“No. If it all comes to light it will be the end of the Sorbian bank, and all my employees will be out on the street. I didn’t have to read too much in my financial textbooks to see that we have far too many employees. The only reason Welker doesn’t rock the boat is because he doesn’t want to make waves. And do you know what else I tell myself? In the old days, we never had anything like that happen. You fellows brought all this with you. So it’s your police who should be dealing with it.”
“I can assure you that we in Schwetzingen had as little money laundering in the old days as you did in Cottbus. Wasn’t it you who said that Chechens, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis—”
“Back in the East German days, the Chechens stayed in Chechnya and the Georgians in Georgia. It’s you people who mixed everything up.”
He had a fixed idea in his mind and would not let anyone shake it. There was a determined look on his face, even if his determination was one of inflexibility.
“So what now? Why are you here? From what I see, you’ve reconciled yourself to the fact that—”
“Reconciled myself?” He looked at me in disbelief. “You think that because I haven’t gone to the police I have bowed my head to all the derision, insults, humiliations, degradations …” He groped for other fitting expressions but couldn’t find any. “I intend to do something!”
“How long have you been in town?”
“A week. I took a leave of absence. I’ll do something that Welker won’t forget.”
“Oh, Herr Ulbrich. I don’t know what you have in mind, but won’t the Sorbian bank be ruined that way, too, with your employees all ending up on the street? Welker wasn’t out to deride or humiliate you, or any of the other things you just said. What he did was use you, just as he uses everyone else, regardless of whether they’re from East or West Germany. It’s nothing personal.”
“He said to me—”
“But he doesn’t speak your language. You yourself just said that you and we don’t speak the same language.”
He looked at me sadly, and with a shock I realized it was the same helpless, somewhat foolish look that Klara sometimes had. I also recognized Klara’s inflexible determination in his face.
“Don’t do anything, Herr Ulbrich. Go back and earn some money at the Sorbian bank for as long as you can—it isn’t going to last forever. Earn enough so you can open an office, in Cottbus or Dresden or Leipzig: Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, Private Investigator. And if you’re ever swamped with work, give me a call and I’ll come help you out.”
He smiled—a small, crooked smile despite his inflexible determination.
“Welker used you,” I continued. “So now use him. Use him to lay a foundation for what you want to do. Don’t get tangled up in settling scores where if you win, you’ll end up the loser.”
He was silent. Then he emptied his glass in a single draft. “That’s a good wine.” He leaned forward and sat there as if he didn’t know whether to remain sitting or get up.
“Why don’t we finish this bottle?” I asked.
“I think …” He got up. “I think I’d better go. Thank you for everything.”
16
A little joke
I finished the bottle on my own. So, Ulbrich wanted to do something that Welker wouldn’t forget. If he had designs on Welker’s life, he would have expressed himself differently. But what did he have in mind? And what could it be that Welker would never forget? Welker, who had such a knack for keeping the good things clear in his mind and forgetting the bad?
I thought about Schuler and Samarin. If Welker hadn’t forgotten them yet, he would soon enough. What had happened to them, what he had done to them, was bad. What would Ulbrich do that Welker wouldn’t forget? Kill him? The dead never forget.
I didn’t sleep well. I dreamed of Korten falling off the cliff, his coat fluttering. I dreamed of our final conversation, of my saying, “I have come to kill you.” And his mocking words: “To bring them back to life?” I dreamed of Schuler staggering toward me, and of Samarin in his straitjacket. Then everything got confused; Welker fell from the cliff, and Schuler said mockingly: “To bring me back to life?”
The following morning I called Welker. I had to talk to him.
“Are you planning an investment?” he asked cheerfully.
“I’m planning a deposit, an investment, a withdrawal—it depends on how you look at it.”
Two new batteries, and my old voice recorder was working again. You can get smaller ones today that record better and longer and that look more elegant. But my old recorder did the job. My old corduroy jacket did the job, too. It has a hole behind the lapel and one in the breast of the jacket so that the wire, hidden from view, can pass from the recorder in the inside pocket to the microphone in the lapel. Whenever I take my handkerchief out of my inside pocket to wipe the sweat off my forehead or blow my nose, I can turn the recorder on or off.
