In Free Fall(23)

Of course it would also be a question of leaving as few traces as possible, but that was just a vague matter of chance, not a necessary condition.

A mechanic with ponytail and steel-rimmed glasses tugged at the loose ignition cables and congratulated Sebastian on his good luck in still having a car at all. Sebastian did not enter into the question of whether he had been lucky or unlucky, but promised to return in an hour. At a high table in a bakery, he drank coffee. On the radio there was a report on the government’s new plans for reform. The woman in the bakery was selling bread rolls with names that sounded like fitness products and discussing with her customers the imminent end of the world. The only advantage in Sebastian’s situation was that none of this mattered to him any longer. He paid. He picked up his car—repaired and fully cleaned, too, thanks to a special offer at the garage that week. Even the trunk had been vacuumed.


IT IS JUST AFTER TWELVE. Sebastian hangs the tea towel on the hook and walks over to the balcony door. The sun has risen over the ridge of the roof, and casts a rectangle of light between the trees in the courtyard. A cat parades over the cobblestones, lies down on its side, and stretches one leg in the air to clean itself. The scene is simple and clear; the trip into town has done Sebastian good. But he is no nearer to his goal of coming up with a proper plan. Every imagined attempt to approach Dabbelink ends in fiasco. At least he feels no pity when he thinks of Dabbelink—only hatred. It seems to him that Dabbelink is, in some secret fashion, responsible for all of this. Sebastian is wary of this very useful conception on moral grounds. He is also happy that Dabbelink has neither wife nor children—not out of human kindness, but for logistical reasons.

He pulls open all the kitchen drawers for the third time, and also opens the little cupboard under the sink.

Bread knife and kebab skewers. A corkscrew and a potato masher. A hammer.

Although Sebastian knows that human beings like killing, he has never thought the process would be simple. He is annoyed by TV films in which a distraught woman reaches for the fallen pistol on the floor and kills her attacker with one clean shot to the head, despite the recoil and a lack of weapons training. The way Sebastian sees it, normal people can perhaps operate a gun, but will never hit their target. Normal people handle a variety of possible murder weapons every day—parcel string, plastic bags, rolling pins, not to mention kebab skewers (have these ever actually been used?)—but still wouldn’t know how to employ them in order to kill.

Ethyl alcohol. Insecticide.

Sebastian seriously considers getting a professional to do the job. It would be simple for an anesthetist to get the necessary drug, then ring Dabbelink and tell him some cock-and-bull story. They would meet at his house for the handover. They would clink glasses of red wine. With luck, it would look like suicide.

Pastry fork. Duct tape. Poultry shears.

Right at the back is an old bottle without a label, filled to the brim with a clear fluid. Sebastian opens it and sniffs. Nothing. Absolutely, markedly nothing.

His mother had always kept the distilled water for ironing high up on a shelf in the laundry room. If you were to drink it, the dead water would seep into your cells, bloat them, and make you explode. A cool wind touches the back of Sebastian’s neck. Dabbelink’s racing bike is kept in the shelter in front of the cycling club. Two water bottles are beneath the saddle.

When Oskar was asked about his methods at the university, he replied that the art of thinking did not lie in finding the answers, but in teasing answers from the questions. Perhaps, Sebastian thinks, the human being is also a problem that carries his solution within him. Perhaps that is what those who study the humanities call fate. A machine, like Dabbelink, has to die cycling.

Bent over the computer keyboard in the study, Sebastian cannot stop thinking about Oskar. Oskar in the full glory of his infallibility. Perhaps he, too, would be unable to come up with a way out of this straight off, but he would know how to rise above by force of intellect. For a moment, Sebastian feels ashamed of wanting Oskar’s support at this of all times. Then he found the right article on the Internet. Contrary to popular wisdom, drinking distilled water is safe. Some health fanatics even consider it good for you as it is sterile. Sebastian reads the article as if it is his own death sentence.

Immediately after this, he is sitting at the kitchen table once again, head buried in his hands. He is a physicist, not a chemist, and certainly not a criminal; he is probably not even very practical minded. They have chosen the wrong man. For a frenzied half hour, he imagines an alternative past peppered with if-onlys. If only he had not set his heart on a couple of weeks of undisturbed work. If only he had not immersed himself in useless theories. If only he had used his time with Maike and Liam fully and wrung every bit of happiness out of it. Now he is being punished for his inattention.