I went straight into the house. It’s nine o’clock now, and Johann hasn’t come home. If he isn’t home by seven, he’s drinking at the Dorfkrug, and I know Lüders will say I led him on.
I’m afraid he’s going to kill me in one of his rages one day, Margret.
Once again I ask you, as I have in my last three letters: If I can’t go on here, can I come to you, with my child?
Please, Margret. I’m glad for your happiness, but please answer my question in your next letter.
Give my love to your husband.
A big hug from,
Your sister, Magdalena
Chapter 46
She has bought a hundred and twenty rolls. Frederike thought fifty to sixty people. She doesn’t really like vague figures like that, but if it’s only soup and sandwiches, she can manage.
She cuts the rolls open, her hands moving swiftly, and passes them on to Lena. She called her at eight o’clock this morning, and Lena came right away.
She’s reliable, and she can certainly work. Ruth appreciates this, so she sometimes throws in an extra few marks. Girls like her are rare these days. She’s studying sculpture, or something like that; helps out here as a waitress; and works with Jansen. All she had really wanted was a work placement as a stonemason, but Jansen soon noticed what she was worth. Now he even calls her when he has work at the funeral parlor. Ruth isn’t sure that’s right for a young person, but Lena doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. Once she said to her, Honestly, Lena. Jansen already has an assistant at the funeral parlor. That’s no work for a young girl.
He pays well, Frau Holter, she had replied. Besides, I find it fascinating.
Before Lena, she had an assistant who spent the whole day on her phone, steering well clear of any work. One day, when she said to a customer, You’ll have to wait till I’ve finished my call, Ruth blew a fuse.
“Once everyone is here, you’ll have to do a head count. I’ve agreed with Frederike that we’ll charge per person.”
Lena spreads margarine on the rolls and places them on trays garnished with lettuce leaves.
“We’ll put the cheese and cold cuts on just before the guests arrive. That way they’ll be fresh.” Ruth goes into the bar and shuts the front door.
Lena finishes her coffee. “Should I put the tables out in the dining room?”
“Yes. Give me a minute and I’ll help you. We’ll make a horseshoe shape, so you can reach everyone easily when you’re serving.”
Lena pushes aside the big fake-leather folding door that separates the bar from the dining room. The tables are lined up against the side wall; the chairs are stacked up at the end.
They have just dragged the first two tables into the middle of the room, when the front door slams shut. Ruth recognizes the sound immediately. “Now what? I can’t waste the whole day chitchatting with the police! I’ve got better things to do.”
She returns to the wall with Lena and they drag the next table into position.
“As long as there’s a murderer on the loose, though, you ought to take the time.” Böhm walks into the room and looks around.
“Ask away. We’ll go on arranging the tables.”
Böhm smiles at her. “Or I could just bring you in. Then you’d spend half a day at the station.”
Ruth places her hands on her hips. “Are you threatening me?”
“Maybe. Because I’m gradually getting annoyed. I’ve never known a victim’s so-called friends to be so uncooperative. Nobody here seems interested in solving the crime.” Böhm’s baritone voice resonates in the large room.
Ruth looks at him with surprise.
Böhm turns to Lena. “And who are you?”
Lena looks uncertainly at Ruth Holter. She clears her throat. “Lena Koberg. I’m a helper here.”
“Where do you live?”
“In Sandweg. The new development.”
Böhm scrutinizes her. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
She shrugs. “Not that I know of.” She turns and heads for a stack of chairs.
Böhm faces Ruth again. “We could talk out front.”
She goes into the bar and sits at one of the tables. Böhm sits down opposite her and starts while he is still straightening his chair. “What did Behrens and the others argue about that day, before he drove home?”
Mahler had called her: Ruth, the cops were here. They’re sticking their noses into ancient history. “I don’t know. They were sitting at that table over there.” She points at the big round wooden table in the corner. “And I was clearing up. Behind the bar and in the kitchen.”
“When a lot of people argue, it gets loud. I don’t believe you when you say you didn’t hear what it was about.”
