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to think that one day one starts aging, and that a few years later one’s done and is old. But it’s nothing like that. Aging’s an ongoing process; you’re never done.”
    “I’m looking forward to my pension. I don’t like teaching anymore. The kids do their thing. They plod through school, and then through job training, and don’t let anything get to them: no book, no idea, no feelings of love. I no longer like them.”
    “What about your own kids?”
    “Them I love. You can’t believe how pleased I was when Röschen finally let her hair grow out and stopped coloring it green. You know she finished high school with honors and got a grant from the German National Academic Foundation? And after only two semesters of business administration she spent a year at the London School of Economics. Even as a student she’s already earning more than I am as a veteran teacher.”
    I shook my head in disbelief.
    “She’s set up a small and successful fund-raising firm. She’s built up and is expanding a mammoth database with the help of some students whom she pays minimum wage, because in fund-raising everything depends on whose birthday falls on what day, when a company is celebrating its anniversary, the personal interests of possible donors, and what kinds of lives their ancestors lived. The other day she said to me, ‘Mom, do you think it’s a good idea for me to rope in some Eastern European students who’re studying German? I could cut my labor costs in half.‘”
    “So what did you tell her?”
    “‘Good idea,‘ I said, and told her she might want to set up those students with computers instead of paying them wages, and let them pay off the computers with their work for her. Needless to say, old computers that are being phased out here—over in Eastern Europe they’ve no need for modern computers.”
    “So?”
    “She thought my suggestion was great. But come to think of it, why don’t you send my eldest to Strasbourg? It’s not really a detective job—it’s more like historical research—and now that he’s spent three semesters in Dijon, his French is better than mine. He passed his exams but has time on his hands, as he’s not starting his job at the industrial tribunal till May.”
    “Does he still live in Jungbusch?”
    “Yes. Give him a call.”
     
     
     

— 10 —
     
So funny you could
split your sides
     
     
    T he following day I didn’t even try to get in touch with Welker. Instead I turned my attention to the police investigation into his wife’s murder.
    “Of course we have a file on him. The Swiss sent us their final report, not to mention that we did our own bit of investigating. Just a minute.” Chief Inspector Nägelsbach would usually have hesitated a little longer before letting me peek into a file. “By the way, have you noticed any changes here?” he asked after he returned with the file.
    I looked at him and then glanced around the room. There was a pile of sealed boxes beneath the window. “Are you moving?”
    “I’m heading home. I’m gathering everything that belongs to me that I’ll be taking along. I’m retiring.”
    I shook my head in disbelief.
    He laughed. “I am. I’ll be sixty-two this April. When the government came up with the pension-at-sixty-two plan my wife made me promise I’d stop working then. Starting next week I’ll be taking all the vacation days I have coming. There you go.” He pushed the folder across the desk toward me.
    I began to read. Bertram and Stephanie Welker were seen together for the last time the morning they climbed up to the hut above the Roseg Glacier. On the afternoon of the following day Welker turned up alone at the Coaz chalet below the glacier. That morning he had found a note from his wife saying she was out hiking on the glacier and would meet up with him at eleven o’clock, halfway up the path he intended to take around the glacier. He had set out right away, at first waited for her at the halfway mark, and