The Sinner

by Petra Hammesfahr

  "They washed their hands of her years ago. I ought to have known better - they must have had their reasons, after all. She lied to me from the outset. For months she led me to believe that Margret was her mother, and that her father had died shortly before she turned fourteen. The truth didn't come out until we applied for a marriage licence. I'd have done better to send her packing. Which reminds me: what's the form? She used the knife on me too. I ought to be able to charge her with assault. Or doesn't it count if you're married to someone?"

  That wasn't all Gereon Bender had said. He admitted that his marriage hadn't been too rosy in the last six months - another respect in which he felt duped and deceived. "Cora always was a bit of a prude. Still, I had the feeling that she enjoyed it but didn't like showing it. But since Christmas ..."

  Then came the radio in the bedroom and the highly disagreeable results of his unwonted lovemaking. Although faintly embarrassed, Gereon Bender went into detail, even using the specific term: oral sex. "Don't get the idea I demanded it of her, I'd never have done that. I simply wanted to make it special for her, and she almost broke my neck."

  Since hearing this, Grovian had once more entertained the suspicion that had arisen during his interview with her: child abuse. It went better with the drugs and her disgust. Her latest outburst fitted too. "Leave my father in peace, he's an old man!" A dead man, or so she'd told her husband.

  He still believed the crux of her story: that she had sometime witnessed the scene she described before she fainted. "I heard her ribs snap ..." Nobody dreamed up a detail like that. But he was alone in believing that Georg Frankenberg could have been involved in this horrific episode.

  Whenever Mechthild wasn't preoccupied with their daughter, she tended to side with offenders and find a host of excuses for them, culminating in the view that they ought really to be released. This time, however, she agreed with the DA, Werner Hoss and the press.

  An innocent man, and a doctor into the bargain, had had to die because of some insane delusion. Mechthild considered doctors inviolable. Although not infallible, they were people to whom you entrusted yourself and looked up with confidence rather than be overcome with dread when they reached for a scalpel.

  Cora Bender had snuffed out one of these estimable men - one who, according to the press, had lived for his profession alone. In Mechthild's opinion, his killer deserved short shrift. Having read about the case in Monday morning's paper, she gratefully seized on it as a means of avoiding any discussion of their daughter's forthcoming divorce.

  He hadn't spotted this at first, genuinely delighted that Mechthild was once more, after many years, showing an interest in his work and giving him an opportunity to get something off his chest - not that it had eased his burdens.

  True, she acknowledged that Cora Bender's childhood was a mitigating factor, but when he'd finished she said: "I wouldn't like to be in your shoes, Ruch. It can't be pleasant, having to give such a pathetic creature the coup degrdce."

  "I'm not planning to give her the coup de grace," he protested.

  Mechthild smiled indulgently. "What do you have in mind, then? She stabbed a doctor to death in front of a host of witnesses. You can't just pat her on the back."

  "If I can prove

  "Rudi," she broke in, "don't kid yourself. You can prove what you like, it'll just be a question of prison or a psychiatric ward."

  She was right, he knew, but he didn't know if he would ever find evidence of a link between Frankie and his killer. Five years ago Cora Bender's world might have collapsed between May and November, or some other happening might have prompted her to tell a pack of lies and her aunt to clear off in a hurry after conducting her voluntary reconnaissance operation. Until now, nothing but good had been heard of Georg Frankenberg. A quiet man, reserved and almost shy where women were concerned.

  And Gereon Bender had said that Cora lied whenever it suited her book. Naturally she lied when lying was her sole recourse. If someone tried to kick her wall down, she tossed everything that came into her head into a melting pot, gave it a vigorous stir and slapped a ladleful of hotchpotch on the nearest plate. Then you had to sift through her offerings and determine the source of each and every morsel.

  It had now been established that she could have picked up most of what she had presented as facts about Frankenberg's past while down beside the lake. Most but not all. Winfried Meilhofer hadn't mentioned the nicknames Billy-Goat and Tiger because he'd never heard them before. Georg Frankenberg had always referred to Hans Bockel and Ottmar Denner, nor had Meilhofer mentioned the silver Golf GTI with the Bonn licence plates.

