by Gisa Klönne
He starts when his mother touches his shoulder.
‘I’m just popping down to the cafeteria. You have a nice chat, the two of you,’ she whispers.
‘Yes, off you go.’ Manni forces a smile. His mother had sounded breathless with delight when she’d called this afternoon in the middle of his meeting and begged him to come straight to the hospital. His father had woken up, she said – it was a miracle. ‘I’ll come as soon as I can,’ Manni had replied. But that is just what he didn’t do, and now it’s evening – already nine o’clock – and the old resignation has crept back into his mother’s voice.
‘Evvywhere,’ the man in bed repeats with a wet mouth.
‘Yes, Dad, I know, you got around.’
‘Fer you!’
The air in the darkened room seems to have grown even heavier. Manni clenches his teeth. This isn’t the time or place to contradict his father. It never is.
‘I know, Dad, you wanted the best for us. You built the house for Mum and me.’
And when you felt like it, you beat us.
He needs a piss, for Christ’s sake. He needs to go home and shower and eat and sleep, if he’s to get anywhere tomorrow. The sick man dribbles more white bubbles; it looks almost as if he were trying to spit.
‘But yer didn’ care, lad. Threw yer life ’way.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘A cop. My own son . . . a cop. Bloody hell.’
‘Ruining your health on the road and letting yourself be messed about by haulage companies for a starvation wage isn’t much better.’
‘A cop.’ Yet more dribble. Icy contempt – Manni has always felt it; now at last it’s coming out. Manni leaps to his feet.
‘Still better than being a lorry driver. Look at you – look where it’s left you. A man in a wheelchair who tyrannises his family and hates the world!’
‘Manni!’ Oh fuck, not her too. His mother’s voice is hysterical, imploring, shrill. Her hand claws his arm. ‘Please, Manni!’
‘A cop!’ His father spits again.
‘And what are you? A bloody pleb! You think your lorry cab is the centre of the fucking world, don’t you? Well, sorry, it doesn’t work like that. I already earn more than you! I have responsibility for human lives, for Christ’s sake, so you can bloody well stop insulting me!’
Whitish saliva. Wheezy breath. The beep of the monitors. Manni frees himself from his mother’s vice-like grip and she begins to sob softly. He desperately needs air; he must find a loo; he must get out of here. Behind him the door clicks shut. He begins to run.
*
She opens her eyes and takes David’s face in her hands. He’s dressed and smells as if he’s had a shower. Behind the white canvas blinds, the sun has moved a few centimetres.
‘I’ll be back at lunchtime tomorrow. Please stay,’ he says softly.
‘I—’
‘Or come again. There’s coffee and toast in the next room. The key’s on the table. If you can’t be here tomorrow, leave it under the doormat.’
‘Where are you flying to?’
‘Algonquin Park.’
‘Are there loons there?’
‘Loons? Of course.’
Judith sits up. ‘I must show you a photo. A school friend . . .’
He moves away from her. ‘I’m sorry, I really do have to go.’
A moment later, the front door clicks shut.
Judith gets up and goes into the bathroom. Three hours have passed since she entered this blue house – three hours that she has not used to look for Charlotte. It’s not a long time, but it feels like an eternity. Suddenly Judith is thirsty and ravenously hungry. She gets dressed, drinks several glasses of water and eats David’s toast with cheese and tomatoes. Food hasn’t tasted so intense for ages. She pours herself a mug of coffee and takes it out onto the wooden veranda. At her feet lies the dock of Cozy Harbour in the glaring afternoon light. Nothing has changed; only the water plane has gone.
Judith tries Atkinson’s mobile number again, but again she only gets through to his voicemail. The feeling of danger returns. Is Atkinson with Charlotte at this very moment – is that why his wife was so hostile towards a visitor from Germany? Judith rolls herself a cigarette. So far, all she knows is that Charlotte was in Toronto and visited Atkinson at the university there. That is clearly too little.
