The Safety Net (28 page)

The longer he thought about it, the more improbable did a love affair outside Blorr seem to him. If she had wanted to
meet the “impregnator” outside Blorr, she would have had to be away at least a couple of hours, and that would have shown up in the reports, if only with a query, but the query would have been followed up, just as it was when she used to take the child to the Groebels in Hetzigrath, or that time she suddenly changed her hairdresser, stopped going to Szymanski in Blückhoven and switched to Picksehne in Hurbelheim. There were no queries left in the reports; in the end she had stopped going to either hairdresser and had washed and set her own hair, that glorious golden-blond hair he wanted so much to admire over a cup of tea and a confidential chat.

As for the neighbors: his thoughts turned first to the Blömers, that somewhat irresponsible crowd that liked to give free-and-easy parties—a nuisance because some of the shadier guests at these parties had to be checked out at least cursorily—and especially Blömer’s brother-in-law Sculcz, obviously a wealthy man (source of wealth still unclarified, he was rumored to be writing popular porn under a pseudonym). Both of them, Blömer and his brother-in-law, were hardly her type, they were too shallow, too irresponsible, certainly not “romantic”—besides he suddenly remembered that he could have saved himself those Blömer ideas: they had only been living there for two and a half months, and she was in her sixth month and was definitely known to have had no previous contact with the Blömers. So there remained young Beeretz, old Hermanns, Klober, Helmsfeld, and, at that time, Breuer; none of them likely, but he had learned not to take probabilities or type-attractions for granted in sexual affairs: Kortschede, that fine, sensitive elderly gentleman who was married, after all, with grown-up children, and played the harpsichord. If one had thought him capable of lapses at all, one would have matched him up with a cultivated, elegant actress or soprano of about thirty-eight as being “his type,” yet Kortschede had succumbed to the cheapest type of male prostitute—that thoroughly vulgar, brutal fellow Schlumm. And Bleibl, in whose case one would have guessed at gypsy or at least flamenco types, had taken for
his third wife a gentle, smiling Yugoslav cleaning woman: positively an angel of gentleness, yet nevertheless unable to stand living with him for more than two years.

Eventually, after realizing that she obviously had committed what she herself would call adultery, he could exclude no one as a partner, neither the elderly Helmsfeld, who probably lacked the guts if not the desire, nor even bowlegged old Klober; both appeared in the reports as visitors: Helmsfeld probably at tea parties with a literary turn, Klober usually briefly, to deliver “homegrown vegetables”—lettuce, cauliflower, “guaranteed organic, ma’am,” couldn’t be persuaded not to call her ma’am, was given a cigar, a brandy, but obviously didn’t feel at ease, usually left the cigar less than half smoked, and not one of his visits had exceeded seventeen or eighteen minutes; so one was quite justified in regarding Klober as unlikely.

Finally there remained—and every avenue had to be explored to the very end—his own men. Among them Zurmack seemed to him the most suspect, suspect when he looked at it from Zurmack’s point of view: he didn’t seem to have any inhibitions when it came to affairs of the heart, for all that he was married, had also on occasion—once, anyway, and in a very delicate situation that might have gone wrong—and without denying it for long, started an affair with the mother of a delinquent while actually on duty. He had arrested a young hashish pusher, had then gone back into the apartment to make a thorough search of the place, and had, as he later admitted, “lain down” with the boy’s mother.

“Yes, I laid her. She was a nice woman, Elli was her name, I can’t even remember her last name, and she wasn’t a hooker, and yes, after that I sometimes did go to her while still on duty, I couldn’t help myself—and to this day, whenever I pass the house, I feel the urge again because I know her old man and the boy are in the slammer—I’m fond of her, might almost say: I love her—and she simply melts when I arrive, I know it—and Lisbeth, my wife, has never known or noticed a thing. But then I did get cold feet—that it might lead to blackmail—but she
never tried anything of the sort, never even hinted at it—Elli, a good woman, a nice woman.…”

And yet he did exclude Zurmack, not from Zurmack’s point of view but from Sabine Fischer’s. He simply couldn’t imagine it, almost less than Klober, although Klober was a bowlegged, elderly profiteer and Zurmack was a handsome, fine figure of a policeman, with a bit of the old gendarme look about him, athletic, straightforward, probably—seen through female eyes—not without charm. Lühler—he was taking them in the order of probability—in theory any time, without hesitation, he was game for any adventure, had had plenty of them, was unmarried, but: for him this “Bee” was way out of reach—too risky, but for social, not amorous reasons. She was in any case “media-exposed”—and how! That could mean trouble, and Lühler wasn’t keen on that, not Lühler—and anyway, if it did turn out to be one of his men—and damn it, they were only human and male—anyway, that would eliminate any security risk, and the only one left was Hubert Hendler.

