Self's Murder

by Bernhard Schlink

  Everyone was taken aback by his idea about Russia. But then again, why shouldn’t he be given a chance to prove himself? If nothing came of it, he would at least have gotten out and about and had a vacation of sorts. If something did come of it—which nobody really believed would happen—then so much the better. It was decided that he would be sent to Russia.

  Samarin stayed there for almost six months. He kept in touch with regular phone calls, faxes, and telegrams. He proposed a series of investments in the energy sector, from electrical power plants in Moscow and Sverdlovsk to securing drilling options in Kamchatka. From time to time he introduced Russian businessmen who were looking to invest money in the West, who would then turn up in Schwetzingen. None of his schemes panned out, nor did the Russian businessmen. But Gregor Samarin returned to Germany a changed man. Not only did he bring back a Russian accent, he also dressed and comported himself as if he were one of the bank’s directors. Old Herr Weller had just retired and moved to the assisted-living section of the Augustinum. Bertram and Stephanie didn’t want to hurt Gregor. Hadn’t they resolved to be different as directors than their fathers had been and to avoid all arrogance and conceit? Hadn’t Bertram and Gregor grown up together? Hadn’t Gregor always been fully committed to the families and their bank?

  Then Gregor began talking about Weller & Welker initiating a takeover of the Sorbian Cooperative Bank, and Bertram and Stephanie tried to make him see why a takeover would be a mistake. The future of Weller & Welker lay in investment counseling, not in handling small savings accounts. The bank had survived the crisis of the eighties by downsizing, drop ping everything that was inessential, and concentrating exclusively on what was essential. But Gregor Samarin wouldn’t let go. One day he came back from a trip to Berlin and announced that he had completed negotiations he’d been involved in for weeks with the Treuhand Agency, which was privatizing former East German state institutions such as the bank, and that he had bought the bank for a song. He had forged a power of attorney, and they could report him, take him to court, and have him thrown in prison if they liked; if they took action fast enough they could perhaps even cancel the deal with the Treuhand Agency. But how would that look for Weller & Welker? How thrilled would their clients be, reading about all the turmoil in the firm? Wouldn’t it make more sense to let him handle the Sorbian Cooperative Bank? He’d get it back on its feet. It was the bank of the common man, and he knew all about the common man since he was one himself. Didn’t Weller & Welker owe him the chance?

  Bertram and Stephanie gave in, and to their surprise it seemed to work. After a year, the Sorbian bank might not have been showing a profit, but it wasn’t showing a loss, either—and this despite the extensive modernization of its main branch in Cottbus and the branches in the provinces, and despite all the Sorbian Cooperative employees having been kept on, as the Treuhand Agency had been promised as part of the takeover. It seemed that the East Germans had more money than was generally assumed. Gregor Samarin also seemed to have the knack of procuring subsidies from local, state, and European institutions. An East German success story!

  Until Stephanie caught on. She didn’t trust the pretty picture, didn’t trust Gregor, and had no scruples about peeking into Gregor’s filing cabinet or his computer. An émigré Russian economist whom she hired in Berlin helped her figure out what she didn’t understand. She told Bertram what she found out, and together they confronted Gregor. They gave him a month to remove himself and his dirty deals from their bank and their lives. They would not go to the police, but they didn’t want anything to do with him.

  Gregor’s reaction was quite unexpected. He had no idea what had gotten into them. He had done them no wrong, he had even furthered their business, and now they wanted to ruin him. He was a businessman—he had obligations and could not afford not to fulfill them. He was going to stay right where he was! And while they were at it, he was sick and tired of having to transport the money from the West to Cottbus. Henceforth, he’d collect the money and feed it into the system right here in Schwetzingen.

  “We’re giving you one month to remove yourself,” Stephanie said, “and that’s that. Don’t force us to go to the police.”

  Two weeks later Stephanie was dead. If Bertram wasn’t prepared to play Samarin’s game, his children would be next—first one, and then the other—and in the end it would be his turn. Samarin wasn’t about to give up all he’d worked for.

