‘H e put you in an impossible position,’ the girl says. ‘Why didn’t you resign?’
‘Why are you asking so many questions today?’ Fritz’s glass is empty. The beer has left a sour taste in his mouth.
‘Because I don’t understand. If I knew more about the case, perhaps I would be able to make some of the logical jumps –’
‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘It is more than that. You are angry with me. Do you think I waste your time?’
She is looking down at her hands.
‘Do you think this is unimportant?’
‘I think,’ she says softly, ‘you are using this case to prove that you are more important than I think you are.’
He lets out a breath and leans back. ‘But you said this was insignificant before.’
‘I merely want you to tell me the point.’
‘I do not know what the point is.’ As soon as the sentence leaves him, he realises his mistake.
She shuts off the recorder. But he does not want her to leave.
‘Please,’ he says. ‘Please, understand. You are the scholar. Scholars analyse. Scholars determine what is important and what is not. But sometimes scholars do not know everything. Please. This case is crucial to Bavaria. To Germany. You must know what happened.’
‘Did they force you to leave? Did you discover who the murderer was and did the Minister of Justice ask you to leave the force?’
‘It was not so simple. I retired. I knew I could do no more.’
‘Yet you would not resign when the Chief Inspector made you the tool of his vengeance.’
Fritz gripped the arms of his chair. ‘If you are such an expert on the Bavarian police, you would know why I did not resign then.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I was afraid I would starve.’
The words hang between them. She has gathered her bag closer, like she does when she is about to leave. ‘But you said you saved money in that period.’
‘And the inflation was starting again. Five million unemployed at the start of 1931, and a million more by 1932. It seemed like 1925 all over again. And 1919. I will be someone’s slave before I go hungry again.’
‘But you retired six months later –’ She stops herself. ‘My God,’ she says and lets her bag drop. ‘Did something happen so that you could afford to retire six months later?’
He does not answer that. He has no simple answer. Everything is infinitely more complex than she makes it. Perhaps her mind lacks the ability to grasp the subtleties of life.
‘Let me get us lunch,’ he says, and flees out the front door.
When he reaches the street he stops and stares at the glass and steel buildings rising over the gothic architecture that once covered all of Munich. Once, he did not think he would live to see the future, but now that he has, he is angry that he is unable to explain how he got here to this place, a world he does not, cannot, will not recognise.
He buys lunch in a café down the street. As he walks back to the apartment, a woman leaves the building and hails a cab. He dodges through the crowd, runs, his body slower than it used to be. He bumps into a man older than himself, but does not beg for pardon; he is too intent on the vehicle ahead of him. As he reaches it, it pulls away. All he can see is the back of her head. He stands on the curb, breathing so hard he wonders if he will ever be able to breathe normally again. The bag is heavy in his hands.
Finally, he goes inside. The walk up the stairs is torture. His muscles ache even from that small exertion. He is not in the physical condition he thought he was in. He has spent too much time in his chair, remembering the days when he could take a flight of steps four at a time, instead of doing the work. Perhaps, since his afternoon is now free, he will begin his regimen all over again.
He opens the door. She is still sitting in her chair. For a moment, he merely stares at the back of her head. Grey strands mix with brown on her head. She is not young, and not old, and despite his fevered imagination, she has waited for him.
‘It took you a long time,’ she says.
He wants to say: I am glad you stayed. I thought I saw you get into a cab. No one stays around me. Thank you for waiting, for being willing to listen. Instead he says: ‘They did not have what I wanted. I had to go to the next restaurant down.’