Guilt Read Free

fingerprints, then left the apartment. But they were too slow. The neighbor, an elderly woman with strong glasses, saw them in the arcade.
    They took the suburban train back to the station. Later they went to a snack bar.
    “It was terrible,” said Nina.
    “The idiot,” said Thomas.
    “I love you,” she said.
    “Yes.”
    “What is it? Do you love me too?”
    “Was he the only one doing something?” asked Thomas, looking straight at her.
    “Yes. What are you thinking?” Suddenly she was afraid.
    “Did you do something too?”
    “No, I screamed. The old swine,” she said.
    “Absolutely nothing?”
    “No, absolutely nothing.”
    “Things are going to get tough,” he said after a pause.
    A week later they saw the poster on a pillar in the station. The man was dead. A policeman knew them from the squad room in the station. He thought the neighbor’s description might fit them, and they were taken in for questioning. The old lady wasn’t sure. Adhesive tests were done on their clothing and compared to fibers from the dead man’s apartment. The results were inconclusive. The man was recognized as a john; he had two previous convictions for sexual assault and intercourse with minors. They were released. The case remained unsolved.

    They had done everything right. For nineteen years they had done everything right. Using the dead man’s money they had rented an apartment; later they moved into a row house. They had stopped drinking. Nina was a salesgirl in a supermarket; Thomas worked as the stores supervisor at a wholesaler. They had gotten married. Within the year she’d given birth to a boy, and then twelve months later a girl. They made their way; things went well. Once he got into a fistfight at the company. He didn’t defend himself; she understood.
    When her mother died, she relapsed. She started smoking marijuana again. Thomas found her at the station, inher old spot. They sat on a bench in the Tiergarten for a couple of hours, then drove home. She laid her head in his lap. She didn’t need it any more. They had friends and were close to his aunt in Hannover. The children were doing well in school.

    When the science had advanced sufficiently, the cigarettes in the dead man’s ashtray underwent molecular genetic analysis. All those who had been under suspicion back then were summoned for a mass screening. The document looked threatening: a shield, the inscription “President of Police of Berlin,” thin paper in a green envelope. It lay on the kitchen table for two days before they could bring themselves to talk about it. There was no avoiding it; they went, nothing more than a cotton swab in the mouth, it didn’t hurt.
    A week later they were arrested. The chief commissioner said, “It’s better for you.” He was only doing his job. They admitted everything, they didn’t think it mattered any more. Thomas called me too late. The court could not have ruled out an accident if they had kept quiet.

    Six weeks later they were released from custody. The examining magistrate said the case was utterly unusual, the accused had integrated themselves fully into society in the meantime. They were under the gravest suspicion and a conviction was certain, but they were not a flight risk.

    No one ever found out where the gun came from. He shot her in the heart and himself in the temple. Both of them died immediately. A dog discovered them the next day. They were lying on the shore of the Wannsee, side by side, sheltered in a sand pit. They hadn’t wanted to do it in the apartment; they’d painted the walls only two months before.

The Illuminati
    The Order of the Illuminati was founded on May 1, 1776, by Adam Weishaupt, an instructor in canon law at the University of Ingolstadt. Only the students of the Jesuits had access to the libraries, and Weishaupt wanted to change this. The professor had no organizational talent; perhaps at the age of twenty-eight he was simply too young. Adolph von Knigge, a