  The children were then sent to school in Switzerland, with two young men in dark suits or in ski suits, in tennis or jogging outfits, or in hiking gear—always at their sides. Bertram had been forced to explain to the headmaster that the men were bodyguards; after the mysterious disappearance of their mother—involving a possible case of abduction or blackmail—one couldn’t be too careful. The headmaster had no objections. The young men kept a certain discreet distance, to the extent they could.

  “As for me,” Welker continued, “you yourself have seen what I’ve been reduced to. I had to move from my house to the bank, and I haven’t been allowed to take a single step on my own. Then you showed up, and I managed to draw you into all this with the tale of the silent partner. In Gregor’s view, your investigation would hardly pose a threat; not to mention that he was worried that you’d grow suspicious if he threw you out. I didn’t hire you because of this idiotic silent partner. I was hoping all along that you’d realize what was going on at my bank and that you’d be at hand when the time came. But you weren’t.”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “No, no, I’m not reproaching you; far from it. I’d only hoped you might notice what was going on. I’d hoped it might be a sign to you that something wasn’t right at the bank when Gregor wouldn’t let me call you, when he didn’t give a damn about what I said, or that time when he exploded and ordered me to believe what he says, or when the attaché case was so important to him while I didn’t show any interest in it. I’d also hoped you’d come earlier today. But I’d hoped, too, that the children would stay longer. I wanted to get out of Gregor’s grip with your help while the children were visiting some friends of mine in Zurich. Do you see what he’s done? He has gotten himself double insurance: if the children elude his grip he still has me, and if I elude his grip—for instance, at a business meeting or social occasion, where he cannot intervene in what I say—then he’s got the children. While they were at my friends’ place in Zurich, he lost them. Now he’s got them again.”

  “We should go to the police.”

  “Are you out of your mind? They’ve got my kids. They’ll kill them if I go to the police.” He stared at his hands. “The only place I can go is back to the bank. That’s the only place I can go.” This time he cried like a child, sobbing pitifully, his shoulders shaking.

  3

  No longer my kind of world

  I assured Welker that there was no reason he couldn’t wait a few hours before going back. Nothing would happen to the children as long as Samarin couldn’t get in touch with him. The children would be of no use to Samarin if they were dead; he needed them in order to threaten Welker. And he could only do that if he managed to talk to Welker.

  “How is waiting going to do any good?”

  “A few hours without Gregor Samarin—isn’t that something? I’d like to have a word with an old friend of mine, a retired police officer. I know you don’t want to hear of the police being involved. But things can’t go on this way, neither for the children nor for you. Something has to give. And we can do with all the help we can get.”

  “Well, go ahead.”

  I called Nägelsbach and then Philipp. I asked Philipp if we could use his apartment as a meeting place, since Gregor’s men knew where I lived and probably had already followed me to Nägelsbach’s and Brigitte’s. Avoiding the autobahn, we meandered over Plankstadt, Grenzhof, Friedrichsfeld, and Rheinau to Philipp’s apartment at the Waldparkdamm. There was no blue Mercedes anywhere to be seen, nor a black or green one, and there were no young men in dark suits.
On the Stephanienufer promenade along the Rhine, couples who had already had lunch were pushing baby strollers while barges chugged along the river.

  Welker was wary. Nägelsbach brought his wife, and Philipp insisted, if we were going to get together at his place, on being present and listening in. Welker looked from one of us to another and then glanced at Philipp’s bedroom door, which stood ajar, revealing the mirror on the ceiling above the water bed. He turned to me and said, “Are you sure that …”

  I nodded and began to tell his story. From time to time he added something, finally taking over himself. In the end, he began to cry again. Frau Nägelsbach got up, sat on the armrest of his chair, and hugged him.

  “No longer my kind of world,” Nägelsbach said, shaking his head sadly. “Not that everything in my world was right—I wouldn’t have become a policeman if it had been. But money was money, a bank was a bank, and a crime was a crime. Murder was driven by passion, jealousy, or desperation, and if it was driven by greed, it was burning greed. Calculated murder, laundering millions, a bank that’s a madhouse in which the insane have locked up the doctors and nurses—all that is foreign to me.”

