The Child by Sebastian Fitzek

under his thumbnail.
    ‘
Interrogate
is definitely the wrong word to use in this context.’ The policeman sitting opposite him cleared his throat. ‘We merely want to ask him a few questions.’
    Pull the other one
, thought Müller, eyeing the man who had introduced himself as Inspector Brandmann. What he was proposing would hardly be a normal question and answer session.
    ‘I really don’t know if I can sanction such a procedure. Is it legally permissible?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    Really?
Müller could hardly believe it didn’t require special authorization by the chief of police or, at the very least, a public prosecutor.
    ‘Where’s your colleague got to?’ Müller consulted the desk diary in front of him. ‘My secretary told me to expect a Herr Dengler.’
    ‘Engler,’ Brandmann amended. ‘My colleague sends his apologies. He’s detained at another crime scene – one that appears to be directly connected to the present case.’
    ‘I see.’ The corners of the medical director’s mouth turned down as they always did when he was examining someone. For a brief moment the overweight man in the visitor’s chair in front of his desk had ceased to be a policeman and become a patient. One whom he would seriously advise to diet and undergo a thyroid examination, to judge by the way his Adam’s apple protruded from his throat.
    Müller shook his head and replaced the paperknife on his prescription pad.
    ‘No. My answer is no. I don’t want to subject the patient to unnecessary stress. I presume you’re familiar with his diagnosis?’ Müller folded his slender hands. ‘Simon Sachs is suffering from an S-PNET, a supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumour of the cerebrum. This is gradually spreading from the right-hand to the left-hand hemisphere of the brain. In other words, it has already crossed the corpus callosum. Having carried out the biopsy myself after opening the skull, I found the tumour to be inoperable.’
    The medical director did his best to smile amiably.
    ‘Or let me put it in language more intelligible to a layman like yourself: Simon is gravely ill.’
    ‘Quite,’ said Brandmann. ‘That’s why we want to carry out this test as soon as possible. It will spare him a lot of onerous questioning and us a great deal of time. I was told the boy almost died of pneumonia. Is that correct?’
    Aha, so that’s the way the wind blows
.
    The boy was their most important witness. They were anxious to question him while they still could. After chemo and radiotherapy had exposed Simon to a potentially fatal bout of pneumonia, Müller had gone against his colleagues’ advice and decided to discontinue aggressive treatment – a measure that, although it might not have prolonged his life, had certainly mitigated his suffering.
    ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘At present Simon is only taking cortisone for swelling of the brain and carbamazepine as an anticonvulsant. I’ve booked him for a further examination that will help me to decide whether we should recommence radiotherapy after all. However, I fear his prospects are extremely poor.’
    The neurologist got up from his desk and went over to a massive lectern near the window.
    ‘How far have you got with your inquiries? Do you know the identity of the murdered man you found with Simon’s assistance?’
    ‘Let me put it this way …’ Brandmann twisted his neck like a tortoise as he turned his head in the professor’s direction. ‘If Simon Sachs really has been reincarnated, he did us a great favour in his former life.’
    ‘The dead man was a criminal, you mean?’
    ‘Yes, a regular villain named Harald Zucker. He disappeared without trace fifteen years ago. Interpol long suspected him of involvement in some barbaric crimes in South America, but it seems he didn’t skip the country after all.’
    ‘Zucker, eh?’ Müller leafed absently through some handwritten lecture notes on his reading stand.
    There was a knock and the door