Kismet (21 page)

‘You mean drunk, sweetheart, and no, I’m not. If you come with me I’ll tell you about it on the way.’ I looked at the time. Twelve-thirty. ‘In half an hour. Think it over.’

Then I got her to tell me her mother’s surname, picked up my cup and moved into the living-room to phone. The phone was answered after the first ring.

‘Afternoon, Herr Höttges!’

Perhaps it was something in the air, or perhaps they’d started mixing happy-drugs into instant coffee, the way I’d read they did with cat food. Anyway, the deep, heartfelt sigh at the other end of the line that followed my greeting filled me with genuine liking.

‘I know, I know: you don’t like me to ring your office.’

‘I’m expecting an important call.’

‘I’ll be quick: I need to know by this evening whether a woman called Stasha Markovic has been arrested for any reason over the last few days. She’s a Bosnian refugee, mid-thirties, green eyes, very bright.’

‘Where can I reach you?’

‘At my home number around six.’

Then I called Slibulsky. He was doing his accounts, he said. I could hear Formula One engines in the background.

‘You sound glum. What’s the matter? The dinner’s tomorrow evening.’

‘I think people can look at me without losing their appetite.’

‘Sounds great. How’s it going with the Army?’

‘If everything works out I’ll have them nailed on
Saturday. Until then I’d be very glad if you could put up a charming little girl in your guest bedroom.’

‘How come you know any charming little girls?’

‘She’s my client.’

‘Have you turned into some kind of youth social worker? This rock ’n’ roll character turned up here yesterday, saying you sent him.’

‘Zvonko.’

‘Yes, he can start next week. What about the little girl?’

I told him briefly how Leila had become my client, and said I didn’t want to leave her alone in my flat.

‘OK. Do we have to cook her spaghetti or play the memory game with her and so on?’

‘Well, she’s not all that little and charming. Just sit her down in front of the TV set and give her some of your Western videos.’

‘Girls don’t watch Westerns.’

‘With her, I wouldn’t be so sure. Anyway, she’ll be agitated and pretty distracted. I’m hoping to get her mother back for her tonight.’

‘Are you sure you’ll find her with this – what’s his name?’

‘Ahrens. I believe I will. The problem is, I must find her without being found myself. But I think I can do it.’

‘That’s funny. You don’t sound like a man who thinks he can do anything. What
is
the matter?’

I muttered something like, ‘Slept too well,’ then we fixed to meet at seven and hung up. For a moment I wanted to tell Leila the news at once, but then I thought it would be more in line with educational principles not to tell her until there wasn’t much time left for objections and nagging.

Twenty minutes later Leila and I were getting into the car, and for the first time since Frau Beierle had hired me I really set out in search of Susi, equipped with a stack of photos.

Looking in the rear-view mirror, I was just in time to see the greengrocer rush out of his shop, waving excitedly in our direction. Luckily we hadn’t met in the stairwell. He would have taken his supposedly desperate situation as a reason to break our tacit agreement and look me in the eye. But now that he was even calling me by my proper name, I wanted to avoid getting close to him more than ever. It might have led to a flowering of sympathy setting us back years. For now I was going to try keeping our relationship going purely by phone.

The afternoon, spent in assorted animal rescue centres – in Fechenheim, Hanau, Egelsbach, Dreieichenhain – turned out much as I’d expected. Endless rows of pens, any amount of barking dogs, and all the German shepherds looked just like Susi. To me, anyway. After complaining of anything and everything during the drive – my beat-up old car, my shitty dog, even my wet weather – Leila brightened surprisingly quickly at the sight of the first bundles of fur looking soulfully at her. Soon she took over the photos and the investigation. She had nothing but a shake of the head for my technique of calling ‘Susi!’ to whatever dog we were looking at, and hoping that Susi would then identify herself by turning somersaults or some other such means.

‘Must look their eyes. Susi have so stiff eyes.’

‘Big eyes, you mean.’

The keepers or attendants or whatever were either grouchy alcoholics muttering incomprehensible remarks to themselves who presumably liked to kick the dogs in
the face by way of saying good morning, or ladies in their mid-forties who truly loved animals. They didn’t love their fellow men as much.

‘You’re looking for a dog for dogfights, right?’

‘No, a German shepherd.’

