Black Ice (15 page)

It was far too risky to tell the police he'd tried it out and it worked. That might put other ideas into their heads. “Tell us, Herr Scholten, could you perhaps have been planning a little accident yourself? Intended for your own wife, maybe? Herr Wallmann offered to let you take your wife to his weekend retreat with you, isn't that right? Could it be that now you've taken fright and thought better of it, and you've thought of pinning something on your boss? You don't get on too well with Herr Wallmann, do you, Herr Scholten? Hasn't he already threatened to sack you?”

The mere idea made him feel hot under the collar. He shifted restlessly in his armchair. He realized they could simply say he himself was responsible for the nail-holes in the planks. And the grease. They could say he'd been rehearsing the whole thing, not with just one of the substitute planks but with the five from the steps.

Hilde said: “Can't you sit still? How can I concentrate on the film? I wish I knew why you have to keep shifting about.”

He said in a very loud voice: “Because I want to!” and then stood up and went into the kitchen. As he was opening the bottle of beer she appeared in the doorway. She said in a penetrating whisper: “Do you have to shout like that? What's the matter with you?”

He raised the bottle to his lips and drank.

“You act in such a common way!” she whispered.

He put the bottle down, belched and said: “I
am
common.”

Her voice turning reedy, she said: “Yes, I knew that
from the start. I should never have married you. I'd have saved myself a lot of grief. If I hadn't married you I might still be healthy. But of course it didn't matter to you whether I was strong enough to have children.”

He belched again copiously.

She sobbed and went away.

Until the next weekend, he kept wondering whether he could do it anonymously. It couldn't be done over the phone. That was much too complicated: he could never explain what it was all about in two or three sentences. If he did it anonymously he would have to write a letter.

He knew from the first that a letter was even more dangerous than a phone call. They would get on his trail; they investigate such letters. But he thought up dozens of ways of writing that letter. He realized how difficult it was to describe the trap, but he kept trying. He did not actually put anything down on paper: too risky. Someone might have come along and asked what he was writing. And he kept finding himself assailed by a torrent of fragmentary ideas that he couldn't control.

He spent the weekend brooding.

On Monday afternoon the door of the filing room was suddenly flung open. Wallmann marched in, shouting: “How much longer do I have to wait for those bank statements? I said I needed them at once!”

Scholten, who had started in surprise, realized that Wallmann was addressing not him but Rosa Thelen. Rosie instantly burst into tears. You could hardly make anything of the shrill broken sounds she uttered between her sobs. “But – but you wanted – you wanted – the statements from the – the job centre – you wanted them at once – too – ”

Wallmann roared: “Yes? So what? Is that too much to
ask? I thought you were supposed to be a bookkeeper?”

“But – but I can – ”

“I know just what you can do. You can sit on your fat arse and twiddle your thumbs. And make coffee. You can't do anything else. I'm sick of it. Things are going to change around here, you bet your life they are!”

Rosie was weeping bitterly. Wallmann went out, slamming the door. Scholten, who had been looking at some papers with his head bowed, looked up and said: “The bastard. I'll pay him back, I promise you I will. Stop crying, Rosie. He can't do anything to you.”

Rosa Thelen went on crying and looking through the bank statements at top speed, meanwhile wiping the corners of her eyes with her wrist.

On the way home Scholten turned into a side street. After driving round a couple of corners he found a phone box in a fairly quiet street. He got out of the car, gritting his teeth, went into the phone box, found the number of the police station in the phone book. He took out his handkerchief, as if to blow his nose, raised the receiver to his ear with his other hand. Just as he realized that he hadn't looked round outside the phone box, a woman's voice answered. “Police here.”

He almost dropped the handkerchief and with trembling fingers tried to drape part of it over the receiver without removing it from his nose.

“Hello? Police here.”

