‘Do you know the film?’
‘No.’
‘I do, though. It’s about a serial killer as well. Mr Brooks is secretly observed at work by a photographer called Smith. But Smith doesn’t go to the police. Instead he blackmails Mr Brooks so that he can accompany him on his night-time trips.’ Aaron hears Niko’s breath slowing. ‘Is there a DVD player in here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are the walls decorated? Photographs, posters, postcards?’
His silence is so deep that you could throw a stone into it and never see it again.
When it becomes unbearable, he says: ‘Just a drawing.’
This time Niko’s silence presses Aaron against a wall that she has built herself. It is an infinity before she hears his voice again. ‘It’s from a newspaper article, by a court artist. From the trial, back then. You’re in the witness stand.’
The wall, built over sixteen years, collapses. Aaron is hurled into the chair in Moabit district court. She clings to the armrest for support as she answers the questions of Boenisch’s defence lawyer. His strategy is based on diminished responsibility: he wants to ensure that his client is sent to a psychiatric hospital. Boenisch is staring at Aaron the whole time. A fly crawls along his underarm. He doesn’t notice. Her eye darts to the courtroom artist. His charcoal scratches on the notepad.
‘Jenny?’ Niko asks, bringing her back.
‘You said he suffocated the woman with a plastic bag. What sort of bag?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Transparent or printed?’
She hears him scrolling on his tablet. ‘Doesn’t say.’
‘Call Forensics.’
Niko phones Forensics. ‘C&A bag. With the logo.’
‘So she was allowed into the cell unsupervised?’ Aaron asks.
‘Of course. She had keys to every block.’
‘Did anyone see her going in downstairs?’
‘Hang on.’ He scrolls down. ‘There were two jailers in the guard room. She said hello, she was in a good mood. No one noticed that she didn’t come out.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Half-past three. It was the beginning of recreation. You know what happens then. Chaos. The jailers are under a lot of stress.’
‘And she got off work as early as that?’
‘She wanted to do some overtime.’
‘So Boenisch must have killed her between half-past three and a quarter to four. And then?’
‘He stayed in his cell, no one was interested. They locked the door at half-past nine. Someone on the late shift looked in on him briefly, but didn’t notice anything. Presumably he had hidden the corpse under his bed.’
Aaron goes into her inner chamber. Now she’s in the loneliest place in the world. She retreats in here when she wants to see everything from a great distance and therefore more clearly. She hears her voice from a long way away: ‘So that’s it until the next morning?’
‘Not quite. At half-past one in the morning something happened. Boenisch pressed the emergency button in the cell. A jailer looked in on him. Boenisch complained of a bad headache and was given some aspirin.’
I’m sure he was delighted with that. Knowing what’s under his bed while they look after him and pay him respect.
‘They had a regular check at six in the morning. He was lying beside her in the spoons position.’
‘How many cups were used?’
Niko scrolls. ‘Two.’
‘Milk, sugar?’
No scrolling. She was the only one who would ask that question.
‘Why is that important?’
‘Was she raped?’
‘No.’
‘What injuries did she have?’
‘Broken larynx.’
‘What do the walls look like?’
‘Painted white.’
‘Nothing else?’
Long pause. ‘Black smears. Opposite the bed.’
‘How high up?’
‘About half a metre.’
Aaron leaves the inner chamber. ‘What do you think?’
‘Boenisch broke her larynx so that she couldn’t scream, and pulled the bag over her head. She defended herself and her shoes rubbed against the wall.’
‘Why wasn’t Melanie Breuer missed at the exit desk? She would have had to clock out.’
‘They were having a farewell party.’
Hence the fastidious check.
‘Now they’re in serious trouble.’
*
She goes back down to the guard room with Niko. Burnt toast, coffee turning bitter in the pot for hours. ‘I’d like to talk to the two people who saw Dr Breuer coming in the day before yesterday.’
‘Schilling is off sick.’
‘And the other one?’
‘Special training.’
Aaron reads between the lines: You’re just trying to pin something on us.
The prison officer who brought her to Boenisch’s cell smells of cigarette smoke and yearning glances at his watch. ‘Any the wiser?’
‘Since when has Boenisch had a DVD player in his cell?’
‘No idea. Must have put in an application. As I say: pure luxury here.’
‘Had he seemed different over the last few days?’
‘I never gave him a cuddle.’
Niko snaps at the man: ‘Do you think it’s funny that he spent the whole night next to a corpse?’
‘I don’t think anything’s funny around here.’
She asks: ‘Which prisoners was he in close contact with?’
‘Bukowski.’
Niko would have asked the same questions if he had been on the case. But the Department was only asked for administrative assistance.
The guys from the Fourth Homicide Unit probably don’t want to deal with a blind woman. ‘She used to be one of yours. Are you being her nursemaid?’
He yells at the officer: ‘Can you be more precise? Why’s he in, since when, where does he work?’
‘Armed robbery. Four years. Car repair workshop.’
‘Take us there.’
