I had cleared up a case that had mystified me, but which I had not actually been working on: A group of youngsters organize an attack, the police want to cover up the attack but still punish the youngsters, and so the police come up with the clever idea of moving the attack to another site. Relocating it, so to speak, as Bleckmeier would rightly say. But the police had to proceed with caution and a light touch. They couldn't afford to trumpet to the world that they were looking for these youngsters. It wouldn't do to mount a big search in connection with an attack in Käfertal and then, as they were being arrested, have them blabbing to cameras and reporters with pens poised about their attack in Viernheim. So the police initiated their search in secret, until Wendt's death, which was somehow linked to the attack and raised God knows what fears and no longer allowed further delay. The police had to go public with their search. All the same, they had struck a deal with one of the perpetrators that he could secure a milder sentence by confessing to the attack in Käfertal. He might even become the chief witness. The only thing the police would be risking was that the others might slip up or refuse to play along. But slipups can be fixed, and why shouldn't they want to play along?
In fact, I myself had not been aware that Wendt's death had somehow been connected with the attack. Wendt had a map of Viernheim on him when he was found. He had been killed by a bullet from Lemke's gun. He had known Lemke from before, had been introduced to Leo by Lemke, and had helped Leo after the attack. Had he been the fifth man Lemke had brought along on the attack, and whom Leo had not recognized, and who then made it back to the psychiatric hospital before she did?
I got off the barge at the Schwabenheim lock. I sauntered along the riverbank to the Schwabenheimer Hof and sat down at a table in the garden of the Zum Anker pub. Many families had come on foot or by bicycle from Ladenburg, Neckarhausen, or Heidelberg. It was past the hour of coffee and cake and the fathers had switched to beer, while the children were beginning to whine because they, too, wanted something but didn't know what. A Madonna in a light blue dress and dark blue cloak stood in a niche in the wall. Two tables farther down sat a middle-aged woman cheerfully reading a newspaper and drinking wine. I liked her. To go to a pub alone, and sit comfortably with a newspaper and a glass of wine, is something that men do, not women, and never mind about emancipation. But she was an exception. Occasionally she looked up and our eyes would meet.
The taxi that I had the waiter call for arrived. I paid the check, walked over to her table, sat down, told her how very attractive she was, got up, and was gone almost before she could thank me for the compliment with a bemused smile. I think I stuttered a little.
During the ride to Heidelberg I was initially proud of myself. In fact, I'm somewhat shy. Then I got angry at myself. Why had I run away? Why hadn't I stayed at her table? Had there been an invitation in her glance, a promise in her smile?
I was about to have the driver turn back, but I didn't. One should never want too much at once. And as for the promise-perhaps she'd only made it because she could tell that she wouldn't have to keep it.
22 Write an article!
I found Peschkalek at Brigitte's place. “We were coming over to visit you when Chief Inspector Nägelsbach called. Congratulations! Have you been released till the trial?”
“I don't know. I might not even be called. I somehow think the last thing they want at the trial is a stubborn old man who keeps insisting that the attack was in Viernheim and not in Käfertal.”
Peschkalek frowned. “You told them the attack was in Viernheim?”
I nodded. “I think they released me because-”
“Are you out of your mind?” he cut in, bewildered. “I thought we had agreed how we'd handle this. Your statement at the trial was supposed to explode like a bombshell! Now the only thing that has exploded is a little firecracker that nobody saw or heard! What's going to become of the trial now?” He grew increasingly irate. “What were you thinking? All that work for nothing! Am I supposed to start from the beginning? Are you no longer interested in the fact that the police are covering up a terrorist attack? You don't care that the trial will turn into a farce?” Now he was shouting.
I didn't understand. “What are you going on about? Bombshells are your job, not mine. Go ahead and write an article!”
“An article!” He waved his hands dismissively, no longer furious, just tired. “It's crazy. Here we had our goal within reach: We have the American report, you're about to go on trial-and then, nothing.”
Brigitte looked at him and then at me. “You mean the report that I-”
I didn't want her to continue. As long as it wasn't clear why Peschkalek was making such a fuss, I didn't want him to know that I had shown the report to the police. So I shouted: “What do you mean 'nothing'? And furthermore, what do you mean by the goal being 'within reach' and me about to go on trial? What goal are you talking about?”
But he waved his hands again and got up. He smiled painfully. “I'm sorry I raised my voice. Don't take it personally, it's a legacy from my father. My mother can only bear to live with him because she has a hearing aid that she can turn off whenever he gets too loud.”
Brigitte talked him into staying for dinner. After dinner, he helped Manu with his essay. “A visit to the planetarium” turned into a sharp, fast-paced report, and Manu was filled with admiration. Brigitte was charmed, too. As he helped her wash up in the kitchen, he suggested that they speak informally. As we sipped our wine, Brigitte suggested that he and I should call each other by our first names as well, and I could hardly refuse. “Gerhard”-”Ingo”-we clinked glasses. But I felt wary.
23 R.I.P
The next day I drove to Husum. It's a journey to the end of the world. Beyond Giessen the mountains and forests become monotonous, beyond Kassel the towns become poor, and by Salzgitter the terrain turns flat and bleak. If we were to banish dissidents in Germany, we would banish them to the Stein-huder Lake.
I had called the main office of the Evangelical Academy and been told that the director, whom Tietzke had identified as a former comrade of Lemke's, was currently conducting a workshop: Abused-Aggrieved-Affected: Coping with Threat in the Whirlwind of Time. I was told that I could sit in on a session and talk to him during one of the breaks. I found the room and tiptoed to the only free chair. The speaker announced that he was coming to the end of his paper, and finally did so after a few lengthy detours. I learned that aggrievement was a passive state while affectedness was an active one, and that we could not hide behind the whirlwind of time but had to stand our ground. I was also initiated into the law of entropy, according to which the world doesn't have much of a prospect to end well. A bearded man of about fifty thanked the speaker. His paper, he said, had extended a hand to us that we would all want to clasp heartily, and we would have ample opportunity to do so during the two-thirty session; now it was time for lunch. Was this the director who had sat with Lemke in the front row at those spaghetti Westerns in '68 and '69? He was immediately besieged by the workshop participants, but when they dribbled away, taking the speaker with them, he remained behind, jotting down notes.
I greeted him and introduced myself. “I have a question that has nothing to do with your workshop. I'm a private investigator and am investigating a murder. I believe that you know, or knew, the main suspect. Were you a student in Heidelberg around'68,'69?”
He was a careful man. He made me show him my ID and had his office call Wendt Real Estate in Heidelberg to ask Frau Büchler to confirm that I had indeed been commissioned by old Herr Wendt to investigate young Wendt's murder. He was pale when he hung up. “This is terrible news. Someone I knew well becoming a victim of a crime. I suppose this is a daily occurrence in your profession, but in my world I experience it as severe aggrievement.”