A DAY HAS PASSED since the police dug up the empty grave by the villa. Within that short time winter crept out of its hiding place and rolled over the country. Within a few hours the temperature fell below zero, snow settled over the land like a whispering sheet and produced a disconcerting silence—the noise of traffic has disappeared, there’s no sound of birds, people talk to each other more quietly.
There’s a state of emergency in southern Germany, the railway has stopped, all flights have been canceled, and the schools are closed. In the north and west there are hurricane-force winds, while a new ice age is spreading across the east. Berlin has turned overnight into a suffocating dream in white. The traffic drags itself through the city like a wounded animal. The pavements are deserted, hardly anyone risks going outside, and in the morning hours the streetlights are just shimmering yellow smears that can’t hold their own against the gloom.
Frauke isn’t very interested in this disastrous state of affairs. She sits shivering on a fallen tree trunk with a newspaper under her bottom. Krumme Lanke lies frozen at her feet, covered with a layer of snow in which there are no tracks to be seen. The only movements in the snowed-in landscape are ravens flapping silently from one branch to another.
Frauke feels as if the weather is reflecting her inner state. She flicks her cigarette away and stamps her feet on the spot a few times. Her watch says a quarter to ten. Frauke is slowly getting nervous. I probably just want to go home, she lies to herself, and takes the next cigarette from the pack. She spent last night in a hotel, although Gerald told her she could stay over at his place. Frauke had thanked him, no. She has enough complications on her plate without adding Gerald to the mix.
After the police withdrew from the villa site on Saturday morning, at Frauke’s request Gerald went with her to a café. Frauke could sense how irritated he was. First of all she’d turned up on his doorstep in a complete state the previous evening asking for help, then a few hours later she threw him out of the villa in front of her friends, before turning up again at his office the following morning and pouring it all out—about some dead woman who’d been nailed to a wall, and the murderer, who had bought an apology for himself. “He wanted what?”
“He wanted us to apologize for him, to the dead woman.”
“And then?”
“Then he wanted us to get rid of the evidence.”
“And you couldn’t tell me that last night?”
“I wanted you to hear it from us all. I thought if they got to know you they’d find it easier to talk about it. But that’s not what happened.”
“I know, I was there.”
“If I’d known that Kris and Wolf were burying the corpse in our garden, I’d have—”
“They did what?”
“The corpse is in our garden now, that’s why I’m here.”
Gerald was confused. He let Frauke know that she was putting some very serious accusations on the table here. Frauke waved a dismissive hand.
“We have nothing to do with the murder. You have to understand that, Gerald, he threatened us all, what were we supposed to do?”
Gerald leans forward.
“Frauke, you realize this all sounds a bit—”
“Crazy?” Frauke finished his sentence for him. “I know. But I can show you everything.”
Gerald drove to Kreuzberg with Frauke to look at the apartment where Wolf had supposedly found the dead woman. Gerald never actually said the word supposedly, but Frauke heard it in his voice.
The apartment was deserted, there wasn’t even any dirt on the floor, and there was no photomural on the wall either. When Frauke pointed out the two holes, Gerald was unimpressed and said there wasn’t much he could do with that. Outwardly Gerald looked interested, but Frauke saw that he was getting annoyed.
He probably has the stories I told him about my mother running through his head, and wondering if I’ve got a screw loose too.
“There’s nothing here,” Gerald observed. “All we’ve got is a deserted apartment. You’ve got to give me more than that.”
“The dead woman’s in our garden now, is that enough for you?” Frauke shot back testily.
She was aware that Gerald would already have waved anyone else away long ago and told them not to take so many drugs next time. Frauke wasn’t just anyone else.
“What do you want from me?” said Gerald.
“I want you to dig up the body.”
“Frauke, I can’t do that without a crime scene.”
“Then I’ll report a crime. I’ll turn myself in if you want.”
Gerald sighed. He looked around the deserted flat.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Gerald drummed up two squad cars and relayed Frauke’s self-denunciation. If he had taken the correct legal course, he would have had to talk to the relevant investigating judge to obtain an approved search warrant of the house and property. It would have taken too long. Gerald wanted to put the whole business behind him as soon as possible, so he deliberately did without the support of other agencies. He only wanted to have his own team along because he wouldn’t have to explain anything to his men. They didn’t ask questions.
They had found nothing but a sleeping bag in the grave. Gerald was relieved when Wolf signed the search agreement without a moment’s hesitation. Frauke’s housemates could’ve legally made things extremely unpleasant for him.
“I want to apologize to you,” said Frauke to Gerald when they were sitting in the café half an hour later. “I was sure the woman was in the grave.”
“Your friends struck me as very convincing.”
“Gerald, they’re lying.”
“Yes, perhaps, but they are your friends.”
Frauke pressed her lips together as if to force herself to be silent. She avoided Gerald’s eyes. She had no idea how to convince him.