At ten o’clock I was sitting in Welker’s office.
“As you see,” he said, his hand sweeping through the air, “nothing has changed since your last visit. I wanted to renovate the place, refurbish everything and make it all more attractive. But I just can’t get to it.”
I looked around. It was true that nothing had changed. Only the leaves of the chestnut trees I could see through the window had begun to turn.
“As you know,” I said, “Herr Schuler came to see me before his Isetta crashed into the tree and he died. It wasn’t only the money he brought me. He also brought me what he had found out about Laban and Samarin.”
Welker didn’t say anything.
“He told you what he had found the evening you and Samarin went to see him, when Samarin happened to step out for a moment.”
Again Welker didn’t say anything. He who says nothing says nothing wrong.
“Later, when you were outside, you saw that Schuler was taking a blood-pressure medication that one mustn’t stop taking abruptly. You know a thing or two about such matters. Then you looked through Schuler’s arsenal of medicines to find some pills that looked similar to his blood-pressure medication, and you found some. You switched the pills, just like that. Perhaps it would kill Schuler—which would be great. Perhaps it would only confuse him, indefinitely, for a long time, or perhaps just for a short period—not bad, either. Perhaps he would notice. But even then you wouldn’t be taking a risk by switching the pills: Schuler would have blamed himself or his niece, but he never would have thought of suspecting you.”
“Indeed,” Welker said. He spoke the way one might when someone else is talking, and one wishes to indicate one is listening carefully and paying attention. He looked at me compassionately with his intelligent, sensitive, melancholic eyes, as if I had a problem and had come to him for help.
“I knew that you are also a doctor. But as long as I didn’t understand your motive, I didn’t make the connection between this fact and what I knew about the side effects of the blood-pressure medication and Schuler’s condition before his accident. It was only then that I had the pills in the bottle checked.”
“I see,” he said. He didn’t ask me: “What motive? What was my motive supposed to have been? Where do you see a motive?” All he said was “I see,” and he continued sitting there quite at ease, looking at me compassionately.
“That was murder, Herr Welker, even if you weren’t certain that switching the medicines would kill Schuler. Murder out of greed. Samarin’s grandfather might have renounced all his rights and claims to the silent partnership in 1937 or 1938, but the action back then of a Jew in favor of an Aryan business partner isn’t worth much. Samarin’s claims would have become uncomfortable for you.”
Welker smiled. “That would be quite ironic, wouldn’t it, if the silent partnership, which was my pretext for bringing you into this affair, now posed a threat to me?”
“I don’t think that’s funny. I don’t think your murder of Samarin is funny, either, a murder you committed with cold premeditation and which you presented to us as the a
ct of a desperate man. I don’t think it’s funny that you’re continuing Samarin’s practices. No, I don’t see anything comic in any of this.”
“I said ‘ironic’, I didn’t say ‘comic.’”
“Ironic, comic—either way, I don’t see anything I could laugh about. And when I weigh the fact that Samarin, who didn’t murder Schuler, probably also didn’t murder your wife—about which you always spoke with such emotion—then I stop laughing entirely. What happened to your wife? Did you find that she, having had a fatal accident, could be of some use as a murder victim? Or wasn’t it an accident at all? Did you kill your wife?” I was furious.
I thought he would jump to his own defense. He had to. He couldn’t allow me to get away with what I’d just said. But he uncrossed his legs, leaned his elbows on his knees, pursed his lips, sullen and sulking, and slowly shook his head. “Herr Self, Herr Self …”
I waited.
