The Glass Demon

by Helen Grant

  When we finally stepped out from under the trees and approached the castle, I was unsurprised to see blue lights flashing and what seemed to be an inordinate number of uniformed police everywhere. Someone saw us and shouted something, and then they were all running towards us. The flashing lights, the running, the shouting, seemed like a distant uproar, a tsunami perceived from the bottom of the sea. I drifted on my own undertow, not caring about any of it as long as I could keep Michel’s hand in mine. I hung on to him as though my life depended on it.

  Someone took us over to the ambulance that was parked outside the green gate. I knew what the ambulance was for and the waiting stretcher. Nobody had bothered to put my sister on the stretcher; there was no point. She would be photographed first, I supposed. I wondered if they had moved her or whether she was still lying in the same place, looking as though she had been frozen in the act of crawling across the hard earth.

  The police did not leave us alone for a second. The two officers from Bonn who had questioned Tuesday at the castle that time appeared. I listened to their questions but found it difficult to formulate replies. The things they asked, about times and movements and sequences of events, seemed unrelated to what had happened. Even in my detached state, though, I could hear the suspicion fizzing in their voices. Who could blame them? They had a dead girl and two teenagers who had walked out of the forest with blood on their hands. Their suspicions grew when Michel and I managed – not very coherently – to communicate to them the fact that somewhere in the woods there was apparently another victim, an elderly man who (so they interpreted our wandering explanation) had been struck over the head and his body concealed.

  A paramedic came out of the ambulance and examined my injured hand. While he was fixing up a support for my fingers there was a considerable amount of urgent conversation between him and Frau Ohlert, the blonde policewoman from Bonn. I was too exhausted to follow much of what was said, but I gathered that she wanted Michel and me to take the police back into the forest. She was pressing the paramedic to say that I was capable of doing it; she seemed to think that the ‘other victim’ might be found in time if we moved quickly enough. Michel tried to interject something at this point and earned himself a very evil look. Evidently Tuesday was no longer on the list of suspects; now we were.

  While the discussion was still going on, my father came out of the castle, followed by another officer; clearly nobody was taking any chances. When he saw me he broke into a run, and I saw the looks which flashed between the policemen, the sudden alertness in their body language. They were half-expecting him to do something desperate – attack me, perhaps, or make a run for it into the forest. Everyone seemed confused about what was happening.

  ‘Lin!’ said my father. ‘Thank God! When I found… I thought…’

  He didn’t say what he had thought. He began to put his arms around me but I did not respond. My grip on Michel’s hand tightened.

  ‘What happened? Where have you been?’

  The questions tumbled out of my father without leaving any space for me to reply. I saw that he was weeping. I let him hug me but I did not let go of Michel’s hand. I stood passively, waiting for him to let me go. His tears meant nothing. If he had kept his promise, perhaps none of this would have happened.

  Herr Schmitz, the policeman with the incongruous American accent, came over and began to talk to his partner, and then to ask questions. Gradually the story emerged, although what they made of it is hard to say. When Michel first mentioned the church in the woods they looked sceptical and when he told them about the windows expressions of frank incredulity crossed their faces. It was just the same with them as it was with Father Engels; they took us for a pair of attention-seeking fantasists. All the same, they had one dead body on their hands and apparently a second one somewhere in the woods. They continued to ask questions.

  My father, listening to the tall policeman’s occasional questions in English and doing his best to follow the conversations in German, slowly began to piece things together. His expression went from one of intense concentration to one of disbelief and then finally of terrible urgency. I knew what that look meant. Any minute now he would be interrupting Michel, wanting to know this and that about the glass, trying to establish whether it might really be what Michel said it was. I was standing there with a broken hand and reeking of petrol, his son had narrowly missed being spitted like a pig and he had found his eldest child lying dead inside the castle; in spite of all this he wanted to know whether the stained glass we were talking about was the real McCoy. The dead feeling I had inside seemed to sink further into me, as though something heavy were dragging me down. I could not even hate or pity him. I watched him with dull eyes and waited for the inevitable.

  He insisted on going with us into the forest. He tried all the predictable arguments, about the unique importance of the Allerheiligen glass, the need for it to be properly assessed and so on. When this failed to make any impression, the police never having heard of Gerhard Remsich, he took another tack. I was his daughter and I was obviously traumatized and injured. He was not prepared to give his permission for the police to drag me about all over the forest unless he was allowed to accompany me. Never mind that I was old enough to be considered a suspect. He made it sound as though I was six years old.

