Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames

by Stefan Kiesbye

  Benno had had neither breakfast nor lunch. Cognac made the rounds. Rarely had he felt so happy in recent weeks. Holger announced that he would defend his dissertation in June, and then spend a year in Florence. He had applied for a scholarship in the fall and received his acceptance that morning.

  Heidrun Michalski, who worked in the archives, looked sheepish as Holger announced his imminent departure. “Then you’ve got only a couple of months left,” she said. She gulped silently, but Holger didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were very watery.

  It was fine with Benno that everybody was focusing on Holger and wanted to drink to him. He sat on his desk, feet on the swivel chair, and looked from time to time out the window, where an orange afternoon sky slowly sank into blackness.

  Shortly after six o’clock he left with Holger and stood with him on Hüxstraße. The last buyers rushed home, and the air smelled of fried food. “Hungry?” Holger asked. “I could eat an elephant.”

  Benno shook his head. “Heidrun has a crush on you.”

  Holger took off his glasses and wiped them with a shirtsleeve. “Are you sure?”

  “Very. Maybe you should invite her for dinner.”

  “Maybe,” Holger replied thoughtfully. “But that has to do with feelings.”

  Benno laughed. “And you don’t have any?”

  “No, I have them alright.”

  “But?”

  He put his glasses back on and looked around. “Why are you standing with me in the street?”

  Benno looked at him questioningly.

  “We’ve had nothing to do for hours. I have no girlfriend. Nobody is waiting for me. But you have a family, and where are you? Are you going to see your mistress?”

  “My what?”

  “You guys held hands at the Indian place. And she visited you in the newsroom.” His tone was without reproach, but his smug grin grew wider.

  Benno smiled a little too rigidly. “Until tomorrow then,” he said, turned abruptly and walked away. His car was in the opposite direction, but he didn’t care.

  On Hundestraße he stood in front of the entrance to the library. A visitor bumped him with his bag full of books. He didn’t know if he really wanted to see Hanne, but she was the only other person he knew in Lübeck and would be happy to see him. Currently, she was perhaps the only person who would welcome a visit from him.

  How many people might have seen him with Hanne? If Holger knew of his affair, his other colleagues might too. If Holger hadn’t kept quiet, perhaps the whole newsroom knew.

  He waited several minutes, but he neither saw Hanne through the glass front door, nor could he come to a decision.

  After a long detour to his car, he made his way to the Burgfeld Hall, to see the first games of the city handball championships. Normally he would have shirked such an evening and invented a thousand excuses, but today he didn’t want to go home. Today he welcomed the smell of floor wax and the sweat of men from the 2nd and 3rd tier leagues.

  He joined a colleague from the Nachrichten, Hendrick Führholz, who sat on a wooden bench near the roof.

  The game was well attended, and most of the audience seemed to play themselves or root for family members.

  “You haven’t missed much,” said Führholz with a straight face. “But the goalkeeper is spectacular.”

  Benno nodded, looked at the tournament schedule, which he’d received at the entrance. “Who is playing now?” he asked, looking at the clock. It was shortly after seven, and the air was hot and without any oxygen.

  “HSV Lübeck versus FLV Travemünde.”

  Who the spectacular goalkeeper was, he could see immediately. He was a thin, wiry man in his forties and of medium height, and seemed as agile as an octopus. Travemünde could barely get the ball past him, and the final score was 15:3.

  “Fabulous,” shouted Führholz, jumping up and clapping after the final whistle.

  The next match was a sad spectacle, full of random hits and fouls. A player with a good-sized potbelly hit the ground, and strands of his hair, which had been glued to his bald head, peeled off.

  In the ensuing break, Benno searched for the refreshment stand. The air was much cooler here, and he sucked it in greedily. He bought a Coke and looked at the men in their cheap, colorful jerseys, their old shoes. The faces were flushed, their eyes bright and radiant, as if this were the Olympic finals. They were all looking forward to the next match. With their gray hair, sweaty faces and thick glasses, they looked like schoolboys with big dreams.