‘Because I can tell you, we don’t give dogs away to all comers.’

‘Quite right too.’

‘You think so? But your daughter speaks hardly any German.’

‘Well, I’m sure there’s a lot to discuss there, but the fact is that we’re looking for a German shepherd, and we don’t have all the time in the world.’

Four unsuccessful hours later we drove home. I still had four animal rescue centres on my list. I’d try them another time. Or maybe not. The closer evening came, the less prominently Susi featured in my mind, and presumably in Leila’s too.

I parked the car round the corner, and we reached the flat unobserved by the greengrocer.

While I packed a bag with a chisel, a flashlight, a hooded jacket and my pistol, Leila sat on the edge of the sofa, jiggling her toes nervously up and down and eating sweets that smelled like room spray.

‘You think my mother come back today?’

‘Well, at least I believe I’ll find her.’ And I did. At times you get a sense of certainty that something is bound to succeed. Goal-scorers have it when they get the ball while facing the serried ranks of defenders, and they know: I’m going to shoot right through them and score the deciding goal. And they do. Or bouncers: OK, they tell themselves,
that bastard is much larger, broader, stronger than me, but right now I’m flinging him out on his ear. And they do fling him out on his ear. Or just people looking for something: I’ll find it today, they say. And they find it.

‘Without me not very good detective.’

‘I’m better with human beings.’

‘Hope so. What about Susi?’

‘There are other refuges.’

‘When my mother back, you take me with you?’

‘Yes, sure. I’d be lost without you.’

The phone rang at six on the dot, and Höttges told me that no Stasha Markovic had been either arrested or done anything to get into police records since Sunday.

‘Listen, Leila.’ I sat down on the sofa beside her. ‘It would be better if you slept with some friends of mine tonight.’ I could have spared myself the educational approach. To my surprise, she agreed at once.

‘Not be alone better, you know?’

‘I understand.’

I dropped her off at Slibulsky’s just before seven.

Ahrens’s white teeth and the slogan
Ahrens Soups: Pleasure On Your Plate
shone through the twilight. I was standing in a phone box opposite the dark brick building, pushing expired phone cards into the slot. Now and then there were situations which made me forget what a luxury not having a mobile was. It happened two or three times a month, when I had to rely on public phone boxes, or when one of those waiters who act as if they thought their place would run better without any guests declined to change a note for me, or when I needed a phone box and there just wasn’t one anywhere in sight. But the rest of the time not having a mobile was a little like always being on holiday. I had Slibulsky constantly going on at me: if a message could be left people felt insulted if they didn’t get called back at once; if no message could be left then they felt
really
insulted. And as one of those things was only occasionally switched off, because of the possible important incoming calls which was why you’d bought it in the first place, a ring tone was assaulting your eardrums every twenty minutes or so as if a fire had broken out. Maybe because of some misguided quota ruling, they use deaf people to develop new ringtones. Or maybe the whole mobile phone business was a kind of human experiment: can we make almost everyone who has over a few hundred marks a month available, independent of origin, religion, sex and education, into a poor idiot terrorising
him or herself? As I saw it, they could.

The next card slotted in, and I dialled the greengrocer’s number.

‘Kayankaya here. Everything all right?’

Heavy breathing, trembling voice. ‘Herr Kayankaya, what luck, I’m completely …’

‘I’m sorry,’ I interrupted him, ‘but I’m in a really very important meeting at the moment, and it will go on for quite a while longer. So you’ll have to turn to the police today if anything happens. And if they don’t arrive in time, then I’d advise you, from my own experience, that facing up to the situation man to man, with a chair or a hammer handy, is more likely to be successful than covering your ears and waiting for the explosion.’

‘Oh … oh dear …’

‘Look, I must go back. I’ll be in touch when I get home. See you soon.’

‘Wait a minute, please, I … I was thinking about it today, if it goes on like this, well, I mean, perhaps it would be better for me to give up this flat and …’

‘Move house?’

‘… There, you see, I do admire your way of going about these things, oh yes, very much, but … well, bombs and chairs and man to man – I haven’t eaten a thing since yesterday evening, and my poor heart, oh, I don’t know, but if it goes on beating like this much longer I’ll explode of my own accord.’

