by Helen Grant
As for me, I felt a certain sense of relief. The hostilities were out in the open at last. This was something concrete which the police could deal with. The charred bush, the broken glass scattered outside our door, these were things which might or might not have a meaning; sometimes I doubted their significance myself. But now the police would have to take action.
As I contributed what little I could to the story, I was conscious that this was the end between Michel and me. We were making a complaint about his father and brother. I imagined him glaring at me across a courtroom, his face blank with hate.
There was also the question of whether Michel had known what they were about to do. Perhaps that was the reason he had failed to turn up at school that morning; he wanted to place as much distance as he could between us. I thought of the time when he had asked me why my father wanted to find the Allerheiligen glass so badly, how he had seemed to be suppressing anger at my replies. Had he been fishing for information? The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed. I should have listened to Johanna’s words of warning. I began to feel the slow burn of anger. It would serve them all right, those Reinartzes, if the police arrested every single one of them, including Michel. Perhaps they would even impound that brute of a dog.
All of us waited for Herr Esch to say what he was going to do.
‘Well,’ he said at last, looking at my father very gravely, ‘we will talk to them.’
There was a long silence.
‘Talk to them?’ said my father slowly. ‘Aren’t you going to arrest them?’
‘It’s difficult,’ said Herr Esch.
‘But you know who they are!’ exploded my father.
‘Your daughter says she knows who they are,’ said Herr Esch, nodding at me. ‘But you and your wife said that you had never seen either of them before, and your daughter wasn’t in the house when they came.’
‘We could identify them if we saw them again,’ said my father. He scowled, his good looks suddenly saturnine. ‘Damn it,’ he said. ‘They threatened us.’
‘Yes,’ said Herr Esch calmly. ‘But what exactly did they threaten you with?’
‘Well…’ My father suddenly realized what Herr Esch was trying to say. ‘I can’t tell you the exact words,’ he snapped. ‘The man was raving like a lunatic. He wasn’t coherent half the time.’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘He could have been talking Platt. I can’t repeat it word for word.’ He glared at Herr Esch. ‘It was obviously a threat from his tone.’
‘Herr Professor –’ began Herr Esch in a regretful voice, but my father didn’t let him finish.
‘Look.’ He was on his feet now, his tone tight with suppressed fury. He thrust out an arm, pointing at the ram’s head, which still lay upside down in the middle of the table. It was alive with flies now; when he swung his arm around half a dozen of them lifted into the air, droning, and then resettled on the raw meat of the neck. ‘Look at that. Just look. You can’t tell me that isn’t a threat.’ He was breathing heavily; I could see that he was working himself up into a rage. ‘What other possible reason could there be for someone marching in here – into our private house – while we were eating and throwing that into the middle of the table? What other reason? Tell me that. Or is that normal round here? Maybe he thought we were having a pot-luck dinner or something?’
I saw Herr Esch’s mouth set into a hard line at this piece of sarcasm. ‘Herr Professor,’ he said coldly, ‘this is not normal behaviour here. We will have to speak to Herr Reinartz and try to establish whether it was him and his son who came here, and with what purpose. Please –’ he added, seeing that my father was about to interrupt again – ‘be assured that we will do this. We will even investigate whether there is any evidence of cruelty against this – unfortunate animal.’ His eyes moved to the ram’s head. ‘We will keep you informed.’
‘That’s it?’ said my father. ‘You’ll keep us informed? There are madmen running about here – who knows what they’ll try next time? And you’re keeping us informed?’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘We could be in danger. What are we supposed to do?’
Herr Esch looked him in the eye. At the other end of the table we heard Frau Axer shut the laptop with a faint snap.
‘You could always leave,’ said Herr Esch.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It never even entered my head to think that Michel would pick me up the following morning, now that the Reinartzes had come out and declared themselves our enemies. His absence the previous day told its own story.