  He had already turned onto Schulstraße when he braked and made a U-turn. He had a flashlight in the trunk and his camera in the glove compartment. He also had a pair of leather gloves in there—he didn’t have to stop at home.

  Benno was sure that Pastor Cornelius had not used his own basement to hide Irina Sobieski. With five children in the house, that seemed too risky. Someone would have discovered her there.

  He could still remember the afternoon when the pastor had asked him to drive to the place where he had seen the corpse. He had paid little attention to Cornelius’ words, but the pastor had been agitated. “How in the world did she get out?” he had said, and his words finally made sense. Irina had escaped him, and he had killed her in panic. That explained the many stab wounds.

  Benno drove along the dark roads, only an occasional car passing him. At Huginwald clinic he turned off the highway and parked the car under some trees. The clinic was the ideal place to hide someone. Granted, sometimes teenagers came out to smoke pot, but they would probably not try to open locked basement doors. Who would search for a missing woman in the boiler room? In the storage rooms? There were a thousand opportunities to hide a woman.

  Branches slapped him in the face as he fought his way to the wall. He trudged through brown, knee-high grass and walked farther and farther away from the road. Near the heating plant, he finally found a nearly crumbled pillar, which he climbed to pull himself over the wall. But when he landed on the other side, his foot hit uneven ground. He twisted his ankle and screamed.

  Cursing, he hobbled toward the heating plant. If anyone else was here tonight, he was warned now.

  The gate to the heating plant was closed. Through a small side window, the beam of his flashlight revealed two huge boilers. Otherwise, he could see nothing. How should he get in there? He walked around the building, kept looking for another entrance, but the locked door was the only one. And it did not move a millimeter, no matter how hard he pulled. If Cornelius had a key, this was a safe hiding place.

  Discouraged, he made his way to the main building. The pain in his ankle slowly subsided, and he was again able to put some weight on his foot. Although the night was cloudy and neither moon nor stars visible, he did not turn on his flashlight again—he wanted to attract as little attention as possible.

  The smell that hit him was even worse than on his first visit. Or maybe it just seemed that way because he couldn’t see much of anything.

  Where would the pastor have kept a prisoner? Not on the upper floors—it seemed too difficult to push or drag a tied woman up the stairs. Plus, most of the upper rooms, as far as he could remember, had windows. And even if there was a windowless closet, the risk of being surprised by teenagers seemed too high.

  That left the basement. Benno leaned heavily on the railing to relieve his sore ankle. He walked into the kitchen and tried to avoid the shards and utensils lying on the ground. He opened the refrigerator room, but it was completely empty. It just smelled damp and moldy. Of course, the pastor had had time enough to erase all evidence of his crime, and Benno felt his enthusiasm wane. His right shoe grew tighter and tighter, and the possibility of finding any trace of Irina Sobieski’s captivity seemed ridiculously small.

  He left the kitchen and stumbled through the hallways. Here was a small chamber, the door ajar. Benno switched on his dimming flashlight. Soon it might give up the ghost entirely, so he had to be economical. Two old washing machines stood here, and sheets and checkered duvet covers l
ay scattered on shelves and the floor. Two small windows did not let in enough light for him to discover anything more. He didn’t see any shackles, no women’s clothing, and the existence of the window spoke against the laundry room.

  In the hallway, he heard a noise in front of him on the floor, and in the dying light of his lamp he saw two shadows scurrying away. Rats. They were the last thing he needed.

  He found a broom closet and two washrooms and shower rooms. But the closet was too small, and the door could not be locked. The washrooms had no doors at all.

  Disappointed, he went up to the reception. He had to stop his search for tonight. The batteries were now completely exhausted, and his right ankle was two or three times bigger than his left. If he wanted to make it home, he had to be on his way.

  Slowly, he crossed what had once been the park. When he arrived back at the wall near the heating plant, he could see that the pillars on this side were largely intact and offered no opportunity to climb up.

