“So?”
“She thought my suggestion was great. But come to think of it, why don’t you send my eldest to Strasbourg? It’s not really a detective job—it’s more like historical research—and now that he’s spent three semesters in Dijon, his French is better than mine. He passed his exams but has time on his hands, as he’s not starting his job at the industrial tribunal till May.”
“Does he still live in Jungbusch?”
“Yes. Give him a call.”
10
So funny you could split your sides
The following day I didn’t even try to get in touch with Welker. Instead I turned my attention to the police investigation into his wife’s murder.
“Of course we have a file on him. The Swiss sent us their final report, not to mention that we did our own bit of investigating. Just a minute.” Chief Inspector Nägelsbach would usually have hesitated a little longer before letting me peek into a file. “By the way, have you noticed any changes here?” he asked after he returned with the file.
I looked at him and then glanced around the room. There was a pile of sealed boxes beneath the window. “Are you moving?”
“I’m heading home. I’m gathering everything that belongs to me that I’ll be taking along. I’m retiring.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
He laughed. “I am. I’ll be sixty-two this April. When the government came up with the pension-at-sixty-two plan my wife made me promise I’d stop working then. Starting next week I’ll be taking all the vacation days I have coming. There you go.” He pushed the folder across the desk toward me.
I began to read. Bertram and Stephanie Welker were seen together for the last time the morning they climbed up to the hut above the Roseg Glacier. On the afternoon of the following day Welker turned up alone at the Coaz chalet below the glacier. That morning he had found a note from his wife saying she was out hiking on the glacier and would meet up with him at eleven o’clock, halfway up the path he intended to take around the glacier. He had set out right away, at first waited for her at the halfway mark, and then ventured out onto the glacier, where he started looking for her. Finally he made his way as fast as he could down to the chalet and called the rescue service. The search went on for a number of weeks.
“How can one not find a body on a glacier?” I asked Nägelsbach.
“On a glacier? You mean in a glacier. She must have fallen into one of the countless crevasses, and since no one knew exactly where she’d been hiking, they couldn’t look for her in a specific area, as they would have in other cases.”
“What a gruesome idea: the woman lies buried in the ice, her youth and beauty preserved, and when they find her someday in the distant future, her aged husband is called in to identify her.”
“My wife said that, too. She says something like that happens in some novel. But who’s to say it will happen? Think of the Stone Age mummy from the Ötztal Alps, or Hannibal’s soldiers, or those of the German emperors, or General Souvarov. Think of the Bernadine monks and all the early British mountain climbers. They were lost in the glaciers a lot longer than Frau Welker and have yet to be found.”
I’d never seen my old friend like this. I must have stared at him in surprise.
“What you want to know is whether I think he murdered her. The fact that he had her note means nothing. There was no date on it, so it could be old. That he was at his wit’s end when he turned up at the chalet doesn’t mean anything, either. One would have to be quite a monster not to be a nervous wreck after killing one’s own wife. What’s in his favor is that one can’t be sure a glacier near Saint Moritz would be free of hikers, even early in the morning. Pushing one’s wife into a crevasse in the glacier is about as discreet as pushing her off a bridge onto an autobahn.”
“If there’s enough money at stake—”
“One takes bigger risks, I know. But then both had made more than enough money since their takeover of the Sorbian Cooperative Bank.”
“Since what?”
“After the Berlin Wall fell, the Weller and Welker bank took over the Sorbian Cooperative Bank, a former East German institution based in Cottbus, with local branches nearby. The takeover was a success, not to mention that every investment people make now is supported by more grants than you can mention, all the way from Berlin to Brussels.”
“But a man might also be ready to take a bigger risk when love or hatred—”
“No, there was no sign at all that he might have had a mistress, or she a lover. The two of them had been in love since they were children, and they were happily married. Have you seen pictures of her? A dark beauty, with eyes full of fire and spirit. It’s true that beautiful women—and especially beautiful women—get murdered. But not by happy, loving husbands.”