  The car and the two names were still Grovian's only means of establishing a link between Cora Bender and her victim, although the names might merely have derived from her imagination. To someone with a penchant for mind games, however, another attractive possibility presented itself: Hans = Johannes = Johnny Guitar. Winfried Meilhofer thought he remembered Frankie mentioning that Hans Bockel was the trio's bass guitarist. If Georg Frankenberg had been in his father's care with a broken arm on 16 May, Hans Bockel could well have met her on that day and introduced her to heroin.

  Grovian had little hope of gleaning anything of importance from her father. He didn't intend to pressure him either. "Did you sexually abuse your daughter, Herr Rosch? Are you responsible for this disastrous state of affairs?" An expert witness could deal with that later. He only wanted some information about the period from May to November. And the name of the hospital where her head injury had been treated.

  When he pressed the bell, the door was opened by a woman whose appearance matched the town. He gave an involuntary gulp: she looked so trim and youthful. Then Cora Bender's words flashed through his mind: "Mother is sixty-five." In her mid forties at most, the woman in the doorway was smartly dressed and well made-up, with short, stylishly cut hair. The tea towel in her hand suggested that she'd been washing up.

  He introduced himself without stating his rank or the reason for his visit. "Fran Rosch?" he said hesitantly.

  She smiled. "Heavens, no! I'm Grit Adigar, a neighbour."

  He felt relieved but only slightly. "I wanted a word with Herr Rosch. Wilhelm Rosch."

  "He isn't here."

  "When will he be back?"

  Grit Adigar didn't answer. Instead, she asked: "What did you want to speak to him about?" Before he could explain, she seemed to catch on. She peered past him at his car, which he'd parked beside the road, and gave a thoughtful nod. "It's about Cora, isn't it? You're from the police. Margret said someone would probably show up. Come in, we don't have to deal with this on the doorstep."

  She stepped back, and that changed everything.

  Beyond her lay a dim, narrow passage lined with wallpaper as old as the house itself. On the left was a flight of stairs covered with threadbare carpet. A thin strip of daylight issued from the door straight ahead, which was standing ajar. On the right, another door. It was also open, but Grovian didn't see this until he was almost level with it.

  The room beyond, whose window overlooked the street, was the living room. The snow-white net curtains were invisible from the inside, obscured by a pair of heavy brown curtains that plunged the room in gloom. Standing in the doorway was another woman.

  He gave a start when she suddenly stepped forward. Her shrewish face was framed by long grey hair that reached to her waist and looked as if it hadn't been washed for weeks. It smelled like that too, enveloping her in a sourish, musty odour. Tall for a woman, she would have topped Grovian by a couple of inches if she'd held herself erect, but her shoulders seemed to sag under an invisible burden. Her scrawny frame was loosely encased in a faded floral apron.

  Grit Adigar gripped the woman's shoulder as she passed her. "That wasn't part of our bargain, Elsbeth. Finish off your lunch first, then you can pray some more."

  The woman didn't answer. She was eyeing Grovian with her head a little on one side. "Is he looking for the whore?" she asked.

  "No, he wants a
word with Wilhelm. I'll deal with it."

  Something akin to a smile appeared on the woman's thin lips. She gave a slow, deliberate nod. "The Almighty's patience was at an end. He has punished Wilhelm. He has robbed him of his voice and strength and confined him to his bed. He'll never leave it again."

  There was an immense difference between hearing Cora Bender talk about her mother and seeing and hearing the mother in person. Grovian felt his skin crawl, despite the summer heat. The thought of a child being exposed to that sanctimonious voice, day after day, gave him the shivers.

  `All right, Elsbeth." Grit Adigar tightened her grip on the malodorous creature's shoulder and propelled her in the direction of the kitchen. "You're going to sit down at the table and do the Almighty's bidding. He likes empty plates. Dumping all that good food in the dustbin would be a waste, and you know what he thinks of that."

  Grit Adigar turned to Grovian. "Pay no attention to her. She was bad enough already, but since Monday she's been completely round the bend. And if you're wondering who she was calling a whore, it wasn't Cora. She meant Margret. To our saintly Elsbeth, any woman who has an affair with a married man is a whore."