Ruth has pulled toward her the small white cloth decorating the center of the table and is indenting fine lines in it with her thumbnail. “I didn’t hear, really.” She leans back abruptly and folds her arms over her chest. “But the truth is, the arguments were always about Magdalena Behrens. She didn’t take her vows all that seriously, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She bites her lip. “Well, I only know what people used to say.”
“And what did people used to say?”
“She was pretty, you see. And she made eyes at men. That’s what people used to say.”
“And the regulars felt they had to tell Behrens? Even though they knew he would beat her?”
Ruth gasps. “Nobody knew that. Nobody knew he beat his wife.”
Böhm nods comfortably. “Oh yes, they did. All the regulars said in their statements that they knew.”
She slaps the table with her open hand. “My husband didn’t know.” Her voice cracks. “My husband definitely didn’t say that.”
Böhm cocks his head to one side and looks at her sympathetically. “Yes, he did, Frau Holter.”
She carves some more lines in the cloth. She thrusts a truculent silence into the empty space between herself and him.
He waits.
“She used to cheat on Johann. If you do something like that, you have to expect it to end badly.” Defiantly, she draws a final line with her nail.
Böhm sounds incredulous: “You think a man who has been betrayed has the right to hit his wife?”
She purses her lips sulkily.
“Do you know who ordered Magdalena Behrens’s tombstone?”
She looks at him in surprise. “What?”
“You heard me. I’d like to know who ordered the tombstone.”
Her eyes narrow, and she appears to be thinking. “Old Frau Behrens didn’t want anything to do with her daughter-in-law. She gave her a separate grave. She didn’t want her in the family tomb, nor did she want to pay for a stone. The regulars took on the cost. That much I know. My husband paid fifty marks, and that was a lot of money back then. But as for who placed the order . . .” She shakes her head. “I really don’t remember. Lüders or Jansen?” She looks out the window. “Mahler made the coffin. At his own expense, so he didn’t contribute to the stone. Best ask Jansen, he’ll know.”
“What a noble gesture. Is it so common here, to pay for the burial of someone you don’t really have anything to do with?”
She shrugs. “Ach, what do you know? They did it for Johann. He was one of them, after all.” She pushes her chair back, puts her hands on the table, and stands up. “I need a schnapps. Do you want one too?”
“No, thanks.”
As she disappears behind the bar, he watches Lena drag a stack of six chairs across the room and line them up around a table.
Ruth knocks back a schnapps with a practiced movement and returns to the table. She places her bony hands on her hips again. “What does Magdalena Behrens’s tombstone have to do with Gietmann and Lüders?”
Böhm indicates the chair. “Please sit down again.”
She hesitates. A fine state of affairs, when he offers me a seat in my own bar. She pointedly remains standing.
“We find it interesting because the date isn’t right.”
The silence extends for several seconds.
Ruth pulls back the chair and sits down. “What do you mean?” Her voice is unsteady.
“Magdalena Behrens didn’t die on the thirteenth of April, but on the fourteenth.”
She stares at him, and he can see her brain working. She slumps. She looks at him disbelievingly, her eyes moist.
“I have the feeling you don’t know the whole truth, Frau Holter.”
She sniffs loudly, then sits up. “I’ve told you what I know. Jansen must have gotten the date wrong. It happens.”
“Magdalena Behrens was raped, Frau Holter. Johann Behrens confessed that he had hit her, and probably caused her death. He denied the rape to the end.”
She has placed her elbows on the table, and is rubbing her hands. She lifts her head and looks at him resolutely. “I’ve told you what I know. Now, please leave.”
Böhm stands up. “I’ll be back.”
Chapter 47
Standing by the cemetery wall, he waits for Van Oss. He only sees the occasional lone person on the road. In a hurry. Scurrying past. Things to do. Cars seldom get so lost that they come this way. To the left, bypassing the village, the main road to Holland emits a constant roar.
