In the shadow of the house wall E-Book

Carolin Sternberg

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 377

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A female corpse on a sidewalk on the outskirts of town. One of the women who is already causing a stir, of all people. It is immediately clear that she must have jumped – if it weren't for the Lusatian coroner – and another person who takes a closer look. A person who is trying to come to terms with his own past. But will it catch up with him again? Young police officer Benedikt Ayari is confronted with a world he actually wanted to escape from. Will he be able to keep a level head?

Leseprobe

In the shadow of the house wall

I can feel her split ends between my fingers. Again, hardly a daydream is complete without her. She left them lying around, her old dead strands of hair, in a brush on my bedside cabinet. That was almost a week ago.

The hair fluff has formed a little knot. I pull it out and scrunch it up in my hand. I try to run my mind through her hair from above, but I can't do it. It has faded, the memory of her and the feeling we had for each other. Everything has faded, even though there's barely been a week between us.

Downstairs, outside the window, sirens had lined up the last time she had gotten out of my bed. Loud, thunderous sirens that still sit in my ear canal, just waiting to take me back to that moment.

I lean out of the window as if I can still hear the sirens, still see the lights flashing like tiny rocket sparks, and find myself back in the moment when she left me. The moment when her make-up from the day before was left on her delicate face, careless and disoriented. She looked at me with her dull blue eyes, looking intimate and connected. So that it became quiet around us, only fleetingly quiet. Her gaze, which promised that it would soon be over and although I knew it would be the last, it still felt like the first.

"We're quiet now."Hiding her lips behind an upright index finger

"We will remain silent from now on."

Then she tore everything apart by leaving. By leaving me behind. I heard the door click shut like the flap on a one-hundred-meter dash. As ifI would start running from then on, straight ahead, as fast as I could and past everyone else. Just look ahead and keep going until she frees me. Until she would reappear at some point to tell me that everything was over. But shortly after she left, there was suddenly nothing left of her. Nothing but the fluff of her hair.

Once again, I roll up the little clump of hair in my hand. It is as sparse and fragile as the wafer-thin thread of my hope. And only the urge that drew me to her from the beginning cannot be released. After all that had happened, it still can't.

I still remember the first time we met. When she was sitting there and I had sneaked past her. She had ignored me, instead giggling silently to herself. The way she sat there, peaceful and apathetic at the same time. I could never have imagined that just one person would change everything in me. That one person would be so powerful. From the very beginning, she was the one who gave my existence meaning, from the very beginning, for that short time. I felt an immediate curiosity about her, a certain connection, felt how much the sight of her invigorated me. I understood her with all the pain, with all the suffering that must have happened to her and I could only guess how much it actually was.

But this is over, there is nothing left but the one in my hands from her.

I pause for a moment. Once again, I mentally try to run my fingers through her hair.

Then I dispose of the tuft of hair in the toilet. It'll be better that way. When it's gone. When the clump simply rolls through the sewer and joins all the other excrement until it slowly disappears into thin air. Just like the rest of the body, which is disappearing more and more before my eyes.

It's time to find out the causes. It's time to take a different view and understand those around me.

Who was this woman lying in the shadow of the house wall?

About a week earlier

I can feel the shaking and glow from outside getting closer and closer to me, as if it were knocking on the window. I open the window and blow cigarette smoke down to the men, they can't see me, behind shallow curtains, behind which I peer down at them. A great commotion spreads, driven bodies move from left to right. Thin cones of light illuminate the narrow stretch of road and give the spectacle below my window the clarity I didn't see coming. The men appear unprepared, their movements far too cautious. They can barely pause to rest their smoking lungs.

A body was found. In the early hours of the morning. Beyond the suburban neighborhood, exactly where people suspected such a crime had been committed. The soulless female body had caused excitement and uncertainty when an employee of the clinic had made her way to the bus at the end of the working day.

There are five uniformed men surrounding the site with red and white striped barrier tape and typing something into illuminated displays. Findings or assumptions, notes, photographs. One of them stands out, dressed in civilian clothes, with a checked sweater over gray cardigan sleeves, inappropriate for the warm spring night. It is the one who seems to be in charge, but also the one who is afraid of missing something. I can see it in his facial expression, which is now a few metres away from me under the floodlight, and I realize that he is not feeling well.

