Dear Child: The twisty thriller that starts where others end

by Romy Hausmann

  ‘Why didn’t you just take the children away? Why did you expose them to this world which they’re not capable of understanding?’

  I think of Hannah, the zombie girl, whose smile nobody understands. Those terrible faces in the newspaper, the truth and the lies. The scrutiny which the children are also subjected to. Two more tragic curiosities. And tears flood my eyes. Tears of shame, of sympathy, of all the emotions washing to the surface at that moment. I’m crying for all of us.

  He puts his hand out to my face and wipes away a tear with his thumb. I cope with it.

  ‘I know it wasn’t ideal. But somebody had to look after them in the meantime, didn’t they? I’ve got a life outside of the cabin. What explanation could I have given for suddenly having these two children? I needed time to get everything prepared, too. Give up my job and the apartment. Look for a new home for us. What would it have looked like if I’d vanished from one day to the next? What would people have thought?’

  I try to picture him leading his other life, as part of normal society, as a man who buys colourful toothbrush mugs and nobody bats an eyelid. I can’t, I still can’t.

  ‘What now? What are we going to do now? Are we going to get the children and just disappear?’

  ‘I’ve already got Hannah. We just need to go and pick up Jonathan.’

  ‘And how are we going to do that?’

  ‘You probably haven’t heard of the heart-warming campaign launched by the Bayerisches Tagblatt. Two large cardboard boxes full of clothes, books and toys donated by readers. One of them went to the psychiatric clinic. Jonathan will have recognised his favourite trousers and the red T-shirt. He’ll know we’re coming.’

  ‘But you can’t just march into the clinic and take the child away.’

  ‘I didn’t have to go into the Becks’ house. Hannah came out.’

  ‘Hannah,’ I gasp. ‘Where is she? I want to see her.’

  He cocks his head – that look of his.

  ‘Please,’ I say when I think I’ve grasped the implicit request. You always have to say please and thank you. ‘Please take me to my daughter.’

  Another moment in which he just stares at me, scrutinises me, his head cocked, that look. Then he bursts out laughing, a laugh that is pure cruelty, a laugh I know from him. One second later he grabs the cord for the roller blind beside me, I hear a crash and it’s black in the room again, pitch-black.

  ‘You’re so pathetic,’ he hisses. ‘Pretending all of a sudden to show an interest in the children.’ Footsteps, I hear footsteps crossing the room slowly and then something metallic thrown to the ground. The key to the room.

  ‘But in truth you don’t give a toss about them.’ I slide on my knees, feeling the floor with small, panicky movements. ‘You let the newspapers write those lies. You let them say Hannah is malformed. You could have given them an interview to put things right. You could have at least complained to the paper.’

  I’ve got it, the key. I keep crawling, the key tight in my hand.

  ‘Sexual abuse – just that phrase in connection with the children! Just the speculation! I never touched them! You know that full well! I’d have never done that!’

  His voice thundering over me, his footsteps that seem to come from all directions. I reach a wall, but I don’t know which one.

  ‘What kind of a mother are you who allows something like that to be written? What kind of a mother are you who doesn’t stand up for her children? You haven’t even gone to visit them!’

  The wardrobe, I can feel the wardrobe. Now I know where I am. Where I need to get to.

  ‘You’re no mother at all!’ the voice booms.

  The door, the lock. I fiddle the key in, it slips and falls to the floor.

  ‘A woman who’s not good enough for any of this!’

  While my mind is snatching scraps of what’s happening here – flipping the fuse switches, the circle that’s now closing, waking up to him and the darkness, as I did that time in the cabin storeroom, the black room as a warning, a demonstration of his absolute power that still lets him play God, still lets him decide over my life, over the day and night, even here, in my own apartment, in the real world, the freedom that is no more than an impression while he, God, is still alive – I pick up the key and make a second attempt. It goes in, I turn it, I yank the handle, which squeaks, the door opens, I stagger out into the dark hall, close the door, brace myself against it, and now try to lock it from the outside. Resistance pushing against the door from the other side, the key falls to the floor again. I leave it, so what, I just have to get out, out of this apartment, into the refuge of the stairwell. I’ve almost made it to the front door, just a few more steps, when the voice says behind me, ‘Are you really sure you want to go without your friend?’