She tries to imagine how Charlotte spent her time in Toronto. A woman with no ties, who had given up her career not once, but twice – first because of sick parents, and then because of a wild bird that had strayed onto a German lake and died there thanks to careless humans. A socially inept woman – thirty-nine when she finally left home after her father’s death with nothing to her name but a house full of relics. At the very latest when she got to Toronto, she must have found out that the man who had sent her the encouraging postcard was married. What did she do? Put up a fight? Try to seduce him? Resign herself?
‘Thank you, Charlotte,’ Judith and the other schoolgirls had said when Charlotte had passed round handwritten invitations to her fifteenth birthday party. They were gobsmacked that she was inviting them all again when she’d been teased for weeks after her last birthday because of the lack of Coca-Cola. On the day of the party they had met up at Newmarket to buy a present and go on to Charlotte’s house. Or at least, that’s what Judith had expected. But instead they had said, ‘Fuck silly Charlotte and her boring middle-class house,’ and wandered off into town, where they helped themselves to perfume and cream samples in the department stores, tried on clothes and ate fries in Burger King.
Judith had joined in. Guiltily, it is true, but at the same time glad to be allowed to tag along, even if she found all the fuss about boys and make-up boring. In the evening she had rung Charlotte and wished her a happy birthday, mumbling something about a cold. It was decidedly feeble, and the flimsiest of excuses, but Charlotte seemed to take it as proof of her friendship. In those days she had followed Judith about like a loyal dog. And Judith had let her, always hoping the others wouldn’t notice. Neither she nor Charlotte nor any of the other girls in the class had ever mentioned Charlotte’s birthday again.
What a coward I was, Judith thinks. It’s true that I was young and scared of being ostracised. It’s one of the oldest laws in life that outcasts don’t form alliances with one another, because they adopt the norms of the stronger members of the community and believe themselves that they are abhorrent – and that joining forces with other outcasts would only make matters worse. All the same, Judith thinks, I could have resisted that law.
Again Judith steers the hire car along the gravel track and turns into the drive of Old Martha’s Cottage. This time, Atkinson’s wife is on the beach playing with two children. An attractive dark-haired man in Bermuda shorts is sitting on a rock with a bottle of beer in his hand, watching them. Judith stops in front of the cottage and gets out of the car. The professor’s wife makes a cross, waving gesture, as if to shoo away an insect. Judith ignores her and approaches the man on the rock.
‘Professor Atkinson, I’m looking for Charlotte Simonis, a German friend of mine.’
He plants the beer bottle in the sand and gets up. ‘I can’t help you,’ he says in German, almost without an accent. But his eyes express something else. Concern? Judith wonders. Alarm? Or fear, even?
‘I urgently need to talk to you,’ she insists. ‘Why didn’t you respond to my calls?’
‘Calls?’
‘I rang your mobile. I thought you were in Montreal.’
He looks at her in confusion.
‘Your wife said you were in Montreal.’
‘I didn’t want her to bother you on holiday, dear,’ Atkinson’s wife puts in. She must have worked out what Judith was talking about. Or can she speak German too?
‘I was out in the canoe.’ The professor gestures vaguely towards the bay. ‘I know nothing about any calls; I never use my mobile on holiday.’
‘Is there somewhere we can talk undisturbed?’ Judith has
had enough of playing hide-and-seek. In the absence of a warrant card, she decides to go on the charm offensive, and gives the professor a smile.
‘I’m terribly worried about my friend. You couldn’t give me five minutes of your time, could you?’
‘If it matters that much to you.’ Atkinson ignores his wife’s poisonous looks. ‘Let’s go to my study.’
The study is a tiny, wood-panelled room on the first floor of the whitewashed cottage.
‘You must excuse my wife. She sometimes worries that I’m overworked,’ Atkinson explains. ‘A little overprotective, you know?’
Jealous, you mean, Judith thinks. Still smiling, she puts Charlotte’s photo and the loon postcard on the table in front of Atkinson.
‘My friend visited you in Toronto a few weeks ago.’
Atkinson nods tentatively.
‘Had you invited her?’
‘No, her arrival was a complete surprise.’