After a while he sat up in his chair and looked me straight in the eye. “It is a fact that Gregor, wearing a straitjacket, was shot in the Luisenpark. If you have something to say about how he came to be there, why he was in a straitjacket, and why he was killed, I suggest you go to the police. It is also a fact that Schuler had high blood pressure and that he drove into a tree in front of your office and died. If he came by to bring you something, if you were with him before the incident and saw that he was in a bad way, then why did you let him get into his car? From what I can see, there are one or two inconsistencies, if not more. Perhaps there are also one or two inconsistencies in the matter of my wife’s death, where naturally the police suspected me first but ended up counting me out. We all have to learn to live with inconsistencies. We can’t just start leveling unsubstantiated accusations …” He shook his head again.
I wanted to intervene, but he wouldn’t let me.
“This is one of the things I wanted to tell you. The other is—how shall I put it?—I’m not interested in history: the Third Reich, the war, the Jews, silent partners, dead heirs, old claims! All that is water under the bridge. It has nothing to do with me, and I won’t be drawn into it. It bores me. I also have no interest in East Germany. I’d be happiest if everyone in the East would just stay where they are. But when the East comes over here, strikes root, starts meddling and trying to take over my business, then I have to show them that that’s not the name of the game. Samarin and his Russians came here to usurp me—don’t forget that. The past, the past! I’ve had enough of it. Our parents bored us with all those tales of their suffering during the war, their deeds in rebuilding Germany, and their part in the economic miracle, the young teachers with their myths of 1968. Do you, too, have a tale to offer? Enough! My job is to keep Weller and Welker above water. We’re an anachronism. On the great ocean of the world economy we’re just a little barge among the oil tankers, container ships, destroyers, and aircraft carriers—a barge that gets tossed about in the rough seas through which all those other ships can sail smoothly. I don’t know how long we can hold out. Perhaps my children won’t be interested in continuing. Perhaps I myself will lose interest one day. As it is, I don’t belong here. I’d have done better to become a doctor and collect art on the side or even to have picked up a brush myself. I’m old-fashioned, you know. Not in the sense that I’m in any way interested in the past. But I would have liked a quiet, old-fashioned kind of life. Old-fashioned—it’s old-fashioned, too, that I followed family tradition and am now running the family bank. But the only way of doing this is all or nothing, and as long as I’m running this bank, as long as we Welkers still exist, nobody will take us for a sleigh ride.” He repeated emphatically: “Nobody!” Then he smiled again. “I’m surprised you let me get away with that mixed metaphor. A barge can hardly be used for a sleigh ride.”
He got up, and so did I. I’d had enough of his words—his well-considered, well-crafted lies, truths, and half-truths.
On the stairs he said: “It’s amazing how old habits can come back to haunt one.”
“What do you mean?”
“If Schuler hadn’t made a habit of storing his Catapresan pills in those bottles, nobody could have replaced them.”
“He didn’t do it out of habit. His niece did it because with his arthritic fingers he couldn’t get the pills out of the foil.”
Then I remembered that though I had told him about a blood-pressure medication, I hadn’t mentioned Catapresan. Had he just betrayed himself? I stopped.
He also stopped, turned to me, and looked at me pleasantly. “The medication was Catapresan, wasn’t it?”
“I never …” But there was no point of capturing on tape: “I never mentioned the name of the medication.” It wouldn’t prove a thing. There was no point, either, in saying that to Welker. He knew it well enough. He had permitted himself a little joke.
17
Presumption of innocence
I went home and sat outside on the balcony. I smoked a cigarette, then another. The third tasted once again the way cigarettes used to when I smoked as many as I wanted.
I was furious. Furious at Welker, at his sense of superiority, his composure, his impudence. At how he’d gotten away with two murders, with the theft of the silent partnership, with money laundering. At how he’d let me know that he had done these things, all the while making it clear that I shouldn’t presume to match myself against him. I shouldn’t presume to match myself against him? He shouldn’t presume he’d get away with this!
I called my friends and insisted they come over that evening. The Nägelsbachs, Philipp, and Füruzan promised to be over by eight. “What are we celebrating?” “What’s for dinner?” “Spaghetti carbonara, if you’re hungry.” Brigitte said she couldn’t come till later.
