‘Wait, Kirsten,’ I pant. ‘I understand it all now! Just listen to me for a minute!’
*
‘Frau Bar-Lev?’
Kirsten’s eyeballs seem to bulge in their sockets and her mouth is open. Her expression gives my feelings a face, a terrified, bewildered face. And yet . . . didn’t I think precisely this some time ago? Frau Bar-Lev serving coffee to a reporter in her sitting room. Nibbling on a biscuit with her false teeth, casually dropping comments about the poor woman from the fourth floor, who’s way too thin, who’s stopped washing her hair and is wearing dirty clothes. You only have to look at her to see it, you can see it all. Frau Bar-Lev, who’s been given the opportunity to top up her modest pension with a little pocket money.
‘Are you saying Maja’s a journalist?’
I nod.
Sonja Hildner told me about the woman who, going by her description, has to be Maja. Roughly mid-thirties, dyed red hair and a slanted fringe. In search of someone suitable to talk to, she’d obviously rung bell after bell in the building, encountering the resistant Sonja Hildner before coming across the amenable Frau Bar-Lev.
Kirsten is busy with her mobile again, but this time to look up Maja on the internet. Feverishly almost, a fever compared to which my alleged penchant for drama seems to fade into the background, I note with relief.
‘That’s her,’ she says, waving her mobile in excitement. ‘Maja König, Bayerisches Tagblatt, Munich office. Munich, Jassy! Has she seriously come from Munich to Regensburg every day to bring you lunch? She must be completely obsessed with you!’ Kirsten hands me her phone with Maja’s picture on the screen. ‘We should give Frau Bar-Lev a talking-to, then notify the police.’
‘According to Sonja, Frau Bar-Lev is staying with her son at the moment,’ I say abstractedly as I gaze at Maja’s photo. Maja König, a woman in a white blouse with the collar turned up, smiling coquettishly into the camera. ‘2004: internship, 2005–08: traineeship, 2008–11: junior editor, since 2011: “people and current affairs editor”.’ I read out the short CV below the picture.
‘Good, now let’s call the police,’ Kirsten says. ‘Lying to people to gain access to their home must be a criminal offence. And anyway, don’t journalists have a sort of professional code of honour too?’
‘I don’t know, Kirsten. After all, she hasn’t written any articles yet. But what will happen if we get the police on her back?’ I draw an invisible headline in the air with my finger: ‘Victim uses police to obstruct journalistic work. Does Jasmin G have something to hide?’
‘But it won’t happen like that! Surely she’s not going to—’
‘The letters!’ I blurt out.
‘What?’
‘They were from Maja! Letter number one arrived on the same day that Maja first came to my door with food. She even brought it up for me, supposedly from my mailbox.’ I slap my hand over my mouth. ‘What does she want from me?’
‘An interview, obviously!’
‘All that trouble for an interview?’
Kirsten shrugs.
‘You haven’t got a clue what an exclusive interview with you would be worth right now. Maybe this is her attempt to break you down, to get you to give her the sensational story.’ She shakes her head. ‘Honestly, Jassy. Let’s call Giesner.’ She takes my hand. ‘We’ve got to anyway, you know that.’
I nod.
‘The facial reconstruction.’
Kirsten nods too.
‘The longer you put it off, the more difficult it’s going to be for you.’
‘No, we’re going to do something else. We’re going to call Maja. We’re going to find out what she wants.’
‘Jassy.’ Kirsten sighs.
‘And then we’ll call Giesner, okay?’
*
Maja answers after the second ring.
‘Hello?’ says a very friendly voice.
‘Maja? It’s Jasmin Grass here.’
‘Frau Grass! What a surprise! Is everything all right? Are you feeling better? I think I should apologise for this morning. I must have given you a fright—’
‘It’s fine,’ I interrupt. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were just trying to be nice and I overreacted. I ought to be apologising to you.’
Kirsten, sitting cross-legged on the sofa beside me, rolls her eyes.
‘You know I’m not in a good way at the moment.’
‘Yes,’ Maja says, sounding concerned. ‘My offer still stands, Jasmin. If you need someone to talk to . . .’
