by Gisa Klönne
However things had turned out, Hans Engel would not have been the head of the family, because her parents were already divorced by the time he died in Nepal. Wanting security, her mother had refused to follow her wayward husband into a Berlin commune with little Judith; like so many of his generation, Hans Engel had thought such places offered an escape from the rat race. He had wanted to improve the world, and exploring it had been a first step. Not his fault that he died in the process, thinks Judith. Not his fault. And certainly no reason to be scared of a long-haul trip, even if it is my first.
It is almost midnight. The washing machine is finished; she carries the wet clothes out onto the roof terrace and pegs them out. In the bedroom she packs her rucksack. Only five days. She goes back into the kitchen, takes a bottle of beer out of the fridge, puts it back again, goes into the living room, takes the tarot cards down from the shelf.
She came across the cards when she was investigating in an ashram in the late autumn during her last case. She had been in a bad way at the time and the leader of the ashram, a slippery fellow called Heiner von Stetten, had almost done for her with his cards. Judith shivers at the memory, in spite of the heat. Queen of Swords, von Stetten had called her. Mask Ripper. Seventy-eight cards – so many answers to a single question. Hocus-pocus, she had thought – all pure coincidence. Later that winter she had decided to prove that the cards were meaningless. But whatever probability theory might say, she had found herself picking the same symbols, over and over: Cruelty, Defeat, the Tower.
She had experimented obsessively. Hoping to disprove the mysterious laws of the cards, she had bought books, combed the internet, launched what was almost an investigation. But in the end she had been forced to accept that the tarot conveyed its own truth, its own wisdom. Not always – but too often for it to be dismissed as mere coincidence.
The cards slide back and forth with ease between Judith’s hands. Her eyes closed, she spreads them out in a fan on the parquet. The tarot doesn’t answer yes or no; open questions are the key, and the better the question, the clearer the answer. Without opening her eyes, Judith sits and waits for a question to come to her. ‘What will I find when I look for Charlotte?’ It’s a good question; she can feel that in her belly, in her chest. She breathes steadily in and out, then lets her left hand travel over the fan of cards from left to right, her eyes still closed. When you ask the cards, you have to let your feelings guide you; you have to trust your intuition. You must accept that there is something inexplicable, but nevertheless there. Judith runs her fingers along the cards, feeling the smooth surfaces, the sharp edges. They are all the same – and yet not the same. One of the cards suddenly feels warm. Judith pauses, letting her fingertips drift a little way to the left and then back again. She isn’t mistaken; the card is hot. She pulls it out, hesitates a moment, then opens her eyes and turns the card over.
A black skeleton holding a black scythe. The message is simple – almost ludicrously banal.
‘What will I find when I look for Charlotte?’
‘Death.’
Part Two
Burning
Tuesday, 26 July
Not a breath of air plays in the grass; not even a bird is chirping. High overhead an aeroplane scores a glowing orange wound in the pale, early morning sky. Barabbas won’t be allowed to roam free today. As they approach the woods where the dachshund found his last resting place, Elisabeth checks to make sure she’s clipped the lead firmly to his collar. She had planned to leave Barabbas at home, but then she didn’t have the heart to; he had looked at her so soulfully with his dark eyes and whimpered so pitifully. And perhaps it’s for the best that she isn’t alone with whatever she finds; even an old Alsatian offers a certain amount of protection to a woman who puts almost all her strength into walking upright and keeping her balance.
Elisabeth stops and leans on her wooden stick which is decorated with metal pennants and flags – memories of happier days. Heinrich had bought them and nailed them on. All those hiking holidays she spent with him in the Alps and the Black Forest – all gone now. Earlier in the morning she had walked barefoot over the dewy grass to the strawberries, and it had made her feel like a young girl. How is it possible that she can feel the grass underfoot and the scented red fruits in her fingers just like in the past, when her body has grown so old and wizened? The tragedy is that we are so powerless, she thinks – that we don’t understand creation’s plan. A few wrinkles here, the odd grey hair there – you live with that; you ignore it. And then one day you look in the mirror and see an old woman staring out at you and you’re surprised because your soul is still young; you feel out of place, unjustly trapped in this feeble, wrinkled body. But you can lament and protest all you like – there’s nothing you can do about it.
