I had only ever been to the Landbergs’ house a handful of times in all the years I had known Hanna. I remembered it as a gloomily impressive place, like an exhibition crammed with the most expensive and monstrously ugly pieces of furniture the world’s most deluded carpenter could dream of. It also seemed to be much further away than I remembered. I laboured up the footpath with my lungs bursting and my heart thumping. It was a sunny day and pretty soon I was perspiring. Worse, the footpath was overhung with unkempt summer grasses and I guessed that they would be alive with blood-sucking ticks. There was nothing for it, though. If I went round by the road it would take four times as long to reach Hanna’s place. I emerged on to the single-track road which led to the house, ineffectually brushing at my arms and legs, gulped in a great breath of air which seemed disgustingly tepid, and ran on, my shoes slapping on the worn tarmac.
The house was right at the end of the road, just before it petered out into an overgrown forest track that was blocked off by a heavy wooden barrier. I stood by one of the stone pillars which flanked the gate and tried to catch my breath. The gate itself was closed and probably locked, but I thought I could climb over it without too much difficulty. There was a buzzer on one of the pillars next to the letter box, but I didn’t bother pressing it. If Hanna wasn’t answering the phone it was unlikely she would simply open the gate.
Peering over the gate, I could see that the drive was empty. There was no sign of Herr Landberg’s Mercedes, though I was not sure what this meant. Had Hanna taken it out again, trying to avoid me? If so, how had she settled it with her parents? It was inconceivable that she could keep borrowing the car right under Herr Landberg’s large aquiline nose. Perhaps the Landbergs were away. Certainly the garden looked as though it had not been tended for a while; the tubs of flowers outside the house were dead from lack of watering. When I had called her about Julius, she had told me they were there, in bed, but now I wondered.
I took hold of the gate, stuck the toe of my shoe into one of the gaps in the ornate metalwork and swung myself up on top. From my vantage point I stared at the front of the house, but there was no sign of movement anywhere. I dropped down on to the Landbergs’ driveway, horribly conscious of the crunching sound my feet made as they landed on the gravel. Then I walked right up to the front door.
I didn’t really expect to find it unlocked but I tried the handle anyway. Then I lifted the old-fashioned knocker and let it fall once, twice. I listened but I could hear nothing inside – no footsteps hurrying towards the door, not even the furtive sound of someone creeping away to hide. I stepped back and looked up at the front of the house. The shutters were down on some of the windows but not all of them. For a moment I thought I glimpsed movement at one of the upstairs windows, but then I realized it was only sunlight flashing on the panes.
The sun was full on the front of the house and it was terribly hot now. My throat was dry and there was a sour taste in my mouth. Worse, there was a detectable tang in the air, sweetish and foul, the scent of something putrefying in the heat. I guessed that it must come from the Landbergs’ dustbins, unemptied and festering in the summer weather. Doing my best to breathe through my mouth, I knocked on the door again, three times, willing Hanna to open up.
You can’t avoid me forever.
Still nothing. I gazed at the neatly painted wooden panels that presented such an impenetrable barrier. Should I try breaking in? I could imagine the state of apoplexy into which Herr Landberg would certainly be catapulted if I dared to break one of his windows. Should I give up the venture and try to make my own way to the Eschweiler Tal? I was already tired, thirsty and half sick with the heat.
With a sudden overwhelming feeling of frustration I seized the knocker again and hammered at the door, sending a series of sharp cracks reverberating through the house like thunder. In the silence that followed I listened, ears straining for the slightest sound. There was nothing. If Hanna was inside listening to my frenzied knocking, she was a cooler hand than I was, staying still and silent. I could hear nothing but my own ragged breathing.
Try the back door.
I stepped away from the house and looked up again, hoping to see someone behind one of those windows. I turned my head and it was then that I noticed the up-and-over door of the double garage. It was open – not wide open, but the lower edge was perhaps four centimetres from the ground, as though someone had intended to close it but had not quite succeeded. From a distance you could barely see that the door was not closed. There was just enough clearance that a rat might have crept in underneath, but that was all.
Now I found myself looking up at the windows again, this time praying that nobody was looking out. If I could get into the garage, there was probably a connecting door to the house and that one might not be locked.
Instinctively I kept close to the wall, so that anybody who happened to look out of the upper windows would be unable to see me. As I approached the garage door I realized that I was involuntarily holding my breath. There was that smell again, sickly sweet and cloyingly pervasive, the ripe scent of rotting organic matter. As I tried to suck in a shallow breath through gritted teeth, it was disgusting. I imagined bin bags filled with stinking food remains piled up inside the garage, the seams splitting to release their noisome contents. What on earth had been happening here?
I pinched my nostrils shut with one hand, then grasped the bottom edge of the garage door with the other and heaved. The door moved up and over, sliding into place above my head. The vile stench burst forth like a poisonous cloud, but that was not the thing that made me stand there with my eyes wide and my hands clamped to my mouth as though trying to smother a scream.
The Landbergs’ silver-grey Mercedes was parked in there, all right. And next to it was Kai von Jülich’s red sports car.