The Pasta Detectives - Rico, Oskar und die Tieferschatten (englische Ausgabe mit Vokabelhilfen) (Rico und Oskar 1) E-Book

Andreas Steinhöfel

• Herausgeber: Carlsen
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Eigentlich soll Rico ja nur ein Ferientagebuch führen. Schwierig genug für einen, der leicht den roten oder den grünen oder auch den blauen Faden verliert. Aber als er dann auch noch Oskar mit dem blauen Helm kennenlernt und die beiden dem berüchtigten ALDI-Kidnapper auf die Spur kommen, geht es in seinem Kopf ganz schön durcheinander. Doch zusammen mit Oskar verlieren sogar die Tieferschatten etwas von ihrem Schrecken. Es ist der Beginn einer wunderbaren Freundschaft … Finally: the highly praised bestseller in English for early readers!

Leseprobe

Andreas Steinhöfel: The Pasta Detectives

Ins Englische übersetzt von Chantal Wright

Mit Bildern von Peter Schössow

Inhalt

Eigentlich soll Rico ja nur ein Ferientagebuch führen. Schwierig genug für einen, der leicht den roten oder den grünen oder auch den blauen Faden verliert. Aber als er dann auch noch Oskar mit dem blauen Helm kennenlernt und die beiden dem berüchtigten ALDI-Kidnapper auf die Spur kommen, geht es in seinem Kopf ganz schön durcheinander. Doch zusammen mit Oskar verlieren sogar die Tieferschatten etwas von ihrem Schrecken. Es ist der Beginn einer wunderbaren Freundschaft … Finally: the highly praised bestseller in English for early readers!

Wohin soll es gehen?

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For Gianni … from me to you and back againA.S.

The piece of pasta lay on the pavement. It was fat and crinkled, with a hole right through the middle. Some dried-up cheese sauce and dirt were stuck to it. I picked it up, cleaned off the dirt and looked up past the old windows of Dieffe 93 into the summer sky. Not a cloud in sight. Definitely none of those white stripes that jet engines leave behind. And besides, I thought to myself, I don’t think you can just open an aeroplane window and throw out your food.

I let myself into my block of flats, whizzed up the yellow-painted stairway to the third floor and rang Mrs Dahling’s bell. She had large, bright curlers in her hair, just as she did every Saturday.

»Could be rigatoni. The sauce is definitely Gorgonzola,« she declared. »It’s nice of you to bring me the piece of pasta, dear, but I didn’t throw it out of the window. Why don’t you ask Mr Fitzke?«

She grinned at me, tapped one finger against her forehead, rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. Mr Fitzke lives on the fourth floor. I hate him. Also, I don’t think the piece of pasta is his. Mrs Dahling was my first choice because she often throws things out of the window. Last winter she threw out a television. Followed five minutes later by her husband, though he came out of the front door. After that, she came down to see us, and Mum had to pour her a drop of whisky.

»He has a girlfriend!« Mrs Dahling had exclaimed in shock. »And the stupid cow is no younger than I am! Give me another swig of that stuff!«

The very next day, with the telly in smithereens and her husband gone, she bought herself an amazing new flat-screen TV and DVD player. We sometimes watch romantic films or thrillers together, but only at the weekend when Mrs Dahling can have a lie-in. During the week she works behind the butcher’s counter at a department store. Her hands are always red raw because it’s so cold in there.

When we watch television we eat canapés with boiled ham and eggs or smoked salmon. If it’s a romantic comedy, Mrs Dahling sniffs her way through at least ten tissues, then starts complaining about the film. »As if that sort of thing really happens! When a man and a woman get together, that’s when the misery begins, but of course they never show that in films. What a pack of lies! Another canapé, Rico?«

»Are we still on for this evening?« Mrs Dahling called after me as I ran up to the fourth floor, two steps at a time.

»Course!«

Her door banged shut and I knocked at Mr Fitzke’s. You always have to knock at Mr Fitzke’s. His bell is broken. It probably has been since they built the flats in 1910.

I had to wait, wait, wait.

