Bernhard Schlink - Self's Punishment

‘Is pink all right, Herr Selk? Compliments of the department store.’ He winked at me, pushed the pink one over the table, and offered me a light from the black one.

‘Former public prosecutor deals in stolen lighters.’ I could just picture the headlines, and fiddled a bit with the lighter before pocketing it and thanking Mischkey.

‘But what about the opposite direction? Would it be possible for someone to penetrate the factory’s computer from the RCC?’

‘If the factory’s cable leads to the computer and not to an isolated data station… But actually you should be able to work that out yourself after all I’ve said.’

‘So you really face off like the two superpowers, with offensive and defensive weapons.’

Mischkey tugged at his earlobe. ‘Be careful with your comparisons, Herr Selk. If we follow your analogy, capitalist industry can only be the Americans. That leaves us employees of the state in the role of the Russians. As a public servant,’ he straightened up, pulled back his shoulders, and made a suitably stately face, ‘I must renounce this impertinent insinuation most strongly.’ He laughed, slouched down, and gobbled his pastry.

‘Something else,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I’m amused by the thought that the industry that fought for this damaging compromise has damaged itself. One competitor could naturally take advantage of our network to tamper with the system of another. Isn’t that sweet, the RCC as the turntable of industrial spying?’ He spun his pastry fork on his plate. When it stopped, the prongs were pointing at me.

I suppressed a sigh. Mischkey’s amusing, playful reflections suggested an explosion in the circle of suspects. ‘An interesting variant. Herr Mischkey, you’ve been a great help. In case I think of anything else may I give you a call? Here’s my card.’ I felt around in my wallet for the business card with my private address and telephone number on which I pose as freelance journalist Gerhard Selk.

We shared the route back to Ebert-Platz.

‘What does your meteorograph say about the coming weekend?’

‘It’ll be fine, no smog, not even rain. It looks like a weekend at the pool.’

We said goodbye. I took the Römer roundabout to Bergheimer Strasse to get petrol. Listening to it running through the hose I couldn’t help thinking of the cables between the RCW and the RCC and now God knows which factories. If my case was one of industrial espionage, I thought on the motorway, then there was something missing. The incidents in the RCW system, so far as I could recall, didn’t add up to a case of espionage. Unless the spy had used them to cover his tracks. In which case, wouldn’t his only reason have been that he feared someone was on his trail? And why should he fear that? Did one of the first incidents perhaps risk undoing him? I needed to take another look at the reports. And I needed to call Firner and get hold of a list of the firms connected to the smog alarm system.

I reached Mannheim. It was three o’clock, the blinds of Mannheim Insurance had already closed for the evening. Only the windows that showed an illuminated M at night were still on duty. M as in Mischkey, I thought.

I liked the man. I also liked him as a suspect. Here was the joker, the puzzle-lover, the gambler I’d been looking for from the beginning. He possessed the necessary imagination, the requisite talent, and was sitting in the right place. But it was no more than a hunch. And if I wanted to nail him with that he’d serenely send me packing.

I’d tail him over the weekend. Right now I had nothing but a feeling and I didn’t see how else I could follow the lead. Maybe he’d make a move that would bring me new ideas. Had it been winter I’d have stocked up at the bookshop for the weekend on computer crime. Shadowing someone is a cold and hard business in winter. But in summer it’s fine. Mischkey was going to the pool.

Mischkey currently lived in Heidelberg at number 9, Burgweg, drove a Citroën DS cabriolet with the licence plate HD-CZ 985, was unmarried and childless, earned 55,000 marks as a senior civil servant, and had a personal loan from the Cooperative Savings Bank for 30,000 marks, which he was paying back in an orderly fashion: all this I’d been told on Friday by my colleague Hemmelskopf at the credit bureau. On Saturday at 7 a.m. I was at Burgweg.

It is a small stretch of street, closed to traffic, and the upper part of it becomes a footpath leading to the castle. The residents of the five or so houses in the lower part are allowed to park their cars there and have a key for the gate that divides Burgweg from Unteren Faulen Pelz. I was glad to see Mischkey’s car. It was a beauty, bottle-green with gleaming chrome and a cream-coloured hood. That’s where the loan money had gone. My own car I parked in the hairpin bend of Neue Schlossstrasse from which steep, straight stairs lead to Burgweg. Mischkey’s car was facing uphill; if he were to drive off I ought to have time enough to be in Unteren Faulen Pelz when he arrived. I positioned myself in such a way that I could watch the entrance without being visible from the house.

At half past eight a window opened at eye-level in the house I had taken to be the neighbour’s and a naked Mischkey stretched out into the already mild morning air. I just had time to slip behind the advertising column. I peered out. He was yawning, doing some forward bends, and hadn’t seen me.

At nine o’clock he left the house, walked to the market by Heiliggeist Kirche, ate two salmon rolls there, drank a coffee in the drugstore in the Kettengasse, flirted with the exotic beauty behind the bar, made a phone call, read the Frankfurter Rundschau, had a quick game of power chess, bought some more stuff, went home to drop off the shopping, and came out again with a big bag and got into his car. Now it was time to go swimming, he was wearing a T-shirt with ‘Grateful Dead’ printed on it, cut-off jeans, Jesus sandals, and had thin, pale legs.

Mischkey had to turn his car but the gate below was open so I had real trouble getting my Opel behind him in time, one car between us. I could hear the music blasting from his stereo at full volume. ‘He’s a pretender,’ sang Madonna.

He took the motorway to Mannheim. There he drove at eighty past the ADAC pavilion and the Administrative Court, along Oberen Luisenpark. Suddenly he braked sharply and took a left. When the oncoming traffic allowed me to turn I could no longer see Mischkey’s car. I drove on slowly, and kept an eye out for the green cabriolet. On the corner of Rathenaustrasse I heard loud music die out all of a sudden. I nudged forward. Mischkey was getting out of his car and going into the corner house.

I don’t know what struck me, or what I noticed first, the address or Frau Buchendorff’s silver car gleaming in front of Christuskirche. I rolled down the right-hand window and leaned over to take a look at the building. Through a cast-iron fence and an overgrown garden I looked up at the first-floor balcony. Frau Buchendorff and Mischkey were kissing.

Of all people, the two of them had to be involved! I didn’t like it at all. Tailing someone you know is bad enough, but if you’re discovered you can always pretend it’s a coincidental meeting and extract yourself reasonably well. Theoretically that could also be the case for two people, but not here. Would Frau Buchendorff introduce me as private detective Self, or Mischkey as freelance journalist Selk? If things progressed to swimming I’d be staying outside. Too bad, I’d been looking forward to it and had packed my Bermudas especially. They were kissing fervently. Was that something else I didn’t like?

I assumed they would set off in Mischkey’s car. It was waiting with the top down. I drove a little further into Rathenaustrasse and parked so that the garden gate and Citroën were reflected in my back mirror. Half an hour later they drove past me, and I hid behind my newspaper. Then I followed them through what we call the Suez Canal to Stollenwörth-Weiher, a little lake in the south that boasts two beaches.