Your Perfect Year(12)
After settling down once again in his armchair, he picked up the Filofax. Instead of losing himself in the quality of the handwriting and the various entries, this time Jonathan concentrated on searching for information that would give him a clue to the identity of the diary’s owner.
It was in vain, apart from the note of the birthday on March 16. There was an occasional specific reference, such as the one on January 2 (7 p.m., Dorotheenstrasse 20, second bell from the bottom) but nothing that he could really use. Unless, of course, he was prepared to lurk around Dorotheenstrasse at seven the following evening in the hope of seeing someone wandering around asking all and sundry about a Filofax. Why on earth hadn’t they put a name, instead of “second bell from the bottom”? That couldn’t be Googled! Why so mysterious? It was all very strange—and not at all designed to make Jonathan’s research any easier. He briefly considered setting off there and then and going to the address, but he soon dismissed the idea. It wasn’t right to turn up unannounced on someone’s doorstep on a holiday.
Then Jonathan had the idea of looking at the back, where most appointment diaries have an address book. Maybe he’d find a few names and phone numbers with which to try his luck the following day. He might get hold of someone who at least knew the diary’s owner and had heard it had gone missing. Or something like that.
Once again, negative. Beyond the page for December 31 there was merely a “Notes” section containing rather a lot of empty pages, followed by the leather cover. Jonathan noticed a slight rustle. At the back of the diary was a pocket with the corner of a white piece of paper peeping out. Jonathan pulled on it and a second later was holding an envelope marked Save for later! The plot thickened.
He opened the envelope—it wasn’t sealed, he reassured his conscience—and breathed in sharply. It was a good thing he hadn’t left the bag lying on the bench! He quickly counted: five hundred euros, in fifties, twenties, and tens, had been tucked into the envelope.
Jonathan mentally summarized his findings. There was this diary, in which someone had made entries from the first to the last day of the year, which had then been lost near the Alster, then thrown away or deliberately left on the handlebar of Jonathan’s bike. Then there was this envelope containing five hundred euros. Nothing else. No phone number or address, no clues whatsoever about the identity of the owner.
So what should he, Jonathan N. Grief, do about it? Obviously, he couldn’t simply keep the diary; someone must be searching desperately for it.
A lost-and-found office. He’d take the bag and the Filofax to the local police station’s lost-and-found desk—that was the easiest solution! Wasn’t it what those places were for? Someone lost something, someone else found it and handed it in, then the owner went to collect it. Simple!
He was on the verge of returning to his laptop to look for the address and hours of the nearest police station with a lost-and-found facility, when he paused.
Was it really such a good idea? After all, the diary seemed to have great personal value. And then there was all that money! Five hundred euros was a tidy sum. How trustworthy were the officers who manned lost-and-found desks? Would they really catalogue the Filofax in the proper way and keep it safe until its rightful owner contacted them?
Or would they more likely take the money and then lose the diary on some shelf, where it would gather dust along with myriad other items until it faded into obscurity? How much did the people in lost-and-found offices earn? Not a fortune, certainly, so an unexpected financial bonus would be an irresistible temptation.
No, the lost-and-found wasn’t such a good idea after all. The bag had been hung on his handlebars, so he was effectively responsible for making sure the diary found its way back into the hands of the person to whom it belonged.
Jonathan had a brilliant idea. He sat down at his keyboard.
Editor, Hamburg News
By email
I’m writing to you this time with a personal request. While out on my daily run by the Alster this morning, I found a bag containing an appointment diary near the fitness station at H?he Schwanenwik. I’m reluctant to say any more about it, to reduce the risk of attracting the attention of possible opportunists.
If the rightful owner gets in touch with you and gives you a more detailed description of the diary and bag, please forward it to me. If it matches, I’ll gladly return the diary to them through your editorial office.
Yours sincerely,
Jonathan N. Grief
P.S. Once again, I wish you a happy New Year!
6
Hannah
Two months before:
Sunday, October 29, 1:24 p.m.
Simon wasn’t dead, but he didn’t look too lively either. Hannah was by his bed a few moments after arriving. He lay buried beneath several blankets, only his pale, snuffling face visible, surrounded by an unappealing heap of used tissues, the bedside table laden with a collection of pills, cough medicine, throat lozenges, and a thermometer.
“Simon! What’s the matter?” Hannah asked.
Her boyfriend blinked in astonishment. “Hannah?” he said weakly as if an image of the Holy Virgin had appeared before him. Wheezing laboriously, he sat up and supported himself with his elbows on the pillow. “What brings you here?”
Until that moment, Hannah had been shocked by Simon’s condition, but her concern turned to annoyance. Simultaneously relieved and angry that Simon clearly had not departed this life, she snatched the covers from him. The suffering patient was lying there in a sweatshirt and long johns.