Grit rose. "Come with me, I'd like to show you something." Leaving Elsbeth staring at her plate in the kitchen, she led the way out into the passage and up the narrow stairs. There were three doors on the landing, one of which she opened for him.
Beyond it lay a sparsely furnished bedroom. Two beds and a bedside table, nothing more. The little alarm clock on the bedside table had stopped at half-past four. Beside it lay a Walkman plus earphones and a stack of audio cassettes, and in front of them stood a photograph in a silver frame.
An amateur snapshot, it showed two girls seated side by side on one of the beds. Their long hair, silver-blond and auburn respectively, was cropped by the frame.
Grovian picked up the photograph and studied it. What most attracted his attention was Cora's face and auburn hair. He had never seen her smile like that. She made an earnest, solicitous, affectionate impression as she sat there with one arm around her sister's shoulders. As for Magdalena ...
"Two extremely pretty girls," he said.
"Yes, they were both pretty," said Grit, "but in Magdalena's case that was an understatement. She had the kind of beauty that drives men insane. I sometimes thought her outward appearance was Nature's way of making up for all that was wrong with her inside, or that those defects ensured that no man would be lured to his doom by her lovely exterior."
She sighed and shrugged her shoulders, smiling sheepishly.
"You get peculiar ideas when you live on top of something like that. Elsbeth must have looked like her as a girl. No wonder she lost her mind, having a child like that. Cora takes after Wilhelm. Magdalena was the image of her mother at that age."
"You wouldn't know she was ill, to look at her," Grovian said.
Grit smiled again. "Diabolical, wasn't it? Her heart was so badly affected, her whole body was bloated. Her kidneys were failing too, yet she looked the picture of health. Her bluish complexion was the only sign that something was wrong with her. Cora wielded her make-up for half an hour before I was allowed to snap them. Magdalena didn't want to be photographed at all. She was very vain - she wouldn't agree until Cora had got her ready. It's the only photo of Magdalena in existence. I took it at the beginning of April, two days before she went to Eppendorf for the last time. We thought she was doing better than ever before. She'd put on weight - she was fuller in the face, and even her legs had stopped looking like twigs. It was only the fluid, in fact, but we didn't learn that till later."
He replaced the photograph and turned round. Above one of the beds was a shelf crowded with books.
"We found the books in the barn," said Grit. "Wilhelm fixed the shelf above Cora's bed after she left and brought them up here."
They were mainly medical textbooks, two of which bore titles suggestive of psychology. The topics were revealing: religious mania and self-healing by means of willpower.
Grit omitted to mention that Wilhelm had also found a slim little notebook in the barn containing nothing but figures. Over 30,000 marks! "How in the world did she amass so much money?" Wilhelm had asked.
`After the age of sixteen," Grit went on, "Cora spent most of her pocket money on these books. I often saw her sneak out of the house at nights and go into the barn. That was where she kept her trendy gear, make-up, and so on - things Elsbeth wouldn't tolerate but teenagers find so important. Her books were there too. She used to change and put on a bit of make-up when she went into town. You'd have thought she was setting off to have a good time, but she usually had one of these tomes beneath her arm, and you don't go dancing like that, or to the movies or the ice-cream parlour. Cora didn't gad around. She can hardly be blamed for meeting Horsti on Saturdays. She needed a bit of freedom, a few hours in the week to herself The rest of the time she devoted to her sister."
Grit said that Cora had read a magazine article about heart transplants and how successful they'd been in the States, and that she'd often spoken of her intention to take Magdalena there some day. A heart transplant wouldn't have done the trick, but Cora was either unable or unwilling to grasp that.
