The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

by Helen Grant

  Boris, obeying the instincts that would no doubt serve him well in his future encounters with the law, denied any knowledge of Stefan’s whereabouts. Eventually, however, the matter weighed on his mind to the extent that he actually decided to do something about it. Perhaps he could no longer enjoy the bottle of Jägermeister he had filched from his father’s drinks cabinet, or perhaps it was the Jägermeister that did the talking when he rang the police (anonymously, of course) and told them what he had seen.

  The police had other things on their minds that evening, but all the same an officer was dispatched to check the scene. As he stood prodding the front wheel of my bicycle (sadly bent under the weight of Boris’s trampling feet) with the toe of his boot, he was summoned by Hilde Koch, who was hovering on her doorstep, terrifying in a hairnet and revolting old Birkenstocks, her nightdress hastily covered by an outdoor coat.

  Frau Koch was not interested in abandoned bicycles; she wanted to know what the police were going to do about the noise and nuisance suffered by God-fearing people who were awakened in the middle of the night by a bunch of kids driving a monstrous car with tail fins up and down the street.

  The mention of kids might have been the thing that caught someone’s attention. It turned out that two policemen sitting in their patrol car down by the station had also seen a large car with tail fins going past, with passengers both in the front and back, but it was definitely being driven by an elderly man. It was probably nothing (such was the prevailing opinion), but a patrol car was sent to check it out. In the deep snow there were virtually no other cars on the road, so it was relatively easy to track Herr Düster’s Mercedes to the Eschweiler Tal.

  The two cops in the patrol car were the genial Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf and a younger man whom I didn’t know; I think his name was Schumacher, like the race driver. Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf wasn’t feeling as genial as usual, being forced to abandon his thermos of coffee to drive up a track in the snow. When they reached Herr Düster’s car, he assumed the “kids” mentioned by Frau Koch had been joyriding, and had abandoned it there. He told Schumacher to get out of the car and take a look.

  The younger man started to ask why it had to be him, but he saw Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf’s expression, brows drawn together and mustache bristling, and decided to take the line of least resistance. He got out and went to look at the Mercedes. The windows were patchy with condensation so he opened the back door and looked inside.

  There was no one in the car. He closed the door, and was wandering around to the rear to look at the license plate when Stefan came running up. He had an odd feverish look about him, two spots of high color standing out on his cheekbones, his face otherwise waxy and pallid.

  “You’ve got to come,” he panted.

  It took a while for him to persuade the two policemen that he was not an underage joyrider. Sitting in the back of the patrol car with melted snow dripping from his clothes and boots and his voice ragged with excitement, almost bouncing on the seat in his desperation to get away, he did not make a very convincing witness, especially once Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf had recognized him.

  “You’re the Breuer boy, aren’t you?” Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf glanced at Schumacher. “The same family as Boris Breuer,” he added significantly.

  “He’s my cousin,” said Stefan impatiently.

  “Are you sure he wasn’t driving this car, young man?” asked Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf sternly.

  “Yes!” said Stefan frantically. He was squirming in anguish on the seat.

  “Then who was driving the car?” Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf wanted to know.

  “Herr Düster,” said Stefan. The two policemen looked at each other.

  “Düster? From the Orchheimer Strasse?”

  “Yes.” Stefan nodded.

  “And you say he has this girl-Pia Kolvenbach?” Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf’s voice was stern.

  “Yes.” Stefan realized what Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf was getting at, and suddenly he was confused. “No. I mean…”

  But Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf was already reaching for the door handle. “You stay here, young man,” said Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf severely.

  “But I want to come with you,” said Stefan instantly. He was rewarded with a very uncompromising stare from Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf.

  “You stay in the car. Do I have to lock you in?”

  “No,” said Stefan unhappily, subsiding back onto the seat.

  The two policemen got out of the car and walked toward Herr Schiller’s car. The door was still yawning open and there was a dusting of snow on the driver’s seat, but no sign of Herr Schiller or anyone else. Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf was still not sure whether he was dealing with juvenile joyriders, a couple of senile old men who had taken it into their heads to go walking in the snowy woods in the middle of the night, or an actual criminal: the person responsible for the disappearances. He thought Stefan was saying anything that came into his head in hopes of staying out of trouble, and of me he had seen no sign; he was not even convinced I was out there. He decided to take a brief look around.

  And thus it was that the two policemen found me there in the Eschweiler Tal, not a stone’s throw from the site of the haunted mill, almost catatonic with hypothermia, and hanging on for dear life to-Herr Düster.

  Herr Düster was clasping me to the front of his green woolen hunting jacket, crushing me to him so that afterward I had the mark of one of the polished horn buttons on my cheek. He was preventing me from turning around again to look at the charred and loathsome thing lying there on a scorched patch of earth from which all the snow had melted, its blackened claws outstretched as though making one last attempt to grab me. When the policemen reached him, Herr Düster turned his head and looked at them quite levelly.

  “Johannes Düster?” said Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf, and Herr Düster inclined his head.

  Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf looked at his partner, Schumacher, but Schumacher was not looking at him or at Herr Düster. He had stepped forward to look at what was on the ground, the shriveled and blackened form, and he was vomiting noisily into the snowy bushes.

