To Clear the Air

by Mechtild Borrmann

  The pale sun creeps its way through the early-morning mist. It’s going to be a warm day. A proper spring day at last.

  The cool morning air catches in his lungs. He ought to give up the cigars.

  Not that he ever wished Gietmann dead, but the loan payments can stop now. Month after month, five hundred marks. It would have continued until his dying day.

  Every year, Gietmann had cursed and threatened. Accused him of reneging. A ridiculous little hayseed who couldn’t even read a hereditary lease. They had driven to Cologne together to talk to that hysterical Anna Behrens woman. They agreed on the monthly payments on the way back. Gietmann had been fair, actually, but on the other hand, he hadn’t held any good cards himself.

  Over and done with.

  He punches the horizontal handrail. How could he not have heard anything that night? He sleeps lightly, and the car must have driven past his driveway. He takes the two steps back to the ladder and turns around, then starts slowly climbing down. For the first three steps, he keeps a tight grip on the vertical timbers holding up the handrail. Then he switches to the rungs of the ladder and descends step by step.

  At first he didn’t know how Gietmann had died. Klara had stared at him, and her suspicion was clearly visible. His own wife! “What if he was shot, Ludwig? On our property? They’ll suspect you.”

  “Stupid woman,” he said. “You’re the one who suspects me.”

  She wasn’t entirely wrong to worry, and he’d had some of the same thoughts himself. But after a short think he was sure: even if he hadn’t heard the car, he would have heard a shot.

  Gietmann hadn’t been shot, thank God.

  Wat dem eenen sin Uhl is dem andern sin Nachtigall, as they say around here: one man’s owl is another man’s nightingale.

  Chapter 21

  The farmhouse is not a farmhouse. Gietmann Inc. is written in big white letters on the roof of the barn. In the paved yard at the back, there are trucks, cement mixers, diggers, and a crane. No dog barking furiously, no cat lying lazily in the sun, no chickens scratching about, no pigs wallowing.

  Böhm gets out of the car and looks up into the pale blue sky. Not a breeze is stirring. Pigeons gather on the overhead cables. It is going to be one of the first really warm days.

  The main house is built of red clapboard; the lintels over the windows and the entrance have been straightened with concrete beams. He approaches the new white front door, shaking his head. Was it for this that the man had to die?

  Frau Gietmann opens the door. Her sturdy frame is clad in a black dress. Her fleshy face is colorless beneath cropped brown-gray hair. She leads him across the pale tiles of the hallway into the living room.

  The suite of black leather furniture, with its chrome legs, is placed amid intricately carved oak dressers with leaded-glass windows. There is a sweet smell of expensive cigars and furniture polish. She serves coffee and cookies. Her hand is steady.

  As she sinks into an armchair, he senses her determination to show no weakness. He expresses his condolences, and she accepts them with a brief nod. “Friday evening, Frau Gietmann. Can you tell me what happened on Friday evening?” He looks at her kindly, speaks softly and calmly.

  She avoids his eyes. Her hands are struggling in her lap. “The truth is . . . The truth is, he always used to go to Chez Susan on Fridays.” She swallows. “Then he would come home late, sometimes not till the next day.” She takes a deep breath, as if she has gotten past the worst. Cautiously, she tries to look at his face, to see whether he blames her.

  Böhm nods. “That wasn’t easy for you.”

  Now she is looking directly at him. Her voice becomes stronger. “If it’s all right with you, I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it to my daughter. Please.”

  These secrets. In his investigations he keeps running into these secrets that everybody knows. These secrets that are never spoken out loud, because everybody wants to protect everybody else. Sometimes tragedies happen precisely for that reason.

  “He didn’t go on Friday. He was waiting for a phone call. Business, he said.” She leans back. Her hands are resting quietly on her thighs. “The phone rang around ten, and he answered it immediately. Then he put on his coat and left. When he hadn’t come back by midnight, I thought he was probably at Chez Susan after all and went to bed.” She shakes her head in disbelief.

