by Gisa Klönne
‘You’re saying a large dog bit the dachshund in the throat when it was already dead?’
‘Am I talking Chinese?’ Karl-Heinz polishes his boules devotedly before laying them back in the wooden case. ‘L’amour, l’amour,’ croons the French singer on the portable radio.
‘What did Jonny’s dachshund die of, Karl-Heinz?’ asks Manni. ‘Have you any idea?’
‘Don’t quote me, but since our furry friend was here, I did have a little look at him, out of professional interest. There are signs of acute blood congestion of the internal organs and pulmonary oedema.’ As if prompted by the word ‘pulmonary’, Karl-Heinz lights up another Davidoff. ‘Water in the lungs,’ he explains. ‘Although you’d have to ask a vet to tell you the normal fluid content in a dachshund’s lungs.’
‘Can you be a bit more precise?’
‘Might be a sign of circulatory collapse. Unusual in a relatively young dog like that.’
‘Unusual or impossible?’
‘It was hot. Plenty is possible.’
‘Something horrendous happened to Jonny in that shelter. Something that is probably directly linked to his disappearance and the mistreatment of his beloved dog.’
‘Maybe the dog died in the shelter.’
‘There’s no evidence of it.’
‘Maybe the boy crawled into the shelter after his dog died a sudden death.’
Maybe, perhaps, possibly. Manni’s headache is back with a vengeance; he is plagued by guilt over his parents and he feels drained – like a beginner who’s been desperately trying to score in a karate competition only to discover that his opponent is a black belt. Manni runs his hand through his hair which is sticking to his neck. He’s got nowhere again today. Asking around in Frimmersdorf was fruitless; no one had seen anything. At school, everyone continues to swear that Jonny had no problems; Big Chief Petermann is slippery as an eel and denies any connection to Frimmersdorf; Jonny’s stepfather hasn’t got back to him, and Jonny’s friend Tim has been laid low by the flu. Jonny’s dead. I can sense it. Is that what the perpetrator is trying to tell them with the laid-out dachshund corpse? Is the dead dog a message?
‘The boy was panic-stricken,’ Manni says slowly. ‘And his dog suffered circulatory collapse. Maybe the cause is one and the same.’
‘You mean the dachshund was scared?’ Karl-Heinz looks sceptical.
‘Well, humans can have heart attacks as a result of stress, can’t they?’
‘Heart failure can have several causes. Possible causes in humans are too much stress, great excitement or extreme fear. Let’s wait for the results from toxicology. I found the remains of some medication in the dachshund’s stomach. Maybe a vitamin preparation; maybe our solution. We’ll know more tomorrow.’
‘I need someone who knows about dogs.’
Karl-Heinz clamps the boule case under his arm and at last silences the French singer with a well-aimed tap.
‘Scared,’ he says sceptically. ‘What on earth could frighten a fourteen-year-old boy and a dachshund to the same degree?’
*
It is getting dark when he hears his father’s car. A low growl and then the soft squeak of the garage door. Tim pulls the duvet up to his chin. You hear better with your eyes closed. All the familiar noises sound new – his parents’ murmured hellos, footsteps on the stairs, the rush of water in the bathroom. Tim keeps his eyes shut tight and tries to breathe as steadily as possible. With any luck, his father will only put his head round the door and then leave him in peace. The bedroom door swings open. It doesn’t make a sound, but he knows. Footsteps crossing the room, a chair being pulled up to the bed, a hand on his forehead. Tim flinches and hates himself for it – why does he always have to give himself away?
‘Tim? What’s wrong?’ His father’s voice is quiet.
Tim opens his eyes, unable to reply. His father switches on the bedside lamp.
‘You don’t have a temperature. Let me have a look at your throat.’
‘I don’t have a sore throat.’ No point trying to pretend to your father when he’s a doctor.
‘Have they been bothering you at school again? Do you want me to talk to your teacher? Or the man who runs the chess club – what’s his name? You like him, don’t you?’