  Matthias

  The old banger clatters on to the pavement outside Jasmin Grass’s building. One hand is already on the door handle, while the other is switching off the engine. I jump out of the car and run to the entrance. An elderly lady has just gone inside and gives a terrified shriek when I squeeze into the hallway behind her, almost tripping over the suitcase she’s put down right behind the door.

  ‘Call the police!’ I bark at the woman, grabbing her shoulders. She’s shaking. ‘Did you hear me? You’ve got to call the police immediately!’

  I leave her and bluster up the stairs. As I know from looking at the bells outside, Jasmin lives on the third or fourth floor.

  What if you’re mistaken?

  What if he didn’t bring her here?

  Then I’ll have let him get away again.

  I banish all doubts and focus instead on the stairs.

  On the third floor there’s no bell with Jasmin Grass’s name, so I have to keep going, up another floor. The sweat runs into my collar, and my stiff old body is groaning under the strain. I reach the fourth floor. The first two bells I check rapidly aren’t the right ones. Then I do find the right apartment and for a second go completely stiff. It’s open a crack. Hannah, I think at once.

  ‘Please don’t shut the door anymore,’ I asked her only this morning, when she’d locked herself into Lena’s old room. ‘Leave it just a tiny bit open so I know you’re all right.’ Hannah, that gorgeous, good girl who always does what you tell her to. I take a deep breath, then cautiously open the door and slip inside the apartment.

  The hallway is dark, but I can make out a light from one of the rooms. And I can hear muffled voices. I creep further into the apartment, my entire body pounding. This time I’m going to get Mark. The pain simmering in my chest says it might be the last thing I ever do, but that doesn’t bother me. This time, Lenchen, I’m not going to let you down. For the last few steps I try to stay as close to the wall as possible to avoid casting a warning shadow which would alert Mark to my presence. The voices are clearer now.

  ‘We can still be a family.’ That must be Jasmin Grass.

  Someone gives a drawn-out sigh, a man. Mark.

  For a second it is totally silent. Then, without warning, so sudden that my legs almost give way in shock, there’s a clatter, a shrill scream mingles with a crash and I leap out from my hiding place, ready to take Mark down.

  Jasmin

  This is the end, we all know that.

  My kitchen, our kitchen, which used to be a place of laughter, conviviality, the heart of our home, has become a site of pain, a sphere full of anger and fear and despair and sorrow. There’s no longer any way out, not the one envisaged by God when he intruded into my apartment tonight to take me away. It’s as if this moment has become disconnected from the normal course of time; inside this room the world stands still.

  It all happened in quick succession.

  He shoved me from the dark hallway into the kitchen, where Hannah was sitting at the table, drawing by candlelight. A still life – Kirsten, silent, contorted and motionless on the kitche
n tiles. With a checked drying-up cloth gagging her mouth and blood on her face. Blood running from her temple and across her closed eyelids. She could have been dead or unconscious. As I know from experience, you can’t always tell by first glance.

  Hannah, by her standards sounding jolly when she greeted me with a ‘Hello, Mama!’ Me, rigid in the door frame, my entire body quivering, shuddering as if in extreme cold, a cold that would not allow me to breathe, gripping me tightly and shaking me.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said, before disappearing around the corner. I heard him at the fuse box, returning the little levers, one after the other, back to their original position.

  ‘Kirsten,’ I whispered.

  Kirsten didn’t react.

  ‘I told you to sit!’ He came into the kitchen, praised Hannah for her drawing and switched on the light above the cooker.

  ‘I’m not going to tell you a third time.’

  I hesitantly went over to the table and sat down. To my left, at most half a metre away, lay Kirsten, contorted, motionless, bleeding.

  ‘That’s a good girl,’ he said with a smile of satisfaction.

  I tried holding his gaze, not to allow myself to get distracted by the knife block on the work surface behind him. Not to allow myself to get distracted by Kirsten, whose pulse I ought to have checked, who I ought to be saving or mourning. She must have unsuspectingly opened the front door to him while I was asleep in my bed. And he’d struck her down.

  ‘Nobody had to get injured,’ he said, as if reading my thoughts.

  ‘I know. It’s my fault.’

  ‘Absolutely right.’

