The Stronger Sex (40 page)

Panda was standing in his place, watching the spectators pushing their way to the rows of chairs and the side aisles, murmuring and coughing. Someone took a last look out and closed the door. Panda's majestic glance quelled the noise.

“Please sit down!” he said. After all the rustling and the sound of chairs being pulled out and pushed back had died away, he sat down himself, cleared his throat, picked up his microphone and said, in measured tones, “In the legal dispute concerning dismissal without notice, Fuchs versus Klofft, the court proposes to the parties the following settlement. First, the parties shall agree that the relationship of employment between them, on the grounds of dismissal for operational reasons by the employer as detailed in the bill of complaint today, 10 September 2007, shall be terminated on 31 March 2008. Second: that by that date the relationship of employment shall be properly wound down. Third: that the defendant shall pledge himself to pay the plaintiff, in compensation for the loss of her position in his firm, the sum of ninety-nine thousand euros in
accordance with paragraphs nine and ten of the Protection Against Wrongful Dismissal Act. Fourth: the defendant shall declare that he will not maintain the accusations of conduct contrary to the contract of employment raised in his written notice of dismissal of 22 July. Fifth: compliance with the terms of this settlement shall put an end to all mutual claims of the parties arising from the relationship of employment and its termination, as well as from the present legal dispute.”

The judge put both elbows on his table and linked his fingers. After a glance around the courtroom he said, “There is one more remark that I would like to make orally: in view of the obviously severe disruption of the relationship of employment that has been made clear in this tribunal, the court assumes that the defendant will release the plaintiff from all obligation to her conditions of employment with immediate effect. The defendant should put that on record immediately after the conclusion of the settlement before this tribunal.” After a short pause he said, “There remains only the question of whether the parties will accept this settlement.”

Gladke whispered briefly and urgently with his client, who began to nod. I said, “If you will allow me, Your Honour, I would like to discuss the matter with my client.”

Panda said, “I can understand that. Then I suggest, if you are in agreement, that for the sake of simplicity we all meet here again for a second hearing, let's say…” He opened his diary and leafed through it. “Let's say a week from today, the seventeenth of September, at twelve? Would that suit you?”

Gladke and I began consulting our own diaries, and said almost in unison, “Yes, that would suit us.” Panda entered the date in his diary. Then he rose and said, “Until today week, then. Good day to you.” He hurried to the door into the judge's room, hunched his head down and disappeared.

Gladke was grinning. He leaned over in my direction and said, “That's what I call a settlement, eh? What do you think of it?”

“Let's wait and see.”

I noted down the essential points of Panda's proposal for a settlement, and put the sheet of paper in my breast pocket. As I stood up, I met Katharina Fuchs's eyes. She was standing up at the plaintiff's table, with Herr Schmickler leaning over her from behind, holding her close to him with both his arms around her waist, and she was giving me a mocking smile as she stood in her lover's embrace. I didn't mind that; it helped me to shake off my pangs of conscience.

I tried to avoid any conversation on the way out, giving a friendly smile as I passed all the people who came toward me with the obvious intention of expressing their sympathy. I climbed down the steps to the underground car park on foot as well, and managed to get to my car, which I had left a little way from the main parking areas, without letting anyone speak to me. Once I had slammed the car door behind me, I took a deep breath.

What a catastrophe! Talk about a “proposal for a settlement”! What a disaster!

Panda had meted out painful chastisement to the masterful and arrogant Klofft. I wasn't sure what he had thought of the case until Klofft appeared at the hearing. I had at least felt I was scoring points with Panda in my answer to Gladke's charges. And I had begun to hope that I'd go home with a settlement that would be reasonably favourable to my client. But Klofft's performance had wrecked everything. He had, of course, reminded the judge keenly of the trouble he had given Panda before. And not least of Klofft's attempt, even though it failed, to reject him as a judge on the grounds of bias.

The judge had shown him who had the whip hand. He had given my client a lesson that might, I felt, kill him.

Klofft was not going to accept this settlement, which was no real settlement. He couldn't accept it without waving goodbye to all his own principles and values.

42

On the way back, and at the first red light, I started thinking how Pandlitz had worked out his proposal for a settlement.

He had specified that we had here dismissal (in this case wrongful) for operational reasons – the other two possible grounds of dismissal being for personal or behavioural reasons – so that Frau Fuchs would not have to fear any complications with the state employment agency or her medical insurance, and also that the employment relationship was to be “properly wound down”. For the same reason, he had not made Katharina's immediate release from the terms of her contract of employment part of the written text, but had ordered that Klofft must provide it separately for the records of the tribunal.

The compensation that the judge wanted to impose on my client was indeed a large sum. But after a little thought I worked out why he had set it at that. According to a current rule of thumb, compensation is worked out on the basis of gross monthly salary multiplied by the number of years the employee has been with a company, and the result is multiplied again by a factor that can vary between 0.5 and 2.0.

Katharina's most recent monthly salary had been 6,000 euros, and that sum, multiplied by her eleven years with the firm, came to 66,000 euros. He had multiplied the figure again by 1.5. That was generous, but within the framework of what was possible.

Klofft wouldn't see it that way. He had wanted to punish his lover where it hurt for her double disloyalty – to his
life's work with the firm, and to himself personally in dumping him for that handsome young Swiss man from the travel industry, a tennis player, rock climber, yachtsman, surfboarder. He had wanted to leave her painfully scarred for life. And now, instead, that self-satisfied judge was aiming to ruin him, the victim of that disloyalty, morally by extracting money from his pocket and handing it straight over to that woman.

She would leave him for ever to begin a new life. She would go off to Switzerland with her handsome boyfriend and the loot, climb mountains and bathe in the lakes. Maybe she would find a new job, even a slightly better-paid one. She had let him down and left him alone.