And listen to the shuffle, shuffle, shuffle behind the old wooden door.

Finally Mr Fitzke appeared, dressed, as usual, in his dark blue pyjamas with the grey stripes. His wrinkled face was covered in stubble and his stringy grey hair shot out from his head in all directions.

What a mess!

A strong smell of mould wafted out. Who knew what Mr Fitzke kept in there. In his flat, I mean, not in his head. I tried to look past him without him noticing, but he stood in my way. Deliberately! I’ve been in every flat in the building apart from his. Mr Fitzke won’t let me in because he doesn’t like me.

»Ah, the little dimwit,« he growled.

At this point I should explain that my name is Rico and that I am a child proddity. That’s a bit like being a child prodigy, but also like the opposite. I think an awful lot, but I also need a lot of time to figure things out. There’s nothing wrong with my brain, though. It’s a perfectly normal size. Only sometimes a few things go missing, and unfortunately I never know when or where it’s going to happen. And I can’t always concentrate very well when I’m telling a story. I have a mind like a sieve – at least I think it’s a sieve, it could be a cheese grater or a whisk … and now you see my problem.

My head is sometimes as topsy-turvy as a barrel full of lottery balls. I play bingo every Tuesday with Mum at the Grey Bumblebees senior citizens’ club and they have a drum full of bingo balls there which is just the same. I have no idea why mum enjoys going there so much because it really is only for pensioners. Some of them never seem to go home, because they wear the same clothes every week – just like Mr Fitzke and his one pair of pyjamas – and a few of them smell a bit funny. Maybe Mum likes it so much because she wins all the time. She beams every time she goes on stage to collect one of those cheap plastic handbags – she only ever wins cheap plastic handbags, in fact.

The pensioners don’t really notice. Quite a lot of them gradually nod off over their bingo tickets or don’t follow what’s going on. Just a few weeks ago one of them sat completely still at a table all the time the numbers were being called. When the others left, he didn’t get up, and when the cleaning lady finally tried to wake him up, she realised he was dead. Mum thought he might already have been dead the Tuesday before. I thought so too.

»Hello, Mr Fitzke,« I said, »I hope I didn’t wake you up.«

Mr Fitzke looks even older than the pensioner who dropped dead at the bingo. And he’s really stinky dirty. Apparently he doesn’t have long to live either. That’s why he wears his pyjamas all the time, even when he goes to the supermarket. When he does drop dead, at least he’ll be wearing the right clothes. Mr Fitzke once told Mrs Dahling he’d had a heart problem ever since he was very small. That’s why he gets out of breath so easily, he said, and one day it’ll be KA-POW! But even if he is about to die, he could still get dressed, or at least wash his pyjamas sometimes. At Christmas, for example. I wouldn’t like to collapse in front of the cheese counter at the supermarket and smell totally gross, not when I’d only just died.

Mr Fitzke stared at me, so I thrust the piece of pasta under his nose. »Is this yours?«

»Where did you get that?«

»The pavement. Mrs Dahling thinks it could be rigatoni. The sauce is definitely Gorgonzola.«

»Was it just lying there,« he asked suspiciously, »or was it lying in something?«

»Huh?«

»Where’s your brain gone? The piece of pasta, you dimwit!«

»What was the question again?«

Mr Fitzke rolled his eyes. Any minute now he would explode.

»For goodness’ sake! Was your bloody piece of pasta just lying there on the pavement, or was it lying in something! Dog poo, for instance.«

»It was just lying there,« I said.

»Then let me take a closer look.«

He took the piece of pasta and turned it around in his fingers. Then he put it – my piece of pasta! – into his mouth and swallowed it. Without chewing.

And then he slammed the door. KER-ASH!

He’s not right in the head!! The next piece of pasta I find, I’ll drop it in dog poo, wiggle it round a bit, then bring it to Mr Fitzke, and when he asks if it was lying in something I’ll tell him it’s Bolognese sauce.