She hadn’t marked the dachshund’s grave – only smoothed the ground when she was finished – but she finds it straight away, just as she left it. She puts down the bunch of sweet-smelling, salmon-coloured roses from her garden. Rest in peace, little dog.
Was that a sound? Barabbas pricks his ears. Elisabeth peers through the light green foliage. Nothing.
‘Come on, Barabbas, lead me through the woods. Show me what there is.’
The dog looks up at her, beating his tail on the ground. Elisabeth clasps the lead tighter. Goodness, what a fool she is. What does she think she’ll find here? Last night, terrified and drenched in sweat, she had known. Now she has forgotten. Barabbas pulls her between birches, sniffs in bushes, rubs his back against a tree trunk. She lets him guide her, still wondering what on earth she is looking for.
Old car tyres, building rubble, plastic waste, a stained piece of carpet which Barabbas buries his nose in until Elisabeth pulls him away. Laboriously she gropes her way forward. Insects are buzzing now and the sun is starting to beat down through the branches. The usual din of conveyor belts can be heard from the power station. It’s no good; the sense of urgency which had gripped Elisabeth in the night and spurred her into coming back has given way to dull exhaustion. She closes her eyes for a moment. Spots of light dance in the redness; she feels dizzy and leans hard on her stick. There really is no point; she must go home.
Back in the kitchen she gives Barabbas water and eats a few strawberries, glad that her breathing is slowly steadying. Over breakfast she reads the newspaper. The political headlines are as frustrating as ever; Elisabeth turns the pages. People fight each other all the time, almost the world over, destroying themselves and the planet – it’s always been that way; she doesn’t have to read it every day all over again. She scans the local pages for news of the open-cast mine and sighs with relief when she finds none. Her favourites are the cultural pages and the miscellaneous section – just as long as there hasn’t been another disaster anywhere.
Fourteen-Year-Old Missing. The report is at the bottom of the right-hand column and almost escapes her notice. Fourteen-year-old Jonathan Röbel, known to friends and family as Jonny, has been missing since Sunday afternoon. The grammar school boy disappeared without trace from a camp on the outskirts of Cologne. He is 1.63 metres tall, has short blond hair and brown eyes. When last seen he was wearing hiking sandals, knee-length olive-green shorts, a black Puma baseball cap and a red T-shirt. He probably has his wire-haired dachshund with him. The dog answers to the name of Dr D.
Dr D. Elisabeth’s hand flies to her throat and her heart begins to race again. Suddenly she knows what she was looking for. Yesterday evening under the cherry tree, and at night when her back had kept her awake, it had suddenly seemed to her impossible that the dachshund Barabbas had savaged to death had been alone. Maybe it’s a child’s dog? she had thought. But who’s the child? The boy next door still has his little dog; she has checked. Jonathan Röbel, known to friends and family as Jonny . . . answers to the name of Dr D. If you have relevant information, please . . . She reads the report again and again.
But the dachshund in the newspaper can’t be the one from Frimmersdorf Woods, because how
could it have got here from Cologne, without its collar, without its owner, with only one ear? No, she can’t provide the police with any relevant information; she has to protect Barabbas. And anyway, who’d listen to an old, forgetful woman like her? Sentimental too – burying a strange dog in a children’s suitcase. A memory flashes into Elisabeth’s mind, teasing and tormenting her. Something in the woods, maybe something she saw or heard on Sunday morning – something palpably close. Elisabeth’s heart flutters. But in spite of her efforts, the memory continues to elude her.
*
The seating alcove in the intensive care corridor is upholstered in a coarse, grubby pink fabric that has seen better days. A Formica table is topped with a vase of artificial flowers on an off-centre place mat. Cheap art reproductions hang on the wall, one of them crooked. It was long past midnight when Manni gave up trying to persuade his mother to leave with him, and she is still here this morning. Something tells Manni she hasn’t moved all night. Her hand lies between his palms, a naked animal, rigid with fear.
