In Free Fall (24 page)

“Here we are,” Schnurpfeil says, when the car stops at the side of the road.

“Final stop, scene of the crime. Everyone off!” Schilf calls in a fit of good humor. “Show me the trees.”

Schnurpfeil looks straight ahead of him like a soldier, and stays put behind the steering wheel, making no move to leave the car. Let him choke on his loyalty to Rita Skura, Schilf thinks, not feeling inclined to give an official order. Back first, Schilf climbs out of the police car. Even without help, it is easy to pick out the two trees. They flank the
road like gateposts, separating two seemingly identical worlds. The forest rises up into the sky on both sides, like a three-dimensional puzzle.

How easy it is to distinguish the two halves from each other, Schilf thinks. Here and there, before and after, life and death. You could do it anywhere, with nothing but a cable.

The air tastes clean, drinkable like water. The birds twittering incessantly.
We should do more open-air investigations, the detective thought
, the detective thinks.

AFTER A CURSORY GLANCE AT THE MARKS
left on the bark by the steel cable, he pushes his way into the scrub. He crosses the ditch, lifting brambles carefully from his shirt, and slides down into the undergrowth with one hand on the ground. The traces left by the forensic team are clear to see: bits of plaster from casts of footprints, earth that has been dug up, and branches that have been sawn off. Schilf parts the ferns with both hands and ducks under the green surface in a moment that seems fleeting. Squatting down, he looks around him. He is surrounded by hairy branches with brownish rolled-up leaves like snail shells.

The descent was hot work. His shirt sticks to his back and he tastes salt on his upper lip. Schilf rolls up his shirtsleeves and waits. He is convinced that this place will have something for him, something the forensic team could not find, because it does not consist of flakes of skin and hair. It is the story of how a boundary was crossed. A story about how thin the membrane is that holds a human life together. Schilf wants to know what it is like for one man to wait for another to die. Ants form a dark pile on top of a caterpillar, which twitches clumsily as its body is carried off in pieces. Apart from that, there is nothing that can help the detective’s understanding.

A whining noise drills into his ears. Here are the mosquitoes to give the witness statement that Schilf still needs in order to be certain of what he thinks. Seven mosquitoes land on his right forearm and sting immediately. The detective jumps up and beats at them. The survivors
launch a new attack without hesitation, and reinforcements come from invisible colleagues; they tickle his neck and sting his arms and hands over and over again. Schilf rolls his shirtsleeves down quickly, shakes his trouser legs, and wipes his face. When he has calmed himself, he notices a small man standing some distance away as if rooted in the ferns, watching him perform the dance of St. Vitus. When their eyes meet, the paunchy man starts moving toward him.

“Miserable bloodsuckers, aren’t they?”

The butterfly collector approaches, raising a didactic finger.

“They’re the rats among the hexapods,” he says. “Insects with six feet,” he adds, when Schilf does not respond.

The detective looks at the backs of his hands, where the first bites are swelling. He wonders what would happen if he were to scratch them with the blade of a knife until they were bloody, and then walk into the office of the leading public prosecutor with his arms outstretched proudly, proclaiming, “Look, here’s the decisive piece of evidence!” He begins to laugh quietly. It would surely be the first case in criminal history to be decided on the grounds of an intolerable itch.

“Are you laughing at my equipment?” The butterfly collector is still. “A collecting net. And here is a storage net, which is just like life. It’s easy to enter and difficult to leave.”

The detective is busy spreading spit on his forearms.

“There’s been a lot going on here recently,” the butterfly collector says. “The police are frightening away my customers.” Lots of tiny lines on the man’s face add up to a great worry. He points accusingly at a lantern-shaped cage. “See—empty!”

“What are you looking for?”

“Six-legged specimens.” The little man stretches out his hand. “Franz Drayer. Pensioner and amateur lepidopterist, on the path to immortality. And what are you looking for?”

“A two-legged specimen.”

“Tall, blond, friendly face?”

“You saw him?”

“He was sitting in these ferns a couple of days ago. Almost at the same spot as you.”

“Thank you,” the detective says. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“You can read about me in the relevant journal!”

