Three weeks later
When Emma opened her eyes she had difficulty getting her bearings. She knew where she was (in Konrad’s office), who she was (a paranoid patient in the dock) and why she was here (to make an important statement – much was at stake). But she didn’t have a clue where the last few minutes had disappeared. The hand of the clock on the shelf had advanced a quarter of an hour and the Assam tea in her cup, which Konrad had just poured, was no longer steaming in spite of the fact that she’d only blinked.
‘What happened?’ she asked Konrad with a yawn.
‘You fell asleep,’ he said. His legs were no longer crossed, but that was the only change in his otherwise flawless poise. He sat as straight as a die in his seat, without looking the least bit tense. Emma knew that he’d been a passionate advocate of autogenic training for years and he’d perfected the mindset for keeping calm.
‘I fell asleep? During our conversation?’ she asked in disbelief, massaging her tensed neck.
‘In the middle of a sentence,’ he asserted. ‘The medication is making you tired and it’s also very hot here. I’ve turned down the fire.’
What a pity.
Emma looked at the glass panel in the wall, behind which the gas flames were lapping with less vigour, and couldn’t help yawning again.
Raising his eyebrows, Konrad asked gently, ‘Maybe we should stop there today, Emma.’
‘Do I have to go back?’
She swallowed. The very thought of her ‘cell’ produced a lump in her throat.
‘I’m afraid so, but I guarantee that they won’t sedate you tonight.’
Wow, what progress!
‘I think I’d like to stay for bit longer.’
‘Okay, but…’
‘No, it’s fine. Tiredness isn’t an illness, is it? I’ve still got some strength left, so we should make use of the time. It does me good to tell you everything.’
‘Everything?’ Konrad pressed her.
‘What are you getting at?’
He took a deep breath and paused. ‘Well, I note that there are some things you merely touched upon before quickly changing the subject.’
‘Like what?’
‘The money, for example.’
‘What money?’
Konrad gave a mischievous smile, as if this question were the proof of his assertion.
‘Didn’t you say that the vet was complaining your credit card was blocked?’
‘Oh, that.’ Emma folded her hands in her lap.
‘What was that all about? Was it a bank error?’
‘No,’ she admitted softly.
‘So it really was blocked?’
‘Yes,’ she said with a nod.
‘And the email you casually mentioned before. The one referring to the blocking of your account, which you thought was spam…’
‘It was real, yes.’
Konrad narrowed his eyes. ‘Did you and Philipp have financial problems?’
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
Emma cleared her throat in embarrassment, then pulled herself together. ‘You asked if we had financial problems. I said no, because it was just me in trouble.’
It was barely conceivable that Philipp would ever get into financial difficulties. His parents had left him a fortune they’d accumulated from building motorway service stations, before the two of them were swept away by cancer.
‘I’d ordered too much, all manner of rubbish teleshopping and on the internet, from expensive cosmetics to microwavable slippers. Useless stuff I was buying to try and take my mind off things. Meanwhile my practice wasn’t earning a cent.’
‘But surely Philipp didn’t leave you in the lurch?’ Konrad asked.
‘No, you know how generous he is. We didn’t sign a pre-nuptial agreement, even though he brought all the money into our marriage. But he was already paying the loan on my practice. I used my own account for my shopping addiction.’
‘And when it was empty you were too ashamed to tell him?’
Emma lowered her gaze. ‘Yes.’
‘Okay,’ Konrad said as if ticking off an item from the list, and indeed he did change the subject.
‘Let’s discuss what you told me about Sylvia. What got you more worked up? When she alleged you swapped the pills, or when she talked of the “supposed” rape?’
Emma swallowed. ‘I don’t know. I think they’re one and the same. She called me a mad liar who was out to hurt her.’
‘Did she?’ Konrad put his head to one side. ‘Didn’t she in fact doubt your sense of perception?’
Emma frowned. ‘I don’t see the difference.’
‘Oh, it’s huge. You know very well how three witnesses to a car crash can sometimes come up with four different accounts of the accident. None of them is lying, but in stressful situations the brain often plays tricks.’
‘Maybe, but I’d definitely know if I’d deliberately swapped her pills and whether or not I was raped.’
Konrad nodded and something uncanny occurred. He changed, and so rapidly, as if a switch had been pressed. His paternal smile vanished as quickly as the laughter lines around his eyes. His expression became tight, almost rigid, as sharp as the drawing pins on his desk. His jawbones stuck out and his breathing grew very calm.
That’s what a fox looks like just before it pounces on the rabbit, Emma thought, and indeed her kind mentor had become the notorious star lawyer whose cross-examinations were feared by witnesses and public prosecutors throughout Germany.
‘So you’re sure?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
Beneath the cashmere blanket Emma clenched her fists.
‘As sure as you were that you were forcibly treated during the Rosenhan Experiment?’
