‘Yes, we must change that,’ said Korten, before I could respond at all. ‘What are your plans for New Year’s Eve?’
I thought about Brigitte. ‘I’m not sure yet.’
‘That’s wonderful, my dear Self. Then we’ll be in touch with each other again soon.’
23 Do you have a tissue?
Brigitte had prepared beef stroganoff with fresh mushrooms and rice. It tasted delicious, the wine was at a perfect temperature, and the table was lovingly set. Brigitte was chattering. I’d brought her Elton John’s
She held forth on reflexology, acupressure, and Rolfing. She told me about patients, health insurers, and colleagues. She didn’t care in the least whether it interested me, or how I was.
‘What’s going on today? This afternoon I scarcely recognize Korten, and now I’m sitting here with you and the only thing you have in common with the Brigitte I like is the scar on your earlobe.’
She laid down her fork, put her elbows on the table, rested her head on her hands, and began to weep. I went round the table to her, she nuzzled her head into my belly, and just cried all the more.
‘What’s wrong?’ I stroked her hair.
‘I… oh… I, it’s enough to drive me to tears. I’m going away tomorrow.’
‘Why the tears about that?’
‘It’s for so terribly long. And so far.’ She raised her face.
‘How long, then, and how far?’
‘Oh… I…’ She pulled herself together. ‘Do you have a tissue? I’m going to Brazil for six months. To see my son.’
I sat down. Now I felt ready to weep, too. At the same time I felt angry. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘I didn’t know things would turn out so nice between us.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She took my hand. ‘Juan and I had intended to take the six months to see whether we couldn’t be together after all. Manuel misses his mother all the time. And with you I thought it would just be a short episode and over anyway by the time I left for Brazil.’
‘What do you mean, you thought it would be over anyway when you left for Brazil? Postcards from Sugar Loaf Mountain won’t change a thing.’ I was quite bleak with sadness. She said nothing and stared into space. After a while I withdrew my hand from hers and got up. ‘I’d better go now.’ She nodded mutely.
In the hallway she leaned against me for one last moment. ‘You see, I can’t go on being the raven mother that you never liked anyway.’
24 She’d hunched her shoulders
The night was dreamless. I woke up at six o’clock, knew I had to talk to Judith today and thought about what I should tell her. Everything? How would she be able to continue working at RCW and hold on to her old life? But that was a problem I couldn’t solve for her.
At nine o’clock I phoned her. ‘I’ve wrapped up the case, Judith. Shall we take a walk by the harbour and I’ll fill you in?’
‘You don’t sound good. What have you found out?’
‘I’ll pick you up at ten.’
I put coffee on, took the butter out of the fridge, and the eggs and smoked ham, chopped onions and chives, warmed up milk for Turbo, squeezed three oranges for juice, set the table, and made myself two fried eggs on ham and lightly sweated onions. When the eggs were just right I sprinkled them with chives. The coffee was ready.
I sat for a long time over my breakfast without touching it. Just before ten I took a couple of gulps of coffee. I set down the eggs for Turbo and left.
When I rang the bell, Judith came down straight away. She looked pretty in her loden coat with its collar turned up, as pretty as only an unhappy person can be.
We parked the car by the harbour office and walked between the rail tracks and the old warehouses along Rheinkaistrasse. Beneath the grey September sky it all had the peacefulness of a Sunday. The John Deere tractors were parked as though they were waiting for a field chaplain to begin the service.
‘Will you please finally start to tell me?’
‘Didn’t Firner mention my run-in with plant security on Thursday night?’
‘No. I think he’d gathered I was with Peter.’
I started with the talk I’d had with Korten yesterday, lingered over the question of whether old Schmalz was the last link of a well-functioning chain of command, had crazily set himself up as the saviour of the plant, or had been used, nor did I spare the details of the murder on the bridge. I made it clear that what I knew, and what could be proved, were leagues apart.
Judith strode along firmly beside me. She’d hunched her shoulders and was holding the collar of her coat closed with her left hand against the north wind. She hadn’t interrupted me. But now she said with a small laugh that cut me even further to the quick than her tears would have done: ‘Do you know, Gerhard, it’s so absurd. When I took you on to find out the truth I thought it would help me. But now I feel more at a loss than ever.’
I envied Judith the purity of her grief. My sadness was pervaded by a sense of weakness, of guilt, because I’d delivered Mischkey to the dogs, albeit unwittingly, a feeling that I’d been used, and a strange pride at having come so far. It also saddened me that the case had initially connected Judith and myself then entangled us so much with one another that we’d never be able to grow closer without a sense of awkwardness.
‘You’ll send me the bill?’
She hadn’t understood that Korten wanted to pay for my investigation. As I explained this to her, she retreated even further into herself and said: ‘That fits perfectly. It would also fit if I were to be promoted to Korten’s personal assistant. It’s all so repulsive.’
Between warehouse number seventeen and number nineteen we turned left and came to the Rhine. Opposite lay the RCW skyscraper. The Rhine flowed past, wide and tranquil.
‘What do I do now?’
I had no answers. If she managed tomorrow to lay the folder of letters in front of Firner to sign, as though nothing had happened, she’d come to terms with it.
‘And the terrible thing is that Peter is already so far away, inside. I’ve cleared out everything at home that reminded me of him, because it hurt so much. But now my loneliness feels tidied away, too, and I’m getting cold.’
We walked along the Rhine, following it downstream. Suddenly she turned to me, seized me by the coat, shook me and said: ‘We can’t just let them get away with it!’ With her right arm she made a sweeping gesture encapsulating the Works opposite. ‘They shouldn’t be let off the hook.’
‘No, they shouldn’t be, but they will be. Since the beginning of time, people with power have got away with it. And here perhaps it wasn’t even the people with power, it was a lunatic, Schmalz.’
‘But that’s exactly what power is, not having to act yourself, but getting some lunatic to do it. That can’t excuse them.’
I tried to explain to her that I didn’t want to excuse anyone, but that I simply couldn’t pursue the investigation.
‘Then you’re just one of the somebodies who does the dirty work for those people with power. Leave me alone now, I’ll find my own way back.’
I suppressed the impulse to leave her there, and said instead: ‘That’s mad, the secretary of the director of the RCW reproaching the detective who carried out a contract for the RCW, for working for the RCW. That’s rich.’