‘Yes, I understand. But of course it would be a big step to take. My instant reaction would be to say maybe a sensible one too. But let’s think some more about it. Perhaps – who knows? – well, perhaps so. Possibly that’s the best solution – but I’m so sorry, now I must …’

‘Yes, of course. But you will ring me, won’t you, when you …?’

‘When I get back, yes, of course.’

I hung up, feeling glad that Leila was with Slibulsky. The greengrocer might perhaps work all right for raising the alarm, but as an obstacle to any characters who wanted to get into the building he certainly wouldn’t. Instead, I had a brief vision of a brand-new, friendly, humorous, civilised neighbour who would be wonderful in every respect.

I picked up my bag of tools, left the phone box, and walked past the entrance of Ahrens’s soup company and down the street. About a hundred metres further on I climbed over a tyre dealer’s fence, quietly crossed the yard, and approached the back of the brick building. Up on the first floor, faint light was falling through an open doorway into one of the offices. I climbed up a stack of tyres chained together, swung myself up on the wall, wriggled through the barbed wire stretched along the top of it, and let myself down on the other side, landing on a pile of gravel. A paved path led round the brick building to the metal factory shed where, I assumed, the soups or sweets or whatever were made. But perhaps nothing was being made there any more. Perhaps the shed now served only as a meeting place for the Army, and the tables were already laid for Saturday.

There was an entrance, locked, a lot of closed doors, and presumably an alarm system. I went once round the shed and found a loose flap over a gutter running down to the ground beside it and disappearing under a piece of metal. I raised the flap and listened. Nothing happened. There was a gap about thirty centimetres wide between
the flap and the gutter. I got through it easily enough up to my waist, but then two things almost made me faint: first my breath was taken away, and second such a strong smell of urine met me as if they were boiling the stuff up to obtain its essence. Gasping, I squeezed my way on, centimetre by centimetre. Lack of air was bad enough, air smelling like that was even worse. Who pissed this kind of thing? Packet-soup manufacturers? The fat Hessian? The pretty secretary? Once I was inside the toilets I hauled the bag after me, straightened up and switched my flashlight on. Perhaps I’m more idealistic or I believe in authority more than I’d like to think – but the state of the toilets of this works, which did after all produce foodstuffs of a kind, staggered me. It wasn’t just that the pans were a little dirty, they’d obviously been competing to see who could leave the most filth behind in here. Used loo paper was piled in the corners, the once white tiles round the urinals were covered with a dull, stained layer of stuff that looked crystallized, and the floor was covered by a slimy layer of something either thick or deep, but at least it gave slightly as you stepped on it. I got out of there fast.

Outside the toilets there was a coffee-break corner with a drinks machine, a small glazed-in office next to it, and right behind that the first of countless areas marked off only by partitions nearly two metres high. While I walked past enormous cauldrons, equally enormous and presumably computer-guided shovels for stirring them, conveyor belts, pipes leading from one area to another, stacks of plastic bags, pallets loaded up with cartons, a fork-lift truck and all kinds of other items, I came to the conclusion that the strong smell in the toilets must come from the equally strong and almost identical smell of the
powdered soup hanging about in all the rooms. Well, obviously, what else did the employees eat at lunch time? So what else did they piss? But then I noticed the absence of any kind of soup powder and anything that might be its ingredients, and I sniffed myself with distaste. If I managed to find Leila’s mother this evening and take her out of here, she was going to get a fantastic first impression of me.

In the back area of the factory shed a second horrible smell mingled with the stink. Something rancid and very faintly reminiscent of chocolate. And there was also another difference: work had been going on until quite recently in the rooms I reached now. Small, unwrapped pieces of something dark lay on a conveyer belt, then the belt disappeared into a cavern containing all kinds of mechanical devices and presses, to reappear two metres further on with wrapped items on it. Red lettering on black paper: Mars bars. I took one, tore the wrapping away, bit off a corner and spat it out again at once. If this was what Ahrens sold as a chocolate bar, maybe the fillet-steak dinner was going to be held in the factory toilets. I’d never had anything like it in my mouth before. If you took the worst, almost cocoa-free chocolate made mainly of very dead animal fat and colouring agents, and kept it for a few weeks in a closed, switched-off fridge, then possibly the end product might be something tasting like this stuff. As an antidote I immediately lit a cigarette. I could happily have eaten the tobacco.