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“Bernd, I need the address, and I know that you’ve got the contacts to find it for me. It wouldn’t be the first time that you’ve used your contacts. Please, do it for me.”

He did it for Kris. He didn’t do it because Kris was a nice guy, or because he’d still been working for him six months previously. It takes other arguments to persuade someone like Bernd Jost-Degen. This argument was very subtle. Kris emanated an unsettling sense of danger. Bernd Jost-Degen didn’t know what had happened to Kris. He only saw that his former employee wanted to have this information at any price. Even though Bernd Jost-Degen had probably never had to suffer physical violence, he could see a blow coming when a fist was clenched.

Afterwards Kris was breathless. He sat down in a café on Savigny Platz and stared at the street through the window. In his pocket was Lars Meybach’s address. It was Tuesday morning, Frauke was to be buried on Thursday morning, and Kris didn’t know what his next step was going to be. For a while he considered talking to Gerald. But he rejected it because he didn’t think Gerald would jump on the idea that Meybach had spoken to Frauke shortly before her death. What did that tell him? There was no solid proof, there were only her statements and of course the corpse, but even that had disappeared. Gerald would laugh at him.

Over the next two hours Kris phoned once and waited. He ate three brownies, and with each brownie he had a milky coffee. Afterwards he had a sugar rush, and his stomach was rumbling. At five to three he sat down in his car and drove to Nollendorfplatz.

His name is Marco M. Even when he was at school he called himself Marco M and corrected the teachers when they only said Marco. Marco M belonged to the group of computer freaks who did everything for bytes and graphics cards in those days: burglaries, shoplifting, nothing violent, just the easy way of getting hold of quick cash. His style has changed since then, he never burgles anywhere any more, his hands are clean; these days other people do it for him.

When Kris was finishing his studies, Marco M lived at his place for a while. Marco M kept Kris supplied with grass and uppers, they spent various evenings zonked in front of the television. After university they lost touch with one another, because Marco M came up with the idea of selling his stuff in the wrong area. He was ratted out, spent two years in jail, and showed up on Kris’s doorstep a week after his release. He showed him a scar on his neck, displayed a homemade tattoo on his ankle, and asked if Kris knew who was currently dealing drugs in his old area. Kris told him what he knew. Marco M addressed the problem. Since then he controls the area around Nollendorfplatz again, and that’s where Kris arranged to meet him.

Marco M is like one of those dogs that have to lift their legs on every street corner, without managing a stream of urine. If you see him, you
don’t inevitably think of a pit bull or a boxer. Marco M has the elegance and alertness of a greyhound. Although it’s hard to imagine a greyhound with a gold chain and a tracksuit. Every day Marco M strolls through his territory at the same time. He calls it surveillance. He wants to know what’s going on, and he wants people to see him.

On this particular day Marco M was sitting on a bar stool outside the comics shop. He had a glass of Coke in front of him, and was rolling two qigong balls around his right hand.

“New hobby?” Kris asked and stopped beside him.

“It helps me relax. Ever tried it?”

Marco M handed Kris the balls. They were warm. Kris rolled them around, it felt good.

“Not bad.”

“Gives you muscles,” said Marco M, and opened a velvet-lined box. Kris put the balls into it. When Marco M got up, he left the box on the bar stool.

“What belongs to Marco M doesn’t get stolen,” he said and put an arm around Kris’s shoulders.

“Let’s go for a walk around the block.”

They walked down Motzstrasse and took a stroll around Winterfeldplatz. Kris offered to buy Marco M falafels and they sat on the park bench in front of the stand and watched the roller-skaters. They talked about the area and how Schöneberg had changed since Kris moved away in the autumn. They didn’t talk about Frauke. Kris didn’t want Marco M to express his sympathy. He tried to think about Frauke as little as possible, which was of course ridiculous in that it was because of Frauke that he was sitting on Winterfeldplatz. After ten minutes Marco M’s phone rang.

“Normally I don’t let people disturb me when I’m eating,” he said apologetically, and took the call. He listened for a moment before hanging up.

“That’s it, then,” said Marco M, and they shook hands.

