I took a last look at my kitchen clock and then went back to the car. Just before I reached it I spoke to a man who was leaning against a barrier, staring up at the wall of the building, and looked as if he’d been there for some time.
‘’Scuse me, can you tell me what happened up there?’
‘Huh! You may well ask!’ he exploded with surprising fury, but somehow with a kind of satisfaction too, and without taking his eyes off the building. He had bad teeth, bad skin, hardly any hair, a pot belly, alcohol on his breath, stained nylon clothing that didn’t fit him and a gold ring in his ear. ‘God knows what that bastard did in there!’
‘Er… what bastard?’
‘Some wog detective.’
‘Wog detective?’
‘Yes, well, a wog’s what I’d call him. He’s a Turk, he is — or was. Could be it blew him to bits. Think of it.’ He cast me a brief sideways glance. ‘Fellow like that. All we need now is wogs in the police… and then goodbye the Ostend!’
Slap a little plaster dust on now and then, and you got to know what the neighbours really thought of you.
‘When, roughly, did it blow that bastard to bits?’
‘Half an hour ago or thereabouts. I was over in Heidi’s place. But I reckon blown to bits is just wishful thinking. I mean, can’t see anything, can you? Blood or body parts or that.’
Heidi’s Sausage Heaven was the culinary high spot of the street. Strictly speaking, if you didn’t count a hamburger bar and a bakery selling sandwiches, it was the only culinary spot in the street. Hunger had driven me to Heidi’s greasy plastic tables now and then, forcing me to swallow stuff that no dog would have looked at.
I acted as if I had to search around to locate the place bearing Heidi’s name. Heidi’s Sausage Heaven, I read aloud from the sign over the door. ‘You’d have a good view of this place from there. Did you happen to see anyone go in before the explosion? Someone who might have set it off. Someone who doesn’t belong here. Doesn’t necessarily have to have been a wog.’
He let the question hang in the air for a moment before wrinkling his nose busily and nodding a couple of times in a very matter-of-fact way. Here at last was someone who knew who really mattered in the Ostend district. Wog offices flying through the air were all very well, but the important point, without a doubt, was that no stranger could pass his lookout post at Heidi’s place without his noticing that stranger and identifying him as such.
‘Hm, now you ask, yes, there was someone made me think, hey, what’s he doing here? I know everyone around this place, see — by sight anyway. I mean, you noticed yourself — it’s my knowledge of human nature, eh?’ He looked me straight in the face for the first time, and while the rest of his demeanour still signalled a large amount of new-found liking for me, an expression of some doubt entered his eyes.
‘What happened to you, then? You look almost like you.’
‘The name’s Borchardt. Explosives expert.’ I offered him my hand, and he automatically shook it. ‘I came straight from another bombing raid. A lot of dust there, as you can see. So how about this guy you noticed before the explosion?’
But he wasn’t to be fobbed off so easily. He looked me suspiciously up and down, let his eyes dwell on my hand holding the car key, connected the Opel logo on its tag with the old wreck behind me, let go of the barrier, bent down a little way and was asking, ‘Your car? Don’t I know it from.?’ when he caught sight of Leila.
‘There’s still a surprising number of these old things still on the road. Not my private car, of course. But as you see, in our work we explosive experts don’t have it all neat and tidy, so the city gives us these old transport fleet rejects. It’s no fun for anyone driving them, I can tell you.’
‘You’re an explosives expert? Police?’
‘Uh-huh. Frankfurt CID.’
He straightened up, stared at me unimpressed, and jerked his thumb at the car window. ‘So who’s that? Frankfurt CID too?’
‘She’s… er… well.’ I put my mouth close to his ear and lowered my voice. ‘The raid I mentioned just now was on a refugee hostel — know what I mean? And that’s one of the witnesses, a…’ I showed him a dirty grin. ‘Well, you can see her hair colour and her… er… complexion.’
He reacted as if a twenty-mark note was suddenly looking at him from a pile of dog shit in the street. First his eyes lit up and he ran his tongue over his lips, then his expression suddenly froze and darkened, until he suddenly took a step back and explained, shaking his head, ‘I didn’t mean it that way! You can’t pin anything on me. All I said was that the guy the office up there belonged to is a show-off arsehole and definitely didn’t have blue eyes, and you’re still allowed to say that, right?’
‘And how! Don’t worry, we in the police weren’t born yesterday either. We know the time of day, and we’d always rather have an honest opinion than all that do-gooding Benetton stuff. I mean…’ and once again I approached his ear, ‘I mean, where do Nobel prize-winners come from? That’s what I always say. They don’t come from Africa, do they?’
His scepticism lasted a moment longer, then he slowly raised the corners of his mouth, and a conspiratorial gleam came into his eyes. ‘You put that very nicely.’
‘Well,’ I said, dismissing the subject, ‘a man can’t help thinking. But could I ask you, all the same, to describe the person you saw from Heidi’s place?’
What he described was a small, fat, white man with thick lips — Ahrens’s Hessian, the one who had smashed my nose in.
I thanked my new Klu-Klux-Klan mate, gave a wave and went to the car.
As I started the engine, Leila asked, ‘What did that old queen with the earring say?’
Maybe I ought to have introduced them to each other. Maybe, once a few prejudices were out of the way, they’d have got on like a house on fire.
‘As I thought. A gas explosion.’
‘You talk long time for as-I-thought.’
‘He was a nice guy. Told me a bit about the area. After all, I’m going to be here every day after next month.’
I drove the Opel past ambulances and groups of people deep in discussion — ‘Fucking bastard’, ‘Wog detective?’ — and filtered into the rush-hour traffic.
‘I don’t think.’
‘Hm?’
‘Gas explosion, I don’t think.’
‘Oh, don’t you?’ I said in an offhand way, and gave her a smile saying: you can think anything you like, I’m not going to lose my temper. Unfortunately she didn’t mind in the least how or if I smiled at her.
‘First Gregor and whole hostel smashed up, then you drive off look at new office?’
‘It was on my way. Why not?’
‘I don’t think. You covered with dirt. And you think Ahrens because of Gregor. And then we drive back just the same way.’
And you can go take a running jump, thought the latest member of the Bockenheim League to save the White Man.
Which was more likely to discourage her, yet more proof that her mother’s boss was not exactly a scrupulous negotiator in his business affairs, or a detective who, she was bound to think, was lying to her?