The snow blew against the window in horizontal gusts, the rattle sounded like tiny fingers drumming against the glass. But Frauke couldn’t see or hear any of it. Her thoughts tumbled over each other. Concentrate, convince him. She wanted to suggest that Gerald should take a closer look at the trunk of Wolf’s car. And what about the sleeping bag? Why did Gerald leave it behind? So many ideas came to Frauke in retrospect.
They could test the holes in the walls for traces of blood …
They could do a lie detector test …
“I don’t get any of this, I just don’t get it.”
“If you like I could talk to your friends again.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Really, I can—”
“You don’t believe me, Gerald, be honest.”
He stared into his coffee and said nothing. Frauke dug around in her pocket, then set a photograph down on the table. Until a minute before she hadn’t planned to bring her mother into this.
I’ve got to protect her.
“I’ve still got this,” she said.
“Who’s that?”
“My mother. There were three photographs in the paper bag. One of them shows Tamara’s daughter, sitting on a step outside the kindergarten, the other photograph is a picture of Lutger, he’s Kris and Wolf’s father. He’s filling up his car. But this one …”
Frauke tapped the photograph.
“… this one the killer took at my mother’s house.”
“Doesn’t your mother live in that clinic in Spandau?”
“In Potsdam. She has a two-room apartment there. Do you get what I’m trying to say? Meybach sat opposite my mother, he must have talked to her. He was there.”
Gerald didn’t pick up the photograph, he touched it with his index finger, that was all.
“Why didn’t he send you a picture of your father?” he asked.
Frauke looked at him as if he’d made a joke.
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, no, I’m quite serious, why did he take the trouble to seek out your mother?”
“How should I know?”
Gerald pushed the photograph over to her. A small gesture, but Frauke nearly recoiled. I’ve only known him for two years, and I can still read him like a book. The gesture told her everything.
He thinks anyone could have taken the picture. Even me.
“My mother is the only one who knows what Meybach looks like,” Frauke said, and couldn’t help the fact that her voice sounded furious. “My mother sat opposite this murderer, Gerald, she’ll remember. If you talk to her and do a composite, then—”
Gerald suddenly slammed his hand down on the table, and Frauke immediately shuts up.
“Listen to me,” he said quietly, “just so that we really understand each other. I really like you, I’m entirely on your side, but I’ve already gone too far out on a limb. Things could get pretty complicated for me. I was at your house, and you threw me out; I looked at an abandoned flat with you, and then sent my men to your garden without a warrant, so that they could dig up a damned hole. And now you want me to go to a clinic and question a woman who’s been mentally disturbed for more than a decade?”
Silence had suddenly fallen around them. Gerald hadn’t noticed that his voice was getting loud toward the end. He hadn’t planned to let himself go. Frauke’s face told him everything. He had lost her. The people went on with their conversations. Frauke picked the photograph off the table and put it in her pocket.
“Frauke, I didn’t mean—”
“You’re right,” she said and got to her feet. “You’re far enough out on a limb.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, where are you going?”
“Where do you think I’m going? I’m going to see my mentally disturbed mother and ask her who took that picture of her,” Frauke replied, buttoning up her overcoat and leaving the café.
It’s a quarter past ten, and Frauke can’t feel her legs any more. The floor at her feet is scattered with cigarette butts. She knows that if she smokes another one she’ll throw up. One of the ravens lands a few yards away from her in a cloud of snow on the Krumme Lanke. It hacks twice at the ice, ducks down and flies away again. Frauke sees it disappearing, and the landscape is motionless and silent once more.
As a child she thought all ravens were guardian angels in disguise. When she thinks about it now she doesn’t know where she got that idea from. But she does remember how good it made her feel. Every time she saw a raven she felt protected and safe.
Her right hand grips the wooden handle in her coat so tightly that it hurts. She bought the knife early this morning in a household supply store on Schlossstrasse. It has a double blade and sits nicely in the hand. No raven will protect me today. Today I’ll protect myself. Frauke looks at her watch again. In the distance she hears the roar of an engine. Road maintenance is on its way and will soon drive past her. Frauke takes the pack of cigarettes out of her coat. The first drag makes her retch, after that it’s better. One more cigarette can’t hurt, she thinks and stares so intently across the ice that the landscape melts and flickers before her eyes like a misty dream.
After leaving Gerald sitting in the cafe, Frauke drove to Potsdam through the snow, registered as a visitor, and walked into the rear wing of the clinic where her mother had her apartment. She felt as if she were in a waking dream. In all those years she hadn’t been alone here once. It would have seemed wrong.
“Where’s your dear father?”
Frauke gave a start when she heard Mrs. Sanders’s voice behind her. She didn’t turn around, she could clearly imagine Mrs. Sanders standing in the doorway of the apartment—on tiptoes, careful not to cross an invisible line.
“He’s not coming today,” said Frauke.
“Aha, but they’re going in and out of your dear mother’s apartment. Whoremongering, I dare say. Is she pregnant again? You can’t turn on a light, your head stays in the dark.”
Frauke ignored Mrs. Sanders and stopped outside her mother’s door. Number 17. She laid one ear against the wood. She was nervous, but then anyone would probably be nervous if they hadn’t spoken to their mother for eleven years.
