‘… a filthy creature, a…’
‘Tell me, how about Dr Ahrens — does he just have animal skins lying on his floor or does he fuck like an animal too?’
For the second time during our short acquaintance I managed to get her making that foolish face, lower jaw dropping and eyelids twitching.
‘What… what are you talking about? I don’t know what…’
I smiled magnanimously. ‘That’s OK. Why not? He’s a smart guy, is Ahrens — smart office, smart car… all the same, in your place I wouldn’t shoot my mouth off quite so loud about tarts and depravity.’
‘What on earth are you thinking of?’
‘Not a lot at this moment. I’m going out with Leila for a little while, and meanwhile you can see to the monster there. It’s probably in all our interests not to kick up a big fuss about this. Call Ahrens and ask him for a doctor who’ll take the bullets out without asking too many questions. I’m sure he knows one. And then I want a private conversation with you later. If you disappear, or summon reinforcements, or do anything else to stop us having that conversation you’ll be in jail this evening. The same applies if you bring Ahrens or Gregor into it against Leila. She was here today only by chance and she has nothing to do with it — whether her mother’s what you say she is or not.’
She briefly opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, nodded slightly, looked at the phone and picked up the receiver. When I closed the door behind Leila and myself I could hear her clearing her throat, and then fluting again, as if restored to her old self, ‘Oh, my dear, I’m glad to catch you. I have to speak to Dr Ahrens. It’s urgent…’
Apparently she took my threat seriously. I briefly imagined Hottges’s face if I’d actually thought of asking him to have a woman with absolutely nothing against her arrested. I’d have had to think up something special to persuade him. Perhaps a projection of the film featuring him on the facade of police headquarters, for instance. Or a Zeppelin circling above Frankfurt by night, with a huge monitor hanging from it showing details of his little rendezvous all the way to Offenbach.
‘Let’s go somewhere we can be alone and keep an eye on the square outside this building.’
‘Keep an eye there?’
‘Go somewhere we can see it.’
Leila pointed down the dark corridor. ‘Visitors’ room.’
If the place where we found ourselves a little later was really meant to be a visitors’ room, they seemed to think here that ‘visitors’ was just a synonym for a robber band. And one that must have mastered the trick of finding a market somewhere in the world for the sale of rusty metal chairs with their foam rubber upholstery spilling out, and tables that were obviously used mainly for stubbing out cigarettes, knife-throwing, and inscriptions in thick felt pen saying ‘Fuck the cunt’. All the furniture — which besides the tables and chairs consisted of a standard lamp without a bulb in it and an empty bookshelf — was screwed to the floor with strong angle-irons. There was nothing you could have moved in any way at all. When I tried opening a window to get rid of the stink of disinfectant, Leila waved my attempt aside.
‘No try.’
‘No try?’
‘Hostel manager say.’
‘No try what? Getting a breath of fresh air?’
Leila shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Steal windows?’
‘Steal windows,’ I repeated, and looked at the cracked, battered plastic frame, which was painted a bilious yellow.
‘Well, let’s keep this short.’ I looked at Leila. She was leaning against the wall a few metres away from me, her arms folded, and once again looking as unmoved as before the appearance of Gregor. Yet she seemed to know as little as I did what we were really doing here. I had got her out of the secretary’s office so that I could go back on my own and deal with Frau Schmidtbauer, and she had probably come with me only to make sure I wasn’t going to call the police after all. After Frau Schmidtbauer’s outburst I thought I knew enough about Leila’s part in the affair. A short conversation to persuade her to trust me, and then I hoped she’d finally disappear.
‘Your mother works for Ahrens and that’s why you don’t want me to call the police, right?’
She nodded.
‘And she doesn’t really want to work for Ahrens at all, but he blackmails her into it, the way he blackmails other people here in the hostel.’
She nodded again.
‘OK, then there’s no problem. I was never really going to call the police, I just meant it as a threat.’
I waited for some sign that she understood and now we could go our separate ways. Instead she dug her hands into her trouser pockets and began walking slowly up and down the room. As she did so she kept casting brief, appraising glances at me, as if I’d made her some offer that wasn’t entirely on the level. In fact it was now that I finally realised how little she could still be called a child. In the secretarial office I had noticed only the rings round her eyes, the scab, the shoulder-length, greasy mop of hair and her loud mouth. Now I looked at her properly for the first time. Her face reminded me of one of those little bistro tables when you are having lunch for two there. Eyes, nose and mouth all seemed to be pushing each other over the edge. Not that her face itself was particularly thin, but everything else was so particularly large and pronounced, like a series of slightly outsized features of classical beauty. Dark, huge, almost protuberant eyes, a slightly aquiline, strong nose, and lips like pink air cushions. In addition she moved like those long-legged girls of whom you can never be sure whether they know what they can do to a man just by taking a short, meaningless walk across the room.
All things considered, it was suddenly clear to me that possibly I wasn’t the first old fogy to have helped her out of a tricky situation or done her some other favour, and perhaps other men had then insisted on being shown gratitude in a room as remote as this one.
‘Hey, Leila, what’s the matter?’ I asked, overdoing the loud voice. ‘Stop marching around like that! We’ve discussed everything we have to discuss. Go to your room and wait for your mother to come back. I promise, she won’t have to work for Ahrens any more after next week.
She stopped. ‘Private detective?’
‘Me? Yes, you know that.’
‘How much?’
‘How much what?’
‘How much you cost?’
‘How much do I cost…?’ What was all this? You couldn’t say Leila had no talent for dragging things out at length.
‘Yes… How much the day? You look for my mother. I can pay.’
As I was still wondering whether I really had to take this pocket-money fantasy seriously, doors slammed somewhere. I turned to the window. The first thing that occurred to me was Leila’s warning about not trying to ‘steal’ the windows; in this instance it meant I was slow to hear cars coming. The black Mercedes was right in front of the hostel entrance. At the same moment I lost any hope that it could be a doctor sent by Ahrens, or someone else parking his car as if God had created that vehicle on the first day and then created everything else for it to park in. The two figures moving weightily from the Mercedes to the door and nodding at each other, as if anticipating something particularly tasty to eat, were my two charmers from Berlin: the knee expert and his mate who was so proud of the number of people he’d done in.
I leaped back from the window, grabbed Leila’s arm and pulled her to the door in a single fluid movement. ‘Get out of here at once!’ I hissed at her. ‘There are some guys coming who…’
‘Can’t stay.’
‘What?’
‘Can’t stay here. Gregor know we…’ she flapped her hand back and forth between us. ‘He know we talked. I…’ and her hand fluttered in the direction of the ceiling. ‘He kill me.’
‘Now listen, Leila…’
‘No now listen! You look for my mother! With me! You private detective! I can pay!’