‘Konrad, I…’
‘At least that’s what you told the audience at your lecture. You showed them a video. Although the woman had different-coloured hair, you explained that it was you being given electric shocks.’
‘Yes, but…’
And with that the cat was out of the bag. The ‘but’ that changed everything. Emma rubbed her eyes in the vain attempt to hold back the tears.
‘But even I don’t know why I fibbed about that,’ she said, then corrected herself straight away. ‘Well, yes, I do. I wanted to take the wind out of the sails of a colleague by the name of Stauder-Mertens. He’s an arrogant arsehole who was trying to make me look ridiculous with his questions. It was really stupid of me, but…’
She left the second ‘but’ hanging in the air, because there was nothing that could undo her deception.
‘Those critical questions from a colleague may have been the trigger for your lie. But not the cause,’ Konrad said.
‘I know that.’
She turned to the window and gazed at the snow on the lake. Wished she could be out there. Floating lifelessly, beneath the ice.
‘Of course you do,’ Konrad said, still pressing her. ‘Pseudology is your specialist subject. You know the circumstances that can give rise to pathological lying.’
‘Konrad, please…’
Emma turned back and looked at him imploringly, but the criminal defence lawyer knew no mercy and enumerated the symptoms: ‘Neglect in childhood. Rejection by one’s parents, one’s father, for example. A highly fertile imagination that allows one to escape into a world of make-believe where one invents a substitute attachment figure, who might be called Arthur.’
‘STOP!’
Emma threw the blanket from her knees. ‘Why are we bothering to talk if you don’t believe a word I say?’ she cried and was about to leap up from the sofa. But, overestimating her strength, she teetered back, knocking over her teacup.
Fat drops fell from the coffee table onto the white part of the rug. A stain wouldn’t have been so obvious on the once-dark black threads that had faded to brown over the years.
‘I’m really sorry, Konrad. Christ, I didn’t mean it.’ More tears filled her eyes, and this time she didn’t bother fighting against them.
‘It’s not a problem,’ she heard Konrad say, who’d jumped up instinctively, and basically he was right. It was a minor stain, which would easily come out in cleaning, yet she felt as if she’d defiled the thing most sacred to him.
Why did it have to be the O rug?
She knew what the old, round thing meant to Konrad. He’d brought it back decades ago from a trip to Tibet when he was a student. It had been his first major acquisition, his lucky charm – and she’d soiled it.
‘Where are you going?’ Konrad asked, when she tried to get up from the sofa again.
She pointed at the door beside the exit that led to Konrad’s private loo.
‘To get some water and soap.’
He shook his head gently, her old friend and mentor once more. Again the change had occurred in a split second, and even if he wasn’t smiling he sounded as warm and friendly as before: ‘The rug isn’t important, Emma. What is important is that you tell me the truth.’
‘I am trying, but you’re scaring me.’
Konrad shrugged as if meaning to say, ‘I know, but what can I do?’
‘Don’t feel intimidated by me,’ he said gently and sat down again. ‘I’m just playing the advocatus diaboli here. During the trial the public prosecutor will try to faze you with quite different tricks.’
Emma swallowed, wishing he’d hug her, or at least hold her hand, but he just watched her sit back down. Only then did he stand up again, take a large handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wipe the glass table. He ignored the dark stain on the floor. ‘The prosecutor will reveal all your dark secrets, which is what he must do. After all, he wants to see you locked up in prison for life.’
‘I know.’
Emma scratched the top of her forehead, resisting the urge to check the length of her hair. She wiped her nose with a tissue, then said, ‘I didn’t intend any of it to happen, do you believe me?’
Konrad tapped his lips, then pursed them and replied after a brief deliberation, ‘Normally at this point I always say that it’s not important. That it doesn’t matter to me whether my client’s lying or telling the truth. But in this case it’s different.’
‘Because we’re friends?’
‘Because I don’t yet know the whole story, Emma. Tell it to me! And not just what I already know from the files. You need to go deeper and talk about things that you find painful.’
Emma’s eyes glazed over.
Looking right through Konrad, of course she understood what he meant. He wanted to hear about the bodies.
Alright then…
Her eyes focused again, wandered across the fire and the huge desk to the window, beyond which lay a lake she’d probably never walk on again in her life.
On the other hand she had pictures in her head that would accompany her everywhere, no matter how fast she ran away from herself.
For example, the barrel with the severed limbs.
Yes, that’s a good idea.
Why don’t I tell him about the barrel?
But before that she had to explain how she’d come to be in the shed in the first place and why she’d had to leave the house for a second time, without noticing that she was being watched by the delivery man… Everything in good time.
And so Emma lay back on the sofa and obliged Konrad by going where she found it most painful.
Back to the house in Teufelssee-Allee, where soon she’d lose everything that had once been important to her.