To Clear the Air

by Mechtild Borrmann

  The bass, in combination with the rhythmic lights, is soothing. A couple of uppers in your trouser pocket, along with some happy pills. His cell phone and car keys in your jacket pocket. The crowbar and shoes buried. The phone and the car keys will have to disappear too.

  Rub your sweaty hands on your thighs. These clothes are made of synthetic materials and don’t absorb the sweat. Drink without thirst. Eat without hunger. Your stomach cramps, catapulting acid up your throat. Your body squeezes its last few drops of moisture into your armpits. Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!

  A bartender places a glass of water on the counter. “Drink, goddammit!” he shouts. His eyes are threatening. The pounding rhythm takes up the refrain. Drink, goddammit! Drink, goddammit! Drink! hammers in your head.

  The glass is pleasantly cool in your hands.

  The fear of being unable to do it had subsided as that last little shiver ran through the big man, like a discreet and tender farewell.

  Everything will be fine tomorrow. When the sun comes up, it will be a whole day ago. Then it’s in the past. Now it’s time to think about the next few days. The beginning is done. Now it’s a matter of following the path to its end, step by step.

  Chapter 17

  Sunday, March 11, 2001

  Gietmann is no more. Gietmann didn’t go willingly.

  Ruth Holter shakes the last of the coffee out of the porcelain pot. Just yesterday she was rushed off her feet until two o’clock in the morning and now, when it’s hardly ten o’clock, it’s the same again. The only other time it has been like this in the last ten years was in 1995, the time of the great flood. That time everyone went to church first. Today they don’t feel threatened. Today they’re sure they won’t end up like Gietmann.

  Two years ago she bought the big coffee machine. It’s really only for funerals, holy communions, and the Marksman’s Fair. She hefts the heavy urn out of the storeroom and into the kitchen, fills it with water, and puts a pound of coffee in the filter. Forty cups. That should be enough. Eighty marks, if she sells them all.

  Gietmann murdered.

  Slaughtered, Jörg Lüders said yesterday.

  She had spoken to Frederike on the telephone this morning. Expressed her condolences and asked about the funeral. But she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Deftly she lays the cups and saucers out on a tray and hurries back into the public bar. Her coveralls twist and swish around her meager frame with every step. She hasn’t turned the stereo on today. Nor yesterday. Doesn’t seem right, music, when something like this has happened.

  “Coffee’ll be ready in five minutes!” She quickly pours a couple more beers. All the faces at the bar are male. Fine by her.

  Frederike said he bled to death. Hard to imagine something like that, here. But Gietmann always did live the high life, always having to go into town. Building contractor, he called himself. And with all those newcomers in the new development. Half of them Dutch, and even Russians and Turks with their own houses. You have to wonder how they can afford it all. Three weeks ago they stole a local boy’s moped, Leon’s, in the middle of the village. There didn’t used to be anything like that. You used to be able to leave your back door open all summer long, even at night, to let the breeze through the house.

  Gietmann!

  This rustic little drinking den of yours, he said once. But he was drunk. He had left quite a few deutschmarks on the counter. That was in the past.

  Norbert is getting noisy again. As soon as he’s had two beers, he gets noisy. “It isn’t necessarily someone from outside.” He hitches himself upright on his stool. “Could be someone from the village, couldn’t it?”

  She grabs the tap and skillfully slides the beers she has already drawn over the tin surface. The only sound is the scrape of glass against metal. Norbert is a newcomer too. You can tell by the way he speaks.

  “Really? And who did you have in mind?” Jörg Lüders lights a cigarette without taking his eyes off Norbert. There is silence, even at the tables.

  “I don’t mean anyone in particular, but the police will think like that. As far as they’re concerned, we’re all suspects.”

  “Nonsense. Let me tell you something: Gietmann was well known for always carrying a lot of cash.”

  A murmur of agreement runs through the room.

  “He had dealings with too many people who bragged about living on credit.” At his table, Günther Mahler nods knowingly to his companions. “Ruth, I ordered four beers. Where are they?” With his arm in the air, he draws a small circle over the table with his hand.

