The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

by Helen Grant

  “But if he did do it…?”

  “Then it has to be handled properly. The police have to question him, and if it looks as though there is enough evidence that he did it, then it has to go to court. Do you know what that means?”

  I nodded.

  “And a court can’t decide to punish anyone unless there’s proof that they did something wrong. You can’t just decide that someone looks guilty, or that you think they did it. You have to be sure. And being sure means you have to have proof.”

  “Like what?”

  “Pia, I hardly think the breakfast table is the place to be discussing forensic science,” said my mother drily. I was used to her occasional digressions into Baroque vocabulary, so I simply waited for her to explain.

  “In this case we don’t even know exactly what happened to Katharina or those other girls. It’s always possible that they went with someone quite happily and that they are still…” My mother stopped herself. “That they will eventually show up safe and well. And then how would everyone feel if they had turned up on Herr Düster’s doorstep and beaten him up?” She sighed. “Isn’t it about time you were off to school? Another five minutes and you won’t be in before the bell rings.”

  I slipped out from behind the table. “But, Mama, what would be proof?” I persisted, reluctant to leave without closing the conversation to my satisfaction.

  “Well, it’s things like someone actually seeing the person committing a crime… or maybe finding stolen goods in someone’s house,” said my mother.

  “Or a body?” I asked.

  “Or a…? Pia, I don’t think anyone is going to find dead bodies in anyone’s house in Bad Münstereifel. Can we drop the subject? It’s gruesome. And some little people”-she nodded meaningfully toward Sebastian-“are starting to understand more and more these days.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Reluctantly, I went into the hallway to find my coat and the backpack that had replaced the now-babyish Ranzen. It was raining outside and I had three minutes to get to school before the bell rang. With a sigh I stepped out into the rain.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Boris says he’s definitely the one.”

  “How does he know?”

  Stefan and I were sitting on a wall in the Gymnasium courtyard. The stone felt glacial even through the thick jeans I was wearing. Stefan seemed unconcerned by the cold, even though his jacket was too thin for the time of year.

  “He says it’s obvious.” Stefan shrugged. “Everyone’s heard the rumors going around, about Herr Schiller’s daughter. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, he says.”

  “That doesn’t sound much like Boris-it sounds more like Frau Kessel,” I said.

  “Doch, well, I guess that’s where it started,” agreed Stefan. He kicked the heels of his sneakers against the wall, thinking.

  “My mother says there has to be proof before you can say somebody did something, like a crime or something,” I said.

  “If he took Herr Schiller’s daughter…” said Stefan.

  “But they didn’t ever get him for that, did they?” I pointed out. “He didn’t go to prison or anything. And Herr Schiller’s supposed to have stuck up for him. Surely he wouldn’t do that if he thought his own brother had taken his daughter away?”

  “Who knows? Grown-ups, sometimes I think they’re all crazy,” said Stefan with feeling. “If we were both grown-up, twenty or something, and you went off and married someone else, like maybe Thilo Koch-” Here he broke off, laughing at my disgusted expression. “Well, I wouldn’t kidnap your kids and murder them.”

  “If they were Thilo Koch’s kids maybe you should,” I said, shuddering at the thought. “Anyway, it’s still just a rumor. Nobody ever even found the body.”

  “Maybe she just ran away,” suggested Stefan.

  “Nee.” I shook my head emphatically. “Would you? It would be too cool having Herr Schiller as a father, if he were younger, I mean. Imagine all the stuff he could tell you. That one about the fiery man, that was really horrible. It was a shame you didn’t hear it.”

  “Hmmm.” Stefan raked a hand through his dirty blond hair. “Pity we can’t ask him about what happened.”

  “No way,” I said regretfully. “If he didn’t get angry, my mother would when she found out.”

  There was a silence as we both pondered this. Finally, Stefan said, “Well, someone needs to find proof.”

  “I suppose the police are doing that,” I said dubiously.

  “They haven’t come up with anything so far, or they would’ve arrested him.”

  “They did arrest him once,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, but they had to let him go, didn’t they? If they’d found something they wouldn’t have done that.” He paused, then added, “In fact, according to Boris, that time at Herr Düster’s house Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf said they didn’t arrest him, he was just helping them or whatever. You remember, when you were in England?”

  A hot flame of guilt spurted up inside me at the memory of the telephone calls I had made from Oma Warner’s house. That was months ago and still I hadn’t heard a thing about them, but it was too much to hope that the crime could be concealed forever. Oma Warner was old but she was definitely not senile. There was no way she could miss those calls when the bill came in, which it must do any day now.

  Worse, the defense I had so blithely imagined at the time, that the deceit was for the greater cause of solving the mystery blighting the town, was patently not going to hold up.

  The stray bits of information we had gathered had singularly failed to coalesce into anything solid; instead it was like trying to do a jigsaw, not realizing that you actually had two or three different jigsaws at the same time with all the pieces muddled up together. Here there was a section with a sleek black cat curled up in someone’s armchair; here there was one depicting a ruined castle by moonlight, and a boy running white-faced down the hill from it. Here was a single piece with a child’s shoe on it. None of them seemed to fit together to make a recognizable scene.