This was a man he had never quite been able to fathom, he liked him, he was one of the most reliable men he had, was well up on his theory, well informed as to the law, had never committed the slightest indiscretion, even when on the vice squad. Kiernter swore by him, by his stable marriage, his behavior, and ascribed Hendler’s occasional edginess, which could sometimes amount almost to irritability, to his financial situation: he had obviously overextended himself in building his house, with his car and other acquisitions, yet there was an “invaluable stabilizing element,” as Kiernter put it: Hendler’s wife, Helga, sensible, affectionate, quiet—and “almost a beauty.” True, in the immediate family there were a few less stable elements, Helga’s sister Monika and her friend Karl Zurmeyen, another of those dropout sociologists but about whom nothing, nothing whatever in the least suspicious was known, though he had been in Berlin at times that could have made him suspect. Only one thing pointed to Hendler as the possible “impregnator”—of all the men under consideration he was the only one to be, if
not entirely, at least approximately, “her type.” A serious boy, devout like herself, not without humor although it sometimes seemed so, and with a quiet virility that must appeal to her; in some aspects a religious fanatic—which she was not—and damnably “righteous,” not self-righteous—righteous, had sometimes circumvented regulations and closed his eyes to certain infringements. He was something of an outsider, couldn’t stand off-color jokes, was intolerant of obscenities, had often put up with teasing and sometimes worse—nevertheless had earned respect, indeed liking, among even the most cynical of his brother officers. But could Hendler—his mind rebelled against calling him the “impregnator” and he introduced the word “lover” into his thoughts—could Hendler be or have been her lover? The word “lover” reduced the improbability without increasing the probability of the impossible.

One of his own men? He could just see the headlines, it would mean the end of him, and no doubt the best course would be to let the matter rest, not to involve Dollmer or Stabski too soon, explain to that newspaper fellow that Mrs. Fischer’s intimate affairs didn’t concern him as long as there was no question of a security risk—and there was none: in the final analysis it could only be one of the neighbors or one of his own men, and none of them was a security risk, perhaps merely a moral risk, and moral risks were no concern of his. Hendler? He was no doubt one of the romantic kind. But then there was that splendid Helga, a pretty, levelheaded young woman with whom he had danced on several occasions, and yet: now Sabine Fischer was at her brother’s in Hubreichen, and Hendler was there to guard her: the walled vicarage garden, that idyllic little annex, the tall trees, the hazel thickets—if they were having a love affair conditions couldn’t be more ideal. Of course her brother Rolf was not one of those free-and-easy, progressive porn types, nor was his capitalistic little sister, in fact he was more of a puritanical socialist type, yet undoubtedly he would neither reproach nor put obstacles in the path of his dear, supercapitalistic little
sister if he should happen to surprise her in a tête-à-tête in that splendid garden.

The affair remained sensitive, explosive even, and probably the best thing would be for him to send all three of them—Zurmack, Lühler, and Hendler—off to a refresher course, to Strüderbeken, where there was open heath and forest and a pleasant officers’ mess. Jogging, football, a bit of target shooting, some theory—that would do them good, they had earned it, and after the course he would send their names in for promotion; they had earned that too, especially Zurmack, whose nerves had been sorely tried by the Bleibl woman—since then he had categorically refused “to go shopping, or be sent shopping, with any of those broads, or to those spas where I have to look on while they get drunk at the bar and wiggle their tits and a fellow’s not allowed to join in the fun. No, thanks. If you don’t mind.” Refresher course, then some leave, transfer: it would do them all good to resume what he called normal police duties. Granted there would be some personnel problems. Mrs. Bleibl Number Four was planning a trip to one of the North Sea islands, and Bleibl had requested the “necessary measures.” This meant he had to consult immediately with Dollmer, perhaps even with Stabski—ask for reinforcements. Not a word about Mrs. Fischer’s pregnancy: that was her affair, her husband’s affair, her lover’s affair, if indeed he knew anything about it. He wouldn’t be surprised if she never, never spoke about it; and if the Zummerling bunch should descend upon her she might be in the soup, but he wouldn’t. But he must phone that newspaper fellow right away and make it clear to him that the Fischer pregnancy had no “security-risk dimension”; he would convince him that he was under no obligation to supply any further information.

