Guilt (9 page)

The court could refute neither Paulsberg’s statement nor his wife’s testimony; hence it could not refute his motive. He was sentenced to three and a half years.

His wife visited him regularly in prison, then he was transferred to the daytime release program. Two years after the trial the remainder of the sentence was commuted to probation. She resigned her position in the law firm and they
moved back to the town where she’d grown up in Schleswig-Holstein; she opened a small law practice there. He sold his shops and the house and began to take photographs. Not long ago he had his first exhibition in Berlin. All the photos were of a faceless naked woman.

The police sergeant was standing in a parking lot on the Berlin ring road. She and her colleagues were the last checkpoint in a routine traffic control operation, a boring job, and she would have preferred to be one of the drivers sitting in the warmth, only having to open their windows a crack. It was sixteen degrees; only the occasional frozen blade of grass broke through the crusted snow cover, and the damp cold crawled through her uniform and into her bones. She wished she were up at the front, choosing which cars would be checked, but that job belonged to her seniors. She had only moved from Cologne to Berlin two months before. Now she was longing for her bathtub. She just couldn’t take the cold; it had never been as bad as this in Cologne.

The next vehicle was an Opel Omega, silver-gray, Polish license plates. The car looked well cared for, no dents, all its lights in order. The driver lowered the window and handed out his license and registration. Everything seemed normal, he didn’t smell of alcohol, and his smile was friendly. The policewoman didn’t know why, but she had a strange feeling. While she read his papers she tried to identify it. At the
police academy they had taught her to trust her instincts, but she had to find a logical reason for them.

It was a rental car from an international company; the rental agreement was made out to the driver and all the papers were right there. And then she realized what was irritating her: the car was empty. There was nothing lying in it, no crumpled chewing gum paper, no newspapers, no suitcase, no cigarette lighters, no gloves, nothing. The car was as empty as if it had just been delivered from the factory. The driver spoke no German. She waved over a colleague who spoke a little Polish. They told the man, who was still smiling, to get out of the car and asked him to open the trunk. The driver nodded and pressed the button. Everything in here was clean to the point of sterility too; the only thing lying in the middle was a briefcase made of red imitation leather. The policewoman pointed to it and made a sign to the man to open it. He shrugged and shook his head. She bent forward to look at the locks. They were simple combination locks, set to zero, and opened immediately. She lifted the lid of the case, and recoiled so violently that she banged the back of her head against the lid of the trunk. She managed to turn away, then she threw up on the road. Her colleague, who hadn’t seen what was in the case, drew his weapon and yelled at the driver to put his hands on the roof of the car. Other policemen came running and the driver was overpowered. The policewoman was white; traces of vomit clung to the corners of her mouth. She said, “Oh my God,” and then she threw up again.

The policemen took the man to the Keithstrasse, which houses the Major Case department. The red briefcase was sent to Forensics. Although it was Saturday, a call was made to Lanning, the chief medical examiner. The briefcase contained eighteen color Xeroxes of corpses, all apparently laser prints. All of their faces looked the same: mouths wide open, eyeballs protruding. People die, and medical examiners deal with them; it’s their job. But the pictures were unusual: eleven men and seven women were all lying on their backs in the same twisted pose. When photographed, they had all looked strangely similar: they were naked and the rough point of a wooden stake was sticking out of their stomachs.

Jan Bathowitz was the name on the Polish passport. When he was brought in, they wanted to question him at once; the police interpreter was standing ready. Bathowitz was polite, almost submissive, but he kept repeating he wanted to call his embassy first. It was his right and finally they allowed him to make the call. He said his name and the legal staff at the embassy advised him to remain silent until a lawyer could get there. That too was his right, and Bathowitz exercised it.

Chief Inspector Pätzold could hold the suspect until the end of the following day, and this he did. So the man was taken to the holding pen and locked in a cell. As they did with every prisoner, they took away his shoelaces and his belt in case he tried to hang himself. When I got there at two o’clock the next day, the questioning could proceed. I
advised Bathowitz not to answer. Nonetheless he wanted to testify.

“Your name?” Chief Inspector Pätzold looked bored, but he was wide awake. The interpreter translated every question and every answer.

“Jan Bathowitz.”

Pätzold went through the man’s particulars; he had had the passport checked out and it appeared to be genuine. A message had been sent to the Polish authorities yesterday, asking if there were any charges against Bathowitz, but as always such inquiries took forever.

