The Oath

by Klaus-Peter Wolf

  Insa’s voice made him prick up his ears. He raised his hand, just like he’d frequently done when co-workers were with him and he had to take an important telephone call. His raised hand halted everything as if it had suspended the laws of nature and stopped the world for a short time. Everyone fell silent and waited, and only when his hand had sunk again did everything continue as normal.

  Büscher wasn’t familiar with this unwritten rule. He was crunching a biscuit and the sound was inappropriately loud in the silence. Rieke’s look let him know he should stop, and he swallowed what was still in his mouth almost without chewing and thought: well great. The old boss calls the shots, and the press spokesperson forbids me from eating while he’s talking on the phone. Where the hell have I landed?

  Ubbo Heide concentrated, listening to his daughter. So as to not interrupt her flow, he said only ‘yes’ or ‘no problem’ or ‘sure’ at the most. After she had told him the embarrassing truth, he asked, ‘Where was the party?’

  ‘In Hude,’ she answered.

  For Ubbo it was another piece in the puzzle that needed to be put together. ‘Everything’s OK, Insa. It’s good that you’re with Mum.’

  Ann Kathrin entered the room. She briefly nodded to Ubbo and took a seat. That also irritated Büscher. Ubbo didn’t seem annoyed by her tardiness. He seemed proud that she considered the meeting so important that she came at all.

  ‘I need a list of all the people who were at the party. I want the names of everyone who could have had access to the keys.’

  He listened. Then he comforted his daughter. ‘No, my child, you’re not making anyone a suspect. You’re simply telling the truth. Only who was where when. That’s not betraying your friends. The culprit has a woman in his power. We have to do everything to help her. We’ll see each other later. I might have to work a bit late today.’

  ‘But Dad, you’re retired!’

  ‘I know, child, I know.’

  Ubbo looked around the room, as if he had to reassure himself that Rieke and Büscher were still there; he lowered his hand.

  ‘The keys were stolen in March. That means our man planned everything long in advance and had at least four months to prepare. We have to take a closer look at Hude and Langeoog.’

  ‘That also means,’ Ann Kathrin deduced, ‘that the culprit knows Insa and knew that you had lent her your car.’

  Ubbo Heide clenched his right fist and bit into the back of his hand. ‘Crap,’ he cursed, ‘you’re absolutely right!’

  Ubbo Heide hadn’t got any further when Büscher’s phone rang. He was pleased because that way he could dispel the impression that he was completely unimportant here. He also raised his hand, as if he’d learned by watching Ubbo Heide. But then he immediately spat out the news like something disgusting he’d almost swallowed.

  ‘A body has been found in Norden in the car park behind the old pirate school! That singer—’

  ‘Bettina Göschl,’ Rieke prompted.

  ‘Yeah, exactly. That Göschl woman found the body and says it’s Joachim Faust.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Rieke said, ‘please no.’

  She looked so shocked that Ubbo Heide suspected there had been a personal relationship between Rieke and the dead journalist. Büscher only thought that she was dreading the expected media circus.

  *

  He spread cinnamon, sugar and pieces of apple over the pancake. The whole kitchen was filled with the aroma. He’d eaten the first few hot straight from the pan; his favourite food as a child.

  Sometimes, when he had so much grown-up stuff to take care of, he wanted to be a child again afterwards. He needed it then. Apple pancakes or rice pudding. All of it with lots of cinnamon. He like to watch kids’ movies then or read comics. He had a whole box of them up in the attic. Sigurd. Akim. Nick. All of them illustrated by Hansrudi Wäscher. But also Fix and Foxi. He’d never liked Mickey Mouse.

  He stacked the pancakes on top of each other. He’d liked the sight of such a pile as a child. But however much he regressed, a part of him always remained stuck in the world of adults.

  His phone lay next to the stove. He’d eavesdropped on the Kripo meeting, as if he’d been in Ubbo Heide’s old office himself. The reception was excellent. Better than he had expected. There were so many techological possibilities these days.

  The death of that appalling journalist had caused shock rather than amusement or relief in the general public.

