More Beer by Jakob Arjouni Read Free Book Online

Anastas’s clients didn’t deserve their time behind bars. I lit a cigarette.
    “Well, is he coming here or isn’t he?”
    “He said he’d be here at nine o’clock.”
    “Good. Let me take a look at those files until then.”
    I went up to the desk, and Anastas explained the contents of the files. First I looked at the autopsy report. Four nine-millimeter bullets. Two in the stomach, one through a lung, one grazing the top of his head. Fired from a distance of circa ten meters. The assassin must have been a beginner, or else drunk out of his mind. Time of death, between midnight and half past. I copied the doctor’s address, and went on to study the defendants’ dossiers. All four of them were in their mid-twenties and had made an early start working for one cause or another in various groups, without attracting particular attention. One of them came from Doppenburg, the other three from Frankfurt. I copied their addresses. According to their statements, they had grown tired of handing out leaflets in vacant pedestrian malls, knowing that no one read them anyway. Then came the idea of a big bang to wake up the people, and they obtained explosives from a chemistry student. They refused to answer questions about the fifth man. When, on the morning after their act of sabotage, they heard about Böllig’s murder, all of them wanted to leave the country and go to Greece. Afterprolonged discussion, they discarded that idea and waited for further developments. Three days later, the police arrived. They didn’t look like killers to me.
    “Another beer?”
    “Yes, please. None of them gave a more detailed description of how they got the idea to blow up that pipe?”
    “No.”
    “One of them must have thought of it first.”
    “They claim they developed the idea collectively.”
    “Developed the idea! Bullshit. I have to talk to them.”
    “They don’t want to do that under any circumstances.”
    “Then think of something. You’re the attorney. Put pressure on them. How am I supposed to get on with my job?”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Kayankaya, but I don’t want to put any strain on my relationship with my clients. You must understand that.”
    “They’re facing fifteen years in prison, and you’re talking about relationships? Once they’re convicted of murder, you’ll have to find another outlet for your interpersonal horseshit … How did the cops find out so quickly? Someone must have squealed. As soon as they realize that, they’ll denounce that someone. If they don’t, they’re idiots. But if they aren’t, and they still won’t talk, I can stop playacting the clever detective. Because if that’s the case, they
did
snuff Böllig. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
    Anastas paced about with a furrowed brow.
    “You may be right. Let me get you that beer.”
    I looked at Carla Reedermann.
    “And what do
you
think we should do? Collect signatures? Print up a leaflet? How about a hunger strike? We could shackle Anastas to the courthouse fence for a week.”
    She smiled. It was a pretty smile.
    The doorbell rang. A moment later, Anastas returned with a young man wearing jeans and a sports jacket, followed by a knock-kneed blonde with no ass. Both of them looked as if this was their first time away from home after nine in the evening. We shook hands, and Anastas made introductory remarks. Alf Düli and Anita Weiss had been engaged for a year and planned a wedding for next summer. Alf Düli was finishing his apprenticeship as a bank clerk. He guided his fiancée to the window, sat down in an armchair facing me, leaned forward, and beamed. I asked Anastas and Carla Reedermann to leave the room.
    “On the night of the twenty-second of April, you put up a tent on the factory grounds of Böllig Chemicals?”
    “Next
to the factory grounds, not on them.”
    “All right. By the lake. Tell me what it was like.”
    Alf told me that his parents had discovered that lake a long time ago, opined that it was surely all