Dear Child: The twisty thriller that starts where others end

by Romy Hausmann

  Giesner looks at the ground and starts scraping at the gravel with the tip of his shoe.

  ‘But now the monster is dead,’ he says after a while, looking me straight in the eye. ‘I’ve questioned Hannah nine times over the past fortnight, Herr Beck. Nine times.’ He shrugs. ‘At least I now know how tall the Eiffel Tower is, which she claims to have visited with her mother. Three hundred and twenty metres.’

  ‘Three hundred and twenty-four,’ I correct him and begin shifting around uneasily on the bench. The hard wood now feels very uncomfortable. ‘With all due respect, Herr Giesner, I don’t think that either you or I are in a position to appreciate just what happens to the human psyche in such extreme situations. But at least you have the cabin, a dead body and the DNA kit. So why don’t you solve the case without Hannah’s help? And find my daughter’s body.’

  ‘That’s exactly what we’re trying to do, Herr Beck! And I believe that Hannah could be a real help in this. It’s just that she seems to be holding something back from us. What could that be, Herr Beck?’

  ‘Why don’t you just leave my granddaughter in peace and turn your attention to Frau Grass instead? You want me to question Hannah, don’t you? That’s what you meant at the beginning when you said: is there any way we can use the situation for our investigation? You say you don’t want to put her under pressure. No, because you want to leave that job to me, don’t you? You want me to solve your case, that’s the long and the short of it!’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Herr Beck, nobody has said that. All I thought was that you’ve developed a rapport with Hannah, and so there’s every chance she might open up to you and tell you things which might be helpful for the future course of our investigation.’

  ‘Investigation,’ I mutter.

  ‘I’m simply asking for your help. You want to find your daughter and so do we.’

  ‘I’ll give you some help: Frau Grass is a liar. You’re very welcome.’

  ‘Do you have any concrete proof? What makes you think that? Has Hannah by any chance said anything—’

  ‘What makes me think that? Common sense, Herr Giesner! You don’t just get abducted and live for months with a family, playing mother and wife . . .’ Giesner opens his mouth to interrupt, but I hold up my hands defensively. ‘Yes, yes, I know, she was forced. But did she never try to find out what was really going on there? What happened to the woman who must have been there before her? Did she never try talking to the man who supposedly abducted her? Surely you can’t believe all that, Herr Giesner!’

  ‘Herr Beck, Frau Grass is a victim, just like your daughter.’

  ‘But unlike my daughter she made it out of the cabin alive.’

  ‘I understand your anger. But don’t take it out on Frau Grass. That’s unfair, don’t you think so?’

  I sigh.

  ‘Besides, Herr Beck, you said yourself that neither of us is in a position to appreciate just what happens to the human psyche in such extreme situations.’

  My heartbeat, which has substantially accelerated over the past few minutes, prompts a well-known tugging in my chest. Then there’s the hard wood under my buttocks. I turn my head away from Giesner and look over the back of the bench to the large building where Hannah is waiting for me. I try to think of her, of the fact that the two of us will soon walk out of that building together and drive away, away from here, back home. But my thoughts keep drifting to Jasmin Grass. That woman. How I’d like to have spoken to her and asked the probing questions myself. Grabbed her by the collar if necessary and shaken the answers out of her. Where the hell is my daughter? What do you know? How did you manage to get back home, but not my daughter? But not a chance. After I wasn’t able to identify her as Lena on the night of the accident, they wouldn’t allow me to talk to her. For your own good, as Gerd put it. They stationed guards outside her room.

  ‘It’s just a hunch, Herr Giesner,’ I say as calmly as possible to slow my heartbeat down to a healthier rhythm. ‘There’s something about that woman that isn’t right. She’s not telling you everything she knows.’

  Giesner lets out an absentminded ‘Hmm’ and then pulls a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He straightens it out and passes it to me.

  ‘Do you recognise this man?’

  I take my reading glasses out of my coat.

  ‘No,’ I say eventually. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘This is a facial reconstruction by the forensic department of the male whose body was found in the cabin.’