Tanja Lewin started seeing the evil in her daughter after her husband had had her committed to the private clinic. One day—they had been in the garden at visiting time, and her father had nipped off to the bathroom—Tanja Lewin took her fifteen-year-old daughter aside and said, “I know who you are and who’s hiding behind your face. And I know what you’ve done. Look at me, or is that so hard to do? It’s because of you that I’m here. It’s because of you that it all happened.”
That was how it began.
The phone rang at night, and when her father picked up the receiver the line went dead, but when Frauke got the phone her mother hissed in her ear: “How’s my whore-child? You know I’m locked up in here while you share a bed with your father? How much must you hate me to do such a thing?”
Her mother’s doctor asked Frauke time and again how she felt and how she was dealing with her mother’s illness. She wanted to know if her mother had made any accusations against her, and repeatedly explained that Tanja Lewin was non compos mentis and confused people and situations. If that’s the case, Frauke wanted to say, why is she accusing just me and not my father too? Frauke kept her mouth shut. To the doctor and also to her father. She didn’t want anyone to learn about her mother’s threats because she was afraid that the doctors would increase her mother’s medication or worse. Buried deep inside Frauke was the hope that if everyone thought her mother was normal she would soon be able to come home and resume her old life.
So during visiting times Frauke always stayed in the background and avoided looking at her mother. The worst thing about it was that there were also lucid moments in her mother’s life, when she was warm and affectionate and called Frauke over to her. This emotional roller coaster increasingly threatened to tear Frauke in two.
The big split came the year Frauke finished school and went to Italy for two months. Her mother was so disappointed by her absence that she stopped talking to Frauke when she came back. And that is how it has stayed until today.
Frauke took a deep breath, knocked and lowered the handle. The apartment was deserted, and her mother wasn’t in the adjoining bathroom either. Frauke looked at the back of the door where the weekly schedule was kept. It was macaroni and cheese today, with rocket salad. Under the word Saturday was a big letter S with a circle around it. Now Frauke knew where she could find her mother.
She had to push aside the curtain over the narrow window in the room to see her mother sitting on a bench. She was naked and alone. Frauke tapped against the glass, but her mother didn’t react. Frauke opened the door and stepped inside. The heat struck her in the face.
“Mama?”
Her mother looked up, startled. The doctors didn’t care for spontaneous visits. They said patients had to prepare themselves for visits. Perhaps I don’t exist for her, because I didn’t register in advance, Frauke thought and tried to smile.
“I didn’t think you were coming so soon,” said her mother. “Birgitt was going to massage me after the sauna and—”
“I’ve got to talk to you,” Frauke interrupted her and stopped in the door. It felt as if her lungs were refusing to inhale the sultry air. Her mother tapped on the bench next to her.
“Couldn’t you—”
“Shut the door and talk to me here,” her mother snapped and slid aside to make room for her daughter.
Frauke shut the door and sat down. She was nervous, and wished she could light a cigarette, but she had no idea whether that was even possible in a sauna.
“I knew you’d come,” said her mother. “I felt it here.”
She lifted her left breast and let it fall again.
Nice gesture, thought Frauke, and nodded as if she understood exactly what her mother meant. Her body was drenched in sweat, but she didn’t think of taking off her coat. It’s my armor, it’s staying on. Her mother’s hand settled on her knee, and Frauke flinched.
“Calm now,” said her mother.
“I am calm.”
Her mother patted the knee.
“He was here,” she said. “He talked to me. He likes you. I think that was why he sought me out. He wanted to know more about you. He asked me why you suffer so. You can imagine how surprised I was. I didn’t know you suffered. That’s why I had to speak to you. I wanted you to know that you’re blameless. Do you understand?”
Frauke tried to react. Order, bring order into this chaos. She cleared her throat and wiped the sweat from her eyes.
“Mama, who was here?”
“The devil, who else would I be talking about?”
“How do you know he was the devil?”
“Do you think I wouldn’t recognize the devil when he’s standing by my bed?”
Her mother laughed, at Frauke, and Frauke did something she would never have thought possible: she slapped her mother in the face.
“I’m twenty-nine,” she said and had to repeat it. “I’m twenty-nine, I’m not fifteen any more. I’ve got enough shit on my plate. You’ve got to stop telling me such crap, do you hear me? Enough now.”
Mother and daughter looked at one another. Was there any recognition in the mother’s eyes? Something about her expression confused Frauke. Then Tanja Lewin raised her hand and rested it on her daughter’s cheek, gently, as if Frauke had taken the blow rather than her mother.
“Don’t cry,” said her mother. “I know how hard it is for you.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I do, I know, and if you knew all the things I know, you’d be locked up in here with me. We crazy people just know too much.”
She smiled as if she had made a joke. Frauke wanted to get away. She imagined herself running out of the sauna, she saw herself leaning against the wall, breathing heavily, and tasted the cigarette, and then she was in the street and then in the car, and then she was gone.
