Dear Child: The twisty thriller that starts where others end

by Romy Hausmann

  My tummy is rumbling. The smell of freshly cooked food wafts under the door; I bet it’s stew. The floorboard creaks again, then I hear footsteps on the stairs. Frau Bar-Lev walks slowly; she’s got a bad hip. Momentarily I feel really bad. Every day since I got back home this wonderful old woman has been climbing the steps up to my apartment, which to her must feel like she’s conquering Kilimanjaro. She could have chatted to reporters all this time, but instead she’s been standing with her dodgy hip by the stove in her kitchen, cooking for me. You should be ashamed.

  I wait until I hear the door click shut two floors below, then wait a moment longer to be sure that it’s absolutely silent in the hallway outside. I turn the key, press down the handle, pick up the pot from the doormat, close the door and turn the key again. My best time so far – under three seconds. With the pot in my hand, I briefly lean with my back against the locked door and breathe as if I’d just completed a marathon. Everything’s fine, calm, stay totally calm, I implore the thumping in my chest. Then I lift the lid. Goulash. I could have sworn I smelled stew.

  I could have sworn I only hit your husband once.

  I take the pot into the kitchen and put it on the cooker.

  I’d arranged him in such a way that at first glance it wasn’t clear whether the murder weapon really could have been a snow globe. The police officers must have searched for other potential murder weapons in the cabin, but there was no hammer that could have accounted for the violence of the blows, nor any knife that could have been responsible for the deep cuts. Well, they did exist, of course, hammers and other tools, knives, even really sharp ones, like the knives they use for gutting animals. But they were locked away and plainly out of access to me. It was only when the full forensic report came in that the snow globe was confirmed beyond doubt to have been the murder weapon. Apparently they even put it back together again, almost in its entirety. Only one piece is missing, they can’t find it.

  Your husband is dead, Lena.

  Your children are in the loony bin.

  I should feel better, as a survivor, the victor, grateful and eager for the life I doggedly fought for over four whole months. The reality is different, however. My apartment is darkened. The sky I longed to see for so long, the sun, the tweeting of the birds – I can’t take any of it. My doorbell is switched off; I react to sequences of knocks. I’ve even disconnected my landline. I only leave my mobile on so the police and my therapist can get through to me. I respond to police queries in dribs and drabs, matters that seemingly refuse to come to an end, and my therapist says I’m doing well. I’m praised because I made it to the supermarket around the corner today, all on my own. Because I’m about to cook something delicious and then catch up on the last season of Gilmore Girls. Because I won’t be able to make my next appointment as my mother or some close friends are coming round. My mouth is already parched from utter lies.

  Do you want to know what my daily routine really looks like? I still wake punctually at ten to seven, my right arm beneath my head, the only possible sleeping position in the cabin when I was tied to the bedposts. Occasionally I try to be rebellious and close my eyes again. I change position; I just want to turn over and continue sleeping. But it doesn’t work. I have to get up and make breakfast for the children. It has to be on the table at half past seven on the dot or they start getting nervous, chasing each other around the sitting room like bouncy balls out of control and squealing until my head’s about to burst – please, children, not so loud!

  It has to be on the table at half past seven on the dot or he’ll scream at me. What kind of mother are you, Lena? What kind of monster are you?

  He’s not here, I know that for sure. He’s dead, I killed him. The police found his body. But I still can’t feel it yet. When I told my therapist this, all she could come up with was, ‘That’s totally normal. It takes time.’ Let me tell you, she doesn’t listen properly. Time doesn’t play a part in my life anymore. I lost it that first day I entered the cabin. Only his time exists. He creates day and night. Like God. Still.

  I don’t make breakfast, of course; there aren’t any children, only me in my apartment, in – ha ha – freedom. Nonetheless I’m in the kitchen at half past seven. Even if all I do is hold on tight to the work surface and try to breathe away the voice raging inside my head.

  You’re an ungrateful woman, Lena. An ungrateful and bad woman.

  I’m good, I retort pathetically. I’m good at moving from the bed to the sofa or to my worn-out reading chair. I’m good at reading books I don’t understand. ‘The river was there. It was a hot day,’ Hemingway writes. That much I can understand. Then the letters start to dance before my eyes and the river he talks about takes a bend, becomes wild, an uncontrollable current tearing me away while the hot day becomes an unbearable furnace, driving the sweat from my pores and tears from my eyes. I’m good at clapping books shut and tossing them away. I’m good at stuffing down the food which old Frau Bar-Lev leaves outside my front door, then bringing it up again in jets. And I’m good at attending to my needs according to his daily schedule, still, still, still. Your times for using the toilet are seven o’clock in the morning, twelve-thirty, five in the afternoon and eight in the evening.

  What remains of an individual when they deny themselves a shit because it’s only half past four? What remains of me?

  I often stand by the knife block in the kitchen and sometimes my hand grips a handle all by itself. It’s not the largest knife in the block, but it is the sharpest. My mother gave it to me one Christmas. ‘It cuts everything,’ she said. ‘Vegetables, bread, meat.’ Meat, Lena.