  ‘The man who abducted my daughter?’

  ‘That’s what we’re assuming, yes.’

  Normal, that’s my first thought. He looks completely normal. That’s what shocks me most of all. If I keep focusing on his face, maybe I’ll find some abnormality that might be weirdly comforting. Lena would have fallen victim to a monster, some creature whose gruesomeness would have been apparent kilometres away. Against something like that she wouldn’t have stood a chance. But the picture in my hand doesn’t depict a that, it depicts a someone, a human being. A man who could have lived in our neighbourhood. Could have been one of my clients. Someone who could have been a lawyer or a car mechanic. A man who could have appeared at our front door to pick Lena up for a date and I would have wished them a nice evening. Maybe I might have even liked him on first impression. More than Mark Sutthoff, in whose smile I thought at first glance I could detect a slyness. For a moment I don’t know whether to be disappointed that the reconstruction doesn’t show Mark’s face or relieved, because yesterday evening when he agreed with me about Hannah, I thought for the first time that I might have been wrong about him. Perhaps I’d been unfair on Mark after all.

  ‘Are you sure, Herr Beck?’ Giesner says, his voice mingling with my thoughts. ‘Have a good look at the man. Take your time.’

  I nod. The man who abducted and probably killed my daughter. This quite normal, unremarkable man.

  Without taking my eyes off the picture, I shake my head.

  ‘I don’t recognise him, no.’

  Giesner sighs, I look up.

  ‘Have you shown this to Hannah?’

  ‘Yes, this morning before you arrived. She looked at it and congratulated me on my drawing skills.’ Giesner gives another sigh.

  ‘You need to get that picture in the media! It should be in every paper and TV news bulletin!’ My hands, which are holding the piece of paper, start shaking with agitation. ‘Surely someone knows the bastard.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Giesner says again, then, ‘We’ll consider it, Herr Beck. Only in our experience, when we publish something like that, it seems as if half the world claims to know the person. You get people ringing up saying, “That’s my neighbour, my children’s teacher, my dentist.” We would have a flood of leads and it would take us ages to work through them all without any guarantee of a result.’

  ‘You’re not seriously telling me that this is too much work for you, are you, Herr Giesner? That’s your job!’

  Giesner doesn’t reply.

  My heart starts racing again.

  ‘So nothing’s going to happen? You’re just going to let the matter rest?’

  ‘No, no, Herr Beck, on no account.’

  He takes the piece of paper from my hand, folds it up again and slips it back into his jacket pocket.

  ‘We’re going to start by asking people personally connected to the case.’

  ‘But that includes me! And I tell you, I don’t know this man!’

  ‘Herr Beck, I know you had a close relationship with your daughter, but . . .’ He falters. I have an idea what he’s going to say next as he chews over his words so they don’t upset the poor, sick old man too much. Of course he’s read the old files. Of course Gerd has briefed him about the investigation into Lena’s disappearance. Of course he’s familiar with the newspaper articles. The lies he possibly thinks are the truth me
rely because they seem so weighty when printed in big, bold letters. Parents who didn’t really know their own child. I can recall every single article, every single word . . .

  Friend of missing Munich student (23): Lena had problems

  Munich (LR) – Jana W (her name has been changed) sits on the windowsill in her sitting room on the fourth floor and gazes out at the city. ‘Where are you?’ is the question that this friend of student Lena Beck (23, as reported here), who disappeared almost a week ago, keeps asking herself. W was the last person Lena Beck was in contact with before she vanished. ‘She called me on her way home from the party,’ W recalls, trying to retain her composure. ‘I should have realised that something was wrong, but I was annoyed that she’d woken me up with her call.’ As to the details of this last telephone call, W says, ‘Lena told me she wanted to change her life, things couldn’t go on as they were.’ But W didn’t hear this as a cry for help. ‘She sounded as if she’d had a lot to drink. Besides, Lena was often in the mood to want to change something. She’d already contemplated abandoning college, which would have been a sensible move. She was never really interested in her studies, and was more often to be seen at parties than in lectures. As a result she was probably going to flunk her exams this semester.’ Like Beck, W is in her fourth semester of a teaching degree at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. ‘But I think she was worried about disappointing her parents. The Lena her parents know is a very different person.’