“What did you tell the devil,” she asked quietly, and her voice sounded almost brittle. Painfully, she understood what she was doing here. She was getting involved with her mother. Again.
Tanja Lewin has seen the devil so many times that she’s no longer deceived. The devil has sung for her and recited poetry for her; he has gripped her heart, thus proving to her that she belongs to him. Frauke’s mother knows what the devil smells like, his preferences and his dislikes. Once he came to her as a child. He crept into the clinic, stood by the side of her bed and said he’d gotten lost. Tanja Lewin laughed at him. Another time he visited her as her doppelgänger, and that time she screamed until not a sound issued from her mouth.
After an absence of several years, five days ago the devil came back to Tanja Lewin. He was wearing a thick jacket, boots, and a woollen cap. He was young, he was friendly.
“The devil doesn’t get cold,” she said by way of greeting.
“I didn’t want to stand out,” he said and pulled up a chair. The devil had no rings on his fingers, his eyes were brown, his face clean-shaven.
“So they know you’re here?”
“Of course, they let me in. Look what I’ve brought you.”
The devil held up a camera.
“You want my soul?”
“I want to remember you.”
The devil asked her to smile. Frauke’s mother smiled, the devil took a picture, then another.
“Tell me about your daughter,” he said.
“I’m not telling you anything,” said Tanja Lewin and laughed anxiously. Even if she spent day and night waiting for the devil, it didn’t mean he didn’t scare her. The devil shook his head and said that wasn’t what he’d understood. He folded his hands. He plainly had time. They looked at each other. They looked at each other for a long time. It hurts when the devil is silent. It’s a bit as if the energy is being sucked out of the room. The air. The life.
“What do you want to hear?” asked Tanja Lewin after a while.
“Tell me what you did to her,” the devil said.
Tanja Lewin wanted to scream. She wanted to jump out of bed and drag her fingernails across his face. The devil didn’t let it come to that. He pushed Frauke’s mother onto the bed with one hand, and with the other he held her mouth shut.
“Everything,” he said and leaned over her. “Tell me everything.”
Tanja Lewin bit into the heel of his hand. She was so filled with fear that the fear gave her courage. The devil kept his hand resting on her mouth. His eyes closed for a moment. The blood from the wound flowed into her mouth, making her swallow and choke. The devil didn’t flinch. His eyes were a question.
Tell me everything, OK?
Tanja Lewin nodded, the hand detached itself from her mouth, Tanja Lewin spat blood on the floor, she choked and nearly vomited. The devil handed her tissues from the bedside table. Tanja Lewin heard the blood dripping from his hand onto the floor.
“I’m bleeding for you,” he said and smiled.
Tanja Lewin started to cry. As she later explained to Frauke, it wasn’t out of fear, it was pure relief that the devil wasn’t furious with her. He was acting sympathetic. He ran his uninjured hand over her forehead and told her to calm down. Now.
She calmed down.
He told her to look at him. Now.
She looked at him, and again the devil asked her to tell him everything.
Tanja Lewin shook her head.
“You didn’t tell him anything?” Frauke said with surprise.
“Nothing. Not a word.”
“And he was satisfied with that?”
“He was satisfied with that. The devil is a gentleman. That’s why I have to talk to you. I don’t trust him. The devil says he likes you, but beware. The devil lies, he always lies. And what he likes, he hates; and what he hates, he calls love. That’s why I gave nothing away. He isn’t to know who you are. You’re my daughter. That’s all he’s going to get. There’s nothing more to say. Do you know what tired means?”
Tanja Lewin didn’t wait for the answer, but laid her head in Frauke’s lap. Like her father. As if her mother knew how he had behaved toward his daughter. Frauke got goosebumps in spite of the heat.
“Let me sleep just for a day,” said her mother. “Or for a week, OK?”
She closed her eyes, one hand still resting on Frauke’s knee and the other clenched in a fist in front of her mouth. Tanja Lewin went to sleep like that, and Frauke sat there and sweated her soul out of her body and didn’t dare wake her mother.
She protected me.
The thought was like ice in the heat.
Frauke withstood it for twenty minutes, then she carefully lifted her mother’s head and rested it on a tissue. The air outside the sauna was the loveliest that Frauke had ever known. Relief came over her in sobs. She slumped onto a chair in the corridor and breathed greedily.
He was here, he wanted to know more about me.
On the way out Frauke asked the nurses if her mother had had any visitors over the last few days. No one knew anything; they explained that her mother wasn’t in a high-security prison.
What does he want from me?
The snow came as a relief. All the white, the cold, the silence. Frauke went to her car and was just tapping a cigarette out of the pack with trembling hands when her phone rang.
The display showed Tamara’s number.
“Yes?”
In the silence that followed Frauke expected all kinds of things. Insults and questions. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Tamara had simply been mucking about.
Do you still know me?
“Could you come, please,” said Tamara. “Your father’s lying outside the door.”
