Kismet

Chapter 9

I spent the next two days in bed. No one disturbed my orgy of television, baked beans and chocolate ice cream. Outside it was drizzling, and according to the weather forecast it was going to stay that way for the rest of the week. The cool, damp weather was just right for someone with a swollen face. I got a fright only once, when the racketeer’s mobile alarmed me. A text message said the mobile was going out of circulation at once.

On Tuesday afternoon I felt reasonably all right again, and called the Albanian. We’d met at a billiards tournament five months before, and then drank a couple of aniseed schnapps together. Soon after that I discovered by chance that his two daughters went to the same expensive boarding school as the son of Slibulsky’s tax adviser. From what the tax adviser said, the Albanian’s daughters weren’t having a great time there. Their class teacher obviously thought it educationally valuable to connect their poor school work with their ethnic origin, doing so at regular intervals and in front of the other pupils. Apart from the fact that they had both been born in Frankfurt, and spent more holidays in Florida than Albania, you might have expected that for school fees of two thousand marks a month each, plus extras, you could at least expect teachers who don’t trumpet their own backwoods prejudices. Normally I wouldn’t have thought anything of it — injustice in institutions for the rich elite was not among the things that bothered me. In this case, however, I had an opportunity to improve my relationship with the Albanian. After I’d been through interrogations first by a bodyguard and then by a private secretary about the reason for my call, their boss finally came to the phone. I told him about his daughters’ problems, and judging by what he said this was the first time he’d heard about them. The girls were presumably embarrassed to tell him. As so often when such things happen, it’s the wrong people who feel ashamed. I took care to give the impression that I would continue to keep him up to date with his children’s school lives, and finally he thanked me warmly and actually gave me the number of his mobile. That number could be worth gold in my job. I never knew exactly what happened to the class teacher who also taught the girls German and sports, but a little later he had to give up teaching sports.

I exchanged a few remarks with the Albanian about his daughters, whose marks had improved to a remarkable degree over the last couple of months. Then I told him in rough outline, without mentioning names and places, what I knew about the Army. Not only could he keep his mouth shut surprisingly often for a gangster boss, he could certainly never be called talkative in general either. If he wasn’t discussing his daughters, phoning him was rather like playing tennis up against a wall. His tone of voice changed too. Warm and melodious a moment ago, it now sounded like a warped wooden door being moved back and forth by a slight wind.

‘I need a few more days to find out what its structure is like, who does what where and how much longer this outfit is expected to operate, but then we could strike.’

‘Pick the time and we will.’

‘It’s a small factory. We’d need about forty men to surround it.’

‘Forty.’

‘But we don’t want a bloodbath. You’ll get my information only if you can promise me your people will keep a grip on themselves. We want to stop the Army operating, that’s all.’

‘That’s all, then.’

‘And the boss is my affair.’

‘And the boss is your affair.’

‘OK, then, I’ll be in touch within the next few days.’

‘Within the next few days,’ he replied, but as I was about to ring off I sensed him suddenly hesitating, as if he had to venture into unknown terrain. I kept the receiver to my ear until he finally asked, ‘Who are you working for?’

‘Myself.’

‘Unpaid?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘The Army made me do something I didn’t like at all, and I can’t leave it at that.’

‘Hm,’ he said, and after a pause, ‘If you try taking me for any kind of ride, I’m finished with you. Is that clear?’

‘That’s clear.’

‘Well then, good luck.’

I rang off and remembered how I’d lost to him in the semi-finals of the tournament. A fair opponent, no fooling about, no tricks. The problem was his retinue of henchmen who always had their hands on either their guns or their pricks in their trouser pockets, and were constantly on the point of taking out one or the other to let fly with it. But he’d promised they would do no more than I wanted, and a boss like the Albanian really couldn’t afford to break his promises. That kind of thing got around, and it was bad for business. Or so I hoped, anyway.

I looked at the time. One-thirty, a good time to have had an accident at work and come off my first shift of the day, trudging round dogs’ homes.

‘Hello, Frau Beierle.’

‘Herr Kayankaya — dear me, you sound as if you have a bad cold!’