  I’m empty, apart from this one, very certain feeling. It has planted itself inside me and I simply can’t be rid of it. It burns in my stomach, it presses against my temples like a vice that tightens by the day. My therapist reckons this is normal too. She says it takes time to process what’s happened, first to order it in my head, then to understand that it’s really over.

  I think she’s mistaken. But I don’t dare say that I feel sure she’s wrong. The police know nothing about this either. It took so much energy and all my acting skills to get myself discharged from the hospital. I’m worried that they’ll think I’m mad and lock me up again.

  You have to know that after the first two nights in casualty I was transferred to the secure unit. That’s the ward for patients who pose a risk to themselves or others. There, the door handles can be removed with a simple flick of the wrist. I don’t know whether they were seriously worried that I might harm myself or someone else. And if so, then I wonder why nobody thought of taking a look inside my overnight bag which my mother brought to the hospital for me. I could have done it, Lena. Thanks to your daughter, I had everything I would have needed. But I’d rather believe that my transferral to this room was – as the hospital staff maintained – to give me security and keep unwanted visitors away. Overzealous journalists, for example. I probably don’t have to tell you what effect this supposed safe room actually had on me. How in the footsteps of the security personnel who wandered up and down outside my room in the first week I thought I heard other footsteps. Someone coming to get me, to punish me. How in this locked room I felt captive again, while everyone around me was talking of ‘freedom’, the end of my ordeal: a paradox. The freedom didn’t make up for the fact that I was imprisoned. My therapist said it was important for me to see your children. But I can’t do it. I can’t look them in the eye, having killed their father.

  Is that what it is, Lena? The feeling gripping me like a vice. Is it guilt?

  I’m taking painkillers for the three ribs I broke in the car accident. I still take half a tablet more than necessary in the hope that this will dull another pain. I’m so alone, Lena. And yet I can’t bring myself to pick up the phone and ask for some company. I think of my father and Kirsten and how nice it would be if one of them were outside my door and knocked. Three short ones, two long ones. But
that’s not going to happen. They’re gone, both of them, and are never coming back. My father died in a car accident when I was seven. In death he took my mother with him, albeit in a very complex way. She lives in Straubing, less than fifty kilometres from here, and is in rude health. But when my father died she never again sat on my bed and sang to me about spiders. And when she came to collect me from hospital last week she merely offered me her hand in greeting. Kirsten, meanwhile, couldn’t stand the sight of me any longer, even before I was abducted. As you can see, Lena, your husband couldn’t have chosen anyone less suitable than me for his little, sick, make-believe family. I was the worst possible person for the role. Even though these past few days I’ve kept wondering whether your role was really that clear. I’m not talking about what your husband forced you to do. No, I’m talking about you, Lena. I’ve started reading the online articles relating to your disappearance. I can’t take it for long, the dancing letters, the bright screen that brings tears to my eyes, never-ending photos of you, the similarity between us that tastes like bile. Who are you, in fact? Who are you, Lena Beck?

  Matthias

  Dear Herr Rogner,

  I’ve tried calling the editorial office several times, only to be told that you are unwell. In my view this doesn’t, however, absolve you of the responsibility for the content of your newspaper, which, as editor-in-chief, you ought to bear even in your absence. How can you allow your staff to submit articles like that? How can you permit such rubbish to be printed for the umpteenth time? I’m seriously disappointed in you, Herr Rogner! You ought to know exactly what it feels like to suffer such a loss, and yet, having dragged my daughter through the dirt, you now dare do the same to my granddaughter? Furious as I am, I would like to make one thing perfectly clear, and feel free to quote me on this: given the circumstances Hannah is in pretty good shape, both physically and mentally. She is just somewhat smaller than most children of her age, due to a lack of vitamin D over many years. Believe it or not, Hannah is a perfectly normal child! She can hold a soup spoon without making a mess. She doesn’t dribble. She knows how to go to the loo and even washes her hands afterwards. Moreover, she shows no signs of physical abuse. Her teeth are impeccable. The doctor treating her even gave her a star sticker. Have you any idea what a star sticker means? Only those children who clean their teeth thoroughly get one. Hannah doesn’t communicate by means of animal noises. On the contrary, she has an impressive vocabulary, which in any case is far superior to that of your rag. She can also speak four foreign languages, in case you’re interested: English, French, Spanish and Italian. So please choose which one she should use to tell you and your colleagues to stop printing your bloody filthy lies! Although nothing could compensate for my personal despair about the articles over the past few days, I beg you urgently to make the writer in question see reason. Should further unethical and plainly untruthful articles appear in your newspaper again, I reserve the right to take legal action.

  Yours emphatically,

  Matthias Beck.

  I hesitate to press ‘send’ for a moment, probably because of Karin. She said I shouldn’t start trying to take on the media. After all, I know from experience what they’re like, those vultures. She also said I should go easy on my heart. That I’ve got better things to do than entrench myself in my room, working on angry and, as Karin says, ‘pointless’ emails.

  But how could I? The press has called Hannah ‘zombie girl’ and ‘ghost child’. There’s one photo of her, just a single photo, but on the internet you can find it with captions even in Chinese and Cyrillic. I’m glad I can’t read what these say. ‘Zombie girl’ is enough for me. You miserable hacks! Haven’t we been through enough already?