  “On the way!” She sticks her pen into her dyed black hair and behind her ear, skillfully fits three stemmed glasses between the fingers of her left hand, picks up a fourth in her right, and goes over to the table. She draws four neat marks on Günther’s beer coaster and gives out the glasses. Now they’re all drinking beer. Just when she’s got the coffee machine going.

  “That thing about the money doesn’t make sense.” Norbert waits. He wants to be asked.

  Mahler raises his glass to the others at his table. He puts it down again with an expansive gesture. “And why not?”

  “Gietmann wasn’t robbed. And they found a car too. Up in the oak forest.”

  Chair legs move about on the old parquet flooring, scraping and creaking. All eyes are on Norbert. Ruth pours hot water into the second sink.

  “But that’s not all.” He reaches into his overalls and pulls out a folded sheet of newspaper. “This is from yesterday.” He holds the page out to Jörg.

  Ruth has plunged her hands into the dishwater. She stands there, quite still, and stares into the water. She has read it. She read it yesterday morning. She put the newspaper to one side and thought, There are Gietmanns like there’s sand at the beach. And what a strange announcement, she thought, with no mention of the relatives.

  “What’s that? Read it out.” Mahler pushes his beer glass into the middle of the table and leans his body forward behind it.

  Jörg crushes his cigarette out in the ashtray without taking his eyes off the newspaper cutting. “I don’t believe it. The announcement of his death.” He gasps, openmouthed, sucking air into his lungs. “Life comes to an end, but memory is forever. Werner Gietmann left us on March 9, 2001.”

  Cigarette smoke hangs under the ceiling like a canopy. The slot machine sends a short, jerky tune out into the room to attract attention to itself.

  Ruth takes her bony hands out of the water and hurries into the kitchen. It can’t be true. It absolutely can’t be true. She pours coffee into a porcelain pot. When she comes back into the bar, Mahler and the others from his table are standing at the counter with their beer coasters. They want to settle up.

  Ruth takes the money. She knows what they’re thinking. She’s thinking it too.

  The young people stay behind. They and the newcomers.

  Chapter 18

  He doesn’t come across anyone until he gets to the station.

  The officer on night duty is waiting for his relief at eight o’clock. “You’re early!”

  Böhm raises a hand in greeting. “I know. The early bird catches the worm.” What crap! Why don’t I just say my wife is gone and I don’t know where else to go? He hasn’t slept a wink—has already been out running for two hours and cleaned up the kitchen, but nothing helps.

  The folder containing the photos of the crime scene is lying on his desk. He opens the window. The cool air and reddish light of dawn pour into the room, displacing the stale air of the previous evening.

  On his computer he finds the reports of the house-to-house interviews. Two witnesses claim to have seen Gietmann’s Mercedes in the village at around ten. Two independent witnesses. He opens the file titled Statement of Frederike Gietmann. There, it says seven o’clock. Supposedly, Gietmann drove into town at seven.

  Where did you meet him? In town? Did you come here with him, or did you wait in the field? How could you have known he would be there? Did you have a rendezvous
? Did you know each other? You knew him. I’m sure of that. You had it in for him, didn’t you? What did he do to you?

  Steeg was going to meet Bongartz at the hospital in town and then bring back the autopsy results. Böhm checks the time on his screen to make sure it is after eight o’clock and then dials Steeg’s number.

  Frau Steeg answers. “I’m sorry, Herr Böhm, but he’s already left. Hasn’t he come in to work?”

  “Yes. Yes, he has. He has some work to do away from here, and I thought I might still catch him. Thanks.”

  Steeg is thirty-eight years old and lives with his mother. He claims he has to look after her, that she can’t manage on her own. Böhm had gotten the impression of a frail old lady. Then he met her. The frail old lady was fifty-nine years old and in excellent physical shape. She told him about her trips to Thailand and Moscow, and how she had bought her son a place of his own for his thirtieth birthday. He had promptly rented it out. Uneconomical, he had claimed. Unnecessarily duplicated costs. Could Böhm maybe talk to him, she had asked, politely. She thought he was old enough for his own place.