Ruth Holter didn’t know the whole truth, he was sure of it. She had been lied to all these years. He had seen it in her face. She would be asking the regulars some unpleasant questions. She would be doing his work for him.
What really happened that day? The date of Magdalena Behrens’s death wasn’t wrong on purpose. Even the killer knew about the wrong date.
You did the same thing with Gietmann’s death notice, didn’t you? You planned it that way. You could only get him to come to a rendezvous long before midnight; that’s why he had to bleed for so long. He couldn’t die on Friday, because that would have matched the date in the newspaper, right? He couldn’t die until Saturday.
Did Lüders rape Magdalena Behrens? Is that why you cut his balls off? When did you prepare the site? How did you manage it so that nobody noticed?
He leans against the cemetery wall.
Where is Van Oss? It would be interesting to know who tends this grave.
The pale gray of the sky seems to leak into the narrow lanes, filling every square foot of unbuilt land. These small old villages are like islands in the vast expanse. An existence without shelter, exposed to the wind, storms, and enemies for centuries. No ramparts, no walls. Only the fog coming to their aid from time to time, hiding them in dense gray. They have learned to whisper, to mistrust strangers. But the cocoon is becoming brittle; the ancient rules are losing their hold.
Ruth Holter’s sense of solidarity is based on lies and half-truths.
He reaches into his jacket pocket and reads Brigitte’s text again. Should he reply, asking when she’s coming home exactly?
They’re so close. If something turns up now, he can hardly go home to welcome his wife. Besides, if he does go home, he doesn’t want to have to leave again immediately. He wants time to understand what’s happening, and time to tell her he doesn’t want to lose her.
Van Oss comes out of the church. Böhm walks to meet him. “And?”
Van Oss shakes his head. “So, the gentleman inside is the—what do you call it?—the grave keeper here.”
“You mean the sexton?”
“Exactly, but not only that. He’s also the funeral director and the stonemason. He’s everything you need when you die. Great, eh? He runs a one-stop shop for dead people.”
Böhm puts his hand on Van Oss’s shoulder. “Joop! Who looks after Magdalena Behrens’s grave?”
“Nobody.”
Böhm takes a step back. His hand slips off Van Oss’s shoulder into nothingness. “No one has been seen here?”
“No.” Van Oss pushes his blond hair back. “And it gets better. The grave has been in this condition for about a year. It was a total wilderness before. The sexton . . . just a minute”—Van Oss gets a notepad out of his jacket pocket—“a Herr Locke, says the tombstone used to be overgrown. Nobody knew who was there anymore.”
Böhm stares at the cemetery gate. He nods with satisfaction. “Can you do me a favor, Joop? Call the station on the radio. We need a man here to keep an eye on the grave. Someone in civilian clothes. Tell them that, to be on the safe side.”
Van Oss plucks at Böhm’s sleeve. “Er . . . there’s more. Herr Locke also said the grave is always tidied up at night. Or rather . . . when he gets here in the morning, there are fresh flowers there.”
“Good, then we’ll keep watch ourselves from five p.m. onward. Steeg, you, and I in turns.”
Van Oss claps his hand to his forehead dramatically. “Oh shit!” He kicks the wall. “Maybe I misunderstood. I mean . . . maybe we can still request someone and they can take on the night shift, no?”
Böhm grins at him. He turns and heads down the main street of the village.
Van Oss takes a couple of swift strides and is at Böhm’s side. “So where are you going?”
Böhm keeps up the same fast pace and continues. “To the funeral parlor. I want to talk to Jansen.”
“He’s in the church. Gietmann’s about to be buried.”
Böhm stops. “You don’t say.”
He turns and heads off in the opposite direction, without slowing down. His phone trills in his pocket. He pulls it out while he is walking. “Yes?”
“It’s me. Just wanted to let you know I’m home now.”
He slows down. “Brigitte, it’s not a good moment. I—”
She interrupts him. “It’s fine, Peter. I wasn’t expecting anything more.”
