gotten in the Waldschänke. “It’s just one of those feelings. Maybe one of the wrong ones,” she added with a
crooked smile. She grabbed the phone and dialed the first number on
the list before Max could talk the topic to death.
The quiet residential street in Hamburg-Eppendorf was right next to
the university hospital. Row houses and duplexes and amid them, an
occasional single-family house from the 1920s. Chestnut trees lined the narrow one-way street and traffic noise from the nearby artery wafted over. It was five thirty on a Friday afternoon, the height of rush hour.
The house in which Frank Jensen lived turned out to be half of
a duplex with a white facade. A porch with dirty windows jutted out
into a neglected front garden. The parking space in front of the house was empty, the garage door was closed, and an ad for a pizza delivery service was sticking out of the mailbox. Max rang the bell. He could hear it ring inside, but nobody opened. He pushed the button again.
Nothing.
He stepped back and looked up to the attic windows, but he
detected no sign of life there, either. He took the three steps from the porch to the front garden, where the grass was in need of trimming.
The windows were too high to peep in. He was about to check if there was a path around the house, when he heard shouting.
“Hello, young man. What are you doing here, if I may ask?”
An old woman was standing behind a sturdy fir in the neighbor-
ing garden. Max hadn’t seen her. Leaning on a hoe, she scrutinized
him suspiciously. She was working in her garden, which was well
taken care of.
“Good afternoon,” Max said and slowly walked toward the woman,
trying not to startle her. “I’m Max Berg and I work for the Hamburg
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Dead Woods
Criminal Police. I’m looking for a Herr Jensen.” He showed her his
badge, but she waved it away with the comment that she couldn’t read anything without her glasses.
“What has Herr Jensen done?” his neighbor wanted to know.
“Nothing, as far as we know. We think he’s a witness. By any
chance, do you know where I could find him?”
“Just check out all the bars around here. He’ll be sitting in one of them.”
“Isn’t he working?”
“Not for at least three years, or is it four already? Let’s see, my
eldest had a prostate operation then; that’s when it was, and that for sure was three years ago. But then Jonas—my great-grandson, you
know—would be four, since we celebrated his first birthday soon after.
But Jonas is only three, isn’t he? Or it was maybe not his first birthday but his second? I’d have to look it up. I wrote it down somewhere.”
Max had patiently listened to the old woman, but now he gently
interrupted her, “I don’t think that’s necessary, Frau . . . Sorry, what’s your name?”
“Berger. Elli Berger. I’m eighty-six,” she added so no one got the
idea that she was just another youngster.
“Frau Berger, I think I know what you are hinting at. The com-
pany for which Herr Jensen worked had to file for bankruptcy. That
was more than two years ago.”
The old lady nodded enthusiastically. “As I said, as I said. Horrible story. At first, I didn’t know what was going on, but when Kirsten
always ran around teary-eyed and they sold first the large car and soon the small one, also, I did ask the poor thing about it. And she told me that her husband had to go on welfare. It’s awful, the situation. They say he was swindled.”
“Really?” Max said
“Sure. You know”—Frau Berger bent a little more across
the hedge that reached up to her chest—“Frank is one of those
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Maria C. Poets
Com-pu-ter-spe-cial-ists.” She enunciated each syllable separately, as if the words didn’t belong to her usual vocabulary. “I don’t know anything about such things; what do I need it for at my age? No. No. But Frank, he worked in such a company and then they conned him.”
“Really?” Max repeated. “And what happened then? Couldn’t he
get another job?”
“No, as I’ve been saying all along. He was duped and then he was
unemployed.” She motioned with her head toward the Jensen house.
“Ever since then, he sits around at home. Sits at home and stares at the wall.”
A computer monitor probably was in front of the wall, Max
thought.
“But he isn’t home now?” Max asked.
“No. He’s probably getting drunk in some bar. That’s what he does
ever since Kirsten moved out with the kids. That was three weeks ago; or was it four? I should look it up. I wrote it down somewhere