  A superfluous explanation, he thought. And whenever anyone offered him an explanation unasked, he pricked up his ears and wondered why.

  The three of them sat down at an old kitchen table. The dresser beside it held a large number of framed photographs, all of Cora Bender. On her own, with her little boy, with her husband, with both. A wedding photo, a snap of her in the maternity ward, a view of the new house. Grit Adigar, who had followed the direction of Grovian's gaze, produced another unsolicited explanation. "Margret sent photos regularly. That's Wilhelm's altar. He could sit here looking at them for hours. He dreamed of her paying a visit sometime - of being able to see his grandson in the flesh - but she never did. I think he realized he'd never see her again."

  A good opening, he thought, for a frontal attack on the point that kept cropping up. A neighbour might be more communicative on the subject than her parents or an aunt who had seen fit to disappear after making a voluntary statement.

  "Did Wilhelm Rosch sexually abuse his daughter?"

  Grit Adigar glared at him indignantly. "Wilhelm? What on earth gives you that idea? Only a policeman would suggest such a thing - he'd sooner have castrated himself with his own hands. Cora was the apple of his eye. It broke his heart when she went away, and on Monday, when Margret ..."

  She recounted what had happened. Margret Rosch had turned up two days ahead of him. Her intentions had been of the best. Far from going to ground, she'd left for Buchholz late on Sunday night, intending to break the news to her brother gently and in person. But news of that kind could not be broken gently: Wilhelm Rosch had suffered a stroke. His condition was critical, and Margret had remained at the hospital with him.

  Everything had happened so fast on Monday, there'd been no time for explanations. Margret had called Grit Adigar only once from the hospital. There was little hope that Wilhelm would survive, she said, and it was possible that someone from the police would turn up because Cora had done something immensely stupid.

  "Did she try to kill herself?" Grit asked.

  "No."

  She buried her face in her hands and breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank God," she muttered. "I thought she might have tried it again, because Wilhelm was so ..."

  Again! To Grovian, it sounded as if this woman knew far more than an aunt who'd had little contact with the family. She could be just as helpful to him as Cora Bender's parents. Above all, she might be willing to tell him what she knew.

  But Grit Adigar wasn't prepared to cooperate without more ado. First she wanted to know what Cora had been getting up to. It sounded innocuous, the way she put it, but the faint smile quickly froze on her lips.

  Grovian decided to be frank with her. He outlined the situation in a few brief sentences. Grit swallowed hard, and it was several seconds before she recovered her composure. "Good God!" she said eventually.

  Elsbeth Rosch, who had been bending over her plate with an apathetic expression, looked up. Her soft voice acquired a sharp edge. "Thou shalt not take His name in

  "Shut up, Elsbeth!" Grit snapped, breathing heavily. "This man - what was his name?"

  "Georg Frankenberg."

  "Never heard of him."

  He showed her a photograph. She shook her head. She hadn't seen a silver Golf with Bonn licence plates either.

  "How about Hans Bockel and Ottmar Denner, or the nicknames Frankie, Billy-Goat and Tiger?"

  She gave a regretful shrug. "They don't mean a thing to me."

  `Johnny Guitar?"

  A fleeting smile. "That does mean something to me, but you ought to ask my youngest girl about him. All I know is, Johnny turned half the female heads in Buchholz a few years ago. My Melanie was no exception. He was a musician. Girls rate musicians higher than motor mechanics."

  A musician, he thought. That's something, at least. But Grit couldn't imagine that Cora had got together with him. "She had a regular boyfriend, Horsti." Grovian had almost forgotten about Horsti.

  Grit gave another apologetic smile. "I'm afraid I only know his first name. We always referred to him as Horsti. He was the love of Cora's life. She was seventeen when she met him. After three months she announced she was going to marry him some day and leave here. She was absolutely besotted with the boy; nobody could understand why. A weedy little fellow, he was - looked almost like an albino, with pale skin and pale yellow hair. All he needed were the pink eyes. I caught a glimpse of him a couple of times when he was hanging around in the street, waiting for Cora. My Melanie could tell you more. She's in Denmark, unfortunately - won't be back till next week - but she often saw them together. Cora's infatuation tickled her. She christened him `the Wimp'."

