In Free Fall(76)

The detective decides to beat the computer using its own weapons. He lifts his feet up onto the sofa and sets to work calculating every possible move and countermove.

By the time it grows light, he has not shifted one centimeter from his position. His deliberations are now being accompanied by the whine of an electric saw, which is biting into solid wood on the street below. The rain machine has shifted down a gear or two, and glaring light that leaves no shadow makes everything in the room look washed-out. At about eight o’clock the detective stretches his legs and massages his neck. He has not made a single move. But he now has a vague idea of where the next attack against his opponent should be made.

Out on the street, he walks over a carpet of wet sawdust. It smells like a circus ring. He steps over branches that have been torn off in the storm, and drops the two postcards in a mailbox on his way to the streetcar stop. Onboard, strangers are telling each other about the damage done in their neighborhoods. Their eyes are shining with the happiness that is only ever brought about by a natural catastrophe representing the comeback of a half-forgotten god.

Schilf gets off the streetcar near the Institute of Physics and takes a detour along Sophie-de-la-Roche-Strasse. The peaceful canal has been transformed overnight into a muddy torrent filled with leaves and plastic bottles. Bonnie and Clyde are nowhere to be seen. Schilf manages to duck behind a parked car just as Sebastian appears from around the corner. Sebastian’s arms are wrapped tightly around his body. He does not have a jacket, a bag, or an umbrella. He looks like a man who has spent half the night on the autobahn and then slept two hours on the swivel chair in his office at the institute.

So you’ve come back to us, the detective thought, the detective thinks.

With difficulty he suppresses the impulse to follow Sebastian.


NOT LONG AFTER, he is standing in front of the locked glass door of the natural sciences library looking at the posted opening times. It is a while before he realizes that it’s the weekend, so he will have to wait another hour. Resigned, he follows his own wet footsteps back through the Gustav Mie building and goes to the cafeteria, which is empty but open. He calls out in a loud voice for a double espresso before he sits down at one of the freshly wiped tables. He puts his mobile phone down and places his hands on either side of it. Barely five minutes pass before it rings.

“Miserable criminal!”

Schilf is happy to hear that Rita Skura avoids repeating herself when she dishes out insults. It is good to hear her voice.

“I have you to thank for the most ridiculous Sunday morning of my life,” she says.

She sounds relieved. Schilf wedges his phone between his shoulder and his cheek.

“Good morning,” he says. “Lovely weather, isn’t it?”

“Of course I had to lie,” Rita says, undeterred. “Sooner or later I could have brought in the murderer by other means.”

“Of course,” Schilf says. “Sooner—or later.”

Rita’s snort makes the diaphragm of the speaker vibrate.

“Do you know the chief public prosecutor?” she shouts. “Have you tried dictating terms to a guy like that?”

Schilf not only knows the man but can also visualize him, hunched into his own body fat, perched behind a desk of presidential proportions. When the newly appointed chief public prosecutor had the immense piece of furniture delivered at his own cost, the laughter of the Freiburg judiciary had been heard all the way to Stuttgart.

This colossus of a man hates being on call during weekends. And he also hates summer. In summer, women like Rita Skura walk around in flowery dresses while men have sweat running down their buttoned-up shirt collars. The chief public prosecutor has probably not invited Rita Skura to come in. The door was wrenched open the very moment she knocked. She has already ruined the previous evening with her phone calls; now she stands before him like a Joan of Arc from Baden, offering herself up as her heaviest cannon, the hands on her hips a challenge. As she speaks, the chief public prosecutor plucks at his hair, observes her for a moment, and visualizes her floating to the ground. All the while he grinds his jaw incessantly, as if he were chewing on something. As soon as Rita has finished, he heaves himself out of his armchair with a groan and closes the window. What he has to say does not need an audience.

“Listen,” Rita says on the telephone now. “No forty-eight-hour remand if he makes a full confession. That’s all that was possible. I had to swear to God that he is not a flight risk.”

“If he were a flight risk he would be long gone. It’s not far to Switzerland.”

“If it were that simple,” Rita says, insulted, “why didn’t you explain it to the public prosecutor yourself?”