They were able to simply turn it on and off.
The missing hole. It got larger and darker and colder when they robbed Mats of the only sense he had left. As soon as the microphone went off and the earphones stopped transmitting, it was as if he were in a never-ending freefall, a nightmare that kept exceeding itself.
As a child, he could never get one particular scary fairy tale scene out of his five-year-old head – one where a prince had been walled in alive. Mats had imagined dark, rough clinker bricks forming an impenetrable wall, inside which he was damned to an eternal darkness. He never could’ve imagined that the invisible, intangible walls of his own body would create an even more horrific dungeon.
‘Hello, Dr Krüger?’
The head physician’s voice was the loveliest sound he could imagine. Every sound that penetrated the darkness and thwarted his freefall was a gift.
‘Can you hear me?’
He blinked, and Roth told him thanks. His voice sounded different somehow than before. More tense. Like someone who’s trying not to say what’s really on their chest.
‘Where is Nele?’ Mats shouted into the eternity of his prison, inaudibly loud. Of course he got no answer.
‘We still don’t have any news from the police,’ Dr Roth said, and it sounded like a lie.
Were they trying to spare him?
‘We’ve currently been condemned to wait…’ Mats heard Dr Roth take a heavy breath, then he added: ‘But perhaps we could use the time we have and something might occur to you that could help the investigators with their search.’
What search are you talking about? The one for Nele – or for her murderer?
Mats wanted to flail about, bite, kick and so much more that he’d probably never be able to do again. He knew Roth was hiding something from him. He didn’t need to see him standing by the bed with his face so clearly ridden with guilt.
‘Please, Dr Krüger, I know how terrible this whole situation must be for you. But we’re grasping at straws here, and the police are requesting that I ask you one more time.’
Mats tumbled inside his own universe, rotating sideways like a lumbering comet. He was certain that Roth was keeping something from him so that he didn’t fully and forever withdraw inside himself. And since he still harboured the silent hope that Nele could be alive – provided that Roth didn’t utter that most horrible of realities – he decided to continue playing along and answer the question the head physician had just posed to him: ‘Dr Krüger, please think. Did you notice anything else suspicious on the aeroplane that could help us in the search for your daughter?’
Mats thought about it. Then he blinked.
Once.