  What kind of people are you guys? he asked himself. Someone publicly bashed you, mocked you and revealed your suspects, and instead of regarding his punishment as justice and celebrating his death as a victory, you hunt the person who did you a favour.

  He held a pancake high in the air and snapped at it with his teeth. He tore a good piece out and chewed with delight.

  You’re the big babies, he thought, not me. You’re just playing police, you’re just acting like you’re fighting evil. But while evil becomes stronger and stronger, you fill out forms and ask for time off for holidays and play by the rules that someone in a fancy office thought up for you, but never applied to real life.

  Then he considered whether or not he should take Svenja Moers a pancake. She hadn’t earned it, after all.

  *

  Odysseus was shocked. His head pounded and he pictured a furious goblin on a motorcycle who, stuck inside there, kept on driving against his skull in the hope that it would burst.

  Some crazy, stupid idiot had cut little Marco’s hair. Now the angelic image was gone.

  At first Odysseus had thought Marco’s sister was watching over another, strange child, to earn a couple of extra euros, but then he looked Marco in the eye, and immediately recognised him.

  The blond hair wasn’t just shorter, it was gone. A radical cut. They had turned an elfin being into a military head with a shaved neck. The illusion of a girl became the reality of a boy.

  Odysseus immediately lost all interest in him. Little Marco recognised Odysseus and ran to him cheerfully, but he felt repelled by the child and didn’t want to hold him or play with him. The monster in his head wouldn’t stop raging until he had found a new toy, a real girl. And it was senseless to deny that. He was back to square one.

  He had tricked and repressed himself and that urge for a long time. Now the pressure was back.

  He didn’t know who had cut Marco’s hair, but he hated their guts.

  Marco’s sister Lissa also had a new haircut and had hoped she would get compliments and filter cigarettes from Odysseus. But at first he ignored her, looking right through her, as if she were made of air. And then, when she grabbed his elbow and spoke to him, his look hit her hard. There was so much hate! Withering rejection.

  He registered her shock and needed a moment to switch back from the role of sadistic sex offender to the friendly, eternally youthful, ordinary guy.

  ‘Were you both at the same hairdresser?’ he asked and added, laughing, ‘You should sue him for damages.’

  Now he was no longer the murdering monster who was sometimes even afraid of himself, but the nice neighbour who had himself completely under control. But Lissa no longer believed him. She’d seen the dark side of his nature flare up, his crazy bloodlust. She didn’t want any more compliments, or any cigarettes.

  Odysseus almost fled Störtebeker Park. He no longer wanted to stay in Wilhelmshaven. He pedalled his heart out at times like these, on the run from himself, burning off energy until he was totally exhausted. Every time he lay somewhere next to a bicycle path in the grass, drenched in sweat, dehydrated, his calves hurting, he understood that it didn’t matter how far he ran from the chosen child, that goblin had come along with him and was already looking around greedily for a new girl.

  Preferably four or five, best of all only two or three years old. Still completely pure. Totally innocent, guileless and full of life yet to be lived.

  Did anyone like eating sheep or mutton? No, it had to be lamb, young and legs still shaky just before death.

  He starte
d to cry. That tiny goblin inside him was stronger than he was. He was just its slave, its minion, its conscience-stricken servant. Perhaps, he thought grimly, it would be better to bite into the capsule that he had bought in Thailand. He imagined it would be better to die than once again become the goblin’s tool.

  He had ridden around aimlessly for almost fifty minutes and was next to the dyke. He could see Spiekeroog and Wangerooge from here. The wind ruffled his hair. He opened his mouth towards the sea, allowing the purifying power of the wind to push inside him.

  Seagulls were suddenly there when he decided to die, greedily fluttering around him, as if he was already a piece of carrion, and they were planning to pick out a couple of juicy pieces from his body. He tried to shoo them away, waving his arms wildly and screaming.

  Then he felt better. He continued to hold his face to the wind, but closed his mouth. His heart was racing.

