Jürgen Alberts

I had triple-locked my office, enough of the guns of Navarone, enough of blackmailers of nakedness, enough of the desperate dead. The book that Theo had entrusted to me, perhaps not completely voluntarily, arrested me from its first page.

I got my Hungarian hookah out of the bottom left drawer, Giant High brand, crumbled some top-class Afghan onto the perforated foil and took a few drags, no campaigners for public decency were going to ban this drag performance. Ah, that was good. And follow that up with the mother of all drag queens, tutti-frutti hat and all. My lungs relax, my toes, my stomach tingles and sways gently under my diaphragm, my head goes into an orbit whose laws are unknown to Kepler.

The speed of the cerebral cortex, racing with a flood of thoughts.

The book was called The Big Sleep. I found it suspect from the start.

No sooner is there a poison gas attack in the Japanese underground than some well-read and easily offended people pull a scruffy, redheaded Scottish author into the media spotlight and claim that the man did it, because in this book or that he described it exactly as it happened. As if the Scots had nothing better to do. Or Berlin’s cops are accused of being illiterate, just because they don’t know the Jerry Cotton novel in which the bank robbers escape through a tunnel. And now the author is under suspicion of not having committed the coup. Where are we living? The world an archbishop was talking about when he said that it was out of joint, gone awry, off on the road to hell’s kitchen? There’s just one book that steers the course of world events: the great bank book, in which everything is added up that goes beyond the fact that two plus two doesn’t after all make four. Pretty suspect, huh?

At first I was sure that Theo had written the sleep book himself. In the time he was either absent or pretending to be. An assistant like that has more free time than oranges for breakfast. I had to keep Zenker on a tight leash.

Things had to change.

First he doesn’t turn up, then he starts writing.

On the cover the author was given as Chandler. Not a particularly good disguise. Most German writers who want to get on the weekly lists of bestselling lies give themselves an anglonym like that. Theo could also have called himself Zinker, Zonker or Zanker, I’d still have picked up his scent. You can’t fool a St. Bernard that easily. The book put me in a foul mood. Angry, beside myself, in a rage, although my doc always says that I suppress my aggression and that’s why I don’t need a toupee. I would have grabbed the phone at once, but I was burning up and didn’t want to set fire to it.

How was this clown of a hack basing his novel on my current case? A dirty trick. Shouldn’t he have asked me, at least? Or paid royalties? Or whatever the hell else. I had to get a copyright hit man to load up with lead. Maybe someone from the Brecht estate, they gave everyone hell. He oughta be ashamed of himself. Grifters every which way you looked. I got my Hungarian working again and hashly took two more drags.

Ah, that was better.

In Chandler, old Lüders is called Sternwood, not bad, I wouldn’t have thought of that, got to admit it. Sibylle is called Carmen and Bettina is Mrs Regan, misspelt at that, okay, that works. I liked the descriptions of the two women, particularly of one. I wouldn’t have minded getting to know her. After midnight. The Yanks are supposed to have a way with hot women. None of us from Bremen stand a chance in comparison, even if we go to the gym and dye our hair. General Sternwood sits in his greenhouse, ill, feeble, barely able to enjoy any of life’s pleasures. Was life any better for Lüders? How did Chandler know?

So, a man – two men? – has two daughters – or one? – and they get up to so much mischief that in his hour of need he employs the wrong methods. But, he hires this Marlowe guy, that’s genius. He has no fear of any terrifying frogs. Theo could learn a lesson or two from him. A possible title: How I became a real detective. Or at least half of one.

At that point a problem occurred to me. I’d been ignoring it too long. Why were Lüders’ fingernails so spick-and-span clean? Were they going to appear in a finger show? In the famous clean hands’ circus? As flying fingertips on the trapeze?