  Limping and cursing Benno walked along the wall, and after fifteen minutes he was at the main gate. On his last visit a new lock had kept the iron bars closed, but the lock lay on the ground tonight, the door was wide open.

  Smiling, he walked out to the road and made his way back to his car. He was relieved and overjoyed when he put the key in the door and threw the flashlight on the passenger seat. Only when he straightened up to take off his filthy coat, he was blinded by someone’s flashlight.

  “Look here, it’s Diedrich.”

  The back seat of the VW Passat was tight, and he had sprained his foot anew while getting in.

  “Can’t you just give me a warning? I didn’t steal anything or set the place on fire. I just thought . . .” Benno fell silent. He couldn’t tell the officers the real reason for his visit.

  “Yes? We’re all ears.”

  “I just wanted to look around. Simple curiosity.”

  “At eleven o’clock at night? You do that often?” Ingo Schmoeh, the officer who had kept his name out of the police report, held Benno’s identity card and driver’s license in his hand, and looked at a clipboard. He picked up the pen, which was attached to the clipboard with string. His colleague, a slightly older, but equally large man, sat in the passenger seat and looked at the brightly lit dirt path ahead of them, and at Benno’s car.

  “You won’t drag me to the police station, right?”

  The colleague was silent, and Schmoeh grunted something unintelligible.

  “If you write me a ticket, that’s enough, right?” He hated how high his voice was. He had never overcome this strange fear of the police.

  “What were you really doing here?” Schmoeh put the clipboard on top of the dashboard. He nodded to the second officer, who got out, walked around the car and opened Benno’s door.

  “Get out,” he said. “We haven’t searched you yet.”

  “I don’t have anything,” Benno said.

  “Get out.”

  Slowly Benno followed the command. Once he stood upright in front of the car, the officer hit his left kidney. Benno screamed, and while he was still gasping, he felt the second blow, this time in the stomach. He tried to hold on to the doorframe, but the policeman pulled him off and placed a fist below his chest. Benno’s scream died, he had no air left to scream. In the dim light from the car’s interior, he could see the officer’s face for the first time. It was a kindly face, used to smiling. A face that inspired confidence. A kick hit him in the stomach.

  Benno fell to the ground and wrapped his arms around his head. But a toe hit his neck under the chin.

  Then Schmoeh’s door opened. Seconds later, the arms of the officer grabbed him and pulled him to his feet. “You have sprained your foot, eh?” he said quietly. “Well, come on, get up.”

  Benno stood trembling, leaning against the back of the car. He looked at the policemen with narrowed eyes.

  Schmoeh cocked his head. “You’ve talked to Gruber. Snooped around. But Irina Sobieski is none of your business.”

  “What did you do with her? Did you keep her hidden here? Made sure she wouldn’t escape? Have you been spying on me all this time?”

  “You really take yourself way too seriously. And again, for the record, the dead woman is none of your business.”

  Benno’s knees buckled. He knew what to say, but wasn’t fast enough. His ribs made a peculiar sound. His stomach was swimming with acid. Schmoeh stepped with all his might on Benno’s right ankle.

  “Now you’ve made a mess,” the colleague said half a minute later, when Benno caught his breath. His voice sounded like that of an advertising spokesperson.

  “I’ve never seen that woman,” Benno squeezed out. “Never.”

  When Carolin arrived at the Grevenhorst precinct, Schmoeh and his colleague had long since left. Her face was gray, full of fear, and he was so happy to see her, tears welled up in his eyes.

  “You look terrible,” she said. Benno wanted to get up and greet her, but his foot didn’t want to support him. His clothes smelled of vomit, his pants were wet and dirty.

  The police officer on duty asked Carolin for her ID, and a few moments later he dismissed Benno. He would get charged for trespassing and resisting arrest. “Schmoeh was very lenient,” the old officer told Carolin. He gave Benno a look of disgust and pity.

  Carolin had to support Benno; he couldn’t walk down the few stairs on his own.

  “What were you doing there?” Carolin said in an icy voice.

  Benno was sweating, the pain in his leg spreading through his whole body.

