Jakob Arjouni: More Beer

“You’ve gotten me into some serious trouble, my dear man.” Kessler’s suave voice hid the edge of the guillotine blade. “Let’s not even talk about the fact that your choice of the Bollig factory was decisively influenced by personal reasons. We could have managed that. We could even deal with the fact that you then decide to move into this house, so that you and the widow can show all the world how opportune Friedrich Bollig’s demise is for you both. That wouldn’t have been so bad-we had our four culprits. And young widows and their lovers are pretty commonplace.”

Kessler took a deep breath. Then he hissed like a snake. “But neither one of those things can be tolerated when a third party enters the picture, a party who won’t be bribed or intimidated, but stays on the ball. And he is a factor,” he sighed, “that makes the whole thing a little too shaky.”

For a moment I heard nothing but the ticking of the kitchen clock. Then Henry mumbled, “You don’t have to worry about the dago. He’s already in treatment, at Dr. Kliensmann’s. An excellent physician, and a good friend.”

Kessler’s voice was still like a talking serpent’s. “But I do have to worry! The dago, who you claim is under your excellent doctor’s care, called me two hours ago to let me know where my agent Kollek has been hanging out for several months without letting me know about it. I thought that over, and then I got in my car and drove here. And what do you know, my hunch was right on target. Herbert Kollek is not at all where I thought he would be, he comes to the door of the Bollig house, all comfy in his bathrobe!”

Henry growled something incomprehensible. Kessler snarled. “And what about this Kliensmann? Who else knows about this business? Mrs. Bollig, the gardener, the cleaning lady? Maybe we’ll read about it in the papers?”

“Only the night watchman.”

“You reported that, and we took appropriate action. If I’ve been informed correctly, he got on a plane to Paraguay this morning.”

Neither one of them said anything for a while. Then Kessler asked, in a suspiciously friendly tone, “Well. Does anyone, including the watchman, know about your connection to me? Or do they all believe that you killed Bollig for his wife and his money? It could have been your own idea to cover up the murder with a political act of terrorism.”

Henry thought this was his chance to rehabilitate himself, and made a fatal move. While he was still swearing by all that was sacred, that no one knew anything about his link to Kessler, I broke into a run. Rounding a corner, I stumbled on a wire and crashed into a flowerbed. Rounding the second corner, I waved and whistled to Slibulsky, who didn’t understand and just stood there, flapping his arms in the air. After the third corner, I pulled the Beretta and charged the front door. That was when the shot rang out. I stopped for a moment, crashed through the half-open door, and collided with the coatrack. I disentangled myself from a bunch of coats and sprinted into the living room.

Kessler, seated next to the telephone, gave me a quizzical look. Beside him, on the floor, lay Henry, the kitchen light reflected in his glazed eyes. His bathrobe had slid off his shoulders, and I could see the blood trickling from his chest down to his stomach. Kessler replaced the telephone receiver and got out of his chair.

“I found the fifth man. Regrettably, he resisted arrest and became violent, so I had to …”

He made the appropriate gesture.

I looked him straight in the eye. “You won’t get away with that, Kessler. I still have your fucking calendar.”

He looked away.

“It’s a deplorable business, you’re right about that …” He ran his palm across his forehead. “But that calendar won’t do it, not in my case.”

Suddenly Slibulsky appeared. He stood next to me and eyed the scene in bewilderment.

“Allow me-Detective Superintendent Kessler, this is Ernst-”

Slibulsky snapped, “Shut up! You want him to write me postcards?” Kessler smiled, I took the keys to Meyer’s office out of my pocket and handed them to Slibulsky.

“Release that little guy. Tell him that he is Numero Uno at Bollig Chemicals until further notice. He’ll enjoy that.”

Slibulsky nodded and made tracks. I spotted a decent bottle of bourbon behind the house bar, poured myself a stiff drink, plopped myself on the couch, and encouraged Kessler to have a seat as well. He refused, stood there with his hands in his overcoat pockets, and asked me calmly,

“What are we waiting for?”

I put down my glass and lit a cigarette.

“I want to tell you something about Kollek.”

“What if I’m not interested?”

“Then you’ll listen to me anyway, or else I’ll put you through the shredder!”

I put my feet up on the cocktail table and told him the story. Kessler pretended to be bored, cleaned his nails, sighed at regular intervals. But his eyes were wide awake.

“On November seventeenth, nineteen sixty-nine, nine months after her marriage to Friedrich Bollig, Barbara Bollig gives birth to a son, Oliver Bollig. How touching, one might think, the kid was conceived on their wedding night … But on December tenth, almost a month later, Herbert Kollek, head of the firm’s publicity department and an old college buddy of Friedrich’s, is summarily dismissed from his job. A little later, he moves to Frankfurt. Oliver Bollig, for his part, is transferred quite soon after his birth to the Ruhenbrunn Private Clinic run by a Dr. Kliensmann, where he is busy constructing things out of clothespins to this very day.

“I went to see the kid today. He doesn’t particularly resemble his official father, as far as I can tell from photographs. And Kliensmann has been receiving, for many years, an excessively generous consultant’s salary from the Bollig firm, without having to provide any tangible services.”

“How nice for him.”

Kessler smiled, back in his balloon-man mode.

“This is how I figure it all hangs together: Barbara Bollig cheated on her freshly caught factory owner on that same wedding night, and she did it with Kollek. After the kid was born, it became evident that Friedrich Bollig couldn’t be his father, and it didn’t take Friedrich long to find out whose offspring it really was. So he kicked Kollek out and made the infant disappear, not wanting a daily reminder of his cuckoldry. He must have paid off Kollek. Then he paid, and kept on paying, Kliensmann a lot of money to have the child put away as a retarded person in that loony bin next door. It was just a coincidence that I ran into Kollek on my first visit here, as Henry, the friend of the family. It was only today, after something the business manager said, that I realized that Kollek and Henry had to be one and the same. He and Barbara Bollig had kept up their relationship all these years, and you helped them solve the problem that Friedrich Bollig’s continued existence was to them.”

Kessler raised his eyebrows.

“I helped them?”

I lit my next cigarette.

“Kollek reached the goal he had pursued for seventeen years. He had the lady, he had the factory, he had made it.”

I smiled at Kessler.

“And you thought, all the while, that he had killed Bollig for whatever you or your mysterious friend M. paid him to do it. Or that’s what you thought until I called you this afternoon.”

Kessler pricked up his ears at my mention of M. His eyes were tiny and alert.

“Not to belittle the results of your more or less,” he coughed discreetly, “accurate research-but what does all that have to do with me?”

He got up and strode through the room. He stopped next to Henry’s corpse and raised his index finger.