“My girlfriend and I live in Stuttgart.”
Schilf recognizes the expression on people’s faces when they are sizing up a crazy old man—it’s a sure sign that he’s on the right track. The waitress nods, her eyebrows raised, and starts justifying her presence by wiping the edge of the table. Her movements are precise, like those of a machine. Now that the detective thinks about it, the parrot with his painted headdress also looks mechanical, and the group of tourists is being hustled out of the picture as if on a conveyor belt. Perhaps I’m the only creature made of flesh and blood here, the detective thought, the detective thinks. And I’m trying to investigate crimes among the robots.
“But he has a motive, after all,” Schilf says. “This senior registrar must have known about the experiments on patients, and blackmailed the medical director.”
He lifts his head to confirm that the waitress is looking at him suspiciously. He feels her catlike gaze on him as a physical sensation, especially on his forehead and temples.
“All nonsense,” she repeats stubbornly.
“How do you know?”
“Intuition.”
She taps her pirate headscarf and Schilf nods approvingly because she has located her intuition in the depths of her brain rather than between her diaphragm and pancreas, like most other people.
“Someone like him,” she says, pointing a false nail at Schlüter’s half-covered face, “either does things properly or not at all. It was pure coincidence that the botched job with the steel cable worked.”
Schilf suppresses a comment on the nature of coincidence, and hurries to ask his next question. “Who did it, then?”
“My name is Kodak,” the parrot says.
“Agfa,” Schilf corrects.
“That bird is a pain,” the waitress says. “Either Schlüter got someone to do it…” She sinks into thought.
Schilf is afraid that her battery is dying. “Or?” he prompts.
“Or the death of that one has absolutely nothing to do with this one. We have stuff without sugar if you want something to eat.”
She turns away and walks toward the entrance of the café with precise movements in time with the rhythmic slapping of her flip-flops. They ought to install etymological dictionaries on their robots’ hard drives, Schilf thinks. But other than that, they seem to work very well.
“Look out.”
Schilf has the impression that the bird is trying to tell him something. He gazes at the parrot thoughtfully as it nibbles away at a stalk of millet. When nothing else happens, he puts the file away and takes out his mobile phone. The rail information service informs him that the first train from Airolo won’t arrive in Freiburg until eleven o’clock that morning.
[2]
MAIKE IS ONBOARD THE FIRST TRAIN from Airolo, feeling like a passenger on a ghost train. It judders its way along a labyrinthine course while a series of dioramas passes before the windows. White goats on shiny green—one of them raising and lowering its head. Cable cars gliding in front of a panorama of mountain peaks. An old man swinging an ax next to his wooden hut. Well-fed cows advertising political neutrality. In small countries the monstrous lies in the details.
When Maike is especially happy or unhappy, she makes lists. She has a list of the best days in her life (her wedding is number one), her greatest disasters (not many entries), her most important successes (founding the Gallery of Modern Art), and her most embarrassing moments (a new cleaning lady throwing a pile of broken chairs out onto the street shortly before a gallery reception). Maike ranks favorite dishes, most annoying people, and her dearest wishes. Her memory is a well-ordered storehouse in which an archivist categorizes every new event. She can say exactly how she feels about almost everything that has happened to her. Keeping lists is her own way of making an inventory of her memories. As of yesterday evening, there is a new list: of puzzling telephone calls.
After the receptionist had put the call through to her room, it had taken Maike an entire minute to realize that the stammering caller was her husband. He said to stay calm so many times that Maike finally started panicking. It was only when she sternly told him to stop it that he told her his confused story. Liam had been kidnapped but was perfectly fine in scout camp after all. Sebastian would pick him up early tomorrow morning. Maike had better break off her holiday, too. It wasn’t actually necessary, but you never know. Perhaps the police might want to ask her a few questions.
Sebastian’s outpouring ended midsentence, like a broken tape. There was a white noise over the line while she remained silent. Oskar had once said that the whole of space was filled with white noise. Maike had heard from someone else that such noise was caused by bugging devices. For a crazy moment, she wondered if they both meant the same thing.