  “Oh, that’s enough,” Frau Nägelsbach said irritably. “You’ve been talking like this for weeks now. Can’t you forget being grouchy about your retirement and come to grips with it and tell this poor fellow and your friends something that might be useful to them? You were a good policeman. I was always proud of you and want to continue being proud.”

  Philipp stepped in. “I understand him. It’s no longer my kind of world, either. I’m not quite sure why: the end of the Cold War, capitalism, globalization, the Internet? Or is it that people no longer have morals?” I must have been staring at him nonplussed. He stared back coolly. “You seem to think that morality isn’t my thing? The fact that I have loved many women doesn’t mean I don’t have any morals. Let’s not forget that wherever money’s being laundered, women are being exploited, too. No, I’m not prepared to give up my world without a fight, and I hope the rest of you aren’t, either.”

  Somewhat taken aback, I looked at Philipp, and then at Nägelsbach.

  “Without a fight?” Frau Nägelsbach said, shaking her head. “You don’t have to prove to the world that you’re not yet ready for the scrapheap or that you can still show the younger generation a thing or two. Call the police! See to it that they don’t rattle Samarin! You know the right people, Rudi. If Samarin catches on that the game is up, he won’t be stupid enough to harm the children.”

  “I don’t think he’d do anything to them, either. But as for being sure—no, I’m not sure. Are you? A culprit might see reason when the game’s up, but he might also lose his reason. So far I haven’t seen Samarin lose his cool. But recently he almost did, and I’m afraid that if he does in fact explode he’d be capable of anything,” I said.

  “Of one thing you can be certain,” Welker cut in. “He’s quite capable of exploding. He’s quite capable of murder, too. No, going to the police is not an option. Thank you very much, but I—” Welker stood up.

  “Sit down, please,” I said. “We must use what we have: a doctor, an ambulance.”

  Philipp nodded.

  “A policeman in uniform.”

  Nägelsbach laughed. “If I still can squeeze into my uniform—I haven’t worn it in years.”

  “We also have the choice of the meeting place. Herr Welker, you need to give a convincing performance over the phone—you must sound so panic-stricken that Samarin will be ready to meet with you wherever you want rather than having you flip out completely. Can you manage that?”

  Philipp grinned. “Don’t worry. I can get Herr Welker there.”

  “We’ll tell Samarin to come to the Mannheim Water Tower,” Nägelsbach said, sliding an ashtray to the center of the table to represent the water tower. He put a newspaper in front of it to represent the Kaiserring and pointed at it with his pen. “Needless to say, Samarin will position his men around the water tower. If he has four cars, he’ll have them wait by the four streets leading away from the tower. But he can’t have all his men waiting in the cars, and if he …”

  Nägelsbach explained his plan, answered questions, and weighed objections, and the venture took shape. Frau Nägelsbach looked at him with pride. I, too, was proud of my friends. I was particularly amazed at Philipp’s calm concentration and authority. Did he plan his surgical operations this way? Did he prepare his colleagues for their roles on the surgical team the way he was preparing Welker for his role on the phone? He talked at him, cross-examined him, ridiculed him, reassured him, and yelled at him, and soon enough he had shaken him so thoroughly that when Welker called Samarin he was on the verge of losing it.

  Samarin agreed to the meeting: five o’clock at the water tower. “No police. You and I will talk. You will speak to your children on the cell phone, and then we’ll drive back to Schwetzingen.”

  4

  Blow-by-blow

  If wishes came true, I would be living in one of the pavilions on top of the two elegant sandstone houses at the corner of Friedrichsplatz and Augusta anlage. I would put a lounger out on the balcony, set up the Zeiss telescope I inherited from my father, and watch what happened from a distance. Instead, I found myself standing by the water tower, where I couldn’t be of any use.

