Self's Murder (7 page)

I did my arithmetic. March 9, 1942, I was living at the hotel in Heidelberg, behind me the Poland Campaign, getting wounded in action, and the field hospital. I had finished my law degree and begun working at the public prosecutor’s office. I had not yet found an apartment, so Klara was staying with her parents in Berlin. Or was she traveling with her girlfriend Gigi through Italy? Or was she somewhere in hiding so she could give birth to a child? I would have liked to have had children. But not a child born on March 9, 1942. From May to August 1941, I was in Warthegau and had been with Klara only a single night.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but—”

“I knew it. I knew you’d shake your head and say, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to have anything to do with you.‘ You could talk about us as brothers and sisters. That you could do, but you could never act like we were. There you shake your head and raise your hands.” He shook his head and raised his hands, the way he imagined us doing. He was trying to sound derisive but in fact sounded despondent.

I shouldn’t have told him that I was sorry. I was not sorry that I wasn’t his father. Furthermore, my apology provoked more accusations, which again triggered my apology reflex. I was on the point of apologizing for all the rigors the West did and did not unleash upon the East.

“I’m not coming empty-handed. You didn’t notice the blue Mercedes when you were driving to Schwetzingen, and I imagine you didn’t notice it this morning, either.” He saw the interest in my face. “You want to know more. Well, I’ll tell you more. The Mercedes came after the old man gave you the attaché case and got into his car. It pulled up, and during the brouhaha the man sitting next to the driver got out and went snooping, first around your office and then around the old man’s car. I needn’t tell you what he was looking for.”

“Do you know who these men were?”

“All I know is that the Mercedes’s number plates were from Berlin. But I’ll find out. As it is, you and I are in the same line of business, and soon you’ll be … soon enough you’ll be …” He fell silent.

He actually was thinking of taking over my business, from father to son. Not right away, but after a period of transition in which we would operate as “Detective Agency: Gerhard Self & Son.” I did not propose “Gerhard Self & Klara Self’s Son.” I didn’t explain to him that he might possibly be the son of my deceased wife, but that he was most definitely no son of mine. I didn’t want to confide in him, talking about my marriage, opening up about myself, compromising Klara. In later years our marriage had been empty. But in those early days, when I had started at the Heidelberg public prosecutor’s office and Klara was soon to follow me to Heidelberg, our marriage was young and, I thought, full of magic, promising lasting happiness. It did affect me that there might have been someone else with whom Klara had had a relationship and a child, someone who didn’t even love her enough to insist she divorce me and marry him. Or did he die on the battlefield? I recalled an officer she knew, about whom she initially spoke a lot but then stopped mentioning, an officer who fell outside Moscow. I searched the face of the man before me for that officer’s features but found no trace of them.

“What is your name?”

“Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, with a hyphen. The Ulbrich without a
T
.”

“Where do you live?”

“At the Kolpinghaus. Its address is R 7—isn’t that crazy? That sounds like … like a cigarette brand name, not a street.” He shook his head in disbelief.

I forbore explaining the Mannheim street system. I also didn’t ask him whether he wasn’t ashamed as an old Communist to be staying at the Kolpinghaus.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, Turbo returned from one of his forays over the rooftops, jumped from the windowsill onto the sofa, and rubbed against Karl-Heinz Ulbrich’s legs on his way to the kitchen. Karl-Heinz said “puss-puss,” his eyes following Turbo with satisfaction. He looked at me triumphantly, as if he’d always known that animals in the West were friendlier than people and that this had now been proven. Luckily he didn’t say this out loud.

He got up. “I guess I’d better go. But I’ll be back.”

Without waiting for a good-bye, he walked through the hall to the door, opened it, and from outside carefully closed it again.

I
called Strasbourg. I couldn’t get hold of Georg—though after he’d been there just a day he wouldn’t have had much to report. So I had to make do with what Schuler had told me.

The silent partner from Strasbourg whose first or last name bore the initial
C
,
L
, or
Z
seemed to spark little interest in Welker or Samarin. As I sat opposite them making my report, Samarin looked visibly bored, while Welker seemed to be trying to suppress his impatience.

