The Snowman by Jörg Fauser Read Free Book Online

fished it out. Then he opened the cellophane bag, touched a damp finger to the powder, and tasted it.

10
    â€œFor someone who’s spent a year in the Med you don’t look good,” said the man, who himself looked white as a sheet and did not move from his leather sofa.
    â€œI haven’t had much sleep recently,” said Blum, stirring the sugar in his coffee cup. “And life everywhere is just as hectic as here.”
    â€œRight again. No one really needs to set foot out of the door these days.”
    Blum looked at the view. Old snow lay on the rooftops. The sky was like a dirty asphalt lid above them, and that was about all you could see from up in this penthouse. The northern parts of Munich were not a particularly attractive sight on a Sunday in March.
    â€œGreat view, right?”
    â€œAt least you’ve solved the suicide problem here, Hermes.”
    Hermes smiled and lit his Gauloise with a gold lighter. He was a thin man of about average height and uncertain age, and always wore black. The penthouse was sparsely furnished, but the sparse furnishings themselves were top quality, and they were drinking Jamaican coffee. A large pot stood on a hotplate. The girl on the double bed was top quality too, Eurasian and aged seventeen at the most. She was reading Camus, L’Homme révolté . Blum took an HB out of its crumpled packet and lit it with his disposable lighter.
    â€œBut you didn’t crawl out of bed or some stand-up bar this fine day, and take a plane to Munich, just to discuss my suicide problems, am I right?”
    Hermes’s voice gave no clue to his origins. With his black hair combed back and his aquiline nose, he could have been Levantine, but Blum happened to know that he had come to Berlin in 1965 from a small town in Lower Saxony, and since then had been in the drugs trade without ever having trouble with the police. Maybe he had a couple of irons in the fire at this very moment. The Eurasian girl turned a page and chewed her thumbnail. Hermes gave an Oriental kind of smile.
    â€œNo,” said Blum at last.
    â€œGood,” said Hermes, with that smile. “So what’s it all about?”
    â€œCocaine,” said Blum.
    The Eurasian girl cast him a fleeting glance – the first since he had entered the penthouse – and ran her hand through the silky hair that fell to her knees. Hermes frowned.
    â€œYou want some cocaine from me?”
    â€œNo, I have some.”
    â€œWell, Blum, I must say you surprise me.”
    Hermes cautiously placed his feet in their black slippers on the carpet, as if to test the load-bearing properties of the floor, then stood up, threw his cigarette end into an alabaster container with a rubber plant reaching to the ceiling, and poured himself another cup of coffee.
    Blum knew that Hermes was waiting for further explanations, but he had no intention of offering any. Finally Hermes smiled and went to the telephone, which stood on an Empire bureau. He dialled a number that he knew by heart, said a couple of words soquietly that Blum couldn’t make them out, and hung up again. Then he bent down, chose a disc from the piles lying about on the carpet, and put it on the player without turning it on. The Eurasian girl turned another page. Either she had taken a course in speed reading or she knew the book by heart already, and was just picking out the best bits here and there. Or perhaps she was only pretending to read, and was recording the conversation with a wireless microphone fitted under her thumbnail . . .
    â€œWe’ll discuss it later,” said Hermes, when he was lying on the sofa again. “I’m no expert in that field, as you know.”
    â€œI know,” said Blum, smiling back.
    â€œAnd how was your trip, Blum? Did they treat you right? Was the food tolerable? Have you had new and fascinating experiences?”
    â€œCan’t complain,” said Blum. “I never stayed anywhere for