Self's punishment - By Bernhard Schlink & Walter Popp Page 0,34

too. I’m glad you believe me. When I tried to tell the police about the thing in the War Cemetery they weren’t in the least bit interested.’

‘And that’s what you want me to do, to carry out the investigations the police neglected?’

‘Yes. I can imagine you’re not cheap. I can give you ten thousand marks and in exchange I’d like clarity about Peter’s death. Do you need an advance?’

‘No, Frau Buchendorff. I don’t need any advance, nor can I tell you now whether I’ll be taking on the case. What I can do is conduct a kind of pre-investigation: I have to ask the obvious questions, check the evidence, and only then will I decide whether to take the case. Do you agree?’

‘Good, let’s do it that way, Herr Self.’

I noted down some names, addresses, and dates, and promised to keep her informed. I took her to the door. Outside the rain was still falling.

3

A silver St Christopher

My old friend in the Heidelberg police force is Chief Detective Nägelsbach. He’s just waiting for retirement; since starting as a messenger at the age of fifteen at the public prosecutor’s office in Heidelberg he may have constructed Cologne Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, Lomonossov University, and Neuschwanstein Castle from matches, but the reconstruction of the Vatican, his real dream, is simply too much alongside his police work, and has been postponed for his retirement. I’m curious. I’ve followed my friend’s artistic development with interest. In his earlier works the matches are somewhat shorter. Back then his wife and he removed the sulphur heads with a razor blade; he hadn’t known that match factories also distribute headless matches. With the longer matches the later models took on a gothic, towering quality. Since his wife no longer needed to help with the matches she began reading to him as he worked. She started with the first book of Moses and is currently on Karl Kraus’s The Torch. Chief Detective Nägelsbach is an erudite man.

I’d called him in the morning and when I met him at ten o’clock in police headquarters he made me a photocopy of the police report.

‘Ever since data protection came on the scene no one here knows what he’s allowed to give out. I’ve decided not to know what I’m not allowed to give out,’ he said, handing me the report. It was only a few pages long.

‘Do you know who oversaw the accident protocol?’

‘It was Hesseler. I thought you’d want to talk with him. You’re in luck, he’s here until noon and I’ve let him know you’ll be coming by.’

Hesseler was sitting at a typewriter, pecking away laboriously. I’ll never understand why policemen are not taught to type properly. Unless it’s supposed to be a form of torture for the suspects and witnesses to watch a typing policeman. It is torture; the policeman pokes away at the typewriter helplessly and aggressively, looking unhappy and extremely determined – an explosive and fearful mixture. And if you’re not induced to make a statement then at least you’re deterred from altering the statement once it has been written and completed by the policeman, regardless of how unfamiliar he’s rendered it.

‘Someone who’d driven over the bridge after the accident called us. His name’s in the report. When we arrived the doctor had just turned up and clambered down to the accident vehicle. He saw immediately that nothing could be done. We closed the road and secured the evidence. There wasn’t much to secure. There was the skid mark showing that the driver simultaneously braked and swung the steering wheel to the left. As to why he did that there’s no indication. Nothing points to the fact that another vehicle was involved, no shattered glass, no trace of body paint, no further skid mark, nothing. A strange accident all right but the driver lost control of his vehicle, that’s all.’

‘Where is the vehicle?’

‘At Beisel’s scrapyard, behind the Zweifarbenhaus, the brothel behind the railway station. The professionals examined it. I think Beisel will scrap it soon. The storage fees are already higher than the scrap price.’

I thanked him. I looked in on Nägelsbach to say goodbye.

‘Do you know Hedda Gabler?’ he asked me.

‘Why?’

‘It cropped up yesterday in Karl Kraus and I didn’t understand whether she drowned or shot herself or neither of the above, and whether she did it in the sea or in a vine arbour. Karl Kraus is pretty complicated at times.’

‘All I know is that she’s one of Ibsen’s heroines.