Scholten said: “Frau Erika Wallmann, of the civil engineering firm of Ferdinand Köttgen, she didn't die in an accident. She was murdered. By her husband. You should investigate . . .” Then he broke off, hesitated, hung the receiver up in a moment of sudden panic. He pushed open the door of the phone box,
almost colliding with an old lady walking down the road with her shopping bag. He turned his face away, got into his car, drove off with the engine roaring. He thought that, in the rear-view mirror, he saw the old lady looking after him.

17

When he got home it occurred to him that he hadn't tried to disguise his voice. He stood beside his car, briefcase in hand, both arms dangling. “Oh, shit,” he said.

Nothing happened for the next few days. The following week passed without any incident too. Scholten began to feel calmer. If they had recorded his voice on tape they'd have turned up at the works some time or other. After all, he had given the name of the firm. They'd have come and played everyone the tape and asked: “Do you know this voice?”

Perhaps they might yet turn up?

For they should at least have come to question Wallmann. This was a murder case when all was said and done.

Perhaps they'd summoned Wallmann to the police station? Or perhaps they had gone to his apartment. In the evening. Two of them. They'd stood outside the front door, and when he opened it they'd shown their ID and said: “CID. May we speak to you for a moment, Herr Wallmann?” They had gone into the living room with him and stood there in their raincoats, looking around them.

It gave Scholten a fright to think that they might have played Wallmann their tape. “What do you have to say about this, Herr Wallmann? You'll understand that we have to investigate the matter. Have you any idea who the man could be?”

It took him some time to calm down again. No, surely that was out of the question. If they'd played Wallmann the tape, the wheels would have started going round by now.

No, there was only one possibility: they were quietly investigating for themselves. They were doing the only right thing. They weren't interested in the man who made the call. They were interested in the murderer. Perhaps they were already closing in on Wallmann. Some time or other they'd be coming to take him away.

Scholten nurtured this hope all through June, and he was still living on it when July came. Sometimes it gave him a pang to see the murderer walking around, still a free man. And whenever Wallmann raised his voice in anger at the works Scholten clenched his fist in the pocket of his overall and said to himself: “You wait, you bastard! I'm sick of this! You're for the chop!”

But when his initial alarm and his anger had worn off, he always found himself back exactly where he had been before. What could he do?

He'd already done everything he could. It was up to the police now. They knew what had happened, damn it! Why were they taking so long about it? Why didn't they do anything?

In August Scholten went on holiday with Hilde for three weeks. They spent the first two weeks in a little boarding house not far from the Baltic coast, as they did every year. Scholten went fishing. Hilde lay in a lounger on the balcony recovering from the stress of the journey.

She had few objections to fishing. Many years ago she had decided that fishing was a healthy sport, unlike the bowling that Scholten had previously said was the kind of sport that suited him and kept him fit.
Hilde liked to eat fish too because of its high protein content. Protein is good for the nerves.

Hilde spent her days in the second week recovering from the noise young people on holiday made in the street at night. Scholten didn't hear them. He didn't wake up at night except when Hilde nudged him and asked if he couldn't hear all that noise.

In the middle of the second week Hilde said Scholten was overdoing his fishing. Overdoing anything was always a bad idea, even overdoing an activity that was healthy in itself. Couldn't he take an interest in something else? He might read a book for once.

So Scholten stayed at the boarding house for a day, leafing through the biography of Pope John Paul II that Hilde had brought with her. In the afternoon he went down to the tobacconist and bought a thriller, Hubert Steinbecker's
Deadly Bait
. The book disappointed him. It had nothing at all to do with fishing. Hilde had disapproved of its purchase anyway.

And as they did every year, they spent the third week visiting Angelika in Kiel. Scholten taught his grandson to play skat. The boy was a quick learner, and after Scholten had taught him the rules they played every day. Hilde tried to stop the games, but Scholten said they would help the boy to learn to multiply in his head and do it fast. Angelika said that would certainly be good for her son. Scholten's son-in-law, a pharmacist by profession, had no objection. He knew nothing about card games. Hilde was not at all happy.