"If that had been all," Grit said, "they'd gladly have operated on her at Eppendorf, just to show they could. I don't know the full details; you'd have to ask Margret. She fetched all the documentation from the hospital, the whole of Magdalena's medical history. While she was alive, nobody here knew exactly how things stood with her. Wilhelm took little interest, Elsbeth was too stupid to understand what the doctors told her, and Magdalena herself wouldn't accept the truth and kept mum. In April the doctors wanted to keep her at the hospital, but she insisted on dying at home. It seems she told them she got all the nursing she needed here, but she didn't breathe a word once she got back. Then Cora came home that night and found her . . . When Wilhelm went upstairs the next morning, because Cora hadn't come down for breakfast, she'd gone."
"When was that, exactly?" Grovian asked.
"Hang on, the date's on the death certificate. It's in their bedroom, I'll get it."
Grit darted out of the door and returned a few seconds later. She handed him the certificate. "Cardiac and renal failure," he read. The doctor's signature was illegible, but he didn't trouble to decipher it. His eyes had fastened on two dates. Date of birth: 16 May. Date of death: 16 August.
Two sixteens. You didn't have to be a psychologist to grasp their significance in Cora Bender's life and why her initial version had dated from the beginning of her romance with Johnny in May. It was wishful thinking. So he could forget about the dead girl on Luneburg Heath and her assertion that her aunt had lied to him.
Margret Rosch had probably told him the truth, or hinted at it anyway, but the things she'd withheld! His anger hadn't subsided in the least. How dare she volunteer to give him all the information he needed - indeed, ram it down his throat - only to suppress the most important point! It was obstruction at best, if not a deliberate attempt to mislead.
But that was something he would have to clear up with Margret Rosch herself. He now turned to what interested him most: Cora's fateful suicide attempt and ensuing medical treatment. Unfortunately, Grit Adigar could tell him little.
Some man had telephoned her in November, a few days before Cora returned. She hadn't caught his name. Too agitated to check, she had run next door and called Wilhelm to the phone. Wilhelm might remember the name, she said, having spoken with him at greater length. All she could say was, Cora had come home in a terrible state. From the look of her, the doctor who'd treated her must have been a bungler. No responsible physician sent a patient home in that condition.
Cora arrived in a taxi with Hamburg licence plates. The cabby had to help her out. She could hardly stand, but he drove off at once without giving her a second thought.
Grit shook her head. "She stood staring at the house as if she'd never seen it before. Then she came tottering up the path. I'd spotted her from my window, so I hurried outside and spoke to her. She stared straight through me. Elsbeth opened the door. She looked at her and said: `Cora is dead. Both my daughters are dead.' Cora screamed. I'd never heard a person scream that way before - like an animal."
She went on to describe how Cora had buckled at the knees, then hit her head on the doorstep again and again. How Wilhelm had come hurrying along the passage. How they had carried Cora upstairs and undressed her. Her body was completely emaciated. The fresh scar and the dent in her skull had healed well, unlike her forearms. "Magdalena can't be dead!" she kept whimpering while they were undressing her. "She can't be, we're flying to America!"
Grit had got the feeling that Cora's mind was a blank - that she'd completely forgotten about that night, presumably because of some major trauma. She didn't seem to entertain the possibility that Cora might really not have learned of her sister's death until November because she hadn't come home at all that night in August.
Grovian did. Johnny Guitar, he thought. The boywho had turned half the female heads in Buchholz. Who had never looked at her twice - until that night. After a three-month vigil at her sister's bedside she ve
ntured out, happy and relieved that Magdalena seemed to be improving. And what a thrill when Johnny noticed her at last! Horsti got the brush-off - maybe lie wasn't even at the Aladdin that night. With a pounding heart she joined Johnny and his fat little friend in the silver Golf, possibly accompanied by another girl, possibly not.
For now, that wasn't the salient point. The trouble was: could one believe that the fulfilment of Cora's dream had prompted her to consign her ailing sister to her fate and drive off into the blue? Hard to imagine, in view of what Grit Adigar had said. But there was another question to which he'd hitherto attached insufficient importance. Could a serious head wound have healed within a few weeks? That was equally hard to imagine.