Reluctantly my father agreed to drive me again. Both of us recognized the impossibility of Tuesday getting up early enough to do it; even so, I reflected, as I stood in the living room with my bag on my shoulder, impatiently tapping my foot and waiting for my father to come down, I was clearly in for a lot of ‘late’ marks. As I gazed up the stairs, willing my father to appear, I saw him cross the landing towards the bathroom. My heart sank. He was as fussy as an old-time film star about his appearance in public. If he was going to make himself look perfect every morning before we set off, I was going to miss the first lesson altogether every single day.
As the bathroom door closed I heard a faint sound from outside. I looked at my watch, then glanced at the front door. Surely not…
The next second a car horn sounded, once and then twice. Michel. He had come after all. It only took a split second for me to decide what to do. Michel was half a head taller than me and like his father he was lean but powerful-looking. None of this daunted me. I was burning with the cold fire of righteous anger: in my mind’s eye I saw myself yanking open the car door and giving him a titanic slap across the face. A tangle of savage thoughts fought for supremacy in my brain. Michel had certainly known what his father was going to do – otherwise why had he avoided me the day it happened? But if the Reinartzes wanted us out, why had Michel even offered to drive me to school in the first place? It could only be that he wanted to pick my brains, hence the questions about my father’s work. I had no idea what interest the Reinartzes had in stopping my father from searching for the glass, but I knew one thing: Michel had betrayed me. He must be stupid if he thought I was going to get into his car and just drive off with him as though nothing had happened. Or maybe he had come to gloat.
I dropped my school bag on the floor and went out of the front door without it, stalking swiftly across the courtyard on feet made hasty by anger. The green gate was open and I could see a glimpse of red bodywork on the other side. I thought that I would like to kick the side door of that tatty car in as well.
As I came out through the gate the horn was sounding for the third time. Somehow this simply made me angrier. Did he still think he could summon me like that? I balled my hand into a fist and banged it down hard on the roof of the Volkswagen as I rounded the back of it, hurting myself more than the car. Then I curled my fingers around the door handle and ripped the car door open.
‘Lin?’
I could swear Michel jumped; he had not noticed me coming out of the gate and going round the back of the car. He turned to me and I saw why.
He had the worst black eye I had ever seen. It had swollen up so much that the eye was almost closed, and the whole area was a terrible mass of deep purplish bruising, puffy and discoloured like some sickly overripe fruit. On his upper lip was a bloody cut that had barely scabbed over. He looked as though he had been in a car crash.
‘Oh, my God.’
The force of my anger was instantly derailed, as though it had suddenly run out of track and I was plummeting into thin air. I took a step back. I couldn’t help myself; he looked so terrible. I must have appeared totally aghast, because incredibly Michel tried to smile at me. The effect was horribly lopsided; the bruised side of his face was so swollen that it was almost immobile.
‘Oh, my…’ I could not stop myself gaping at him. ‘What happened?’
‘My dad,’ said Michel grimly.
‘What?’ I was so shocked that I could hardly take i
t in. ‘What did he… I mean why…’ I shook myself. ‘Look, can you wait a minute while I get my bag?’
I didn’t wait for him to reply. I dashed back to the house and picked up my school bag. I had been formulating an explanation for my father in my head, but I needn’t have worried. He was still upstairs in the bathroom. I rummaged quickly in my bag and found a sheet of paper and a marker. I wrote, Don’t need a lift, gone with Michel. Love, Lin in big black letters and left it on the table where my father would see it when he came down. Then I slipped back out of the house as quietly as I could, closing the door carefully behind me. If he heard me go and came after me, I’d never get away.
As I slid into the passenger seat of the Volkswagen, Michel was already gunning the engine.
‘We’re going to be late,’ he said.
I stared at him disbelievingly. ‘So what?’ I searched for words. ‘Michel, did your dad really do that to you?’
Michel didn’t reply. His gaze was fixed on the road ahead. He reached down to change into second gear and I glanced at his hand; the knuckles were scabbed over.
‘Michel.’ I reached out and put a hand on his arm. ‘Michel, talk to me.’
Still he said nothing, but once we were far enough along the track that the castle had disappeared behind the trees, Michel slowed the car to a halt and switched off the ignition.
