Kismet

Chapter 13

We were sitting in the car on the way to the Ostend district and my office. As my private address and my private phone number weren’t in any public directory, or available online either, I assumed that if Ahrens had wanted to send me any warnings, threats or offers I’d find them at the office. After our meeting and my performance at the Adria Grill, which would certainly have been reported to him, I thought it was out of the question that he’d simply let me carry on in the same way. Now at the very latest, after extensive phone conversations with Frau Schmidtbauer, he must react somehow. I suspected he’d try bribing me and thus get his chance to finish me off.

‘… my father is Croat, my mother is Srbkinja. I am born in Bosnia. My father is worker in engineering works, is not soldier. And when the war begin he is against it. He talks big: better dead than leave mother Serbia. Always talks big. So he imprisoned in Croatia or Bosnia, somewhere. My mother says, always say you Bosanka, never Srbkinja. Bosanka is like hostel manager’s poor old dachshund. All people say: aah, that poor old dachshund. Srbkinja is like hostel manager’s wife.’

‘Hm. How long has your mother been working for Ahrens?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Make money.’

‘Yes, fine, but how does she make it?’

‘Just how don’t know. My mother not say because of my father. Fat Ahrens has finger in pie all way to Croatia.’

‘And when did your mother disappear?’

‘Last Sunday. That why I in Schmidtbauer office. She know where my mother is. But she don’t say. Only say, coming back soon, coming back soon.’

‘Did Gregor leave those bruises on your arms?’

‘Yes. For shouting and so on. Since my mother gone, I sleep badly.’

‘Hm.’

I wondered what Ahrens was planning to do when his lightning takeover of the protection money racket in Frankfurt came to an end. When the entire wobbly structure, maintained only by means of enormous pressure and large amounts of violence, crashed to the ground. He probably had his dated ticket to God knows what beach resort in his wallet already. And if he actually got there he’d be leaving part of the city demolished for years to come — in retrospect, the departure of the Schmitz brothers would look like any everyday business crisis by comparison. As a result of the Army’s activities, all normal protection money rackets would be scandalous, and every serious extortionist would have to go about in a tank if he wanted to keep his extortion undercover. And they would go about in tanks, too. The business would get even more secret, even more brutal, even more excessive. Bar and restaurant owners would think back nostalgically to the days when they could relatively easily balance their protection money against their income on the black economy. And their guests would long for those boozy nights when they didn’t have to fear that some idiot might come marching into the bar any time, shooting one of them down just to show that he was to be taken as seriously as the now legendary Army of Reason.

I lit a cigarette, and Leila asked if she could have one too.

‘How old are you?’

‘Next month fifteen.’

‘Smoking’s bad for you.’

I thought I could feel the airflow as her head whipped round. ‘You my mother or what?’

‘You wanted to come with me, and I decide who smokes in my car and who doesn’t. Fourteen-year-old girls don’t.’

‘Huh! But fourteen-year-old girls have to breathe old detective’s smoke!’

‘Listen, sweetheart: call me old again and you can go back to Gregor by yourself, on foot.’

It wasn’t a laugh or even a giggle, but a sound that did have something to do with amusement — derisive, deploring, almost pitying. After a pause she said, ‘Like Schmidtbauer. Don’t like her age either — two old cunts.’

Hit the nail on the head again. In a game of ‘Who has the last word?’ I’d have staked all my money on her. In a game of ‘Who’s good at dealing with fourteen-year-olds?’ I probably wouldn’t even have made the first selection stage.

Finally I handed her my cigarettes and lighter, and after we’d been smoking in silence for a while I asked, ‘How many do you smoke a day?’

‘Sometimes more, sometimes less. Depends how day is. Sometimes cigarette is like last bit of fun.’

‘Hm, yes, same with me. Doesn’t your mother object?’

‘Sometimes more, sometimes less.’

‘OK, let’s come to an agreement.’

‘Agreement? Come to where?’

‘Let’s do a deal.’

‘OK.’

‘When I’m not around you can do as you like. But in my presence you don’t smoke more cigarettes than I do.’

‘Presence…?’

‘When we’re together.’

‘You smoke many?’

‘Quite a lot.’

‘Good. Is deal.’

At the next kiosk I stopped and bought a packet of chewing gum.

‘Swindle, right?’ said Leila as I got back into the car. ‘Now you not smoke in presence.’

‘A deal is a deal.’

‘And swindle is swindle.’

‘Hm.’ I nodded. ‘And dumb is dumb.’

‘OK. Chewing gum, please.’

