The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

by Helen Grant

  “In case we need to get away in a hurry,” said Stefan. “Like a getaway car.”

  I felt a familiar twinge of disquiet; Stefan always seemed to talk about the venture as though it were a scene in an action movie.

  “Are we going to have walkie-talkies too?”

  He gave me a look of disdain. “Don’t be silly.”

  I was going to bring a flashlight, and Stefan was going to raid his father’s toolbox to get a hammer and chisel to open the cellar doors.

  “How do you know what to do?” I asked dubiously. “You haven’t ever done that before, have you?”

  “No, but…” Stefan’s voice trailed off. I was relieved; I really did not want to hear him say they do it all the time in the movies. I feared if I heard him say that I would lose my nerve altogether.

  Once Stefan had opened the doors we would climb inside and pull them shut behind us, in case anyone should pass by or look out of their window; it was unlikely, since Bad Münstereifel was generally pretty dead by nightfall, but you could never tell. It would be just our luck if Hilde Koch were to get out of bed at midnight to ease her ancient bladder and couldn’t resist a peep out her front window.

  “And once we’re inside?”

  “We search,” said Stefan simply.

  “What about Herr Düster?”

  “Well, obviously we can’t search upstairs,” said Stefan impatiently. “But he’s not going to have hidden anything up there, anyway, is he?”

  “Why not?”

  “Serial killers never do,” said Stefan with authority. “He’s probably put the bodies in the cellar.”

  “Yeuch,” I commented, shuddering. “And if we find something, what do we…?”

  “We get proof.” Stefan said it firmly.

  “Proof? You mean…?”

  “We have to get something, and bring it out with us.”

  “Stefan, if we find a dead body I am not touching it.”

  “Who said you have to, silly? We can get a bit of the clothes or something.”

  I gazed at him hopelessly. There really was no escape this time. We really were going to do it.

  “All right,” I said.

  I still thought I might put the expedition off. When Stefan brought the topic up again I prevaricated: there was no point attempting it with the weekend coming up-the Christmas market was open until late from Friday to Sunday, so the town center would be packed with people. There was a cold snap and snow was expected-we would freeze if we went out of doors at midnight, and we would leave tracks in the snow if we did. I had a couple of long days at school coming up and needed the sleep. I thought I had a cold coming on…

  “Pech gehabt,” said Stefan with a supreme lack of sympathy.

  “It’s not just tough luck-I’m really sick…” I sniffed theatrically.

  “Look, Pia.” He sounded excited. “Herr Düster has gone away. We have to do it now.”

  “Now?” I looked about me wildly.

  “I mean tonight.”

  “How do you know he’s gone away?”

  “I heard that old Schrulle Frau Koch telling someone in the bakery at lunchtime. She said he left this morning and good riddance.” Stefan looked at me, his eyes shining with the fervor of a fanatic. “Don’t you see? This is our chance! We have to do it tonight.”

  “OK,” I said. I felt sick.

  The rest of the day passed in an agony of suspense. When school finished I deliberately walked home via the Marktstrasse, avoiding the Orchheimer Strasse, where Herr Düster’s house lurked like a trap. I wouldn’t let Stefan walk me home.

  When I arrived at the house, both my parents were there, but were occupying spaces as far as possible from each other. My mother was energetically cleaning out one of the kitchen cupboards, perhaps deciding who was to have custody of her extensive Tupperware collection, and my father was enthroned in the wickerwork armchair in their bedroom with a file on his lap and the telephone within reach. Sebastian was sitting in front of the television with his thumb in his mouth and a heap of toy cars lying neglected around him, his round eyes glued to the screen, where the Teletubbies were cavorting among gigantic rabbits and futuristic windmills.

  No one seemed to notice my arrival; we had all become like individual planets traveling on their lonely orbits around a pitiless sun, our paths concentric, never meeting. I fetched myself a glass of apple juice, then sat at the kitchen table and tried to do my homework, but it was impossible to concentrate.

  In the end I closed the files and went outside to find my bicycle. It was icy cold outdoors, and already beginning to get dark; the street-lamps made little impression on the gloom. I would have to leave the bike out in the street and trust that neither of my parents noticed it and made me put it away again. I wheeled it into the space between my father’s car and the wall in the hope that it would not be seen. I lingered for a while in the street, hunched against the cold, and hacked aimlessly at the ice in the gutter with my heel, but after Frau Kessel had passed and said, “Hallo, Pia Kolvenbach,” in a disapproving tone, I realized that I had better go indoors; I was simply drawing attention to myself.

  At suppertime I tried to break the silence by asking my mother, “Is it true that Herr Düster has gone away?” but she merely said, “Mmmm,” and continued to gaze out the window at the darkened street with a distracted expression on her face. Her fingers were forever working at her dark ponytail; the ends were becoming lank.

  My father was reading, or pretending to read, the Kölner Stadtanzeiger. Every so often he would put the paper down in order to reach for something-the plate of cold Wurst or the butter-but he never asked anyone to pass him anything. He preferred to stand up and reach over the table, looming oppressively over the rest of us.

  When the telephone rang it was a relief. I was sliding out of my place to go answer it when my father got to his feet, raising one large hand to indicate that I should sit down again, he would do it.

