One Man, One Murder

12

“… and I was going to Mannheim today. Haven’t missed a game this year, not one minute. Even in Dortmund, I was there to the very end. And what an end it was. They scored six goals against us-six! Just imagine … After that I was quite fed up, but then-well, I just felt I couldn’t leave the guys in the lurch, just like that. So I kept on going, every Saturday, and now we’ve got the worst behind us. With Bein and Falkenmayer on board, we may even make it to the UEFA Cup next year, or we get the championship, and then we’ll be back on the international scene, and then-” He stopped and looked at the iron bars. Behind them lay an empty landing with green walls and three yellow light fixtures. The shadows cast by the bars divided our cell into narrow segments. Again, no windows. A faucet stuck out of one wall, and next to it there was a dirty white plastic toilet. Seventeen of us were sitting there on iron bedsteads, gray blankets wrapped around our shoulders. People smoked in silence. The women had been locked up in another cell down the hall. Once in a while one of them would call out, and one of the men would answer. It sounded like a conversation between people who were drowning. We had been there for four hours. A female officer had brought us some bread.

This was the deportees’ holding tank at Frankfurt airport. The next flight to Beirut left in four hours. It was a little past three.

I huddled next to the young guy with the brushstrokes under his nose and contemplated the glowing end of my cigarette. His name was Abdullah, he came from South Lebanon, and in four hours he would be on his way back there. In front of us, on the floor, lay a fellow Turk murmuring prayers. Now and again he stopped, raised his head, and explained something to me in Turkish.

Abdullah cracked his knuckles.

“But maybe it’s just the way things balance out. The Eintracht team stays on top, and I go down, or the other way round.”

“So, if you shoot yourself in the head, the Eintracht wins the championship?”

His tongue made clicking sounds against his palate. “Fate is our master.” And, after a glance into the hallway: “No, there really is a law that makes things balance out. For instance-after I passed my college entrance exam, my girlfriend took off. Honest to God.”

I nodded and blew smoke rings. I kept thinking about ways to save these people from their flights. Attorneys, newspapers, church people-as long as I was not allowed to make a phone call because the immigration police believed that they had to put me on the evening flight to Istanbul, it was all pretty pointless.

One of my smoke rings floated right onto the praying fellow’s nose. He looked up, waved his arms furiously, and started talking a mile a minute. Maybe he had asthma? I shrugged and smiled apologetically. When he didn’t stop babbling-my smile was set in concrete by then-Abdullah got irritated and intervened.

“Please get it through your thick skull-he doesn’t understand a word you’re saying. He’s a Turk, all right, but he doesn’t speak Turkish.”

“Is that so? But why? Is he too stupid?” The guy’s upper lip curled disdainfully. “Or is he ashamed?”

His German was almost perfect, and I was annoyed with myself for having tried to communicate with him in a kind of sign language.

“I never learned it, that’s all.”

“What is your father’s name?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“What’s his name?”

“Tarik Kayankaya.”

He waved his hand as if to say, “There you are.” Then he said: “Well, what did I say, you’re a Turk.”

“Amazing. You found that out, just like that?”

“You’re denying your origin!”

“Why don’t you just go on praying a little more? And I’ll stop smoking.”

His index finger shot forward and stopped, trembling, in front of my nose. “Tomorrow night you’ll be back home, and then you won’t be able to pretend you’re German!”

Abdullah spat on the floor. “Yeah, terrific. Then he’ll sit in the joint there, and get punched in the mouth three times a day, but when he gets out after twenty years, he’ll be able to order a cup of coffee in Istanbul in perfect Turkish.”

Abdullah flashed his gold teeth. The pious guy scrutinized him from top to toe, turned up his nose, and hissed: “I won’t be bought. I’d rather be in prison in Turkey than plead for asylum in Germany.”

He had hardly finished when there was some commotion behind us. A Kurd peeled off his blanket, cursing, and crossed two bedsteads to get to the patriot. He looked like a guy who took better care of his fists than of his chin.

“Man, you’re talking shit. You’re talking a bunch of unbelievable shit!”

