Self's Murder by Bernhard Schlink Read Free Book Online

of this. The reason our bank survived was because it downsized, not because it expanded. We man age fortunes, advise investors, supervise funds, and do all that on a high international level. The few local people in Schwetzingen who still have accounts with us don’t really fit the profile anymore. We serve them for old times’ sake. And the clients of the Sorbian Cooperative Bank don’t fit the profile, either, even if there are a lot of them; even if little and often fills the purse.”
    “Your son-in-law doesn’t see eye-to-eye with you on this?”
    “Him?” he bleated, laughing abruptly and contemptuously. “I’ve no idea what he can see, or if he can see at all, for that matter. He’s a talented boy, but the bank’s not his thing and never has been. He studied medicine, and old Welker ought to have let him become a doctor instead of forcing him into banking because of family tradition—as if things as they now stand still have anything to do with family tradition! It’s all about fast money, new friends, new employees—I’ve no idea if the investment and funds business still exists the way Welker and I set it up. That’s how far things have come: I have no idea what’s going on.”
    Before I left he showed me a picture of his daughter. She was not the opulent beauty I’d imagined from seeing the photograph of her grandaunt at Schuler’s place, or from Nägelsbach’s description. She had a slender face, straight dark hair, and stern lips, and though her eyes had fire and soul, they also had an alert intelligence. “She was a banker and had studied law. She inherited the sixth sense for finances that our family developed over the centuries. If she were still alive the bank wouldn’t be in the state it’s in.” He took his out wallet and gave me fifty marks. “For the war graves.”
    I drove home by way of Schwetzingen. The waitress at the café greeted me as an old regular. It was three thirty: time for a hot chocolate and a marble cake, and the end of a Friday workday at the Weller & Welker bank. At four o’clock the four young women emerged from the bank. They stood there for a moment and said good-bye to one another, and then two went off along the old moat, the other two in the direction of the train station. At four thirty the three young men appeared and went along the moat in the opposite direction. I left a twenty-mark bill on the table, waved to the waitress, and followed them. They walked quite a distance, past Messplatz and under the railroad tracks to an area where there was a car wash, a home-improvement outlet, and a liquor store. They went into an eight-story hotel and I could see them being given room keys at the front desk.
    Back at the office, the light on my answering machine was blinking. Babs’s son, Georg, had found my message and wanted to drop by: Would Sunday or Monday be better for me? Brigitte wanted us to go to the movies Saturday evening. The third call was from Schuler. “I’m sorry if I was a bit abrupt on the phone. I’ve had a chat with Bertram and Gregor, and I know now that you didn’t say anything bad about me. It turns out Bertram has had a little too much on his plate of late, but he’ll be dropping by later. Come and see me again: Perhaps next week? Maybe Monday?” He laughed, but it was not a joyful laugh. “There’s life in the old badger yet. He’s caught himself a fat goose.”
     
     
     

— 12 —
     
Chock-full
     
     
    T hat weekend spring assured us it meant business, that it had come to stay and would not be chased away by any more ice or snow. In the Luisenpark the deck chairs were out on the lawns, and I was dozing away, wrapped in a blanket as if all was well with the world and my heart was sound. Later, when Brigitte and I came out of the movie theater, the full moon lit up the streets and squares. Some punks were playing soccer with a beer can in the pedestrian zone, some bums were passing a bottle of wine around in front of the town