‘They say I can’t be with him all the time because he needs to rest.’ Her voice is no more than a whisper.
‘I’m sure the doctors know what they’re doing, Mum. They’re not being unkind; they’re doing all they can to make Dad better.’ Dad – when was the last time he said that? Manni carefully replaces his mother’s hand on her lap and pours coffee out of a china coffee pot into two cups. He puts a sandwich from the hospital cafeteria onto a plate and holds it out to his mother. ‘Come on, Mum, breakfast. You need to keep your strength up.’
With surprising force she pushes his hand away. ‘You have something to eat, Manfred. Coffee’s enough for me.’
He devours two sandwiches and starts on a pain au chocolat. In the cafeteria he had been convinced that he wouldn’t be able to eat a thing and only bought the sandwiches because it seemed sensible. Now that he has begun to eat, he realises how hungry he is. The noises he makes as he chews sound obscene in this corridor with its dimmed lighting, muffled sounds and dimmed, muffled life, but he can’t help it, and his mother seems not to notice.
‘Your father shouldn’t have smoked,’ she whispers, stirring her coffee. ‘In such heat too. He was so red in the face, all afternoon. I warned him. “You’ve already had one stroke,” I said. “Dr Hartmann says you’re not to smoke.” But he wouldn’t listen to me; you should have spoken to him, Manfred.’
The coffee is scalding hot and bitter. Manni puts his cup down on the tray too roughly, and coffee slops over the sugar lumps. Four and a half hours of restless sleep is all he’s had, but at least he’s showered and changed his clothes. A second stroke – they’ve pumped his father full of sedatives now he’s lying in a near coma, there’s no way of knowing whether he’ll open his eyes again. I’ve got to work, Manni thinks. Got to go to headquarters, talk to Bruckner, draw up a plan for the day. Got to be in the lay-by when the dog squad arrives – and it won’t be long now.
‘Your father’s so stubborn.’
Your father, your father, Manni thinks. Why doesn’t she say ‘Günter’? Or ‘my husband’? But no, it’s always ‘your father’, as if it were Manni’s fault that there’s this man in her life – as if her son were to blame for her goddam broken marriage to this nasty broken man; as if she had nothing to do with her own husband. Why don’t you just get divorced, Mum? Manni doesn’t know how often he’s asked that, but the question has always gone unanswered. Now another round of suffering has been rung in. But this time that’s her lookout. If you think I’m going to join in this farce and play the grieving son to your grieving widow, you can think again; someone has to keep a clear head and bring in the money. Manni jumps to his feet and brushes the crumbs off his jeans, sending them flying. Some of them land on the table and some on his mother’s lap but, unusually for her, she doesn’t react.
‘I must get to work, Mum. Make sure you get some sleep. I’ll be in touch later.’
*
When the lift comes he feels like an ungrateful bastard, but he elbows the feeling aside, pushes his way in next to a tiny Asian nurse and an empty steel bed and presses ‘Ground Floor’. On the drive from Bonn to Cologne he begins to feel better. It’s early enough for him to have the left-hand lane more or less to himself – just him and a few others who seem to agree that 180 kilometres an hour is a reasonable minimum speed. At headquarters Thalbach praises Manni for the report he wrote yesterday – a good thing he managed to finish it before having to leave for the hospital. The missing persons case is gathering momentum. ‘Where’s Jonny?’ reads the front-page headline in the Cologne Express, beside a heart-rending photo of the boy and his dachshund. The other media have dutifully picked up the story too. They haven’t made such a big thing of it, but enough, with a bit of luck, to provide Investigation Team Jonny with some witness statements at last – from walkers or joggers or whoever else happened to be in Königsforst on Sunday. Somebody must have seen something.
They agree that Bruckner will do telephone duty, and before long Manni is on his way to Königsforst lay-by, a bottle of Coke on the passenger seat, techno in his ears, chuffed that he had enough foresight yesterday evening to secure himself a Vectra so that he doesn’t have to drive the usual heap of junk. It may not glide along quite as smoothly as his own GTI, but still, Manni thinks, thrusting the first Fisherman’s Friend of the day into his mouth, still . . .