Frauke gives a start. She doesn’t know how long she’s been staring straight in front of her. How could I be so careless? The noise of the passing snowplow pulled her from her thoughts. How did Meybach know I felt guilty? How did he know that? Her right hand hurts, she loosens her grip and stares at the knife. It’s twenty past ten, and Frauke wonders if she’s really capable of killing. She used to believe that if she ran up a hill fast enough she would get to the top and go flying off. It was the run-up that mattered.
Killing might be like that, I need a proper run-up and I have to believe in it, then it’ll happen all by itself.
Frauke tries to imagine her life afterward. Starting work again, ordering a plate of tabouleh at the Arab restaurant, browsing in the bookshop or talking to Kris, making a date with this man and that one and knowing exactly whether she would or whether she wouldn’t have sex with him; talking to Wolf, holding Tamara in her arms, everything being as it should be and she just being who she is and no one else after she’s killed a human being.
“Where are you?” she says in a whisper and listens to the departing snowplow and wishes she was back in the villa.
Normally it doesn’t take Frauke ten minutes to get to the villa from Potsdam, but yesterday the journey through the snowstorm took half an hour. Arriving in front of the villa, she didn’t dare drive up to the property and parked like a stranger on the pavement outside. What if they don’t let me in?
Frauke checked her face in the rearview mirror. The black hair, the center part, perhaps a bit too much makeup around the eyes. She brushed her hair behind her ears and got out.
Her father was sitting on the veranda, wrapped in a blanket. He held a cup in his hands and reminded Frauke of a black-and-white photograph that she’d once seen at an exhibition. When her father saw her coming toward him, he quickly took the blanket off his shoulders. He doesn’t want to look old and weak.
“I thought there was no one there,” he said by way of greeting, and pointed behind him with his thumb, “so I waited outside.”
“You could have frozen to death,” said Frauke, glancing at the kitchen window. There was no one to be seen.
“People like me don’t freeze that easily,” her father replied and tapped his chest with his left hand. “Premium steel, you know?”
He folded up his blanket and laid it on the bench.
He tried to hug her. Frauke recoiled. She had had more than enough affection from one parent already.
“I know it was a joke,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Her father pretended he hadn’t heard her.
“Tamara’s heart probably stopped when she found me outside the door. My, you should have seen her face. She probably thought I was dead. But this air makes you tired, too.”
“Dad, why didn’t you call me?”
“Your car wasn’t there. I thought you were bound to be back soon. I’m used to waiting. Tamara made me coffee, but I wouldn’t go in. Trouble brewing, right?”
He took one last sip from the cup and tipped the rest in the snow before setting the cup on the bench. It left an ugly brown stain in the immaculate white.
“What’s up?” asked her father. “Are you two fighting or not? You can tell me. I—”
“It’s got nothing to do with you.”
He raised his hands defensively.
“Fine, fine. That’s not why I’m here anyway. Your mother rang, she wants to talk to you.”
“I know, I just paid her a visit.”
“But how did you know …”
Her father fell silent and rubbed his hand over his face, he was tired as always, his eyes bloodshot.
“You two are a mystery to me,” he said. “I don’t understand you. Your mother called me this morning, she phoned me from one of the pay phones in the common room. I was to find you and tell you that she …”
He broke off mid-sentence. Frauke saw the tears and wondered how he could love her mother like that. After all those years. No human being should love another human being like that.
“What did she tell you?” he wanted to know.
She told him. She told him everything she had learned from her mother, and saw him switching from joy to grief. Joy that his wife’s mind had been clear for a few moments and that she had phoned him; and grief because she talked of the devil as if he were a welcome guest.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s go.”
• • •
In the street outside the villa she let go of her father’s arm and sat down in the car. She closed the driver’s door, started the engine, and turned on the heating. She breathed deeply in and out. She didn’t want to look at her father standing there on the edge of the street watching her. It wasn’t one of her best days. First she had dragged the police into the house in front of her friends, then she had got involved with her mother, and now this. Maybe he’ll just go, maybe he’ll forget me, and we’ll never see each other again. The passenger door opened, and her father slumped into the seat with s sigh.
“I’d just like to go to sleep,” he said. “Will you stay at my place tonight?”
“And what about your car?”
“I’ll collect it another time.”
His hand pressed her leg.
“Please, Frauke, I beg you.”
Frauke didn’t want to go back to her father’s and meet his new flame. No one should see her like that. Her father said he understood. So she took a room in a little hotel on Mommsenstrasse. No sooner had they walked into the room than her father lay down on one side of the bed and was asleep within minutes. Frauke sat by the open window and smoked. Her thoughts circled, they were like birds of prey waiting for a rash movement.
How could Meybach do that?
At around midnight she took a bath and had a pizza delivered. The question didn’t go away, the question wanted an answer. Meybach had made a crucial mistake. He had got too close to Frauke. He should have stayed away from her mother. Now things were personal, and Frauke couldn’t cope with that.
How could he? Just tell me, how?
For a while she watched her sleeping father, who had been passive all his life, and had always lived with the weary hope that his wife would be well again one day. As Frauke heard his steady breathing, she understood that she could never allow herself to be like that. No passivity, no weary hopes. She decided to aim straight for her goal. No nervous dancing around. Enough waiting. She hated being helpless.