  Steeg was just cheap. Van Oss called him “astonishingly frugal.” Once he invited a female colleague from Narcotics out for a meal. At the end he insisted on splitting the bill. When she asked him what kind of an invitation that was, he magnanimously said he had picked her up from her home and would take her back, but she needn’t worry: he would pay the entire cost of the gas.

  “Good morning!”

  Böhm starts.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Van Oss is standing in the middle of the room with his hands buried in the pockets of his loose brown corduroys. Red suspenders lie taut over his brown checked shirt.

  Steeg had once called him a Dutch parakeet. When Van Oss greeted him the following morning with “Good morning, you German blackbird,” they called a truce.

  Böhm taps his own chest. “Ever heard of knocking, Joop?”

  “Sure. I did knock.” He runs his left hand through his blond hair.

  “Or maybe . . . ?” Böhm yawns long and hard.

  “The door was open.” Van Oss goes over to the coffee machine. “I’ll make a drop of coffee, but I do have some news.” He looks around, yesterday’s used filter between his thumb and index finger. “Where’s the garbage bag?”

  “Out with the trash.”

  “Oh? And where are the new garbage bags?”

  “In the drawer under the sink.”

  With the filter in his left hand, Van Oss tries to tear a new bag off the roll with his right. “Shit, Peter. Give me a hand.”

  Böhm stands up, tears a bag off, and pulls it carefully over the rim of the trash can. “What news do you have?”

  “Our colleagues have found two witnesses—”

  “Who saw the car in town at around ten.” Böhm nods at him encouragingly.

  “Right. How long have you been here?”

  Böhm goes back to his desk.

  Van Oss spoons some coffee into the filter. “Peter, what’s going on? I don’t want to be rude—but you look like shit.”

  Böhm exhales audibly. “Brigitte’s gone.”

  “What do you mean?” Van Oss comes over to the desk with the coffee can. He and Brigitte are friendly, and he has often come over with his girlfriend, Janine.

  Böhm tells him the story.

  “But she says she wants to think. Why do you say she’s not coming back?” Van Oss sits on the edge of the desk, resting the coffee can on his thigh.

  “It never occurred to me. But yesterday morning, when she left . . . For the first time in twenty-four years I thought there was someone else.”

  Van Oss nods. “Yes, I can understand that.”

  Böhm knows he understands. Janine has indulged in several affairs, and Van Oss has suffered greatly. Once, well and truly drunk, he rang Böhm’s doorbell at three o’clock in the morning. He was unable to utter a single comprehensible word, and in the end passed out. Böhm took him to the hospital.

  He stands up and claps Van Oss on the shoulder. “Let’s get to work. The photos are there, and Lembach has some results. Besides, Achim should be here any minute.”

  They spread out the photos.

  “Tell me what you think, Joop. Did the killer wait for Gietmann, or did they arrive together?” Böhm looks at the pictures again and thinks back over his own impressions of the crime scene.

  Van Oss starts. “Okay. Let’s assume that everything we’ve been told so far is correct. Gietmann drives into town at about seven, or else to a certain establishment on the road to Xanten. In any case, he never arrives. His car is seen back in the village at about ten. That would mean he came back, but not in order to go home.”

  Böhm reaches for his coffee cup, stands up, and takes up a position by the window. His gaze wanders over the cobblestoned square toward the clusters of row houses beyond. They are so low that a man can touch the gutters as he goes by. They stand huddled together, like sheep on the heath in a heavy frost. “The witnesses couldn’t see whether he was alone in the car or had someone else with him. If there was someone else, he probably gave his killer a ride.” Böhm shakes his head vigorously.

  “Why would someone drive up to a hunting blind, at night, in the rain, and go for a walk?” Van Oss shoves his thumbs under his suspenders.

  Böhm turns away from the window. “Let’s try a different tack. He comes back alone. He wants to go home. Something catches his eye on the side road. He gets out of his car.” He looks through Van Oss without seeing him. “Yes, that would be a possibility. He gets out. What he sees makes him walk up the lane, and that’s where his killer is waiting.” His eyes return to the spread-out photos. “There must have been a rendezvous. If he didn’t meet his killer before then, there must have been.”

