with the stuff. But why today? Why not five months ago?”
“I caught Fred last night, with the money. He told me everything before he took off.”
“How much did they pay him?”
“Fifty thousand. For going away forever.”
Not a whole lot, I thought. I surveyed the bookshelves.
“You sure had a lot to read here.”
“How else do you think I could have passed the time?”
I lit a cigarette. “You’re packing? Where are you going?”
“To the police.”
I turned to her abruptly and shouted, “Why, goddamn it-why did you do it?”
She gulped. “The story had to have an end. And not just any end, but exactly this one.”
She pointed across the room.
“This woman took Friedrich Bollig away from me. She did not let me come to his funeral. As I found out yesterday, she was an accomplice to his murder. All these years I have had to drown my thoughts and my grief in drink-and I should let her get away with all that scot free? I could not let that happen. This is my farewell party … my farewell to it all! A little dramatic, but I like it that way.”
She coughed.
“You’ll go to prison.”
She got up and walked to the window.
“You think this is better than a prison? It’s a cave filled with bad memories. How many years do I have left? Who will find me?”
“Did you spend a lot of time here?”
“A couple of hours every day. I used to read, write letters to the dead. Whatever old people do to pass the time.”
I brushed off this last with a wave of my hand. “What did Fred Scheigel tell you about the night of the murder?
They had fired him the day before. He was afraid to tell me, so he just went to his hut at the factory as always, but this time only to get drunk. When he heard the shots, he ran outside and found Friedrich. Dead. He must have sat there for a moment, because when he turned around, that Henry was standing behind him. Henry must have gotten rid of the gun. Otherwise, I’m sure, he would have shot Fred too. Then there was that explosion, Henry assured Fred that if he kept his mouth shut he would be given enough money to disappear from here forever. He only had to say that someone had knocked him down. Then Henry took off. A little later Barbara Bollig appeared, and when she too realized that Fred had seen something, she told him the same thing and promised him a lot of money.”
She shrugged, sighed.
“Fred didn’t particularly regret Friedrich Bollig’s death. Besides, he was glad of the chance to get away from her at long last, with the money he was offered. And the detective accepted his story without questioning it.”
“And the detective’s name was Kessler?”
She nodded. I clapped my hands.
“Genius! The guy’s a genius.”
Nina Scheigel looked puzzled. I didn’t go into that, but told her, “It was you, wasn’t it, who killed Otto Bollig back then? With arsenic. You thought that would make everything all right with Friedrich.”
She smiled.
“That’s so long ago. Who cares about it now?”
She was right. Ultimately, I didn’t give a damn. I paced back and forth and tried to clear my head.
“You’ve killed my only remaining witness. Henry’s gone.”
Once again she didn’t understand, and once again I let it ride. I cast a glance at the corpse. “I brought you a bottle of vodka from Nikolai.”
“You are a strange young man.”
“Why did you do it?” I asked, myself more than her. Then I said, a little too loudly, “I have to take you along now.”
She cleared her throat and asked, “May I ask you a favor?”
“Well?”
“Let me pack my suitcase and go to the police by myself. By myself, do you understand? I don’t want to be taken there.”
I nodded and walked to the door.
“You can run away, for all I care. It won’t make any difference.”
She laughed sadly.
“Where would I go? No, no. If you want to be nice to me, send the bottle to jail. There won’t be a whole lot of difference between drinking it there or here.”
I bit my lip.
“Farewell, Mrs. Kaszmarek.”
“ ‘Well’? Don’t poke fun at me, young man.”
In the candlelight, her face was that of a painted old alley cat. Her green eyes were smiling.
I pulled the door shut behind me and walked slowly down the stairs. Halfway down, other ladies living in the building came rushing out to ask me what I knew about the Biblis disaster. I just walked past them. In the street I turned my face up to the rain. The cold droplets felt good.
6
As we stood outside the door of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, I began to feel queasy. Kollek and Barbara Bollig were both dead, and if Kessler stuck to his story that he had had no idea about any of it, his calendar was my only piece of evidence. And that didn’t seem like a whole lot.
Kessler knew this. He gave me a threatening smile.
“Kayankaya-mark my words, you’ll regret beating me up.”
“I only regret that I didn’t snuff you.”
Slibulsky had preferred to stay in the car. He said he had met enough magistrates to last him a lifetime.
It was almost ten o’clock at night. Lubars had been reluctant to come to his office at such a late hour. I knew him well, and he rather liked me, whatever that was worth. He was a public prosecutor, first and foremost. As soon as I mentioned Kessler to him on the phone, he regretted that he had agreed to come.
Finally he arrived, his hair none too well combed, and not wearing a necktie. He was of average height, bloated, and red-faced. He greeted us, briefcase in one hand, a bunch of keys in the other. “Good evening-good evening, Mr. Kessler. Please excuse my getup. But I thought I was done for the day …”
Kessler laughed tolerantly.
“Right, right. I could think of more pleasant ways to spend an evening too, but …”
He cast a withering glance at me. We entered Lubars’s office. A handsome desk, two visitors’ chairs. While I planted myself in one of them, Kessler said, “Tell me, Mr. Lubars, how is your wife? I heard she was ill?”
At the word “ill” he looked at me and showed his teeth.
“Thank you, thank you, she is doing better. Please be seated.”
Kessler sat down in the chair facing me. Lubars slid behind his desk, put on his glasses, and folded his hands.
“I hope we can clear this up as quickly as possible. Both Mr. Kessler and I have had a strenuous day.” They nodded to each other.
I asked myself how much influence Kessler had in the system. Perhaps it was due to his friendship with “M”?
“Now then, Mr. Kayankaya, when you called you said that you would bring in a murder suspect.” He coughed discreetly, glanced at Kessler. “But surely that was some kind of joke?”