  Böhm has already seen, as he came into the hallway, that the telephone is an old-fashioned one, which means it will not be possible to trace the call. He leans forward. “It’s understandable that you thought that.”

  She nods gratefully. “Yes, but then Frederike came over yesterday morning with that announcement. It didn’t mention a place, and there are so many Gietmanns. And who thinks up something like that? Who does such a thing?” Her hands are fluttering up and down in her lap, like birds trying to leave the nest for the first time. Tears gather in her red-rimmed eyes. She takes a white handkerchief from the sleeve of her blouse.

  “Your husband didn’t say who called?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Frau Gietmann, when you read the announcement, it sounds a bit as if someone was taking revenge. Maybe for something that happened long ago. Can you think of anything?”

  “No.” She has regained her self-control. “There was sometimes trouble with customers, of course. Twice there were lawsuits. He had a falling out with Lüders. That was about a loan. No. Nothing you’d kill a man for.”

  Böhm asks for Lüders’s address and starts to leave. In the hallway, he turns around one more time. “Frau Gietmann, did your husband have a cell phone?”

  She nods. “He carried it all the time. He had it on Friday too. I know that for sure. It was on the table in the living room. He put it in his coat pocket.”

  Böhm asks for the number, gives her a business card, and leaves.

  On the way to his car, Böhm turns his face up to the sun. It is already strong. Just like Frau Gietmann’s no, when he asked her about events in the past. He takes his phone out of his pocket, takes off his leather jacket, and lays it on the passenger seat. Time to report back to the station.

  Van Oss answers. Böhm gives him Gietmann’s cell and landline numbers and asks him to check them out.

  Frederike Gietmann’s house is only five hundred yards away. He decides to walk. The cooing of pigeons adds luster to the now-bright blue sky and follows him along the narrow path around the farm toward the new development.

  Frederike is sitting on her terrace. From here, the view is of the back of her parents’ home. Two children of preschool age are playing on a neatly mown lawn with a sandbox, swing set, and slide. Only the tall, slim woman’s bloodshot eyes darken the picture. She has her brown hair tied back in a ponytail.

  She offers him a chair and some coffee. He accepts the chair with pleasure but turns down the coffee.

  She didn’t talk to her mother on Friday and quite naturally assumed her father was at Chez Susan as usual. No, she didn’t see him leave.

  “Did my mother tell you he went to Chez Susan regularly?” She looks at him innocently. For a moment, all the grief disappeared from her expression. “She always used to tell me he was going to the Rübezahl Hotel and would stay the night there because he didn’t want to drive drunk.”

  Böhm regrets that he has another question. He would gladly sit here in the sun and watch the children play.

  “The death notice, Frau Gietmann. Who had a reason to get revenge?”

  She shrugs, resigned. “I did the books for my father. As far as the business is concerned, everything was normal. At least, everything that crossed my desk. There was some trouble over the development here. Environmental organizations made a fuss about it. Bird sanctuary, wild geese in particular. But certainly not a reason for something like this.”

  One of the children starts crying.

  “Lara, give Moritz back the wheelbarrow. He had it first.”

  Then she looks directly at him. “About four years ago, my father
fired an employee who had been stealing building materials. The man shouted across the yard, ‘I’ll pay you back for this. I’ll get you one day.’ And last year there was the big trouble with Lüders. Dad lent him money, and Lüders didn’t want to pay it back. There was nothing in writing. I don’t know whether Lüders paid, but a lot of angry words were thrown around.”

  Fluffy white clouds were forming on the horizon. A small herd of sheep grazing unhurriedly in the distance.

  On the way back to the farm, his stomach growls like a wary old dog.

  You called and told him to come. You called and arranged a rendezvous with him at the blind, didn’t you? What did you have against him? What did you have in mind for him?

  Chapter 22

  She is not offering a big lunch menu yet. In summer, when the tourists ride through on their bicycles and she sets up the tables under the big chestnut tree, that brings a little in. But between September and May there is nothing to be gained by it.

