by Gisa Klönne
*
He had prepared everything carefully, hiding a cup of hot water in his bedroom and holding his hands and face under the scalding jet of water in the bathroom until they were red and swollen. Tears of pain had gushed out of his eyes, but he didn’t mind because he knew it meant temporary salvation. His mother came in to wake him for school. He moaned and groaned a bit and she felt his hot forehead and fetched the thermometer. He asked her for a glass of juice, and, while she was getting it, he dipped the tip of the thermometer in the cup of water. Not for long, but enough to fake a temperature of 38.6. Now he’s allowed to stay in bed, and his mother isn’t so cross with him for coming home from school so late yesterday, mumbling some excuse about a bellyache.
Tim closes his eyes. He had asked his mother to leave the curtains drawn because the sun was too bright, but the truth is, he doesn’t want to see the sun; even the coral reef fish are no comfort today. One thing’s clear – he isn’t ever going to school again. But equally clear is that he can’t tell anyone the reason.
At night he had dreamt again that he was diving in the ocean and again he lost his bearings and began to scream. He sensed that he wasn’t alone – that there were other divers or predatory fish around – some invisible lurking danger, waiting to force him even further from the safety of the surface. He felt as if he was going to suffocate. Once his refuge, his ally, the sea has become his enemy. Even that they have taken from him.
Tim reaches out for the picture book on his bedside table. Listlessly he leafs through the underwater photos which he usually can’t get enough of. Only one picture holds his interest a little: a sandy seabed from which, if you look for long enough, you can see two dark eyes peeping out. ‘The plate fish can change its colour to match its surroundings,’ the caption reads. The plate fish starts off life as a perfectly normal fish, but because it always swims sideways, it gradually changes shape over time: its body becomes flat, and its left eye moves over its head next to its right eye. Like that, the plate fish can look out for overhead predators with both eyes as it glides along the bottom of the sea. And if it wants to make itself invisible, it can bury its sand-coloured body in the sea bed. Only its eyes stick out of the sand, like periscopes on a submarine.
The thought of periscopes makes Tim think of the binoculars – of Jonny, and of his, Tim’s, bitter failure as a scout. Tears shoot into his eyes as he remembers his humiliation yesterday. He pushes the book away in disgust. He isn’t a deep-sea fish; he isn’t a scout, and he’s lost his only friend.
He’s a loser. He doesn’t want to live.
*
It’s only a matter of time before the police come round with news of Jonny’s death. Martina knows that; she knows Jonny died in the night, even if Frank claims that a flat torch battery doesn’t mean a thing – Martina should calm down, stop being so hysterical, pull herself together. She hasn’t yet confronted him about the twenty thousand euros. She hasn’t been able to face it. She’s put the tell-tale bank statement in her wardrobe, in the box where she keeps her tampons and panty liners. It’s safe in there.
She kisses Marlene and Leander, helps Frank to manoeuvre the pair of them into their car seats and waves goodbye to the Passat as it takes away what remains of her family for another morning. How do you measure guilt? Whatever Frank may be guilty of, she knows that she, too, let Jonny down. She had been in such a rush to get to her theatre workshop. After all those years at home with the children, she had been desperate to recover something of her old dream. If she hadn’t – if she’d been there for Jonny, insisted that he tell her what was troubling him, helped him to pack, reminded him to take his torch, maybe even gone in the car with him and Frank to the Red Indian camp – then, she thinks, he’d still be alive.
She makes a pot of peppermint tea. Tea and biscuits is all her body can cope with. The doorbell rings, making her jump and then tremble. She knew they were going to come, but she hadn’t realised they’d be as fast as that. Suddenly Martina finds herself clinging to the uncertainty that has seemed so unbearable to her these last few days.
Korzilius, the blond inspector, has shadows under his eyes. What’s happened to Jonny? Where is he? she wants to ask, but can’t. Instead, she pours the inspector a cup of tea and cowers on the corner bench, silently fighting for every last second of ignorance. Korzilius sits down opposite her like yesterday and the day before. How quickly habits develop out of a chance encounter; how quickly relations are formed, even if it’s only out of necessity and obligation. The inspector opens his mouth to speak, but the jingle of his phone beats him to it. He studies the display crossly before taking the call.
