whispers directly into the mind of the sleeping person. Only you can’t fall asleep completely, or else you might not hear him.
Watch closely: while he was half asleep it occurred to Brenner that he had overlooked one little thing amid the onslaught of voicemails. Because place and time for the hand over of money had been made known to Knoll one day before the kidnapping!
So when shortly before nine an old man opened the garden gate, Brenner had been wide awake for a while. The old man didn’t have Helena with him, and he didn’t come off as a kidnapper, either, but nonetheless-to be feared. Because the typical Schrebergarten pensioner, without any kidnapping or murder thrown in, already fills the bill more than amply, i.e., overweight, limping, lawn-mowing, fence-painting, grilling, TV-watching, politicizing, groaning, weeding, car-washing, undershirt-wearing, opinion-expressing, hard-of-hearing crankiness personified.
But let’s not be unfair. Because the old man being hard of hearing, that alone was an enormous advantage for Brenner. Hard of hearing an advantage, and the heavy breathing an advantage, too. Because once he’d shuffled into the living room, the heavy breathing prevented the Schrebergartener from making any effort to go up to the attic. And his being hard of hearing resulted in Brenner being able to understand nearly every word from the attic when Knoll arrived at nine sharp with a briefcase of money and a stooge in tow.
“One million?” the hard-of-hearing pensioner barked.
“Go ahead and count it,” Knoll answered at a normal indoor volume, but Brenner understood him anyway because when someone says what you’re expecting him to say, then you understand him easier, even from a distance.
“What did you say?” the retiree asked, because he couldn’t understand Knoll even at close range. Possible that this rule about easier comprehension of what’s expected only applies to “from a distance” and not to “hard of hearing while at close range.”
“Go ahead and count it,” Knoll said as softly as he had before because that was his volume, he didn’t let the rules of the game get dictated by someone else, no, always nudging the others a little to where he wanted them.
The stooge said nothing because-silent stooge.
“One thousand, two thousand, three thousand,” the Schrebergartener began, and Brenner thought to himself, if he’s going to count to a million, I’m going back to sleep.
“Seventy-two thousand,” the Schrebergarten boss said, and then stopped. “And where are the six hundred and seventy-two euros?”
Knoll either said nothing or said “Kiss my ass” so quietly that neither Brenner nor the pensioner heard it.
“I still do business in schillings, I don’t do euros,” the old man bellowed. “And one million is still seventy-two thousand six hundred and seventy-two euros and not seventy-two thousand euros flat.”
“As long as you’re not front-ending me in old francs,” Knoll said, dry as dust, and in the tension of the moment Brenner had to be careful not to let out a laugh.
“Exact calculation, my friend,” the old dogmatist wheezed.
“If you were being so exact about everything,” Knoll said, and a few other words, too, that Brenner couldn’t make out, but Knoll’s bad mood he understood nevertheless.
“If I were going to be exact, it would come to seventy-two thousand six hundred and seventy-four euros and forty cents. Actually, forty-two cents, but the two you can have, and the forty I’ll give you, too. But six hundred seventy-two euros, that’s still nine thousand schillings, roughly calculated. To be exact…”
What was happening now Brenner couldn’t see from where he was, but I’ll put it this way: it took exactly as long as you’d need to pull an antediluvian pocket calculator out of your blue work pants and to type in 672? 13.76.
“… it comes to nine thousand two hundred and forty-six schillings, and those I can’t just let you have.”
Brenner understood Knoll excellently now because he was speaking loudly and clearly-and had suddenly switched to, let’s say, a more informal mode of address.
“Either you sign now or you find yourself another chump who’ll buy this barracks off you for five times its value. Do you think I came all this way with a notary so that I could haggle over eighty-three cents?”
“What’s ‘five times the value’ supposed to mean?” the Schrebergartener protested. “Supply and demand!”
Shameless people always believe that all people are as dumb as they themselves are shameless. And maybe the shamelessness of the hard-of-hearing house-seller infected Brenner a little, too, because by now he’d ventured far enough out to the tiny staircase that he could see the three heads below through the brittle railing above. Interesting, though. Knoll: bald. The notary: thinning mousy hair. And the pensioner, of all people: full head of white hair. And the notary was even fairly young. But mouse hair already! And the skin on Knoll’s crown was peeling a little. Brenner thought to himself, amazing that he doesn’t take better care of himself in the sun, and he thought about maybe bringing it up with him if a good opportunity arose.
The white-haired pensioner was finally signing now. Because it might have become clear to him that he shouldn’t wear out his patience with Knoll and the notary, and so before the buyer could change his mind, he’d put his three X’s down on the contract and left with the envelope of money.
It must have been an interesting sight that morning for the nosy neighbor of Knoll’s new premises. Forty-nine hours after the disappearance of Helena Kressdorf. First the pensioner limps out the door with a thick envelope and doesn’t even close the garden gate behind him. And shortly thereafter a taxi pulls up-because the outermost row of the Schrebergarten lets directly out onto the access road-and the notary with the briefcase climbs into the taxi, and right after the notary, Knoll comes out and gets in his Volvo, and half a minute later Brenner leaves the house. Caravan: understatement.
And if the neighbor had looked very closely, she might have even noticed that Brenner was following Knoll in his purple Mondeo-car chase, if you will. But she couldn’t possibly have guessed everything that Brenner had yet to face that day. Even with the most ironclad resolve, Brenner himself couldn’t have guessed. And to be perfectly honest: if he had guessed, he wouldn’t have driven one centimeter after Knoll. Because Brenner would have preferred to stay in the Schrebergarten cottage, prayed a few Our Fathers, and searched for a rope to hang himself with in peace.
CHAPTER 12
Mankind could not have invented anything better than driving a car. Especially when you have someone you can follow. Because then it’s not so boring. The constant looking in the rearview mirror just made Brenner realize how often he would check to see if Helena was okay when he was driving, if she needed something, if she was sleeping, if she was smiling, if she was sitting comfortably, if she wanted a sip of something, if her teddy bear had fallen over, if she’d care to discuss something, or if she’d like to have her peace and quiet.
And every time now, no Helena in the rearview mirror. It pained Brenner so much that he even let out a cry. Because that’s one of the many advantages of a car. You can listen to music in private, you can enjoy nature without exertion, and when in despair, you can let out a cry.
For the sake of the car chase, of course, it was good that Brenner’s rearview glancing should plummet so dismally into emptiness. Because, he was all the more sensitive to what he saw behind that emptiness. Never before had a detective tailed a suspect as attentively as Brenner did Knoll-from the rearview mirror. Because he always left enough distance, and where Helena’s face would’ve been in the rearview mirror, Knoll’s black Volvo was gliding along in the back window, but very tiny. The best music Brenner had heard in years was on the radio, the sun was laughing, traffic was rolling smoothly along, and it annoyed him at first when the programming got interrupted. But then, of course, believe it or not, the dead-serious news announcer reported that the case of Helena Kressdorf’s kidnapping had taken a dramatic turn due to a bloody incident with the ransom handover.
And you see, that’s the downside of driving. Because you think you’re the only one experiencing something, you think the world stands still while you’re in motion. But in reality, you’re the one sitting with one foot on the gas pedal and the other on the clutch until the radio tells you that the outside world just turned in a bloody direction.