  It was some time after we had gone, Herr Düster and Stefan to the police station and myself to the hospital in Mechernich, that the police discovered the body of Daniella Brandt. Herr Schiller, whom I had thought was my friend, kindly Herr Schiller, who let me have coffee and told me that if something needs to be done you should do it, even if you are afraid-Herr Schiller had carried her in his arms when his car could go no farther in the snow, and placed her body in the low cave that the local people call the Teufelsloch, the Devil’s Hole. I had hated Daniella the day she came to our house and I screamed at her. She had revolted me with her blatant desire to get close to the epicenter of my family’s pain. Now she herself would be the center of attention, her name spoken on every street corner, her family’s anguish unraveled for everyone to examine.

  People said afterward that it was unbelievable that a man of his age could carry a child of that size. But great emotions can give us great power, and Herr Schiller was carrying a lot of hate in his heart. They think he meant to burn the body, so that there would be nothing to link him to the crime, just as there was nothing recognizable about those things that bobbed and wallowed in the well under Herr Düster’s house. He had intended that Herr Düster should be blamed for the existence of those, were they ever discovered.

  No one knows exactly what happened out there in the snow, not even me, and I was the closest to him when the gasoline he had brought for Daniella’s funeral pyre ignited like a bomb and sent him screaming and staggering into my path, a human inferno. Did he lift the gas can to pour its contents onto the corpse on its pall of pure snow, and accidentally drench himself? Did he know he had soaked himself in gasoline, and if so, why did he light a match? No one knows the answers to these questions.

  Daniella did not burn; her body was spared that indignity. The policeman who peered into the Teufelsloch, scanning it with his
flashlight, found her on her back with her hands folded across her stomach, as though lying in state. A poisonous scent of gasoline hung over her. Still, she looked as though she were sleeping, but for the deathly pallor of her face: a perfect snow princess, with ice crystals sparkling on her white skin and her light hair. The policeman who found her thought that perhaps some spark of life might still lurk within the coldly beautiful form. It was not until he had pulled aside the collar of her jacket to try for a pulse that he saw it was no use.

  Chapter Fifty-four

  I was drifting in and out of an uncomfortable sleep when my parents arrived at the hospital. My mother burst into the room, closely followed by my father and a harassed-looking doctor in a blue smock.

  “Can I please ask you-” the doctor was saying plaintively, but my mother ignored her.

  “Pia? Oh my God, Pia!” My mother was all over me like a maternal whirlwind, kissing my forehead and cheeks, touching my hair. “Are you all right, Schätzchen?”

  “I’m fine,” I started to say, but it came out as a croak. Even smiling felt like too much of an effort; my mother’s anxiety was exhausting.

  Abruptly she burst into tears. My father laid a tentative hand on her shoulder.

  “Kate? She’s all right.”

  “She’s not all right,” sobbed my mother. “Look at her. Just look what that-that-”

  She let out a wail and the doctor’s hands came up in a gesture of protest; there were other patients to think of; if she would just-

  I think she would have told my mother to leave, except that a bell was ringing somewhere else, and she had to leave the room herself.

  Silently, my father enfolded my mother in his arms. I saw him hug her to him, rubbing her back, kissing her hair. She was letting him, I realized, and even in my exhausted state I felt the first spurt of hope.

  “She’s all right, Kate, she’s all right,” my father was murmuring over and over again, and my mother was clinging to him. She cried for what seemed like a long time, until the last sob turned into a cough and she started trying to wipe her nose with her fingers. She raised her head at last, and her face was only inches from my father’s. For a moment they stared at each other.

  Then my mother said, softly, “I’m sorry, Wolfgang,” and putting up her hands she very gently pushed him away.

  I could hardly bear to look at my father’s face.

  “Kate,” he said, and there was a question in his voice.

  Slowly my mother shook her head. She stood there for a moment, not looking at him, her head turned to one side. Then she said rather too loudly, “One of us should stay here. Why don’t you get the bag from the car?” The last few words were tremulous.

  My father came up to the bed and took my hand for a moment, pressing it with his strong fingers. Then he turned and went out of the room. He must have come back sometime later with my mother’s bag, but by then I was asleep.

  I was in Mechernich Hospital for two days, and it would have been longer had my mother not broken me out of there. If you are admitted to a hospital in Germany you can expect to be there for a full seven days-or, at least, you could when I was a child and the health insurance was still paying for anything you cared to have. My mother, however, was having none of it. She packed up my things and buttoned me into a new fur-lined jacket. Then she dragged me downstairs to the car.

  “Oma Warner’s arriving this afternoon,” she informed me as she reversed out of the parking space, so rapidly that I feared for the cars parked on the other side.

  “Are we going to get her?” I asked.

  “No.” My mother rammed the car into gear and gunned the engine. “She’s taking a taxi from the airport this time. I said we’d pay.”

  “Oh.” I supposed this was for my benefit; the invalid had to be rushed home and kept there.