‘Karl-Heinz. Hello.’ He taps his pad with his biro. ‘There’s no doubt, then. Thanks.’
He snaps his phone shut again and turns to Martina.
‘Frau Stadler, we found your dachshund this morning.’
Not Jonny. Dr D.
‘As well as the tattoo in its ear it had a microchip implant, so there’s no doubt that it was your dog. I’m afraid it’s dead.’
‘Jonny . . .’ She doesn’t manage to say more. Is it possible she’s made a mistake? That there’s still hope? No.
‘We only found the dog.’
Again the inspector’s phone rings; again he looks at the display. But this time he doesn’t take the call. Instead he talks about a village she’s never heard of called Frimmersdorf – about a church and a suitcase. The suitcase in particular seems to be important. He puts a Polaroid photo of it on the kitchen table in front of Martina.
‘Could this have been Jonny’s? Have you ever seen this suitcase?’
Martina shakes her head.
‘Does your family – does Jonny have any connection to Frimmersdorf?’
‘I don’t even know where it is.’
‘About forty kilometres north-west of here, on the edge of the open-cast mining area of Garzweiler.’
Garzweiler. She’s heard that name. Frank’s mentioned it. Does he know someone who lives there? She can’t remember.
‘Your dachshund was – well, “laid out” might be the best way of putting it –lovingly laid out in this suitcase. That would seem to indicate that whoever did it was fond of the dog. Do you think it might have been Jonny?’
‘Do I think Jonny killed Dr D. and then laid him out? Is that what you’re asking?’ Martina sounds hard-headed and aloof. This blond inspector doesn’t understand a thing. He isn’t going to find her son. He can’t help her any more than Frank can. The realisation comes almost as a relief. Martina feels as if something inside her has cooled down, leaving her free to act at last.
‘Maybe Jonny wanted his dead dog to rest in peace,’ the inspector says.
‘You’re wasting your time suspecting my son,’ says Martina with her new icy calm. ‘Jonny is dead.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I’m his mother. I can sense it.’
The inspector gets up. He hasn’t touched his tea.
‘I must talk to your husband again, Frau Stadler.’
‘He’s taking the kids to his parents.’
The inspector’s phone starts to ring again. Once more he frowns at the display before taking the call.
‘I’ll be right with you,’ he says brusquely.
‘How did Dr D. die?’ Martina asks.
‘We don’t know yet. Tell your husband to get in touch with me. I’ll see myself out.’
*
A little before five Judith wakes up, muzzy from a dream she can’t remember, muzzy from another short night. She rolls onto her back and pushes back the pillow that she had drawn into her arms in the night like a lover. Is Margery Cunningham right? Is David Becker a Casanova who specialises in tourists? Judith feels a twinge in her belly. Her body is a traitor. It longs to be touched; it lusts for closeness with the intransigence of a frustrated ex-inmate. But that isn’t what she’s here for; she mustn’t let herself get carried away. The important thing now is that David Becker is the key to Charlotte’s
whereabouts.
Judith gets up and pulls a cotton shirt over her head. She fills a glass with tap water, takes her packet of tobacco and steps out onto David’s veranda. The air is cool. A delicate pink veil hangs over Georgian Bay. Two herons or cranes are moving across the sky, their wings beating majestically. A yacht glides out of the harbour without a sound although neither sail is set. Is this what Charlotte Simonis was looking for? This abundance of space and openness, light and air, so different from her previous life dominated by sick parents and dead dolls’ eyes – so different from Cologne, a city with no sweeping horizons and hardly any wildlife. Only, if you’re lucky, a few seagulls that stray into town to join the pigeons and magpies and blackbirds – and a handful of swifts in the summer. Even the sparrows are dying out.