No, no and no. Tim shakes his head vigorously. No way must his father go into school; that would only make everything worse. The first time he went in, Frau Dolling, who was still his class teacher at that point, had confronted Tim the very next day. She had made him stand up in front of the whole class and tell them what Lukas had done wrong, and Lukas had been made to apologise. After that, Lukas and his mates were more careful in class, but the teasing and bullying in the playground got worse. Tim had learnt his lesson and kept quiet – at least until the iPod business. Lukas had stolen Tim’s new iPod from his schoolbag and even boasted openly about his spoils. Tim’s parents had paid another visit to the school, and to Tim’s acute embarrassment, the iPod had reappeared in his own sports bag. After that, the bullying had been worse than ever, and a phone call from Lukas’s father had left even Tim’s parents thinking he’d lost the iPod and made up the story about Lukas to avert their anger. He’d had to apologise to Lukas in front of the entire class.
‘What’s wrong, Tim?’ His father’s voice jolts him back to the present. ‘Has something happened in school again?’
‘No, nothing. Don’t go to school – please.’ Tim’s eyes fill with tears, and he presses his fingertips into the corners, ashamed of himself. But it’s no good; they keep coming. ‘I had a temperature and a headache this morning, that’s all.’
‘It’s because of Jonny, isn’t it?’
More tears. Silly crybaby.
‘You mustn’t give up hope, Timmy.’ His father sounds unusually gentle. ‘Tomorrow morning you must go back to school. Maybe your friend will be back by then.’
Tim listens to his father’s footsteps recede. He knows that, downstairs in the living room, his parents are going to argue now. He creeps to the door and opens it a crack. Snatches of sentences float up to him.
‘. . . spoiling the boy!’
‘. . . never at home!’
‘. . . only of yourself!’
‘. . . him to a boarding school . . . starting with headaches now . . . like you.’
‘. . . be glad he’s alive!’ His mother gives a sob – a dry, croaking noise. Tim pulls his bedroom door shut again. His father mumbles something and opens their drinks cabinet – glasses chink, his mother’s sobs subside.
If you slit your wrists, you don’t always die. Better to stab yourself in the heart. Carefully, Tim turns the key in his bedroom door. Only then does he take Jonny’s knife from its hiding place, in among the sea urchin shells. Where exactly is your heart? Tim runs his hand over his ribcage, feeling the bumps of his ribs and, beneath them, the almost painful thudding. If he puts the tip of the knife in just the right place and throws himself onto the floor on his belly – will that work? And where exactly is the ‘right place’?
The tip of the knife is sharp and cool. He doesn’t dare. What if he got the wrong spot? They’d send him to a psychologist again; they’d talk to his teachers. Jonny would know where to put the knife. Jonny would be disappointed in him – a scout who lets himself get caught; a boy who’s too cowardly to put an end to his own life.
Tim turns out the light and feels for the book about deep-sea life he threw under the bed earlier in the day. He opens it and strokes the silky pages one last time. Then he clasps Jonny’s knife tighter and plunges in the cold tip, carving up the mute fish, because they’re no help to him.
*
Blues and browns and greens as far as the eye can see, broken only here and there by a few houses or a deserted road. David pulls the plane’s nose over to the left and the shore disappears; now there’s nothing but glistening water beneath them.
‘In a few minutes we’ll be crossing Manitoulin Island. At over three hundred kilometres lon
g, Manitoulin is the world’s largest freshwater island. According to a Native American myth, it was the birthplace of the god Manitu.’ David’s voice speaks concise tour-guide sentences into Judith’s headphones. It doesn’t bother her. She hasn’t been on holiday for over a year – fourteen peaceful days in an olive grove in Corfu with Martin – Martin, who had been there for her when Patrick was murdered, but whom she was unable to love. Now he’s a consultant in Erfurt and it’s surely only a matter of time before he acquires a house and wife and children. It’s different with David; it was different right from the beginning. Meeting him was like a hair-raising schuss – the soaring, effortless start from the mountaintop ski slope, when you push yourself off and begin to gain momentum, knowing that speed has its own laws – laws you must bow to, if you are to enjoy the schuss and survive it unscathed, because once you’ve started, there’s no stopping or turning back.
This empty, wide-open country is making me reckless, thinks Judith. I spent too long holed up in my flat, with my music and my grief. But of course that isn’t true. Of course it’s David doing this to her. Him and her – two bodies, two people, two strangers under the illusion that they are one, that they are made for each other, made for happiness. An old, old story – a banal story that’s been heard and read a thousand times over, wept at and marvelled at and smiled at – a story that ends badly, but is so irresistible as long as you’re caught up in it that concentrating on anything else becomes a feat of strength.