  In the end they buckled; it was the argument about not allowing his daughter to be led off into the woods that did it. We set off, with police both ahead of and behind us, not taking any chances. I stumbled along behind Michel, looking neither left nor right. The paramedic had given me something for my hand and the pure white agony which had been racking it had faded to a dull throb. My hair was sticking to the sides of my face. Every so often my father would get close to me and try to ask me something about the glass, but I ignored him and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

  We came to the place where the fence had been trodden down and the ground scarred with ruts, and a little later to the spot where we had to leave the path. I tried to ignore the fevered mutterings of my father at my shoulder, as though he were some tempting devil. A few minutes later we stepped into the clearing and saw the church.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  ‘God in heaven,’ said my father. ‘It’s true.’ He took a couple of steps towards the church, but one of the policemen stopped him.

  ‘Stay here, please,’ he said gruffly in German.

  ‘But –’

  My father’s German failed him as usual and he looked around for me, but I was not taking the bait. I stood by Michel and eyed the front of the church, shivering, wondering whether Father Krause still lurked somewhere within. He had grown in my imagination to such terrifying and diabolical proportions that even the presence of armed police did not make me feel safe.

  My father stayed where he was, but he was visibly consumed with impatience, desperate to get into the church and see for himself. He came over to me and I could feel the excitement crackling all around him like static.

  ‘Lin? Are you sure about what you saw?’

  I just stared at him and felt for Michel’s hand.

  ‘Was there anything in the glass which would identify it? Any text? A name?’

  I shook my head. If there had been anything, it was all gone now.

  When he saw that there was nothing to be gained by questioning me, my father threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat, but he did not say anything.

  The police were fanning out, surrounding the church on all sides. The word Axt drifted across to me. That was why they were being so cautious. From the incoherent account Michel and I had given them, they were not sure whether they were looking for a dead body or an armed one, very much alive.

  The tall policeman from Bonn, Herr Schmitz, came over to where Michel and I were standing. I was glad it was him and not the blonde policewoman. In her icy blue eyes I read nothing but suspicion, but he was a little warmer, avuncular even. It did not occur to me that the two of them adopted these roles o
n purpose.

  ‘This other person,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘where was he when you last saw him?’

  ‘In…’ I faltered. I pointed. ‘In there…’

  ‘Inside the church?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And he was injured? Or was he dead?’

  ‘I don’t know…’ I shivered hopelessly. ‘We thought he was dead… but then he was gone…’

  ‘Fräulein Fox?’ He sounded as though he was trying to talk someone back into consciousness. ‘I need to know whether it’s safe for us to go in there.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I repeated helplessly.

  ‘Could he still be in there, this person?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so…’

  He didn’t ask me any further questions. It was not until very much later that I realized he probably wanted the full details properly recorded, not blurted out in the middle of a forest. Nobody knew yet what Father Krause was; they might have been looking for a murder victim.

  The policeman moved away to confer with his partner, though one of the local officers stayed close to Michel and me. My father kept shooting glances at him and then at the church, as though calculating whether he could make it inside before anyone stopped him. The hunger in his stance was palpable; he was pointing like a gun dog. I looked at him and looked away. I felt slightly sick. Polly was dead and he still cared about the glass. He still wanted to be the first one to see it, the one to break the news.

  The police had now encircled the church. I watched them without much interest. In spite of what I had said, I did not think that Father Krause might still be inside. The Allerheiligen glass had been the lodestone which drew him to the church, binding him to it as strongly as Bonschariant himself was bound in legend. Now the glass had been shattered I thought that the enchantment had been broken. When I had taken up the axe and marched into the forest, I had thought that at the first blow, when the glass had shivered into a million tiny fragments, Bonschariant would depart screeching into whatever dimension he had come from. I felt the same about Father Krause. I thought in my heart that he would never be seen again.

  I watched two of the policemen cautiously approaching the door of the church. Everyone else had fallen silent. I could quite clearly hear the crunching of their boots on the stony earth. They disappeared into the church and for what seemed like an interminable length of time we heard nothing at all. At last one of them reappeared. The church was empty.

  At this news there was a perceptible break in the tension which had filled the air. My father took the opportunity to move away from where we stood, with the policeman hovering a few metres away like a patient guard dog. The ground rose very slightly to the left of the church and my father began to walk slowly and self-consciously along the edge of the rise. I’m not going anywhere, said his body language. I’m just stretching my legs. The policeman glanced his way, but since he was obviously not heading straight for the church decided to let it go.

  My father continued his crab-like scuttle along the higher ground. I could see that his face was always turned towards the church. He was eager for the moment when the south side of it would come into sight, when he would catch a glimpse of the windows, even from the outside. He would say, Incredible, there must be eight different lights, or, Reticulated tracery windows, superb, speaking to an imaginary audience of thrilled academics. I watched him step over a tree stump and stand still, staring. He stayed there for a long time. He never looked towards me, and as far as I could tell he never said a word, but his whole attitude was one of strained concentration. He took a step forward, down the bank, and then stopped. He put up a hand very slowly and began to rub his right eye, as though trying to clear blurred vision.

  Then with a choked cry he was running towards the church at full tilt, running straight for the front door.

