Self's Punishment Part 3

'At least they deigned to grant the industry online access to the state emissions a.n.a.lysis,' Ostenteich interjected.

'Do you consider it possible, Herr Oelmuller, that the accident and the incidents in the computer system are in some way connected?'

'I've thought about it. Here practically all production processes are controlled electronically, and there are multiple links between the process computers and the MBI system. Manipulations via the MBI system I can't completely discount it, in spite of all the built-in security measures. Regarding yesterday's accident, however, I don't know enough to say whether a suspicion in that direction makes sense. If so, I would hate to think what could be in store for us.'

Ostenteich's interpretation of yesterday's accident had almost made me forget my arm was still in a sling. I raised my gla.s.s to the gentlemen and made my way over to the buffet. With a loin of lamb in its herb crust on my pre-warmed plate, I was steering my way to Firner's table when Schmalz came up to me.

'May my wife and I invite the doctor to coffee?' Schmalz had evidently dug out my t.i.tle and gladly adopted it to neutralize another sibilant.

'That's extremely kind of you, Herr Schmalz,' I thanked him. 'But I'll hope you'll understand that until the end of this case, my time is not my own.'

'Oh, well, another time, maybe.' Schmalz looked downcast, but understood the Works came first.

I looked around for Firner and found him on his way to his table with a plate from the buffet.

He stood still for a moment. 'Greetings, have you found out anything?' He held his plate awkwardly at chest level to hide a red-wine stain on his dinner s.h.i.+rt.

'Yes,' I said simply. 'And you?'

'What's that supposed to mean, Herr Self?'

'Let's imagine there's a blackmailer who wants to demonstrate his superiority, first of all by manipulating the MBI system and then by creating a gas explosion. Then he demands ten million from the RCW. Who in the company would be the first person to get that demand on his desk?'

'Korten. Because he's the only one who could decide about sums of that size.' He frowned and glanced instinctively at the slightly raised table where Korten was sitting with the head of the Chinese delegation, the president, and other heavyweights. I waited in vain for an appeasing remark like 'But Herr Self, whatever are you thinking?' He lowered his plate. The red-wine stain did its bit to reveal a tense and uncertain Firner beneath the veneer of relaxed serenity. As though I were no longer there, he took a few steps towards the open window, lost in thought. Then he pulled himself together, rearranged the plate in front of his chest, nodded curtly at me and moved in a determined fas.h.i.+on to his table. I went to the toilet.

'Well, my dear Self, making progress?' Korten arrived at the next stall and fumbled with his fly.

'Do you mean with the case or the prostate?'

He peed and laughed. Laughed louder and louder and had to put a hand out on the tiles to support himself, and then it came back to me, too. We'd stood next to each other like this before, in the urinals at the Friedrich Wilhelm. It had been planned as a preparatory measure for playing hookey, and then, when the teacher noticed we were missing, Bechtel was to stand up and say, 'Korten and Self were feeling sick and went to the lavatory I can go in quickly and check how they are.' But the teacher checked on us himself, found us there having a great time, and, as a punishment, left us standing there for the rest of the lesson, supervised by the janitor.

'Professor Barfeld with the monocle will be here any minute,' snorted Korten. 'Barfing Barfer, here comes Barfing Barfeld.'

I remembered the nickname, and we stood there, trousers open, clapping each other on the shoulder. Tears sprang to my eyes and my belly hurt from all the laughing.

Back then things almost took a nasty turn. Barfeld reported us to the headmaster and I had already imagined my father raging and my mother weeping and the scholars.h.i.+p evaporating into thin air. But Korten took it all on his shoulders: he had been the instigator and I'd just joined in. So he got the letter home, and his father only laughed.

'I've got to go.' Korten b.u.t.toned up his fly.

'What, again?' I was still laughing. But the fun was over and the Chinese were waiting.

10

Memories of the blue Adriatic

When I returned to the hall it was all drawing to a close. Frau Buchendorff asked how I was getting home, I couldn't be driving with my arm.

'I took a taxi before.'

'I'd be glad to give you a lift, since we're neighbours. Quarter of an hour by the exit?'

The tables were deserted. Small knots of people formed and dispersed. The red-haired girl was still standing with a bottle at the ready, but everyone had had plenty to drink.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said to her.

'Did you enjoy the reception?'

'The buffet was good. I'm amazed there's anything left over. But seeing there is could you pack a little something for a picnic tomorrow?'

'How many in your party?' She bobbed an ironic curtsy.

'For two, if you have time.'

'Oh, can't do that. But I'll have something packed for two nonetheless. Just a moment.'

She disappeared through the swing-doors. When she returned she had with her a largish box. 'You should have seen the face of our chef. I had to tell him that you're peculiar but important.' She giggled. 'Because you've dined with the general director he took it on himself to add a bottle of Forster Bischofsgarten Spatlese.'

When Frau Buchendorff saw me with the carton she raised an eyebrow.