  “Kolvenbach.”

  I stared listlessly at my plate, wondering whether Sebastian could be fed the last piece of salami, like a dog waiting under the table.

  “What?”

  My father’s voice rose as though he were shocked. My mother turned her head for an instant but then resumed her vague surveillance of the window. Her lips were pursed slightly as though in irritation, and I guessed she thought my father was trying to get attention that she was determined not to give.

  “When?”

  This time my mother did not even move her head. My father listened for a long time. “Mein Gott,” he said at last, and then, “Do you want me to-?”

  There was a further silence as he listened to someone speaking at the other end, then he said, “Bis gleich,” and put down the receiver. He came back into the kitchen.

  “Kate.” It was almost a shock hearing him speak my mother’s name out loud. The silence from my mother was ominous. “I have to go out. I have to-”

  He got no further. “Just go,” said my mother.

  “Don’t you want-?”

  “Just go,” she said again.

  My father’s brows knit together but he said nothing. He went back into the hallway and removed his winter jacket from its hanger; a moment later the front door banged shut and he was gone. I looked at my mother.

  “I wonder what-”

  “Eat your supper, Pia.”

  I did eat my supper, though without relish. Something was going on outside, I knew. I could hear voices at regular intervals as people passed our front windows. It was not one of the days for the Christmas market, so there was no particular reason for so many people to be out on the street.

  I saw my mother glance at the window herself and guessed that she was regretting her refusal to hear what was going on. Still, she was determined not to advertise her interest. She finished her own supper in silence and then cleared up with a lot of clattering of plates and slamming of drawers.

  “Pia, go and get ready for bed” was about the only remark she ad
dressed to me in the entire evening; she had closed up like an oyster shell. I went upstairs and changed into my nightdress. When I was ready for bed I went down and kissed my mother, but it was like kissing a waxwork. She hardly seemed aware that I was there.

  I went back upstairs and put my head around Sebastian’s door. He was fast asleep already, curled into a ball with the covers wrapped around him so that he looked like a spring roll. My father was still out. It seemed that no one had the slightest interest in me or in what I was doing.

  I climbed into bed and lay there for a very long time, my eyes tracing the familiar outlines of my room as they adjusted to the dark. Sleep seemed unimaginable. I had set my alarm clock for half past midnight; after some thought I hopped out of bed again and went to close the door, in the hope of preventing the alarm from waking anyone else.

  Eventually I heard the creaking of my mother coming up the stairs, and shortly afterward the groaning and clanking from the pipework that meant she was running a bath. A house as old as ours is as garrulous as an old lady: it can tell you everything that is going on. I slipped into an uneasy doze from which I awoke, disoriented, as my mother’s bedroom door closed.

  I groped for my alarm clock and pressed the little button that illuminated the dial. It was nearly eleven o’clock, and I had not heard my father come in. If he were not home before twelve thirty, I dared not try to leave the house: he would surely look in on me before he went to bed and, besides, there was the actual risk of meeting him on the stairs.

  In the event, however, he came home a little after half past eleven; I heard the front door close with a bang and then the sound of him stumping heavily up the stairs. I curled into a ball facing away from the door and closed my eyes, feigning sleep. I heard the door open but my father did not come in as he normally did, to straighten my covers or kiss my forehead. I simply heard him give a very heavy sigh, and then the door clicked shut again.

  A little later the toilet flushed to the accompaniment of more percussion from the plumbing, a door closed, and there was silence, or as much of it as our aged house could manage.

  Perversely, after my father came home I really did fall asleep at last, so deeply that it took me some time to surface after the alarm went off. For what seemed like a long while I was dimly conscious of its relentless beeping nagging at me, then suddenly I snapped into wakefulness. I almost fell out of bed in my eagerness to push the button down and silence the racket.

  My heart was thumping so hard that it felt as if it might leap into my throat and choke me. My fingers still around the alarm clock, I listened. There was no sound of anyone else stirring; the two closed doors between me and my parents had done the trick, or perhaps they were both too worn out by the constant tension between them to wake.

  I put the bedside light on, and listened again; still nothing. I was really going to have to get up and go out. As quietly as I could, I slipped out of bed and dressed myself in jeans and a dark sweater. Just as I was about to open the door, I had a sudden afterthought: plucking my largest teddy bear from the chair in the corner of the room, I stuffed him into the bed and arranged the quilt over him. To a critical eye it was not a very convincing effect, but if one of my parents were simply to look into the room without putting the light on, it might just fool them. Then I opened the door.

  Now that I was committed to action, I really hoped that my parents would not wake up. I couldn’t imagine how I would explain what I was doing fully dressed on the landing in the middle of the night. Going down the stairs was agony; every creak and groan from the ancient boards threatened to give the game away.

  In the darkened hallway I fumbled for my down jacket and my outdoor boots. When I had finished lacing the boots I went to the door and discovered one thing that had worked in my favor; my father had forgotten to bolt and chain the door when he came in, being perhaps too exhausted to remember.