“Brigitte thinks she might have run away.”
“My wife suggested that, too.” He laughed. “What we have here is a touch of feminine instinct. Yes, she could have run away.”
I waited to hear how the police followed up that lead and what they’d found, what his view of the likelihood of such a possibility was. When he said nothing, I asked him outright.
“She could be God knows where. It might not be the most charming way to leave a man, but then, no way of leaving someone is charming.”
I’d known Nägelsbach since he had started working as a bailiff at the Heidelberg public prosecutor’s office. He is a quiet, serious, thoughtful police officer. His hobby is building matchstick sculptures, models ranging from the Cologne Cathedral and Neuschwanstein Castle to the Bruchsal prison. He is often in a good mood and likes a good joke. Dark humor, satire, and sarcasm are foreign to him.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He avoided my eyes and looked out the window. The trees were still bare, but their buds were on the verge of bursting open. He raised his hands and let them fall again. “I’m up for the Federal Cross of Merit.”
“Well, congratulations!”
“Congratulations? It’s true I was delighted at first. But …” He took a deep breath. “We’ve got this new chief. One of those energetic, efficient young men. Needless to say, he doesn’t know us like the old chief did. But he’s not particularly interested in us, either. So he walks up to me and says: ‘Herr Nägelsbach, you’ll be getting a Federal Cross of Merit when you leave. I’ll be needing a few pages on you.’ ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know anything about you, but I’m sure you know all there is to know. I want you to write down for me why you deserve the ribbon in your buttonhole.’ Can you imagine?”
“That’s what new young bosses are like nowadays.”
“I told him there was no way I’d do that, to which he replied that it was an official order.”
“And?”
“He just laughed and went on his way.”
“The ‘official order’ bit is just a silly joke.”
“The whole thing’s a silly joke. Federal Crosses of Merit, official orders, the years I sat here, the cases I worked on: so funny, you could split your sides. I realized that much too late. If I had realized it earlier I could have had a lot more fun.”
“Haven’t we always known that?”
“Known what?” He was hurt and defensive.
“That we could have had more fun in life.”
“But …” He didn’t go on. He looked out at the trees again, then at his desk, then at me. The hint of a smile flitted over his mouth. “Yes, perhaps I have always known it.” He pushed his chair back and got up. “I’ve got to head out. Did you jot down old Herr Weller’s address? The Augustinum retirement home in Emmertsgrund. The other parents are dead. By the way, he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. He just some times acts like he does when you ask him a question he doesn’t like.”
11
Quick cash
Emmertsgrund, Heidelberg’s newest residential development, lies on a slope above Leimen. The attractive apartments of the Augustinum retirement home face westward and have a view of the Rhine plain, j
ust as the beautiful hospital rooms of the Speyerer Hof Clinic do. A cement factory lies at the foot of the hill, emitting pale, fine dust.
Old Herr Weller and I sat by the window. The two rooms of his apartment were filled with his own furniture, and before we sat down he told me the story of every piece. He also told me about his neighbors, with whom he didn’t get along; the food there, which he didn’t like; and the roster of social activities from folk dancing to silk painting, in which he wasn’t interested. His failing eyesight prevented him from driving, so he was stuck in the Augustinum and felt lonely. I don’t think he really believed that I was collecting donations for the German War Graves Commission, but he was lonely enough not to care who I was. What’s more, we’d been both wounded in action in the Poland Campaign back in the war.
I invented a son, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson, and he told me about his family, and about the death of his daughter.
“Don’t your son-in-law and grandchildren come to see you?” I asked him.
“He hasn’t come since Stephanie died. I don’t hold it against him, but he does have a bad conscience. As for my grandkids, they’re off at school in Switzerland.”
“Why should he have a bad conscience?”
“He should have looked after her. And he shouldn’t have gone in for all that nonsense with that former East German bank.”
While old Herr Weller had been complaining about his living conditions, there was a hint of whining in his voice. Now he spoke resolutely, and I felt the authority he must have once commanded.