  ‘It’s not so bad, Mama,’ Hannah said, looking up from her pad. I could see the almost imperceptible upwards curve of her lips – Hannah’s way of smiling. ‘It was just a stupid accident.’

  I sniff.

  ‘Yes, Hannah, it was.’

  A soft groan: Kirsten.

  ‘You see.’ He’d heard it too. ‘The tough little cookie’s still alive.’

  ‘Please, leave her alone,’ I said with difficulty. ‘This is about us. I made a mistake, lots of mistakes.’ From the corner of my eye I detected a movement: Kirsten, lying no more than an arm’s length from the doorway to the kitchen. I shifted around on my chair to conceal her from him.

  ‘I disappointed you all. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Perhaps I can make it up to you. We can still be a family.’

  I don’t know when he noticed Kirsten trying to crawl out of the kitchen. Whether he’d been watching her pitiful attempt the whole time, maybe even secretly having a good laugh about it. Whether he’d just been waiting for the right moment when her trembling fingers touched the threshold. Or whether the realisation was sudden, because he’d been focusing not on Kirsten, but on my blatant attempt to play for time. In the blink of an eye he dived around the table, pounced on Kirsten and dragged her by the hair back into the middle of the room. In the blink of an eye I’d jumped up from my seat and was pounding my fists on his back, kicking his legs, screaming. In the blink of an eye I was lying beside her, simply shaken off like a bothersome insect. Only now did I notice the second man collapse to his knees in the doorway, his hand clutching his chest, eyes wide open, his face like colourless wax with deeply etched features distorted by shock. This man hadn’t been attacked, there had been no need for that. It was the realisation that had wrestled him to the floor. ‘Rogner?’ he gasped.

  A feeling washed through the room and hit me like a huge, icy wave. I recognised the name, but couldn’t remember where from.

  ‘Herr Beck,’ was all Rogner said, then, ‘Oh well.’

  This is the end, we all know that.

  Probably even Rogner himself, who now opens the top button of his shirt, as if the collar has become too tight. Matthias Beck, Kirsten and I are sitting in a row along the left-hand wall of the kitchen, all three of us impotent, passive, weak. Rogner doesn’t even have a weapon to keep us quiet. He doesn’t need one. Matthias Beck is feeling faint; I’m worried it might be his heart. His face is still as white as a sheet and pinched, while he has clenched his right hand into a fist and is pressing it to the left of his chest. Kirsten, who was struck down by Rogner, has a head injury that won’t stop bleeding. I press the cloth which was gagging her mouth to the wound, while her head rests wearily on my shoulder. And me, the cause of all of this, the cause of all the pain, I’m not in any state to rise up and launch myself at him, do something, try at least. After Rogner threw me to the ground in both the bedroom and the kitchen, my ribs are as sore as they were after the car accident, the pain as acute; every breath feels like I’m being stabbed by a knife. And I hate myself for it. I should be the one rescuing us, even just for the sake of making amends, even if it means me sacrificing my own life.

  Rogner is pacing up and down. I can tell he’s thinking. He’s thinking about the end. He will have to kill Matthias Beck and Kirsten, there’s no other way out. As for me, I’m not sure. Maybe he still intends to take me with him, for Hannah. I ought to have known. I can’t help thinking that I ought to have known. That I wasted precious time feeling sorry for myself and suspecting the children. I ought to have known, everything. After all, I know this man.

  ‘Listen.’ I try again. ‘I’ll come with you, okay? I can be your wife and a good mother. But in return you have to let Kirsten and Herr Beck go.’

  Rogner spins around. Gives a joyless, dry laugh.

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. Of course you’ll come if I want you to.’ He wanders over and looks me in the eye. ‘The question is whether I still want that, Jasmin.’