I hated everything about it: the taste, the sticky sound of chewing, the picture of me and Leila chewing the stuff in competition, so to speak, because of a dubious agreement. I’d just managed to shake off three killers, I was covered in mud and dust from head to foot, I had the criminal outfit in present-day Frankfurt after me, and I went and did a stupid thing like this. But instead of simply spitting out the unfamiliar, minty clump of gum and lighting a cigarette, I thought about ways I might extend our bargain. How may scoops of ice cream was a cigarette worth, for instance?

There wasn’t much time left for such meditations. As I was still imagining Leila making pitying noises again and explaining that if she happened to want an ice, she could buy hundreds for herself, we passed the first fire engine. Next moment I saw half my office desk lying behind a roadblock in the street.

A firefighter waved me to the side, I stopped the car and leaned across the steering wheel. On the third floor of the box-like fifties building where I’d had my office for the last six years there was a large, gaping hole measuring about four square metres. The back wall was still intact, and I noticed the round kitchen clock which one of my clients had once said was about as trendy in a detective’s office as a piece of knitting.

‘What that?’ Leila was leaning forward too, pressing her nose against the windscreen.

‘No idea.’ It seemed to me she must have exhausted her capacity to absorb scenes of violence for today. At the moment she seemed quite brave, but at her age, I assumed, that could change quickly. And a hysterical girl of fourteen was the last thing I needed. ‘Probably a gas explosion. I was actually going to move my office here next month.’ I lit a cigarette and tossed the packet into her lap. ‘I’ll just go and take a look. You stay here, OK?’

‘OK,’ she replied, but she didn’t sound really convinced. She probably wasn’t going to be outmanoeuvred another time as easily as over the cigarette deal.

I got out and walked around a bit. There wasn’t much to see. Firefighters, a few onlookers rubber necking, and a number of tenants of the building all talking excitedly. No one recognised me under my coating of mud and plaster dust.

Naturally the loss of my office together with a phone and fax machine, a computer, a first-class coffee machine and a crate of schnapps wasn’t good news, but it didn’t particularly rile me. I’d never much liked the place, twenty square metres in size, badly heated, with woodchip wallpaper, and acoustically filled with Sting, George Michael, and umpteen rehashes of cute soul pieces played by the TV production outfit that had moved in next door. Perhaps this way I’d even get around having to pay the overdue rent. What did bother me was the way that over the last few days the Army of Reason had turned my life into something increasingly like a military confrontation. I already knew about threatening letters, home-made bombs, squads of thugs, answering machines filled up with torrents of abuse, and I’d once been sent a dead sheep slit open and wearing a Turkish fez, a very imaginative touch. But this was the first time I’d ever had my office blown up in the middle of Frankfurt in broad daylight, just to stop me pursuing a case. Of course, there was always the possibility that unknown to me, there were genuine faulty gas connections in the building. Or that the ladies of the TV Larger Than Life production company had planned a firework display in line with the company name, to celebrate the opening of a new series about dentists’ daughters having problems with architects’ sons, and they just happened to have put their twenty boxes of rockets down outside my door for a moment. But I didn’t think I’d bet on it.

I took a last look at my kitchen clock and then went back to the car. Just before I reached it I spoke to a man who was leaning against a barrier, staring up at the wall of the building, and looked as if he’d been there for some time.

‘’Scuse me, can you tell me what happened up there?’

‘Huh! You may well ask!’ he exploded with surprising fury, but somehow with a kind of satisfaction too, and without taking his eyes off the building. He had bad teeth, bad skin, hardly any hair, a pot belly, alcohol on his breath, stained nylon clothing that didn’t fit him and a gold ring in his ear. ‘God knows what that bastard did in there!’

‘Er… what bastard?’

‘Some wog detective.’

‘Wog detective?’

‘Yes, well, a wog’s what I’d call him. He’s a Turk, he is — or was. Could be it blew him to bits. Think of it.’ He cast me a brief sideways glance. ‘Fellow like that. All we need now is wogs in the police… and then goodbye the Ostend!’

Slap a little plaster dust on now and then, and you got to know what the neighbours really thought of you.

‘When, roughly, did it blow that bastard to bits?’

‘Half an hour ago or thereabouts. I was over in Heidi’s place. But I reckon blown to bits is just wishful thinking. I mean, can’t see anything, can you? Blood or body parts or that.’

Heidi’s Sausage Heaven was the culinary high spot of the street. Strictly speaking, if you didn’t count a hamburger bar and a bakery selling sandwiches, it was the only culinary spot in the street. Hunger had driven me to Heidi’s greasy plastic tables now and then, forcing me to swallow stuff that no dog would have looked at.

I acted as if I had to search around to locate the place bearing Heidi’s name. Heidi’s Sausage Heaven, I read aloud from the sign over the door. ‘You’d have a good view of this place from there. Did you happen to see anyone go in before the explosion? Someone who might have set it off. Someone who doesn’t belong here. Doesn’t necessarily have to have been a wog.’