“I thought it was all milk and honey with those banks in our new eastern states,” I said.
“Let me tell you something, young man”—he was my age, but to my amazement actually addressed me as “young man”—“you don’t have a background in banking, so I don’t expect you to know any of this. The reason our bank survived was because it downsized, not because it expanded. We man age fortunes, advise investors, supervise funds, and do all that on a high international level. The few local people in Schwetzingen who still have accounts with us don’t really fit the profile anymore. We serve them for old times’ sake. And the clients of the Sorbian Cooperative Bank don’t fit the profile, either, even if there are a lot of them; even if little and often fills the purse.”
“Your son-in-law doesn’t see eye-to-eye with you on this?”
“Him?” he bleated, laughing abruptly and contemptuously. “I’ve no idea what he can see, or if he can see at all, for that matter. He’s a talented boy, but the bank’s not his thing and never has been. He studied medicine, and old Welker ought to have let him become a doctor instead of forcing him into banking because of family tradition—as if things as they now stand still have anything to do with family tradition! It’s all about fast money, new friends, new employees—I’ve no idea if the investment and funds business still exists the way Welker and I set it up. That’s how far things have come: I have no idea what’s going on.”
Before I left he showed me a picture of his daughter. She was not the opulent beauty I’d imagined from seeing the photograph of her grandaunt at Schuler’s place, or from Nägelsbach’s description. She had a slender face, straight dark hair, and stern lips, and though her eyes had fire and soul, they also had an alert intelligence. “She was a banker and had studied law. She inherited the sixth sense for finances that our family developed over the centuries. If she were still alive the bank wouldn’t be in the state it’s in.” He took his out wallet and gave me fifty marks. “For the war graves.”
I drove home by way of Schwetzingen. The waitress at the café greeted me as an old regular. It was three thirty: time for a hot chocolate and a marble cake, and the end of a Friday workday at the Weller & Welker bank. At four o’clock the four young women emerged from the bank. They stood there for a moment and said good-bye to one another, and then two went off along the old moat, the other two in the direction of the train station. At four thirty the three young men appeared and went along the moat in the opposite direction. I left a twenty-mark bill on the table, waved to the waitress, and followed them. They walked quite a distance, past Messplatz and under the railroad tracks to an area where there was a car wash, a home-improvement outlet, and a liquor store. They went into an eight-story hotel and I could see them being given room keys at the front desk.
Back at the office, the light on my answering machine was blinking. Babs’s son, Georg, had found my message and wanted to drop by: Would Sunday or Monday be better for me? Brigitte wanted us to go to the movies Saturday evening. The third call was from Schuler. “I’m sorry if I was a bit abrupt on the phone. I’ve had a chat with Bertram and Gregor, and I know now that you didn’t say anything bad about me. It turns out Bertram has had a little too much on his plate of late, but he’ll be dropping by later. Come and see me again: Perhaps next week? Maybe Monday?” He laughed, but it was not a joyful laugh. “There’s life in the old badger yet. He’s caught himself a fat goose.”
12
Chock-full
That weekend spring assured us it meant business, that it had come to stay and would not be chased away by any more ice or snow. In the Luisenpark the deck chairs were out on the lawns, and I was dozing away, wrapped in a blanket as if all was well with the world and my heart was sound. Later, when Brigitte and I came out of the movie theater, the full moon lit up the streets and squares. Some punks were playing soccer with a beer can in the pedestrian zone, some bums were passing a bottle of wine around in front of the town hall, and couples were making out under the arbors of the Rosengarten.
“I’m looking forward to summer,” Brigitte said, putting her arm around me.
On Sunday I had lunch with Georg in the Kleiner Rosengarten. He said he was willing to go to Strasbourg to search for the silent partner in old registries and telephone directories, the records of legal and notary chambers, and lecture schedules. He was ready to leave on Monday. I appointed him assistant detective and ordered champagne, but he wanted to stick to alcohol-free beer.
“You drink too much, Uncle Gerhard.”