Judith indicates the postcard. ‘You wrote: “One day we’ll make it come true”. She was once very taken with you. What exactly was to come true?’
‘That’s a long time ago.’
‘“One day we’ll make it come true”,’ Judith repeats.
Atkinson sighs. ‘Loons – common loons. I was often a guest at her father’s house when I was in Cologne, and Charlotte was always fascinated when I talked about Canadian fauna. That must have been what I meant – that I’d show her our loons if she ever came to Canada.’
‘But you didn’t think she’d actually come.’ Judith is no longer so friendly. Atkinson says nothing.
‘And then Charlotte did turn up after all. What did you do? Did you keep your promise?’
Atkinson darts a nervous glance at the door. Judith smiles at him again.
He sighs. ‘She wanted to watch loons – a long-term project for her Ph.D. thesis. I gave her a list of the addresses of our national parks.’
‘A list of addresses.’
‘I couldn’t – it was the middle of the semester. I have a family.’ Again Atkinson’s eyes wander to the door. ‘Charlotte understood.’
‘Are you in a relationship with her?’
‘No!’
For the first time, Judith has the feeling he’s telling the truth. Perhaps Charlotte wasn’t interested in Atkinson at all. Perhaps it really was the loons she was interested in, and she only wanted Atkinson to help her launch her new career as an ornithologist.
‘A list of addresses,’ she repeats. ‘Isn’t that rather little in the way of help, considering she’s the daughter of your old mentor?’
‘I’m a geneticist.’
‘Like Charlotte’s father.’ Suddenly Judith feels choked. Pull yourself together, she tells herself silently – it’s not your fault that Charlotte was let down by her father and this arrogant Canadian professor and God knows who else besides.
‘Did Charlotte ever come to Cozy Harbour?’
Again the darting glance at the study door. ‘No.’
She doesn’t believe him, but even with more smiles, a bit of flattery and another round of the old question-and-answer game she fails to crack Atkinson. And perhaps there isn’t anything to crack; perhaps it really was only the loons Charlotte was interested in; perhaps they’re the key. Was that what the loon in Judith’s dream was trying to tell her? No. That fixed red gaze was a warning – and maybe a call for help.
‘Where’s Charlotte now?’ she asks Atkinson.
The professor shakes his head, clearly relieved that the conversation is coming to an end. ‘I don’t know. I really have no idea.’ He gets up. ‘I must get back to my family. Let me see you to your car.’
*
Ten thirty p.m. Martina Stadler is exhausted, and yet wide awake. She pushes the duvet aside and reaches for Jonny’s torch on her bedside table. The spare room is even stuffier than the bedroom. She closes the door behind her softly and listens out. All is quiet in the next room; Frank is asleep. A week ago she would have sworn that her husband was incapable of committing a crime. Now she is no longer so sure. Another day has gone by – as unbearable as every day has been since Jonny has been missing. Again the blond inspector wanted to know where Frank was on Saturday afternoon. Again Frank remained doggedly silent. She had felt like shaking him and yelling at him, but she hadn’t had the strength.
She puts Jonny’s precious torch down on the desk and turns on the lamp with the bottle-green glass shade, an heirloom from Frank’s grandfather. Hesitantly she pulls open the drawers and pushes them shut again. Nothing but stationery – hers and Frank’s. It’s the first time she’s had cause to wonder where Frank might keep anything he wanted to hide from her. She opens the fitted cupboard where his boxes of model-making equipment are stacked and neatly labelled. Before Jonny moved in with them, Frank had pursued his hobby in the basement, and the attic up here had been Martina’s sanctuary. Then they had let Jonny choose his room, and when he decided on the basement, they’d had the cupboard put in for Frank, moved Martina’s grandmother’s bureau into their bedroom and carried Frank’s enormous desk up to the attic. Had everything started then? Did that act of surrender spark a bitterness that smouldered below the surface until it erupted into hatred, unbeknownst to her?