The Turk replied in Turkish. He must have struck a wrong note: the next moment he was flying through the air, crashing against the wall, and sliding back down to the floor like a wet rag with a nosebleed. A murmur ran through the cell. The Kurd stood in our midst like a commander of armies. His gaze swept the assembly with a “try me” expression. He had to be a body builder or decathlon athlete; in any case, he seemed to enjoy throwing people around, and if the people happened to be Turks, that was even more fun. He just stood there and waited, long enough for the prayer enthusiast to scrape himself off the floor and to reel over to the Kurd again. One might have thought that courageous, but it was undeniably unhealthy, and Abdullah muttered “What a raving idiot!” The Kurd cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, and everyone present realized individually that there would be no joy in intervention. Just as the Kurd got ready for another throw, a door swung open and five cops came marching down the hall. Three men, one woman, and a dog, to be exact. Things got really quiet. The Turk and the Kurd retired into a corner. The patrol of five stopped in front of our cell, and the woman took a piece of paper out of her breast pocket.

“Chatem, Abdullah.”

Abdullah’s brown face turned a cheesy yellow, and I could no longer hear him breathe. The woman put her piece of paper away and unlocked the door. The men and the dog entered the cell. I motioned to Abdullah to remain seated and to keep his trap shut.

“Step forward.”

I got up.

“Come with us.”

“Where to?”

“Your flight leaves in an hour,” the woman explained. She was still standing in the hall. “We told you the wrong flight this afternoon.”

Surrounded by the men and the dog, I left the cell. A murmur arose behind me, some of the men uttered quiet curses. Suddenly a voice called out: “Allah yardimcin olsun!” The door slammed shut, and someone else growled: “He’s on the side of the cops, your Allah.”

My last glimpse of the refugees was the old guy in patent leather shoes. He was loosening his tie.

She had the modest hair pulled back in a bun, the unornamented hands, the compassionate voice and the pale thin-lipped face of a nun, combined with the furtive eyes of a feminist in all-male company. On her, the freshly starched and ironed uniform was as becoming as a cardboard box. Her feet were clad in brown hiking boots, and between her breasts hung a necklace of light blue stones. She played with it whenever she was thinking things over. I sat there for ten minutes, arms crossed on my chest, two cops standing guard behind me, on a wooden chair and watched her search for Abdullah’s passport in several metal cabinets, desk drawers, and file folders. Not a word had been said. On the wall facing me hung a calendar put out by the Border Guard. The picture showed one of its helicopters against a sunset.

I looked at the clock. If she had told the truth, Abdullah’s plane was leaving in forty minutes. To prevent his being on it, I would have to sit here for another half-hour. And the passport had to remain misplaced. It would be even better if she could be distracted from the search. I took care of that.

“May I go to the men’s room?”

“No.”

“I’m supposed to pee in my shoe?”

A washrag landed on my shoulder.

“Let’s keep calm, colleague.”

“Did you hear that, sister? He called me colleague. That’s defamation. Tell the guy-”

“Please, Mr. Chatem …” Her tone reminded me of the kind of whole-wheat pedagogue who is able to smile a student into the ground and out of school. The voice was gentle and understanding, and she moved her arms as if she wanted to embrace me. Everything about her pretended to be soft and warm, but her eyes shone hard and cold as steel: “… if you could just be patient for a moment.”

Although it wasn’t a question, she seemed to be waiting for a reply. I bowed my head: “Sorry, Mrs. Commissar, I’m a little nervous … What are my twenty-seven wives going to say after they haven’t heard from me for such a long time? And my grandfathers, and my mother, oh Allah, my mother! She’ll put me back in the sheep pen, the way she did when I let my brother Hassan play with that hand grenade-”

“Mr. Chatem!”

She slapped the desk with her palm and looked stem. Then she strode past me and hunkered down in front of a cabinet. The ribbed contours of her underwear showed through the fabric of her pants. I turned my head and drawled: “She’s got some hot little panties, doesn’t she, your boss?”

Before one of the brothers could react, she turned, still sitting back on her heels. She hissed at me. “What did you say?”

“I said I’m sure you’re hot to trot, and why don’t we have a little foursome? We’ve got a few minutes, don’t we?”

Her stare lasered into my forehead. She got up slowly and walked toward me. Her left hand played with the necklace.

“What did you say I was?”

“I said you were hot to trot. To fuck. Fuck, or screw …” With a silly grin on my face, I turned to my guards and shouted: “Screw, screw, screw!” Then back to her: “And let me tell you, I’m hung. Back home, the folks call me Ali the Flagpole.”

Her pupils had contracted. I winked at her: “And when I say beam, sweetie, I mean pole.”

