“I’d be happy if I didn’t have to go back in there,” he said, nodding toward Nägelsbach’s room. “Did you get the forensics report?” “The forensics report?” Then he remembered what I wanted and that the report was lying on his desk. “Come with me.” Both chairs in front of his desk were heaped high with files and mail, so I sat down on his examination table, as if he were going to come over and tap my knee with a little hammer to check my reflexes. He leafed through the report. “Schuler: chest and stomach crushed, vital organs damaged, neck broken. It was a bad accident.” “I was with him just minutes before it happened. Something was wrong with him. It was as if someone had frightened the living daylights out of him.” “Perhaps he was sick. Perhaps he’d taken too many sleeping pills. Perhaps his medications interacted. Perhaps he had an adverse reaction to a new sedative or blood-pressure medication. By God, Gerhard, there are a thousand and one reasons why someone might be in a bad state and have an accident.”
