Jutta Profijt - Morgue Drawer Four

Olli ranks among those men who are not embarrassed of their tears. But he doesn’t make a big deal about it. He pulled a gigantic handkerchief out of his pants pocket, blew snot into it, and returned to the topic.

“You wanted to propose a wager?”

“If my girlfriend’s car key fits in a car that you’ve got here, then I’ll take that car with me.”

Martin’s hands were dripping with sweat, his knees were shaking, but his voice was coming across fairly sensibly. Good thing, too.

“Just like that?” Olli asked.

“Just like that,” Martin confirmed.

Olli pressed a button on his phone, and in the next moment Greenbeard came in. That’s not his real name of course, but one time he ate five liters of woodruff-flavored gelatin on a bet, won the pot, and five minutes later puked everything back out. In so doing, there was certain residue left in his beard. What his real name is, I’ve forgotten.

Olli held out his fleshy hand, and after a brief hesitation Martin put the key into it. Olli handed the key to Greenbeard, and whispered a few sentences into his ear. There wasn’t anything we could do but wait.

That was the most dangerous moment of this whole operation. Olli might bag the key and demand a surcharge from his end customer for that, but my senses told me he would stick to the deal. And in fact after three rather long minutes, the BMW drove out, pulling up to the entrance.

“Come on, we’re getting out of here,” I told Martin, who was standing in front of Olli’s desk the whole time sweating blood and water.

“Just a moment,” Olli said as Martin turned around. “How did you know that you would bust the bank here with your wager?”

Martin shrugged. “It was a message from Sam,” he said with a wink. “Thanks,” he added afterward, but he got no answer because Olli was already weeping again.

We stepped over to the car, climbed in, and drove to Birgit’s place.

Birgit was overjoyed. She drove Martin back to Olli’s, where the trash can was still parked on a side street, Martin got into the trash can and Birgit into the BMW, and everyone went home, happy and content. Except for me, once again no one was paying attention to me; I was bored, and Martin had forgotten to turn on the TV again.

Martin’s boss was nice about Martin getting to work a half hour late. He took Martin aside and asked him in a collegial tone if he was feeling fit enough to work again, and all that claptrap. I listened in a bit and then went in search of Katrin. She was already deep in conversation with Jochen.

“…acting pretty strange, the past few days,” I heard her say. “And then this mugging on top of it all. But he won’t say anything. I’m slowly starting to get worried.”

Ah ha, they were talking about Martin. His colleagues were gossiping already.

Meanwhile the guy they were gossiping about was pleased as Punch, because visiting him at his desk was none other than Birgit.

“…as just a little thank-you. Because you were having such a hard time with the old headset and its cord was bugging you.”

Scattered on Martin’s desk was enough packaging for Christmas and birthday combined, and his right ear was covered by an earpiece that concealed almost his entire outer ear, with a little boom sticking out in front that presumably contained the mic. Boy, he totally looked like crap in it, though, with his shiner on the left and this cyborg ear on the right, but Birgit was beaming at him. What exactly was this woman’s ideal of male beauty? She probably voted for Alf as Sexiest Man Alive and went soft at the knees seeing the party leaders on the floor of the Bundestag.

Martin in any case was smiling in bliss, dictating “Birgit is the greatest” into his computer. Cool, huh? I left the two love birds to their cooing and roamed through the building in search of something more exciting. Gregor struck me as not the worst option. He was standing in the lobby with his cell phone to his ear, fumbling in his chest pocket for a pen.

“Yeah, go ahead,” he mumbled once he’d found it. He sank down onto one of the chairs in the lobby, took a pad of paper out of his jacket’s side pocket, and jotted down some address that didn’t ring a bell for me right off the bat. Except that it was in the area where Martin and I had gotten our heads smashed in the night before last looking for information about the dead woman.

“And the witness, what’s her name?” Gregor asked, listening carefully and writing a name down. Ekaterina Szszcyksmcnk. All right, obviously that wasn’t really her name, but I found her last name impossible to remember; it was just a string of random consonants no normal person could possibly pronounce.

“And she was certain she recognized the woman from the pictures in the paper?” Gregor asked. I couldn’t hear the answer.

“Does she know her name?”

Brief pause.

“Too bad. Oh well. Still, it’s a starting point at least. I’ll head over there now.”

He hung up, said hi to Birgit, who was apparently on her way out, as he walked past her to take the elevator to Martin’s floor. Martin was sitting at his computer, dictating words that aroused him, such as “multiple perforations of the lung” and “a strikingly well-defined margin resulting from the use of a dull tool causing separation at the root of the penis.” I turned my attention to other things. More beautiful things. Katrin, who was watering the ferns. I fawned around her a bit, but of course she didn’t notice me. Really too bad. It could’ve been so nice going out on a double date. Martin and Birgit, me and Katrin.

Martin had stopped describing what were apparently the fatal results of some real-life telenovela, so I turned my attention to him and Gregor to get my hands, as it were, on the latest information. But first Gregor subjected his friend to a highly embarrassing interrogation.

“What the hell happened to you?” was the opening line.

“It’s not that bad,” Martin said, heroically.

Poser. Yesterday he was crying his eyes out, and now today he was pretending he was an American soldier whose kneecaps can get shot to smithereens without a wince or whimper.

“Yeah, I can tell…” Gregor said. “Geez, your head slips off your pillow and hits the mattress, and this is how you come to work!”

Martin smiled ruefully. “I guess we’ve known for some time that hard mattresses are definitely not as healthy as people used to assume. Maybe I should buy myself a new one.”

Birgit’s visit seemed to have cheered him up dramatically; now he was even making little jokes at his own expense.

Gregor didn’t smile. “I hope you filed a report with the police.”

Martin shook his head. “Against the mattress?”

He was going to carry this number mercilessly through to the curtain; I wouldn’t have thought him capable of that.

“We’ve got some leads on that anonymous woman,” Gregor said. “I’m telling you this so you’ll stop sniffing around on your own and getting yourself all clobbered up.”

“Who is she?” Martin asked.

Gregor shook his head.

“Does your information match my, uh, research?” Martin added.

“No comment.”

“Man, Gregor. We’ve talked about cases before; we’re a good team,” Martin said.

He looked disappointed or sad; I couldn’t interpret his hangdog look exactly.

“Yes, we’re a good team, as long as you stick to your autopsy tools and your brain—and stop using your fists.”

Martin didn’t say anything.

“I only want to protect you,” Gregor said. “First off, so you quit taking a couple blows to the jaw every day, and, second, so you avoid stress on the job. I mean real stress. You do know that the district attorney will kick you in your coroner’s ass if you interfere with official police business by conducting your own investigation and withholding information. You’re still part of the criminal prosecution, after all. You could lose your job.”