'I've packed the Chinese security expert. Didn't you notice how pet.i.te and dainty she is? The delegation leader shouldn't have let her go with me.' In her presence all I could think of were stupid jokes. If this had happened to me thirty years ago I'd have been forced to admit I was in love. But what was I to make of it at an age where falling in love no longer happens?

Frau Buchendorff drove an Alfa Romeo Spider, an old one without the ugly rear spoiler.

'Should I put the roof up?'

'I usually ride my motorbike in swimming trunks, even in winter.' It was getting worse and worse. And on top of it, a misunderstanding she was putting up the roof. All because I hadn't dared say that I could think of nothing finer than to be on the road on a mellow summer night with a beautiful woman at the wheel of a cabriolet. 'No, leave it, Frau Buchendorff, I like driving in a sports car with the top down on a mellow summer night.'

We drove over the suspension bridge, below us the Rhine and the harbour. I looked up at the sky and the cables. It was a bright and clear starry night. When we turned off the bridge and before we were submerged in the streets, Mannheim with its towers, churches, and high-rises lay before us for a moment. We had to wait at a traffic light and a heavy motorbike drew up alongside. 'Come on, let's drive out to the Adriatic,' shouted the girl on the back of the bike to her boyfriend. In the hot summer of 1946 I'd often been out at the gravel pit, its name, Adriatic, imbued with Mannheimers' and Ludwighafeners' yearning for the South. Back then my wife and I were still happy and I enjoyed our companions.h.i.+p, the peace, and the first cigarettes. So, people still went out there, more rapidly and easier these days, a quick dip in the water after the movies.

We hadn't spoken throughout the journey. Frau Buchendorff had driven fast, and with focus. Now she lit a cigarette.

'The blue Adriatic,' she mused 'when I was small we sometimes drove out in our Opel Olympia. There was coffee subst.i.tute in the thermos flask, cold cutlets, and vanilla pudding in the preserving jar. My big brother was streetwise, a rocker, as they called it; on his moped he soon went his own way. Back then the notion of going for a quick dip in the night was just getting fas.h.i.+onable. It all seems so idyllic now, looking back as a child I always suffered those outings.'

We'd reached my house but I wanted to savour a little longer the nostalgia that had engulfed us both.

'In what way suffered?'

'My father wanted to teach me how to swim but had no patience. My G.o.d, the amount of water I swallowed.'

I thanked her for the ride home. 'It was a beautiful drive.'

'Goodnight, Herr Self.'

11

Terrible thing to happen

A glorious Sunday saw the last of the good weather. At our picnic by the Feudenheim Locks my friend Eberhard and I ate and drank much too much. He had brought a miniature wooden crate with three bottles of a very decent Bordeaux, and then we made the mistake of downing the RCW Spatlese, as well.

On Monday I woke up with a blazing headache. On top of that the rain had coaxed out the rheumatism in my back and hips. Perhaps that's why I dealt with Schneider all wrong. He had reappeared, not flushed out by the Works security service, just like that. I was to meet him in a colleague's laboratory; his own had been burnt to a sh.e.l.l in the accident.

When I entered the room he straightened up from the fridge. He was tall and lanky. He invited me with an indeterminate flick of the hand to take a seat on one of the lab stools and remained standing himself, shoulders stooped, in front of the refrigerator. His face was ashen, the fingers of his left hand yellow from nicotine. The immaculate white coat was supposed to hide the decay of the person inside. But the man was a wreck. If he was a gambler then he was the sort who had lost and had no shred of hope left. The sort who fills out a lottery ticket on a Friday, but doesn't bother to look on the Sat.u.r.day to see if he's won.

'I know why you want to talk to me, Herr Self, but I've nothing to tell you.'

'Where were you on the day of the accident? You'll know that surely. And where did you disappear to?'

'I unfortunately do not enjoy great health and was indisposed in recent days. The accident in my laboratory was a real blow, important records of research were destroyed.'

'That's hardly an answer to my question.'

'What do you really want? Just leave me alone.'

Indeed, what did I really want from him? I was finding it more and more difficult to picture him as the brilliant blackmailer. Broken as he was, I couldn't even imagine him the tool of some outsider. But my imagination had duped me in the past and there was something not right about Schneider. I didn't have that many leads. His, and my own, misfortune that he'd found his way into the security files. And there was my hangover and my rheumatism and Schneider's sulky, whiny manner that was getting on my nerves. If I couldn't intimidate him then I might as well kiss my job goodbye. I gathered myself for a fresh attack.

'Herr Schneider, we are investigating sabotage resulting in damages reaching into the millions and we're acting to prevent further threats. I've encountered nothing but cooperation during my investigation. Your unwillingness to lend your support makes you, I'll be perfectly honest, a suspect. All the more so as your biography contains phases of criminal entanglement.'

'But I put a halt to the gambling years ago.' He lit a cigarette. His hand was trembling. He took some hasty drags. 'But, okay, I was at home in bed and we often unplug the telephone at the weekend.'

'But Herr Schneider. Security was round at your house. There was n.o.body home.'

'So you don't believe me anyway. Then I won't say another word.'

