‘Ahead,’ I finished. ‘When will the trap be ready?’
‘This is Thursday. The head of the computer centre wants to see to it himself over the weekend, and on Monday morning the users are to be informed.’
The prospect of wrapping the case up on Monday was enticing, even if the success wouldn’t be mine. But in a world of certified security guards guys like me don’t have much of a place anyway.
I didn’t want to give up immediately, however, and asked, ‘In the dossier I found a list with around a hundred suspects. Does security have any further information on one or another of them, something that’s not in the report?’
‘It’s good that you mention that, Herr Self,’ said Danckelmann. He heaved himself up from his office chair and as he came over to me I noticed he walked with a limp. He followed my gaze. ‘Vorkuta. In nineteen forty-five, age eighteen, I was taken to a Russian prisoner-of-war camp. Came back in fiftythree. Without old Adenauer I’d still be there. But to return to your question. We are in fact privy to some information about the suspects that we didn’t want to include in the report. There are a couple of political cases that the Secret Service keeps us up to date on. And a few with problems in their private life – wives, debt, and so on.’
He rolled off eleven names. As we worked through them I quickly gathered that the so-called political ones concerned only the usual trifles: signed the wrong leaflet as a student, stood as candidate for the wrong group, marched at the wrong demonstration. I found it interesting that Frau Buchendorff was among them. Along with other women she had handcuffed herself to the railings in front of the house of the Minister for Family Affairs.
‘Why were they doing it?’ I asked Danckelmann.
‘That’s something the Secret Service didn’t tell us. After divorcing her husband, who apparently coerced her into such things, she stopped attracting attention. But I always say, whoever was political once can’t shake it off from one day to the next.’
The most interesting person was on the list of ‘Losers’, as Danckelmann called them. A chemist, Frank Schneider, mid-forties, divorced several times. A passionate gambler. He’d grown conspicuous when he started going to the wages office too often to ask for advances.
‘How did you latch on to him?’ I asked.
‘It’s standard procedure. As soon as someone asks for an advance a third time, we take a look at him.’
‘And what does that mean exactly?’
‘It can, as in this case, involve going so far as shadowing a person. If you want to know, you can talk to Herr Schmalz, who did it at the time.’
I had a message sent to Schmalz that I’d expect him for lunch at twelve noon at the restaurant. I was about to add that I’d be waiting for him by the maple at the entrance, but Danckelmann brushed me aside. ‘Leave it. Schmalz is one of our best. He’ll find you all right.’
‘Here’s to teamwork,’ said Thomas. ‘You won’t hold it against me that I’m a bit sensitive when our responsibility for security is removed. And you are from the outside. But I have enjoyed our pleasant chat, and’ – he laughed disarmingly – ‘our information on you is excellent.’
On leaving the redbrick building where security was housed, I lost all sense of direction. Maybe I used the wrong stairs. I was standing in a yard along the lengths of which the company security vehicles were parked, painted blue with the company logo on the doors, the silver benzene ring and in it the letters RCW. The entrance at the gable end was fashioned as a portal with two sandstone pillars and four sandstone medallions from which, blackened and mournful, Aristotle, Schwarz, Mendeleyev, and Kekulé regarded me. Apparently I was standing in front of the former chief administration building. I left the yard, and came to another, its façades completely covered with Virginia creeper. It was oddly quiet; my footsteps resounded exaggeratedly on the cobblestones. The buildings appeared to be disused. When something struck my back I whirled around in fright. In front of me a garishly bright ball gave a few more bounces and a young boy came racing after it. I retrieved the ball and approached the boy. Now I could make out the windows with net curtains in the corner of the yard, behind a rosebush, next to the open door. The boy took the ball from my hands, said ‘thank you’, and ran into the house. On the nameplate by the door I recognized the name Schmalz. An elderly woman was looking at me suspiciously, and shut the door. Again it was absolutely quiet.
6 A veal ragout on a bed of mixed greens
When I entered the restaurant, a small, thin, pale, black-haired man addressed me. ‘Herr Self?’ he lisped. ‘Schmalz here.’
My offer of an aperitif was declined. ‘No thank you, I don’t drink alcohol.’
‘And what about a fruit juice?’ I didn’t want to forgo my Aviateur.
‘I have to be back at work at one. Happy if we could directly… Little to report anyway.’
The answer was elliptical, but without sibilants. Had he learned to eradicate all ‘s’ and ‘z’ words from his working vocabulary?
The lady at the reception area rang the bell for service, and the girl I’d seen serving at the directors’ bar took us up to the large dining hall on the first floor to a window table.
‘You know how I love to begin a meal?’
‘I’ll see to it straight away,’ she smiled.
To the headwaiter Schmalz gave an order for ‘A veal ragout on a bed of mixed greens, if you would.’ I was in the mood for sweet and sour pork Szechuan. Schmalz eyed me enviously. We both passed on the soup, for different reasons.
Over my Aviateur I asked about the results of the investigation of Schneider. Schmalz reported extremely precisely, avoiding all sibilants. A lamentable man, that Schneider. After a row over his demand for an advance, Schmalz had tailed him for several days. Schneider gambled not only in Bad Dürkheim but also in private backrooms and was accordingly entangled. When his creditors had him beaten up, Schmalz intervened and brought Schneider home, not seriously injured, but quite distraught. The time had come for a chat between Schneider and his superior. An arrangement was entered into: Schneider, indispensable as a pharmaceutical researcher, was removed from work for three months and sent to a clinic, and the relevant circles were informed that they were not to allow Schneider to gamble any more. The security unit of the RCW used its influence around Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.
‘A good three-year gap while the guy lay low. But in my opinion he remained a ticking bomb, even ticking today.’
The food was excellent. Schmalz ate his at a rush. He didn’t leave a single grain of rice on his plate – the obsessive behavior of the food neurotic. I asked what, in his opinion, should be done with whoever was behind the computer shambles.
‘Above all, interrogate him thoroughly. And then make him get in line. He can’t be a threat to the plant any more. Bright guy. He could…’
He flailed around for a non-sibilant synonym for certainly or surely. I offered him a Sweet Afton.
‘Prefer my own,’ he said, and took a brown plastic box from his pocket containing homemade filter cigarettes. ‘Made by my wife, no more than eight a day.’
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s homemade cigarettes. They are way up there with crocheted modesty covers for toilet paper. The mention of his wife reminded me of the janitor’s apartment with the nameplate ‘Schmalz’.