He let the question hang in the air for a moment before wrinkling his nose busily and nodding a couple of times in a very matter-of-fact way. Here at last was someone who knew who really mattered in the Ostend district. Wog offices flying through the air were all very well, but the important point, without a doubt, was that no stranger could pass his lookout post at Heidi’s place without his noticing that stranger and identifying him as such.

‘Hm, now you ask, yes, there was someone made me think, hey, what’s he doing here? I know everyone around this place, see — by sight anyway. I mean, you noticed yourself — it’s my knowledge of human nature, eh?’ He looked me straight in the face for the first time, and while the rest of his demeanour still signalled a large amount of new-found liking for me, an expression of some doubt entered his eyes.

‘What happened to you, then? You look almost like you.’

‘The name’s Borchardt. Explosives expert.’ I offered him my hand, and he automatically shook it. ‘I came straight from another bombing raid. A lot of dust there, as you can see. So how about this guy you noticed before the explosion?’

But he wasn’t to be fobbed off so easily. He looked me suspiciously up and down, let his eyes dwell on my hand holding the car key, connected the Opel logo on its tag with the old wreck behind me, let go of the barrier, bent down a little way and was asking, ‘Your car? Don’t I know it from.?’ when he caught sight of Leila.

‘There’s still a surprising number of these old things still on the road. Not my private car, of course. But as you see, in our work we explosive experts don’t have it all neat and tidy, so the city gives us these old transport fleet rejects. It’s no fun for anyone driving them, I can tell you.’

‘You’re an explosives expert? Police?’

‘Uh-huh. Frankfurt CID.’

He straightened up, stared at me unimpressed, and jerked his thumb at the car window. ‘So who’s that? Frankfurt CID too?’

‘She’s… er… well.’ I put my mouth close to his ear and lowered my voice. ‘The raid I mentioned just now was on a refugee hostel — know what I mean? And that’s one of the witnesses, a…’ I showed him a dirty grin. ‘Well, you can see her hair colour and her… er… complexion.’

He reacted as if a twenty-mark note was suddenly looking at him from a pile of dog shit in the street. First his eyes lit up and he ran his tongue over his lips, then his expression suddenly froze and darkened, until he suddenly took a step back and explained, shaking his head, ‘I didn’t mean it that way! You can’t pin anything on me. All I said was that the guy the office up there belonged to is a show-off arsehole and definitely didn’t have blue eyes, and you’re still allowed to say that, right?’

‘And how! Don’t worry, we in the police weren’t born yesterday either. We know the time of day, and we’d always rather have an honest opinion than all that do-gooding Benetton stuff. I mean…’ and once again I approached his ear, ‘I mean, where do Nobel prize-winners come from? That’s what I always say. They don’t come from Africa, do they?’

His scepticism lasted a moment longer, then he slowly raised the corners of his mouth, and a conspiratorial gleam came into his eyes. ‘You put that very nicely.’

‘Well,’ I said, dismissing the subject, ‘a man can’t help thinking. But could I ask you, all the same, to describe the person you saw from Heidi’s place?’

What he described was a small, fat, white man with thick lips — Ahrens’s Hessian, the one who had smashed my nose in.

I thanked my new Klu-Klux-Klan mate, gave a wave and went to the car.

As I started the engine, Leila asked, ‘What did that old queen with the earring say?’

Maybe I ought to have introduced them to each other. Maybe, once a few prejudices were out of the way, they’d have got on like a house on fire.

‘As I thought. A gas explosion.’

‘You talk long time for as-I-thought.’

‘He was a nice guy. Told me a bit about the area. After all, I’m going to be here every day after next month.’

I drove the Opel past ambulances and groups of people deep in discussion — ‘Fucking bastard’, ‘Wog detective?’ — and filtered into the rush-hour traffic.

‘I don’t think.’

‘Hm?’

‘Gas explosion, I don’t think.’

‘Oh, don’t you?’ I said in an offhand way, and gave her a smile saying: you can think anything you like, I’m not going to lose my temper. Unfortunately she didn’t mind in the least how or if I smiled at her.

‘First Gregor and whole hostel smashed up, then you drive off look at new office?’

‘It was on my way. Why not?’

‘I don’t think. You covered with dirt. And you think Ahrens because of Gregor. And then we drive back just the same way.’

And you can go take a running jump, thought the latest member of the Bockenheim League to save the White Man.

Which was more likely to discourage her, yet more proof that her mother’s boss was not exactly a scrupulous negotiator in his business affairs, or a detective who, she was bound to think, was lying to her?