I’d really wanted to ask everybody who lived in the building about that piece of pasta, but now it was gone, swallowed up by Mr Fitzke. I was sad. It’s always like that when you lose something. When I had it I didn’t think it was that great, but now it was suddenly the best piece of pasta in the world. That was how it was with Mrs Dahling. Last winter she was moaning about her husband being a cheat, and now she’s watching one romantic comedy after another and wishing he’d come back.

I wanted to go down to the second floor, but I thought it over and rang at the flat opposite Mr Fitzke’s first. That was where the new person who had moved in two days ago lived. I hadn’t seen him yet. I didn’t have the piece of pasta any more, but it seemed like a good time to say hello. Maybe he’d let me in. I like visiting other people’s flats.

This flat had been empty for a long time because it was so expensive. Mum had thought about renting it. There’s more light on the fourth floor than on the second and even a bit of a view. You can look out through the trees over to the old, flat-roofed hospital on the other side of the road. But when Mum found out what the flat would cost, she had to drop the idea. Luckily for me, because then Mr Fitzke would have been right next door to us. The greedy pig.

The new person’s name was Mr Westlake. That’s what it said on the sign under the doorbell. He wasn’t at home, and I was actually a little bit happy about that. It made me nervous, thinking that I’d have to say his name out loud. East and west, if you see what I mean. I always get left and right mixed up, even on the compass. When it’s a matter of left or right, the lottery balls in my head always start to jumble.

I was angry as I ran down the stairs. If Mr Fitzke hadn’t destroyed my evidence, it would have been a great day to be a detective. The pool of suspects was very small. For example, I could rule out the two fancy apartments on the fifth floor. The Runge-Blawetzkys had gone off on holiday the day before, and Mr Marrak, who lives next door to them, hadn’t been seen for two whole days. He was probably staying at his girlfriend’s, who also did his washing for him. Every few weeks Mr Marrak could be seen running around with a giant bag of washing. He ran out of the building, back into the building, back out, back in and on it went. Mrs Dahling once said that the young men of today were useless. Once upon a time they would just take a toothbrush with them when they went out, and today they took half their wardrobe. Mr Marrak wasn’t at home in any case. Yesterday’s junk mail was still sticking out of his letterbox in the hall downstairs. If you watch murder mysteries instead of smoochy films, you start noticing things like that right away.

OK, that was the fifth floor crossed off. Mr Fitzke and the new man with the compass thing in his name live on the fourth floor. On the third floor, across from Mrs Dahling, lives Mr Kiesling. There’s no point knocking on his door until the evening anyway because he’s out at work during the day. He works as a dental technician in a laboratory.

On the floor below are Mum and I, and across from us the six Kesslers, two adults and four children, but they’re on holiday too. The Kesslers own their flat and there’s a staircase connecting their second-floor flat with their other flat on the floor below. Mr and Mrs Kessler need a lot of space with all those kids.

Most of all I had been looking forward to visiting the other flat on the first floor, the one below Mum and I. That’s where Jule lives, along with Berts and Massoud. They’re students. But I couldn’t go and knock without the piece of pasta. Berts is all right. I can’t stand Massoud because Jule likes him more than me. And that’s all I’m saying on that subject for the moment. I should have started my investigation down there, or at old Mr Mommsen’s, the caretaker – he lives on the ground floor.

Ah well, never mind.

So it’s back up to the second floor and home.

As I went into the flat, Mum was standing in the hall in front of the gold mirror with the little fat cherubs on it. She had pulled up her sky-blue T-shirt and was looking at her chest in a worried way. Who knows how long she’d been standing there. I could see her thoughtful face in the mirror.

A lot of people, especially men, stare at Mum in the street. Not because she runs around with her T-shirt pulled up, but because she looks fantastic. She always wears short tight skirts and low-cut tops. High-heeled, silver or gold strappy sandals. Her blonde hair loose, long and silky, and a whole bunch of ringing, jingling bracelets, chains and earrings. I like her fingernails best of all. They’re really long. Mum glues something new onto them every week. Tiny, glittering fish or a small ladybird on each one, for example. She always says that there are plenty of men out there who are into that and that’s why she does so well at work.