I have just broken the first rule, just asshehad not kept to our agreement, and am now sitting at the edge of the corridor, inconspicuously behind an open crack in the door.What was I supposed to do? Wait and stare at the ceiling for as long as she demanded? Should I just look away? Or was this not just the beginning of everything? The one that needed to be pursued?

"Inspector Reiter,"I can hear from a distance.

A voice that sounds like several cigarettes. The man seems exhausted as he repeatedly tries to push his sleeves back to his elbows and the words of his counterpart obviously pass him by.

I have learned to be a silent observer. Over the last few weeks, I have gradually become better at imagining people with their thoughts and innermost longings . This one is not the right man to lead any mission. He is unloaded, completely uncoordinated, as he sways from right to left to keep his restlessness under control. This man's best days are behind him. That's no secret.

Inspector Reiter, as he calls himself, follows the young orderly and joins him with a glass of warm coffee in his hand.

Both have now moved away from me. Now I can only make out rough outlines. But the police officer's uncertain movements stand out so that I can still see enough. At the same moment, a woman joins them, a young blonde I already know.

She loudly describes what has upset her, but the inspector remains unmoved, looks down at the tablet and tries to digitize her account.

Chapter 1

Rider

The corpse had been lying in the shadows of the house wall, crammed together like a folded winkel. Alone and alone, the sight of its outline saddened the young employee, who was trying to return to work in the middle of the night. The dead woman looked lonely, like she had been left behind by someone.

When the trainee doctor informed the Forster control center shortly afterwards, things took their usual course. Shortly afterwards, the phone of the local chief commissioner, who was on night duty, rang. It was Dietmar Reiter, who sleepily picked up the receiver and could not imagine that the reason for the call was a female corpse that had been found. A body found on a sidewalk outside the city limits. As if it had fallen out of a window or slumped over while running and forgotten there, on the side of the house wall. Something like that rarely happened here. They were burglaries, which usually took up the on-call phone, or acts of domestic violence. But not the discovery of a body. He had set off in a state of complete agitation, hoping to return as quickly as possible to the warm bed from which he had been torn by the call from his control center. But when Chief Superintendent Reiter got out of the car at the scene of the crime, he realized in this lightning-fast wide awake state that this deep longing would have to wait much longer. Because the scene demanded his immediate reaction.

And so he gave himself little pleasure as he cleared his eyes of the remaining sleeping sand and strained to center himself as he sat next to the corpse.Truly uncertain, because the timing could not have been more unfavorable. The man in his mid-forties had barely had a chance to recover from the effects of the past few months before he found himself in the midst of a psychic diffusion. He felt that he had long since drawn on his last reserves. Not a suitable state to devote himself to another matter, because things had just been overlooked.

So, as head of the team, he took over the distribution of tasks and limited the urgent matters to the essentials. It initially appeared that the deceased had jumped from an upper floor. At first glance, there was nothing to suggest otherwise from the chief inspector's point of view. That was the suspicion that he sent to the coroner's office just a few hours later after a sparse investigation.

The body has already arrived when Inspector Reiter descends to the autopsy site. He staggers and clings to the railing as if he can barely see straight from sheer exhaustion. The previous night had swept over him like a storm and snatched every last shred of strength from him. A fiasco for the chief inspector, who had been dealing with completely different things for some time and was barely fit for such an ominous case. Barely regaining his balance, he struggled down step by step and realized that he hadn't been there for years.

His business rarely took him outside. He didn't often have to leave the office. Once or twice at the most, but there had hardly been another corpse. None like this, none that made the Forster chief inspector himself doubt.

Despite the spacious cellar, the sultriness is already taking hold, so that the recklessly foul smell of the todes is getting closer with every step. For the inspector, it is a true confrontation with himself, a challenge the likes of which he has not faced for years.

He and his younger colleague have been out since dawn. After Dietmar Reiter had finished his part in the psychiatric ward, he had briefly reclaimed his unformed body in the form of alternating showers and then made his way to the man standing next to him with two frothed lattes to announce that a dead woman had been found during the night. There, in front of the municipal psychiatric ward.

He seems a little frustrated now because he can't find his feet. Because this situation has completely overwhelmed him, because his position as suburban commissioner has remained meaningless, different from what he once expected, different from the way his younger companion will go. The one he had almost spilled coffee on his shirt that morning. And who had radiated such composure after the announcement that it seemed incomprehensible to Dietmar Reiter. A complete contrast, he might have thought, when he compared the two of them. But Reiter was not comparing himself. He also had a strong personality, just under different circumstances. Under conditions that were more predictable, that gave him security, but not here and not today, where he was constantly concentrating on not tipping over backwards.