*
Black metal gate on rollers. An angle grinder squeals. A soldering iron does a spot weld, splat-splat-splat, there’s a smell of burnt sparklers. Aaron shields the flame of her lighter against the wind. Outside, an announcement at Holzhauser Strasse U-Bahn station comes over the wall. ‘Stand back from the platform edge!’
Bukowski is brought out. ‘Hi there. Got a cig?’
The phlegmy rattle in his voice is one big warning to him to stop smoking. But it’s also an excellent soundbox. Aaron sees muscles, tattoos, a bull neck. She holds the pack out to him, gives him a light, catches the smell of fresh liquid soap.
I bet you won’t guess that I’m blind.
Niko asks: ‘How well do you know Reinhold Boenisch?’
‘So so.’
The administrative employee smokes too. ‘Don’t talk crap. You’re always hanging around together.’
‘He tried to get too close. I didn’t want any of that.’
‘That’s right, you’re a good person.’
‘That’s what I always say.’
‘Did you notice anything unusual about Boenisch lately?’ Aaron asks. ‘Did he keep himself to himself, was he disturbed?’
‘He’s always disturbed. He says there’s a party going on in his head.’
‘Did you know he was seeing a shrink?’
‘We all do. Did you ever see her? Really hot. Sorry. I shouldn’t say that to you, should I?’
Aaron knows that he would be grinning all the way to the top of his head if his ears weren’t in the way. She stamps out her cigarette. She’s been practising for a week. ‘Mr Bukowski, a man like you wouldn’t have someone like Boenisch as a friend. He’s a big guy, but he isn’t good at defending himself. Men who murder women are pretty far down the pecking order in this place. He needs a fighter to protect him, and you’re that guy. In return he gives you some of his wages. Can we agree on that?’
Bukowski snorts.
Niko says: ‘Your business partnership is over, Boenisch is going to be transferred anyway.’ His voice is confident, authoritative. Aaron knows that tone, the one he used in Naples the first time they met to declare, quite calmly, “Ten million isn’t a problem.”’
‘And?’
‘Telly in the evening for as long as you want.’
Bukowski thinks.
‘Have you got a girlfriend waiting for you outside?’ Aaron asks.
‘Why?’
‘Two hours in the contact room.’ She already feels the need to smoke again.
‘Can I have another cig?’
Aaron gives Bukowski her last one. She sees him rolling the cigarette back and forth between thumb and forefinger, and smugly blowing a smoke ring.
‘He comes and talks to me on Sunday. Wants to know can I beat him up. I think he’s taking the piss. But he means it. I whacked him a couple of times. He has a screw loose.’
3
The corridor is endless. She notices her footsteps getting slower and slower. Niko stops by the open door.
‘You don’t need to do that.’
‘I do.’
In the contact room she immediately hears the excited squeak of bedsprings. An officer shouts, ‘That’s enough.’
She holds out her hand. Whenever they greet anyone, Aaron is always faster, so that she doesn’t need to try to find the other person’s hand. She would never touch Boenisch if it wasn’t absolutely necessary; the very thought makes her want to throw up. But Aaron wants to read his hand.
He grips her hand with both massive cuffed paws. They are damp and quivering with anticipation.
What does he look like, sixteen years on?
His voice has the pleading undertone that she knows and has never forgotten. ‘I’m so sorry that you’re blind. So sorry.’
Here, let me give you an erection.
‘I want to speak to Mr Boenisch on his own.’
Niko snorts: ‘Out of the question.’
She pulls him a little way away. Her heels tell her that there’s another metre of air between her and the wall. Aaron whispers: ‘If it makes you feel any better, chain him to the radiator.’
‘Forget it.’
‘He won’t say a word if you’re here.’
Niko reluctantly brushes Aaron’s hand away, thinks for a moment and goes.
Shifting chair, metal on metal, footsteps, slamming doors.
*
The bullet entered the back of her head and passed through both hemispheres of the cerebral cortex. But the optical nerve was undamaged. Aaron sees very clearly. She takes her bearings from breathing and the voice, and has learned to direct her eyes ten degrees above the position of her interlocutor’s mouth so that he has the impression of being looked at.
But in interrogations she does something different. The sighted person tells the blind one things that he wouldn’t confide in anyone else. Because the blind person can’t see you turning red, kneading your hands, staring into the distance, wrestling for words. He thinks. It’s like a confession. The sighted person thinks he’s safe behind the black curtain that separates the blind person from him, but he’s blind too.
Aaron looks past Boenisch. She wants him to feel superior to her.
She sets her phone down on the table and starts the recording. His breathing is quick. He can hardly wait for her to ask the first question.
‘Are you happy with the food here?’
He exhales a stream of sour air, so disappointed, so disappointed that it isn’t a perfect first sentence.
That’s why it’s exactly the right one.
‘Yes.’
‘You work in the laundry. Do you get on with your colleagues?’
‘I suppose.’ He could cry, because she’s messing everything up.
‘Do they treat you well?’
Boenisch groans.
‘What is it?’
‘One of the guards beat me up. My ribs are black and blue. Do you want to feel?’
‘We’ll have to report that. Let’s do it later.’