Schilf nods farewell and leaves a witness who does not matter to infinity.

Puffing and cursing, he reaches the road. He is combing his hair with his fingers, removing small twigs, when a ringing sound disturbs the peace of the forest.

“All right, you bastard. I’m listening.”

“Rita Skura in top form! Delighted. Sadly, my price has risen in the meantime.”

“What do you want, you miserable blackmailer?”

Schilf allows himself an artificial pause and plucks a final burr from his trousers. The police car is parked a few meters away, looking like an uninvited guest amid nature’s anarchic profusion. Schnurpfeil is sitting behind the windshield, pale and stiff as a waxwork, loath to even glance at him. Schilf turns away and looks at his feet. He needs all his concentration and persuasive powers for the next sentences, and not a resentful police officer.

“Listen, Rita. I need a little more time to clarify the matter. I’ll give you the name, to take the wind out of your bosses’ sails—otherwise, come Monday they’ll be setting the special forces on us. Are you still there? Still listening?”

“Stop blustering, Schilf. Tell me what you want.”

“I want my man to remain free. Don’t take him in until I close the file. And no press.”

This statement does not pass unnoticed. It’s half an eternity before Rita is able to reply. When she does, she sounds utterly uncertain.

“We’re talking about a murderer. I think you’re losing your marbles.”

“And you don’t have them all yet, Rita, my child. And I mean all the people who count as suspects in your case. Where are you right now?”

“In my office.”

“Are you waiting for the next call from the police chief?”

“You bastard. You know full well I can’t guarantee what you’re asking of me.”

“Oh yes you can. Call me again when you’ve made up your mind.”

Schilf hangs up. He takes loping strides toward the police car, slides into the backseat, and taps the frozen Schnurpfeil on the shoulder.

“You can drop me off at the police apartment. Then go to HQ and pick up my travel bag from Rita Skura’s office. You’ll probably be the only person to come out of there alive today.”

The senior policeman starts the engine with a roar and puts his foot down. As they snake toward the valley through narrow bends, Schilf hums a sentence that is stuck in his head:
You have to complete something before it’s all over
.

[2]

WHILE SCHILF SLEEPS IN HIS CLOTHES
and shoes on the sofa of the police apartment, looking like a corpse in one of his murder cases, Sebastian is standing in his kitchen where every drawer handle is an expression of Maike’s aesthetic sensibility. He is preparing an elaborate dinner. The day on which he embraced his son in scout camp, on which his distressed wife ran through the door only to storm out again after a terrible row, and on which a detective wanted to discuss physics—this horror of a day still stubbornly refuses to come to an end. Sebastian has spent the afternoon looking out from the balcony, concentrating on not calling the gallery because he wanted to give Maike time to get used to the situation. When he was unable to bear the silence in the apartment and Liam’s polite reserve any longer, he went out to buy groceries for dinner.

Now he is cooking a Thai meal, following a recipe in a cookbook that he found at the back of a cupboard. It was still wrapped in plastic—an unwanted gift. Sebastian stands at the work surface, hunched as if he is trying to express humility before the highly specialized kitchen equipment in front of him. Even the simplest can opener fulfills its function better than Sebastian has fulfilled his.

To be a good physicist. To live a happy life. Not to upset the people he loves.

It is quiet like the eye of a tornado. Sebastian enjoys following the instructions in the cookbook. No pros and cons to weigh up, no decisions to make. He pounds coriander seeds, peppercorns, and cumin seeds into a rough paste with a heavy pestle and mortar, tosses slices of chili and ginger into the food processor, and almost forgets to thaw the prawns in water. Every now and then he bends down and takes another ingredient out of the two shopping bags that lie at his feet like obedient pets, losing some of their girth each time. Liam came into the kitchen ten minutes ago, and has been fighting his usual impatience before dinner by carrying glasses and plates from the cupboard to the kitchen table one by one, refilling the salt shaker, and constantly asking for other tasks.

“Why are we eating in here?”

“It’s cozier.”

In truth, Sebastian would not dare to attempt sitting down together in the familiar environment of the dining room.