The motorway lay-by looks as desolate as yesterday. Mr Snack’s van is all bolted up. But the dog squad has arrived and there’s a van from Forensics too.
‘All right, mate?’ Mike gives Manni a slap on the shoulder. ‘Looking pale. Have a bad night?’
‘Didn’t get much sleep.’
‘New bird?’
Manni forces a suggestive grin. If he ever makes it back to the beer garden, it’s a safe bet that Miss Cat’s Eyes has found some other bloke to make her happy, but his colleague needn’t know that. He looks about him. ‘OK then, what’s the plan?’
Mike scratches his dog behind the ears. ‘We’ve split up into two groups. Six of us are starting here; the others are carrying on by the hut where we left off yesterday. The idea is to meet about halfway.’
Karin from the forensics team beckons Manni over. ‘Looks as if we’ve found some DNA in the hut. Traces of saliva on the straw of an empty drink carton, and some skin particles. Want us to see if we can get a match?’
The likelihood that the DNA is Jonny’s is extremely slim. But if they could prove that the boy was in the hut – maybe even that it was his fear the dog had smelt – they’d be a step further. ‘Go ahead,’ says Manni. ‘What’s the saying? We have to clutch at every straw. Or do you have anything better on there?’
‘Got a few dog hairs that might match.’
‘Get them straight to Karl-Heinz.’
‘He’ll be delighted.’
One of the dog handlers curses loudly; presumably he’s strayed into toilet territory, that strip of land behind the bushes that is so richly manured by Cologne’s open-air freaks. Manni gives Karin a nod and trudges over to the ill-used bushes. Sometimes it’s best not to give too much thought to the ins and outs of an investigation. Who knows how much more shit they’re going to be stirring up in the hours to come.
*
Tim feels as if someone has strapped diving weights to his legs; every turn of the pedals is an effort of will. Last night he dreamt he was snorkelling in the sea but, unusually, it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. He lost his bearings; something pulled him deep down, away from the light, and he opened his mouth in a soundless scream. That’s a stupid thing to do under water, of course, but it’s what he did. Then he woke up. His mother was leaning over him and shaking him by the shoulder, because he really had been screaming. He was soaked in sweat and exhausted – and very hoarse.
The nearer he gets to school, the heavier his legs feel. Coming up to the level crossing, he glimpses a shadowy figure out of the corner of his eye. The next thing he knows, someone has kicked him so
hard in the shin that he almost loses control of his bike.
‘Morning, Rinker, farty old stinker!’ Lukas from Tim’s class cycles up alongside him with a smirk on his face. ‘Told the cops a lot of bullshit yesterday, did you?’
‘Rinker Stinker!’ Somebody laughs. It’s Viktor. Tim feels himself blush. Viktor isn’t in his class, he’s in Jonny’s, so it won’t be long now before the whole school knows his new nickname – he should have guessed that Lukas and his mates would see to it that the whoopee cushion story got around. And no Jonny to spend break with.
Whatever he does, he mustn’t cry now; he mustn’t let anyone see how he feels. Last time he cried they took photos on their phones and were still emailing the pictures to each other and sneering at them days later. Luckily Lukas and Viktor overtake him without paying him any more attention. Tim gets off his bike and bends over as if he’s checking the gears. Other schoolchildren cycle past, and Tim pretends not to notice, fumbling blindly with some wire or other. Whatever he does, he mustn’t let anyone see how he feels – how afraid he is. If he hangs back a little longer, then with any luck he’ll avoid running into those idiots again at the bike stands. Maybe Lukas is already crossing the playground to boast to the other bastards in their class that he let Tim have it just now. Cousin Ivonne will be waiting impatiently for Viktor, and he won’t take any notice of Tim once the pair of them have started snogging. Tim will take his secret path to the science block where they have double physics first thing – one of Tim’s favourite subjects. If he’s clever, he can make it into the lab without bumping into Lukas and Co. first. And this time he’ll make sure there’s nothing on his chair before he sits down.
