The boss saw my questioning look. “Why don’t I get in the driver’s seat, and you and Gregor push? What we need…”

“No.” The driver turned around. A mature face and a low, hoarse voice. “I’ll stay here, and you do the pushing.” I heard an accent, but I couldn’t quite place it.

The boss was the younger of the two, but looking at his delicate hands and slender build, I couldn’t make rhyme or reason of the driver’s suggestion. However, the boss did not contradict him. We got out. The driver stepped on the gas and we pushed against the car, the spinning wheels whirring and flinging out snow, pine needles, leaves, and mud. We went on pushing, it went on snowing, and our hair got wet, our hands and ears numb. Brigitte and Manu came over. I had them sit on the car’s trunk, and when I got on it, too, the wheels made contact and the car lurched out of the ditch with a jolt.

“Get home safely!” I called out after them, and we headed back to our car.

“Wait a minute!” The boss came running after us. “Who should I thank for rescuing us?”

I found a card in my jacket pocket and handed it to him. “‘Gerhard Self.’”

He blew the flakes off the card and read aloud: “‘Private investigator.’ You are… You are a detective? Then I have a job for you. Can you drop by my office?” He rummaged around in his pockets for a card but didn’t find one. “My name is Welker, and it’s the bank at the Schlossplatz in Schwetzingen. Will you remember that?”

3 A job’s a job

I didn’t go to Schwetzingen the following day, nor the day after. In fact, I had no intention of going. Our encounter that stormy night on the Hirschhorner Höhe, and his invitation, reminded me of the promises one makes with holiday acquaintances. They never work out.

But a job’s a job, and a case is a case. I had spent last fall investigating the sick-leave claims of salesladies at the Tengelmann department store chain, and had managed to catch one or two who were feigning illness. That was about as rewarding as being a train conductor on the lookout for fare dodgers. In the winter no cases came my way. It’s just the way of the world: one doesn’t hire a private detective who is over seventy as a bodyguard, or send him around the world to chase down stolen jewels. Even a department store chain that wants to spy on its sales staff will be more impressed by a younger fellow with a cell phone and a BMW who’s a former cop turned private investigator than by an old guy driving an old Opel.

Not that I didn’t manage to keep myself busy all winter without cases. I cleaned my office at the Augustaanlage, waxed and polished the wooden floors, and washed the window. It is a big window; the office used to be a tobacconist’s store, and the window was for display. I cleaned my apartment, around the corner in the Richard-Wagner-Strasse, and put my cat, Turbo, who’s getting too fat, on a diet. I showed Manu The Execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico in the Kunsthalle museum, and the Suebenheim burial mounds at the Reiss Museum. In the Landesmuseum für Technik und Arbeit I showed him the electrified chairs and beds that were used in the nineteenth century in attempts to drive tapeworms out of people’s intestines. I took Manu to the Sultan Selim mosque and to the synagogue. On TV we watched Bill Clinton being sworn into office. In the Luisenpark we went to see the storks, which had not flown to Africa this winter, and walked all the way down the bank of the Rhine to the Strandbad-its closed restaurant white, unapproachable, and dignified, like an English seaside casino in winter. I tried to convince myself that I was relishing the opportunity to do everything I’d always wanted to but couldn’t find time for.

Until Brigitte asked me: “Why are you always going shopping? And why don’t you go during the day, when the stores are empty, instead of in the evening, when they’re packed? That’s the kind of thing old people do.” Her questions went on. “And is that why you eat lunch at the Nordsee and the Kaufhof? When you had time on your hands, you always used to do your own cooking.”

A few days before Christmas I couldn’t make it up the stairs to my apartment. I felt as if my chest were clamped in iron, my left arm hurt, and my head was, in a strange way, both clear and befuddled. I sat down on the first landing until Herr and Frau Weiland came and helped me up to the top floor, where our apartments are across from each other. I lay down on my bed and fell asleep, slept through the whole of the following day, the day after that, and Christmas Eve. When Brigitte came looking for me on Christmas Day, first irritated and then worried, I did get up, and had some of her roast beef along with a glass of red wine. But for weeks afterward I was tired and could not exert myself without breaking out in a sweat and getting out of breath.

“You had a heart attack, Gerhard, and not a small one at that-I’d say a medium one. You should’ve been in intensive care,” said my friend Philipp, a surgeon at the Mannheim municipal hospital, shaking his head when I told him later about it. “There’s no messing with the old ticker. If you aggravate it you’ll end up biting the dust.”

He sent me to his internist colleague, who wanted to push a tube from my groin into my heart. A tube from my groin into my heart! I told him thanks, but no thanks.

4 Silent partner

The lady I do all my banking with at the Badische Beamtenbank knew the name Welker, and the bank on the Schlossplatz in Schwetzingen. “Weller and Welker. It’s the oldest private bank in the whole Palatinate area. Back in the seventies and eighties it was struggling to survive, but it’s pulled through. I hope you aren’t thinking of leaving us.”

I called and was put through to Welker’s office. “Ah, Herr Self. I’m so glad you called. Today or tomorrow’s fine, though I’d much rather…” His words became muffled for a few seconds as he covered the mouthpiece. Then: “Could you come over today at two?”

The road was dry. The snow at the sides had turned grimy. It had dripped from the trees and dried in the furrows of the fields. Beneath a gray, low-hanging sky the traffic signs, guardrails, houses, and fences were waiting for spring, and a spring cleaning.

The bank Weller & Welker was marked only by a small tarnished brass plate. I rang the bell and a door within a large gate swung open. The entry was vaulted and paved. Three steps on the left led to another door, which opened as the first one closed. I climbed the stairs and felt as if I had stepped into another era. The bank counters were carved of dark wood and had wooden bars. The panels next to them were inlaid with blond wood: a cogwheel, two crossed hammers, a wheel with wings, a mortar and pestle, and the barrel of a cannon. The bench at the far end of the room was of the same dark wood and had dark green velvet cushions. The walls were covered in shimmering dark green fabric, and the ornate ceiling was also of dark wood.

The room was silent. There was no rustle of bills, no clinking of coins, no hushed voices. I didn’t see behind the lattice any men with mustaches, hair plastered on scalps, pencils behind ears, leather sleeve patches, or rubber-banded upper arms, which would have been appropriate here, nor did I see their modern counterparts. I stepped closer to the counter, saw the dust on the bars of the lattice, and was about to peer through when suddenly the door across from the entrance opened.

The driver was standing in the doorway. “Herr Self, I-”

He didn’t manage to finish the sentence. Welker came rushing past him toward me. “I’m so glad you were able to come. My last client’s just left. Let’s go upstairs.”

Behind the door there was a steep narrow staircase. I followed Welker up and the driver followed me. The stairs opened into a large office with partitions, desks, computers, phones, a number of young men sporting dark suits and serious faces, and an occasional young woman or two. Welker and the driver swiftly escorted me through to the executive office, which had a view of the Schlossplatz. I was ushered to a leather sofa while Welker settled into one chair and the driver the other.