Bernhard Schlink - Self's Punishment

I needed a while, too. ‘This morning I wrote you a final report. You’ll find it along with an invoice in your mail, today or tomorrow. It was sad. It felt as though I was having to tear something out of my heart: you, Peter Mischkey, some better understanding of myself that I was getting from the case.’

‘Then, you’ll agree to continue? Just tell me what’s in your report.’

We’d reached the art museum; a few drops were falling. We went in and, wandering through the nineteenth-century painting galleries, I told her what I’d discovered, my theories, and what I was pondering. In front of Feuerbach’s painting of Iphigenia on Aulis she stopped. ‘This is a beautiful painting. Do you know the story behind it?’

‘I think Agamemnon, her father, has just deposited her as a sacrifice to the goddess Artemis so that a wind will start to blow again and the Greek fleet can set sail for Troy. I love the painting.’

‘I’d like to know who that lady was.’

‘The model, you mean? Feuerbach loved her very much. Nanna, the wife of a cobbler from Rome. He quit smoking for her sake. Then she ran away from him and her husband with an Englishman.’

We walked to the exit and saw it was still raining. ‘What do you plan to do next?’ Judith asked.

‘Tomorrow I want to talk to Grimm, Peter Mischkey’s colleague in the Regional Computer Centre, and with a few people from RCW again.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘If something comes to mind, I’ll let you know. Does Firner actually know about you and Mischkey, and that you’ve hired me?’

‘I haven’t said anything to him. But why did he never actually tell me about Peter’s involvement in our computer story? To begin with he always kept me up to date.’

‘So you never realized that I’d tied up the case?’

‘Well yes, a report from you crossed my desk. It was all very technical.’

‘You only got the first part. Why, I would like to know. Do you think you can find out?’

She’d try. The rain had stopped, it had grown dark, and the first lights were coming on. The rain had brought the stench from the RCW with it. On the way to her car we didn’t talk. There was weariness in Judith’s step. As I said goodbye I could also see the deep tiredness in her eyes. She felt my eyes on her. ‘I’m not looking good at the moment, right?’

‘No, you should go away somewhere.’

‘In recent years I’ve always gone on holiday with Peter. We met each other at Club Med, you know. We should be in Sicily now, we always travelled south in the late autumn.’ She started to cry.

I put my arm round her shoulders. I didn’t know what to say. She kept crying.

Grimm was barely recognizable. The safari suit had been exchanged for woollen flannel trousers and a leather jacket, his hair was cut short, his upper lip sported, resplendent, a carefully sculpted pencil moustache, and along with the new look there was a new confidence on display.

‘Hello, Herr Self. Or should I say Selk? What brings you here?’

What was I to make of this? Mischkey wouldn’t have told him about me. Who else then? Someone from the RCW. A coincidence? ‘Good that you know. That makes my job simpler. I need to look at the files Mischkey worked on here. Would you show them to me, please?’

‘What? I don’t understand. There aren’t any files of Peter’s here any more.’ He looked puzzled, and a shade mistrustful. ‘Under whose mandate are you here, actually?’

‘Two guesses. So you’ve deleted the files? Perhaps that’s for the best. Tell me what you think of this.’ I took the computer printout from my briefcase, the one I’d found in Mischkey’s file.

He spread it in front of him on the table and leafed through it for quite a while. ‘Where did you get this from? It’s five weeks old, was printed here in the building, but has nothing to do with our stock.’ He shook his head thoughtfully. ‘I’d like to keep this here.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I must be off to the meeting now.’

‘I’ll gladly bring you the printout again. I have to take it with me now.’

Grimm gave it to me, but it felt as though I were wrenching it from him. I put the obviously explosive contraband into my briefcase. ‘Who took over Mischkey’s responsibilities?’

Grimm looked at me in sheer alarm. He stood up. ‘I don’t understand, Herr Self… Let’s continue our discussion another time. I really must get to this meeting.’ He escorted me to the door.

I stepped out of the building, saw a phone-box on Ebert-platz, and called Hemmelskopf immediately. ‘Do you have anything at all at the credit bureau on a Jörg Grimm?’

‘Grimm… Grimm… If we have something on him, it’ll come up on the screen in a second. Just a moment… There he is, Grimm, Jörg, born nineteenth November nineteen forty-eight, married, two children, resident of Heidelberg, in Furtwänglerstrasse, drives a red Escort, HD-S 735. He had debts once, seems to have made something of himself, though. Just around two weeks ago he paid back the loan at the Cooperative Bank. That was around 40,000 marks.’

I thanked him. That wasn’t sufficient for Hemmelskopf, though. ‘My wife is still waiting for that ficus tree you promised her in spring. When can you come by?’

I added Grimm to the list of suspects. Two people are involved with one another. One dies, the other gets rich, and the one who gets rich also knows too much – I didn’t have a theory, but it seemed fishy.

The RCW had never asked me to return my entry pass. With it I had no problem finding a parking space. The guard still knew me and saluted. I went to the computer centre and sought out Tausendmilch without falling into the hands of Oelmüller. I’d have found it unpleasant having to explain to him what I was doing here. Tausendmilch was alert, keen, and quick on the uptake as ever. He whistled through his teeth.

‘These are our data. A curious mixture. And the printout isn’t from here. I thought everything was quiet again. Should I try to trace the printout?’

‘Leave it. But could you tell me what these data are?’ Tausendmilch sat down at a computer and said, ‘I’ll have to flip through a bit.’

I waited patiently.

‘Here we have a list of people on sick leave from spring and summer nineteen seventy-eight, then registers of our inventions and inventors’ royalties, way back to before nineteen forty-five, and here’s… I can’t open it but the abbreviations might also stand for other chemical companies.’ He turned the machine off. ‘I wanted to thank you very much. Firner called me in and said you’d praised me in your report and that he had plans for me.’

I left a happy person behind. For a moment I could picture Tausendmilch, on whose right hand I’d spotted a wedding ring, coming home after work that day and telling his elegant wife, who had a martini ready for him and in her way was contributing to his rise, about his success today.

At security I sought out Thomas. On the wall of his office hung a half-finished plan of the course for security studies. ‘I had something to do in the plant and wanted to discuss your kind offer of a teaching appointment. To what do I owe the honour?’

‘I was impressed by how you solved our data-security problem. You taught us some things here, Oelmüller in particular. And it would be indispensable for the curriculum to have a freelancer involved.’

‘What would be the subject?’

‘The detective’s work: from the practical to the ethical. With seminars and a final exam if that’s not too much trouble. The whole thing should start in the winter term.’

‘I see a problem there, Herr Thomas. According to your concept, and it also seems sensible to me, I can only teach the students by using my experience with real cases. But think of the business here at the Works we were just discussing. Even if I didn’t mention any names and I went to lengths to disguise the whole thing a bit, it would be a case of the king’s birthday suit.’