On the way home Scholten wanted to leave the motorway at Blumenthal. He said it would be only a little longer to go by way of the Brahmsee, and maybe they could catch a glimpse of the Chancellor's holiday home, maybe Helmut Schmidt himself would be out
sailing on the lake, he'd always been interested in sailing. Hilde said this was all she needed, she didn't know how she was going to stand the drive back anyway: she was feeling very unwell.

Scholten passed the exit road to Blumenthal. He was driving very fast. Hilde asked why he had to rush along like that; it made her feel dizzy. And the cat didn't like it either, the cat would go frantic again. Scholten said the cat didn't mind at all. He put his arm behind him, patted the cat basket and said: “Isn't that right, Manny?” The cat mewed. “There you are,” said Scholten.

He abandoned himself to a daydream for the rest of the journey. He returned to his daydream after every interruption by Hilde, he imagined it all in detail.

He saw himself going to the works on Monday morning, they were all there already, strangely enough, even Kurowski. All but Wallmann. They were standing in the project managers' office. He asked: “What's up?” Büttgenbach looked at him and said: “Haven't you heard? Herr Wallmann's been arrested.” Inge Faust was crying.

When Scholten went to the works on Monday morning Wallmann was out in the yard with the chief mechanic, inspecting the surface finisher that had been overhauled at the weekend. Standing high up on the surface finisher, he looked down and said: “Had a good time?”

“Yes thanks, very good.”

“And how's your wife?”

Scholten realized that he had put his hope in the police in vain. They hadn't taken his phone call seriously. Perhaps they hadn't understood it. There hadn't even been a policeman at the other end of the line, only that stupid female. He'd probably interrupted
her in the middle of painting her nails. Very likely she hadn't even passed the message on.

Over the next few days Scholten tried to think of another approach. But none of his ideas came to anything. He knew in advance that he would always reach a point where the whole thing could be dangerous to himself. Very dangerous.

In addition, Wallmann was behaving reasonably well. This went on for some time. Plenty of orders were coming in. One afternoon in September, when Scholten had found him a few files, Wallmann even offered him the cigar box. “Like one?”

Scholten said “If I may,” and selected a cigar.

Wallmann said: “Herr Scholten, we have a bit of leeway, but the boat will have to be prepared for winter quarters some time. You know what to do, dismantling all the gear and so on. Could you maybe drive over next month and see to it? I should think a day would be enough.”

Scholten turned the cigar in his fingers. “And all those weeds will need to come out too. They grow like nobody's business up there.”

“I don't mind if you stay there two days. I'll pay you.”

“Yes, well, I must just see how I can fix it with my wife.”

“Take her with you, why don't you?”

“Well, I'll think about that.” Drive to the lake with Hilde. That was all he needed!

When he left Wallmann's office his conscience smote him. He looked at the cigar with distaste, put it down on his desk. He went over to the window, looked up at the sky and said in his mind: “Erika, help me. Why don't you tell me what to do?”

Fifteen minutes later he lit the cigar again. It
wouldn't do Erika any good for him to throw the expensive thing away.

In mid-September heavy rain set in. A couple of building sites were flooded. The mood in the office was low. Büttgenbach was away for four weeks, having a kidney stone operation. The weather improved but not the mood in the office.

Early one afternoon Wallmann came striding out of his office. He shouted down the corridor: “Kurowski, come here at once. The sewer in Adenauerstrasse has collapsed.”

“What?” cried Kurowski in alarm. “How did that happen?”

Wallmann stood there in the doorway, bellowing. “Didn't you hear? Rothgerber called – there's someone underneath it! That bastard Vierkotten, he didn't shore it up!”

Kurowski came out with his overcoat in his hand. Scholten ran after them, calling: “Shall I come too?” Wallmann got into his car, slammed the door, opened it again and shouted: “No, you stay here, what would you do on the site, just stand there, staring?” Scholten went in again. He told Rosie and Inge Faust what had happened. Half an hour later the phone rang. Scholten answered it.