If it came to the worst, she should be able to prove that Breuer had known of her affair with Peter, that he had tolerated it. All it needed, if he really did go to court, was to produce the trip log, which he had certainly examined and analyzed. It showed quite clearly, once or twice a week, that distance of exactly twenty-three kilometers before a stop lasting one, two, or sometimes three hours. Hadn’t he said to Peter with a wink: “Are you seeing someone there?” Hadn’t Peter nodded and agreed that those forty-six kilometers there and back were to be booked and charged to his personal account? And didn’t Breuer know perfectly well that it was exactly twenty-three kilometers from the office to his home—hadn’t they checked that together countless times, if only for tax purposes? There were witnesses who one could only hope wouldn’t fail: like Plein the bookkeeper, who might be required to produce the accounts. What possible other conclusion could Breuer have come to? Would he testify in court: twenty-three kilometers for personal use, two hours for a personal visit, and where?
Naturally they had never discussed it, yet there was the evidence—bookkeeper, trip log—and it had gone on for eight, almost nine weeks, and could have gone on even longer if it hadn’t been for that miserable security business, if Peter’s dossier hadn’t contained a few awkward things, plus that stupid pistol, too old-fashioned and childish to have been sold to anyone even as a toy: a revolver dating from around 1912, though admittedly with ammunition.

True, her attorney had pointed out that it might easily go through even if Breuer denied his connivance. Breuer, he maintained, might plead, even if he admitted his connivance (which was unlikely), that, though he
had
condoned it, he could no longer do so once it had become a matter of record and thus of public interest—given the press laws that placed Erna, as a neighbor of the Fischers, firmly in the public domain, which was “arguable but not unequivocal.” As the husband he could “condone while suffering” (good God, he hadn’t suffered all that much, he’d probably got some kinky pleasure out of it!), but he couldn’t afford any damage to his reputation, particularly as a businessman, without suing for divorce; besides, it certainly had become public knowledge and—this would have to be argued, it really was arguable—not through her fault or Peter’s but through Breuer himself, who could never keep his mouth shut and was trying to blame his bankruptcy on “injury” of some kind. She thought it quite possible that he had phoned some reporter himself: he was certainly kinky enough for that, and if things got rough she wasn’t going to pull any punches, the whole dirty business would simply have to come out. And if Breuer really did win this case, she could claim—so the attorney had indicated—to have been “a victim of security.” This would create entirely new categories, so her attorney had told her and Breuer’s broker had confirmed, categories which might have to be established in a test case. So: if he insisted on the divorce—fine, but no question of guilt, he’d have to cough up, she knew all about his bank accounts.

Klober would certainly be on her side too, the investigation of his callers having led to embarrassing revelations: smuggling, and something about heating oil she didn’t understand; but above all, and this had infuriated Klober, many of those types with whom he’d been carrying on, well, not quite legal transactions (Breuer had done the same thing with some mysterious Italian watch dealers!)—those types stayed away because they weren’t keen on “stumbling head first into a fuzz trap.” The business they had done with Klober could also be done with others; and Klober had hinted pretty frankly, without actually spelling it out, that to face a tax audit would cause him some trepidation. At any rate, Klober was clearly “a victim of security,” and there was already a group of attorneys collecting “victims of security” across the country, even in cases where such victimization consisted of no more than the unavoidable annoyance of having the police on the streets or wherever. There was already a case on record of a girl who lived with her parents next door to some big shot, with evidence to show that up to a certain date she had been doing well in school but had then suffered a nervous breakdown, failed her exams, and committed suicide. A drop in the value of property due to “security” was also a matter of record. If it was true, as was claimed, that tax discrepancies and dubious-seeming transactions, or certain “sexual behavior,” were turned up as the result of security investigations yet did not represent security risks—if all that was to be handled discreetly or even kept secret but somehow did leak out through gaps and holes—who would be responsible for the damage?