Crime by Ferdinand von Schirach Page A

school for fun to sail through his school-graduation certificate and attended lectures in mathematics twice a week at the Technical University. He had a small but significant fortune, he paid his taxes, and he had a nice girlfriend, who was studying comparative literature and knew nothing about Neukölln.
    Karim had read the charges against Walid. Everyone in the family had seen them, but he was the only one who understood their significance. Walid had raided a pawnbroker, robbed him of 14,490 euros, and raced home to establish an alibi. The victim had called the police and given them an exact description of the perpetrator; it was immediately clear to the two investigators that it had to be one of the Abu Fataris family. The brothers looked almost unbelievably alike, a circumstance that had already saved them more than once. No eyewitness could tell them apart at a lineup, and even tapes from security cameras didn’t pick up much difference.
    This time, the policemen moved fast. Walid had hidden the loot on his way back and thrown his weapon into the River Spree. When the police stormed the apartment, he was sitting on the sofa, drinking tea. He was wearing an apple green T-shirt with the luminous yellow slogan FORCED TO WORK on it in English. He didn’t know what it meant, but he liked it. The police arrested him. On the grounds of “imminent danger,” they made a mess of a house search, slicing open the sofas, emptying drawers onto the floor, overturning cupboards, and even ripping the baseboards off the walls on the suspicion that these might conceal hiding places. They found nothing.
    But Walid remained under arrest—the pawnbroker had described his T-shirt exactly. The two policemen were pleased to finally have picked up an Abu Fataris who could be put away for at least five years.
    Karim sat on the witness chair and looked up at the judges’ bench. He knew that nobody in the courtroom would believe a word he said if he merely gave Walid an alibi; when it came down to it, he was an Abu Fataris, one of the family pursued by the district attorney’s office as major repeat criminals. Everyone here expected him to lie. That wouldn’t work. Walid would be swallowed up in the prison system for years.
    Karim recited to himself the saying of Archilochus, the slave’s son, which was his guiding motto: “The fox knows many things, the hedgehog only one thing.” The judges and the prosecutors might be foxes, but he was the hedgehog and he’d learned his skills.
    “Your Honor …” he said with a catch in his voice. He knew this wouldn’t move anyone, but it would raise the general level of attention a little. He was making an enormous effort to sound stupid but sincere. “Your Honor, Walid was at home all evening.” He let the pause linger as he saw out of the corner of his eye that the prosecutor was writing a provision that would be the basis of a legal proceeding against him for perjury.
    “So, indeed, at home all evening …” said the presiding judge, and leaned forward. “But the victim identified Walid unequivocally.”
    The prosecutor shook his head, and the defense attorney buried himself in his papers.
    Karim knew the photos of the scene of the arrest from the files. Four policemen who looked exactly like policemen: little blond mustaches, pouches, fanny packs, sneakers. And then there was Walid: a head taller and twice as broad in the shoulders, dark-skinned, green T-shirt with yellow writing. A ninety-year-old half-blind lady, who hadn’t been there, could have “identified him unequivocally.”
    Karim’s voice caught again, and he wiped his sleeve across his nose. It came away with little things stuck to it. He looked at it and said, “No, Your Honor, it wasn’t Walid. Please believe me.”
    “I remind you once again that when you testify here, you are under an oath to tell the truth.”
    “But I am.”
    “You are risking severe punishment. You could go to jail,” said the judge, wanting