Juli Zeh - In Free Fall

At the end of this speech, face impassive, he presented an alibi for the night of Dabbelink’s death. A short break with friends at the Montreux Palace Hotel on Lake Geneva. The dates tripped off his tongue with such confidence that Rita immediately decided to delegate the task of checking them to Sergeant Sandström. Schlüter wished her good day, waved his attendants over, allowed a nurse to open the door for him, and marched down the corridor toward the room of the patient he was scheduled to visit.

Too proud to run after him, Rita had stayed put, ground her teeth, cursed her job, and realized too late that the glass door could be opened only from the other side. She had far too little evidence to name Schlüter as a suspect. He was not even a witness whom an investigating judge could summon to give a statement.

Rita Skura had spent the rest of the morning on the hospital ward, annoying nurses, patients, and junior doctors with questions, all without obtaining a single useful piece of information. All of them had genuinely liked Dabbelink, who had been a competent senior registrar and a pleasant colleague. Sadly, no one knew him well. Unmarried, childless. Willing to be on call during weekends. All were shocked by his terrible death. Rita finally lost her cool in front of an innocent-looking trainee nurse. She sawed through the air with her large hands until the girl burst into tears. Then she had to take the girl in her arms and comfort her because an irate detective had been beastly to her.

Rita watches a patient have a sneaky cigarette on a balcony. The staff of this damned hospital, she thinks, is behaving like a family of rabbits gone to ground after a bird of prey has snatched one of their number. In truth, she cannot find fault with their behavior. Murders and other terrible things are happening outside, but inside the hospital nobody has enough time to spare from the business of saving lives to even glance up from their conveyer belts.

She snaps her mobile phone open and rings Schnurpfeil, whose obedient voice gives her peace of mind even in the most awful situations. Of course he will come to pick her up, in half an hour, yes, and with great pleasure. In the meantime, he adds shyly, she should order a turkey sandwich in the hospital canteen, so that she doesn’t forget to have lunch again.

Rita gets into the elevator, and as it descends she stares at her neon-gray face in the mirror. If the Freiburg police force fails to deliver any results of note over the weekend, the press will give the bristle-haired home secretary hell, and he will give the mustachioed police chief a roasting, and so on. Rita is, as she knows, at the bottom of the food chain.

WHEN THE DOORS OF THE ELEVATOR OPEN, she is greeted with a sight not calculated to raise her spirits. There is not much happening in the wide expanse of the reception area. Visitors cross the room with hurried steps and there is a splashing noise from a nihilistic indoor fountain complete with a few goldfish. The usual potted palms add to the impression of freshly scrubbed futility. To the left of the entrance is the canteen with its red, yellow, and blue chairs.

First Detective Chief Superintendent Schilf is sitting in the middle of this garish splendor, exactly at the spot where two waves of the pattern in the tiles meet. He is hunched over on a particularly yellow chair, tapping away on the display of a small gadget that he is holding close to his face. Like an old man who has stumbled into the play area in a shopping center. His gaze follows a patient carrying a plate with three slices of cake on it. He looks as if he is looking out for someone he knows.

Rita watches from a distance until her desire to spray him with disinfectant and watch him die like a large bug on the floor has grown into an alarmingly vivid fantasy. Schilf barely seems to notice her when she walks up to him.

“What the devil are you doing here?”

“Playing chess,” the detective replies without raising his head. “One of mankind’s most elegant attempts to forget itself.”

“Is it working?”

“Neither the game nor the forgetting.”

He sighs. Until now, Rita Skura had quite understandably thought that he was here to get in her way, to snoop over her shoulder, and, worse still, to help her. When he sighs for a second time and looks around anxiously at the dull thud of a pair of crutches, she is no longer sure. Schilf seems to have come on personal business.

“Are you looking for someone?”

He shakes his head as if he has been caught out, straightens himself, and tries to look serious.

“Oh no,” he says. “I’m probably afraid I’ll discover a second Schilf here, shuffling around the corner in a shabby dressing gown.”

“If I ever have to stay in a hospital,” Rita Skura says, “I’ll only wear evening dress.”

“That’s what everyone thinks, Rita, my child. But when it actually happens, they always turn into a down-at-heel shadow of themselves.”

“How do you know?”

“One of the most important qualities of a good detective is omniscience.”

Rita snorts with irritation and goes up to the counter, where she orders dead bird on bread. The waiter does not laugh; and it was not intended as a joke.

“How’s it going?” Schilf asks when she sits down at his table.

“Wretchedly.” The sandwich falls apart at first bite. “Doctors will sell their grandmothers before they betray one of their own. It’s not impossible that this piece of wisdom comes from you.” Rita licks mayonnaise from her wrist. “And by the way, we have an agreement. A clear division of labor. At the risk of repeating myself: What the devil are you doing here?”

“What would you do if you knew you were going to die soon?”

The sandwich stops in midair.

“What are you on about, Schilf?”

“I’m trying to have a conversation with you. We don’t always have to talk about work.”

Rita is ready with an acerbic reply, but she thinks better of it, and pauses to consider.

“I’d find a new home for my cat,” she says. “And travel around to visit all the people I love.”

“Would that be a long journey?”

“Fairly short.”

Schilf nods. Two visitors have met at the hospital entrance and started a conversation. You can’t give up hope, one of them says. Yes, hope, the other one says, that’s the last thing to die. Both laugh, but stop immediately. They are standing in the path of the sensor for the automatic doors, which open and close busily.

“It would have to be a ground-floor apartment,” Rita says, “with a garden. For the cat, I mean.”

She pinches scraps of turkey from the plate, shoves them into her mouth, and swallows without chewing. More than anything, she would like to go home right now, draw the curtains, and stop up her ears with cotton wool to block out the twittering of birds. She would lie in bed, stroke the cat, and ask herself why she hadn’t listened to her parents.

“This hospital is not good for us,” Schilf says to her lowered head. “Let’s talk about work again instead.”

“Great,” Rita says. “And how’s it going with you?”

When Schilf reaches for her plate, she picks up the remaining piece of bread and bites into it defiantly.

“The usual,” Schilf says. “As far as that goes, I’m quite the old hand. A real Stalin of investigative methods.”

Rita looks at him, bewildered.

“By the way, I’ve found your cyclist’s murderer,” the detective says.

Rita nearly spits the piece of bread across the table. She looks at the remains of her pathetic lunch and waits for rage to fill her. It does not come. She just feels tired, with an air of finality.

“I warned you,” she says lamely. “You mustn’t cross me.”