From Cora Bender's parental home he set off for the restaurant that served good but inexpensive food. No luck: it was shut between three and six, so he drove to the hospital in which Wilhelm Rosch was fighting for what remained of his life and his sister was keeping watch and ordering the nursing staff around. He was unable to speak to Cora Bender's father. As for her aunt, she fiercely defended her reticence.
What did a girl who had died of cardiac and renal failure five years ago have to do with the Frankenberg case? Absolutely nothing. The very mention of Magdalena's name was bound to cut the ground from under Cora's feet. As a concerned and caring aunt, Margret Rosch had preferred to leave this decision to her niece. If he would be kind enough to recall, she had told Cora: "Tell them why you left home in August." That Cora hadn't done so spoke for itself. It was a guilt complex of which a simple detective could have no conception.
He swallowed the simple detective bit without protest. But Margret Rosch gave him no time to rebuke her in any case. She proved adept at diverting the simple detective's attention from her sin of omission and steering him in another direction. On Monday, even before uttering a word about Cora's act of folly, she had asked her brother the name of the hospital in which her niece had been treated.
Wilhelm knew nothing of any hospital. The doctor had given him his name and an address in Hamburg on the phone. Later, however, when Wilhelm sent him a letter of thanks, it was returned "Unknown at this Address".
"Interesting, no?" Margret Rosch said in a milder tone of voice. "Why should the man have given him a false name? What had lie done to her? I can guess!"
She blew out her cheeks and shook her head. "Know what annoys me most of all, Herr Grovian? That I didn't let Cora get on with it when she was sitting in my kitchen with that stuff."
"What stuff?"
Margret Rosch sighed and gave an embarrassed little shrug. "Heroin. I told you, didn't I, that she attributed her condition to withdrawal symptoms? She'd got hold of some at the railway station and asked me to fill the hypo. I took it away from her. At the time I simply assumed she didn't know how to handle one because the man had been injecting her. But now I think, if that had been so, she would at least have seen how he filled the thing. She didn't have the first idea. Try testing her if you don't believe me."
He didn't believe a word of it, neither the putative doctor with the false name, nor the rest. Margret Rosch had had plenty of time to liaise with Grit Adigar. The nice neighbour had prepared the ground; the enterprising aunt was sowing the seeds. Their intentions were obscure to him, however. As a nurse, Margret Rosch could hardly be naive enough to believe he would entertain the likelihood that Cora Bender's fractured skull had been treated by a first-year medical student.
He would have no choice but to question all the hospitals and medical practices in the Hamburg area. A job for some subordinate who enjoyed telephoning until his ear was sore.
Grovian lacked the information he needed to locate Horsti. Besides, he was hungry. After concluding his conversation with Margret Rosch he made another attempt to get a good and inexpensive meal. It was a few minutes past six. The steak was not only ample but excellent; the vegetables left nothing to be desired. He had told Mechthild he might be very late, so she wasn't to wait dinner for him.
He spent just over an hour in the agreeably unpretentious restaurant, trying to picture what it had looked like in its Aladdin days. The friendly waiter couldn't help. He'd only lived in Buchholz for the past two years and had never heard of Johnny, Billy-Goat or Tiger, let alone Frankie or Horsti.
Grovian set off on the long drive home just after eight, slightly wiser than before but not a step further - far from it. He encountered a total of four tailbacks on the return trip, despite the lateness of the hour. Thanks to those and the various roadworks, the drive took him seven hours. He got home at half-past three in the morning.
Mechthild was asleep. There was a note on his pillow asking him to call Werner Hoss urgently, but it was too late even for that. He slipped into bed as stealthily as possible. His eyes were smarting with fatigue, his head throbbed, his neck and shoulders were completely tensed up. He was asleep in less than two minutes.
Next morning he learned that Cora Bender had tried to terminate the investigation in her own way. The news hit him like a whiplash. He couldn't have felt worse had he handed her a loaded pistol.
Half a packet of paper handkerchiefs! How could he have imagined, even for a moment, that he had the least inkling of what went on in her head?