  I shook my head despondently. “So maybe he didn’t do it.”

  “Or maybe they just don’t have proof,” said Stefan.

  I slid off the wall. “This is stupid. We’re just going around in circles.”

  There was a gentle thump as Stefan’s sneakers also hit the ground. He hauled his bag off the wall and slung it over his shoulder.

  “So let’s get some proof.”

  I stared at him. “Very funny.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “What are you going to do? Break into Herr Düster’s house while he’s out, and search it?” A hot little prickle of excitement ran through me even as the words left my lips. It was the thing to do, of course; it was the thing all this had been leading up to. The question was whether we would really, really try to do it. This was in a whole different league from using Oma Warner’s telephone when she was out at bingo. This was like climbing to the highest platform at the swimming pool and deciding whether to dive off-no: this was like climbing up to the top of a cliff and deciding whether to dive off. Just contemplating the idea was like anticipating that sickening plunge.

  Now it was Stefan’s turn to stare. “I was going to suggest we follow him,” he said. “But you’re right, we should try to search the house.”

  “Stefan-” Hearing the idea on someone else’s lips, suddenly it sounded real and also completely crazy.

  “What?”

  “We can’t just break in… What if we get caught?”

  “We won’t get caught. And, anyway, who says we have to break anything?”

  I hugged my schoolbag to my chest. “Well, what else are we going to do? Knock on his door and ask if we can search the house?”

  “We could get in through the cellar.”

  “No way.” Now Stefan had me seriously concerned. We were discussing this as though we were really and truly about to get into Herr Düster’s house and turn it upside
down looking for dead girls. I shivered.

  I knew exactly what he was proposing about the cellar. Most of the old houses in the town had a grille or even a little trapdoor somewhere at ground level, leading into the cellar. In times gone by it would have been used to deliver fuel. Nowadays most of them were rusted up, covered with cobwebs-but still there. Now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure Herr Düster’s house had the trapdoor sort, two little doors set at an angle to the wall and fastened with a padlock. If we could find some way of removing the padlock it would be easy to just open the doors, hold on to the top of the frame, and slide one’s body down into the darkness below…

  “We’d never get in that way,” I said as firmly as I could.

  “Yes, we would.” Stefan’s voice was earnest. “Look, Frau Weiss is off sick today, anyway, so who’s going to notice if we’re not in class?”

  I looked at him in horror. “You think we should do it now?”

  “No, I just think we should go and look.” Stefan rolled his eyes. “I’m not that stupid. We’d never get in there in broad daylight, not with Thilo Koch’s Oma watching the whole street. When we get in there, it has to be at nighttime. After dark.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Walking up the Orchheimer Strasse I felt as though every eye in the street must be upon me. I dared not think what would happen if we ran into anyone we knew-such as Frau Kessel, for example. What a field day she would have if she found out the pair of us were playing truant.

  “This is a crap idea,” I hissed under my breath.

  “Stop worrying,” said Stefan. He smiled beatifically at a passerby. “Guten Morgen.” He sounded disarmingly polite and as innocent as a lamb.

  Herr Düster’s house was almost opposite Hilde Koch’s. There was no sign of the old lady, but still I felt uncomfortable, as though the small windows of her house concealed piggish little eyes that were watching our every move. Even the drooping remains of flowers in the window boxes seemed to be craning forward to listen.

  “Look.” Stefan nudged me in the ribs, then gave a low whistle of wonderment.

  Someone had indeed broken one of Herr Düster’s front windows; it had been hastily boarded up with what looked like a piece of white Formica. Never the tidiest house in the street, now it looked positively disreputable, like an old seaman with a dirty patch over one eye.

  Stefan wandered over to the house, with me following, trying desperately to restrain the urge to shoot furtive glances around me.

  The cellar trapdoor was more or less as I remembered it: two small doors that had once been painted crimson but were now the color of dried blood. There was a small metal handle on each; fastening them together was a heavy padlock. Looking at it, I felt relief.

  “We’ll never get that open.”

  Stefan squatted on the cobblestones and fingered the padlock. “We won’t have to.” He hooked a finger under one of the metal handles and pulled. “Look.” The handle was coming away from the door, flakes of rust crumbling off it.

  “Stefan!”

  “Shhhh…” He got to his feet, brushing the brown flakes from his fingers. I opened my mouth to tell him exactly how crazy I thought he was, but before I managed to get a single word out, someone interrupted me.

  “Pia Kolvenbach.”

  For a moment I really felt as though my knees would buckle under me.

  “Frau Kessel.”

  I turned with a horrible sensation of inevitability and found myself staring at a familiar Edelweiss brooch of quite stunning ugliness pinned firmly to a brown woolen bosom. With reluctance I raised my eyes to Frau Kessel’s face. Under the towering confection of white hair, the twin lenses of her glasses flashed as she tilted back her head, the better to look down her nose at me.

  “What are you doing?” She regarded me with distaste, but the glance she shot Stefan was pure poison. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  It was Stefan who saved us both from a fate worse than death, namely, being hauled back to the school in public by Frau Kessel, probably by the ears.

