Brenner and God by Wolf Haas Read Free Book Online Page A

cahoots with Knoll.”
    “If you’re so certain that Knoll’s behind it, why don’t you just go pick up the kid from him?”
    The detective made a dopey face, as if to say,
like we’re going to tell you of all people what we’re doing with Knoll right now
.
    “Well now, someone’s in an awful hurry all of the sudden, Herr Simon.”
    “Where would I know Knoll from? You know for a fact that Knoll doesn’t stand there himself in front of the abortion clinic.”
    He was right on that account, of course. Knoll didn’t personally stand in the street and try to prevent patients from entering the clinic with his own hands. You don’t ever do something like that yourself! A bank director like Reinhard doesn’t personally carry the TV out of the house when someone defaults on a loan, either. Knoll had enough church-types to stand in front of the clinic for him all day with rapt expressions on their faces and holding photos of embryos up in the air with the word “Murder” written across them.
    “Just how am I, of all people, supposed to have kidnapped Helena?”
    “Egypt’s third president was assassinated by his own bodyguard.”
    “I wasn’t hired to be a bodyguard. I was hired to be a driver!”
    Peinhaupt reached for the telephone and called up front to see whether the Frau Doctor was in the building. That sent Herr Simon into a panic—you’d have thought Peinhaupt had called in the bloodhounds.
    “I’m just a driver,” he said, so sheepishly that he held himself in contempt.
    “The Frau Doctor told us she and her husband selected you from a large number of candidates because of your police background.”
    “So what?”
    “So what. So that’s exactly why you were more than just a driver, Herr Simon. Do you think, with the threat being as great as it was, that they would have entrusted their child to just any stranger?”
    You should know, back before Herr Simon had been hired, Knoll once said to the Frau Doctor during an argument that she should watch out for her only child so that the good lord doesn’t make
her
child disappear—like all those children she’d taken away from the good lord.
    “Anti-abortionists don’t kidnap! They’re just poor crazies, slinging their rosaries. The anti-abortionists aren’t
anti-
children—they’re
pro
-children!”
    “And the threats from Knoll you simply didn’t take seriously. Maybe you know him so well that you can assess his character that accurately?”
    “He’d be the first kidnapper to announce the kidnapping ahead of time.”
    “Don’t play any dumber than you already are. That’s exactly what’s so funny about it. If a kidnapper wants to extort money, then naturally he’s not going to announce it beforehand. But if he has a higher purpose, that’s something else altogether.”
    “So that’s what you learn at the police academy these days?”
    “As long as the kidnapper doesn’t make contact, then the demand is from Knoll to shut down the clinic, the only lead we’ve got anyway. And it can be assumed that a desperate mother like the Frau Doctor will grasp at any available straw. The longer the kidnapper’s silent, the more weight’s given to Knoll’s old demand. Without even having to send word. And no ransom to be handed over, either. A kidnapping without a neuralgic point, my dear Simon.”
    I have to say, Knoll’s plan wouldn’t have been half bad. First, the casually made threat, without any witnesses in theroom, of course, and not too long thereafter, the kidnapping. Because there’s nothing worse for the family than a kidnapping where no demand is made. And nothing worse for the police than a kidnapping where no ransom is handed over. As soon as the Frau Doctor closes the clinic on her own initiative without the kidnapper having to make a single call, the kid will turn back up safe and sound. Coincidence.
    “Then it’s Knoll you’re after and not me. I’ve never seen the man before.”
    “A woman’s waiting outside for