"Good morning!"Reiter hears the clear tones of a vigilant forensic scientist at this moment. The latter has long since examined both gentlemen as they stand there, rooted to the spot and leaning against each other, like two of the lower ranks. But one of them seems braver. It is the younger one who accepts his responsibility and faces the waiting gentleman in a friendly manner.

"Good morning too, we're from the CID,"he says, as if the question is still on the table.

Reiter, on the other hand, can hardly be bothered to look at the white-bearded gentleman. And yet he is relentlessly confronted with the incomprehensible fact that a dead woman is lying on the dissection table. He can barely look up and keep his stomach together. This dead body had already deprived him of his commissioner skills the night before. He would have preferred a punishable traffic offense that was a little more complicated or the expropriation of large amounts of property. But this event remains too abstruse, so he tries to distance himself mentally from the incident.

"You see, nobody comes anymore, we are simply forgotten down here."

The coroner briefly complains to clarify the facts before he can devote himself to the actual reason for this meeting. Facts that are now becoming apparent to both of them. Some have been forgotten down here, and not just those who have long since died.

Reiter and his colleague look up along the cracked concrete walls to the vault. Pipes protrude from the ceiling cladding everywhere; it looks like an above-ground construction site. Afterwards, spare parts were not in stock and helping hands gradually moved away. Reiter was aware of the circumstances in this town. That Forst was not exactly on the upswing, that this city was gradually falling apart. After the last upheaval, many had left and never returned. Provincial systems had long been underserved, and small towns on the border with Poland in particular were gradually losing their independence. And if he was honest with himself, the commissioner, then this actually suited him.

But now he can't give in to this embarrassment and returns to the room once more. Now, he has to look. Very closely. During the night, the corpse seemed a little too artificial, too unreal for him to be able to identify it as a deceased human being. As a living being whosebody had once been supplied with blood, just like his. Between the lights and cigarette smoke, her skin had gleamed a delicate white and as she lay there, somewhat secluded against the wall of the house, she looked more like a wax figure. Her face still looked so delicate, a well-formed nose, two equally curved lips, even though she had long since passed away.

Now, however, the unclothed body has dark spots and has lost all plasticity. Irregular and particularly pronounced on the arms and legs, they lend him darkness. His eyes are closed and have long since collapsed. He appears to be desiccated, much more advanced in his decomposition process than the inspector had judged.

Dietmar Reiter had barely internalized the features of the dead woman last night in his excitement. He only remembers her fine face, strong hair, a tight dark strand lying across her face like the end of a curled feather boa. He examined her sparsely and without concentration. In his opinion, there was nothing worth drawing on his last reserves for.

Instrumental sounds from the late sixties can be heard in the background, somewhat inappropriate for the situation. But fitting to the appearance of the curly-haired forensic scientist. Walther Fuszius seems to blossom as his palm runs upright over the pale body of the deceased.

A scar as thick as a woolen thread is visible directly below the navel. Already extensively faded, it is still recognizable that it was sutured by a surgeon.

"Perhaps a caesarean section, the incision for an appendectomy is usually made more laterally," he reports with true focus.

Massive abrasions are also visible, starting at the heels and extending up to the buttocks. Notin the same form throughout. But they are long, streaky abrasions that come from the same direction.

"I'm almost certain that the woman was moved again after she was already lifeless. Of course, it's also possible that she was simply pushed aside because she was in the way, but who would do something like that?"he adds, index finger and lips touching thoughtfully.

Dietmar Reiter no longer knew what death smelled like. Bittersweet, like a mixture of rancid soap and a biotope of decaying food scraps.

Reiter instantly frees himself and pulls his sweat-soaked face mask under the last third of his face. He gives way and walks with heavy feet to the only natural light source in the room to tilt open the barred window. With his back leaning against it, his legs can hold him up. Reiter then observes his eager colleague from a distance. Next to whom, considering the circumstances, he feels even more pale-looking today than at other times. He observes how he conducts himself, how he communicates, how he deliberates, as if he is clearly the more experienced of the two. His hands always hang a little too unsteadily under his hips, but he conveys an unmistakable curiosity.

Benedikt looks over the forensic scientist's shoulder. His eyes follow every step and although the rotting process degenerates into a stench, he doesn't move from the spot.