I’d said all I had to say. “I’ve picked up the Strasbourg lead and can either follow it or drop it. I do get the impression, however, that you’ve lost interest in the silent partner.”

Welker assured me that the silent partner was as important to him as ever. “Let me write you another check. Strasbourg won’t be a cheap venture.”

He took his checkbook and a fountain pen out of his jacket and wrote me a check.

“Herr Self,” Samarin said, leaning forward and looking me in the eye. “It seems that Schuler had access to the bank and withdrew some money. He left that money with you, and—”

“He brought me an attaché case, which I have placed in the care of a third party. I’m not sure whether I should hand it over to his heirs or the police. I don’t even know who his heirs are, or the exact circumstances of Schuler’s death.”

“He died in a car crash.”

“Somebody frightened him to death,” I countered.

Samarin shook his head—slowly, ponderously—and as he did so he rocked his upper body back and forth. “Herr Self.” He squeezed out the words. “When someone takes something that doesn’t belong to him, it doesn’t do that person any good.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Welker said soothingly, glancing at Samarin and me with some irritation as he handed me the check. “You must understand that decades ago Herr Schuler was our teacher, a good teacher, and we don’t forget it. His death was a blow to us, and the suspicion about the money, too. I must say that I cannot believe—”

Samarin exploded. “You
will
believe what—”

“What you tell me?” Welker looked at Samarin and me triumphantly for a few seconds.

Samarin was so furious that he almost tipped the heavy chair over as he got up. But he managed to get a grip on himself. Slowly and menacingly he said, “You will be hearing from me, Herr Self.”

I walked along the palace gardens to Schuler’s house. I couldn’t figure out what Welker’s moment of triumph was all about. Or why the money that had disappeared seemed to worry him less than it worried Samarin. If there was something fishy about the used fifty-and hundred-mark bills, whether Schuler had taken them or not, then this ought to worry the boss more than his assistant, even if his assistant is responsible for practical matters and has a tendency to be overbearing and is quick to flare up. Or were they playing some version of the good-cop, bad-cop routine with me? But if that were the case, Samarin could have exploded instead of getting a grip on himself.

I looked around but nobody was following me, neither my counterfeit son nor a blue Mercedes. The woman who opened the door at Schuler’s house was his niece. She had been crying and again burst into tears the moment she began to speak. “He smelled and grouched and nagged. But he was such a good person, such a good person. Everyone knew it, and his students liked him and came to see him, and he helped them every way he could.”

She herself had been a student of his, as had her husband. They met when both happened to drop by one day to see Schuler.

We sat in the kitchen, which she had tidied up a little. She had made some tea and offered me a cup. “There’s no sugar. When it came to sugar, I managed to talk some sense into him. As for alcohol, he wouldn’t listen.” The thought of this brought more tears to her eyes. “He wasn’t long for this world, but that doesn’t make it any better. Do you know what I mean? It doesn’t make it any better.”

“What do the police say?”

“The police?”

I told her that her uncle’s accident had happened right outside my door. “I came to Schwetzingen right away to inform you, but the police were already here.”

“Yes, the precinct in Mannheim called our local station, and they came by. It was a coincidence that I happened to be here. I don’t come every day. He wants … I mean, he wanted …” Again she began to cry.

“Did the police say anything, or ask you anything?”

“No.”

“Your uncle was in a terrible state when he came to see me right before his accident. It was as if he’d suffered a shock, as if something had really frightened him.”

“Why did you let him drive?” She looked at me reproachfully through her tears.

“It all happened much too fast. Your uncle … He was here one minute, gone the next.”

“But surely you could have held him back, I mean you could have …” She pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “I’m sorry. I know how difficult he could be once he’d gotten something into his head. And here I am, practically accusing you. I didn’t mean to.” She looked at me sadly, but I reproached myself with everything she wasn’t reproaching me with. She was right: Why hadn’t I held him back? Why didn’t I at least try? This time it wasn’t only my emotions that had been too slow.

