30
All's not lost
He gave up. Bait, offer, threat—whatever game I was playing, he no longer dared not play along. But playing along in my game meant giving his game up.
“You don't seriously believe that it was I who shot Rolf Wendt?” He looked at me, appalled.
“You put him under pressure. You had Lemke's gun. You contacted the newspapers. You—”
“But how—”
“How?” I shouted. “You want to know how it can be proved? One thing you can be sure of is that when the police have a lead they find the proof, too, and whatever they won't find, Lemke will provide them with.”
“No, what I meant was, how could I have been the one who killed him if what I was after was to blackmail him?”
“Believe me, I won't lose any sleep over that one.”
“It was an accident. Rolf—”
“The gunshot was an accident? Come on, Ingo—”
“If I'm going to talk, at least listen to what I have to say.” He looked at me half desperate, half furious. I was silent. “You don't have to tell me it sounds crazy! Rolf and I had gotten into a fight because I wanted the map and he wouldn't give it to me. I threatened that I would tell the police that he had hidden Leo in his psychiatric hospital. He grabbed hold of me and I slapped his hands out of the way and pushed him, and he fell backward.”
“And?”
“He just lay there. At first I thought he was playing games, then I thought he had fainted. Then I suddenly got this really weird feeling and felt for his pulse. Nothing. He was dead.” Peschkalek sat down in the Venetian chair, put his arms on the armrests, raised his hands, and let them fall again. I waited. He smiled crookedly and shot a quick glance at me. “I had taken the gun along to frighten him a little, and, well, as he was dead anyway…I fired it.”
“All that just to sell your story? You thought—”
“I didn't just think. I'd have pulled it off if you hadn't gotten in the way. Then the reporter would have been on the scene before the police, would have found the little map, and would have started giving the matter some thought. Then it would have been easy enough for me to point the reporter in the right direction. But things have gotten moving anyway and become public.”
“Did Lemke give you the gun?”
“Helmut give me something?” He laughed. “Helmut is a taker. And for years I was a giver. I was proud to be part of things, to let him order me about. The girls had to make coffee and cook spaghetti, and I had to see to electrical cables, equipment, and cars. That's why Helmut wanted me around when he was in Spain and got all that new-age stuff going with groups and seminars and nude bathing and hot springs. When that didn't pan out and he came back here, things still went on the way they always had. I was to be part of things— in other words, see to all the technical stuff—but I had learned my lesson.”
The lesson Peschkalek had learned was that nothing is free, that as you make your bed, so shall you lie in it—and nobody will come tuck you in. The whole thing had been Lemke's idea.
“You have to have something to offer people, was his motto. Soccer games, celebrity weddings, accidents, and crime are what excite people, and postmodern terrorism is just as much a media event and has to be organized and marketed like everything else.” Lemke needed Peschkalek in order to fill the gap in the market. This time not only because it was more convenient not to have to worry about the technical side of things, but because Lemke wasn't capable of pulling off the whole thing on his own. He needed a cameraman. “But though he needed me, he didn't want to go fifty-fifty. I was to get only a third. I talked to him about it, but he wouldn't budge. He is…somehow, you can't talk with him. So I thought to myself: Just you wait, my time will come.”
And Peschkalek's time did come. Initially, the horror was great. “The morning after the attack—you can't imagine. There we were, huddled around the radio. There was the news at the top of each hour, and every time we'd think: That's it, here comes the report! But each time, nothing. Even though we had two casualties to offer, and that's not to be sniffed at.” On the following days there wasn't anything in the news either, and added to that disappointment came the uncertainty of what might have happened to Bertram and Leo, what Bertram might have said after his arrest, and if Leo had been arrested, too, or where she had gone into hiding. But Bertram wasn't actually in a position to reveal anything important because he didn't know anything of importance about Helmut and Ingo, and Helmut was certain that Leo would not want to reveal anything. So they set to work, writing to TV stations and newspapers. When that didn't pan out, Helmut wanted to drop the whole thing. “He still hired you to search for Leo and said he was doing it so we could put more pressure on the media without needing to worry that she might mess things up for us one day. He used my money for that. But I think he only did it because he wanted her back—because the way I see it, his mind was already on other projects.”
Then Peschkalek had jumped in, shadowing me, had almost managed to trace her, and had set Rawitz and Bleck-meier on me. When shooting at Rolf didn't bring the whole thing out in the media the way he wanted, Peschkalek had first reported me to the police, then Helmut and Leo. “Helmut had stayed in constant contact with me. It never even occurred to him that he might pull the short straw one day.”
Peschkalek had picked up momentum as he talked and looked at me hopefully. “All's not lost, Gerhard. When the trial comes, Helmut will put the record straight on Käfertal and Viernheim—that will be a real bombshell, and all the TV stations and papers that turned their backs on my story will have a feeding frenzy. With the map that you have, the story will get even better and more lucrative. There's at least half a million in it for each of us.” He rummaged through his pants pocket. “Do you have a cigarette?”
I lit one for myself, threw him the yellow pack and the lighter, and leaned on the bookshelf. “Forget it. It isn't going to work. But you could give me the material.”
“Don't worry, I won't turn it into cash. Perhaps I can use it to get Leo out.”
“What, are you nuts? I've been working on Viernheim for over half a year! You want me to just chuck everything out the window?”
“Look, Ingo, it's over. The police know that Wendt was shot with Lemke's gun. When they confront Lemke with that, he'll know that you took it and shot Wendt with it. He won't want to pay for a murder he didn't commit. What other options does he have but to hand you over to the police? He has no choice. Give it up, Ingo.”
I took binder number 15.6 and its video off the shelf, and he jumped up and tried to snatch them out of my hands. I held on to them tightly, but didn't have a chance. He was young, strong, and furious. There was a short scuffle, and the binder and video were in his hands.
He looked at me, malicious and ready to pounce.
“You won't get far with those,” I said.
He grinned and threw a mock punch at me with his right hand. I stepped back. He put down the binder and video and came closer. I had no idea what he was doing. He launched into a shadowboxing dance, throwing punches first with one fist, then the other, and I kept stepping back. Had he lost his marbles? Then one of his punches hit me, and I staggered backward through the open bathroom door, taking glass beakers, bottles, and trays with me as I fell, and lay in the rubble of his darkroom.
I struggled back to my feet. I could smell chemicals. There was the gentle puffing sound with which a gas range lights up, and the cigarette I had dropped as I fell lit the puddle beneath the bathtub. I tore past the startled Peschkalek into his living room. Behind me there was another puffing sound, then another. I felt the warmth of the fire, turned around, and saw the flames leap out of the bathroom and seize the carpet and the shelf. Peschkalek tore off his jacket and started beating at the flames. It was completely futile.
“Get out!” I yelled. The fire began to roar. In the bedroom, the bed and closet were in flames. “Get out!”
The jacket with which he was beating at the fire was burning. I grabbed hold of him, but he tore himself loose. I grabbed hold of him again and dragged him toward the door. I tore it open. A gust of wind blew in, and the whole room was in flames. The heat drove us onto the landing. Peschkalek stood there, staring hypnotized into the burning room. “Let's get out of here!” I shouted, but he wasn't listening. He began walking back toward the door like a sleepwalker, and I pushed him down the stairs, hurrying after him. He tripped, caught himself, tripped again, and went tumbling head over heels.
He lay at the foot of the stairs without moving.