He sat at his desk for several minutes, just sat there staring at the coffee percolator. A fresh brown film had formed on the bottom of the jug. At half-past nine he left the office and bought a bottle of detergent and a scouring pad at a supermarket. Then he not only scrubbed the jug but also polished the old machine until it looked like new And he didn't even see it.
All he saw was her hand gripping the innocuous little packet of tissues. He also heard her voice: "You can't imagine what happens when I talk to you - it all comes alive again."
Now he could imagine. At least he now knew what spirit he had conjured up: Magdalena.
She was lying on a bed. Her arms and legs had been pinioned with broad cloth restraints. Her head was aching and buzzing from the violent blow she had dealt it, and they'd given her a sedative injection. That she could remember. She had fought like a wildcat, lashing out with her fists and feet, biting and screaming almost uncontrollably.
Some of this had lodged in her memory, but her impressions of it were too vague to preoccupy her. Now that they'd brought her to this room, she lay quietly on her back, drowsing. Although she could feel the restraints on her ankles and wrists, the stiffness in her limbs and the big plaster on her forehead, none of it mattered.
There was no room for tears even when her head gradually cleared. Her heart was beating, and she was breathing. She could even think, yet she had ceased to exist. She had missed eternity by a few minutes and ended up in the worst place imaginable: a psychiatric ward.
Although her bed was not the only one in the room, the others were unoccupied. Not unused, though. The rumpled bedclothes testified to the fact that their users were permitted to move around freely elsewhere. But not her! Most shameful of all was the nappy. She could feel it distinctly.
At some stage the door opened. A pair of hands swiftly checked her restraints; an impassive face looked down at her. "How are you feeling?"
She turned her head away, not wanting to feel anything any more. Two or three tears appeared from nowhere and seeped into the pillowcase. Two or three more trickled down her nose and onto her compressed lips. She licked them off with the tip of her tongue.
She was thirsty, but she would have bitten off her tongue rather than ask for a sip of water. Her throat hurt, it was so dry and so sore from the rough treatment it had received. So was her nose. Everything had been scraped raw.
The early-afternoon light was very bright. One of the barred windows had been opened a crack, and sparrows could be heard twittering outside. The succulent sound of rubber-soled shoes receded in the direction of the door, leaving her alone again. Alone with her thoughts and memories, her fear and guilt.
Conscious of every heartbeat, she wished it would be her last. She concentrated hard. If one could survi
ve by willpower alone, as Magdalena had done for eighteen years, why shouldn't one be able to die by willpower alone? No use, her heart went on beating.
Later the door opened again. It was still light outside. Someone came in with a tray. The Last Supper. Except that it wasn't the last for a woman free to make her own decisions: it was the first for a zombie. A feeding cup and an open cheese sandwich cut into bitesized cubes. One hand gripped her chin, another held the spout of the cup to her lips. She turned her head away indignantly, spilling the contents on her pillow A smell of peppermint filled the air. A man's expressionless voice said: "If you refuse to eat and drink, you'll be force-fed. Now, are you going to open your mouth or aren't you?"
She didn't open it. Her thirst had become almost unbearable; her throat was completely parched, her tongue swollen.
Whoever it was that had brought the tray went out again. The door closed, but not for long. It opened again, and this time HE came in.
She knew who he was as soon as he bent over her. He radiated professional expertise like an aura. It shone in his eyes, issued from him with every breath. "I possess the knowledge and the power! I am the one who can save you from eternal damnation. Trust me, and you'll feel better."
With a last vestige of defiance, she thought: "Wrong, you arsehole. Got a pack of cards with you?"
His voice sounded friendly. "You don't feel like eating?"
She wasn't sure if she should answer him. Who could tell what he would deduce from her replies? He might never release her from this room, from this nappy, from his clutches.
She decided to try after all, just to show him what a tough nut she was. A drug-addicted whore case, hardened by life on the streets. Her raw throat didn't share her intention, so it was only a croak: "Thanks, I'm not hungry, but I'd be grateful for a cigarette if you've got one."
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