Kris left him sitting on the park bench. He walked up Maassenstrasse, past cafés and people sitting outside drinking overpriced macchiatos. They didn’t look good, they were pallid, yearning for sunlight, and had no idea what trend they were supposed to be following right now. It felt good not to be one of them.

Kris sat down in his car and drove toward Potsdamer Strasse. He was calm, he didn’t look too often in the rearview mirror. At the first lights
he took a CD out of the glove compartment. Hardkandy. The music brought a bit of light into his day. Kris drove home.

It was only after he had parked outside the villa that he noticed his tension slowly fading away. He glanced in the mirror and saw the open front gate. He glanced at the villa. There was no one to be seen.

Kris reached under the front seat and pulled out the two packages. The automatic had scratches and dents, but it sat nicely in his hand. Kris couldn’t help thinking of Frauke’s gas pistol. He had once held it in his hand, and the automatic had a very different weight. It was more real. Kris opened the second package. Marco M had told him that there would only really be any noise after the sixth shot.

“I only need two shots,” Kris had replied.

The silencer fitted the barrel perfectly. Kris unscrewed it again and checked the safety catch before shoving the gun and the silencer back under the front seat and getting out.

In the evening they had dinner together. Kris asked Tamara to pass him the bread and wondered how Meybach could be so stupid as to use a registered cell phone. Wolf said he wanted to disappear for a few days after the funeral, to the country or maybe the sea, he didn’t know exactly, and Kris nodded and wondered what he would do when Meybach was standing face-to-face with him.
Could I? Would I?
He wasn’t one for heroism, but he had the feeling that if he did nothing, nothing would happen. It was a metaphysical law.

Could I hold the gun to Meybach’s head and put an end to it all?

It was the only question that Kris refused to think about.

After Tamara and Wolf set off for the cemetery that morning, Kris lit the fire. Three hours later he’s still sitting in front of it. He knows he’s deliberately drawing out the moment of decision. He’s afraid of himself. His thoughts revolve around the life that all four of them lived in the villa before that lunatic went and nailed a woman to the wall of a room.

Kris thinks that if he sits here long enough, he’ll sweat out all his anxieties. His eyes hurt, his lungs are struggling to process the oxygen. He nods off for a moment and wakes with a start. He saw himself. With the gun in his hand. He wasn’t holding the gun, the gun was holding him. In his dream he couldn’t shake it off. As if the gun were stuck to his hand.

Kris gets to his feet. He has worked out that he would never have the
guts. The combination gun plus Kris is ludicrous. He’s no hero. Who was he actually trying to convince?

You go off and buy yourself a gun and what then?

Kris stretches, he spits in the fire, then he pulls the window open. The fresh air is so good that for a moment Kris just stands there in the draft, enjoying the cold on his skin. Spring and the sound of birds.
How could I imagine I was capable of it?
He leaves the window open and is about to get in the shower when the ringing of the telephone from the corridor stops him. Kris picks up the receiver. It’s Meybach. He hopes it isn’t a bad time. He has one last job for them.

T
WO PIGEONS STRUT
to the middle of the road and wait for the lights to change. When the cars start moving, the pigeons fly up and land on a windowsill. As soon as the light turns red, they land on the pavement, strut back to the middle of the road, and the game starts all over again. You watch them for four phases of the lights and wonder if pigeons have a sense of humor.

A bell rings as you walk into the bakery. The smell of warm bread and fresh-brewed coffee makes your stomach rumble. You say good morning and pretend to study the display. There’s a radio on in the background, somewhere in Berlin mattresses are now so cheap that no one can believe it. The man behind the counter wraps the baguette and puts a plastic lid on your coffee. You round up the total, giving him a thirty-five-cent tip, and you say goodbye to each other.

The pigeons have gone, although the light is red. You cross the street and sit down in your car. You hold the coffee cup in both hands and put the plastic lid on your right knee. It surprises you that you’re so calm. The coffee in the cup isn’t trembling.

His name is Karl Fichtner. He owns four bakeries in the north of Berlin. In this particular one he helps out between five and seven in the morning, before delivering the bread to the other bakeries. His work ends at two o’clock in the afternoon. He doesn’t know that today is his last working day.