  ‘Precisely,’ Karin said, when straight after breakfast I was about to disappear back into my study to boot up the computer. Between the two plates with nibbled slices of toast and jam lay the daily paper. Its headline had ruined our appetites. ‘Zombie Girl from the Cabin of Horrors!’

  ‘That’s precisely the point: we have been through enough already.’ Karin’s tone was gentle, although the accompanying expression on her face told me what my wife actually wanted to say: you’re going the wrong way about this. We have a daughter we ought to be grieving for. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do, or because after all these years of waiting and not knowing, we’ve simply deserved it. First of all we had to get over what happened that night two weeks ago. The merciless emotional rollercoaster, when for a few moments we got our Lena back, only to lose her again straightaway.

  ‘Lena would want me to.’ That’s what I said to Karin, that’s the karate chop to her neck, every time. She can’t argue against that; that phrase silences her. Lena left behind a gift for us, the most precious gift possible. And that’s exactly why I now press ‘send’, firing off my rant to the editor-in-chief of the daily paper.

  What a gruesome miracle life is.

  A miracle that Lena perfomed.

  Hannah. Our little Hannah—

  ‘Matthias,’ Karin calls out from downstairs in the hall, as if I could have possibly failed to hear the bell. Gerd called to say there were developments in the case, but he wouldn’t say any more than that to Karin over the phone. He must have learned from the chaos he unleashed on the night in question.

  ‘Matthias!’ Karin’s voice rings out from below once more and I sink slightly lower in my desk chair. They still haven’t found Lena’s body.

  ‘Gerd’s here!’

  I place my hands on the desk and haul myself up with difficulty.

  It’s important to Karin. She’d be happy with a few bones that were definitely Lena’s. She’d just like to have something to bury, and a place where she could shed tears and plant flowers. I, on the other hand, don’t know how I’d cope if somebody showed me a bone and said, ‘That’s your Lena.’

  Gerd and his colleagues are working on the assumption that her abductor buried her somewhere in the woods near the cabin. But they’re no longer expecting to find her in one piece. Apparently there’s a large wild boar population in the area. It’s not nice to be told, when it’s a question of your own child, that wild boars are omnivores and sometimes drag their spoils for kilometres.

  ‘Apart from the skull,’ Gerd told me. ‘They leave that behind. It’s too big for them.’

  Thinking about this, I can barely make it down the stairs. My knees are trembling and my heart is having convulsions. Down below, Karin has just put a foot on the first stair, obviously to come up and see what I’m doing.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ I say feebly.

  Karin nods vigorously. I can see nervous red blotches on her face and neck.

  *

  Gerd is already sitting on one of the two-seater sofas in our living room. There’s a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. Karin has used our best crockery, the white china with the golden rim.

  ‘Don’t get up,’ I say when he makes to stand. I go to the sofa opposite and Karin sits beside me on the armrest. ‘So? What’s new?’

  Pompously, Gerd takes a deep breath.

  ‘We’re now able to prove beyond any doubt that Lena spent time in the cabin.’

  I wait for the climax. It doesn’t come.

  ‘Is that it? We already knew that.’

  ‘No, Matthias, we suspected it. There is a difference. Knowledge is based on facts and evidence. We were able to recover two strands of hair with their roots and draw up a genetic profile from them. It matches the sample we took from Lena’s toothbrush all those years ago.’

  I sigh and look at Karin, who has one hand pressed to her chest and does actually look impressed.

  ‘With your DNA kit have you been able to pin down the identity of the abductor too?’

  ‘No,’ Gerd says, his jaw visibly tensing. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got nothing to match it against. He doesn’t correspond with any profile in our database, which means h
e’s never had a criminal record, or at least has never been involved in anything serious. We don’t store data for lesser offences, such as common theft.’

  ‘Or maybe he was just shrewd enough to avoid being captured by you.’

  Karin lays a hand on my arm to try to placate me.

  ‘Matthias . . .’

  I gesture towards Gerd. ‘What about the cabin? It must belong to somebody! The owner will be in the land register.’

  Gerd gives a tense sigh when he turns from Karin back to me.

  ‘It’s unclear whether the land where the cabin stands is still in Bavaria, or whether it’s on Czech soil. It’s the border area, at any rate. No man’s land. Officially, nobody built a cabin there. And nobody appeared to have noticed either. The surrounding area is so overgrown that you can barely get a car through.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Gerd!’ I bellow, leaping to my feet. ‘Why don’t you bloody well tap that Grass woman up! She’s supposed to have spent four months in the cabin with that guy and she doesn’t even know his name? She’s taking the piss!’

  Gerd gets up too. Now we’re standing facing one another, with just the coffee table separating us and Karin’s pitiful efforts to keep the peace.

  ‘Matthias, they’re doing all they—’

  ‘Frau Grass told us,’ Gerd interrupts her attempt, but unlike me he strives to keep his cool, ‘that the abductor didn’t mention his name. We have no reason to doubt her statement. And as far as the children are concerned, he’s just Papa.’