“Mr. Bathowitz, you know why you’re here.”

“Your police brought me here.”

“Yes. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Where did you get the photos?”

“What photos?”

“We found eighteen photos in your briefcase.”

“It’s not my briefacse.”

“Aha. So whose is it?”

“A businessman from Witoslaw, my hometown.”

“What’s the name of this businessman?”

“I don’t know. He gave me the briefcase and said I was to bring it to Berlin.”

“But you have to know what his name is.”

“No, I didn’t have to know that.”

“Why?”

“I met him in a bar. He spoke to me, he paid me right up front and in cash.”

“Did you know what’s in the photos?”

“No, the briefcase was closed when I got it. I have no idea.”

“You didn’t look inside?”

“It was shut.”

“But it wasn’t locked. You could have looked inside.”

“I don’t do things like that,” said Bathowitz.

“Mr. Pätzold,” I said, “what is the actual charge against my client?”

Pätzold looked at me. That was the point, and of course he knew it.

“We’ve had the photographs examined. Professor Lanninger says the corpses are most likely genuine.”

“Yes?” I said.

“What do you mean,
yes?
Your client had photos of corpses in his briefcase. Corpses with stakes through them.”

“I still haven’t found out what the charge is. Transporting color Xeroxes of photographs of corpses made by a laser printer? Lanning is no Photoshop expert, and ‘most likely’ is not the same as ‘definitely.’ And even if they were genuine corpses, there is no law against having pictures of them. There’s nothing here that constitutes a criminal offense.”

Pätzold knew I was right. Nonetheless, I could understand him.

At that moment, we could have left. I stood up and took my briefcase. But then my client did something I didn’t understand. He laid a hand on my forearm and said he didn’t mind the chief inspector’s questions. I wanted a break, but Bathowitz shook his head and said, “It’s fine.”

Pätzold’s questions continued. “To whom does the briefcase belong?”

“The man in the bar.”

“What were you supposed to do with it?”

“I already said I was supposed to bring it to Berlin.”

“Did the man say what was in the case?”

“Yes, he did.”

“What?”

“He said it was blueprints for a big project. There was a lot of money involved.”

“Blueprints?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he send the plans by courier?”

“I didn’t ask. He said he didn’t trust couriers.”

“Why?”

“He said couriers in Poland are always working for both sides. He preferred to have a stranger whom nobody knew transport the things.”

“Where were you to take the pictures?”

Bathowitz didn’t hesitate for a second. He said, “To Kreuzberg.”

Pätzold nodded; he seemed to have reached his goal.

“To whom in Kreuzberg? What’s his name?”

I don’t understand Polish, but I understood the tone in Bathowitz’s voice. He was totally calm. “I don’t know. I was supposed to go to a phone booth at five o’clock.”

“Excuse me?”

“Mehringdamm, Yorckstrasse.” He said these words first in German, then in Polish. “There’s apparently a phone
booth there. I’m to be there at five o’clock tomorrow afternoon, and the phone will ring, and I’ll be told the rest of it.”

Pätzold continued questioning him for another hour. The story didn’t change. Bathowitz remained friendly, he answered every question politely, nothing made him tense. Pätzold couldn’t refute any of his statements.

Bathowitz was fingerprinted and photographed. The computer had no trace of him. The inquiry to Poland was answered: everything appeared to be in order. Pätzold must either release Bathowitz or go before a judge. The DA declined to make a request for an arrest warrant; Pätzold had no choice. He asked Bathowitz if he’d agree to leave the briefcase with the police. Bathowitz shrugged; all he asked was a receipt for it. At seven that evening he was allowed to leave the police station. He said goodbye to me on the steps of the old building, walked to his car, and disappeared.

Twenty policemen were posted around the phone booth next day and the police cars in the neighborhood were on alert. A Polish-born plainclothes officer who had roughly the same build as Bathowitz and was wearing similar clothes stood in the phone booth at 5 p.m. with the red briefcase. A judge had granted a warrant to tap the phone line. The phone didn’t ring.

A jogger found the body on Tuesday morning at a parking spot in the woods. The 6.35-millimeter Browning had made only small entry wounds, circular, barely half a centimeter across. It was an execution. Pätzold could only start a new file and notify his colleagues in Poland. Bathowitz’s death was never solved.