  ‘Halt!’ bawled someone, and then there was a confused chorus of voices all shouting at my father, who took not the slightest notice. If he had thought about it at all, he would have realized that they were armed, but I doubt it would have made any difference. At first they sounded irritated rather than threatening, but as my father neared the church door without any sign of slowing down they began to seem alarmed. Officers started to run towards him from all sides, the two officers from Bonn among them. Their faces were grim. Another few metres and my father would be in the church, trampling all over whatever evidence there was. He had taken them by surprise; I don’t suppose they were used to having crime scenes contaminated by stampeding medievalists.

  It is a tribute to my father’s determination that he got into the church at all. The second police officer appeared in the doorway, summoned by the shouting outside, and my father simply shoved him aside.

  There was a brief moment of silence as everyone gawped at what my father had done. Then a howl arose from inside the church, a cry that hacked through the air like an axe, hoarse and ragged. My father had seen what had become of the glass. For a second everybody froze. It was terrible, like the shrieking of a parent over a slain child.

  Herr Schmitz was the first to collect himself. A moment later he had reached the door and began barking instructions at everyone else. I suppose he had foreseen that whatever had not been trodden underfoot by my father was about to be trampled by his fellow officers. He and the policeman who had just come out of the church went inside.

  I did not go back into the church myself. I never went back into it. But I heard afterwards that the two policemen found my father kneeling on the tiled floor, raving like a madman. His hands were stained with red and he kept looking at them, then up at the ruins of the windows, and keening like a banshee. His hands were red with his own blood. The floor of the church was covered in tiny shards of stained glass, jagged and razor-sharp. My father had tried to take up handfuls of them, as though he could somehow summon back the form and light which had comprised Gerhard Remsich’s masterwork before it ran through his fingers like sand. He kept trying to clutch at it, until Herr Schmitz and the other policeman hauled him away by force.

  They dragged him out into the open air and Herr Schmitz shouted for someone to fetch the paramedic. The two of them were still holding on to him, but my father had stopped struggling. He stood between them with a stunned expression on his face. He kept looking at his hands, as though he did not understand what had happened to them. Perhaps he thought the magnificent crimson of the glass had somehow seeped into his fingers.

  Michel moved closer and put an arm round my shoulders. Perhaps it was the movement which caught my father’s eye; at any rate, he looked up and for a moment our eyes met. He gave a tiny start and realization flooded into that dazed expression. In his imagination he suddenly saw me swinging the axe, he heard the rain of glass pattering on to the church floor.

  Even at that distance I could see the anguish and rage which blazed out of his eyes. One of them was rimmed with red; he had rubbed his face with his bloodied hands. It was like looking into a black hole, a ravening pit sucking everything in – light, understanding, forgiveness. I buried my face in Michel’s shoulder. Bonschariant, if any such person had ever existed, had fled from the shattered remains of his home. But my father had still not cast out his demon.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Michel and I might have been in considerably deeper trouble if Father Krause had really vanished for good. If he had had the means to go right away, or if he had decided to destroy himself in some lonely spot and had never been found, our position would have been very difficult indeed. We had given conflicting accounts of our whereabouts when Ru was attacked and we had been the first to find Polly’s body. In addition to these damning circumstances, there was the not insignificant matter of over a million euros’ worth of art treasure reduced to a heap of glass splinters, and a third body apparently missing. As soon as my hand had been properly treated we could expect some very prolonged questioning from Herr Schmitz and his cold-eyed partner – and we had nothing to offer them except a tale which sounded as though
it had come straight out of Grimm’s. If I had not been so exhausted I would have been panicking. There was a very real possibility that Father Krause might have his revenge after all, if we bore the blame for his deeds.

  By the end of my acquaintance with Herr Schmitz, however, I think he had a grudging admiration for Michel and me, although Frau Ohlert never did. Until the very last time I saw her, she was still eyeing me with a suspicious expression which said all too plainly that she thought we had got away with something. I never asked Herr Schmitz what would have happened to us if Father Krause had never been found, or what he had thought when he first assessed the events of that terrible afternoon. Some things it is better not to know.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  If you leave the Kreuzburg by the main track and drive straight out of the forest you will come to Baumgarten, but there is also a narrower, less well-known track, a track I had taken myself once before, which comes out at the village of Traubenheim. The spot where the track meets the main road is within a stone’s throw of the railway station. The station itself consists of not much more than a pair of concrete platforms and signs with the name of the village. With no ticket office and no regular staff, in the middle of the day I should think there are rarely any passengers waiting. The platform is shielded from the road by a screen of tall trees. I am sure it would be quite possible for someone to slip out of the woods, step on to the platform and catch the first train to come along without ever being seen by a living soul. The northbound trains which pass the station at Traubenheim run towards Bonn and from there you can change and continue to Köln. From Köln you can go pretty much anywhere you like: Hamburg, Frankfurt, even over the border to Brussels or Paris.