  The morning’s excitement has died down. The menfolk have gone home. Lunch and then the couch. Jörg is the last one to leave.

  “Where’s Ludwig?” She polishes a beer glass busily. “Why are you here on your own for the morning session?”

  “Come on, Ruth.” He stares into his golden-yellow beer. “Dad’s in a terrible state. They had their disagreements, but you don’t wish something like that on your worst enemy.”

  A stranger, wearing jeans and an expensive-looking sweater, appears in the door. Ruth is about to say I’m closing, but then she remembers the urn with the coffee. There’s nearly a gallon left, and maybe she can still sell a cup. Perhaps even a pot.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You must be closing.”

  “No, no,” she says hastily. “There’s still a little time.”

  “Are you still serving food?”

  He has a pleasant voice, and friendly blue eyes behind his steel-framed glasses. “Goulash soup,” she offers. Tomorrow is her day off, and by Tuesday it will have gone bad. Nothing would suit him better. She can see it in his eyes.

  He nods. “Yes, that would be great. And a coffee, please.”

  Jörg finishes the last drop of his beer and taps the glass surface three times with his coaster. “See you later, Ruth. I’m off.”

  The stranger pulls up a bar stool and sits down. Ruth slips into the back, pours a cup of coffee, and starts heating the goulash soup. Throwing it out would cost four marks twenty; selling it brings in four marks twenty. Bottom line: eight marks forty.

  As she places the cup in front of him, he smiles gratefully. “Gietmann must have come in here too?”

  “Who are you?” she says, looking at him challengingly. She’s not like that. You can’t just come in and start asking nosy questions.

  He reaches into his back pocket and brings out his ID.

  Peter Böhm, it says. Kriminalpolizei. Police. She gives him back the card. “Is this an interrogation?”

  “No, I’m just gathering information. I’m trying to put together a picture of how Werner Gietmann lived.” He gives her another friendly smile.

  “Your soup’s ready.” She goes into the kitchen, stirs the ladle back and forth a few times, then spoons the dark-brown liquid into a bowl. That’s what happens when you’re hospitable. You give a man some soup and a coffee, and then it’s okay to sound you out. She adds a spoon and goes back into the bar. “Yes, Gietmann was a customer here, a good customer, even.” She places her bony fists on her hips. “Werner Gietmann was a good man. He didn’t ask for credit, didn’t block the toilet with puke, never made any trouble when he’d had more than was good for him. More than that I can’t tell you.”

  “Your goulash soup is outstanding. You can’t get such a hearty soup in town.”

  She nods with satisfaction. At least he understands that. “I make it properly, with plenty of meat. No packages or powdered crap.”

  “Do you know Ludwig Lüders?”

  She takes her hands off her hips and wipes the gleaming metal surface of the bar with a cloth. “Yes, of course. Everyone knows everyone in this village. I mean, everyone who’s always lived here. Why do you ask?”

  “I thought you might be able to tell me the way to his house?”

  “I see.” Relieved, she puts the cloth aside.

  “We have reason to believe Gietmann was killed because of something in the past. I’m sure you know all the stories in the village?” Böhm pushes his empty bowl aside and pulls the coffee toward him.

  “There aren’t any stories like that here. There’s trouble, like everywhere. The young ones fight over a girl. The old ones go to court over land or hereditary leases. But people don’t kill each other. At least, it hasn’t been our way up to now.” She takes his bowl and puts it into the kitchen pass-through. “You’ll have to look somewhere else for your murderer. We don’t have anyone here who would do something like that.” She plunges her hands into the sink and pulls out the plug. The water flows, gurgling and spluttering, down the drain.

  No one does anything like that here, and back then, no one could do anything about it, she thinks. It was an accident, really. And now, after all these years, you shouldn’t come digging.

  She looks pointedly at the clock by the cash register.

  Böhm drinks the bitter fluid down. “I’ll pay now.”

  “Six twenty.”

  He puts seven marks down on the counter. “Can you tell me how to get to the Lüders farm?”