“I …” But I didn’t know what to say. I looked at her as she sat bent forward, her hands weakly clasping the handker-chief, her face warm, innocent. She hadn’t asked me who I was, but had simply taken me for a friend of her uncle’s, a companion in grief. I felt as if I’d not only let Schuler down, but her as well, and I sought absolution in her face. But I could find none. Without confession there is no absolution.

W
hen Brigitte and I arrived at the retirement party the Nägelsbachs were throwing at their place in the Pfaffengrund settlement, Nägelsbach was already tipsy and morosely cheerful.

“Well, Herr Self? At first my colleagues didn’t want to hand your friend over to Forensics, but I had a word with them and they finally sent him over. Speaking of which, from now on you’ll have to make do on your own. I won’t be able to help you anymore.”

His wife took Brigitte and me aside. “His boss asked me what kind of present he might like,” she said. “I’m afraid he’s thinking of turning up here uninvited. If he does come, can you intercept him? I don’t want him suddenly coming face-to-face with my husband.”

She was wearing a long black gown—I couldn’t tell if it was for mourning at the end of her husband’s career, or because it was beautiful and suited her, or if she wanted to portray somebody: Virginia Woolf, Juliette Gréco, or Charlotte Corday on her way to the scaffold. She does things like that.

The guests were crowded into the dining area and living room, which were connected by an open sliding door. I greeted this and that police officer I recognized from the Heidelberg headquarters. Brigitte whispered to me: “Forensics? Did he just mention forensics? Do you have anything to do with forensics?”

Frau Nägelsbach brought us two glasses of apricot punch.

The doorbell kept ringing, and guests kept arriving. The hall door stood open and I heard a voice I recognized. “No, I’m not a guest. I’m with Herr Self and need to speak to him.” It was Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, wearing a beige anorak over a white nylon shirt and a flowery tie. He came straight over to me, took me by the arm, and steered me through the hall into the empty kitchen.

“It’s the Russians,” he whispered, as if they were standing right next to him and might overhear.

“Who?”

“The men in the bank and the blue Mercedes. Russians, or Chechens, or Georgians, or Azerbaijanis.” He looked at me meaningfully and expectantly.

“And?”

“You really don’t know?” he asked, shaking his head. “They’re not to be trifled with. The Russian Mafia’s nothing like what you’ve got here in the West—nothing like the Italians or Turks. The Russians are brutal.”

“You’re saying this as if you were proud.”

“You must take precautions. When they want something, they get it. Whatever’s in that attaché case, it’s not worth crossing them.”

Was he puffing himself up? Or was he one of them, whoever
they
might be? Were they the rough guys, while he was sent to soften me up, all in an attempt to get back the attaché case?

“What’s in the attaché case?” I asked him.

He stared at me despondently. “How are we to work together if you don’t trust me? Not to mention, how do you expect to get through this if we don’t work together?”

Brigitte came into the kitchen. “His boss has arrived, and Frau Nägelsbach …”

But it was already too late. We heard Nägelsbach greeting his boss with exaggerated civility. Would he like a glass of punch? Or perhaps two or three? Some situations are bearable only with alcohol. Some people, too.

Brigitte and I went into the living room, though Ulbrich still kept after me. As a good-bye present Nägelsbach’s boss had brought him a photograph of the Heidelberg police head quarters, as if it were the Grand Hotel, and he was doing his best to be pleasant, unaware of the emotions he was triggering. I started chatting with him about the police in different parts of the country and the secret services, and judging by the things he said, he knew a thing or two. I asked him about the Russian Mafia but he shrugged his shoulders. “Do you know what someone from RTL Television said to me the other day? All the private stations are scouring material for T V, but one thing you can’t offer the public is the Russian Mafia. Not because it doesn’t exist. The thing is, it has no class, no style, no tradition, no religion—none of the things one likes about the Italians. All the Russian Mafia has is brutality.” He shook his head in disappointment. “In this case, too, Communism has steamrolled over culture.”