»Sooner or later the girls will start to droop,« Mum said to her reflection in the mirror, and to me. »Another two or three years and gravity will have its way. Life’s all about crossing off the days.«

I didn’t know what gravity was. I would have to look it up. I always look up things I don’t know in the dictionary, so that I get cleverer. Or sometimes I ask people. Mum or Mrs Dahling or my teacher, Mr Wehmeyer. I write down what I’ve discovered. Like this:

GRAVITY: When something is heavier than something else, it pulls the other thing towards it. For example, the earth is heavier than almost everything else, that’s why nothing falls off it. A man called Isaac Newton discovered gravity. It is dangerous for breasts and apples. And possibly for other round things too.

»And then?« I said.

»Then I’ll get some new ones,« Mum said decisively. »We’re talking about my floating assets here, after all.« She sighed, pulled down her T-shirt and turned towards to me. »How was school?«

»All right.«

She knows not to say anything about my special classes, because I hate talking about them. For years Mr Wehmeyer has been trying to sort out the lottery balls in my head. I’ve thought about suggesting that he should turn off the lottery machine before he starts messing around with the balls, but I never actually have. If he doesn’t know that, that’s his bad luck.

»Why did Mr Wehmeyer ask you to go in today?« said Mum. »I thought yesterday was the last day of school?«

»It was for a holiday project. Some writing.«

»You, writing?« She wrinkled up her forehead. »What are you writing?«

»Just something about me,« I murmured. It was more complicated than that, but I didn’t want to let Mum in on it until I’d tried it out successfully.

»I see.« Her forehead smoothed out. »Have you had anything to eat?« She ran one hand through my hair, leaned over and kissed me on the forehead.

»Nah.«

»So you’re hungry?«

»Yeah.«

»OK. I’ll make us some fish fingers.« She disappeared into the kitchen. I tossed my rucksack through the open door into my bedroom, then followed her, sat at the dinner table and watched.

»I need to ask you something, Rico,« Mum said as she melted butter in the pan.

My head automatically slipped down between my shoulders. Whenever Mum asks me something and uses my name at the same time, that means she’s been thinking about things, and when she’s been thinking about things, it’s usually something serious. And by serious I mean difficult. And by difficult I mean lottery balls.

»What?« I asked cautiously.

»It’s about Mr 2000.«

I wished the fish fingers were already done. Even an idiot could tell where this conversation was going.

Mum opened the fridge, scraping and digging around in the freezer compartment with a knife to free the packet of fish fingers from its covering of blue ice. »He let another child go,« she continued. »One from Lichtenberg this time. That’s the fifth already. The one before was from –«

»Wedding, I know.«

And the three before that were from Kreuzberg, Tempelhof and Charlottenburg. Mr 2000 has been keeping everybody in Berlin on the edge of their seats for three months. On television they said he was probably the most cunning child kidnapper of all time. Some people call him the ALDI kidnapper, after the supermarket, because his ransoms are so low. He lures little boys and girls into his car and drives off with them, and afterwards he writes their parents a letter: Dear Parents, If you would like little Claudia back, it will cost you only 2000 euros. Think carefully before getting the police involved over such a ridiculously small sum, because if you do, your child will come back to you in pieces.

Up until now, none of the parents had involved the police until after they had paid up and their child popped up safe. But everybody in Berlin is waiting for the day when some little Claudia or Alexander or other doesn’t come home in one piece because their parents have messed up. Some people might be quite happy that their child had been kidnapped and wouldn’t cough up a penny. Or they might be really poor and only have fifty euros to their name. If you only gave Mr 2000 fifty euros, it’s likely that the only piece left of your child would be a hand. The interesting question was which part he would send back, the hand or the rest of the body. My bet is on the hand. It would be less noticeable. And a giant parcel for everything-minus-the-hand would cost fifty euros in postage all by itself.

If you ask me, 2000 euros is a ton of money. But in an emergency, as Berts once explained to me, anybody can get their hands on cash if they put their minds to it. Berts is studying for an Em-Bee-Ay, which has something to do with money, so he must know what he’s talking about.