She ate the pizza and waited to see if she would change her mind. But with every passing minute her confidence grew. The only snag was that she didn’t want to leave too early, which was ridiculous, because there was no wrong or right time to visit one’s own house.
Unless you want to be caught.
She washed her face with cold water and looked at herself in the mirror.
Now or never.
She wrote a note for her father, pulled on her coat and went out into the snow.
Half an hour later she closed the front door. It was quiet, a pleasant, familiar darkness filled the rooms, and the smell of a wood fire lay in the air. Frauke took off her boots and left them by the front door. No traces. She laid her hand on the radiator in the hall. The warmth was still there, it would only fade at dawn. Frauke knew how chilly the villa felt after you woke up. The luxury of a shower, the boiler working to pump warmth through the house, a new day.
Without me.
Frauke left the front door open a crack and stepped inside.
Please be where you always are, please.
She stopped by the wardrobe and looked through the jacket.
Nothing.
She reached for the coat. Nothing.
And now? What do I do now? I can hardly go upstairs and ask Kris if he could help me for a moment.
Frauke thought for a moment, then took out her phone and tapped in Kris’s number in the dark.
Please don’t let it—
The sound of a ringing cell phone came from the kitchen. Frauke immediately hung up, the ringing noise stopped, and Frauke crept across the floorboards in her socks. Her footsteps were barely audible; the floor just creaked a little in the kitchen.
The phone was on a pile of magazines. She put it in her coat pocket and crept back out of the kitchen. As she stepped into the corridor, she was suddenly standing in front of herself. Her heart stopped painfully for a moment, then Frauke looked away from her reflection and stepped outside. Boots on, shut the door carefully, down the steps to the gate. The crunch of her footsteps in the snow was frighteningly noisy. She didn’t look back. She knew that no one was watching after her. She was confident that just as she was vanishing now, her footsteps would vanish over the next hour.
• • •
Her father hadn’t moved from the spot. He could be dead, Frauke thought, and rested her hand on his back. Warmth, the rhythm of his breathing. Frauke shut herself in the bathroom. She found the right number after a few seconds. Kris had given her not a name, but a sign: #.
Frauke pressed CALL.
Meybach picked up after the fourth ring.
“I was wondering when you would call. I wanted to thank you for the file, that was good work.”
“You are one sick fucker,” Frauke hissed. Silence.
“Hello?”
She looked at the display. Meybach had hung up. She pressed REDIAL. He kept her waiting and only picked up after the eleventh ring.
“Let’s start again from the beginning,” he said.
Frauke breathed deeply in and out.
“That sounds better, you’re relaxing.”
“How the hell could you go and see my mother?”
“Oh, it’s you, Frauke Lewin, lovely to hear from you. It must have struck you that I have a spot for you. From the very first day I knew we had a particular connection, you and I.”
“There is no connection between us. How dare you visit my mother?”
“She’s an interesting case. Other people’s pasts haven’t given me much, but your mother is a special case.”
“If you ever go back and—”
“Come on, Frauke, this isn’t about your mother.”
He fell silent. She didn’t want to ask, she asked.
“So what is it about?”
“About guilt, of course, what else? Don’t you get the irony behind this? You have an agency that apologizes, but there’s lots that you can’t forgive yourselves.”
“What do you know about us? You don’t know us. You know nothing about us.”
“I don’t know much. I’m being honest. But what do you know about guilt? What do you know about forgiveness?”
Frauke was confused, she had no idea what he was talking about.
“We are doing a job,” she said.
“Maybe that’s the problem. You were just doing a job. Perhaps we should leave it there. Do your job. I just need one more apology from you and then it’s quits, the job is over.”
“QUITS? WHAT DO YOU MEAN QUITS?” Frauke exploded. “NO ONE’S GOING TO APOLOGIZE FOR YOU EVER AGAIN, YOU SICK—”
Again that silence at the other end. Frauke hoped her yelling hadn’t woken her father up. She stared at the display and marched up and down the bathroom a few times. She could have called Meybach from the street, but she wanted to be near her father. As if he could offer her protection.
Seven rings later.
“It’s always a question of sympathy,” Meybach said.
“You won’t get any sympathy from me. You’re a murderer. Murderers don’t deserve sympathy. And don’t think I don’t know who you are. My mother gave a precise description of you. The police know all about it.”
“Frauke, you insult me. I know your every footstep, so stop bluffing. And anyway no one’s going to listen to a woman who’s been living in a closed institution for fourteen years, and who gets visits from the devil from time to time. But that isn’t the point either. I can tell you what I look like. You know what I look like. But what good will a description do you? Are you looking for me or something?”
She couldn’t get her head around it. She felt so furious that the pressure in her head nearly tore her in two.
He’s fucking with me, this sick fucker is fucking with me.
“I want us to meet,” she said urgently.
“Say that again.”
“I want us to sort this business out between us. Whatever your plan is, you’ll get it from me as long as you leave my friends out of it.”