I told her the truth. Not a trace of hysteria.

‘Stupid that with office,’ she said. ‘But with Ahrens, that your problem. I have my problem, and I can pay. You look for my mother first is agreement.’

So far I hadn’t asked her, and I didn’t really want to know either, but now I did think for a moment of what she might have gone through during the Bosnian war. Perhaps by comparison she thought all this fuss about an office blown to pieces was just hysterical shit for those who lived in a land where people drove Mercedes.

‘… and of course I’ll keep my word. Don’t worry.’

‘Good. But with office, why lie?’

‘Because your mother is probably with Ahrens, and I didn’t want you to be afraid.’

She thought about that.

‘Understand. But I not afraid. My mother is strong.’

Yes, sweetheart, but obviously not strong enough to get home to you last Sunday, and certainly not as strong as knives, knuckledusters and guns, and when Ahrens hears — as he’ll have heard by now — that I took you away from the hostel with me, he doesn’t have to be a genius to work out a nice little blackmail move appealing to my professional honour, and then we both have a problem. Because I’m not quite so honourable as to hand myself over in exchange for your mother, and get shot down.

Instead I said, ‘I’m sure she is. I only have to look at her daughter.’

‘Look at her d.?’ she began, before she understood, and for the first time since my appearance in Schmidtbauer’s office her pouting lips curved into a smile. ‘Yes, we all strong people.’ And after a pause, sounding almost annoyingly confident, ‘Will be nice when my mother back. You like her too.’

‘I certainly will,’ I agreed. And I registered, to my surprise, that my heart changed its rhythm and skipped a couple of beats.

Ten minutes later we drew up outside my flat, and if I had not quite admitted my fears to myself, I felt very relieved all the same at the sight of the building standing there, not shattered by any bomb. My flat might be badly heated, it might have woodchip wallpaper, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether I preferred the sound of Heino or Sting coming through the walls, but by comparison with my ex-office I liked it. Slibulsky had often asked me why I didn’t find myself something nicer than this two-room coffin in a new building. But I’d never yet thought of any kind of flat to suit me better than the two-room coffin. Some people liked to wear check suits, others drank Fanta with fish. And I’d once seen someone perfectly happily dancing to a German-language cover version of Stairway to Heaven. I’d grown up in flats in new buildings. The angular, low-ceilinged surroundings, always smelling slightly musty of glue or cleaning fluids, gave me the kind of feeling others get from the smell of Christmas baking.

When I’d showered, put clean sheets on the bed for Leila, shown her the bathroom, given her towels, and in reply to her question had told her, to her satisfaction, how many cable channels my TV set received, I ordered enough casserole, cheese and salad from a Turkish restaurant for a whole party of truck drivers. Then I poured myself a vodka, and while soft splashing and bubbling sounds came through the bathroom door I rang my caretaker-greengrocer friend.

‘Oh, Herr Kayaya!’ he greeted me cheerily down the phone. At first I thought I should take this as the sign of a night with a tart ahead, and because Leila was here I was almost about to ask him to turn the volume down a little today. But then I realised that we were speaking on the phone for the first time since our west-of-Thuringia-alliance pact, and that he was probably just keen on this form of communication because it could be relied on to exclude any eye contact. I was used to the innocently proffered curtailment of my name. It was among the last when-are-you-going-to-go-home tricks that he still allowed himself from time to time.

‘How can I help you?’

‘Well, listen, I don’t like this, but I have to tell you.’ I paused, and heard his breath halting slightly. ‘As you know, I’m a private detective, so now and then I have to deal with people who… well, people one would rather not have to deal with, know what I mean?’

He hesitated before a cautious, ‘Well, not really,’ came over the line, and definitely any other answer would have been a joke.

‘Then let me put it bluntly.’ I cleared my throat. ‘I’m talking about pimps, or to be precise a pimping gang. Tough guys, Russians, Mafia members. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Russian Mafia.’

‘Er…’ He swallowed.

‘For instance,’ I said, helping him out, ‘that massacre in the upmarket brothel a few years back, ten prostitutes dead and about a dozen of their clients, I don’t recollect the exact figures — that was the Russian Mafia. Or the men who arranged the call-girl orgy last autumn and then tried to leave without paying the bill and as a result… well, it was in all the papers. Why I’m calling you now is because, in connection with an ongoing investigation, I was speaking to one of the bosses today, and when I gave him my address so that he could send me something… well, he looked really grim. He finally said, and he didn’t sound good: there’s a swine lives in that building beat up my best little floozy…’ By now the other end of the line sounded as if I were phoning a tomb. ‘Well, that’s the kind of way he speaks. Anyway, then I asked him for a description of this… er, swine — I mean, it seemed just about certain he must be one of my neighbours, and naturally I wanted to warn whoever it was…’ I took a deep breath and then went on firmly, ‘I’m really sorry, and I’m sure there’s some mistake, but the description he gave me fitted you exactly…’ I stopped for a moment. ‘Hello?’