  “Later,” he said, gritting his teeth. His tongue felt swollen.

  “Did you fall?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer, focused on his feet instead.

  In the parking lot behind the precinct stood Heintz’ old Taunus. “He wanted to drive himself. I had to beg,” said Carolin. “I told Tim only that I was going to pick you up. You can think of a good story.” She closed her door. “Where is our car?”

  “At the clinic,” Benno said quietly.

  “Can you drive with your bum foot?”

  He wasn’t so sure, but what could he do? Somehow he would manage. All he wanted now was a bathroom and some ice for his foot. He hoped that he hadn’t broken anything, because his body felt like a bag full of broken glass.

  He sank into the passenger seat. The car smelled of tobacco and paint thinner, but that was alright with him.

  “Try not to get anything dirty,” said Carolin. “You smell like a skunk.” Then she laughed tonelessly. “When the police called, I was happy at first. I thought, finally. Finally.”

  “What?” asked Benno. “What do you mean?”

  “Finally, someone stands up to you and your antics. Why did you have to crawl around there in the dark? Without even calling me? I had no idea where you were or what you were doing.”

  “I didn’t think you were interested.”

  “We are still married,” said Carolin.

  “I discovered something terrible,” Benno blurted out. “I didn’t want to tell you at first, it’s so . . . so outrageous. But that’s why I went there. We need Tim to get out of here.”

  “There you go again.”

  “I’m serious. The pastor held Irina Sobieski captive for nearly a year. And then he killed her. And now he’s after Tim. Cornelius is probably in cahoots with the police. The officers who arrested me tonight, they knew exactly why I was at the clinic . . .”

  Her shrill laughter interrupted him, tore his words to shreds. “Are you in your right mind? The pastor a killer?”

  “It’s true,” Benno insisted. “Irina’s colleague said that she saw him in Lübeck. He was Irina’s lover.”

  “You are making these things up.”

  “No,” parried Benno. They weren’t far from the clinic, and Benno looked out for a police car. He was afraid that the two cops would be lying in wait for him a second time.

  “Just because you have a mistress.”

  “I don’
t have a lover.” It was a lie, but in this moment it felt like the truth to Benno.

  “You know what? You get in your car, and then you can drive to Lübeck. I don’t want you in my house.”

  “But Cornelius . . .”

  “Stop it,” she snapped. “Don’t we have everything we ever dreamed of? A house in a small village, a job, a family? And you, you’ve ruined everything. Didn’t take you long. Half a year. That’s all. Half a year, and now you’re coming up with crazy stories about murder and kidnapping.” She paused. “Who was with you at the old hospital? Do you have a sweetheart around here?” She slapped her forehead. “I’m so stupid. Lübeck. Your lover lives here. Who is she? I probably even know her.”

  Benno shook his head. “No, I’ve been searching for the hideout. Where Cornelius held Irina.”

  Carolin’s laughter rang in his ears. “You know what? I’m letting you out here, and when you get home, there’ll be a suitcase with your things in the yard. You take it and get out of Strathleven. Everything else, your precious records and books you can pick up next week. Call me, we’ll make an appointment. So that I’m not alone in the house when you arrive. So you’re not getting any ideas.”

  Benno nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

  “Yes,” said Carolin. “That’s what I want.” Seconds later, they stopped in front of the main gate of the hospital. Benno didn’t feel like arguing, didn’t want to explain that his car was parked a few hundred yards away. He got out with difficulty, looked back at her and said, “I . . .”

  But Carolin sang at the top of her lungs, “Lord, your love is like grass and shore,” and all he could do was slam the door shut. “Like wind and vastness and like home and hearth,” came from the inside, before the car sped away.

  Even with a thick branch as a prop, it took him nearly fifteen minutes before he reached his car. The Ford was still where he had parked it, and Schmoeh was nowhere to be seen. Almost happily he dropped into the seat.

  After a few seconds he started the engine and drove cautiously back to the highway. Here, too, no police car was in sight. Everything around him was silent.