  Welker got there well before five. He walked around the water tower, looked into the empty basins, and kept peering from the Rosengarten all the way to the Kunsthalle Museum. He was very nervous. He kept hugging his chest as if he were trying to hold on to himself. He walked too fast, and whenever he stopped he stepped nervously from one foot to the other. Nägelsbach, in his police uniform, sat on a bench, relaxed as if enjoying a break. His wife was sitting next to him.

  From the pavilion I would probably also have had all of Samarin’s men in view. I saw the blue Mercedes—it was standing in front of the bus station on the Kaiserring, and a man was sitting at the wheel. I didn’t see the other young men. I didn’t see Samarin, either, until he crossed the Kaiser-ring and came walking toward Welker. He had a heavy, strong gait, as if nothing could sway or stop him. More likely than not, he had inspected the perimeter and had assured himself that everything was fine. If Welker had involved the police, they would not have sent a policeman in uniform to the meeting place and have him sitting next to a woman. Nor would the police have tolerated my presence. Samarin peered at the water tower, shook his head, and chuckled.

  Later I forgot to ask Welker what Samarin had said, and what his reply had been. They did not talk for long. We had planned everything blow-by-blow.

  The ambulance waited in the Kunststrasse until the light turned green. It drove across the Kaiserring and around the fountain in front of the water tower and turned on its siren and flashing lights a few meters away from Welker and Samarin. Samarin was annoyed. He turned and looked at the ambulance. Philipp, in a white coat, came out from the front, and Füruzan and another nurse hopped out from the back, in uniform and wheeling a stretcher. Then Samarin saw Frau Nägelsbach collapsed in front of the bench, and his annoyance subsided at the very moment Philipp placed a hand on his shoulder and plunged a syringe into his arm. Samarin staggered, and it looked as if Philipp were grabbing hold of him to steady him and prop him up. Then Samarin collapsed onto the stretcher, which in the twinkling of an eye was wheeled into the ambulance. The nurses pulled the doors shut, Philipp jumped into the driver’s seat, and the ambulance sped off along the Friedrichsring. Nägelsbach saw to his wife, who was savoring her role by not regaining consciousness. She came to her senses only once the ambulance’s siren died away in the distance, and Nägelsbach walked her to the taxi stand in front of the Deutsche Bank. Within a minute it was all over.

  The Mercedes lunged forward with squealing tires, tore over the median strip and the streetcar tracks, and sped along the Friedrichsring in fruitless pursuit of the ambulance. I still couldn’t see the other young men. None of the people strolling in the park stopped: nobody was sur
prised, nobody spoke to anyone, nobody asked what had happened. It had all happened so quickly.

  I sat down on the bench where the Nägelsbachs had been sitting and lit one of my rare cigarettes. Rare cigarettes don’t taste good. They taste like one’s first cigarette, which doesn’t taste good, either. In half an hour Samarin would regain consciousness in a windowless storeroom in the hospital, laced into a straitjacket and strapped to the bed. I would negotiate with him—we knew each other. Welker insisted that Samarin be exchanged for his children. He wanted Samarin to experience his defeat to the fullest. “Otherwise he’ll never leave me in peace.”

  5

  In the dark

  I found Samarin with his eyes closed. There wasn’t enough space for a chair; I leaned against the wall and waited. He was still in a straitjacket and strapped to the bed.

  He opened his eyes, and I noticed that he’d been keeping them shut only in order to feel, hear, and sniff out my mood and state of mind. He looked at me stonily but said nothing.

  “Welker wants his children back. He will exchange you for his children. And he wants you out of his life and his bank.”

  Samarin smiled. “So that all will be right with the world once more. Those up there among themselves, and we down here among ourselves.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “How long do you intend to keep me here?”

  I shrugged. “As long as necessary. This room isn’t used. If you make trouble, you’ll be pumped full of pills and dragged before a judge, who’ll have you committed to a psychiatric ward. Though you should really be dragged to court for murder. But that can come later.”

  “If I don’t return to my men soon they will harm the children. That was the plan: if something happens to me, something will happen to the children.”

  I shook my head. “Think about it. I’ll be back in an hour.”