Judith rolls herself a cigarette. ‘Don’t do anything on your own,’ Margery Cunningham had said, when the fire had burnt down and the wine bottle was empty. ‘Talk to me first.’ I should have told her about David and me, thinks Judith. It would only have been fair. She helped me, after all; she found out an astonishing amount about Charlotte in an extraordinarily short space of time, although I couldn’t even show her my warrant card. She trusted me. But Judith had only said that she wanted to talk to David today, and Margery hadn’t objected. Maybe I underestimate her, Judith thinks. Maybe she’d let me act even if I’d been honest. If anyone knows about emotional risk, it’s her.
She stubs out her cigarette and goes back inside. Who is David Becker? She could open drawers, search through cupboards, boot up his laptop and rummage through files, but that would be betraying his hospitality – and something else she would prefer not to think about too closely right now. She switches on the coffee machine. She is tempted to ring Manni to make sure all’s well at headquarters at least, but she resists. No grace period, Millstätt had said. She hopes Manni has found his missing boy safe and sound by the time she starts back on Monday. But even if he hasn’t, there’s nothing she can do about it. She rings Berthold Pretorius.
‘I don’t think Charlotte was thinking of doing a Ph.D. in Canada,’ he says, when Judith comes to the end of her account. ‘I’m sure she’d have told me.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘We always talked about work-related things.’
‘But you didn’t talk about Charlotte getting chucked out of Cologne University when she refused to dissect the loon.’
‘Well, no – not really. But still . . .’
‘You mean Charlotte must have had some very personal reason for coming to Canada, or else she’d have told you about it?’
‘Yes.’
What does that say about a years-long relationship that Berthold himself describes as friendship?
‘Charlotte never mentioned Atkinson and the loons, did she?’
Berthold Pretorius says nothing.
‘How good is your friendship, Berthold?’
‘Well, as I said, we’ve been friends since school, and we’ve always talked about—’
‘Work-related things, yes, I got that.’
‘You have to find her,’ Berthold says, yet again.
‘I’m doing my best.’
They say goodbye after a bit of small talk about the weather in Cologne – still humid and no prospect of cooler temperatures. The record-breaking summer, Berthold says, is wearing people out. Judith suddenly feels worn-out too. The feeling of intense solitude conveyed in Berthold’s words depresses her – or perhaps less the solitude itself than the meek acceptance of it. For a moment she sees Berthold as he used to be, a plump schoolboy with inky fingers and chewed nails. She remembers him laughing when he was bullied, remembers him grotesquely exaggerating his clumsiness to make the bullies laugh too – but his eyes hadn’t laughed; his eyes were blank, expressionless mirrors. Had something similar happened to Charlotte? Had she hidden her feelings and desires until they were out of reach, frozen – as if under ice?
An hour later, Judith parks the hire car outside the Moonshine Inn. The almost childlike night porter at reception nods vigorously when she shows him Charlotte’s photo.
‘I know you’ve already spoken to the police – that’s why I’m here. I’m a friend of Charlotte Simonis. I’ve come here from Germany because I’m worried about her.’
‘A friend.’ That seems to draw him out, even if he doesn’t have much to tell her. Charlotte, he says, got up early every morning and came back late at night. Judging by her clothes, she was a nature lover, like so many German tourists. He had hardly spoken to her.
‘How did she seem to you?’ Judith asks.
The porter looks at her uncomprehendingly. Maybe he’s never given much thought to the emotional well-being of women he regards as elderly.
Judith tries anyway. ‘Did she seem happy? Troubled? Nervous?’
He shrugs. ‘She didn’t say a lot. But I’d say she was normal – happy rather than unhappy.’
‘And was she always alone?’
‘Yes, or rather, almost always. Once someone met her in the car park. A man.’
‘Would you recognise him?’
‘Maybe.’
Judith shows him the photo of Atkinson that she pilfered from Cologne University and the Trips to the Wilderness brochure with David Becker’s portrait. ‘Was it either of these men?’
The porter studies the pictures intently, then taps the brochure. ‘She booked a trip with this man here. But it was the other one who came to fetch her in his car.’
Atkinson. Judith feels the familiar tingle.
‘Sure?’
‘I think so.’