“How do you know you can give me what I need?”
Let me do it, cried a voice in Frauke’s head, let me take the burden off my friends, just let me do it.
She went on speaking as quietly as possible.
“I have no idea what this woman did to you, but it seems plain to me that it’s a matter of revenge.”
No reaction. Frauke heard his breathing. Meybach didn’t agree with her, but he didn’t deny it either. Frauke went on.
“I can help you. I can give you what you’re looking for.”
“And that might be?”
“Absolution.”
“Perhaps we should meet, then,” he said.
Frauke tried to sound normal, but the words came too fast.
“Where and when?”
Meybach laughed.
“You’re under pressure, aren’t you?”
Now it was Frauke who came close to hanging up. I’ve betrayed my friends, I have nowhere to live now, you bastard, and you’re asking me if I’m under pressure!
“Maybe I’m the one who can grant absolution,” Meybach went on.
“Yes, maybe,” Frauke lied.
After that he told her where she could find him; then he hung up, and Frauke stared with surprise at the display on Kris’s phone for a few moments, before she kissed it.
I’ve got you, she thought, now I’ve got you.
Which is why six hours later Frauke is sitting on a fallen tree trunk on the shore of the Krumme Lanke, shivering pitifully. So far there hasn’t been a single stroller or jogger. Only the ravens switch from one tree to another, as if they were impatient too.
It’s 10:33. Meybach said he would be there at ten. Frauke looks around, the forest is a dark wall behind her. She doesn’t think Meybach will come from there. The snow would give him away after only a few steps.
He’ll come along one of the gritted paths, and then I’ll sort everything out and I’ll—
Kris’s cell phone rings in her coat. She takes it out. The display shows #.
“So there we are,” Meybach says by way of greeting.
“I’m here, where are you?”
“To be perfectly honest, I found it rather difficult to trust you. Who’s to say that you wouldn’t turn up with another police unit?”
“I’d never—”
“I know you would if you could. But you’ve probably taken your toll on the policeman’s nerves, am I correct?”
Frauke looks behind her.
“You were watching us?”
“I always had an eye on you all. It was very daring of you to call on your old friend in the criminal investigation department.”
Frauke starts sweating.
“I did all that on my own,” she says quickly. “I’m … I’m losing it. The others had nothing to do with it. I’ll make up for it.”
“I thought we were going to meet.”
“We are meeting,” says Meybach, and a moment later there’s a whistle. The ravens rise up out of the trees. Frauke sees a man standing on the opposite shore. A hundred meters away. Perhaps less.
“That’s not fair,” she says.
“What’s not fair? Did you want to shake my hand?”
No, I wanted to slit your fucking throat, Frauke wants to answer. She narrows her eyes slightly and sees that he’s wearing jeans, a black jacket, a cap, and has his phone pressed to his right ear.
Frauke walks closer to the shore of the Krumme Lanke. Her eyes hurt, she’s concentrating so hard on seeing Meybach. But however hard she tries, he stays a blur, as if he were a mirage that could dissolve into nothing at any moment.
“Why didn’t you bury the body in some forest or other?”
“Scruples,” says Frauke, “and respect for the dead woman. We didn’t just want to chuck her in any old place. Everyone deserves a decent funeral.”
“So you buried her in the garden?”
Frauke says nothing.
“Not everyone deserves a funeral, Frauke. Some people should just be chucked.”
“Is that why you came and got her from our property?”
The figure on the opposite shore doesn’t move.
“Who says I came and got her?” asks Meybach after a long pause.
Frauke breathes in with a hiss.
“What are you doing?” asks Meybach.
Frauke looks down at herself with surprise. She has stepped on the ice of the Krumme Lanke.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The ice won’t hold you. Do you think I’d be so stupid as to stand here if it held you?”
Frauke doesn’t answer him. Her right hand grips the handle of the knife in her coat pocket. In spite of the cold she feels sweat on her back. Like yesterday in the sauna, everything’s repeating itself.
“Did you really think I’d go to the trouble of getting the corpse out of your garden? I thought you were smarter than that. I probably shouldn’t spend any more time on you, now that you’re out of the game.”
“Who says I’m out of the game?”
Meybach laughs, and Frauke could kill him for that laugh alone.
“You mean your friends forgive you and are glad to see you again after you brought the police into their house? I wish we’d met under different circumstances, I think we would have gotten along. Whatever you have to do with the agency, you aren’t really a part of it. You should forgive yourself, Frauke, that’s the first step, and no one else can—”
“HOW DARE YOU MEDDLE IN MY LIFE!”
Frauke’s words ring out over the ice. She wasn’t speaking into the phone, she leaned forward and yelled the words straight at him. When she puts her phone back to her ear, Meybach says softly, “So I’ve touched a raw nerve, then.”
She can’t look at him any more. It’s over. She’s finished. I’m not going to beg, she thinks and snaps her phone shut. She puts it in her coat pocket and looks across to Meybach as if waiting for a starting flag, then she starts running.
