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you have anything to do with forensics?”
    Frau Nägelsbach brought us two glasses of apricot punch.
    The doorbell kept ringing, and guests kept arriving. The hall door stood open and I heard a voice I recognized. “No, I’m not a guest. I’m with Herr Self and need to speak to him.” It was Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, wearing a beige anorak over a white nylon shirt and a flowery tie. He came straight over to me, took me by the arm, and steered me through the hall into the empty kitchen.
    “It’s the Russians,” he whispered, as if they were standing right next to him and might overhear.
    “Who?”
    “The men in the bank and the blue Mercedes. Russians, or Chechens, or Georgians, or Azerbaijanis.” He looked at me meaningfully and expectantly.
    “And?”
    “You really don’t know?” he asked, shaking his head. “They’re not to be trifled with. The Russian Mafia’s nothing like what you’ve got here in the West—nothing like the Italians or Turks. The Russians are brutal.”
    “You’re saying this as if you were proud.”
    “You must take precautions. When they want something, they get it. Whatever’s in that attaché case, it’s not worth crossing them.”
    Was he puffing himself up? Or was he one of them, whoever
they
might be? Were they the rough guys, while he was sent to soften me up, all in an attempt to get back the attaché case?
    “What’s in the attaché case?” I asked him.
    He stared at me despondently. “How are we to work together if you don’t trust me? Not to mention, how do you expect to get through this if we don’t work together?”
    Brigitte came into the kitchen. “His boss has arrived, and Frau Nägelsbach …”
    But it was already too late. We heard Nägelsbach greeting his boss with exaggerated civility. Would he like a glass of punch? Or perhaps two or three? Some situations are bearable only with alcohol. Some people, too.
    Brigitte and I went into the living room, though Ulbrich still kept after me. As a good-bye present Nägelsbach’s boss had brought him a photograph of the Heidelberg police head quarters, as if it were the Grand Hotel, and he was doing his best to be pleasant, unaware of the emotions he was triggering. I started chatting with him about the police in different parts of the country and the secret services, and judging by the things he said, he knew a thing or two. I asked him about the Russian Mafia but he shrugged his shoulders. “Do you know what someone from RTL Television said to me the other day? All the private stations are scouring material for T V, but one thing you can’t offer the public is the Russian Mafia. Not because it doesn’t exist. The thing is, it has no class, no style, no tradition, no religion—none of the things one likes about the Italians. All the Russian Mafia has is brutality.” He shook his head in disappointment. “In this case, too, Communism has steamrolled over culture.”
    By the time Brigitte and I headed back home, Ulbrich had disappeared. I hoped it was the headlights of his Fiesta that I saw in my rearview mirror. If not, they now knew about Brigitte.
     
     
     

— 17 —
     
The black attaché case
     
     
    I lay awake that night. Should I give Samarin the black attaché case? Or should I give it to the police, making certain that the men in the blue Mercedes followed me to the station and saw what I did? Or should I put it by the lamppost outside my office while they were parked a few cars away and wait for them to get out, pick it up, and drive off—out of my life?
    When I called Nägelsbach in the morning, he was hungover. It wasn’t easy to explain to him what I intended to do. When he finally understood, he was appalled. “You want to do that at the Heidelberg police headquarters? Where all my life I—” He hung up. Half an hour later he called back. “Okay, we can do that at the headquarters in Mannheim. They know me, and there’ll be no problem with me parking there for a while. Did you say at