The doctor feels his way over the deceased's face and opens her sunken eyelids. They are deep black and soulless and tiny to look at.

"So this one's been dead for a while, at least two days. Maybe three."

His hands quickly jump to his limbs.

He explains:"Look at the decline of the nails, the decay is already in the process."

But Benedikt proves to have a clear mind.

"However, the dead woman was lying in the air, the thermometer climbed to twenty degrees yesterday morning ..."

And he refers to the optimal conditions that could have accelerated the decomposition process. As if absorbed from a textbook, but this could not be ruled out. Nevertheless, the experienced older gentleman has enough arguments to prove the theory he has just put forward.

"You've been paying attention, my boy, but it had already lost its rigidity when it was delivered this morning and some areas are covered in spots. That's more than clear."

Benedikt glances at the windowsill and encounters Reiter's lack of strength. How he tries to press himself against the wall and takes refuge in the fresh air. Almost as if he is ashamed of his own investigations.

"It was also found in foot traffic. It certainly wouldn't have been lying there unnoticed for long,"Benedikt adds.

A little louder, so that it reaches Dietmar Reiter's ears. Silence returns for a short time.

"How old will she have been? About mid-thirties?"he breaks invisible streams of thought.

"If at all. Considering that she's been lying there for a long time, probably even younger,"the forensic pathologist replies.

She was pretty. She was once handsome when the blood was still coursing through her veins. Now she is only garish and discolored and far removed from the face of life.

The eyes of the counselors glide along the violet-tinted woman's skull. Skin structures have hardly been destroyed, but there is a notch under the hair. The skull of this female creature has been deformed, deformed with considerable force.

"An indication of the impact?"Benedikt's head repeatedly turns to the person leaning against the window. Questionable and hesitant. Because it hardly suggests anything.

"No, my boy, there's no way this woman could have jumped. Anyone who says that hasn't looked."

The older man's eyes fall in the same direction. He shakes his gray curly head without comment.

Detective Inspector Reiter feels he has been caught out, but he keeps his head down. He is unable to accept the accusation thrown at him. He is no longer able to follow the conversation. It is only possible to read the dynamics of the conversation through facial expressions and gestures. The contrast between the two now becomes even clearer.

At this moment, he realizes it. He realizes that the time has come to place even more trust in the person whose freshly shorn hair almost conceals his origins.

He recalls how many years had passed between then and now. What his colleague had once looked like. Back then, more than a decade ago.

Reiter had met his colleague for the first time when his curly locks still towered over his shoulders like soft absorbent cotton. The two had met at a training course in Hamelin. Back then, the budding detective wore this particular look. A look with a strong character that you didn't necessarily come across in the countryside. Bright green pants, combined with elegant leather sandals and a white mangled stand-up collar shirt had never before been chosen for a seminar on"organized crime".

However, over the years, Dietmar Reiter was able to gradually determine the length of his service based on his haircut. At first it was only a few centimetres, just enough for the man, whose name harmonized with his overall appearance, to tuck his curly locks behind his ears. However, the chief inspector's hair is now longer than that of his younger colleague. And the intensity of hisner clothing also distanced itself more and more from the previous color selection over several periods of time. In Dietmar Reiter's eyes, after just a few years, he was already adapting to the characteristics of a police officer - but only in appearance. And Reiter had to admit to himself that he understood this reorientation. After all, someone with the name Benedikt Ayari rarely had things thrown at him that were worth picking up.

Walther Fuszius changes the pair of gloves he is wearing and puts a plastic visor over his face. His rubberized fingers then scan other limbs of the dead body. He works his way carefully from the skull to the upper torso. His fingers stop at the level of the small intestine to repeatedly examine the scar. They examine the lower abdominal area, where countless spots are visible, the veins are greenish in color.

"You have to pull the skin far apart, the cleaner the cut will be,"the forensic pathologist demonstrates and then reveals the surgical instruments.

Gradually, Dietmar Reiter regains strength under his feet and approaches the dissection table. He clears his throat inaudibly and stands up to make it clear that his body has regained its strength. At least for this brief moment.

"So you'll be in touch on Monday?"he returns to his position on duty, completely ignoring the fact that he was just on the verge of collapse.

Walther Fuszius is not particularly impressed by his return. His hand, already armed with dissecting instruments, now moves away from the skin again.

"Of course!"he sounds highly excited."Earlier, of course, if it's possible."