‘Look, Lin…’
I could see that he was going to try to fob me off.
‘Michel, your dad can’t do that. You should go to the police or something.’
Even as I said this, I knew he wouldn’t. And what if he did? Supposing they said the same to him as they had to us – that they’d ‘talk’ to Michel Reinartz Senior? We both knew that would be about as effective as trying to negotiate with Godzilla – and after they had gone, Michel would be there at home again, with that ruffian of a father and the mysterious and inarticulate brother I had yet to meet, the pair of them ready to solve the problem with their fists.
Michel gave a heavy sigh. ‘He won’t do it again. I gave him a couple back. I’m not a kid any more.’
‘But…’ I looked at that terrible face again. ‘Why did he do it?’
An unpleasant suspicion welled up in my mind. I hesitated to put it into words – if I was wrong, it would sound as though I was horribly self-centred, thinking everything revolved around me. All the same, I realized, I had to ask.
‘Was it about me?’
Reluctantly he nodded. ‘He told me to stop picking you up.’ He sighed. ‘In fact, he told me to stop seeing you altogether.’ He looked at me, his good eye hard and defiant. ‘I told him to fuck himself.’
‘Shit, Michel.’ I leaned my head against the cool glass of the car window and shut my eyes. ‘And he beat you up for that?’
‘He tried.’
He did a pretty good job, I thought to myself.
‘You really should tell someone,’ I said aloud.
‘Maybe.’ I could tell from his tone that he wouldn’t. Michel reached for the ignition keys and started the engine up again. ‘Look, we should get going.’
‘Michel, he can’t go round doing stuff like that to people.’
‘He doesn’t go round doing it to people.’
‘Well, he shouldn’t do it to you.’
‘He lost his temper.’
‘That doesn’t justify it,’ I said hotly.
‘You don’t understand. He gets angry sometimes but not like this. I’ve never seen him like this. He just went mad. And afterwards…’ He shook his head. ‘He started crying. It was weird.’
‘It’s no use him being sorry afterwards,’ I said angrily.
‘I don’t think it was that. All this stuff came out about my mother.’
‘Your mother?’
I stared at him. I had never heard him mention his mother before, but I had drawn my own conclusions about that after meeting his rude and unkempt father. If I had been her, I wouldn’t have stuck around either.
‘He’s got this sort of idea that when she died…’ His voice trailed off.
She died? I thought. In spite of the matter-of-fact way Michel referred to it, I felt cold. Don’t be stupid, I scolded myself. She probably got sick… maybe she had cancer or something. You don’t have to see murder everywhere. All the same, I wouldn’t have cared to live out there at that run-down farmhouse in the dank shadow of the forest, with its overcrowded courtyard a graveyard for rusting machinery.
‘When she died…’ I prompted softly.
‘That it had something to do with the Allerheiligen glass.’
There was a long silence as I absorbed this.
‘Let’s not go to school,’ I said suddenly. I glanced at Michel. ‘Let’s go somewhere. I don’t know, a cafe or something.’
‘Lin…’
‘Don’t say no,’ I said as forcefully as I could.
Reluctantly Michel reached for the car keys.
‘Do you know somewhere?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘There’s an Imbiss in Traubenheim.’ He shot a glance at me. ‘But, Lin…’
‘Yes?’
‘Why do you want to go there?’
‘Because,’ I said grimly, ‘we’re going to find ourselves a corner, where there’s nobody else around, and nobody can hear what we’re saying, and then you’re going to tell me what the hell’s going on.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Imbiss in Traubenheim turned out to be a little snack bar that was about three times as long as it was wide; it looked as though it had been shoehorned into the space between the two half-timbered houses which stood either side of it. There was a large board outside, with a green and gold Bitburger beer logo on it, and a list of dishes containing a terrifying amount of fat and protein. Early though it was, the smell of frying was heavy on the air, irresistibly delicious but fatally unhealthy, like the scent of a Venus fly trap. I glanced into the glass cabinet at the front of the bar as we went in. The sausages lined up inside were enormous and glistening with grease. I wondered who would possibly attempt to eat one.