‘Yes, Maja. I do need someone to talk to.’
*
‘That was quick,’ Kirsten says when I hang up soon afterwards. ‘What did she say?’
‘That she’s still at work, but she can come over this evening. Around nine, half past nine.’
‘Which means right now she’s swanning into her boss’s office, bragging that she’s clinched the exclusive interview,’ Kirsten says. Her grin tells me she is quite keen on my idea after all. Her plan was to call Maja and confront her, and I know she would have done this for me. She’d have been happy to act as an outlet for all the pressure of the past few days and the situation as a whole. But I didn’t want to give Maja the opportunity to hang up. Extricate herself from the matter with the push of a button. Not after she’d gone so far and even entered my apartment under false pretences. Not after I had barely any space left in this world, and she’d infiltrated the last few square metres that gave me some inkling of protection and control. Kirsten had to understand this.
‘Probably,’ I say, returning Kirsten’s grin, although I don’t really feel like it.
Kirsten reaches for my hand.
‘And now . . . ?’
And now.
I take a deep breath.
Hannah
Grandad is down in the cellar, looking for the old photo albums.
He and Grandma have been arguing again. It didn’t bother them that I was standing next to them, listening. Grandad was cross because Grandma had put the photo albums in the cellar. He doesn’t think that the pictures of my mama as a girl should be banished to some old crate, and certainly shouldn’t be in the cellar, because the cellar’s a bit damp and that might ruin the pictures. Grandma said he ought to make his phone calls like he promised he would.
‘I’ll ring Mark later,’ Grandad said, then disappeared into the cellar.
Grandma is in the laundry room.
She told me that you always have to wash other people’s clothes before you wear them, and that she’s going to wash the donated things in the cardboard box right now so I might be able to put some of them on tomorrow. She wanted to take my dress too, but I held on to it tightly. When she made a funny face, I wanted to tell her that the dress didn’t belong to anybody else and so it didn’t need washing, but then she said, ‘Fine, you can try it on and we’ll wash it later.’ Probably because she didn’t want any more trouble with Grandad. He now knows that Sister Ruth can be my grandma too, if necessary, so Grandma Karin has to pull her socks up and behave well. I think she realises this because I only had to scream once when she was about to take Fräulein Tinky to the laundry room as well. ‘But that creature’s totally threadbare and filthy . . .’ She didn’t get any further; my lion voice saved Fräulein Tinky. Although I think that Grandma’s not completely wrong, Fräulein Tinky’s far too weak for the washing machine. So I had to be there for Fräulein Tinky and save her from being washed. Just as Fräulein Tinky was there for me, so often taking the blame when something fell down or tipped over at home, or when something else stupid happened. She spent a whole night sitting outside our front door for me.
Grandad’s in the cellar, Grandma’s in the laundry room and I’m in Mama’s bedroom. The door is slightly open, as Grandad told me it should be.
I’ve already got changed and I look beautiful. I turn around in front of t
he mirror in the door of the wardrobe. Fräulein Tinky’s lying on Mama’s bed, behind me. ‘Look, Fräulein Tinky,’ I say, spinning around again especially fast just for her, so the bottom of my skirt flies outwards.
But Fräulein Tinky just rocks her head wearily from side to side. I sit down beside her and lift her on to my lap.
‘This is how we always sat by the wood burner at home. Do you remember, Fräulein Tinky?’ I ruffle her head. She’s still very cold and stiff, but that’s no surprise. Maybe she had to sit outside for hours in the box of donations before Grandma finally brought her in. ‘Have you seen the pretty stars up there?’ I say, pointing to the ceiling. ‘Mama did those for us. She knew we’d come here.’ I close one eye and with my finger draw the invisible lines for the Plough in the air.
I pull my legs on to the bed and curl up into a ball with Fräulein Tinky in my arms.
‘Don’t worry,’ I whisper to her. ‘It won’t be long now.’
Jasmin
It’s almost seven o’clock already. I don’t open the door until the knocking becomes persistent and I recognise Cham’s voice calling out, ‘Frau Grass? This is Chief Inspector Frank Giesner.’
