Self's deception - By Bernhard Schlink & Peter Constantine Page 0,39
hopped over two puddles, got drenched by a gush of water from the porch gutter, and joined Frau Kleinschmidt in her front hall. I wiped my glasses dry.
“Are you looking for your son again? He was here—see, there's his car—but a man drove up and then the two of them went for a walk.”
“In this weather?”
“Strange, isn't it? I think it's strange. And three-quarters of an hour later the other man came back alone, got in his car, and drove off. That's strange, too, isn't it?”
“You have sharp eyes. What did the man look like?”
“My husband's always saying that, too. 'Renate,' he tells me, 'Renate, you've got a good pair of eyes in that head of yours.' But I didn't get a good look at the other man. He'd parked back over there. See? There, where the Ford is standing. It was hard to get a good look at him in the rain. In the rain, all cats are wet. But I did see that he was driving a VW Golf,” she said brightly, like a child eager for praise.
“Which way did the two of them walk?”
“Down the street. It's the way to the river, you know, but you can't see that far from here, no matter how good your eyes are.”
I refused a cup of freshly brewed coffee and got back in my car. I slowly drove down the street that ran along the Neckar River. Houses, trees, and cars were shrouded in a veil of rain. It was just after four, but it looked like early twilight.
After a while the rain grew lighter, and finally my wiper blades scratched over the dry windshield. I got out. I followed the path that crosses the Neckar Meadows from Wieblingen to Edingen and then goes past the sewage plant and the composting plant and under the autobahn bridge. At one point I thought I saw a piece of clothing that might belong to Wendt, trudged through the wet grass to take a look, and came back with wet feet. I generally like being outside when the earth is aromatic after a rain and the air tingles on my face. But this time I only felt clammy.
I found him, his arms outstretched and his eyes fixed. Above us the traffic rumbled. The way he was lying there, he could have fallen from the autobahn bridge onto the slabs that had been put down when the bridge was built. But there was a small hole in his light raincoat where the bullet had pierced his chest. It was dark red, almost black. On his raincoat, around the hole, the red gleamed brightly. There wasn't much blood.
Next to him lay his briefcase, as if it had slipped out of his hand. I took some tissues out of my pocket and used them to pick up the briefcase and take it under the bridge, where it was dry. With the tissues wrapped around my fingers, I pulled out a newspaper, a large notebook, and a copy of a map. The notebook was Wendt's hospital appointment calendar, and had no entry for this afternoon. The map had no place names on it, and I didn't recognize the terrain it showed. There was no town, river, or colors that might indicate a forest or houses. Most of it was divided into small numbered squares. A double line vertically cut the map in half, and several double lines veered from it to the left and extended into another double line that led straight to the edge of the map. I committed a few of the numbers to memory. At the bottom there was 203. At the top, 537, 538, and 539. On the left side, 425, and on the right side, 113. Then I put the briefcase back exactly as I had found it.
Wendt's head was slightly raised, propped up by a stone jutting out from a slab, and it was as if his fractured gaze was reaching longingly into the distance. I would have liked to close his eyes. It would've been the proper thing to do. But the police would not like it. In Wieblingen I called from the nearest phone booth and asked to be put through to Chief Inspector Nägelsbach's office.
“I can't believe you sent me your colleagues from the Agency.” I had to get that off my chest first.
“I sent you who?” Nägelsbach asked.
“This morning I had a visit from Bleckmeier and Rawitz, from the Federal Criminal Investigation Agency. They wanted to know