She opens and closes boxes. What does she think she’s looking for? A blood-stained knife? Ridiculous. A diary documenting what the blond inspector thinks he knows – that Frank hated Dr D. and maybe wanted rid of Jonny too? But Frank has never been a man of words. Money, she thinks. That would be my advice to a woman who has sudden doubts about her husband’s trustworthiness – check his phone, check his emails and, most important, check his bank statements. She switches on the computer, which springs to life with a loud beep. Did Frank hear that? She creeps to the door and strains her ears. Silence.
Frank and she share an email account, which he hardly uses because he has another, work address. Their joint current account holds no secrets either; as usual, they are only just in the black. That leaves the credit card account and the instant access savings account. After ten minutes of frantic searching, Martina remembers where Frank keeps his PINs and passwords. Laboriously she types interminably long strings of numbers into various online forms. At last the login is accepted. She clicks on ‘Account overview’, her heart beginning to race. The instant access account is an emergency pot of hard-saved money put aside for broken washing machines and other such eventualities; they had been planning to make an unscheduled mortgage payment from it at the end of the year. Now it’s empty. The day before Jonny went missing, Frank withdrew twenty thousand euros.
As if on autopilot, Martina clicks on ‘Print statement’; as if on autopilot, she folds the print-out and turns off the computer. She is shaking so hard that every move takes her for ever. She had gone poking around behind her husband’s back because, despite her great fear, she was convinced it was a way of reassuring herself – convinced she’d find only evidence of his innocence. Now she knows she was wrong, and this has thrown her completely. Jonny, she thinks. Please come back, Jonny. Her cold, trembling fingers fold the bank statement smaller and smaller, and still her heart is hammering away in her chest, as fast as a baby’s, although she has just lost an innocence she will never recover.
She switches off the desk lamp, the statement a small, stiff square in her cold hand. She pushes it into the pocket of her cardigan and gets up, clutching Jonny’s torch, but she is shaking so hard that her knees give way beneath her. She staggers to the sofa and sits staring into the darkness. They haven’t found Jonny yet; there’s still hope – isn’t there? She caresses the torch before switching it on. No light, not even a glimmer. Her heart bursts; fear rips at it – fear and the intuition that her fears are justified.
Then she feels nothing – only unfathomable darkness.
Somebody rattles the door handle – knocks – calls her name.
‘Martina, what’s going on? Why are you crying, Martina? Open the door!’
She totters through the blackness
and grips the door handle. She turns the key in the lock and makes a dismissive gesture that freezes Frank’s blood.
‘The torch,’ she whispers. ‘Jonny’s dead.’
*
Superintendent Margery Cunningham looks like a cherub – small and round, with blond curls. But her handshake is firm, her eyes are steady, and her voice has the timbre of a nightclub crooner. She listens attentively to what Judith has to tell her about Charlotte Simonis – and that, Judith says to herself, really is a miracle, when you think that I’ve turned up at this police station in the middle of nowhere completely out of the blue. Either a miracle, or else an example of the Canadian friendliness mentioned in every travel guide, which I had so far taken for a myth. Or perhaps it’s simply the tedium of the silly season in a provincial police station which is to blame.
‘I’ll see what I can do for you,’ says the cherubic detective, whose eyes, surprisingly, are not cerulean blue, but dark brown. ‘We should know more by tomorrow.’
‘Today would be better,’ says Judith in English, surprised at how easily it comes back to her.
Margery Cunningham raises her eyebrows.
‘I think Atkinson’s lying. I’m pretty sure that Charlotte Simonis came to see him in Cozy Harbour. I’m going to drive there now and show her photo around. But maybe there’s no point; maybe something’s happened to her. Maybe,’ – Judith gestures towards the detective’s computer – ‘she’s already been registered as an unidentified dead body.’
‘You think there was a crime?’
‘All I know is that Charlotte may be somewhere in this area, and that Terence Atkinson isn’t telling me everything he knows.’
‘He’s a respected member of the community.’
‘You know him?’
‘I live in Cozy Harbour.’ The Canadian woman studies Judith with her head on one side, and then seems to come to a decision.
‘All right, then. My great-grandfather was German, and it isn’t every day I have a German colleague here asking me for help. Are you staying in Cozy Harbour?’