He’s brought with him the policeman who took me home last week with my mother. I invite them in.
‘Hello, Herr Giesner,’ Kirsten says, stepping out of the bathroom and offering her hand to Cham and the other policeman.
Cham says hello to Kirsten and thanks me for having called him and being prepared to see him today. I apologise for not having made myself available yesterday, and I’m grateful when he doesn’t say in front of Kirsten that he tried to reach me on my mobile several times throughout the day. This is another reason why I’ve forced myself to see him today after all. If I continued to ignore him, I reckoned it would only be a matter of time before he turned up at my front door unannounced. Likewise it could only be a matter of time before Kirsten caught me fiddling with my mobile in an attempt to reject his calls. I doubt she would have understood how I could be so determined to lure Maja to my apartment and cut her down to size, but weasel out of assisting with the police investigation. Because the case is me, it’s both of us, Lena. I wish it could just be about you. I want to help you find peace. Help find you. I know you’re counting on me, and I’m trying to draw strength from this. I think of your smile, your photo, that carefree moment when you were happy and had no idea what the two of us would have to go through.
‘Let’s sit down,’ Kirsten says, making for the sitting room. When Cham follows her and walks past me, I notice the thin green cardboard folder under his left arm. That must be it, the piece of paper with the facial reconstruction.
‘It’ll all be very quick, you’ll see,’ Kirsten assured me earlier on, to give me the last bit of courage, the spark of effort I still needed to dial Cham’s number. ‘It’s purely a formality. You’ll look at the picture and identify the man. It’s quite simple: yes, that’s him. And finished. You don’t have to say any more. You put up with that face for four months, Jassy. And you made it. You’ll manage the few seconds Giesner needs for his files.’ I really wanted to believe her, but I probably didn’t appear especially convinced, so she added, ‘Trust me, you’ll feel a good deal better afterwards. This is the first step forwards for us.’ What I heard most clearly in that was for us.
‘I’m sure this isn’t easy for you, Frau Grass,’ Cham says as he sits beside Kirsten on the sofa and puts the cardboard folder on the coffee table in front of him. I try to ignore him sizing up my dishevelled appearance, the same stained sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms baggy at the knees, which I wore for my meeting with Dr Hamstedt and which at best seemed to confirm that I couldn’t be expected to make much of an effort at the moment. ‘But I hope you appreciate that we can’t spare you this, unfortunately.’
‘It’s all right,’ I say, stifling a cry of pain as I sit in my reading chair. ‘Let’s get it over with, then,’ I say, looking at Kirsten who’s giving me nods of encouragement. Cham nods too, then takes the piece of paper from the folder and holds it out to me. I take a deep breath; I breathe to calm my increasing heart rate, my heart that pumps and pushes, expanding its power until I feel it in my whole body rather than just my chest. Then I’m holding the paper in my hands, studying the face, his features. I’m both amazed and terrified. My index finger traces the lines. His picture flashes in my mind, overlapping almost uncannily with the image of him on a sheet of A4 paper, and then everything blurs before my eyes, the image blends with the three-dimensional reality, scraps of memory flare inside my head like shots, tearing me away. It’s a vortex, sucking me in, taking me with it; I screw up my eyes and when I open them again I’m back in the woods.
The accident. Bright colours explode before my eyes. Pain. The ground where I’m lying is cold and hard. Someone is bent over me. His voice: ‘Shit, are you hurt? Can you hear me?’
I blink weakly, there’s blood in my eye. His face keeps blurring.
‘Can you hear me? I’m going to call an ambulance, okay?’
I want to nod, but I can’t. My eyelids flicker.
‘You’ve got to stay awake, okay? Hello? Can you hear me?’
‘Frau Grass?’ a distant voice from another reality asks. It’s Cham.
‘Just give her a moment,’ another voice urges: Kirsten.
The headlights, they’re blinding me, the pain makes me feel drunk. The man, the driver of the car, is leaning over me. I can vaguely see him put his hand in his coat pocket. ‘I’m calling for help, okay? The ambulance will be here soon.’ I can relax for a moment. If I die now, I’ll be dying in freedom. And this man will have saved me. And I worship it, the face of my rescuer . . .
