It is good for the victims of a burglary to seek professional help. You must have already been informed of this by the police officer who gave you this brochure… The police officers told us to go to the flea market under the Kale1F to see if we would recognize anything there. They told us, if we recognized anything, not to make a fuss, but to call the police and that they would come.
They said this sternly to my wife and me, just as they were drinking coffee. One of the inspectors was sitting on the flattened ten-year-old sponge of the low forty-year-old wooden two-seater, resting his elbows on his knees which had come parallel to his shoulders as he brought the cup of coffee to his lips. Don’t do anything by your own hand, he said.
Before this, we had gone on to answer all his questions, before the younger one, the crime scene technician with the kit, who mainly asked a few questions here and there, started walking around our little apartment. We told him how the three of us returned from lunch at my mother’s, how we found the door ajar and how I first told myself that I probably hadn’t even closed it, and only turned the key and left it like that (it would not have been the first time); how the little one (who now, while the investigation was going on, was at my mother’s again – not to upset him, he was five) came in first and froze in place; how we saw mayhem, drawers thrown all around the hallway and paper strewn around; how we shrieked, how we stepped inside in panic; how I looked right towards the kitchen window, how we realized that it was broken; the benjamin fig fallen underneath it on the floor, earth and glass everywhere; how our legs went wobbly; how our stomachs turned; how we yelled that someone had robbed us; how the little one ran left toward his toys and whimpered: “Me too? My toys too?”; how his chin and tiny body started shaking; how his mother hugged him, how our bedroom, bedsheets and clothes had been rummaged through; that it was as if someone had swept through our soul, had touched us bare… “Wait a second. Hold up. If you will, we need to make an inventory, just let my colleague get the equipment first.”
And once that crime scene investigator creaked with his kit, I stepped in front of him.
“Here, on the door handle! He came through that window, unlocked the door from the inside and left. Surely he left fingerprints behind!” I led him.
“You don’t say? Been watching CSI, huh?”
“I’ve watched it,” I admitted, my mouth slightly agape.” Spray something here; brush here; surely there are fingerprints.”
“And do you sometimes unlock the door?”
“I do… every day” and I thought to myself, it just had to be someone dumb.
“And does your wife sometimes unlock the door?”
“She does every day too” and then I knew that I could not be dealing with anyone dumber.
“And do you touch the glass every day? Or are you careful not to smear it with your fingers, so you go for the door handle, huh?”
“I go for the door handle.”
“And, what now? Will I find many fingerprints from both of you on that glass?”
“You won’t.”