  There was something sublime about having one’s own death in one’s hands. The clarity of the possibility freed him from all constraints. He looked at the sea and felt a primal connnection with the seagulls, as if he could fly away with them and finally be free, through his own willpower. This power made him larger than everyone else, larger than the cultivated people who ate beef and pork, but would rather starve than eat a human, larger than all the civilised population with its diplomas, salary brackets and prenuptial agreements.

  He spread his arms and laughed loudly into the wind.

  Yes, he was truly free if he claimed the power of simply leaving the world. Like you walked out of a loud restaurant where the food didn’t taste good: turning your back on the rude waiter, ignoring the bill, leaving nothing behind but a half-full plate.

  Now he could even laugh about the goblin in his head, and it quickly became subdued. It was no longer driving a motorcycle, feeling afraid because it would die along with him. The goblin, unlike him, loved life. That made it vulnerable. Weak. Conquerable.

  And now, in this cheerful lightness, in this limbo between life and death, he also sensed the identity of that Samurai warrior who had beheaded Stern and Heymann. Only one person had had that expansive feeling of superiority during the reading in Gelsenkirchen, viewing everyone else as insects. He didn’t know the name, but he knew the face.

  How blind I must have been not to have sensed him, he thought. It was that policeman, who’d already caught his attention on Langeoog. A hothead. Aggressive, perhaps even intelligent – at least compared to his colleagues. Nowhere near as intelligent as him: Odysseus.

  At some point the case had been taken out of his hands and he had been removed from the field. Maybe that’s why he had pegged him as harmless. Although now he wanted to know more. He needed that power.

  The mind, he thought, is a good servant, but a bad ruler. You can’t give it too much latitude, or it will ignore everything that it can’t understand, categorise and sort.

  But he wasn’t as stupid as others like him, who collect newspaper articles or even trophies. No. He had all his keepsakes in his head. That way no one could take them away, and they were safe from every house search.

  But he hadn’t remembered the name of that cop. At the time he had seemed irrelevant. Now he decided to look for him on the Internet. Surely there were the old newspaper reports from the archives online.

  Before you come to me, I’ll come to you. I won’t take my life yet. First I’ll get you, and then a cute little girl. Perhaps . . .

  He asked himself if he only thought these things to calm his raging mind or if he really would do it. At any rate, that cop was his first target, as soon as he had found out his name.

  *

  Ann Kathrin Klaasen, Frank Weller, and Rupert were at the crime scene before forensics, but not before Holger Bloem. The whole city seemed to know already.

  Bettina Göschl was in the back of a police car with the door open. The singer was pale and jittery. She had blood on her hands and face.

  Melanie Weiss had come running out of The Galley bringing water, a coffee and a blanket for her. Then she handed her a tissue so she could at least clean herself a little. She’d touched her face with her bloody fingers.

  The journalist Holger Bloem didn’t want to photograph the body for ethical reasons, but had recorded some reactions from tourists and locals from Norden.

  Dark rainclouds emerged over the Credit Union bank. The wind pushed them further, and an initial shadow on the car park was followed by the first raindrops.

  Even the most hard-bitten were shocked by the sight of the body. Traces of tyre marks led to the other side of the car park towards The Galley.

  ‘It looks like,’ Rupert said, ‘the culprit fled by bicycle.’

  ‘No, those aren’t bicycle tracks,’ Ann Kathrin disagreed, ‘more like a buggy or—’

  ‘A walker!’ Rupert crowed. ‘Sure, the grandma from the estate car!’ He was proud of his flash of inspiration.

  ‘Can you take a couple of pictures?’ Weller asked Holger Bloem. ‘The damn rain will wash away all the traces before forensics—’

  ‘What do you need?’ Holger asked drily.

  Weller pointed to the trail of blood. ‘This first.’

  ‘We need something in the picture so we can determine the proportions later!’ Ann Kathrin called to them.

  ‘Do you still smoke?’ Holger asked Weller.

  Weller shook his head. ‘Not anymore, sadly.’

  Holger Bloem turned to the cluster of bystanders. The people were in a state of shock, but didn’t leave despite the rain.

  ‘Does one of you have a packet of cigarettes?’