  Could the 23-year-old possibly have been so desperate that she was contemplating suicide and jumped into the Isar on the night she disappeared? Jana W won’t rule this out. ‘But I can also imagine her absconding with some guy. She was always telling me about new male acquaintances. In the worst-case scenario, maybe this time she hooked up with the wrong one.’ W says, however, that she hasn’t given up hope of seeing her friend again soon. With tears in her eyes, she begs, ‘Lena, if you’re out there somewhere, please come home. We miss you.’ Just before midday, police divers resumed their search of the river. ‘So far we haven’t come up with anything that has any bearing on the case of the missing woman,’ Chief Inspector Gerd Brühling said. He refused to comment on Lena Beck’s current psychological state. Nor would he go into any more detail about the statement given by a woman who claims to have seen the student in the company of a man at a motorway service station near the Austrian border. But he insisted, ‘Of course we’re taking every piece of information seriously and following up every lead.’

  *

  ‘Herr Beck?’ Giesner says.

  ‘Okay,’ I say wearily. ‘Ask those people’ – I do air quotes – ‘personally connected to the case. The friends who apparently knew Lena far better than I did. Ask them if this man might have been one of the allegedly vast number of male acquaintances my daughter had. Give them a good grilling.’ I reach for the back of the bench as support and groan as I haul myself up. ‘Maybe unlike Herr Brühling, you’ll realise how many people back then spread lies about Lena just to make themselves feel important. Lifting the lid on that would be worthwhile in itself. Oh yes, and please don’t forget Frau Grass.’

  Giesner, who has got up from the bench too, gives me a searching look.

  ‘You have no cause to doubt yourself as a father, Herr Beck. Parents want to protect their children, that’s only natural. It’s just that sometimes they forget that their children are independent people—’

  ‘Yes, yes, okay,’ I growl and point at his jacket. ‘Could I take the reconstruction with me to Munich to show my wife? After all, she’s personally connected to the case too.’

  ‘Inspector Brühling can do that. He’s right there.’

  ‘Herr Giesner, I don’t want to upset my wife any more than is necessary.’ I clutch my chest. ‘These interrogations are arduous for all of us.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Herr Beck, but I can’t give it away, I really can’t.’

  The hand sitting flat on my chest clenches to a fist and I grimace.

  ‘Maybe you could just look away for a second while I take a picture with my mobile,’ I pant, short of breath. ‘Then I’ll show it to my wife and we’ll get in touch immediately if the man is familiar. I mean, we just decided we were going to do our best to work together, didn’t we?’

  Giesner gives a subtle shake of his head. ‘Even if you don’t believe me, Herr Beck, I understand you. But this doesn’t mean I’m going to do you this favour. Let me do my job and you look after your granddaughter. That way we’re all best served, trust me.’

  Hannah

  My grandfather went outside with the policeman but he promised me he wouldn’t be long. Which also means it won’t be long until I’m back home.

  Frau Hamstedt suggested that we should do some more drawing in the meantime. I pointed out to her that it’s lying to say we should do drawing because in truth it’s only me who would draw. But I don’t want to draw anyway. I think I should use the time to say goodbye to Jonathan. You always have to say goodbye before you go. Not saying goodbye is impolite. Frau Hamstedt let me.

  We go out of her office and down the corridor to the glass door. To the left is the lift, to the right the stairs. I ask Frau Hamstedt if we can take the lift. She looks at me like Mama sometimes does when we’re doing lessons and my answer’s not quite right. As if I hadn’t thought something through properly.

  ‘It’s only a cable system,’ I tell Frau Hamstedt, after by accident I briefly show my annoyance. I can’t tell Frau Hamstedt she’s an idiot or she definitely won’t let me go home. ‘And the doors have to be shut otherwise you could fall out of the compartment.’