  “Gerhard Lüders lives at the Lüders farm. Old Lüders, Ludwig, lives at the Behrens farm.”

  “The Behrens farm?” Böhm’s eyebrows rise.

  Like a hawk, she thinks. Like a buzzard that has spotted some prey. Sitting in the sky with quick, small flaps of its wings, waiting for its opportunity. Why does she talk so carelessly?

  “And where does Behrens live?”

  She swallows. “Old Frau Behrens died at least a year ago.”

  Chapter 23

  The small farmhouse is occupied, but that is all. The barn has no door; it serves as storage for a car, a trailer, bicycles, and a wheelbarrow. A row of car tires lies beneath a tarp by the left-hand wall. To the right of the barn, stretching into the distance behind the house, there is a meadow with old fruit trees.

  A man is suddenly behind him. “Can I help you?”

  Böhm introduces himself and looks the man over without being rude. The thin, blond hair is carefully combed over balding spots. The acrylic sweater, a diamond pattern in brown and reds, ends beneath a double chin. The upper body looks strong. At its base, though, is a belly that stretches the sweater’s diamonds into squares.

  “Your friends were already here. We didn’t hear anything.” He speaks in a monotone. His arms dangle limply by his sides.

  “Oh, yes. Sometimes we come back, when new questions turn up. You have a beautiful orchard, Herr Lüders. I’d love to have one like it. You are Herr Lüders, aren’t you?”

  The other man nods imperceptibly. “Gerhard Lüders.” He makes no move to invite Böhm into the house.

  “You’re not working the farm. What kind of work do you do?”

  “My brother shares the work in the fields. I work in the cooperative.”

  “Ludwig Lüders. Is that your brother?”

  “No, my father. Jörg lives nearby with his family; our parents live over there.” His chin briefly emerges from its folds to indicate the direction of the hill.

  “Did you know Gietmann?”

  “Yes.”

  Böhm rolls up the sleeves of his sweater. The sun is hanging over the roof of the barn. The wisps of cloud are getting closer. “What can you tell me about him? What was he like?”

  “He was a businessman. I didn’t have much to do with him, except when I was at the bank. Ask my father, he can tell you more.”

  Böhm’s ears prick up. “You used to work at the bank? What made you leave?”

  Lüders turns away a few degrees. “You’ll find out anyway. I was fired. I didn’t check the collateral
when I granted a loan. A man screwed me over. My father was that man.” Now his arms come to life. He rubs his face with his left hand. His voice takes on an aggressive tone. “Go around and have a word with him. He screwed Gietmann over too. Ask him.”

  Böhm scrapes his left foot over the ground, a mix of clay and sand. “Do you mean to tell me your father profited from Gietmann’s death?”

  “I don’t mean to tell you anything.”

  “I’d like to speak to your wife too.”

  Lüders laughs bitterly. “My wife has left.” He turns his back on Böhm and goes up to the house.

  “Herr Lüders.”

  Lüders opens the side door. It slams shut behind him.

  Böhm’s stomach churns. My wife has left. He goes to his car and dials Brigitte’s cell.

  “The person you are calling . . .”

  He presses the red button and tosses his phone onto the passenger seat. It is stuffy in the car. It takes only two minutes to get to the Behrens farm.

  The farmhouse sits in a dominant position on a hill. The heavy old oak door protects its occupants. The young man who was in the bar opens it.

  Böhm introduces himself.

  The living room is large and comfortable, the furniture handmade and old. The heavy armchairs and the sofa have been newly upholstered in pale beige and an old-fashioned pink. There is a smell of vinegar and roasted meat.

  Ludwig Lüders is sitting in one of the armchairs, with Saturday’s newspaper spread out in front of him. His wife is standing at the dining table, putting on a fresh tablecloth. He stands up, with some effort, and shakes hands with Böhm. His wife gives Böhm a nod and disappears through the door behind the counter. For a few seconds there is the sound of running water and clattering dishes.