I heard a distant noise, human in physical origin but sounding more mechanical. Like the final breath escaping a corpse.

‘Are you still there?’

The corpse groaned. Then it said, almost in a whisper, ‘It can’t be true… please, believe me, I…’

‘That’s just how I reacted. My neighbour the greengrocer — it can’t be true! I mean, we both know that I know, and I entirely understand — we all do as nature demands, don’t we? — I understand that you have, let’s say, visitors now and then.’

‘Well… er…’

‘You don’t have to tell me anything, really you don’t. And you can rely on me not to tell anyone about it, so far as that’s in my power.’

‘Thank you, Herr Kayankaya, oh dear, this is all very unpleasant…’

Kayankaya! And uttered with perfect fluency. I thought of the discipline it must have cost him to get my name wrong in front of me all these years.

‘But it doesn’t have to be. I’m sure this will all turn out to be a misunderstanding. For now, however, I’m afraid I must advise you to keep a sharp eye open for anyone approaching this building. Especially at night. As I see it, these people will either try to throw a bomb into your flat or your shop, or send a bunch of thugs. They’re acting according to their lights: leave a bruise on my girl and I’ll put you in a wheelchair.’

‘But I didn’t leave any bruises!’ he burst out. ‘I didn’t even — I mean…’ He was gasping in panic. ‘Didn’t even do anything unusual. Understand? Perfectly normal, and always with a condom. And sometimes we just talked!’

Yes, of course: Heino belting it out and groaning fit to shake my bed, and the two of you were just talking!

‘Like I said, I’m sure it will all be cleared up. But I do insist that you must call me at once, even in the middle of the night, if any stranger tries getting into your shop or through the front door of this building. I’d say — well, my instinct tells me — the front door’s more likely.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to call the police?’

‘You know what the police are like! By the time they arrive you’ll have been beaten to a pulp long since, and the thugs will be back in Uzbekistan or somewhere. Quite apart from the questions you’d have to answer then. And the police don’t do it discreetly, they bawl you out in the middle of the front hall, what filth were you up to with that poor Russian girl? I mean, think of it, maybe before supper time…’

That corpse-like noise again.

‘No, no. You just call me, and I’ll be down at once. I know how to deal with these people, don’t you worry.’

He stammered a bit more about how he couldn’t make all this out, I told him to make a large pot of strong coffee for the night ahead of him, then we rang off, and it looked as if Leila and I could sleep easy.

A little later the front door bell rang. Once I’d convinced myself by looking out of the window that I wouldn’t be letting in any thick-lipped Hessian or a killer with his face powdered white, I pressed the door opener. Soon after that I was taking delivery of a bag the size of a laundry basket, full of polystyrene boxes and aluminium foil containers. I laid the sofa table, found a bottle of mineral water for Leila, poured myself more vodka, and tried working out a plan for the next few days.

The Croatian economic delegation was arriving on Saturday, and if Zvonko had been telling me the truth the Croatian head of the Army of Reason was among them. By then I had to find out where the fillet-steak banquet cooked up by Zvonko’s uncle would take place. A nice cosy evening with all leading members of the Army — there could hardly be a better moment to embark on final hostilities, along with the Albanian and his chain-wearing followers. The question was, what was I going to do for my new client until Saturday? If I wasn’t to endanger the bosses’ meeting, I must go underground for the next few days. I wanted Ahrens to believe that the attack on my office had sent me running from the field of battle. Which incidentally also decreased the danger of my being blackmailed into a swap: detective exchanged for detective’s client’s mother. For the moment, then, there was only one thing I could do for Leila: find out on the quiet whether her mother really was with Ahrens. Either of her own free will because, as Frau Schmidtbauer said, she was ‘the worst of them all’ and a tart who’d seized her chance to get her hands on some of Ahrens’s takings, or alternatively under duress. Presumably she didn’t look too different from her daughter, and perhaps Ahrens was keeping her in some cellar as his safari partner.

I drank some vodka and lit a cigarette. The idea that Leila’s mother had been Ahrens’s sex slave since Sunday, for some reason, appealed to me even less than such very unappealing ideas normally do. Of course she could just have been picked up by the police while travelling on public transport without a ticket. An eager-beaver cop, and as a refugee she’d have landed in jail. But suppose Ahrens really was keeping her prisoner? Was I to leave that state of affairs alone until Saturday? Because of two guys who were now worm fodder?

