‘It can’t go on like this, Emma,’ Philipp whispered, as if he were worried that Jorgo might hear him two floors up. ‘You’ve got to make a decision.’
‘What do you mean?’
The distant beeping was gnawing at Emma’s nerves and she couldn’t concentrate on her husband’s voice. Nor could she deal with the horrific images in her head. Images of what might happen to Jorgo up there – a slit throat, for example, opening and closing, and each time the policeman unsuccessfully tried to scream a torrent of blood spurting onto the floor of the children’s room that would forever remain unfinished.
‘What are you talking about, Philipp?’ she asked again.
Her husband came up close and bent down so that his cheek touched her slapped one. ‘Therapy, Emma. I know you want to get over this alone, but you’ve crossed a line.’
Emma shuddered when she felt his breath on her earlobe. For a moment she thought she was remembering the tongue that, in the darkness of the hotel room, had buried itself in her ear, while she, paralysed, had only been capable of muffled cries. But then Philipp said softly, ‘You’ve really got to look for a therapist, Emma. I’ve spoken to Dr Wielandt about this.’
‘The police psychologist?’ Emma asked in horror.
‘She knows your case, Emma. Lots of people are familiar with it. We have to check the…’ He faltered, obviously because he realised he couldn’t finish the sentence without hurting his wife.
‘… check the facts of my statement. Say no more. So what does Dr Wielandt think? That I’m a pathological liar who invents rape stories for fun?’
Philipp took a deep breath. ‘She’s concerned that you were deeply traumatised as a child…’
‘Oh, shut up!’
‘Emma, you have a lively, exuberant imagination. In the past you saw things that weren’t there.’
‘I was six years old!’ she yelled.
‘A child neglected by her father, making up an imaginary substitute to compensate for his lack of affection.’
Emma laughed. ‘Did Dr Wielandt have to write that out for you or did you learn it by heart first time?’
‘Emma, please…’
‘You don’t believe me then?’
‘I didn’t say that—’
‘So now you also think I suffer from hallucinations, don’t you?’ she hissed, interrupting him. ‘I imagined the whole thing? The man in my hotel room, the injection, the pain? The blood? Oh, what am I saying, perhaps I wasn’t even really pregnant. Maybe I made that up too? And the alarm in the attic, that’s just in my head too…’
She fell silent abruptly.
Oh God.
The beeping wasn’t even in her head any more.
It had stopped.
Emma held her breath. Looked up at the ceiling that was urgently in need of a coat of paint. ‘Please tell me you heard it too,’ she said to Philipp and pressed her hand to her mouth. After her outburst the sudden silence felt like a harbinger of dreadful news.
‘You heard it, didn’t you?’
Philipp didn’t answer her, but Emma heard footsteps coming down the stairs. She turned to the door, where Jorgo appeared with a red face.
‘Have you got any batteries?’ he asked.
‘Batteries?’ she repeated, confused.
‘For the smoke alarm,’ Jorgo said, presenting her with a small nine-volt battery in the palm of his hand. ‘You need to change these every five years at the latest, otherwise they start to beep like the one in your attic.’
Emma closed her eyes. Happy that there was a harmless explanation for the beeping, but also disappointed in an irrational way. Basically, she’d had a nervous breakdown because of the signal from a smoke alarm, and this overreaction can only have reinforced her husband’s doubts about her mental faculties.
‘Strange,’ Philipp said, scratching the back of his head. ‘That can’t be right. I only checked the things last week.’
‘Not thoroughly enough, so it seems. So, Emma?’ she heard Jorgo ask, and for a moment she had no idea what he was getting at.
‘Batteries?’ he repeated.
‘Wait, I’ll have a look.’ She pushed past Jorgo and Philipp and was on her way into the living room when she suddenly remembered what she’d forgotten earlier.
Samson!
In all the kerfuffle she’d completely forgotten about him, and only now that she was looking at his sleeping blanket by the fireplace did she realise what her subconscious had been nagging her for.
Why didn’t he come when I called him?
Samson just raised his head wearily and seemed to smile when he saw his mistress. Emma was horrified by his sad expression. His breathing was shallow and his nose dry.
‘Are you in pain, little one?’ she asked, wandering over to the shelves where the electric thermometer was in the bottom drawer. She glanced at the desk and all of a sudden was unable to think about Samson’s condition any more.
Not when she saw the desk.
Where the package was that Salim had given her earlier.
Wrong.
Where it ought to have been.
Because in the place where she’d put it before opening up her notebook, to take yet another look at the lift photo of the Hairdresser, there was nothing to be seen now.
The package for A. Palandt had vanished.