Self's punishment Read Online Free PDF

them of this via radio and loudspeaker vans. I was surprised before how quickly we cleared the streets.’
    ‘Are you considering evacuation?’
    ‘If the chlorine gas concentration doesn’t decrease by half in the next twelve hours we’ll have to clear east of Leuschnerstrasse and maybe also Neckarstadt and Jungbusch as well. But the meteorologists are giving us grounds for hope. Where should I let you off?’
    ‘If the carbon monoxide concentration in the air permits it, I’d be delighted if you’d drive me to Richard-Wagner-Strasse and let me off at my front door.’
    ‘The carbon monoxide concentration alone wouldn’t have been enough for us to set off any smog alarm. It’s the chlorine that’s bad. With that I prefer to know people are safely at home or in their office, not, at any rate, out on the street.’
    He drew up in front of my building. ‘Herr Self,’ he added, ‘aren’t you a private detective? I think my predecessor had something to do with you – do you remember the case with the senior civil servant and the sailboat?’
    ‘I hope we’re not sharing a case again now,’ I said. ‘Do you know anything yet about the origins of the explosion?’
    ‘Do you have a suspicion, Herr Self? You certainly didn’t just happen to be at the site of the occurrence. Had attacks been anticipated on the RCW?’
    ‘I don’t know anything about it. My job is innocuous by comparison and takes a quite different direction.’
    ‘We’ll see. I might have to call you down to headquarters to ask you a few more questions.’ He looked skywards. ‘And now pray for a gusty wind, Herr Self.’
    I walked up the four flights of stairs to my apartment. My arm had started to bleed again. But something else was worrying me. Was my job really going in a quite different direction? Was it coincidence that Schneider hadn’t come to work today? Had I cast off the idea of blackmail too quickly? Had Firner not told me everything after all?

8
    Yes, well then
    I washed down the chlorine taste with a glass of milk and tried to change the bandage. The telephone interrupted me.
    ‘Herr Self, was that you leaving the RCW with Herzog? Have the Works called you in for the investigation?’
    Tietzke, one of the last honest journalists. When the
Heidelberger Tageblatt
folded, he’d got a job with the
Rhine
Neckar Chronicle
by the skin of his teeth, but his status there was tricky.
    ‘What investigation? Don’t get any wrong ideas, Tietzke. I had other business at the RCW and I’d be grateful for you not to have seen me there.’
    ‘You’ve got to tell me a little bit more if I’m not supposed simply to write what I saw.’
    ‘With the best will in the world I can’t talk about the job. But I can try to get you an exclusive interview with Firner. I’ll be calling him this afternoon.’
    It took half the afternoon before I caught Firner between two conferences. He could neither confirm sabotage nor rule it out. Schneider, according to his wife, was in bed with an ear infection. So Firner, too, had been interested in why Schneider hadn’t come to work. He reluctantly agreed to receive Tietzke the next morning. Frau Buchendorff would get in touch with him.
    Afterwards I tried calling Schneider. No one picked up, which could mean anything or nothing. I lay down on my bed. In spite of the pain in my arm I managed to fall asleep and woke up again in time for the news. It was reported that the chlorine gas cloud was rising in an easterly direction and that any danger, which had never really existed anyway, would be over in the course of the evening. The curfew, which had never really existed either, would be lifted at ten o’clock that night. I found a piece of gorgonzola in the fridge and used it to make a sauce for the tagliatelle I’d brought back from Rome two years ago. It was fun. It took a curfew to make me cook again.
    I didn’t need a watch to know when ten o’clock came around. Out on the streets a din broke out as