FRAUKE LEWIN was the only one you were really taken by. When you took a closer look at the agency, she stood out right away. Something about her fascinated you. She seemed different from Tamara Berger, who struck you as fragile and anxious, too weak for real life. She was different from Kris Marrer, who seemed to consist entirely of corners and edges. And she was different from his little brother Wolf, who might have looked predictable, but you knew it was only an illusion. Those of us with feelings of guilt are the most unpredictable of creatures.
You concentrated on Frauke Lewin. For two days you were so close to her that in retrospect you wonder why she didn’t notice you. There was a closeness there, there was a connection, there was … You still can’t quite grasp it. You only know that you wanted to find out more about her.
You disliked her father right off. But you were fascinated by her mother. Her medical report, her life before and after she was admitted to the clinic, her relationship with Frauke. You saw where the guilt came from and decided to pay her mother a visit. It was a stupid idea. It was irresponsible and dangerous of you. And then she turned you away and didn’t tell you anything. Nonetheless your visit was worth it. You not only came a bit closer to Frauke, no, she phoned you and wanted to see you. And now that Krumme Lanke is the only thing separating you, you really regret that there’s this problem between you. You wish you’d met her in normal life. You also wish she’d think about everything in peace. With a cool head. She would understand you. With more sympathy she would understand you. But like this …
“You aren’t really a part of it,” you say and try to read her facial expression in the distance. “You should forgive yourself, Frauke, that’s the first step, and no one else can—”
“HOW DARE YOU MEDDLE IN MY LIFE!” her voice rings out across the ice.
For a moment you’re speechless, then you say carefully, “So I’ve touched a raw nerve, then.”
They’re the wrong words, the conversation is over. Frauke puts her phone away, ducks down, and suddenly comes running toward you. How can she be so brave? After ten meters her woollen cap flies off her head and falls on the ice, her coat opens like a black flower. You can make out her determined expression, her arms pump away in the rhythm of her footsteps, something metallic glitters in her hand.
She’s attacking me, you think and can’t believe it, she’s really attacking me. The big question now is, what are you going to do if she makes it across to your side? Are you going to have a fight with her? Look at her face, she’s a Fury. You could run away and—
I’m not going to make a fool of myself.
Frauke has crossed the middle of the lake. She shows no hesitation, she has only one goal in mind. Meter after meter she’s getting closer, her footsteps echoing dully across the surface of the ice, you think you can hear her loud breathing, then there’s a sharp crack and the surface beneath Frauke collapses. The knife falls from her hand and skitters across the ice to you. Frauke tries to grip the edge of the hole, the edge comes away, water slops out and turns the snow gray before making it transparent. You stand there and watch. You can’t deny it, you’re relieved. Something like pity, something like disappointment rises up in you. You wonder how she could’ve been so stupid.
Not stupid, brave.
Fine, as you wish. But I hope you know that the brave almost always die first, don’t you?
THE SHOCK ISN’T just the cold of the water, the shock of failing’s much worse.
I was so sure I’d make it.
Frauke knows instinctively that she has to hold her head above the surface or it’s all over. She reaches for the edge of the ice, which breaks away under her fingers. She kicks out with her feet, a ring of iron settles around her ribcage and cuts off her breathing.
Calm, stay calm, I’ll get out of this and then …
For several seconds she forgets to tread water. She sees Meybach clearly and distinctly standing on the shore. He hasn’t backed away. He hasn’t tried to run off. The mirage has a face.
I … I know him, I …
Frauke disappears under water, re-emerges, her fingernails scratch across the edge of the ice. She manages to brace her left arm. Tired. The cold is slowly making her tired. The back of her neck feels as if it’s in a bear trap. The pain is paralyzing and flows down her back, one vertebra at a time. The tiredness is everywhere now, it slows her movements and makes the pain fade into the background, while her waterlogged coat drags her down. Now Frauke gets her right arm out of the water as well, and supports herself on the edge.
The ice holds.
Rest, just rest for a moment …
Then she sees Meybach turning away.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
He doesn’t reply, he doesn’t listen to her, he goes back up the embankment.
“Stop, you … Are you scared? Have I—”
The ice breaks, Frauke was careless for a moment and supported all her weight on the edge. Her head disappears under water, her nose fills up, she emerges coughing and gasping for air. Something sharp moves in her head and splits her nerves. Everything becomes dull and numb. The water freezes on her face, and when she reaches around, the edge of the ice isn’t there any more. Her hands meet the water and send it splashing into the air. The ravens start screeching. The lake pulls hungrily at Frauke, the tiredness is everywhere, the heaviness, the cold and the numbness that settles like a cocoon around her body and her whole being.
No one is standing on the shore now. No footsteps can be heard on the ice. Only the sun looks through the clouds, making the ice glitter. It looks like hope.
Soon …
Warmth settles on Frauke’s face. Her hands reach into the void, her movements slow.
Soon …
A wall of clouds pushes in front of the sun, the wind comes back, the ravens fall mute. It is silent. It is silent. Slowly the hole in the ice closes up again.