‘Is that him, Frau Grass?’
Suddenly I notice something else too. A sound, like a swishing through the air. I know this type of sound. I heard it earlier, I made it myself when I took a backswing with the snow globe and sent it flailing through the air. And I know the sound that comes afterwards too. Like dropping a watermelon on the floor – bam! That’s what it sounds like when you bash someone’s head in. I blink in horror. At first the driver is still kneeling over me, but when I blink again he collapses. Now his face is right beside mine, so close that I ought to be able to feel his breath on my skin. But I don’t feel anything; he’s not breathing. His eyes are wide open and frozen. I want to scream, but I can’t. Not here, not right now. Somewhere else, yes. The scream echoes around my sitting room, mangling the images. I curl up on my reading chair, twitching as if suffering an epileptic fit, everything in convulsion. Kirsten leaps up from the sofa, takes me in her arms. I’m kicking my legs, my face is hot and wet, my skin is burning.
‘Jassy! Everything’s all right, you’re safe. You’re at home and I’m here with you. Can you hear me, Jassy?’
‘Do you recognise him, Frau Grass?’
Yes, I do recognise him. And I scream – in fear. And I cry – for my rescuer. And I kick – against what this means. And Kirsten holds me tighter.
‘Just leave it, Herr Giesner! Can’t you see the state she’s in?’
You’re not well. You need help.
Back. I run. Across the grassed plot of land that surrounds the house and into the neighbouring woods. Branches scratch my skin, I can barely see anything in the darkness. There, suddenly, behind me. Was that a crack?
‘Is that the man who abducted you, Frau Grass?’
I could have sworn I smelled stew.
I could have sworn I only hit him once.
His face, shreds, red, everything red.
A room without a door handle. For your own security, Frau Grass.
‘Breathe, Jassy, nice and calm. I’m here, everything’s all right. Try to breathe.’
It’s purely a formality. You’ll look at the picture and identify the man. It’s quite simple: yes, that’s him. And finished. You don’t have to say any more.
‘I’m here with you, Jassy. You don’t have to be afraid. It’s over.’
I blink. I feel Kirsten’s heartbeat, strong and reliable. Her arms holding me tightly. Her warmth. And then I hear my own voice, saying, ‘Yes, that’s him.’
Matthias
Hannah’s lying on her bed, asleep. She looks like an angel, like my Lenchen. What a picture, spoiled only by the old cuddly toy in her arms, donated by some Tagblatt reader, and the faded dress she’s got on. We didn’t manage to go shopping today, but tomorrow I intend to go to town with Hannah, get her some new clothes and a new toy. Okay, maybe without Hannah, to avoid a scene in the shopping centre. But I have to be confident that Karin will be on top of things if I leave the two of them alone at home for a couple of hours. I carefully spread the bed cover over Hannah’s delicate body and whisper, ‘Goodnight, my darling.’
I cast a final glance at the little sleeping angel, then leave the door just slightly ajar. Karin has gone to see a friend of hers from her yoga course in Gilching, just down the road, presumably to rant about me.
I’m just going down the stairs when I hear my mobile ring from the living room, reminding me that she may have good reason for her resentment. I’ve forgotten to call Mark. I hurry down the last few stairs so the insistent ringing doesn’t wake Hannah.
The screen reads: Gerd Brühling, office.
‘Hello?’ I say. But before I can get any more words out, Gerd lets rip. He talks of screws loose, lost marbles and me not being all there anymore. I’m a silly old ass, unhinged, useless and dangerous even. I understand the words he’s saying, but not what Gerd’s problem is.
‘I assume we’re now over the part where you insult me?’ I ask, using the first pause for breath he seems to have taken in his tirade. ‘So would you be so kind as to tell me what this is all about?’
‘You’ve been sounding off to the newspaper about our work!’ Gerd pants; his outburst has made him run out of steam. I see him before me, sitting behind his desk, his belly tight beneath his wrongly buttoned-up shirt and his fat face bright red. ‘The article in today’s Bayerisches Tagblatt!’
Dear Child: The twisty thriller that starts where others end Page 25