  Frau Hamstedt is silent to begin with. The lift gives a ding when it arrives and we get in. The silver doors close behind us. Frau Hamstedt pushes the round button with the number two on it. There are three round buttons in total, one above the other like a traffic light. This is how you tell the lift which floor to go to.

  ‘Why didn’t you ever take Jonathan with you when you went on your trips?’

  The corners of my mouth twitch as there’s a tugging in my tummy. The tugging feeling in my tummy is what I like most about going in a lift.

  ‘Hannah?’

  I make a cross face again.

  ‘Because I’m her favourite child.’

  I don’t know how often I need to say this until she understands. There always has to be a favourite child you can rely on.

  *

  It’s dark in Jonathan’s room because the blinds are down. The retina problem must be in our family. It smells bad in his room too, of stale farts, which isn’t surprising as nobody’s put a recirculation device in here. In my room too they only tilt open the window when I go to eat or to do drawing or go with Grandad to the appointments. I’ve asked why, but nobody’s given me an answer. I think it’s because the handles on the windows have a little lock on them and they have to be unlocked before you can tilt the windows open. There’s probably only one key and Frau Hamstedt’s helpers have to look for it each time. I told them to do it like we did at home. We never had to think where the key might be or spend ages looking for it because Papa looked after it. I told Frau Hamstedt’s helpers that they should choose someone to be in charge of the key. But of course they don’t listen to me. They probably think I’m just a child and so I’m not particularly clever. But I’m much cleverer than them.

  Jonathan is sitting on the floor in the far corner of the room, his knees up to his chest. ‘Hello, Jonathan,’ Frau Hamstedt says. She opened the door especially quietly so he wouldn’t get a fright, but I think Jonathan is taking so many of the blue pills that he doesn’t care if someone comes into his room. He doesn’t even lift his head from his knees.

  ‘Would you like me to wait outside?’ Frau Hamstedt asks me. I nod. Outside means, however, that she’ll wait in the open doorway, with her back to us. I approach Jonathan on tiptoe, although I don’t think he’s dangerous. He isn�
��t anything anymore. I sit very close to him so he can hear me properly when I whisper. Assuming he can hear at all.

  ‘Why did you draw Sara?’

  I think he flinches very slightly.

  ‘Have you forgotten how dreadfully Mama screamed because of her? Have you really forgotten it all?’

  I remember every detail. The dreadful screaming. The ugly face that Mama pulled. How she kicked and tossed and turned so much that her bracelet cut her wrist and blood ran down her forearm. Then there was more blood and much more screaming, which meant nobody could sleep. And the Fräulein Tinky business. If Mama hadn’t screamed so dreadfully because of Sara, Fräulein Tinky would never have knocked over the cup of hot chocolate in fright and Papa wouldn’t have put her outside as a punishment. She wasn’t allowed back in until the evening. She’d turned very cold and stiff, and it took ages to warm her coat up again beside the stove. All because of Sara.

  She was a very funny colour. She was purple and slimy, smeared with yellow and red. I wouldn’t touch her until Mama had cleaned her up. Everything was filthy: Sara, Mama, the entire bed. I pulled the sheet off the mattress. Papa said that Mama lost far more blood than when Jonathan and I were born. The stains were really big. Papa also said there was no point in washing the bedclothes. He brought a roll of big rubbish bags into the bedroom, then the three of them went into the bathroom. I was just unbuttoning the pillowcases when Mama came back with Sara. Mama was moving very strangely and slowly, as if she was worried her bones would break with every step. She sat on the bed. The baby looked better now, clean. Mama said it was perfect. She was perfect, Sara. The name means ‘princess’. Now there was nothing better than Sara. I was so tired. First Mama’s screaming, now Sara’s whining. I stuffed the bedclothes in two loads into the rubbish bags, like Papa had told me.

  ‘When are we going to go away again, Mama?’

  Mama didn’t hear me at first, so I had to ask her again.

  ‘We can’t just at the moment, Hannah,’ she said, without taking her eyes off Sara, who she held in her arms. That dreadful whining. I wouldn’t have even been able to tell if the recirculation device was working properly.