‘Here I am,’ I whispered back. Then the boat was next to me. Philipp hoisted me up. At that moment Energy and Stamina saw us. I don’t know what they planned to do. Fire at us? Philipp started the motor and with a spraying bow wave made for the middle of the Rhine. Exhausted and shivering with cold, I sat on the deck. I pulled the bloodstained cloth from my pocket. ‘Could you do me another favour and test the blood group on this? I think I know, blood group O rhesus negative, but better safe than sorry.’
Philipp grinned. ‘All that excitement over this damp cloth? But first things first. Go below, take a hot shower, and put on my bathrobe. As soon as we’ve made it past the water police I’ll make you a grog.’
When I came out of the shower we’d reached safety. Neither the RCW nor the police had sent a gunboat after us and Philipp was just in the process of manoeuvring the boat back into the Altrhein channel by Sandhofen. Although the shower had warmed me, I was still shivering. It was all a bit much at my age. Philipp docked at the old mooring and entered the cabin. ‘Jeezus,’ he said. ‘That was quite a fright you gave me. When I heard the guys hammering against the metal I thought something had gone wrong. I didn’t know what to do. Then I saw you jump. Hats off to you.’
‘Oh, you know, when you have a killer dog on your tail you don’t stop to consider whether the water might be a little on the cold side. Much more important was that you did exactly the right thing at the right time. Without you I’d probably have drowned, with or without a bullet in my head. You saved my life. Boy, am I glad you’re not just a silly womanizer.’
Embarrassed, Philipp clattered about in the galley. ‘Maybe you want to tell me now what you’d lost at the RCW.’
‘Nothing lost, but found some things. Apart from this disgusting wet cloth I found the murder weapon, probably the murderer, too. Which explains the wet cloth.’ Over the steaming grog I told Philipp about the corrugated van and its surprising refit.
‘But if it was as simple as that to chase your Mischkey off the bridge, what about the injuries to the veteran who was the Works’ security guy?’ Philipp asked when I was finished with my report.
‘You should have become a private detective. You’re quick on the uptake. I don’t have any answers, unless…’ I remembered what the owner’s wife had told me at the railway restaurant. ‘The woman at the old station heard two bangs, one right after the other. Now it’s getting clear. Mischkey’s car was hanging from the railings on the bridge, Schmalz senior, with a great deal of effort, managed to dislodge it, injuring himself in the process. And the effort killed him two weeks later. Yes, that’s how it must have been.’
‘One bang as it broke through the railings, the next as it crashed down on to the railroad bank. It all fits together medically, too. When old people strain themselves too much, it can easily cause a haemorrhage in the brain. It goes unnoticed until the heart gives out.’
I was very tired all of a sudden. ‘Still, there’s a lot I’m hazy about. Schmalz senior himself didn’t come up with the idea to kill Mischkey. And I still can’t see a motive. Please take me home, Philipp. We’ll have the Bordeaux some other time. I hope you won’t get into any trouble on account of my escapades.’
As we turned from Gerwigstrasse into Sandhofenstrasse a patrol car complete with flashing light but without siren went tearing past us towards the harbour basin. I didn’t even turn round.
21 Praying Hands
After a feverish night I called Brigitte. She came immediately, brought quinine for my temperature and nose drops, massaged my neck, hung up my clothes to dry that I’d dropped in the hallway the previous evening, prepared something in the kitchen that I was to heat up for lunch, set off, bought orange juice, glucose, and cigarettes, and fed Turbo. She was professional, industrious, and worried. When I wanted her to sit for a little on the edge of the bed, she had to leave.
I slept almost the whole day. Philipp called and confirmed the blood group, O, and the rhesus negative factor. Through the window a rumble of traffic from the Augusta-Anlage and the shouts of playing children drifted into the twilight of my room. I remembered sick days as a child, the desire to be outside playing with the other children, and simultaneously the pleasure in my own weakness and all the maternal pampering. In a feverish semi-sleep I kept running from the panting dog and Energy and Stamina. I was making up for the fear I hadn’t felt yesterday where everything had happened too quickly. I had wild thoughts about Mischkey’s murder and why Schmalz had done it.
Towards evening I was feeling better. My temperature had gone down and I was weak, but I felt like eating the beef broth with pasta and vegetables that Brigitte had prepared, and smoking a Sweet Afton afterwards. How should work on the case proceed? Murder belonged in police hands, and even if the RCW, as I could well imagine, pulled a veil of oblivion over yesterday’s incident I’d never find out anything more from anyone in the Works. I called Nägelsbach. He and his wife had finished dinner and were in the studio.
‘Of course you can come by. You can listen to Hedda Gabler, too, we’re in the third act just now.’
I stuck a note on the front door, to reassure Brigitte in case she came to check on me again. The drive to Heidelberg was bad. My own slowness and the quickness of the car made uneasy companions.
The Nägelsbachs live in one of the Pfaffengrunder settlement houses of the twenties. Nägelsbach had turned the shed, originally meant for chickens and rabbits, into a studio with a large window and bright lamps. The evening was cool and the Swedish wood-burning stove held a few crackling logs. Nägelsbach was sitting on his high stool, at the big table on which Dürer’s Praying Hands were taking shape in matchstick form. His wife was reading aloud in the armchair by the stove. It was a perfect idyll that met my eyes when I came through the garden gate straight to the studio and looked through the window before knocking.
‘My word, what a sight you are!’ Frau Nägelsbach vacated the armchair for me and took another stool for herself.
‘You must really have something on your mind to come here in this state,’ was Nägelsbach’s greeting. ‘Do you mind if my wife stays? I tell her everything, work-wise, too. The rules of confidentiality don’t apply to childless couples who only have one another.’
As I recounted my tale, Nägelsbach worked on. He didn’t interrupt me. At the end of my narration he was silent for a little while, then he switched off the lamp above his workplace, turned his high stool toward us, and said to his wife: ‘Tell him.’
‘With what you’ve just told us, maybe the police will get a search warrant for the old hangar. Maybe they’ll find the Citroën still there. But there’ll be nothing remarkable or suspicious about it. No reflective foil, no deadly triptych. That was pretty, by the way, how you described that. Right, and then the police can interrogate a few of the security people and the widow Schmalz and whoever else you named, but what is it going to achieve?’
‘That’s it, and of course I could prime Herzog in particular about the case, and he can try to use his contacts with security, only it won’t change a thing. But you know all that yourself, Herr Self.’
‘Yes, that’s where my thinking has brought me too. Nonetheless I thought you might have an idea of something the police could do, that… oh, I don’t know what I thought. I haven’t been able to resign myself to the case ending like this.’
‘Do you have any idea of a motive?’ Frau Nägelsbach turned to her husband. ‘Couldn’t we get further that way?’
‘I can only imagine from what I know thus far that something went wrong. Just like that story you read to me recently. The RCW is having trouble with Mischkey, and it’s getting more and more bothersome, and then someone in control says, “That’s enough,” and his subordinate gets a fright and in his turn passes the baton: “See to it Mischkey is quietened down, exert yourself,” and the person this is said to wants to show his dedication and prods and encourages his own subordinate to think of something, and it can be unusual, and at the end of this long chain someone believes he’s supposed to knock off Mischkey.’