passionate gambler. He’d grown conspicuous when he started going to the wages office too often to ask for advances.
‘How did you latch on to him?’ I asked.
‘It’s standard procedure. As soon as someone asks for an advance a third time, we take a look at him.’
‘And what does that mean exactly?’
‘It can, as in this case, involve going so far as shadowing a person. If you want to know, you can talk to Herr Schmalz, who did it at the time.’
I had a message sent to Schmalz that I’d expect him for lunch at twelve noon at the restaurant. I was about to add that I’d be waiting for him by the maple at the entrance, but Danckelmann brushed me aside. ‘Leave it. Schmalz is one of our best. He’ll find you all right.’
‘Here’s to teamwork,’ said Thomas. ‘You won’t hold it against me that I’m a bit sensitive when our responsibility for security is removed. And you are from the outside. But I have enjoyed our pleasant chat, and’ – he laughed disarmingly – ‘our information on you is excellent.’
On leaving the redbrick building where security was housed, I lost all sense of direction. Maybe I used the wrong stairs. I was standing in a yard along the lengths of which the company security vehicles were parked, painted blue with the company logo on the doors, the silver benzene ring and in it the letters RCW. The entrance at the gable end was fashioned as a portal with two sandstone pillars and four sandstone medallions from which, blackened and mournful, Aristotle, Schwarz, Mendeleyev, and Kekulé regarded me. Apparently I was standing in front of the former chief administration building. I left the yard, and came to another, its façades completely covered with Virginia creeper. It was oddly quiet; my footsteps resounded exaggeratedly on the cobblestones. The buildings appeared to be disused. When something struck my back I whirled around in fright. In front of me a garishly bright ball gave a few more bounces and a young boy came racing after it. I retrieved the ball and approached the boy. Now I could make out the windows with net curtains in the corner of the yard, behind a rosebush, next to the open door. The boy took the ball from my hands, said ‘thank you’, and ran into the house. On the nameplate by the door I recognized the name Schmalz. An elderly woman was looking at me suspiciously, and shut the door. Again it was absolutely quiet.
6
A veal ragout on a bed of mixed greens
When I entered the restaurant, a small, thin, pale, black-haired man addressed me. ‘Herr Self?’ he lisped. ‘Schmalz here.’
My offer of an aperitif was declined. ‘No thank you, I don’t drink alcohol.’
‘And what about a fruit juice?’ I didn’t want to forgo my Aviateur.
‘I have to be back at work at one. Happy if we could directly . . . Little to report anyway.’
The answer was elliptical, but without sibilants. Had he learned to eradicate all ‘s’ and ‘z’ words from his working vocabulary?
The lady at the reception area rang the bell for service, and the girl I’d seen serving at the directors’ bar took us up to the large dining hall on the first floor to a window table.
‘You know how I love to begin a meal?’
‘I’ll see to it straight away,’ she smiled.
To the headwaiter Schmalz gave an order for ‘A veal ragout on a bed of mixed greens, if you would.’ I was in the mood for sweet and sour pork Szechuan. Schmalz eyed me enviously. We both passed on the soup, for different reasons.
Over my Aviateur I asked about the results of the investigation of Schneider. Schmalz reported extremely precisely, avoiding all sibilants. A lamentable man, that Schneider. After a row over his demand for an advance, Schmalz had tailed him for several days. Schneider gambled not only in Bad Dürkheim but also in private backrooms and was accordingly entangled. When his creditors had him beaten up, Schmalz intervened and brought Schneider home, not seriously injured, but quite distraught. The time had come for a chat between Schneider and his superior. An arrangement was entered into: Schneider, indispensable as a pharmaceutical researcher, was removed from work for three months and sent to a clinic, and the relevant circles were informed that they were not to allow Schneider to gamble any more. The security unit of the RCW used its influence around Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.
‘A good three-year gap while the guy