The knot in the files. A sequel story of a different kind (part 2). Today in the Truth summer series: How it escalated…
The individual parts of the case are becoming increasingly complicated Photo: AP
What happened so far: Attorney Dr. Schrunz was supposed to find a knot for his only client, Röder, as quickly as possible. This time, Röder had obviously got into trouble with the Chinese triads, who were not joking when it came to knots…
There was now thunder outside the patio door of his office. Lightning flashed over his own palace gardens, which had once been financed by the lucrative dispute “Röder v. Pope Francis”. And then exactly what happened with almost every sudden change in the weather happened again: Mother appeared.
Theodora Schrunz, née Bundschuh, was floating about a meter above the terracotta tiles in a white shroud stained with arterial blood. She cast withering glances at the illuminated garden gnomes made of hard plastic, which were grouped together to recreate various motifs from Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” to Picasso’s “Guernica” to the “Miracle of Bern” (Helmut Rahn wearing a particularly cheeky pointed cap with a hip flask stuck in the brim). The flippant, ironic approach to art and culture that Schrunz’s young friend Irmina Hornbach, a junior architect at the Nauen University, had established in the Schrunz household, was not at all to her taste.
Old Schrunz howled hollowly when she saw her son through the window, who was trying in vain to hide behind his leather armchair: “What’s it like here? Do you still have that stupid little cow? And why did you kill me?”
Schrunz had trouble suppressing a yawn. It was always the same song. As soon as the old woman appeared, there was nothing but annoying accusations. No “I love you” or “Do you remember back then…?” or “Gitti from the Häberles is divorced now – you liked her so much in elementary school,” like with other mothers, but always: “Why did you kill me, blah, blah, quack, quack…” It was enough to make your hair stand on end.
“Get out of here, mother!” cried Ferdinand Schrunz, holding up the cross made of dried Maultaschen that was always ready for such cases. That actually always helped, and lo and behold: Theodora Schrunz dissolved, howling, in a column of smoke that flew away to the north. Only a faint smell of butyric acid reminded us of the brief spook.
The horror passes
Smiling at himself, the fat shyster stood up and brushed the dust off his suit. It always went by so quickly. He hardly knew what he had been so terrified of just a moment ago.
So back to work. He took the fax out of the envelope that Röder had sent it in, since Schrunz didn’t have a fax machine, and read: “Get the knot, otherwise you’ll get a smack on your paws. And then on your ass – knot here, march, march!”
He immediately noticed the mistake: Röder couldn’t write poetry, not even a simple rhyming couplet with two completely identical words at the end of each line; he had a severe dichotomy. Someone must have dictated the words to him and then forced him to send the fax, for example to a fax machine in the next room, bag the result and send it to him, Schrunz. Was Röder being blackmailed? And with what and why? Were the triads really behind it, as Brockhaus suggested?
Suddenly it came back to him: The Triads had helped him get rid of his mother. Or was it the Trichinas, the notorious underground organization from the small Pacific state of the same name that was now threatened with extinction because the German Transport Minister had ignored a time limit? No, it was the Triads. All three brothers: Heinz Müller, Heinz Meier and Heinz Schulze.
Until now, the corpulent lawyer with the prominent stomach ulcer would have had no idea that he and his client Röder were in the same boat, for better or for worse, with water seeping into it in countless places. But that was the case, because the criminal brothers now wanted to be paid, and with a knot made of pure… yes, what exactly…? Yes, exactly, oh my God!
Schrunz held his breath for minutes. He hardly dared to finish the horrible thought…
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