  I swallow hard several times while Rogner continues his brooding stroll around the kitchen. From right to left and back again, time after time, a caged tiger, an unpredictable wild animal. My gaze remains fixed on the microwave. Maja, I suddenly think. Maja, who I’d completely forgotten. Maja, who was going to come after work. Who will come, because she has no idea that the point of my telephone call was merely to lure her into my apartment to tear a strip off her. She must think I was intending to pour my heart out, provide her with the material for the article of her life. Although she’s late – she mentioned nine o’clock or half past nine, and it must be almost eleven by now – she will come, absolutely, she just has to. Maja, who can save us. In my excitement my breathing gets shallower. The moment I hear her at the door I will have to scream, scream at the top of my voice. I realise I’ll only have seconds before he beats me or shuts me up some other way, maybe with one of the kitchen knives. But I’ll make use of those few seconds. I’ll direct all my strength into this cry for help and hope that Maja’s reaction is the right one and she alerts the police. I’m startled from my thoughts when Rogner’s hand suddenly grabs my chin and moves my gaze from the clock to him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jasmin,’ he says, grinning. ‘But she’s not going to come.’

  I try, but fail, to grasp the sense of what he’s saying. He appears amused by the confusion on my face. He lets go of my chin and pats my head as if I were a stupid little puppy.

  ‘I know you had an appointment with Maja. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to continue to make do with me.’

  ‘I don’t understand . . .’

  ‘Oh dear, such a disappointment, isn’t it? And I thought you were smarter than that. But if it’s any consolation, Maja didn’t understand to begin with, either. She had, after all, been allowed to stand in for me when I was unwell. Apart from some articles – which, by the way, I disapproved of just as much as you did, Herr Beck, but which I’m afraid slipped through somehow – I have to say that she’s done a really good job. Under my guidance, of course. First she made friends with your neighbour. Old . . . what’s she called? Oh well, it’s not important. She was very chatty and immediately told her that she was cooking for you because there was nobody else looking after you. When she’d arranged to g
o and see her son she was worried about you. Who’d cook for you now? Well, of course Maja was only too happy to take on the responsibility.’

  This is like a torrent of cold water right in my face. He’d set Maja on me. Remotely, he knew how I was all the time. Had a laugh at my expense.

  ‘Are you saying—?’

  ‘Lars Rogner,’ he says very formally, not without a hint of disappointment. ‘Editor-in-chief, Bayerisches Tagblatt. You really ought to read the papers more, Jasmin.’ He grins again and now I realise where I know his name from. He wrote lots of articles about you, Lena. Perhaps even most of them. What a gruesome pleasure it must have been for him.

  ‘In Maja’s defence,’ he continues, ‘she thought the whole time it was about getting an interview. It was her job to get friendly with you, win your trust and keep an eye on you. When you rang up today and asked to meet her, the sweet little mouse was so excited. But in the end she had to appreciate that this was a job for the boss.’

  I imagine an open-plan office with people behind thin, grey partitions, telephoning animatedly. I can hear the noise of all those fingers clattering away feverishly at the keyboards. I see Maja in her starched white blouse with its raised collar, which she was wearing for the photograph on the online editorial page, and can scarcely believe that Kirsten and I would have just had to click a few more times before stumbling upon a photo of Lars Rogner. We’d have notified the police and now he’d be handcuffed in the cells. Then I picture him in my mind, slinking down the corridors of the editorial offices, on the hunt for someone he could set on me, selecting Maja because she’s dedicated, ambitious and, to cap it all, perhaps susceptible to his charm. And she has no idea that rather than furthering her ambitions she’s just part of his game. And I fear she’s delighted, she feels honoured. He has chosen her.

  ‘Did you . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, please!’ He raises his hands defensively. ‘Right now Maja’s in the office doing overtime. Unfortunately she wasn’t the only one at the Becks’ house yesterday after Hannah was discharged from the psychiatric clinic. And once you’ve lost the exclusive claim to a story, you then have to make a bit of an effort if you’re going to distinguish yourself from the competition. I suggested she get in touch with your ex-boss at the advertising agency. They met this afternoon. As I hear, you were sacked three weeks prior to your disappearance because one day you failed to turn up to work. He said you didn’t get over the break-up with your friend. Or maybe your problems go back further, they’re deeper-rooted. You didn’t have an easy childhood, did you? After your father died, you lived in a home for a few years until your mother came and took you back in. Nice woman, by the way, your mother. Nice, but quite damaged. You really were – how did she put it? – a difficult child.’ Rogner clicked his tongue disapprovingly, while I gasped for air a few times. ‘A good upbringing is so important, isn’t it? Anyway, the article is scheduled to appear in tomorrow’s edition, so I imagine Maja’s still got quite a bit to do. Let’s say she sends her apologies.’