Inspector Reiter moves away from the scene with a matter-of-fact stride. He hopes that he can suppress the recurring dizziness for the moment.

He stops emphatically at the top of the first flight of stairs, turns his body and rests one arm on his hip to emphasize his colleague's point."Are you coming?"The budding detective obviously can't detach himself from this case just yet.

"Ben, today is your day off." But he doesn't seem to have his wits about him at the moment. He stares into the air, his head focused on something that doesn't seem to be there. His mood has changed. He suddenly seems exhausted, a little displeased.

Benedikt Ayari struggles to fight something out internally. His brow furrows as if there is moving life beneath it. Obviously, his soma is somewhat separated from his mind standing at the dissection table. And the two only reunite when the pathologist pulls the corpse's skin apart with both fingers and the freshly polished metal penetrates the abdominal wall before his eyes. Focusing his gaze, the trainee detective waits a moment before turning away, but apparently the expected effect does not occur, as the blood of the dead body has long since stopped.

"Mr. Ayari, are you coming?"Reiter's emphasis is now clearer. He feels impatient, it's time for him to leave these walls. Then he stamps one foot on the metal steps so that the muffled sound rings in everyone's ears. Finally, Benedict wakes up from his stupor, in which he had almost become one with the corpse. He circles around the scenario as if he is memorizing it once more.

"See you soon,"he says goodbye."Hopefully..."

The officers leave the building one by one and make their way to their vehicles. As Benedikt's hands sink into his trouser pockets and rummage around for the key, he throws Reiter a final, sustained indignation."Why did you formulate the situation so clearly ...?"he asks, never actually questioning his colleague's work.

Reiter stops before taking the lane to the red Volvo, his insides starting to flutter again.

"I mean, in the worst case scenario, there might even be a murderer running around here,"Benedikt adds a touch of drama to his question. And Inspector Reiter tries to absorb this as best he can.

He knows very well that Benedict's accusations are entirely justified.

Reiter had failed to read between the lines and analyze the find in his personal favor. He was acutely aware that he would not have been able to handle such a matter. He was much more aware that his word could be the last.

It was already the case that the first rough traces pointed to suicidal homicide. The crime scene, found as it could have been depicted in the handbook, suggested a jump from the upper floor, unless you looked very closely. So a layman would have signed exactly that.

But Reiter's conscience had once looked different and he knew that the conditions had played into his hands. That he had taken advantage of the fact that this dead woman was a nobody after all. A nobody for whom this effort was not worth it.

The chief inspector nevertheless tries to defend himself against his younger colleague's accusation.

"What would you have written, Ben? You know how things work,"he throws back, trying to get Ben to stop worrying.

At this moment, the inspector is too weak. The sound of his voice seems stricken, as if this exhaustion is already running through him from head to toe. He straightens up, then pats his comrade-in-arms on the shoulder and breathes clear words into his neck."It's not always that simple, is it?"

Because he knows that Benedikt Ayari has often acted to his own advantage.

Benedict

Benedikt looks after the inspector as he moves away. There is no mistaking his friend's exhaustion and his words have also reached him. This is the moment when the memories come flooding back. The recent past begins to catch up with him before the sound of Reiter's engine brings the young officer back to the present. Benedikt hears the sound of the brakes and observes the increasingly smaller red-painted SUV. Then he activates the opening of his vehicle and climbs in. As he puts on his seatbelt, he looks in the rear-view mirror again and, as always, turns off the hazard lights to say goodbye to his colleague. He looks after him again until he is no longer visible, and only then does the ignition come on. Benedikt now glides automatically to the junction, turns right between avenues onto the brittle asphalt of the country road.

Reiter's words reinforced the feeling in him once again. The feeling of having made a mistake, of having taken the meaning out of things in order to free himself from self-reproach. Just like before and just like that one night last night. Gradually, he realizes that he will drive home lost in thought. Any attempt to concentrate on the surrounding traffic is increasingly lost in memories. Memories of the incident at the police station about three weeks ago come flooding back to him without him being able to hold them back.

It was this one day, in principle not very different from all the others. But Benedikt had been alone at the station for a few hours at short notice. And that night, it initially looked as if it was actually to Benedikt's advantage.

"I have to drive home quickly!"said the other colleague on duty, whose heavily pregnant wife was about to give birth.

