Free The Last Weynfeldt by Martin Suter Page A

blatantly clear as the other signet ring men’s suits. Weynfeldt wore it with the ease of someone who had never worn anything else. Lorena decided that he was not a typical signet ring specimen.
    â€œAsk me,” she said.
    â€œWhat do you want me to ask?”
    â€œWhy I did it?”
    â€œThat’s none of my business.”
    â€œIt is now. Now it’s cost you a load of money.”
    â€œYou haven’t asked me why I did it.”
    â€œWhy did you do it?”
    â€œBecause you asked me to.”
    â€œDo you do everything people ask you?”
    â€œIf it’s in my power.”
    Definitely not a typical signet ring man.
    They walked through a small park. A few people had stopped and were pointing excitedly at something beneath a beech tree. Not an abandoned, ticking suitcase; not a cobra escaped from the zoo; simply a few cheeky crocuses and hellebores sticking their noses out of the humus.
    â€œHow have you been since that day?”
    â€œSince I was at your place?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œUp and down. And you?”
    Adrian Weynfeldt seemed to be thinking. He really needed to think how he had been since then. It took quite awhile till he came up with an answer. It went, “I never get really down, I guess.” And a few seconds later he added, “I never feel really upbeat either.”
    The path led out of the park and onto a narrow sidewalk on the left hand side of a street. Weynfeldt shifted the shopping bags from his left to his right hand and placed himself on Lorena’s right.
    â€œWhy do you keep switching sides?” she wanted to know.
    â€œNormally I walk on the left of a lady. But on narrower sidewalks I walk on the side next to the traffic. It was instilled in me from birth. It throws me off if I walk on the wrong side.
    Lorena laughed. “You protect women from the traffic with your body?”
    â€œStrange, isn’t it?”
    â€œKind of cute too.” She linked arms with him. A cement mixer came toward them. Lorena drew Adrian away from the curb. “Come here, you can’t take that on.”
    They walked through the blazing sunshine. The top button of Adrian’s two-button jacket had been done up the entire time. Now he undid it. She noticed there was a monogram on his shirt. A. S. W., like on his pajamas.
    What does the S stand for?” she asked.
    â€œSebastian. It was my father’s name.”
    â€œLike the servant in Heidi .”
    Weynfeldt laughed. “True. That hadn’t occurred to me till now.”
    They walked on in silence. After a while he said, “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
    â€œWhatever you want.”
    â€œWhy was it me you called?”
    Lorena reflected for a long time. Then she replied, “Because now, ever since that Sunday, you are responsible for my life.”

10
    S PERLING S TRASSE 42 TURNED OUT TO BE THE PINK HALF of a small semidetached house, its other half painted saffron yellow. The neighbors had clearly been unable to agree on a single color.
    Even as he rang the bell Weynfeldt knew he wouldn’t like the woman who lived there. It was her fault he had been forced to leave Lorena at twenty to three, put her in a taxi, with a voucher to cover the fare, wave goodbye and hope she would turn up as promised the next evening at Châteaubriand, the tiny, overpriced gourmet restaurant where he was very safe from his younger friends, and pretty safe from the older ones.
    A dog with cracked vocal chords started barking. He heard a woman trying to silence it, without success.
    The door opened a chink. A small dog’s head poked through, teeth bared. “Just a minute, till I’ve locked Susi up,” the woman’s voice said. The door was closed again. Weynfeldt waited.
    The tiny front garden smelled of spring. Snowdrops, crocuses and pink cyclamen were flowering in the bed in front of the house. A rusty, collapsing garden table stood under a birch tree,