  “We’re doing a project.”

  Frau Kessel swiveled toward him with the oiled precision of a machine-gun post rotating to face its target.

  “Indeed. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners, young man?” When Stefan looked at her blankly, she added tartly, “I have a name.”

  “We’re doing a project… Frau Kessel,” said Stefan with a sangfroid that took my breath away. How he could remain unmoved under that basilisk glare was beyond me. He flourished a slim ring binder that he had managed by some sleight of hand to remove from his schoolbag. “Old buildings in Bad Münstereifel.” Frau Kessel looked as though she might take the binder from him, but he was too quick for her; it had already disappeared back into his bag.

  “And what precisely does this project have to do with this house?” demanded Frau Kessel, nodding toward Herr Düster’s house; I had the impression she avoided saying Herr Düster’s house on purpose, the same way she would have avoided greeting him by name.

  “We have to write down the words on the front,” said Stefan without missing a beat.

  Automatically we all looked upward. Sure enough there was an inscription carved into one of the horizontal timbers, though it had weathered badly; all that could be read now were the words In Gottes Namen: in God’s name.

  “Hmmph,” said Frau Kessel disapprovingly. She eyed us suspiciously over her spectacles. “Couldn’t you have found a better example?”

  “They’ve already been done,” said Stefan.

  “Is that so?” said Frau Kessel. She sniffed. “I don’t believe anyone has written down the inscription on my house. I am sure,” she added, “that I would have noticed if any young people had been hanging around outside.”

  “Your house has one too?” asked Stefan in tones of intense interest. I shot him an evil glance: Don’t go overboard, or the old Schrulle will make us go and look at it. It was too late.

  “Of course it has. I’m surprised you didn’t know, especially if you are supposed to be doing a project about it,” Frau Kessel informed him. She patted her monstrous coiffure. “It is considered significant, I believe.”

  “Fascinating,” said Stefan in such an enthusiastic voice that even Frau Kessel was suspicious; her eyes narrowed. “No, really,” he went on earnestly. “I would love to see it.”

  “Hmmm.” Frau Kessel eyed us both doubtfully. “Well,” she said eventually in a grudging voice, “I suppose you can come and look at it. But you can make yourselves useful and carry these.” She handed us each a bulging cloth bag.

  “Yes, Frau Kessel,” we chorused obediently. I adjusted my grip on Frau Kessel’s shopping bag, as ever apparently stuffed to the brim with bricks and lumps of iron. She wheeled about and set off up the street with the pair of us trotting behind her.

  “Stefan-” I hissed under my breath.

  “Yes?” he answered from the side of his mouth, without turning to look at me.

  “What are you doing?”

  He kept his eyes fixed on Frau Kessel’s brown woolen back. “I want to find out what she knows.”

  “What, you think she did it?”

  “No, Dummkopf. But she knows every single thing that happens in this street.”

  “You’re nuts.” I shook my head.

  With relief we dumped Frau Kessel’s shopping bags on her doorstep. She unlocked the door and carried the bags inside; for a moment I thought she was going to shut the door on us and Stefan’s efforts would be wasted, but her vanity got the better of her. She could not resist coming back outside again to point out the most interesting features of her house. We duly admired the inscription, which simply read, God protect this house from evil. Evidently a previous inhabitant of the building had shared Frau Kessel’s obsession with Evil in Action.

  “Well?” said Frau Kessel, hands on hips. We gaped at her. “Aren’t you going to write it down?” Dutifully we pulled out pens and notebooks and copied down the words. I ho
ped Frau Kessel would not notice that I was writing across the top of my English homework.

  “Hmm,” she said grudgingly, “it’s nice to see the school encouraging an interest in local history for once.” She sniffed. “There are few enough people around here who take an interest in their own town.”

  “Yes, Frau Weiss-she’s one of our teachers-she says a lot of important stuff is being forgotten,” said Stefan. “She says once the old people of the town have died, it will all be lost forever.”

  I observed signs of an internal struggle on Frau Kessel’s face at this point; the desire to prove that she, too, was a repository of invaluable information about the town was fighting with the reluctance to be styled one of the old people of the town.

  If Stefan noticed this, he gave no visible sign of it, but went on innocently: “We’re going to interview some of them if we can. Frau Koch, well, everyone says she knows everything about the town.”

  “Do they?” said Frau Kessel grimly.

  We both nodded enthusiastically as though our heads were on springs.

  “Hilde Koch may look old,” said Frau Kessel severely, “but it may surprise you to know that she is actually seven months younger than I am. I am sure there is nothing she could tell you about the town that I couldn’t.”

  “We didn’t think of that,” said Stefan. “We thought you were a lot younger than that.”

  I shot him a sideways glance: Don’t overdo it. Surely even Frau Kessel wouldn’t swallow a blatant piece of flattery like that? But she did.

  “Well,” she said, favoring Stefan with a grisly smile, “the years have been kind.”

  Privately I wondered what she would have looked like had they been unkind, but I stifled the thought before it could creep into my expression.

  “Of course, I can’t spare more than half an hour,” she went on. “And don’t think I won’t be watching you every second you’re in my house.”