Jakob Arjouni - Kismet

The girl, on the other hand, could have come straight out of an ad appealing for donations to the Red Cross. A thin, emaciated body in worn jeans and a dirty T-shirt, arms covered with scratches and bruises, and a chin with a thick, blood-encrusted scab on it. She was looking sceptically at me from dark eyes which, for her age, were impressively ringed with dark circles. Her gaze seemed to be asking whether she was the reason why I was here, and if so, whether I intended to do something just bad or very bad indeed to her. Perhaps she was older than fourteen; it was hard to say in her condition. But anyway I had thrown nearly everyone from sexual maturity up to the age of twenty five into the same pot. Sometimes the pot was labelled Child, at other times something else.

‘Hello-o-o,’ fluted the woman, turning as emphatically and exclusively in my direction as if she’d like to turn the girl into a flowerpot or something else that wouldn’t attract my attention. Perhaps she was ashamed of this dirty heap of misery in her office, or of her astral body beside the skeleton. Or perhaps it was simply her normal behaviour when a man and a girl were in the same room with her.

‘Hello to you too,’ I replied. ‘Kayankaya, private detective.’

She gave a slight start, and her eyes narrowed as if I had blown air into her face. ‘Private detective,’ she repeated, trying to maintain her cheery tone. ‘So… er, how can I help you?’

I really wanted to ask her to send the girl out of the room for a little while, but decided not to. It would only have warned her that I was here about something worse than stolen bicycles.

‘I’d like to talk to you about a gang extorting protection money who are probably forcing inmates of this hostel to work for them.’

On the way here I’d been prepared for one of those difficult and usually fruitless afternoons when large numbers of people kept suggesting more or less clearly how great it would be if I finally stopped asking questions and went away. I was all the more surprised to find I’d obviously scored a direct hit in double-quick time. Her lower jaw dropped foolishly, her eyelids began to twitch, and the heads of Charlie Chaplin shook like a have-a-go-free notice on an ancient pinball machine. I watched her struggling to regain her composure. The she suddenly broke into hearty laughter.

‘And there was I thinking I was dealing with a madman! Private detective! Whoever heard of such a thing these days?’ She laughed again. ‘You were only joking, right? Well, you certainly took me in. You must be the electrician, aren’t you? It’s the lighting in the corridor. Wait a moment and I’ll show you. Leila.’ As she waved towards the door, she turned to the girl. ‘Go upstairs, please, dear. We’ll go on talking later.’

Either she had realised pretty quickly how little she wanted someone listening in on any conversation with me, or I had hit even harder than I’d guessed. Perhaps my mere appearance in the secretarial office at this moment was a direct hit in itself.

But however that might be, her little performance wasn’t running too badly so far — and if the girl had got up and gone out she could have carried on with it, acting slightly stupid, talking about corridor lighting, claiming not to know anything, believe me or not as you like, goodbye.

However, the girl didn’t get up and didn’t look as if she could be easily persuaded to do so. Hands clutching the arms of her chair, she thrust her lips out defiantly and stared, unmoved, at the woman behind the desk.

‘Leila!’ The mouth was still smiling, but the voice had taken on a barracking tone. That didn’t seem to bother Leila. To make it perfectly clear that she was not going to obey, she slipped off her plastic flip-flops and stuck her feet behind the chair-legs. Apart from that she didn’t move.

The woman tried hard to indicate, by rolling her eyes with amusement, how widespread and really rather sweet such teenage obstinacy was, but how trying too. Of course there was no reason for it at all, we grown-ups were of the same mind there.

‘Leila, if you don’t go I’ll have to call Gregor, and he’ll take you to your room, chair and all.’ She leaned forward and smiled at the girl, closing her eyes so much that I couldn’t see them. ‘Do you really want to deprive me of my chair? I have to discuss the corridor lighting with this man, and I’d like to ask him to sit down. I’m sure you can understand that.’

Leila slowly opened her mouth, wiggled the tip of her tongue between her teeth a bit, and looked at the woman as if she were a conjuror whose tricks have all failed, but who’s still passing round the hat. Then she said calmly, ‘I heard, old cunt,’ and pointed her finger to her ear. ‘Private detective. Corridor lighting shit!’

You could have charged entrance money for the ensuing pause. While it was as much as the woman could to do keep her facial muscles under control, Leila scratched her head and looked straight in front of her, frowning, as if wondering whether she was sitting here with an old cunt for any good reason.

‘Would you believe it?’ the woman finally managed to say. ‘Here we are, caring for them day and night, and what thanks do we get?’

‘Does caring for them day and night mean talking such garbage?’

‘… I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard. Why were you suddenly so keen to have the girl out of the way once I mentioned extortionists and protection money?’

‘It’s no such thing! I.’ She pursed her lips and looked across her desktop as if an answer might be lying around somewhere there. ‘I don’t like discussing such things in front of children. I’m sure you can understand that. Quite apart from the fact that your suspicion is, of course, wildly far-fetched.’

‘Fetch far?’ asked Leila, who was following our conversation with interest.

Before I could reply to her the woman interrupted. ‘That’s enough of that! Go away, Leila, or I’m calling Gregor!’

‘Gre-gor!’ Leila imitated her, but the the next moment she shut her mouth and looked like she was scared by her own words. It was to be assumed that Gregor’s name put a lid on audacity.

‘Just as you like!’

As the woman reached for the phone, tapped in a number and waited, face averted, for someone to answer, I tried to think what I was going to do if Gregor did drag Leila off, chair and all. And I wondered how ruthless I wanted to be. By now I was convinced that either Leila knew something I wasn’t supposed to find out, or I knew something that she wasn’t supposed to find out. Either way, I couldn’t ask her about it in front of this woman. The mere fact that I was here, seeing the woman try to get Leila away from me almost without bothering to pretend about it, could get her into all sorts of trouble. Depending on how high one assessed the chances that I saw her as a source of information or a witness. For the girl’s sake, I thought, it would be best if I left.

Meanwhile Leila was acting the defiant child again. She went on wiggling her tongue between her teeth, stretched out a dirty foot now and then, circled it in the air and examined it critically. All the same, you could sense that the increasingly probable arrival of Gregor scared her. She looked briefly at me a few times. Perhaps she was hoping I’d stay.

‘Gregor?… Please would you come down quickly… Yes, a little problem… Leila… Uh-huh, see you in a minute.’

After she had put the receiver down she sat deep in thought for a few seconds, and then looked up with a fleeting smile as if to say: sorry about that interruption, now, where were we? She did not in fact say anything, just kept on smiling. Obviously that was how she meant to occupy the time until Gregor arrived.

‘Frau… er?’