"Take your time,"Benedikt waved both hands away. It was a great relief to be able to do some off-duty work himself that night. He still had a pile of work to do from the police academy that he should have put in the professor's mailbox days ago.

Shortly after Benedikt Ayari dismissed his colleague for the night, he sat down in the corner of his desk and dug out the stack of several pages of copies from his shoulder bag to spend the time he had gained in a useful way. Of course, at the other end of the desk there was also a pile of documents from the daily patrols of the last few weeks. But Benedikt was now feeling so much pressure from his professor that he finally tried to ease it a little.

Barely seated, he ran his marker over the first few pages to filter out the most important points. He read a text on dealing with sniffer dogs. Which didn't really excite the budding detective inspector.

The words strung together like miserably long chain words. He almost overread punctuation marks and Benedikt noticed an increasing pressure rising in his forehead. A stinging headache spread and he struggled to keep both eyes open. So he placed the bright yellow marker between the unfolded copies to move a few steps.

He strolled up and down the square section of the office with both hands in his trouser pockets. At leasthis circulation got going a little, he thought to himself.

He was still wearing his worn-out Nikes, which he used as a change of shoes to take his feet off his uniform shoes from time to time. His feet had never felt particularly comfortable in them. And because he suspected that his colleague would not be returning any time soon, he decided to take another step towards comfort. So he went to his locker and calmly slipped off his worn sports shoes. He could see white residue on the tips of his toes, reflecting the dried salt content of his sweat. He also took a few steps up and down the entrance area of the station, walking on his socks for a few minutes.

It had been as quiet as a mouse around him. The flickering of the surveillance screen was the only source of light in the spacious corridor. Only the rain was audible, gently brushing against the windows. The night was as if deserted, constantly silent. Until the policeman suddenly noticed something. A sound that broke the silence. Hard to localize, hard to classify what it was. But the sound repeated itself, again and again. And it sounded like a fist hitting a door. But very timid and reserved. It was a knock.

Benedikt Ayari opened the front door to the Presidium and stuck his head out into the terrible rain. He looked around, but at first gigantic drops of water restricted his field of vision."Hello?"he asked uncertainly, feeling a little ridiculous as he seemed to be communicating with nothingness. He squinted both eyes, not yet having crossed the line into wearing glasses, and heard something hurrying in the cone of light from the lanterns quite a distance away. It looked as if someone was running away, someone whose braid was dangling back and forth, someone who was trying to escape. A person.

She was wearing a light-colored suit whose top and bottom did not contrast in color. Her hair, however, was a slightly different shade, but gradually blurred between the streetlights.

"Stop!"he shouted energetically, a little frightened himself by the vibration of his voice. But the person did not respond to his shouts and continued to move away at the same pace until it became smaller and smaller. Benedikt felt challenged. He had to react. But before he could rush tohis lockerand slip back into his Nikes, the person disappeared into the gaping darkness.

And as he was still standing there, wondering about the intention, about the reason for the knock, his now soaked feet sensed that the knocker had also left something behind. A stone lying on the doorstep, offering protection to a piece of paper underneath.

Benedict grabbed this apparent message before it too became soaked with moisture and slammed the door into the frame.

The person who ran away had meticulously folded this piece of paper. Folded it edge to edge into miniature format. It almost screamed that someone had a remarkable folding technique. Inwardly frantic, he pulled his soaked socks off his feet and returned barefoot to the desk.

The big hand now stood at two hours past midnight and the duty was to last until the early morning. Benedikt felt an oppressive restlessness on his shoulders that took hold of him and had rarely happened to him before. Somehow different from what he knew from the patrols in the big city.

Hundreds of times he had experienced nights in which he had not been able to think, hundreds of times. Yet he couldn't compare any of them with the one he was experiencing now.

Perhaps those unknown conditions robbed him of his composure on this deep dark night and brought a strange unpredictability to the police station. The roaring wind that had risen in the warm Main night and the drizzling rain against the window panes. This desolation, in which no human being seemed to be wandering far and wide, framed the entire situation with a mysticism that now lent the whole thing emphasis.

With trembling fingers, Benedikt opened the small folded sheet of paper and, piece by piece, returned its ends to their original shape. Then he swept the spread-out study assignments to one side, like a pile of newspapers that had been read out, and placed the mysterious document on the surface of the table, smoothing out the pronounced creases with his open hand. A slight trace of the heavy rain had been unavoidable and smudged the ink after opening it. A visible smudge ran wafer-thin across the gleaming white. Curved letters were worked into the paper one by one by hand, somewhat artistically rendered in an oddly flawless script. It looked as if someone knew their trade. As if someone had taken the time to make this piece of paper. There were hundreds of capital letters in an incredibly tiny font size. It looked as if someone had left a message. As if someone had tried to say something and then backed out for some unspecified reason.