Chapter 48
This is the last thing he needs. Cops sniffing around with their moronic ideas about “back then.” The long-haired one was a Dutchman. That’s how bad things have gotten. Foreigners on the government payroll. Next we’ll have Turks and Arabs and wherever else they all come from as policemen and tax inspectors and, for all he knows, other things too. They want to scare him, but it won’t work. He’s not going to let some long-haired Dutchman get under his skin. Just let him get his hands on whoever it is that has Gietmann and Lüders on his conscience. He won’t know what hit him.
Enough! First he has to sort out this business with the Behrens woman, the one in Cologne. He picks up the phone and calls information.
There are four Anna Behrenses in Cologne. Which one would he like?
“All of them, dammit.” How’s he supposed to know exactly where she lives? “Wait, I need something to write with.” He puts the receiver down on the sideboard, runs into the kitchen, finds a ballpoint pen, and tears off a strip of newspaper. Once back in the living room, he barks “Yes, now” into the telephone.
Once he has written the numbers down, the woman asks if she can connect him with one of them.
“No,” he snaps.
He dials the first number. “Excuse me, is that Anna Behrens, from Merklen?”
The voice at the other end sounds elderly. “From where?”
He hangs up.
Next number. The phone rings five times, six times . . . What if she’s not home? Eight times, nine times . . . If she’s at work?
“Hello?” The voice sounds younger.
“Am I speaking with Anna Behrens, from Merklen?”
There is a pause. He drums his paint-covered fingers on the sideboard.
“Who is this?”
It’s her. It must be her. He has worked out exactly what to say. “Listen, my name is Mahler. I was a friend of your father’s.” He waits. “Hello? Are you still there?” Silence. “Frau Behrens? Is that Anna Behrens, from Merklen?”
He can hear her breathing hard on the other end of the line. “Listen, it’s about the meadows lying fallow here, see. I wanted to ask if maybe you wanted to sell them. I mean for a reasonable price, of course.”
“Is that Günther Mahler?”
He holds the receiver away from his
ear. Her voice is shrill.
“Is that the Günther Mahler who was there when my mother was killed?” she shouts.
He grips the back of the chair and sits down. “Excuse me?” He looks around the hallway, searching for something to fix his eyes on, something that will offer support. He holds the receiver in his lap.
“Don’t you dare call me again, ever!” Her voice cracks.
He holds his hand over the receiver, trying to get rid of her.
Then, at last, he works out how. He slams his hand down on the cradle with all his strength. The phone falls to the floor. The dial tone buzzes at him from his lap; it sounds like the woman’s screaming.
The child! The child was there when the police found her.
My God! Why hadn’t they ever thought about that? Maybe the kid was there before . . . ?
He rises awkwardly from the chair, picks up the telephone, and places the buzzing receiver on its cradle.
Gietmann’s funeral is coming up.
The woman’s unhinged.
He must talk to Jansen.
It was an accident.
The woman’s completely insane.
Maybe she has something to do with the murders?
Chapter 49
They go into the church through the massive oak door on the west side. The vaulted ceiling and the columns are undecorated; their magnificence lies in their height. Here, reverence is not about splendor. These believers are ruled by austerity. The dark wooden pews have a muted gleam and the patina of long use. Behind the plain altar, stained glass windows rise up toward heaven, giving light and hope.
Böhm turns to his right.
Three old women in the front row. Dark silhouettes, deep in prayer, begging forgiveness. The pulpit, richly decorated, hovers over their heads. The coffin is laid out in front of the simple wooden altar. It is closed. Elaborate wreaths are arranged on stands to the right and left, as well as on the dark brass-trimmed wood and the stone steps.
Böhm bows his head.
That’s the way it is here. Many people remember Gietmann and will continue to do so for a long time. It will be the same with Lüders, he is sure. It is part of his job to deal with death all the time, but in fact he doesn’t do so. He’s called to work by dead bodies, and at the same time he turns away and starts dealing with the living, the perpetrators. That is his task. For that reason he vowed, after Andreas died, always to keep in mind that he had only this one life.
To Clear the Air Page 14