  A wimp for a regular boyfriend? It looked as if he were fighting a losing battle. Next question: "What about her attempted suicide? Do you know what made her do it?"

  Grit nodded slowly, but her response was qualified. "I only know what Cora told me. It didn't happen here. According to her, she threw herself in front of a car. She never told me the reason, but she didn't have to. It was obvious: she couldn't get over Magdalena's death."

  The very sound of the name made Grovian's head throb with unbridled fury at the thought of Margret Rosch's duplicity. Grit Adigar talked for nearly half an hour without a break. She described the arrival of the blue baby, the burning of the pretty dress in the tin bucket, the candle-scorched, blistered hands, the knees sore from praying, the sodden bedclothes, the desiccated soul of a child.

  It was painful simply listening to it all, and he felt the whole time as if he were on the point of grasping something, some factor of whose existence he had never even dreamed until now. Not that he wanted to grasp it, because it would point too unequivocally in the direction of insanity. He found it impossible to imagine, as he sat at the kitchen table with Elsbeth muttering to herself, that any child could have developed normally under such a mother's tutelage.

  The one thing he did grasp was Cora Bender's reason for not mentioning her sister hitherto: that her death was associated with a burden of guilt of which nothing and no one could relieve her. She had been guilty, even before Magdalena's birth, of draining her mother's strength.

  He could have strangled the pathetic creature with his bare hands. Looking at her bent over her plate, he felt satisfied that she was responsible for Georg Frankenberg's death - indirectly responsible, perhaps, but that did not detract from the onus that rested on her bony shoulders.

  Grit described Cora as a quiet, self-willed, introverted child and a rebellious teenager who was touchingly solicitous of her invalid sister on the one hand, and, on the other, eager for a modicum of personal freedom with Horsti at the Aladdin on Saturday nights.

  A disreputable dump, it was rumoured to have supplied more than music, dancing and drinks. Drugs too had been readily available. The Aladdin had closed down well over four years ago. Th
e premises were now occupied by a nice, clean restaurant serving good and inexpensive food.

  "Was Cora a drug addict?" lie asked.

  "Not while she was still living here," Grit said firmly. "She was far too responsible. As for later on, shall I be honest?"

  "Of course."

  "I don't think so. I always thought the state of her arms made that less likely than more so. They must have been covered with suppurating sores. I've never had any dealings with junkies, but I don't believe they'd inject into festering wounds. I spoke to her about it at the time, and she said: `I don't believe so either, Grit, but I don't believe a lot of things and they're true just the same. It wouldn't be surprising if I'd done drugs after the drama here.'

  According to Grit, the drama had occurred in August five years ago. She hadn't witnessed it in person. She was away visiting friends on the Saturday in question and hadn't got home until late that night. To that extent she could only voice conjectures, she emphasized, but they were conjectures that fell within the bounds of probability.

  In April the doctors had ascertained that Magdalena really was on her last legs. In the middle of May her condition worsened. Cora no longer left the house, even to do the shopping. Wilhelm had to take it over. Meanwhile, Cora sat at her sister's bedside day and night.

  This was the period at which Grit had sighted Horsti a few times when he was loitering outside so as to at least be near Cora or grant her a glimpse of the love of her life.

  That conflicted with what Margret Rosch had said about her brother's two phone calls. Grit brushed this aside. "Margret must have misunderstood him. Bad company? Wilhelm would never have put it that way. Even if he did, he must have meant Magdalena, not Horsti. Wilhelm never got on with Magdalena, and the feeling was mutual. She wasn't an easy person. Just because someone's terminally ill, it doesn't mean they haven't got a mind of their own. Magdalena did, take it from me."

  With a ghost of a smile, Grit proceeded with her account of Magdalena's last few months. She took her time dying. As often happens with the terminally ill, she seemed to recover shortly before the end. In August Cora decided to risk it. Wilhelm and Elsbeth had gone to Hamburg, so she treated herself to a Saturday night out with the faithful Horsti. She was gone only a few hours. By the time she returned her sister was dead.