The bathroom door opened, and out came — what the hell was going on here? — a belly dancer. She wore a white blouse printed with glittery flowers, low-slung baggy golden-silk trousers, a kind of belt with gold coins hanging from it, and brightly embroidered slippers. The coin belt sat loosely around her bare hips, hanging down in front like a letter V. When Leila moved, it jingled, and the point of the V swung against the spot between her legs like a gentle tip-off.

What was the idea? A local history and folklore show? Carnival time? Seduction? She came into the room a little gingerly and looked expectantly at me.

‘Good heavens.’ I gave her a friendly smile. ‘Anything planned for this evening?’

‘Planned?’

‘I mean, are you going out dancing, or to the funfair or something?’

She stopped and looked at me in astonishment. The way you’d look in astonishment at the feeble-minded. Then she suddenly appeared to be gazing right through me, let her shoulders droop, shuffled over to the sofa, sighed, ‘Supper?’ and sank into the cushions, jingling.

‘Yes, that’s right, supper.’ Had she expected applause? Did she want to put on some sort of performance? Or did she perhaps think, on account of experiences she might have had with proselytising workers in the hostel, that you had only to wear some kind of folk costume in the land where people drove Mercedes for the natives to fall about in ecstasies at the idea of cultural exchange? It must be something like this, I imagined, when your own kids came home from school with the nutcrackers or candlesticks they’d made in handicraft lessons. Or was there something I didn’t quite get here?

‘Well, I for one haven’t eaten since this morning, and as far as I know you haven’t eaten since midday either. And after a day like this…’ I nodded at her, filled our plates, and ignoring her elaborate lack of interest told her to tuck in.

Perhaps she simply wasn’t hungry, or she didn’t like the casserole, or girls of her age nourished themselves on lettuce leaves — oh, not too many, for goodness’ sake — but anyway, eating supper turned out to be a one-sided and thus oppressive business.

‘No appetite?’ I asked after I’d shovelled the first few spoonfuls down myself.

Leila leaned back on the sofa, kicking off the embroidered slippers and bracing her bare feet against the table, and twirled a little green stalk of something in her fingers. Without looking up, she murmured, ‘No appetite?’

‘Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want to eat?’

‘Smell like home cooking.’

‘Then you have pretty good cooking at home,’ I heard myself saying, like one of those adults I sometimes saw on kids’ TV programmes on mornings when I had a hangover, and who always made me wonder whether there was a soul in the world over three years old who didn’t take an instant dislike to that stupidly affable tone.

Eyebrows raised pityingly, Leila gave me a brief sideways glance, then looked back at her little green stalk and audibly breathed out.

‘OK, then tell me what you’d rather smell. After all, you must eat something in the next few days.’

‘Why must?’

Why must…? My spoon stopped suspended in the air, halfway between plate and mouth. Defiant, cheeky, outrageous — yes, all very well, but certainly there wasn’t ever a minute in my life reserved for this.

‘Because people have to eat if they’re not going to die of starvation,’ I grunted, putting the spoon in my mouth.

‘I look nice?’

‘Look nice? Yes, you do look nice. You’re beautiful,’ I told her, hoping to make her forget my botched reaction to her big entrance as a belly dancer. ‘But if you carry on like this you’ll soon be nothing but a beautiful skeleton.’

‘You like better fat slut, hm?’

‘Fat slut… look, who gives you lot German lessons in that hostel?’

‘I self.’

‘You yourself? What from? Off the walls of public toilets?’

‘Porn.’

‘What?’

‘Boys in hostel have films and book. I have book too, The Sperm Huntresses.’

‘Oh…’ I tried to assume as down-to-earth an expression as possible. At the same time I registered that the spoon in my hand was stirring the casserole in a slightly manic way, as if of its own volition. ‘Um… all that’s kind of a specialised vocabulary. What about if you just want to go and buy rolls or something?’

Very slowly, she turned her head, looked at me from under drooping eyelids, and suddenly began to laugh. Loud, hearty, engaging laughter. No doubt about it, there was something here I didn’t get.

When she’d finished laughing, she asked, ‘We watch films?’

‘Er… what kind of films?’

‘Films with my mother, of course, moron.’

Moron. Was that out of the porn book too? Fuck me, moron?

Relieved by the change of subject, I pointed my spoon across the room. ‘The video recorder’s over there.’

At school I regularly got such bad marks in foreign languages that they were a joke — would I have paid more attention if the languages had been taught in porn? Maybe I’d be working with the United Nations now.

Laden up to her chin, Leila came back from the bedroom, made her way past me balancing about fifteen video cassettes and knelt down in front of the VCR.