»Do you have 2000 euros?« I asked Mum. You need to be prepared. In an emergency she could break into my piggy bank. You put the coins into the slit in the glass dome. I’ve had my piggy bank in the shape of the Reichstag for as long as I can remember and I’m pretty sure I must have saved enough for an arm or a leg. For twenty or thirty euros, Mum would at least have a small piece to remember me by.

»2000 euros,« she said. »Who do you think I am?«

»Would you be able to get that much money?«

»For you? Even if I had to kill for it, love.«

There was a crack and a thick piece of ice landed on the kitchen floor. Mum picked it up, made a noise like pfff or hhmmph and threw it into the sink. »This freezer really needs defrosting.«

»But I’m not as small as the other kids who were kidnapped. And I’m older.«

»Yeah, I know.« She prised the packet open. »But I should still have taken you to school every day for the last few weeks and picked you up again.«

Mum works until early in the morning. When she comes home, she brings me a fresh bread roll and gives me a kiss before I leave for school, and then she goes to bed. She usually doesn’t get up until the afternoon, long after I’m back home again. She would never manage to take me to school and pick me up again.

She held her breath for a second and scratched her nose. »Am I a bad mother, Rico?«

»Course not!«

She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment; then tipped the deep-frozen fish fingers out of the packet and into the pan. The butter was so hot that it hissed. Mum took a quick step back. »Oh God! Now I stink of the stuff!«

She would shower anyway before going to work that night. She always showers after fish fingers. It’s the most expensive perfume in the world, she once said; nothing sticks to you like the smell of fish fingers. While they were sizzling in the pan, I told her about the piece of pasta I’d found and that Mr Fitzke had destroyed it, which was why I couldn’t find out who it had belonged to.

»The old grouch,« she murmured.

Mum can’t stand Mr Fitzke. A few years ago, when we had moved into Dieffe 93, she had dragged me through the entire building so that we could introduce ourselves to the neighbours. Her hand was very sweaty, and she held me really tightly. Mum is brave, but she still has feelings. She was afraid that people wouldn’t like us when they found out she worked in a nightclub and I was a bit different. Mr Fitzke had answered her knock and stood there in his pyjamas. Unlike Mum, who kept a straight face, I grinned. That was my mistake. And then Mum said, Hello, I’ve just moved in, and this is my son Rico. He’s a bit different, but it’s not his fault. So if he ever gets up to anything …

Mr Fitzke squinted at us and pulled a face as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. Then, without saying a word, he slammed the door in our faces. Ever since then he’s called me a dimwit.

»Did he call you a dimwit?« Mum asked.

»Nah.« There was no point getting her worked up.

»The old grouch,« she said again.

She didn’t ask why I absolutely had to know who the piece of pasta belonged to. That was just another one of Rico’s ideas. She was right. There was no point asking.

I watched her as she turned the fish fingers. She hummed a song and shifted her weight from the left foot to the right and back again. While the fish fingers were frying, she set the table. The sun fell through the window and there was the tasty smell of summer and fish in the air. I felt happy. I like it when Mum cooks or does one of those other look-aftering things that mums do.

»Blood sauce?« she said, when she was finished.

»Yep.«

She put the bottle of tomato ketchup on the table and pushed my plate towards me. »So I won’t be taking you to school then?«

Contents

Cover

Andreas Steinhöfel: The Pasta Detectives

Wohin soll es gehen?

Widmung

Saturday: Pasta Surprise

Saturday again: Oskar

Sunday: The Holiday Diary

Monday: The new Neighbour

Monday again: Up on the Roof

Tuesday: Up and Down

Almost Wednesday: The Special Edition

Wednesday: Looking for Sophia

Wednesday again: Shadowier Shadows

Almost Thursday: In the Building behind ours

Almost Thursday again: The Escape

Thursday: Bright and Sunny

Andreas Steinhöfel

Peter Schössow

Impressum

Cover

Impressum

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Inhalt