They weren’t hungry. They didn’t know what to make of the sudden invitation and sat around expectantly, nursing their wine. All I told them was that I had spoken with Welker and had recorded the conversation. I played them the tape. When it ended, they looked at me questioningly.
“If you remember, Welker hired me to find the silent partner, just to bring me into the game without Samarin suspecting anything. Banks and family stories, stories of yesterday and the distant past—it all sounded innocent enough. Welker wanted me in the game so I’d be there when he got the opportunity to move against Samarin. The matter of the silent partner didn’t interest him at all. But then the silent partner did become interesting. He took on a face—and not in a figurative sense, but a literal one. A face with a receding hairline, large ears, and protruding eyes. You’ll recognize this face.” I handed them Laban’s picture.
“Well I’ll be damned!” Philipp said.
“Old Herr Weller and Herr Welker had acted correctly enough: they helped the silent partner’s great-nephew establish himself financially in London and saw to it that the great-niece, who hadn’t managed to leave Germany in time, got new papers under the name Samarin. When she died, they looked after her child. Though as the boy was born with the name Gregor Samarin, they also raised him as such. The great-nephew died in London, and the great-niece had disappeared as ‘Ursula Brock.’ The silent partner’s share was to go unclaimed for good.”
“How big was this share?”
“I’m not exactly sure. When Laban brought his money into the bank, it was as much as the bank itself had. The bank had been on the brink of bankruptcy. I have no idea how from a bookkeeping standpoint his share might be valued up or down over the years.”
“What part did Schuler play in all of this?”
“Schuler had been Welker’s and Samarin’s teacher, and later the bank’s archivist. When I mentioned to him that Welker was interested in the silent partner and that I was to shed light on his identity, Schuler was gripped by jealousy. He wanted to prove that he was more capable than I, that he could look into all of that without me. He burrowed through the bank’s archives until he got lucky. This is the passport of Laban’s great-niece.”
Frau Nägelsbach turned it this way and that.
&nb
sp; “How did Schuler know that Ursula Brock was Laban’s great-niece?” she asked. “And how did he conclude that she was Samarin’s mother?”
“He had known her as Frau Samarin and Gregor’s mother, and any documents concerning the Brocks could only have been in the silent partner’s file. Along with this passport he might also well have found some other documents that he didn’t give me. Not to mention that he found something else that he did bring me: money that was to be laundered at the bank. That money made me miss finding the passport for quite a while. What I initially thought was that Schuler had threatened Samarin with exposing his money-laundering racket and had consequently signed his own death warrant. But all the while, he had signed his death warrant by revealing to Welker that he knew Samarin’s true identity. What Welker did then was to switch Schuler’s pills. That wasn’t a fail-safe way of killing him, but it was worth a try. If it succeeded, it would get Schuler out of the way; if it didn’t, there was always time for a second attempt. Welker wasn’t in a hurry. He knew how loyal Schuler was and that he wouldn’t immediately go to Samarin with what he had found out. But it worked. Schuler was in a bad way, became disoriented, and drove into a tree. And yet Schuler was alarmed by fact that he was feeling worse and worse, so he quickly brought me what he had found: the money and the passport.”
“Blood-pressure medication?” Herr Nägelsbach said. “I admit to being a hypochondriac, Reni is one, too, and I’m interested in medicine. But I had no idea you could kill a person with blood-pressure medication.”
“You can’t actually kill anyone with it,” Philipp explained, “but if you’re on Catapresan and suddenly stop taking it, you run the risk of blackouts. The only question is how Welker could have known …”
“He studied medicine,” I said. “After he finished his studies, he sacrificed his medical career to the bank.”
“What happened then?”
“You mean after Schuler’s death? As you know, Welker shot Samarin, leading us to believe that he had been overwhelmed by pain, sorrow, and anger. But the truth is that he shot him with a cool hand and in cold blood. He wanted to get rid of Samarin, the silent partner’s heir, the lackey who all of a sudden wanted a say in the bank, the man with dangerous connections who was blackmailing him, the man with the lucrative connections who was standing in his way.”
Self's Murder Page 17