  The mention of Oma Warner made me uncomfortable: there was still the matter of the telephone bill, though I hoped it might somehow have been forgotten among the recent dramas. I looked out of the window at Mechernich speeding past. It was as bad as Middlesex: gray streets and rain-slicked pavements. The weather was never so severe here as it was in Bad Münstereifel for some reason, and the snow that had fallen had quickly thawed. Brown mush clogged the gutters. I leaned my forehead on the cool glass and sighed.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  I saw Herr Düster only once more in my life. I wouldn’t have seen him at all, but for my father’s insistence. My mother was adamant that I should not have anything more to do with him. Even when it was clear that he was completely innocent of any kidnapping or killing, now or ever, she was still furious with him for taking me to the Eschweiler Tal, where I might have died of hypothermia-or worse.

  In fact, in her mind the entire town was guilty by association. It was typical, she said, that every person in the whole place could spend all their spare time discussing other people’s business and still miss what was really going on under their very noses. The sooner she, Sebastian, and I were out of the place forever, the better.

  Oma Warner didn’t add anything to this, but she pursed her lips and went about the place silently, folding things and shelving things and packing things up for the move. She and my father behaved as though they were ambassadors from hostile countries, too polite to indulge in open warfare, yet unable to be warm to each other, even at Christmas. Unexpectedly, however, she came out on my father’s side when I raised the question of whether I might see Herr Düster.

  My mother said I was visiting him over her dead body, but both my father and Oma Warner thought it would be a good idea. Nowadays people like to use that American word closure, but Oma Warner just said she thought it would help me to put the whole thing behind me for good.

  I wasn’t allowed to go to Herr Düster’s house. Instead he was permitted to come to our house, where my mother (who opened the door) eyed him suspiciously. She let him stand on the doorstep for a few seconds too long before she stepped back to let him in. Herr Düster doffed his hat and stepped somewhat gingerly into the hallway.

  “Guten Tag, Herr Düster,” said my mother; she was unable to keep the chill out of her voice.

  “Guten Tag, Frau Kolvenbach,” said Herr Düster politely. He didn’t try to win her over with smiles and compliments; charm was never his strong point, and anyway, my mother was distinctly unreceptive. She hardly said another word to him before she ushered him into the living room, where I was waiting.

  “Pia? If you want anything, just… yell,” she said with heavy emphasis as she closed the door. I didn’t reply. I imagine if Herr Düster had lived in the town for much longer he would have had to become inured to innuendo-since Herr Schiller was not there, he was the only possible target for gossip and speculation. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire is the town motto: they should have engraved it on a crest and stuck it on the front of the Rathaus. I doubt Herr Düster’s reputation as town reprobate would have improved even if it had become known that he had grappled with half a dozen murderers single-handed and brought the lot of them to justice.

  Herr Düster put his hat on the coffee table and sat on an armchair a little distance from me. He did not seem inclined to say anything.

  “Herr Düster-thank you,” I blurted out in a rush.

  A faint smile sketched itself on his gaunt features. “I hope you have fully recovered?”

  “Yes-thank you.” I fell silent for a moment. There were so many things I wanted to ask him, but I could not think of any way to introduce the topics. If I had been a little older, as I am now, I might have known the way to do it. But at that time the tremendous age gap yawned between us.

  “I’m very sorry,” said Herr Düster at last. I looked at him, wondering why he was sorry.

  “Herr Düster?” I couldn’t help it; my voice was trembling. “Why do you think he did it?”

  “My brother, Heinrich, was sick,” he replied gently. “I think he had been sick for a long time.”

  “Yes, but why did he do it?”
r />   Herr Düster sighed. “I don’t really think it is a suitable topic for a young lady…”

  My heart sank; he was going to pull that favorite stunt of adults on me, and tell me that I was too young to understand.

  “But I think all the same you have a right to know,” he finished. He gazed past me for a moment at a blank spot on the wall. I knew he was seeing things that had happened a long time ago.

  “Did you know that Heinrich was married?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, and he had a daughter. Frau Kessel said I looked a bit like her,” I added, and saw a shadow pass across Herr Düster’s face.

  “A little, yes,” he said. “Gertrud was perhaps slightly thinner than you are. But that was the war, of course…” He paused, remembering. “Heinrich was never an easy person, not as a young man. He had a hardness in his heart somehow. Once he made up his mind to do something… he could be very hard on other people, too, if he made a judgment.”

  I said nothing to this; none of it sounded like my Herr Schiller. But on the other hand my Herr Schiller would not have been in the Eschweiler Tal on a freezing night, trying to splash gasoline on the corpse of a young girl. I shivered.

  “Hannelore-Heinrich’s wife-she was very beautiful, you know,” went on Herr Düster.

  I thought of Frau Kessel, spitting venom in her kitchen: Both brothers were mad about the girl, but she chose Heinrich. Who can blame her?

  “Is that a picture of her in your house?” I blurted without thinking.

  Herr Düster looked at me. “No. I don’t believe there is a photograph of her anywhere in existence.” He did not say, Why should I have a photograph of her? I noticed. I thought there was a slight undercurrent of wistfulness in his voice, as though he should like to have had one.