You wait in the restaurant where he has his lunch. You sit at his table, but not in his seat. You have drunk some mineral water and studied
the street through the window. He only sees you after he’s shaken the waiter’s hand. You nod to him, he hesitates, you smile. You’re good at smiling.

Fichtner is someone who only speaks after he’s thought about what he wants to say. Someone who doesn’t like to take his words back. He joins you, opens his jacket, and rests his forearms on the tabletop. As he does so he watches you, his hands folded. He has a small tattoo on his forearm. It’s an edelweiss.

You say nothing, you’ve learned to wait. After a pause Fichtner clears his throat and asks if he knows you. He seems tired, but you’d probably be tired too if you shoved rolls into the oven at 5:00 a.m. every day. You like the fact that Fichtner asks you the same question as Fanni did a week ago.

“We know each other from before,” you reply, pushing the photograph toward him.

Fichtner picks it up. He doesn’t blink, he seems to stop breathing. The waiter comes, Fichtner ignores him, the waiter turns on his heel. Fichtner holds the photograph at a slight angle, so that it catches the light, then he sets it back down on the tabletop and says, “It’s so long ago.”

“An eternity,” you agree.

His eyes seem to settle on your eyes. That’s how it feels. As if his gaze were touching you. The scar on his cheek stands out white.

“You were still a child,” says Fichtner. “You were—”

And then he starts crying, his chin sinks to his chest, it’s humiliating. He doesn’t even put his hands in front of his face. No dignity, just violent sobbing. And then the tears. You look around. You hope that everyone is taking in this embarrassing moment.

As so often over the last few days you wonder what Butch and Sundance would do now.
What if?
It’s a silly game, because Butch and Sundance don’t exist any more. They’ve been wiped from the memory of time, and it is that loss you can’t forgive. Not yourself, and not society, and if there’s a god anywhere, then he’s the last one you would forgive for it. But whatever way you twist and turn it, we keep returning to the insight that there are people who do not deserve forgiveness. People you have met.

One of them is dead, the other is sitting opposite you, crying.

Out of shame, perhaps? Perhaps he’s weeping over the loss? All vanished
innocence is a loss. Butch and Sundance vanished the day they met Karl and Fanni for the second time. The first time they came out of it only with injuries. Butch in particular. Wounds that would turn into scars. But nothing more than that. The second time they were pushed over an invisible barrier and disappeared forever into the void. Darkness, emptiness. It was an insignificant day in the history of the world, and nothing and no one can give you back that day.

After they took Butch away the second time, the friends went on seeing each other at school, in the street, or in the supermarket, but
seeing each other
wasn’t enough. They lost one another, even though they were both within sight.

Sundance has never understood how that could happen. At the time he needed some advice, he needed to talk to someone. Whenever his parents asked about Butch, he changed the subject. In his helplessness, Sundance moved further and further away from his best friend.

On the other hand, Butch repressed so much that Sundance became irrelevant. For most of his teenage years he kept to himself and became a crab that disappeared backward from the screen of life, until everyone had forgotten that he had ever existed. His parents, his friends, and, to a large extent, himself. That was how the friendship between Butch and Sundance broke down, as the friendships of youth often do—without words, without much point.

They lost sight of each other for twelve whole years.

Imagine you’re on a train that’s traveling along a distance that consists of days and weeks speeding past. The train doesn’t stop. Months whistle by, and becomes the thunder of years. You sense the echo in your head. There’s a draft in your face, and the speed makes all movement difficult, because time commands your attention. Sundance learned very early how long even a short span of time can be when you miss someone. He was there, he lived there. Yes, he found new friends, but in his memory there was always a room reserved for him and Butch alone. That room grew dusty, and no light entered it.

After finishing high school, Butch moved to Charlottenburg, while Sundance stayed in Zehlendorf and went on living with his parents. Over the next few years their paths never crossed. Every now and again they heard about one another via friends, but nothing happened. Until
that Saturday evening when both of them went to a district of Berlin that they hadn’t gone to before. Köpenick.