Jutta Profijt - Morgue Drawer Four

Our drive took us across the Rhine, the cathedral receding downriver behind us to the left, and Martin got even more nervous as he considered the possibility that we might soon be running on empty, but it didn’t come to that. The Jaguar turned off the main road.

“Industrial wasteland” is a buzzword that describes a piece of land where some kind of industrial operation used to be located. First the operation brings in wads of cash while regrettably contaminating the soil and groundwater, then it’s closed, falls into disrepair if the site wasn’t in ruins already, and then the former owner or heirs no longer can or want to be found—thereby sticking the general public with the costs of decontaminating the poison pit. That’s the kind of site our stylin’ Jaguar was driving to.

Martin turned on his blinker to follow, but before he could execute this hair-raisingly idiotic idea, I talked him out of it with a carefully worded question.

“Are you batshit crazy?” I roared.

Martin hit the brakes as hard as he could. Pure reflex.

“We’re going to stick out like Santa Claus at Easter Sunday mass if we follow behind the Jag now,” I said, returning to normal intonation.

“Right, got it,” Martin moaned, sniffling.

“We’re going to have to keep a low profile and follow him on foot,” I said. “So park the car here, and let’s get going.”

Martin parked the trash can on the shoulder, awkwardly locked the doors, and started walking at a brisk pace.

To our benefit, all kinds of bushes and trees had already taken over the abandoned site as their habitat, so we didn’t need to walk around without any cover. I whooshed out in front as a scout, found the Jag not far from us, and even caught another glimpse of Dr. Eilig, who was walking up to a dilapidated building, attaché case in hand. I was torn between going back to Martin and staying with Eilig, but I ultimately decided on Eilig. Presumably that was my error because Martin wasn’t keeping an eye out behind him, either—only in front.

Dr. Eilig took up position on the front steps of the old building, its roof totally missing and its rear gable wall half caved-in, and then looked around. Obviously he couldn’t see me, and he couldn’t see Martin from his location, either. After looking all around again, Eilig stood there for a moment almost hesitantly, but finally he set the attaché case down in the entryway to the old building and walked at a rapid gait back to his Jaguar, climbed in, and drove off.

Martin had just enough time to dive behind a wall as the car raced past him. We couldn’t tell if Eilig saw him.

A few seconds later Martin had reached the attaché, which I hadn’t let out of my sight the whole time. “What’s inside?” he asked.

“How am I supposed to know?” I asked.

“Can’t you see inside it? Or seep into it, or something?” Martin demanded.

“And do you suppose there’s a little light bulb inside, like in the fridge?” I asked back.

“Well I don’t know,” Martin mumbled.

“Why don’t you just open it?” I suggested.

“And what if it’s a bomb?” Martin asked.

“Is it ticking?” I asked.

Martin listened and shook his head.

“So open it,” I said.

He lay the case down carefully, gently pressed on the locks, and the cover sprung open. No bomb. Money. Hundred-euro bills. More than I’d ever seen in one stack before. Sweet!

“Take the attaché and let’s get out of here,” I said. Martin stood there as though he were nailed to the spot.

“Martin!” I yelled, but he showed no reaction.

“He’s being blackmailed,” Martin mumbled thoughtfully. “Eilig is being blackmailed.”

“That’s how I see it, too,” I said. “And that means: we’ve got a problem. To be specific, the blackmailer is going to be showing up in a minute to pick up his cash. We need to clear out of here now.”

“Why is he being blackmailed?” Martin mused to no one in particular.

“He’s got a whole pile of skeletons in his closet,” I said. “And you don’t screw around with people like that. So hobblety-hobblety-ho, let’s go.”

Martin didn’t move. “But who knows about the skeletons in his closet?”

Here again you can see how complicated these college-educated types make life. When confronted with a case full of money, what on earth does a normal person care who is blackmailing who? No one gives a fuck; the main thing is you get to get your hands on the dough. But not Martin.

Martin was taking his own sweet time thinking things through.

“Why did Eilig need to have killed you, actually?” he asked.

“Because I stole his car and knew that there was a body in it,” I replied.

“But how did he know that you were the thief?”

“He must have seen me breaking into the car.”

“What could he have seen?” asked Martin the Meticulous, who had never yet just believed the blatantly obvious.

I thought about it. Eilig could have seen only a thin, inconspicuous guy in dark clothes with a cap on driving away in his car. No one followed me as I drove the car to the rendezvous point. No one was standing in the parking lot when I handed the car off. Eilig had no way at all of knowing who I was. Therefore, he was not the one who killed me. But who was it then? And why was Eilig being blackmailed? I asked Martin this as well, since he had infected me with his brooding, and as a result I totally forgot about the danger we were in.

“Why he was being blackmailed is easy,” Martin said. “Because of the body in the trunk.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

“The only question is: by whom?”

The answer hit us at the same time: I had gotten a job from someone to steal the SLR. That someone intended to sell the car in Eastern Europe and had almost certainly discovered the body in the trunk first. His contact in the East…At that moment everything became clear to me: his contact was a tall, thin, good-looking, dark-haired guy who I’d seen for the first time on the day I died, then in Olli’s shop, and most recently at the Institute for Forensic Medicine. All the threads in this case converged into the fat hands of one man:

“Olli.” I thought it to myself, but Martin yelled out the name loud and clear.

“That’s right,” said a completely calm voice that I immediately recognized as Olli’s, from barely five meters away. “And that’s why the money belongs to me and I will thank you to get your manicured hands off it right now.”

Martin and I stood there as though flash-frozen. We hadn’t heard Olli coming; he had just suddenly emerged from the semiruined building. Maybe he’d been hanging around there the whole time. I don’t know; I hadn’t noticed him.

“Uh-oh…” Martin said as he too recognized the obese car smuggler. The activity in his brain was sending out sparks.

“Of course,” Martin said. “You had no need to find out whose SLR it was; you had already hired someone to steal a unique car.”

Olli nodded.

“And when the car was delivered to you with a body in the trunk, the situation was just begging for blackmail,” Martin said.

Olli nodded again. “I’d have been stupid not to ask for some cash on the side.”

“But why did Pascha Lerchenberg have to die?” Martin asked.

Olli stopped short. “How do you get to him?”

“He’s the one who stole the SLR,” Martin said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world that Martin knew that.

Olli’s eyes narrowed between the jiggling fat above and below them into even thinner slits.

“You’re the guy who knew that I had your girlfriend’s BMW,” Olli said.

Martin nodded.

“And now you know that Pascha stole the SLR,” Olli said.