Slowly but surely, everyone is going crazy. His mother rings every quarter of an hour and refuses to accept that he doesn’t want to talk to her. The last time she called, he yelled at her, but that won’t necessarily have put her off. Martina Stadler is an even tougher nut to crack. First she cried and puked when he questioned her, and now she’s suddenly gone frosty and keeps saying Jonny’s dead. It’s blatantly obvious that she’s hiding something – probably trying to protect her husband. Manni tries to concentrate on Thalbach’s blather. He had insisted they all come straight to headquarters, but now that they’re gathered here, pawing at the ground in this stuffy conference room, he can only go on and on about the disastrous message they are giving out as long as the child is missing, about public concern, malevolent journalists and, of course, more than anything, about the upcoming press conference where, once again, he has no success to report. Blah, blah, blah.
Jonny is dead. I’m his mother. I can sense it. Martina Stadler’s words go round and round in Manni’s head like a public announcement. Most missing persons cases are cleared up in two or, at most, three days, when the missing person turns up again. This boy, Jonny Röbel, has been gone for five days and they have nothing to go on except a baseball cap, a few drops of blood, the elusive smell of fear, detected only by sniffer dogs, a dachshund’s ear – and now a dead dachshund to go with it.
Is Martina Stadler right? Is her boy dead? She had said it without discernible emotion, almost matter-of-factly, as if she had already resigned herself to it. Maybe that’s what gets under his skin. I can sense it. Manni has heard similar statements from desperate relatives in the past. When he didn’t ring, I knew something had happened. Or: I woke up in the night and had this feeling she wasn’t alive. But that had been in murder investigations, after the victims had been discovered, and he had never taken such claims of a sixth sense particularly seriously.
Thalbach’s secretary marches into the conference room and hands him a packet of photos. Thalbach glances at them and passes them round. There are only two types: one shows the red-and-green checked children’s suitcase; the other the same suitcase at the foot of the wooden crucifix. A melancholy son of God gazes over the roofs up to Heaven – which in Frimmersdorf, Manni thinks to himself, is filled with clouds of steam from the cooling towers.
‘Why Frimmersdorf?’ Thalbach heaves himself up from his chair and folds his arms behi
nd his back.
‘The perpetrator must have had some connection to Frimmersdorf.’ Petra Bruckner speaks slowly, as if she’s just woken up.
‘What connection?’
‘Lives there, or used to live there. Works there, has friends or relations there, knows the village . . .’
‘Check that against everyone on your list.’
Manni sits up straighter. ‘The perpetrator wanted us to find the dachshund. Putting it there at the bottom of the crucifix – it’s like a message.’
Thalbach looks at Manni – intently, inscrutably, like yesterday in the lobby when Manni had unintentionally interrupted his conversation with Millstätt.
‘What kind of message?’
‘Remorse? A plea for forgiveness?’ Spoken out loud, that sounds a bit nuts, and Manni feels himself growing hotter. Why can’t he keep his mouth shut? What did Thalbach and Millstätt decide about him yesterday? He doesn’t know and it probably makes no difference what he does or says now; if the missing persons case turns into a fatal incident inquiry, then he’s out and Krieger’s in – a put-up job. He might as well pursue his train of thought. He takes a deep breath and looks at Thalbach. ‘Or else the dachshund’s just a symbol. Jonny’s stepmother has certainly been convinced since this morning that Jonny is dead.’
Thalbach puts his head on one side. ‘Understandably, the Stadlers’ nerves are somewhat on edge. Let’s stick to the facts for the moment.’
‘There might be something in Manni’s interpretation,’ Bruckner puts in. ‘Maybe the perpetrator regretted killing the dachshund and wanted it buried – with the church’s blessing – so he left it outside the church.’
‘A madman, then,’ says Manni.
‘Or an animal lover,’ Bruckner suggests.
‘An animal lover who cuts off a dog’s ear? Speaking of which – the ear was in Königsforst; the dog itself was in Frimmersdorf, forty kilometres away. Why?’
‘The ear was tattooed. Maybe the perpetrator didn’t know about the microchip, so he cut off the ear to prevent the dachshund from being identified.’