Aaron continues unmoved for the next five minutes: how often his aunt visits him, whether he would rather watch television in the common room or on his own, when he turns out the light in the evening, how good the reception on his transistor radio is, the quality of his mattress. All subjects that she’s absolutely fascinated by.
The novel is only the packaging. It’s about the film.
When she notices that Boenisch is about to go mad, she asks: ‘How do you like Mr Brooks?’
At last. He gasps happily for air, and Aaron is back in that hot August sixteen years ago, when she was studying at police academy on a six-month internship at the Sixth Berlin Homicide Unit and was assigned to the special unit that had been set up a few days before.
*
Two lawyers from a Charlottenburg chambers with over a hundred partners had disappeared without trace just a week apart. Both had worked until late in the evening; the night porter at the office block was the last one who saw them alive. Of course a connection was drawn with one of the clients of the chambers. But the chambers specialized in boring tax law, and the women had never been involved in the same case.
And they seemed not to have anything to do with each other out of the office.
No ransom demands. There wasn’t the slightest trace.
Aaron was given the job of making contact with the families, who were growing more desperate by the day. She could see it on her colleagues’ faces; it was hard always coming out with the same phrases: Don’t give up hope. We’re doing everything possible. If you like, of course you can have counselling.
Soon the faces of the husbands and children wouldn’t leave her in peace. The files eventually took up two metres on the shelf. About a hundred people from the area were questioned. Friends, relatives, colleagues, neighbours, staff and members of a gym. The possibility was even considered that the women might have had a secret lesbian relationship and gone into hiding.
Aaron read everything until she knew each sentence off by heart.
The night porter had been questioned four times.
So Dr Marx took the lift straight to the underground car park at about eleven o’clock?
Yes, about eleven. I was about to go upstairs and do my rounds, and she was in the lift when the door opened. I said: ‘You go on down, Doctor, I’ve got plenty of time.’
The next time:
I know it was exactly eleven because I looked at my watch: it must have been something very important if she’s been in the office for so long, I thought. She pressed the wrong button and ended up with me in the foyer. I wished her a pleasant evening. She didn’t talk to me.
And then:
It must have been five to or five past. She wanted to go back up because she’d forgotten something. Probably papers. She was rattled about something.
How do you mean?
Just a bit strange. Curt.
The interrogations were carried out by various officers and filed away in different dossiers, which was why no one had noticed the contradictions. What time was it exactly? Did the woman talk to him or not? Had she pressed the wrong floor or did the lift stop in the foyer because the porter had pressed the button? Did she want to go down or up? If the latter, why had he not gone up with her if he was going on his rounds anyway? Had he gone to sleep, and had no idea when the woman had left the building? But in that case why would he have tied himself up in contradictions? He would only have needed to claim that he was somewhere in the building and hadn’t a clue when she went home.
That night porter was Reinhold Boenisch.
*
He tries to lean forwards. Aaron hears the handcuffs jerking along the radiator. She forces herself to do something kind to Boenisch and moves her chair towards him half a metre.
He exhales gratefully. ‘I’m ashamed that I watched that film. I shouldn’t have done. It aroused me a lot.’ His voice is quive
ring. ‘Do you know it?’
‘Yes.’
His breathing is pure ecstasy.
‘How long have you had it – and where did you get it?’
‘Not long. Somebody recommended it,’ he says evasively.
An important sentence. Aaron listens to the echo of its meaning.
‘Who was it?’
‘Somebody.’
‘Somebody you like?’
‘I don’t know.’
Certainly not Bukowski. The idea of choosing a psycho-thriller hiding behind a trashy title as a cover for Mr Brooks so that it didn’t stand out among Boenisch’s other books and got past the censors is too clever for him.
‘I shouldn’t have watched that film.’
Again the handcuffs scrape. Aaron allows Boenisch another ten centimetres or so.
‘I’m so glad you came that time. So glad. You saved my life. You were my—’ He’s crying, can’t go on talking, his flip-flops slap on the floor and he can’t get out the whirl of words that fills his mouth.
It’s such an effort to reach out her hand and stroke Boenisch’s shoulder that she gets a cramp in her arm. He eagerly stretches his shoulder towards her. ‘My angel. Thanks for knocking at my door.’
*
Yesterday she was in Paris on a joint investigation between the BKA and the French anti-terror unit RAID. When, between two meetings, she heard Niko’s voice on her voicemail for the first time in five years, she couldn’t clear her head for several minutes, she was tongue-tied. Over the hours that followed she was dealing with an Al-Qaeda sleeper arrested in Wuppertal who had been caught with plans to carry out attacks in France. She got through it somehow. Then she went outside, smoked a cigarette and heard the hum of the huge, breathing building. I won’t do it. You can’t force me to. But suddenly she found herself thinking about her athletics training at school, how she missed the mat when pole vaulting and broke her elbow. After everything was healed she went to the sports ground. She knew she would be scared of that bloody crossbar for ever if she didn’t vault at least one more time. After that it was fine.
So Aaron called Wiesbaden and asked her secretary to inform the Department and book her a flight from Orly. She Googled the Berlin weather report for the third of August sixteen years ago. That’s how she knows that it rained in the evening, for the first time in ages.
In the Dark Page 4
