Free Self's Murder by Bernhard Schlink

five?”
    “Yes, and could you please thank your wife for me?”
    He laughed. “She put in a good word for you.”
    I packed only a few things. It all had to fit in the black attaché case. I didn’t need a lot; it wouldn’t take more than a couple of days.
    Turbo sensed that I was going away. The neighbors would look after him, but he pouted and disappeared, as children do when they realize that Mom and Dad are about to go on a trip.
    I took my things and dropped in at Brigitte’s massage practice at the Collini-Center. I had to wait, so I read an article in an old magazine about a movie set in East Germany before reunification: a young couple set out on heists in Bonnie-and-Clyde fashion, robbing the old-style, vulnerable banks of the new currency that had just been introduced. Until they got too wild and began robbing banks in Berlin and got shot.
    Brigitte saw her patient off and sat down next to me. “I’m expecting the next client any minute, and thank God for that, because the health-care reform has cost me a third of my old patients, and finding new ones who’ll come in even though their insurance won’t reimburse them isn’t easy.”
    I nodded.
    “What’s going on?”
    “I’ll be away for a few days. My case has ground to a halt. I might be able to get it going again someplace else. Not to mention that I feel a bit spooky around here. If anyone asks for me, you can tell them that.”
    She got up with a hurt look. “I know the script well enough: ‘
What’s going on?‘ she asks him. ‘Nothing,’ he replies, looking out the window into the twilight with a stony glare. Then he turns and looks deep into her eyes. ‘It’s better this way, honey. The less you know, the better. I don’t want the guys to get on your case, too
.‘”
    “Come on, Brigitte. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. Believe me, I don’t want to hide anything from you. But right now it’s better if you don’t know what’s going on. Believe me.”
    “‘
Trust me, my darling,‘ he tells her, looking at her intently. ‘I’ve got to think for the two of us right now
.’” The bell rang and Brigitte got up to open the door. “Well, take care of yourself!”
    I found a place to park on the Augustaanlage, not far from my office. When I got out of the car I didn’t see the blue Mercedes anywhere. Back at my office, I took out the black attaché case and emptied the bills into a trash bag. There was a large plant pot under my desk and a bag of soil that I had bought quite a while ago to replant my potted palm. I put the trash bag inside the new pot beneath the palm tree; the plant didn’t get quite as much soil under its roots as I’d initially planned, but if it didn’t like it, it could go to hell. I never liked that plant.
    I put my overnight bag into the attaché case. When I left my office with it, the blue Mercedes was waiting on the other side of the street. The man beside the driver opened the door, got out, and came running toward me. By the time he made it across the street through the evening traffic I was already in my Opel, driving off. He waved to the Mercedes, which honked its horn and cut into traffic and made a U-turn to my side of the street at Werderstrasse, despite a red light. There it picked up the other man and tailed me through the Schwetzingerstadt district.
    Mollstrasse, Seckenheimer Strasse, Heinrich-Lanz-Strasse—the streets were filled with cars and bicycles, the stores were open, the sidewalks were bustling, and children were playing in front of the Heilig-Geist Church. This was my safe everyday world. What could happen to me here? Yet the Mercedes was tailing me so closely that I couldn’t see its grille in my rearview mirror but could clearly make out the humorless, set faces of the driver and the man beside him. In the Heinrich-Lanz Strasse he tapped me—a gentle meeting of his bumper with mine—and fear crept up my spine. When the light turned red at the