‘Hey, I only want to know what she looks like. I’m not planning to write a doctoral thesis on her.’

‘Doctoral thesis?

Yes, well, The Sperm Huntresses… ‘If we’re going to watch all these videos we’ll be here till tomorrow evening.’

‘I play just few nice ones, OK?’

‘Play some where I can get a good look at your mother. What is all this stuff?’

‘Birthday, wedding, holiday, my first school day, all that: my grandma, my grandpa, my mother in garden, my father ride bike but only on one wheel. We often go out of city. And then is wedding. I begin with wedding, OK?’

‘Why the wedding?’

‘Because my mother much in it. And I like it.’

‘What’s your mother’s first name?’

‘Stasha.’

For the first ten minutes almost nothing appeared on the screen but cars, and tables laid for a meal. Every guest was filmed arriving, and every guest was sitting in a car on arrival, and there were a great many guests. And a great many tables laid for them. Extensive panoramic shots followed: stone-built cottages, olive trees, wild meadows, then the farm where the wedding was being held, along with its interior courtyard and a bonfire over which three men waving at the camera and drinking to each other from bottles were turning five sheep on spits. Leila sat on the floor, leaning forward and concentrating. She had firmly taken possession of the remote control and thus any chance of fast-forwarding, and she supplied me with names and background information. She laughed at the sight of many of the faces, others made her knit her brows, and as two puppies now and then scampered across the picture she made coaxing noises as if calling to them.

‘There, look!’ She pointed to a little cherry tree. ‘Is planted for my birthday, real birthday, now tree is tall as a house.’

‘Hm, yes.’ Of course it was touching to see Leila almost getting into the onscreen picture, what with the attitude she assumed and the way she looked at it. But the vodka was beginning to take effect, a cherry tree was a cherry tree, and the cameraman had either had a few drinks himself or felt called to higher things in the world of cinema. Anyway, his camera dwelt on even the cherry tree for the amazing length of the time it took to smoke half a cigarette.

‘Who’s the cameraman?’

‘Friend of my father. But is not so good. Usually my father take pictures. Was first at home to have camcorder. He take many films. And he take photos and he paint and he make lamps, funny lamps made from old pots, and he…’

‘Can ride a cycle on only one wheel.’

‘Yes, too. My father is crazy man.’

The video finally moved on from the cherry tree. The bridal couple drove up in a flower-bedecked car. The party applauded, a combo began playing a mixture of village music and gypsy marches, doors were opened, two bare legs slipped out of the darkness, and there she was: slender, black-haired, very bright-eyed and looking if she had got into the wrong video. End of the World 1992 or Christmas with My Mother-in-Law — that’s the kind of thing her expression would have suited. Before she got right out of the car she leaned into it again, and her head jerked. Then she straightened up, brushed something off her shoulder, and turned to the waiting guests with a smile as if she had just discovered that her fiance still had ongoing relationships with most of the female guests. Or as if someone had short-changed her on her wedding outfit; she wore only a short white dress, white sandals and a pearl necklace.

For a couple of seconds everyone hesitated. Even the combo seemed to play several bars of repeats. But finally a man stepped out of the surrounding crowd, went up to Leila’s mother, hugged and kissed her, and soon I saw the backs of head after head. Half a courtyard full of guests wanted her to greet them. So far as anyone could see amidst all the separate embraces, Leila’s mother wasn’t exactly on the point of bubbling over with beguiling charm, but as the ritual went on her expression at least thawed sufficiently for the guests not to feel they had to apologise for being there at all.

After the backs of about fifteen heads, the cameraman changed the angle of his shot and zoomed in on her face. It was more fragile and finely drawn but also harder than her daughter’s. Thin, caramel-coloured skin, rather small, rather delicate bones, and light green eyes that seemed almost transparent. On the other hand her gaze, both cold and inquiring, and a hint of future wrinkles that wouldn’t look as if they were only laughter lines suggested someone who at least knew what she didn’t want, and made sure she didn’t get. The only one hundred per cent resemblance between mother and daughter, so far as anyone could tell from a video, was in their mouths. Leila’s mother’s mouth was saying something now, laughing almost wholeheartedly from time to time, and constantly kissing proffered cheeks.

It wasn’t as if I were picturing… well, who knows what? I liked Leila, and there was certainly nothing to dislike about her mother, or not for me. But it was only a film, and I was at home, and finding the woman was part of my job — until she looked into the camera. I’ve no idea why, but her eyes looked out of the shot so long and so steadfastly that for a moment, no doubt a vodka-fuelled moment, I was convinced she was looking at me. Me and no one else. And I was looking back.

‘You like, OK?’

‘Hm?’

‘My mother — you like?’