That evening I was back in my office poring over the history of banking. The Sorbian Cooperative Bank also had a paragraph dedicated to it. It was a rarity. Cooperative banks had actually come about as self-help establishments set up by occupational groups. Schulze-Delitzsch had set out to make artisans into members of a cooperative through cooperative banks, while Raiffeisen strove to do the same with farmers. Hans Kleiner from Cottbus, who founded the Sorbian Cooperative Bank in 1868, wanted to inspire cooperative ideas in the Sorbian Slavic minority. His mother was Sorbian, wore Sorbian dress, told little Hans Sorbian fairy tales and taught him Sorbian songs, with the result that he made Sorbian affairs his life’s work. During his lifetime the bank had only Sorbian members, but after his death it opened its doors to others, expanded, flourished, and survived the great inflation and the worldwide depression. Then came a great blow. The Nazis wanted nothing to do with the Sorbians and turned the bank into a regular cooperative bank.
When and how the Sorbian Cooperative Bank was to recover from this blow would have to wait till tomorrow. Weller & Welker had taken the bank over, so it must have recovered and had a happy ending. On my way home that night I found the cooperative idea so sensible that the usual hankering of banks and bankers for more and more money suddenly struck me as strange. Why heap money upon money? Because a child’s compulsion to collect things can in adult years no longer be satisfied by collecting marbles, beer coasters, and stamps, and so must turn to money?
The following morning I was sitting once more at the desk in my office before the children of the neighborhood were heading to school. The bakery a few doors down was already open, and a steaming cup of coffee and a croissant stood before me. There wasn’t much more to the story of the Sorbian Cooperative Bank. While other such banks were closed down by the Soviets, those in and around Cottbus continued to be run under the name of Sorbian Cooperative Bank. The bank was completely absorbed into the system o
f a state-owned savings bank. Yet it did keep its name; respect for the Sorbian Slavic people, brothers of the victorious Soviet people, forbade its abolition. Along with its name it also kept sufficient autonomy for the Treuhand Agency, formed after the reunification of Germany to privatize East German enterprises, to put the Sorbian Cooperative Bank on the market, ultimately selling it to Weller & Welker.
It was nine o’clock and the morning traffic on the Augustaanlage had quieted down. I heard children, who for some reason or other didn’t have to get to school till later. Then I heard a car pull up by the sidewalk, where it stopped with its engine running. The rattling and chugging began to get on my nerves after a while. Why didn’t they turn the engine off? I got up and looked out the window.
It was Schuler’s green Isetta. Its door was clapped open, but the car was empty. I went out onto the sidewalk. Schuler was standing in the entrance next door, reading the names beside the buzzers.
“Herr Schuler!” I called, and he turned and waved. He waved as if he were shooing me away from the sidewalk—as if he wanted me to get back into my office. I didn’t understand, and though he seemed to be calling out something to me I couldn’t hear him. He came staggering toward me, his right hand still waving, his left hand pressed to his stomach. I could see that his left hand was holding the handle of a black attaché case that was knocking against his legs. I took a few steps toward him and he bumped into me. I got a whiff of his bad smell and heard him whisper “Take this!” and “Go!” He shoved the case toward me and I took it. He steadied himself on me with the hand that had just given me the case and righted himself. He hurried over to his car, got in, closed the door, and drove off.
He swerved in a crooked line from the sidewalk to the right lane, and then from the right lane into the left. He steered toward the steel bollards bordering the traffic island in the middle of the Augustaanlage, scraped one, scraped the next, scraped the traffic light at Mollstrasse, and picked up speed without paying any attention to the light, which had turned red, to the cars that had just started entering from Mollstrasse, or to the children who had begun crossing the Augustaanlage. At first it looked as if he would crash into the lights or the tree at the edge of the island on the other side of Mollstrasse. But he rolled over the curb, missed the lights, and grazed the tree lightly, and yet the curb and the tree tilted the Isetta enough to capsize it, sending it sliding on its side over the grass until it crashed into another tree.