Benedikt felt his skull trying to fight off the exhaustion of the night watch, his thoughts racing as they struggled to find solutions. It could have meant anything at that moment and was far too challenging a mental task for this time of day.

So the young policeman got up from his chair, prepared himself a cappuccino and, after an eternityonce again felt the incessant urge to inhale some tobacco smoke as quickly as possible. A deep puff promised to bring him down in the past. And Benedikt knew that he could satisfy this need now, as his superior always carried a filled packet of cigarillos around in his customary jacket. It wasn't necessarily the most enjoyable brand that Dietmar Reiter kept in the inside pocket of his leather coat, but at least it was something smoky between his lips. Benedikt brazenly rummaged around in it and helped himself to the dented box. He had long since given up smoking, but now it seemed appropriate, perfectly appropriate in this situation.

As instructed, he went to the smoking area with the already glowing cigarillo, which was still there. Still wondering how much seriousness was behind this strange event. Wondering whether he had become the victim of an infantile prank and would now become a laughing stock?

He put his smouldering butt in the overfilled storm ashtray with the others and went back to the corner of his desk. He could just hand the note in to forensics. Without causing a stir, as if he wanted to get some practical experience in the middle of his studies. But if he was honest, he'd already done too much damage to the structure of the paper. The production of his sweat glands had left traces, especially on his fingertips, so that the paper was now rippling in some places. His legacy had long since replaced that of the messenger. He could imagine that they would think he was a beginner after all those years of service, or someone with a very strong imagination. At that moment, Benedikt hoped a little for the return of his colleague.A voice that would speak to him and pull him out of this world of thoughts. A piece of tangible reality. He hoped for an impulse that felt alive. But all that remained around him was silence.

Benedikt put the enigmatic piece of paper back into its original form and leaned back in his office chair. He stretched both feet out towards the table and tried to find his way back. To get back to the here and now and leave things for the time being. It felt good for the policeman to stretch out both toes and feel some air on his skin.

He heard the Friday atmosphere of departure left behind by the department after work. Around him, overloaded folders formed towers doomed to collapse. All it would have taken was a breeze. Next to all the other desks, the garbage cans were overflowing. Littered with packages of Asian fast food that had been ordered at lunchtime. Remnants of wet wipes stuck to keyboards like overripe banana peels that had become one and started to emit a pungent, fruity smell. On this humid night, even the milder odors didn't fade a bit.

Benedikt remembered comparing that smell to a freshly brewed winter tea. A brew that his wife would brew for him when he was unwell. The fruity, wintery scent promised comfort and warmth and reminded him of the traditions of their homeland. Even though it was hardly appropriate at this time of year, Benedikt felt at peace. He felt lighter at that moment. There at his desk, he soaked up this feeling to remove himself a little from what was happening. Perhaps even too much.

Until suddenly a tap on his shoulder snapped him out of his stupor. His head was already tilted to one side and he felt tension in the vertebrae of his neck. The clock was now exactly at four o'clock and gradually themorning birdsong began to sound, although it was still pitch black outside.

"Go home Ben, I'll take over the rest of the shift,"said the returning colleague.

Benedikt wiped a slight trace of saliva from his cheek and gave his counterpart a wordless nod. He feigned ignorance and asked meekly and only out of politeness how the pregnant woman had been at home. But the man now standing in the kitchenette held back in his embellishments. His brow furrowed as if he was wondering about the hysteria of pregnant women.

"Oh, it was just a false alarm. Just pregnant women."

Benedikt sorted the professor's documents back into the university folder. He was already getting ready to go home, but there was still one thing to decide. He reached for the now refolded paper square and turned to his colleague, who was in the process of disposing of Benedikt's used coffee pad in the garbage can and had a noticeably annoyed look on his face.

"I forgot, I'm sorry,"Benedikt added consolingly, but that frustration didn't seem to be due to his carelessness.

Benedikt could have said that someone had knocked on the door and left something.