And her reward would be to live a happy life – unlike him.

When I saw an empty parking slot, I went into it and called Hochkeppel. He had been in the office since early today. “He's already been asking about you,” Simone told me.

Hochkeppel came on the line. “Hello, Alex? How did it go?”

I said, “I don't know what you expected, but I'm afraid I have a worst-case scenario to report.”

He didn't reply for a moment, and then asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean Pandlitz proposed a settlement that Klofft isn't going to accept. Can't accept, if you ask me.”

“Tell me the details.”

“Klofft is to terminate their relationship of employment on 31 March on operational grounds. He is to agree that from now up to that date she is free from her contractual obligations, and to pay her ninety-nine thousand in compensation.”

Another silence before he asked, “How did it get to that point?”

“I'm not entirely sure what the reason was. In fact I had an impression it was going pretty well for us. But then Klofft took it into his head to alienate his old enemy Pandlitz. Pandlitz and more or less everyone else in the courtroom.”

“What? Was Klofft there?”

“Not at the start. But after a while he burst into the middle of the hearing. With his chauffeur. And finally he lost his temper and shouted. While Gladke was speaking. Gladke was saying that his client had served the firm loyally. And Klofft shouted that it was a fine kind of loyalty, the woman wasn't loyal, she was a slut of the worst kind. And a bitch on heat, yes, he shouted that out in the courtroom. And then he left.”

“I don't believe it!”

“You'd better. If you say that a few more times I'll end up not believing it myself any more!”

After a moment he said, “What are you doing now?”

“I'm on my way to see him and inform him. I'm afraid it all has to be done in rather a hurry.”

When he did not respond again, I said, “Well, till later, then.”

He said quickly, “Alexander!”

“Yes?”

After a pause he said, “You do know, don't you, that you now have a valid reason to decline to represent him further?”

“Yes, I know, but I'm not going to.”

“Why not?”

I laughed. Then I said, “Loyalty, I suppose. I'll be in touch later.”

I ended the conversation and called Klofft's villa. Cilly answered.

“Is he home yet?” I asked.

“Yes. Karl and I got him to bed. I don't know if he's asleep, but he wanted to lie down. And be left in peace.”

I said I had to let him know the outcome of the hearing. She hesitated, and then asked, “Well?”

It took me some time to get a reply out. “I don't know how he's going to come to terms with it. It… it's a bad outcome for him. Very bad.”

She said, “OK. I'm here.”

When she opened the door to me, she wasn't wearing her painter's smock but white jeans, with a blue-and-white check blouse, white sandals and a blue headband in her hair. She raised her head and kissed my cheek. Then she went upstairs ahead of me. She reached out to the door handle on the left, waited until I was beside her and then opened the door.

Klofft was lying on a broad bed beside the back wall of the room, with his eyes closed, dressed in a dark-grey tracksuit and his socks. There were three stacks of books on a bedside table, and a large table lamp with a shade; a bucket stood in front of the table. You could hear him breathing quietly.

Cilly tiptoed toward the bed. “Herbert?” she said.

He didn't move.

She went another step closer. “Herbert? Dr Zabel is here.”

His eyelids opened. His eyes wandered over the ceiling for some time, and then around the room until they fixed on Cilly.

She said, “Dr Zabel is here. He has… some information for you.”

He made an indefinable sound, and moved his hand as if to beckon me closer, then patted the right-hand side of the bed.

Cilly moved a chair up, took the bucket and put it down on the other side of the bed.

I sat on the chair. Klofft's eyes wandered over the ceiling again, then spotted me and rested on my face. He smiled, with a little difficulty; his face seemed to me curiously distorted, and less mobile than ever.

Klofft said, “Do you know what I was dreaming?”

“No. But I'm sure you'll tell me.”

“Yes. Yes, I will.” He smiled. “I don't know why I tell you things I've never told anyone else.”

He was still smiling at me, but he stopped talking. Finally I said, “Is that so?”

“Yes, it is. People tell you things; you'd probably have made a good CID officer.” After a brief pause he said, “Oh, nonsense. But anyway you're a damn good lawyer.” He closed his eyes.

I was afraid he might fall asleep. After a while I said, “So what was your dream about?”

He smiled, in silence, and then suddenly said, “I dreamed about my mother.”

After another long silence I said, “I expect it was a good dream?”

“You bet it was!” He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Anything I could dream about her, no matter what… it would have been good, do you see? There was nothing, absolutely nothing about her that wouldn't have been good. If you see what I mean.”

“Of course. Of course I see what you mean.”

He closed his eyes again, moving his lips in silence. Then he said, “Not that she didn't tell me off! No, indeed, she often whacked me one!” He was speaking with a little difficulty, concentrating on one sentence at a time. “She wasn't one of those mothers who postpone that sort of thing. Threatening kids with their fathers. ‘Just you wait till Papa gets home!' Not her. It was only when I'd done something really bad that she told my old man about it. And then he'd give me another whacking. But she dealt with everyday things herself. And at once.”

He laughed. “And the slaps she did hand out, well, she had a good strong arm, I can tell you! There were quite a few of them over the course of time.” He laughed again.
“Well, the everyday things… and there were quite a few of them with me, too. I'd usually been up to something when I came home. And she could mostly tell. I don't know how, probably just by looking at me.”

I said, “My mother could do the same. I used to go red when she just gave me one of her looks.”

He laughed. “Exactly. Women can probably do that. Unlike…” He stopped short and then went on. “Well, take me, for instance… a woman can tell me a whole pack of lies before I notice a thing! I always let myself be tricked.”

“Do you really think so?” I said. “I've always felt you were rather… well, very distrustful.”