We bought two Cokes from the dour-looking man lurking behind the glass cabinet and went to a table right at the very back of the bar, where there was no danger of being overheard.
‘Right,’ I said firmly. ‘Talk to me.’
‘Lin…’ Michel spread his hands out helplessly.
I did my best to look him in the eyes, though the sight of that battered face made me wince.
‘Michel, don’t even think about lying to me. Tell me what’s going on. Why did your father beat you up?’
There was a long silence. Then Michel sighed. ‘I told you. He said I wasn’t to see you any more – not to give you lifts to school and to stay away from the castle.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…’ Michel hesitated. ‘I think he was scared.’
‘Scared?’
From what my parents had told me about the scene the previous day, it didn’t sound as though Michel’s father was scared at all; it sounded as though he had been the one doing the intimidating.
‘Michel,’ I said. ‘You know what he did yesterday? To my family?’
Michel said nothing, but he glanced away, his expression unreadable. He might have been ashamed, or angry, or simply confused.
I put my hand out and touched him lightly on the wrist.
‘I think you should stop giving me lifts to school. Dad can do it, or I’ll walk down and get the bus.’
‘No,’ said Michel stubbornly.
‘Michel, I don’t want to be responsible if your dad does something again. I don’t know what he thinks I’ve done but… maybe it’s better if you don’t drive me any more.’
‘I said no.’ Michel’s head came up and there was a flash of real anger in his eyes. ‘He’s not telling me what to do.’
‘But…’ I saw the dour-looking man at the other end of the room turn his head and realized that I had raised my voice. With an effort I lowered it until it was just above a whispe
r. ‘But, Michel… it’s not worth it.’
Michel looked at me, and in spite of the black eye his gaze was so frank that I looked away. Neither of us said anything as I sipped my Coke and studied the floral pattern on the plastic tablecloth as though it was the most fascinating work of art I had ever seen. My face felt warm; I had a horrible feeling I was blushing.
‘Michel,’ I said eventually, when I had begun to feel that the lengthening silence was worse than any possible gaffe I could make by speaking, ‘what did happen to your mother? What did your dad mean about the Allerheiligen glass having something to do with it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Michel. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. She died of an aneurysm. There was nothing strange about it. She just… died. She was in Kaufhof in Nordkirchen when it happened, looking for clothes for me and Jörg, and she just collapsed. They took her to hospital but she was already dead. There was nothing anyone could do.’
I sat in silence for a few moments, digesting this. Awful scenes arose in my imagination, of a woman of about thirty, with Michel’s dark brown hair and puppy-dog eyes, standing among the racks of children’s clothes, selecting something – a little T-shirt in blue, perhaps – and then crumpling without a sound, like a character gunned down in a silent movie. The same woman, sprawled on the floor with the contents of a rack of tiny clothes which she had pulled down with her, the blue T-shirt still clutched in one lifeless hand. Another shopper standing there with her hand to her mouth, staring. The shop staff coming running – a gangly assistant with a name badge pinned to the front of his shirt leaning over the fallen woman, his eyes round with panic…
‘That’s terrible,’ I said finally and inadequately.
Michel sighed. ‘I was little when it happened. I can’t really remember her.’
‘It doesn’t make sense, though,’ I said. ‘I mean, someone dying in the middle of a shop in a town centre… how can that have anything to do with the Allerheiligen glass?’
‘My dad thinks it did.’ Michel looked away, down the length of the bar, to where the dour-faced man was still lurking behind the counter, rubbing at the surface with a cloth. There was an appraising look on Michel’s face and I guessed that he was wondering whether the man was within earshot. He turned back to me. ‘He said my mother didn’t believe all the stuff about the glass being unlucky. She used to say that it ought to be in a museum, where everyone could see it, not hidden away…’ Michel paused and I had the sense that he was coming to a decision. ‘She said it was beautiful.’
