He got up, and so did I. I’d had enough of his words-his well-considered, well-crafted lies, truths, and half-truths.
On the stairs he said: “It’s amazing how old habits can come back to haunt one.”
“What do you mean?”
“If Schuler hadn’t made a habit of storing his Catapresan pills in those bottles, nobody could have replaced them.”
“He didn’t do it out of habit. His niece did it because with his arthritic fingers he couldn’t get the pills out of the foil.”
Then I remembered that though I had told him about a blood-pressure medication, I hadn’t mentioned Catapresan. Had he just betrayed himself? I stopped.
He also stopped, turned to me, and looked at me pleasantly. “The medication was Catapresan, wasn’t it?”
“I never…” But there was no point of capturing on tape: “I never mentioned the name of the medication.” It wouldn’t prove a thing. There was no point, either, in saying that to Welker. He knew it well enough. He had permitted himself a little joke.
17 Presumption of innocence
I went home and sat outside on the balcony. I smoked a cigarette, then another. The third tasted once again the way cigarettes used to when I smoked as many as I wanted.
I was furious. Furious at Welker, at his sense of superiority, his composure, his impudence. At how he’d gotten away with two murders, with the theft of the silent partnership, with money laundering. At how he’d let me know that he had done these things, all the while making it clear that I shouldn’t presume to match myself against him. I shouldn’t presume to match myself against him? He shouldn’t presume he’d get away with this!
I called my friends and insisted they come over that evening. The Nägelsbachs, Philipp, and Füruzan promised to be over by eight. “What are we celebrating?” “What’s for dinner?” “Spaghetti carbonara, if you’re hungry.” Brigitte said she couldn’t come till later.
They weren’t hungry. They didn’t know what to make of the sudden invitation and sat around expectantly, nursing their wine. All I told them was that I had spoken with Welker and had recorded the conversation. I played them the tape. When it ended, they looked at me questioningly.
“If you remember, Welker hired me to find the silent partner, just to bring me into the game without Samarin suspecting anything. Banks and family stories, stories of yesterday and the distant past-it all sounded innocent enough. Welker wanted me in the game so I’d be there when he got the opportunity to move against Samarin. The matter of the silent partner didn’t interest him at all. But then the silent partner did become interesting. He took on a face-and not in a figurative sense, but a literal one. A face with a receding hairline, large ears, and protruding eyes. You’ll recognize this face.” I handed them Laban’s picture.
“Well I’ll be damned!” Philipp said.
“Old Herr Weller and Herr Welker had acted correctly enough: they helped the silent partner’s great-nephew establish himself financially in London and saw to it that the great-niece, who hadn’t managed to leave Germany in time, got new papers under the name Samarin. When she died, they looked after her child. Though as the boy was born with the name Gregor Samarin, they also raised him as such. The great-nephew died in London, and the great-niece had disappeared as ‘Ursula Brock.’ The silent partner’s share was to go unclaimed for good.”
“How big was this share?”
“I’m not exactly sure. When Laban brought his money into the bank, it was as much as the bank itself had. The bank had been on the brink of bankruptcy. I have no idea how from a bookkeeping standpoint his share might be valued up or down over the years.”
“What part did Schuler play in all of this?”
“Schuler had been Welker’s and Samarin’s teacher, and later the bank’s archivist. When I mentioned to him that Welker was interested in the silent partner and that I was to shed light on his identity, Schuler was gripped by jealousy. He wanted to prove that he was more capable than I, that he could look into all of that without me. He burrowed through the bank’s archives until he got lucky. This is the passport of Laban’s great-niece.”
Frau Nägelsbach turned it this way and that.
“How did Schuler know that Ursula Brock was Laban’s great-niece?” she asked. “And how did he conclude that she was Samarin’s mother?”
“He had known her as Frau Samarin and Gregor’s mother, and any documents concerning the Brocks could only have been in the silent partner’s file. Along with this passport he might also well have found some other documents that he didn’t give me. Not to mention that he found something else that he did bring me: money that was to be laundered at the bank. That money made me miss finding the passport for quite a while. What I initially thought was that Schuler had threatened Samarin with exposing his money-laundering racket and had consequently signed his own death warrant. But all the while, he had signed his death warrant by revealing to Welker that he knew Samarin’s true identity. What Welker did then was to switch Schuler’s pills. That wasn’t a fail-safe way of killing him, but it was worth a try. If it succeeded, it would get Schuler out of the way; if it didn’t, there was always time for a second attempt. Welker wasn’t in a hurry. He knew how loyal Schuler was and that he wouldn’t immediately go to Samarin with what he had found out. But it worked. Schuler was in a bad way, became disoriented, and drove into a tree. And yet Schuler was alarmed by fact that he was feeling worse and worse, so he quickly brought me what he had found: the money and the passport.”
“Blood-pressure medication?” Herr Nägelsbach said. “I admit to being a hypochondriac, Reni is one, too, and I’m interested in medicine. But I had no idea you could kill a person with blood-pressure medication.”
“You can’t actually kill anyone with it,” Philipp explained, “but if you’re on Catapresan and suddenly stop taking it, you run the risk of blackouts. The only question is how Welker could have known…”
“He studied medicine,” I said. “After he finished his studies, he sacrificed his medical career to the bank.”
“What happened then?”
“You mean after Schuler’s death? As you know, Welker shot Samarin, leading us to believe that he had been overwhelmed by pain, sorrow, and anger. But the truth is that he shot him with a cool hand and in cold blood. He wanted to get rid of Samarin, the silent partner’s heir, the lackey who all of a sudden wanted a say in the bank, the man with dangerous connections who was blackmailing him, the man with the lucrative connections who was standing in his way.”