‘Yes, er, but she…’, I said, not exactly stammering, although my tongue and my lips had been known to function better, ‘. but to all appearances she doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself very much…’

‘To appearances…?’

‘I mean, at first it looked as if something was getting on her nerves.’

‘Yes, I know…’ Leila dismissed this. ‘She want small, quiet party. But my father give big surprise. Lots of people there, my mother not like that. See that old cow?’ She pointed to a young woman of about twenty, tossing her head in pique at something. ‘She hate my mother. But my father invite everyone. Is always like that.’

And now the man she was talking about came into the picture. Objectively, you had to admit, he looked dazzling. Large, soft, brown eyes, a firm chin, straight nose, and a pop singer’s haircut, shoulder-length, airily casual, it would probably fall perfectly into place even in a hurricane. Holding hands with a roughly five-year-old Leila, he made his way from guest to guest, greeting them, kissing them, evidently an amusing character. At least, people were laughing at him, and when they weren’t he kept on laughing himself. He accompanied his remarks or jokes with sweeping gestures and a changing play of expression, expansive as everything else about him. If he hugged someone he seemed to be taking a run-up to do it, in kissing he smacked his lips first as if a kiss were more ardent the more obviously it was delivered, and when he picked up Leila for her to be kissed too he raised and waved her in the air like a trophy. The clumsiness that went along with this and was not, I thought, entirely spontaneous, presumably appeared ‘cute’ to a large part of the female sex.

‘Is me,’ came an impatient voice from the floor.

‘I recognised you at once! I kept wondering if I’d ever seen such a pretty little girl before.’ I didn’t want to inflict any more belly-dancer disappointments.

‘Hm.’ A self-evident observation. ‘With my father. My father very funny. You see?’

‘Yes, anyone can see that.’

‘But…’ She stopped, and then her voiced tipped over, suddenly had a touch of desperation in it. ‘But like I said, has big mouth too. So in prison. Because soldiers not see jokes, they.’

‘Only hear the big mouth, right?’

‘But if my mother do good work for Ahrens, my father get out.’

‘Did your mother say that?’

Leila nodded. ‘And so another thing: if my mother gone…’

‘Your father stays in prison.’

‘Uh-huh.’

She looked at me, downcast. Automatically I promised the kind of thing anyone would promise. ‘I’ll find your mother, you can be sure of that.’

Her eyes went to the floor. ‘You know, sometimes she… well, not angry, but not amused either, like at wedding.’

‘You mean she could get across Ahrens?’

‘Get across?’

‘Annoy him. Tell him he’s an old cunt.’

‘Yes. Like that.’

There was a pause, and I had the impression that Leila was waiting for more assurances that her detective would cope with everything. But for some reason or other I didn’t want to give them. Perhaps out of respect, perhaps out of superstition. Finally we looked back at the screen.

The guests were now drinking aperitifs. The cameraman went from group to group, filming everyone as if for the records, and many of them felt obliged to put on some kind of silly show in front of the lens. I wondered whether Leila was more worried about her mother or her father. Since he had come on screen there was pain in her eyes. Suppose her mother had simply run away? No more child, no more husband riding bikes on one wheel, a new life, new happiness?

I lit a cigarette. After a while Leila came over to the sofa, sat down beside me and took one too. The first sheep was being taken off the spit in the video, and people were beginning to gather around the tables, full of anticipation — but there was no fun in it for us. Lost in thought, Leila watched her smoke rising, and all I wanted to see was her mother, who had apparently left the wedding party for the time being. But instead of switching off the box and thus perhaps providing an opportunity for another conversation leading to more rash promises, I sat where I was, drinking vodka, letting the pictures run past me, thinking of this and that and waiting for Leila to fall asleep.

After finishing her cigarette she drew her feet up inside the baggy trousers, nestled into the sofa and put her head against my leg. For a moment she looked as if she were weeping secretly into her hands, and I stroked her hair. A little later she was asleep. I carried her into the bedroom, covered her up and put the light out. Alone in the living-room, I wound the video back and looked at her mother again. She really did have very light, very inscrutable eyes and skin you wanted to touch. Then I lay down on the sofa and tried to go to sleep myself. I wasn’t too worried now about what Ahrens might be doing to her. She didn’t look as if trying to force her to do anything would be much fun. And certainly Ahrens had enough on his hands just now without bothering with a reluctant female. Or if she wasn’t reluctant, then I really didn’t need to worry about her.

I tossed and turned for a while, smoked a few more cigarettes in the dark, and finally just stared at the ceiling. From time to time the greengrocer walked around his flat, and Leila twice talked in her sleep. I lay awake feeling strangely peaceful. When I looked at my watch for the last time, it was just before three.