“You can set the table,” he says for the third time.

The washed vegetables glow in appetizing traffic-light colors, reaching their visual high point just before they sink into a reddish mass along with the prawns. When Liam comes up to the stove to peek into the pans, Sebastian strokes his head and swallows hard as he realizes how perfectly the curve of the child’s skull fits into the cup of his hand. He snatches a sidelong look at his son, who does not notice. He looks at the boy’s smooth forehead, the delicate nose with its arched nostrils, the pale eyes, which hint at depths as appealing as they are dangerous. As he looks at Liam, he gets a heavy, sinking feeling in his stomach. He is shocked by the strength of this love, which is capable of sending a grown man—with all his complex memories, convictions, hopes, and ideas—to a place outside of space and time, a place in which nothing except the laws of love apply. As Liam twiddles a wooden spoon with a wagging motion of his finger, Sebastian experiences, with painful clarity, the potential “no longer being” that is inherent in all creatures and things. From now on, Liam can also be seen as the absence of Liam,
and that is hard to bear. Sebastian is irretrievably tied to an anti-Liam, whose visible body is a door, the entrance to hell, a door that is not closing properly. Ever since Sebastian has gotten his son back, it has cost him enormous effort not to send him out of the room.

“Damn!”

It was stupid of him to rub his eyes with his hands. The chili and onion take effect, sending Sebastian to the sink, where he washes his face with cold water.

Maike smells the food as soon as she unlocks the door and steps into the hall. It smells of appeasement. Sebastian is standing at the stove with puffy eyes and a red nose, and Liam is doubled over with laughter, pointing at him. The spit between Liam’s teeth is green from secretly nibbled peppers. Maike stands in the door frame and wants to laugh with Liam and cry with Sebastian. She asks herself why she washed the floors of all the rooms in the gallery on her hands and knees in order to put off coming home.

“What’s going on here, then?” she asks, dropping to her knees to catch Liam as he rushes into her arms.

“Dad’s got Thai in his eyes!”

Liam puts up with a kiss and runs back to the stove. He stands on tiptoe and devotes himself to stirring the rice, as though the viscous mass on the wooden spoon could bind him to normality.

“How was your day?” Sebastian asks. For a second, it really seems as if everything were as usual.

As Usual is the worst thing that can happen to Maike right now. She drops onto a chair and smiles helplessly into the growing silence. She feels as though she has been gone not for a few days but for years, and is now returning to a life in which she can participate only as a spectator. Sebastian, who is screwing up his eyes as he tastes his curry, seems as alien to her as an actor who has stepped out of character without warning. She wants to take hold of him and shake him and scream at him, or perhaps hug him and stroke him and smell him, too—whatever it takes to get her husband back.

Since this morning, however, it has been impossible for her to make any movement in his direction, so she can only sit and look and think. It is not only Dabbelink’s death that has driven her half out of her senses. Nor Liam’s mysterious kidnapping. It is the coincidence of these two things as well as the fact that, in some final way, she understands nothing. Emptiness is not an opponent, and it is impossible to defend a family without an opponent. If Maike had experienced a little less happiness and a little more unhappiness in her life thus far, she would know what to call this empty feeling: fear.

“A strange day,” Maike says after clearing her throat, a very necessary action. “A funny guy came to see me in the gallery.”

“As tall as Dad?” Liam asks. “Only old? Bulging tummy, and a face like an elephant?”

“How do you know?”

“That’s our detective.”

“You’re joking.”

Maike has grown paler than before, if that were possible. Her patched-up calm is crumbling at the edges.

“Almost done!” Sebastian calls to her in an artificially cheery voice, like a TV chef. Maike ignores him.

“Are you saying,” she says to Liam, “that this guy works for the police? And that he was here with you both?”

“Just after you left,” Sebastian says in a low voice.

“I can’t bear this any longer,” Maike whispers.

“He promised to make everything OK.” Liam’s voice breaks with desperate enthusiasm. “He’s clever.”

“Everything is OK, my darling,” Maike says to Liam. And to Sebastian, “What did you talk about?”

Sebastian brings a pan to the table and ladles curry onto the plates.