Or that he had found something outside the door while he was sticking the note behind the hardened cardboard stapler. But he didn't do that, because the excitement of the person present prevented him from doing so. Instead, he felt his heart rate increase rapidly and his insides startled.Breathing heavily, he pulled his socks over his bare feet, let the folded piece of paper slide into his shoulder bag together with the other pile as if it had never appeared and said a sober"it was very quiet ... you didn't miss anything"as a farewell, while he tied his shoelaces in a hurry, already half bent over with one leg in the corridor. Then he walked straight out of the office.

Benedikt is still sitting behind the wheel on his way back from the forensics department when he returns from his memories. The avenues are strewn with early bloomers. He realizes that his mind had been replaying the drive over this moment. So vividly that he no longer knows how he got to his destination. Perhaps he had taken detours, perhaps he had run red lights, but he barely remembers a single thing.

After pulling into the carport at home, all he knows is that the first thing he will do is go to his study. He knows that he will initially ignore everything around him, instead opening the pocket compartment and pulling out his shoulder bag. Because ever since he had returned from his shift that morning, the folded square of paper had been resting right there. The following day, he no longer saw the point in continuing to devote himself to this oddity. So things took their course and gradually took the intensity out of the strange event. But now it was catching up with him again, even as the call from the chief inspector arrived on his work phone in the early hours of the morning.

The piece of paper had spent all this time undamaged in the leathery aisle, untouched and now wrinkle-free again. Benedikt pulls it out and switches on the light above the desk. He can still make out the remnants of the night, the rain, his fingerprints, but they have faded a little.

It is a jumble of letters, nothing has changed. But today, he feels, his visionseems a little clearer than in the middle of this dark, almost moonless night.

He crosses over the rows on the piece of paper, first horizontally, then vertically, and writes down words with a pencil."EIN, DER",he reads out loud to himself. He tries it backwards and diagonally. He runs his fingertip over curved blobs of ink at a gentle pace. There are lots of small, rather small capital letters and Benedikt's eyes need to rest again and again. He rummages in the desk drawer for a magnifying glass. Then he opens his laptop and searches the internet for something comparable. He realizes that the letters belong to the modern German alphabet, but there are hardly any words to be found. He tries Latin, Polish and Spanish, but the phonetic transcription is missing.

He rubs his closed eyelids. They strain him, these depressing questions, the feeling of getting lost in a jumble of letters.

Right now, Benedikt Ayari realizes that he urgently needs someone else's advice.

Rider

The inspector looks after his colleague, whose words cause him concern.

Cover-up, you might think, was the right term for what Dietmar Reiter had in mind that morning.

The inspector was well aware of what he would trigger as soon as he got onto the narrow lane highway. That a time that had brought peace and hope was coming to an end. For him and everyone involved. That his word was nothing more than a scurrying breeze, because now he really could no longer protect this peace.

Dietmar Reiter stops again at the next opportunity to mix caffeine tablets with cheap filter coffee to keep his battery from running out, at least until he was on his way back.

Then he is struck by a shimmering façade, by a hundred thousand panes of glass.

The new presidium provides an impressive insight into every listed corner. Splendid and pure, somehow majestic.

Proof in the flesh that Dietmar Reiter had begged and worried in vain for the whole of last year, that he had made a real "laughing stock"of himself and that they had found him ridiculous. He hadn't wanted to understand it, but now it seemed as crystal clear to him as this massive specimen before his eyes.

Next door, where the inspector once attended police school, all that seems to be left of it today is a gatehouse. The former Soviet building had to make way for dust-dry car parking spaces and what has become bigger and bigger over time.

As he stands there looking up at the white paintwork, he hardly dares to set foot inside. It feels as if all of Forster's savings have gradually helped this specimen to become more magnificent. Now he can't help but draw comparisons. Reiter's hard-won savings, transformed into useless ceiling lamp constructions, towering up to the stairwell.

Dietmar Reiter now knows about all the ridiculousness, about his own, about how high his entertainment value must have been. That they were deliberately exerting pressure, probably even making bets on how long the inspector could still solder his wires together. All of a sudden, he was now denying himself his hard-earned title. Because the others had already done so. He had been a laughing stock among all the small-town commissaries fighting over the case, that's what he was! But by no means a chief inspector, who was once considered respectable several years ago.

So if Dietmar Reiter now penetrates this dazzling building, the Forster control center will very soon ensure further growth. And he himself will be able to isolate himself, neatly pulling out of the affair, while those in charge remain ignorant.