopped talking, his thoughts were slowly ordering themselves into a serious bit of reflection. How, he was wondering, can I get rid of this guy? The question was entirely justified. Imagine being surrounded every day by about thirty corpses. That’s your job, and you’ve gotten used to it. Well, it’s actually not that bad, because at least dead people don’t talk your ears off with whatever petty complaints, the way living patients do to their doctors. So things are actually pretty easy. Until the day a body suddenly shows up that’s not quite as dead as it’s supposed to be. For a scientist, that must surely be a terrible ordeal in and of itself, but the proposition that this errant soul may be just the beginning of some brand-new trend could make even one of your more-inured guys like Martin break out in a cold sweat. A vision of legions of specters swirling around him flashed through Martin’s brain briefly, and he actually started trembling.
Of course now, in hindsight, I recognize that Martin’s anxiety at that point was justified. He was just overwhelmed with the situation, and it’s quite natural to wonder how to get rid of a ghost you didn’t even summon. At that moment, however, as we stood in sweet communion before my refrigerated morgue drawer, I found what he was reflecting on nothing but revolting. I was dead, I had a problem, and he was wondering what the easiest way was to get rid of me again. Disgusting, right?
“Do you believe that your soul will be able to find peace if we solve your murder?” he said, wording his question carefully.
Ha! Did he really think the wool can so easily be pulled over my eyes? Whether or not my soul found peace was totally beside the point for him. What he wanted was for my soul to disappear—no matter, heaven or hell, as long as I was gone. That’s how I felt at the time, at least.
“I think so,” I said, because if he was hoping to get rid of me again by solving the crime, then he would certainly make an effort to find my murderer and restore my reputation. My reputation as a person who was important enough for someone to kill. Who didn’t plunge off the bridge out of sheer stupidity. A martyr, a war victim of Cologne’s brutal underworld.
Martin sighed. “OK, then please recount the sequence of events for me, the backstory, everything you know.”
Now I had a problem, because even if I really, really do like to go boozing now and again, three point seven is pretty high, even for me, and I had only hazy recollections of many of the details.
But I told Martin about my last day in as much detail as possible.
“You didn’t see anyone at the station or on the overpass?” Martin asked.
“Of course I saw people,” I said. “But no one that I knew.”
“And the person who pushed you, you didn’t see them, either? Not even—” Martin hesitated. “Not even as you were falling?”
“You mean after I was already lying dead in the snow and my soul slowly started wafting up, I should have been able to get a good look at the murderer from that vantage?”
He nodded.
“Well,” I replied after a moment’s thought. “Maybe I did see him, but I didn’t recognize him. You don’t become all-knowing just because you’re dead.”
Too bad, Martin thought, and I had to agree with him on that. In general my condition was subject to considerable limitations. I was able to make contact with only one single human being, and although I could sense his thoughts, I wasn’t able to speak out loud. Plus, I had to actually move from place to place, so I couldn’t beam myself up or move objects around, either. I hadn’t imagined it like this at all.
“Then we’ll have to approach the issue in a different way,” Martin said. He was no longer trembling, but he was still pale. “Who might have had reason to kill you?”
I should’ve expected that question to come up, but it threw me for a second, all the same.
Try it out yourself: At some quiet moment in your life, ask yourself who might feel like offing you. Well? Weird, right? So right off the bat obviously all the usual suspects occurred to me. My ex, who I played for a couple hundred smackers. Mehmet at the casino, who I owed money. Pablo, which isn’t his real name, but that’s the name I knew him by, he’d been my dealer before he landed in the pen—which he blamed me for! Of course, on lengthier reflection other names would occur to me, and of course it might also be possible that stealing the SLR with the body in the trunk might have resulted in a certain irritation when it reached its intended destination. The only question was, what destination. The owner of the car? Olli? His Eastern European buyer?
“My ex threatened many times, and in front of witnesses, to knock me off one day,” I let drop, with forced casualness. “That bitch thinks I played her.”
“Di-did you?” Martin asked, stammering out of nervousness.
“Well,” I started slowly, immediately glinting into Martin’s brain for the answer: he thought I did!
“Put the heat on her, then we’ll see what turns up,” I said. I was overcome by a certain joyous anticipation. I pictured grim, beautiful images in my head: a drill team of the boys in blue marching in unison up to Nina’s door, knocking, dragging her out into the hall as soon as she opened the door, and then asking her the same question over and over again: “Why did you kill your ex-boyfriend?”
She would smoke until she didn’t even have any butts left, the cops wouldn’t let her out to get any new ones, and hour by hour she would have to answer the same question over and over again. Sweet.
“We can’t involve the police,” Martin explained.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because the autopsy report didn’t indicate any signs of foul play, and the police are also assuming it was an accident. The investigation into your death has been concluded.”
“Then you have to open the case up again,” I said.
“We’ve already discussed that issue,” Martin countered. “I can’t tell the police that the murder victim himself told me that he was killed.”
“Then you have to talk to my ex,” I said, but my excitement had already waned. Martin was a wuss. He’d politely ask Nina in his cautious way whether she might possibly have killed her ex-boyfriend, and she would ask him if his brains were in his ballsack. Then she’d get some idea into her head and start licking her tongue over her lips, wrapping a strand of hair around her finger, and looking around discreetly for the hidden camera. And when she realized there wasn’t any camera, she’d glare at him like he was a rat with a boil at the base of his tail and then throw him out, plain and simple. Sayonara, O you beautiful third degree.
Martin took down Nina’s name and address. He wanted to head over there after work today, and I decided not to warn him that obviously I intended to tag along.
The rest of the day passed without any incidents worth mentioning, if you disregard the fact that a suicide victim was delivered to determine the cause of death. Considering that a freight train loaded with new cars fresh off the line at one of Cologne’s large auto plants had cleanly cut the man’s body in two right above the navel, I couldn’t really see any need for a detailed autopsy because I’d have guessed the cause of death as—surprise!—dismemberment, but Martin and his colleagues are resolute. A body that did not die from heart failure, old age, or some other natural cause is investigated very carefully, period.