I'd heard that often enough. Sometimes it helped to convince the other person I believed whatever he said. Sometimes I'd understood how to address the deep-seated trouble at the source of this childish reaction so that everything came gus.h.i.+ng out. Today I was capable of neither one nor the other. I'd had it.

'Right, then we'll have to continue our discussion in the presence of Security and your superiors. I'd have liked to spare you that. But if I don't hear from you by this evening . . . Here's my business card.'

I didn't wait for his reaction, and left. I stood under the awning, looked into the rain and lit a cigarette. Was it also raining on the banks of the Sweet Afton? I didn't know what to do. Then I recalled that the boys from Security would have set their trap and I went over to the computer centre to take a look. Oelmuller wasn't there. One of his co-workers whose badge revealed him to be a Herr Tausendmilch showed me on screen the message sent to users about the false data file.

'Should I print it out for you? It's no problem at all.'

I took the printout and went over to Firner's office. Neither Firner nor Frau Buchendorff were there. A typist regaled me on the subject of cacti. I'd had enough for one day and left the Works.

If I'd been younger I'd have driven out to the Adriatic regardless of the rain to swim off my hangover. If I could just have got into my car I'd maybe have done it anyway, regardless of age. But with my injured arm I still couldn't drive. The guard, the same one as on the day of the accident, called a taxi for me.

'Ah, you're the fellow who brought in Schmalz's son on Friday. You're Self? Then I have something for you. He scrabbled beneath the control and alarm desk and came back up with a package that he handed over with ceremony.

'There is a cake inside as a surprise for you. Frau Schmalz baked it.'

I had the taxi take me to the Herschel baths. It was women's only day in the sauna. I had it take me to the Kleiner Rosengarten, my local, and ate a saltimbocca romana. Then I went to the movies.

The first movie showing in the early afternoon has its charm, regardless of what's playing. The audience consists of tramps, thirteen-year-olds, and frustrated intellectuals. When there were still students who lived out of town, they went to the early showing. Pupils who matured earlier used to go to the early showing to make out. But Babs, a friend who's headmistress of a high school, a.s.sures me that pupils now make out at school and are all made out by one o'clock.

I'd ended up in the wrong theatre the cinema had seven of the things and had to watch On Golden Pond On Golden Pond. I liked all the actors but when it was over I was glad I no longer had a wife, and never had a daughter or some little b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a grandson.

On the way home I looked in at the office. I picked up a message that Schneider had hanged himself. Frau Buchendorff had spoken with extreme matter-of-factness on the answering machine and asked to be called back immediately.

I poured myself a sambuca.

'Did Schneider leave a note?'

'Yes. We have it here. We think your case is over now. Firner would like to see you to talk about it.'

I told Frau Buchendorff I'd be there straight away, and called a taxi.

Firner was light of heart. 'Greetings, Herr Self. Terrible thing to happen. He hanged himself in the laboratory with an electric cable. A poor trainee found him. We tried everything to revive him of course. No use. Read the suicide note, we have our man.'

He handed me the photocopy of a hastily scrawled sheet of paper, apparently meant for his wife.

My Dorle forgive me. Do not think you didn't love me enough without your love I'd have done this a long time ago. I can't go on now. They know everything and leave me no option. I wanted to make you happy and give you everything may G.o.d grant you an easier life than in these past dreadful years. You deserve it so much. I embrace you. Unto death your Franz.

'You have your man? This leaves everything open. I spoke with Schneider this morning. It's gambling that had him in its clutches and drove him to death.'

'You're a defeatist.' Firner bellowed with laughter in my face, his mouth wide open.

'If Korten thinks the case has been solved, he can of course relinquish my services at any time. I believe, though, that you're jumping to conclusions. And you yourself don't take them that seriously. Or have you already deactivated the computer trap?'

Firner wasn't impressed. 'Routine, Herr Self, routine. Naturally the trap is still in place. But for the time being the matter is over. We just have a few details to clear up. How, above all, Schneider managed to manipulate the system.'

'I'm quite certain you'll be on the phone to me soon.'

'Let's see, Herr Self.' Firner, honest to G.o.d, stuck his thumbs into the waistcoat of his three-piece suit and played 'Yankee Doodle' with his remaining fingers.

On the way home in the taxi I thought about Schneider. Was I responsible for his death? Or was Eberhard responsible for bringing so much Bordeaux that I had been hungover today and too gruff with Schneider? Or was it the senior chef, with his Forster Bischofsgarten Spatlese that finished us off? Or the rain and the rheumatism? The links between cause and effect and guilt went on and on.

Schneider in his white lab coat was often in my thoughts in the days that followed. I didn't have much to do. Goedecke wanted a further, more detailed report on the disloyal branch manager, and another client came to me not realizing he could have got the same information from the town clerk's office.

On Wednesday my arm was on the mend and I could finally collect my car from the RCW parking lot. The chlorine had eaten into the paint. I'd add that to the bill. The guard greeted me and asked whether the cake had been good. I had left it in the taxi on Monday.