He was still standing in front of me in the get-out-of-here mode, but now he was staring at the floor, and his terry-cloth-covered belly was heaving rapidly.
“How about offering me a cup of coffee?”
He looked up. “Coffee?” He looked absent-minded, then shook his head. “My espresso machine is broken.”
“I’m not that choosy. Just make some with a filter.”
“I have no filters.”
“You don’t? All right, tea or cocoa will do. And get your girlfriend. I’m sure she’d like to have some breakfast, and I’ll only be a minute.”
He stared at me. His face lost all color, and for a moment it looked as if he would attack me. His voice was trembling. “You’re hallucinating. Get out of my house!” Then he panicked, and he raised his arms. “I don’t want to see you anymore! Ever again! Just go! Get out of here!”
I got up and slapped him. He yelped and covered his face with his hands.
“Stop the hysterics. I’m here to wind up a case. And if you’d stop to think for a second, you would notice that I haven’t brought any cops or handcuffs. You and your girlfriend will be perfectly safe.”
He lowered his arms. Tears were running down his cheeks.
“Wh-what?”
“You heard me.” I sat down again and pointed at the second door in the room. “She’s listening to us, right behind that door, isn’t she? So, pull yourself together, for her sake if nothing else.”
He needed a couple more minutes during which nothing was heard except for his heavy breathing and the jangling of folk tunes. Then he gulped, turned, and called out in English:
“Sweetheart, please come in!”
The door opened slowly, and a woman in her mid-twenties, in a red and white striped cotton dress, entered the room. She was barely five foot tall, delicately built, and had a round, apple-cheeked face with large serious eyes, framed by shoulder-length black hair. Her feet, encased in yellow raffia slippers, made no sound as she came forward, arms folded across her chest. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” I nodded, then asked Weidenbusch: “Now will you get us something to drink?”
Ten minutes later, Weidenbusch was pouring tea into our cups. After that initial greeting Sri Dao had not uttered a single word. She observed events with complete calm and followed our conversation with interest. There was no way of telling how much she understood or what she thought of it. After Weidenbusch had taken a seat at the table, I began my story: the visa scam, and Charlie, and Hottges, and Manne Greiner. At first, I addressed Sri Dao directly, but when that seemed more and more like talking to a wall, I concentrated on Weidenbusch.
“… so my first impression was correct: when the VW bus arrived, Mrs. Rakdee recognized her former husband and pimp. But it was not an intentional reunion. It was a mistake. I assume that Charlie made the necessary calls and sent Manne to the agreed pick-up point without giving him any names. So the surprise was mutual, and if the gang didn’t want to endanger the anonymity of their operation, they had to get rid of Mrs. Rakdee. I don’t know what plans they had for her, but when the group was moved out of the villa, Manne stayed behind-with her.”
I sipped my tea. If Weidenbusch hadn’t been heaving the occasional mournful sigh, one would have thought that he had fainted while sitting there with wide open eyes. Sri Dao, on the other hand, was desultorily stirring the sugar in the sugar bowl.
“Then, when I got there, only Manne was left. Dead-and in a state of undress customarily assumed only by couples. He may have raped Mrs. Rakdee, or she may have seduced him. Whatever was the case, she had managed to break his neck.”
Weidenbusch gave me a quick glance. Then he leaned forward and rested his forehead on his hands. Sri Dao watched his movements and looked surprised.
“After that, she called you. But she didn’t tell you about the murder. Then you called me at home, but I wasn’t there. When we had our next telephone conversation, you already knew what had happened. You wanted me to stop my investigation, and, as I told you, I almost believed your change of heart. But when you showed up at the airport to demonstrate once again, and in person, how ignorant you were of Mrs. Rakdee’s whereabouts, it became obvious to me that a) someone was pressuring you-but there was nothing to go on in that direction, or b) you had your own reasons for leading me down a false trail. And so on, and so forth. All in all, it’s not a bad theory, and that’s all it is. There is no evidence, and I won’t go looking for any. There isn’t even a corpse. I buried it, because I assumed from the start that the murder could only have been committed by a refugee who gained his-or her-freedom. In my book that’s self-defense, even if other motives may have come into play.” I paused briefly, then said: “Now do you understand what I meant by saying nothing will happen to you?”
But he didn’t understand, at least not immediately. He was still hiding his face in his hands. Next to him, Sri Dao contemplated her own hands which lay folded in her lap. I picked up my teacup and leaned back. The first bees of spring hummed into the room, and you could hear children laughing and bouncing balls down in the street. Maybe Elsa Sandmann would accept an invitation to have dinner with me?
Slowly, Weidenbusch raised his head. “But why did you come here, to tell us these things, if you-”
“If I don’t intend to do anything about it? First of all, it was my job to find Mrs. Rakdee. That’s what you were paying me for. Now I have found her. Second, I’ve been involved in this story for too long not to feel the urge to tell it at least once. And third, I don’t enjoy being fooled. So,” I took out my wallet and put three thousand-mark bills on the table, “here’s your money.”
“Oh!” He waved it aside. “No, no, you keep it, please. I don’t know how else to thank you … If that’s the right expression-what I mean is …”
There was still fear in his voice, and I began to wonder what he might need to regain his balance. Maybe his girlfriend ought to give him a hug, I thought. But, for a while now, she had been casting a rather cool eye at him, just as if he had committed some kind of blunder. As far as I could see, he hadn’t been doing anything besides stammering incoherently. Being a murderess safe from prison, arid seeming quite unconcerned about her deed, I felt that she could have been a little nicer to him. I took one of the bills, said “That’s fine,” and prepared to leave. As I picked up my cigarettes I happened to glance at the daily paper lying next to them. In the lower right-hand corner was the result of the tennis game Becker vs. Steeb, two days ago. Six two, six two for Becker. Suddenly I understood Sri Dao’s unfriendly mood. If Slibulsky hadn’t seen the end of the game but had answered Weidenbusch’s phone call, not more than half an hour could have elapsed between my departure and that call. This would have been just enough time for Slibulsky to raise the alarm in Gellersheim and to have the villa evacuated in a panic mode. But it was not enough time for a murder and two phone calls. In other words: by whatever means Sri Dao had managed to reach a phone in that chaos, she must have called Weidenbusch during the evacuation. And when Weidenbusch hadn’t been able to reach me, he himself had driven to Gellersheim.
I looked at the couple. Both of them seemed tense. Weidenbusch interpreted my hesitation in his customary manner and said quickly: “No, just take it all, and if you would like more-”
“Stay where you are.”
Her elbow on the table, Sri Dao was holding her cup under her nose and watching him and me across the rim as if we were playing ping-pong.
“I think that Mrs. Rakdee feels you should tell me something.”
He looked irritated, turned to look at her. “Sweetheart?”
Sweetheart did not react.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, maybe it isn’t such a good start for a wonderful love affair if one party lets the other get away with murder.”