Judith had tried to get in touch with Margery Cunningham to tell her that Atkinson’s cottage was suddenly deserted, and that she was flying into the wilderness with David – perhaps even to Charlotte, if she could manage to persuade him. But she was told at the police station that Margery was on an operation – and she couldn’t get through to her on her mobile either. So Judith had boarded David’s water plane without leaving a message. This is strictly speaking in breach of her arrangement with Margery, which means that Judith is filled with an almost childish sense of freedom. How long did Margery expect her to wait for her all-clear and any new findings she might have? Judith doesn’t have the time to wait around; she has forty-eight hours left to find Charlotte – forty-eight hours with David. After that she has to drive to Toronto and catch her plane back to Germany – or else she can forget her new start in Division 11.
David is the key. He had given in at last and promised to take Judith close to where Charlotte is based. He is going to act as her messenger and maybe she can even persuade him to take her straight to Charlotte – Charlotte who once wanted to be friends with Judith and still, Berthold swears, thinks the world of her, although Judith betrayed her; Charlotte who left nothing in her house full of childhood relics except a sense of forlornness, an aimless longing that has curdled and turned sour like old milk. How is Judith to confront this woman? She hadn’t, she realises, thought about it until now, because she hadn’t been expecting to find her alive. Charlotte is a taciturn but determined nature lover who wants – and, according to David, pays – to be left in peace. Maybe Judith has the wrong idea about her; maybe she has drawn the wrong conclusions and the pity she feels for Charlotte is nothing but arrogance.
They fly over Killarney Provincial Park and the La Cloche Mountains. Conifers cast long shadows; water glistens; rocks shimmer red in the afternoon light.
‘Pink granite and white quartz dominate the park.’ Judith leans against the window and abandons herself to David’s tour-guide voice. In the early twentieth century, the voice tells her, some artists, the ‘Group of Seven’, campaigned to have these red rocks and gnarled pines and firs declared a nature reserve, not knowing that acid rain was going to damage the lakes. Now, though, exhaust gases are filtered, and the water is beginning to recover. The canoeists who row here can, once again, experience pure wilderness.
They land on a lake surrounded by forest. David tells Judith it is outside Killarney Park, but she has no way of verifying this. Trees, water, rocks – the scenery remains unchanged; the park has no visible boundaries. They chug around on the water for a while until David throttles the plane’s engine. Judith can make out a wooden jetty and a log cabin, half concealed beneath trees.
‘So you have brought me to Charlotte’s place.’ She looks for an explanation in his eyes and perhaps something else too, which she prefers not to put a name to.
David shakes his head. ‘I’ve brought you to my place.’
Relief – that’s what she feels. Unprofessional, inglorious relief.
‘Charlotte’s camp isn’t far from here,’ says David. ‘We just flew over it.’
‘Why didn’t I see it?’
‘Hard to make out a green tent under green trees.’
‘Couldn’t you have pointed it out to me at least?’
David takes Judith’s hand. ‘Give us time.’
‘Is that why you brought me here? To spend time with me?’
‘Would that be a crime?’
‘For God’s sake, David, that’s not the point. I can’t sit around and wait. You know how urgently I need to find Charlotte.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Is that pain is his eyes, or is she imagining things?
He opens the door of the water plane and jumps out onto the jetty. Judith’s instinct is to throw herself out after him, but she doesn’t immediately succumb. She switches on her phone to see if there’s a message from Margery, or a missed call, but it doesn’t look as if she has reception here. She’s on her own with David. Two people in an empty landscape, one of whom has the distinct advantage of knowing the country and owning a plane. Perhaps David really is the village Casanova. Maybe he never intended to take her to Charlotte; maybe he knows nothing about her. A paranoid thought, directly contradicted by Margery Cunningham’s words and the information from David’s office.
