Jakob Arjouni - Kismet

He let the question hang in the air for a moment before wrinkling his nose busily and nodding a couple of times in a very matter-of-fact way. Here at last was someone who knew who really mattered in the Ostend district. Wog offices flying through the air were all very well, but the important point, without a doubt, was that no stranger could pass his lookout post at Heidi’s place without his noticing that stranger and identifying him as such.

‘Hm, now you ask, yes, there was someone made me think, hey, what’s he doing here? I know everyone around this place, see — by sight anyway. I mean, you noticed yourself — it’s my knowledge of human nature, eh?’ He looked me straight in the face for the first time, and while the rest of his demeanour still signalled a large amount of new-found liking for me, an expression of some doubt entered his eyes.

‘What happened to you, then? You look almost like you.’

‘The name’s Borchardt. Explosives expert.’ I offered him my hand, and he automatically shook it. ‘I came straight from another bombing raid. A lot of dust there, as you can see. So how about this guy you noticed before the explosion?’

But he wasn’t to be fobbed off so easily. He looked me suspiciously up and down, let his eyes dwell on my hand holding the car key, connected the Opel logo on its tag with the old wreck behind me, let go of the barrier, bent down a little way and was asking, ‘Your car? Don’t I know it from.?’ when he caught sight of Leila.

‘There’s still a surprising number of these old things still on the road. Not my private car, of course. But as you see, in our work we explosive experts don’t have it all neat and tidy, so the city gives us these old transport fleet rejects. It’s no fun for anyone driving them, I can tell you.’

‘You’re an explosives expert? Police?’

‘Uh-huh. Frankfurt CID.’

He straightened up, stared at me unimpressed, and jerked his thumb at the car window. ‘So who’s that? Frankfurt CID too?’

‘She’s… er… well.’ I put my mouth close to his ear and lowered my voice. ‘The raid I mentioned just now was on a refugee hostel — know what I mean? And that’s one of the witnesses, a…’ I showed him a dirty grin. ‘Well, you can see her hair colour and her… er… complexion.’

He reacted as if a twenty-mark note was suddenly looking at him from a pile of dog shit in the street. First his eyes lit up and he ran his tongue over his lips, then his expression suddenly froze and darkened, until he suddenly took a step back and explained, shaking his head, ‘I didn’t mean it that way! You can’t pin anything on me. All I said was that the guy the office up there belonged to is a show-off arsehole and definitely didn’t have blue eyes, and you’re still allowed to say that, right?’

‘And how! Don’t worry, we in the police weren’t born yesterday either. We know the time of day, and we’d always rather have an honest opinion than all that do-gooding Benetton stuff. I mean…’ and once again I approached his ear, ‘I mean, where do Nobel prize-winners come from? That’s what I always say. They don’t come from Africa, do they?’

His scepticism lasted a moment longer, then he slowly raised the corners of his mouth, and a conspiratorial gleam came into his eyes. ‘You put that very nicely.’

‘Well,’ I said, dismissing the subject, ‘a man can’t help thinking. But could I ask you, all the same, to describe the person you saw from Heidi’s place?’

What he described was a small, fat, white man with thick lips — Ahrens’s Hessian, the one who had smashed my nose in.

I thanked my new Klu-Klux-Klan mate, gave a wave and went to the car.

As I started the engine, Leila asked, ‘What did that old queen with the earring say?’

Maybe I ought to have introduced them to each other. Maybe, once a few prejudices were out of the way, they’d have got on like a house on fire.

‘As I thought. A gas explosion.’

‘You talk long time for as-I-thought.’

‘He was a nice guy. Told me a bit about the area. After all, I’m going to be here every day after next month.’

I drove the Opel past ambulances and groups of people deep in discussion — ‘Fucking bastard’, ‘Wog detective?’ — and filtered into the rush-hour traffic.

‘I don’t think.’

‘Hm?’

‘Gas explosion, I don’t think.’

‘Oh, don’t you?’ I said in an offhand way, and gave her a smile saying: you can think anything you like, I’m not going to lose my temper. Unfortunately she didn’t mind in the least how or if I smiled at her.

‘First Gregor and whole hostel smashed up, then you drive off look at new office?’

‘It was on my way. Why not?’

‘I don’t think. You covered with dirt. And you think Ahrens because of Gregor. And then we drive back just the same way.’

And you can go take a running jump, thought the latest member of the Bockenheim League to save the White Man.

Which was more likely to discourage her, yet more proof that her mother’s boss was not exactly a scrupulous negotiator in his business affairs, or a detective who, she was bound to think, was lying to her?

I told her the truth. Not a trace of hysteria.

‘Stupid that with office,’ she said. ‘But with Ahrens, that your problem. I have my problem, and I can pay. You look for my mother first is agreement.’

So far I hadn’t asked her, and I didn’t really want to know either, but now I did think for a moment of what she might have gone through during the Bosnian war. Perhaps by comparison she thought all this fuss about an office blown to pieces was just hysterical shit for those who lived in a land where people drove Mercedes.

‘… and of course I’ll keep my word. Don’t worry.’

‘Good. But with office, why lie?’

‘Because your mother is probably with Ahrens, and I didn’t want you to be afraid.’

She thought about that.

‘Understand. But I not afraid. My mother is strong.’

Yes, sweetheart, but obviously not strong enough to get home to you last Sunday, and certainly not as strong as knives, knuckledusters and guns, and when Ahrens hears — as he’ll have heard by now — that I took you away from the hostel with me, he doesn’t have to be a genius to work out a nice little blackmail move appealing to my professional honour, and then we both have a problem. Because I’m not quite so honourable as to hand myself over in exchange for your mother, and get shot down.

Instead I said, ‘I’m sure she is. I only have to look at her daughter.’

‘Look at her d.?’ she began, before she understood, and for the first time since my appearance in Schmidtbauer’s office her pouting lips curved into a smile. ‘Yes, we all strong people.’ And after a pause, sounding almost annoyingly confident, ‘Will be nice when my mother back. You like her too.’

‘I certainly will,’ I agreed. And I registered, to my surprise, that my heart changed its rhythm and skipped a couple of beats.

Ten minutes later we drew up outside my flat, and if I had not quite admitted my fears to myself, I felt very relieved all the same at the sight of the building standing there, not shattered by any bomb. My flat might be badly heated, it might have woodchip wallpaper, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether I preferred the sound of Heino or Sting coming through the walls, but by comparison with my ex-office I liked it. Slibulsky had often asked me why I didn’t find myself something nicer than this two-room coffin in a new building. But I’d never yet thought of any kind of flat to suit me better than the two-room coffin. Some people liked to wear check suits, others drank Fanta with fish. And I’d once seen someone perfectly happily dancing to a German-language cover version of Stairway to Heaven. I’d grown up in flats in new buildings. The angular, low-ceilinged surroundings, always smelling slightly musty of glue or cleaning fluids, gave me the kind of feeling others get from the smell of Christmas baking.