  Lars Schafft knocked one out of his packet and held it out to Holger. But Holger took the whole packet and placed it next to the trail of blood. Then he took pictures. A couple of drops stuck to the packet, ironically exactly where ‘smoking kills’ was printed.

  ‘You can keep it,’ Lars Schafft offered, ‘I want to give up anyway.’

  The rain thinned the blood and dissolved the traces into small rivulets, just as forensics arrived.

  Rupert questioned the bystanders. He was primarily interested in the old lady with the walker, who looked like a typical Lotto player.

  ‘The culprit,’ Ann Kathrin declared, ‘didn’t come by car. He didn’t park here, and fled the scene with a stroller, walker or whatever, in the direction of the pedestrian zone.’

  Weller poked Bloem. ‘Samurai warrior escapes with walker instead of getaway car. How do you like that headline, Holger?’

  Holger Bloem didn’t answer. He felt sick. He preferred to take pictures of ships, gardens or island landscapes.

  Peter Grendel pushed his way through the crowd to his neighbour Ann Kathrin. ‘Is that the scumbag from TV?’

  Ann Kathrin nodded.

  ‘I just talked to him over there, and there really was a lady with a walker.’ Peter pointed to Rupert. ‘So it was exactly as the idiot suggested.’

  Ann Kathrin looked seriously at her friend and neighbour. ‘A lady with a walker?’

  ‘Yes, a feeble old lady. If those tracks are hers, she probably didn’t even see what happened. She looked nice, just an old granny who you’d hold the door open for or help to cross the road.’ Peter pointed to the body that was being covered to protect it from the rain and the people staring. ‘At any rate, not a granny who would kill like that.’

  ‘Maybe she was a witness and doesn’t even know it. Or is walking around the city, traumatised.’

  ‘Did anyone see,’ Rupert yelled into the crowd as loud as he could, ‘who cut the larynx out of that windbag?’

  Ann Kathrin was astonished by his insensitivity. Peter Grendel whispered in her ear. ‘I’d stop your colleague before there’s trouble.’

  Ann Kathrin immediately accepted Peter’s suggestion and reprimanded Rupert. ‘We’re at a crime scene, Rupert, not in a bar. And the deceased deserves to be treated with respect.’

  Rupert gave her a clueless look. ‘And you’re telling me that! Did he insult me or you?
’

  ‘That’s not at all important anymore. Either you tone it down or I’m going to send you away.’

  Weller spoke with Bettina Göschl. She was still sitting in the back of the police car but had her feet outside, as if she might leave at any minute. She was taking alternate small sips of water and coffee and had wrapped the blanket from The Galley round her shoulders. Melanie Weiss stood next to her, leaning against the open door of the police car.

  ‘I can’t help you anymore,’ she said to Weller. ‘I parked over there. I wanted—’

  Melanie answered for her. ‘She wanted to come to us. We’re having an event today with songs and crime novels. It’s been sold out for weeks. But it won’t happen now. I hardly think that Bettina can sing in this state.’

  Bettina Göschl drank another sip of water and agreed. ‘I’m afraid I have to go home. I want to have a bath and go to bed. This has really taken it out of me.’

  Weller still pressed her, trying to bring a little bit of normality to the crazy situation. He’d learned that a chat about normal things that had nothing to do with a homicide often helped witnesses to remember more. He knew Bettina and called her by her first name. After all, they lived in the same street.

  ‘I have your pirate song as a ringtone,’ Weller said.

  Bettina smiled at him. ‘I know. But I still can’t help you, Frank. I just saw the body and all that blood, and then I called you right away.’

  ‘How did you get blood on your hands and clothes?’ He regretted the question immediately. The answer was just as he had expected. ‘I bent over the man, wanted to help him, but he was already dead.’

  Straightaway, Weller turned around and walked over to Ann Kathrin.

  ‘He must have changed clothes. With the mess the culprit made here, it would be impossible for him to have escaped through the pedestrian zone without being noticed. He must have been covered in blood.’

  Ann Kathrin agreed. ‘The old lady must have been a strong young man,’ she said. ‘Using a walker like that and wearing a disguise he could easily get close to any victim. He probably even stowed a change of clothes in the walker.’