In Free Fall(96)

But the worst thing of all is the voice of the first detective chief superintendent. Schilf is crouched on the passenger seat talking to the windshield about branches and ponds and parallel universes and other bizarre stuff. The crazed monologue makes Rita Skura wish that Schnurpfeil would draw into the next petrol station and throw everyone except her out, and simply drive off, out of the city, onto the A5 toward Basel, and go straight on until the sea can be glimpsed between the trees. Sadly, Schnurpfeil makes no move to do this, but is concentrating on the evening traffic. Nothing in his actions betrays the fact that he imagines throwing everyone except Rita out at the next petrol station and driving off with her, until he reaches the sea.

Rita’s fingers drum up a storm on her lap. Schilf’s cry for help has shaken her self-confidence somewhat. Her instincts tell her to call up the chief public prosecutor and request an arrest warrant for Sebastian. But if she is to proceed from the opposite of her instincts, as she normally does, she must stay where she is and follow the ideas of someone of unsound mind. Her method of working doesn’t seem to be effective any longer. Or perhaps it simply cannot be applied to its progenitor.

When Schilf’s babbling stops for a moment, Rita ventures to speak.

“This is madness.” She leans forward and taps her forehead. “You’re dangerous, Schilf. This is totally birdbrained.”

The detective breaks into a sudden fit of laughter that fills the vehicle. He sounds like he is suffocating by the end of it.

“Birdbrained!” he splutters, also tapping his forehead. “That’s a good one.”

“I’m getting out at the next junction,” Rita says.

“At the next junction,” Schilf says to Schnurpfeil, putting his hand on the driver’s forearm, “stop in front of the sports shop.”

The van brakes. Schnurpfeil gets out and slams his door. Schilf passes him the briefcase through the open window.

“Two tops, two pairs of trousers, and two pairs of shoes,” he says. “The jerseys in yellow. And take Sebastian with you for size.”

Sebastian puts the cooler down at his feet as gingerly as if it were a newborn baby in a cot, and gets out of the van. Her mind completely blank, Rita watches him as he walks into the shop with Schnurpfeil. When the two men have disappeared, Schilf puts an arm over the headrest and looks back at her. They are silent. It feels good to be silent, even though Rita knows that this long stare is only Schilf’s way of preventing her from getting out and walking away.

“All right, then,” she finally says. “Give it to me straight, in simple language.”

Schilf presses his thumb and index finger against his eyelids, as if he needs to concentrate intensely.

“Oskar created a parallel universe,” he says, “in which Liam had been kidnapped and not kidnapped at the same time. Sebastian was supposed to recognize what it means not to be able to trust in reality. What it is like to have no ‘either/or’ but only an ‘as well as.’”

“So much for the theory,” Rita says. “Let’s move on to the practice.”

“In a way, the kidnapping was an experiment. But something went wrong. Another memorial to the horror of what we call coincidence was built. And that tangled up the worlds.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t follow you.”

“Imagine two trains traveling next to each other for an instant, at exactly the same speed, totally parallel. At this point, it is possible to change trains. Oskar drew up the timetable, and coincidence created the disaster. And Sebastian slid from one universe into the other.”

Schilf takes his hand away from his face at last. His eyes are glittering.

“Rita, my child, we’re going to create a second parallelism, in order to enable Sebastian to return to his world.”

“You can be really frightening sometimes.”

Rita casts a glance at the cooler, tosses her hair back, and looks out of the window as if she is trying to convince herself that outside, at least, everything is as it was.

“This is what I understand,” she says. “It’s not about this nonsense of parallel universes, but about the fact that Oskar is the one who is really guilty. You’re saying that he has fucked up his friend’s life in order to teach him a lesson about responsibility. And he’s sitting in Geneva pretending that this has nothing to do with him.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying!”

Schilf’s face lights up and Rita cannot bear to contradict him. She allows him to stretch out his hand and pat her on the cheek. Sometimes she wishes that her work still required her to wear a uniform. That would keep the world at a slight distance.