Judith pushes her phone into her trouser pocket and joins David on the jetty. The roughly hewn silvery planks bounce under her weight. David takes a step towards her. She turns away from him and looks out at the water. The air is soft, the water smooth, the country around them quieter than anywhere she has ever known. David puts his arms around her; a tentative, almost weightless embrace. She leans against him. The planks creak beneath their feet. Then it is quiet again. No engine, no factory, no power cable quivering in the air – not so much as the echo of voices or footsteps or stirrings of any kind; only David’s breath at her ear and her own heartbeat in her chest. Judith suddenly realises how loud Cologne is, how loud even Cozy Harbour is, compared with the silence here. All at once, Charlotte seems very close to her. What is she doing here, alone in her green tent? And what does she do when the silence becomes unbearable? Is the woman who wanted to escape mankind now a prisoner of these silent, interminable forests?
A scream breaks the silence, then another, then a third. A supernaturally high tremolo, fretful and frantic, faster and faster – the laughter of a madwoman. Judith feels David’s arms tighten around her. She jerks free.
‘What’s that?’
‘Loons,’ he says.
*
Something jolts him awake; he doesn’t know what. The feeling that he’s been running without getting anywhere – something left undone, a dead boy, his father’s drooling. A breath of air stirs the curtain at the open window, the light of the street lamp casts bluish shadows. It’s too hot. Manni sits up. His head is clear again, which is something. He did drop into the beer garden after work, but only drank a Fanta and Coke. Miss Cat’s Eyes wasn’t there. The brief evening with her now seems to him like a fantasy, an illusion, a midsummer night’s dream. He looks at the clock. It’s 3.30 a.m. – far too early to get up, far too early to have had anywhere near enough sleep. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him; he doesn’t normally suffer from insomnia. It must be the heat. He gets under the shower. He’s overtired, in a keyed-up kind of way, and at the same time strangely alert; he might as well drive to headquarters.
The corridors of Division 66 are dark and empty. Manni switches on the main light,
puts on the coffee machine and stares at his computer. Beside it are stacks of manila files – unfinished cases, inquiries, reports of hearings. Two cardboard boxes on the floor contain the wall decorations from his old office – sporting trophies and photos of his mates from home; he hasn’t felt like unpacking them yet. Manni boots up the computer. There’s yesterday’s report to type up, but first of all he must find out what drove him out of bed. Who still needs questioning? Who needs questioning again? Classmates, teachers, neighbours, members of the Red Indian club? Line by line he goes through the lists, beginning with the chess club. ‘Question Tim Rinker,’ he notes down on a separate list. Then he runs his finger down the list of Jonny’s schoolmates. ‘Viktor Petermann’ – is that the big chief’s son or just a chance namesake? And if it isn’t coincidence, why on earth didn’t Petermann mention it? The coffee machine gurgles in the corridor. Manni fetches himself a cup and plops two sugar lumps into the coffee. Another name strikes him: Ivonne Rinker. Tim’s sister? Manni makes a note of both names. If they’d questioned the schoolchildren individually, they’d know more – and if he hadn’t let Tim’s mother brush him off yesterday. He had assumed, too, that Petra Bruckner had compared names, but it seems he was mistaken.
Manni types up his report and stuffs the print-outs into Thalbach and Bruckner’s already overflowing in-trays. Division 66 is still deserted, and the sixth day is dawning since Jonny Röbel disappeared without trace. ‘Hagen Petermann,’ Manni writes on his to-do list; ‘Why Frimmersdorf?’; ‘Child porn/dealers/Holland?!’ and, after a moment’s thought: ‘What’s up with J’s stepfather?’ Too many questions, too few answers. He won’t get anywhere like this; he’ll never find the boy. He leafs through his reports until he finds the notes of his first interview with Big Chief Petermann. What had he said about Jonny? There it is: Jonny’s a loner, a scout.
Manni leaps to his feet, suddenly wide awake. What does a scout do? He watches – without letting anyone see him. Winnetou was her stepson’s idol, Martina Stadler had said, although Jonny was starting to grow out of the Red Indian phase – adolescents, you know what they’re like. But Jonny still has the complete works of Karl May on the shelves in his bedroom – gold-green spines next to non-fiction books about Native Americans, picture books, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and comics. And on the Stadlers’ computer, various Native American sites are bookmarked, along with the Karl May Festival and the Karl May Museum in Radebeul.