‘Well, I had a little accident. Just now, in Oberursel, I thought I’d found Susi at last, and I went into the pen. But it was a different dog, one that likes jumping at people’s faces. And well, it broke my nose.’

‘Oh, my God!’

‘It’s not too bad, but I have to go to the doctor now, and maybe I can get back to searching for Susi at the end of the week.’

‘Of course, of course! You must look after yourself. Take your time. Injuries to the head should never be taken lightly.’

‘I’m just sorry for Susi. Now she’ll have to be shut up longer in one of those awful pens.’

‘Oh, Susi will be all right. It’s really amazing how many animal rescue centres there are around Frankfurt.’

‘Yes, amazing.’

‘Because people are so cruel, specially in this town. Or that’s my opinion, anyway.’

‘An interesting opinion. Although after today’s incident I have to say,’ I added, chuckling hard, ‘the animals in this town can be quite cruel too.’

‘Of course, you poor thing! I mustn’t keep you here talking. You go off to the doctor, and then go to bed.’

‘Thank you for being so understanding, Frau Beierle.’

‘Oh, never mind that. And if you need anything, just call me.’

We said goodbye, and I wondered when the day would come on which she realised that her bow-wow was probably never going to come back with my assistance. And I also wondered how much longer I wanted to play the pop-eyed Turk for her benefit. Because of course the Islamic scholar had picked me from the yellow pages on account of my name, and of course when we first met she had explained to me at length what the Turks were like, myself included. Industrious, proud, strong on family values, keeping up old traditions, the secret rulers of Asia — in short, I was a whole great nation in myself. Not for the first time, I was fascinated to discover what having a good education and a university degree did not mean. But as I’d been out of a job for weeks, and as my normal daily retainer fee had automatically doubled the moment I set foot in her villa with its large garden, I didn’t shake her belief that she had practically invented the Ottomans. Only when she played me some appalling music, and I could see from her face that she was obviously expecting me to drum along with it or do a little dance, did I suggest that even in a people who appeared to be of one and the same origin, individual tastes might differ. Whereupon she said I didn’t really know what I liked any more, Western values and the Western lifestyle had distorted my true identity. To keep her sweet, I did her a small favour when we came to the business part of the deal: I tripled my retainer, just like that, and let her haggle until she beat me down to double the retainer, as if I usually did that kind of thing. Her small, knowing smile as she wrote me her cheque seemed to be saying: you see, that’s how the Orientals live. Once I had the Army business behind me and set out looking for Susi again, supposing I actually found her I’d have to find out how the Orientals felt about rewards. Perhaps there was some nice fifteenth-century proverb: find my watchdog and I will shower you with gold.

I made fresh coffee, drank a cup, dressed, cleared away the bottles from inside the door, and went to the supermarket. The manager there told me that the Ahrens company had stopped delivering three months ago for unknown reasons. When I asked whether Ahrens Soups had sold well, he said, ‘No worse than other products of the same kind.’

On the way home I bought all the newspapers with local Frankfurt sections, and thought of the deserted corridors and offices in Ahrens’s admin building. Obviously the place was closed, and not just on Saturdays. But then why did it employ a receptionist? In addition one who thought so little of the way the wind was blowing there that she’d help an enemy of her boss to get away?

At home I leafed through the local sections, and found the reports I had been more or less expecting. Serious accident in Kaiserstrasse. In circumstances that are still not clear, a car burned out on Saturday night near the station. Both male passengers died in the fire… Shoot-out in the station district. Four shots woke residents of Windmuhlstrasse on Sunday at four in the morning… and so on… one dead… hit and run accident, driver failed to stop. Not far from the station a grey Mercedes rammed a car parked by the roadside on Sunday evening, and then drove off, according to eyewitness accounts, in the direction of Sachsenhausen. Those in the car got off with only a scare.

If the Army went on like this, even an authoritarian like the Albanian wouldn’t be able to keep his men from taking a proper revenge for long.

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading the sports sections and having a nap. Around seven I dressed and undid the bandage. The swelling around my nose had gone down, leaving a blue and yellow bruise behind. It wasn’t pretty, but wouldn’t make people turn and run. I put a pistol in my pocket and set off in my Opel for Offenbach.