She slapped me so fast and so hard that I fell off my chair. While I was still on the floor, the door opened. I raised my head and froze. The tall gray-haired man with the angular face stopped in the doorway and took in the scene. His voice sounded a little hoarse when he asked: “What is going on here?”

“Mr. Chatem has insulted me.”

“Chatem?”

I grabbed the edge of the desk, pulled myself up, brushed off my sleeves. “The sister is referring to me.”

Hottges closed the door, thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked slowly up to me. Once again his cold gray eyes held mine. Without turning away, he said: “Mrs. Henkel, leave the room, please.”

“But, Commissioner, what does that-”

“And take the officers with you.”

By the door, she turned back. “Should I make a reservation for him on the next flight?”

“Just leave!”

After the three had left us alone in the office, I leaned against the edge of the desk and lit a cigarette. Hottges followed my actions with his eyes. Otherwise he was motionless.

“So, what do you know, I did hit the right office yesterday morning, didn’t I? Do you know the reason that Larsson, or Manne, or whatever his name was, gave for transporting the refugees from the villa to the bunker? He claimed that a neighbor had called the police. The same neighbor Klaase wasn’t allowed to tell me about in your office-because you knew it was a hot tip. Even if the rationale for the move was an invention-because the real reason for it was I-Larsson could have found out about the neighbor only from you!”

He had remained stone-faced, but the skin around his nose had paled visibly. Now he looked down, and the muscles around his jaw twitched. I couldn’t tell whether he was about to fold or whether he would try to shut me up. I knocked the ash off my cigarette.

“And that explains why the gang was so well informed about people who had been issued deportation orders. They had it from the horse’s mouth-from you, the man who issues those orders. Inspector Hagebrecht’s key to the bunker was the final clue. I’m sure he is not in on the scheme, but he’s not the kind of guy who would wonder where his superior officer had obtained such a key. What I can’t understand is why your partners didn’t let you know about me? It was really stupid to lock me up in the bunker.”

He was still staring at the floor. Then he turned his back to me and started pacing. “You’re in no position to harm me,” he said. His voice was firm but strained.

“That’s correct. A few refugees hide in a bunker, are discovered by the police, get deported. They are illegal aliens, and from a purely legal point of view, they get what they deserve.” I dropped the butt, stepped on it, lit another one. “Or that would be all there was to it-if I hadn’t found a corpse in Gellersheim.”

He stopped. “A corpse?” Then, haltingly, he resumed his pacing. His face reflected a blend of fright and the confirmation of his worst fears. I nodded. “And even though it’s unlikely that you committed that murder, and even though nothing else can be traced back to you, I can still get you some publicity that won’t smell too sweet. It might even lead to things like suspension, dismissal, loss of pension.”

He had stopped by the window and was looking at the police parking lot and the entrance to the arrival hall. A family returning from vacation in colorful hats, sandals, and socks made their way through the sliding doors. The son was wearing a pair of diving goggles.

Hottges cleared his throat. “How much?”

“Not how much. I want the file.”

“What file?”

“The one you made disappear yesterday morning. The Rakdee file.”

A pause. He looked out the window again. “Is that all?”

“No. Give orders to the effect that none of those people will be deported for the time being; that they get a chance to speak to their attorneys; and that they get some real food brought to their cells.”

He nodded. His expression almost made me feel sorry for him. I gave him a skeptical look. “No need to be so down in the mouth. Until now you’ve always acted the sergeant major. It’s your job to hunt people. But to rob them of their money and jewelry, in cahoots with mobsters-if someone happens to tread on your toes after that, you might as well hang on to the old stiff upper lip.”

When he raised his head again, he had aged years. His eyes were murky, and the angular chin was just a brittle and trembling bone. Then he shouted: “What do you know about it! In cahoots with mobsters! Once in my life, I made a mistake!”

I put out my cigarette. “Should I hazard a guess? Koberle found out about that mistake, and you’ve been on his list of collaborators ever since.”

I pushed off from the desk, went to the door, and put my hand on the doorknob. By the window stood a broken man staring at an empty parking lot.

“Anybody can get involved with crooks, and then get blackmailed by them. But as an immigration officer I find you simply disgusting. That file will be in my mailbox by tomorrow morning. And don’t even think about warning Koberle. If he calls, just tell him I’m on my way to Istanbul. Good day.”