  Van Oss stands with his back against the map. “Yes, but up at the blind, where the car was. Otherwise the car would have been sitting by the road for hours, not even twenty yards away from the scene of the crime. I can’t believe he would take that risk.”

  Böhm leans on the desk with both hands and examines the photos again. “Did Gietmann have a cell phone?” He picks up Lembach’s list, which details everything that was found at the crime scene and in the car.

  “You don’t have to look.” Van Oss pushes himself away from the wall and comes over to the desk. “No cell phone was found.”

  “He must have had one.” Böhm is becoming quite uneasy.

  Van Oss pulls an image of the dead man toward him. “When can we talk to Frau Gietmann? The killer had it in for Gietmann, and there must be a reason.” He puts the photo back.

  Böhm sticks a finger under the neck of his cashmere sweater and rubs his neck. “Think about the death notice, Joop. Memory is forever.” He takes a sip of his coffee, which is now lukewarm. “I’ll drive over to Frau Gietmann’s.” He nods firmly at Van Oss. “And we need all the rumors, slanders, and truths making the rounds in the village.”

  Chapter 19

  She has been back for four weeks.

  Slowly she realizes it is Saturday and she must have slept the day away again. She stands up and wanders around the apartment. It had started up again three months ago. This time she did not try to take her own life. No pills, no cutting her arms, no gas in the kitchen.

  I won’t do it anymore, little one. I swear I won’t do it anymore. Everything’s going to be all right.

  This time she kept her promise. This time she went to the doctor early enough and had herself committed.

  The alarm clock on the bedside table says seven o’clock. In the morning? No, it must be seven in the evening. She goes into the kitchen. Slept through, slept through the entire day. That means she hasn’t been taking her medication on schedule, that she hasn’t eaten, that . . .

  Her pillbox is on the kitchen table, a little container with the days of the week and times of day carefully written on it. An elongated green pill and a round white one lie beneath the words Saturday, by 9 a.m.
<
br />   It’s light. It can’t be evening yet. It really is only seven in the morning. Relieved, she opens the box and walks over to the window with a glass of water. No people. The street is down there, unused, framed by parked cars on the right and left sides. Still so early. She could, in fact, lie down for a while longer. She goes over to the living room, lies down on the sofa, and turns on the television.

  The news broadcast shows the date and time in the top right-hand corner.

  She leaps to her feet. But . . .

  She stares at the screen again. There it is: Sunday, March 11, 7:18 a.m.

  Again. Once again she has slept through two nights and a whole day. Thirty-six hours.

  She runs into the kitchen. She glares at the pillbox. What are they doing to her? Why do they give her pills with side effects like this? She breathes in, trembling. No, calm down. Don’t suspect the wrong people now. Everyone was kind to her in the clinic. Why would they want to harm her?

  She runs back into the living room. Maybe she got it wrong.

  March 11, 7:22 a.m.

  She flops onto the sofa and clasps her hands to her face. What’s happening to her? What’s going on here?

  Heat rises, creeps up her spine and into her head, turning every image red.

  Frau Behrens, you have some problems with your perception. You know that. You have a highly developed imagination. You must learn to see the difference.

  Chapter 20

  Lüders wakes early and hikes over to the blind. This is where they found Gietmann’s car. Under his hunting blind, of all places. And Gietmann himself on the track. On his track, of all places. He doesn’t go there. He climbs up into the blind and sees, a good twenty yards away from the road, the security tape and the policeman. How long are they planning to stand around in his field, trampling his rapeseed?

  They were there yesterday. A dead body, they said, and had he seen or heard anything during the night? An outsider, he’d thought; it hadn’t even occurred to him that it might be someone from the village.

  Bled to death, Jörg said yesterday evening. The way those Turks slaughter their sheep. You see that stuff on TV, but here? That’s what comes of letting all these foreigners in. This kind of thing didn’t used to happen. You used to be able to trust everyone. Not so much as a pitchfork would go missing. On the contrary: neighbors looked out for each other. That’s how it used to be.