  Carefully I opened the door. Instantly, icy midnight air hit my face. Snowflakes were whirling down from the leaden darkness above the rooftops. I slid out the door and pulled it gently shut behind me. Then I waited for a moment, but there was no sound from the house, no light suddenly coming on. The street was very dark. The white Christmas lights that festooned every building in the town from October to January had been switched off, leaving only one feeble old-fashioned lamp at the other end of the street casting a faint circle of light.

  I retrieved my bicycle from its slot between my father’s car and the wall, and wiped snow from the seat with my sleeve. I would have to take care; the cobbles were slick with snow too. After one last glance about me, I got onto the bicycle and cycled off into the night.

  Chapter Forty-three

  You’re late” was the first thing Stefan said to me as I dismounted from the bicycle.

  “I nearly didn’t come at all,” I told him. “My father didn’t come home until really late.”

  “Oh.” Stefan sounded uninterested. “Get the bike in here, quick.”

  I wheeled the bicycle into the alley. Stefan followed me in, glancing about to make sure that no one was around. He need not have worried: the street was deserted. The snow was starting to settle; if I had arrived five minutes later I would have left telltale tracks in it.

  “Have you got the tools-the chisel and stuff?” I whispered.

  “Yes.” We looked at each other.

  “We’d better get on with it,” said Stefan. “I’m freezing.”

  It’ll be warmer indoors, I thought, with a sudden frisson as I realized that once we were indoors we would be inside someone else’s house-we would have broken in. I followed Stefan out of the alley. He moved quickly and silently over the cobblestones, keeping close to the wall in a way that I strongly suspected was copied from the movies.

  We crouched down close to the cellar doors. Stefan unwrapped the hammer and chisel from the rag he had used to carry them in. He shot me a glance.

  “Go on,” I said. I was not going to touch the tools myself; I had no idea what to do.

  “Have you got a flashlight?”

  I nodded, slipping my little light out of my pocket. I switched it on and attempted to train the beam on the cellar doors. Carefully, Stefan positioned the chisel against the padlock, then took a swing with the hammer. The resultant clank sounded horrifically loud. I winced, screwing my eyes shut, but when I opened them I was disappointed to see that the padlock was still as tightly fixed to the doors as before.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  “I can’t help it,” Stefan hissed back crossly. He shook his head, trying to get his snow-dampened hair out of his eyes. “Hold the light straight.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  Stefan took another swing. Again there was the appallingly loud clank followed by “Scheisse” in muffled tones. “Did you hit your fingers?”

  “No.” Stefan sounded agonized. “I jarred my hand.” He nursed his hand. “You try.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just try.”

  Reluctantly, I took the tools from him. I made a few experimental chips with the chisel but the sound seemed enormous, a neon sign announcing our presence, and I could see I was not making the slightest impression on the padlock.

  “It’s not going to work,” I whispered.

  “Scheisse, Scheisse, Scheisse.”

  “Well, what do you expect me to do?” I said fiercely. I stood up. “You have another go.”

  I handed the hammer and chisel to him; I could not face even holding the flashlight for him anymore. I slid it into my pocket. Inside me emotions were washing back and forth like a tide. When Stefan had failed to break open the padlock, my first feeling was one of relief: honor had been satisfied, we would not have to go into Herr Düster’s house, I could cycle home and creep back into my bed before anyone knew I was gone. We had done everything that anyone could.

  Then came the inevitable reaction, like a persistent undertow dragging me back out to sea: Katharina Linden, Marion Voss, Juli
a Mahlberg… if something needs to be done you should do it. I closed my eyes, but still I could feel the cold creeping into my flesh in spite of my down jacket-a damp insinuating chill, the cold of a night that no one should put a dog out in, let alone a child. It was impossible not to think of those girls, Katharina and the others-were they lying out there somewhere, far from the warmth of their beds, pale faces lapped in wet black leaves, the snow in their hair gathering but never melting?

  It was not possible simply to stand there and peer at Stefan through the darkness. Disheartened, I went to stand on Herr Düster’s doorstep, where the slight recess offered some meager protection from the snow. I glanced up and down the street; all was still and silent. I couldn’t help but wince at the clink of the chisel on the padlock. Even if Stefan managed to get the padlock open, it was going to be blatantly obvious what we had done.

  Hugging myself, I leaned against the door. Like the rest of the house, it was old and uncared for. The wood felt rough and weathered under my touch. As well as a newish metal lock there was still a brass doorknob, tarnished with age, and underneath it the old keyhole, the worn edges giving it the appearance of a toothless old mouth. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I slid my freezing fingers around the doorknob and gently turned it. With an audible click the door opened.

  For a moment I stood there dumbfounded, with my fingers still gripping the knob. Herr Düster’s house yawned in front of me, the interior a black pit.

  “Stefan.”

  “What?” came the reply, in an irritable stage whisper.

  “Stefan, the door’s open.”

  “What?”

  “The door’s open.” I heard him get to his feet and a moment later he was by my side.

  “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. It just opened. He can’t have locked it.”

  “Mensch.” Stefan sounded impressed.

  “Stefan-maybe he’s at home.”

  “No way. Frau Koch said he’d gone.”

  “So? Maybe she’s as big a storyteller as her grandson.”