Karl is better now that he has let the children back into his life. He spends a lot of time with them. The children are like a balm. He and Blum agree on that as they sit side by side on the garden bench, watching them play. Every day, although the girls don’t know it, they keep the boat from capsizing, they make sure that their mother gets up and goes out into the day, that Karl doesn’t lie down forever. Mark lives on in their little faces. That thought stops them from giving up.
• • •
“You’re working again. That’s good.”
“Thank you for helping me with the children, Karl.”
“It’s the children who help me.”
“What would I do without you?”
“Don’t say that. It’s the other way around. What would I do without you? If you hadn’t asked me to live here, I’d be dying slowly in a nursing home.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“You know I’m right, Blum.”
“You belong to us and we love you, Karl.”
“And who loves you?”
“The three of you.”
“But there’s something on your mind.”
“You mustn’t worry, Karl. I’m fine.”
“There is something. I know you. It’s to do with that woman.”
“Oh, Karl.”
“I know I’m right.”
“Once a cop . . .”
“What is it about her? She left without saying good-bye.”
“So? Karl, everything’s just fine. Dunya is a friend of mine from the past. She always came and went as she pleased.”
“Nonsense.”
“What do you mean, nonsense?”
“She’s no friend of yours. You hardly know her.”
“Please drop the subject, Karl.”
“I can help you.”
“You can and do help me by looking after the children. I can manage everything else on my own.”
“There’s something wrong. I can sense it.”
• • •
Blum can imagine Karl as he was before the tick made an old man of him. Unyielding, a bloodsucker himself, the sort who never stops asking questions until the truth comes to light. He was a good police officer, Mark said, he learned all he knew from him. His instinct, his persistence. But she’s not going to tell Karl a thing, she won’t confide in him, won’t put him in danger. Even though Blum knows that he would never judge her or give her away, she bites her tongue. Saying nothing, she leaves him with his dark presentiments. Blum takes his hand and presses it. Karl knows she’s stubborn; he knows she isn’t going to tell him a thing. He’s known her long enough. He has come to love her for all that she is and all that she isn’t. She will not tell him that she has killed a man, cut him into pieces and buried him. She isn’t going to tell him that the man was probably Mark’s murderer. That there are four more of them out there. She won’t tell him any of that. Only their intertwined fingers matter. Blum’s hand in his must be enough. Karl must trust her.
• • •
How glad she is that he’s there. While she goes on investigating, like a woman possessed, looking for those men, Karl cooks for the children, puts them to bed, reads aloud to them. Those men must be somewhere, and somehow or other Blum will find them. Even though she knows less than nothing, she will run them to ground and make them talk. All four of them. But she doesn’t know where to begin. Men between thirty and sixty, inconspicuous and friendly, no one in the world would think for a moment that they could do something so perverted. White sheep innocently grazing in a meadow, probably leading a perfectly normal life, probably quite close to Blum. Respectable citizens like Schönborn. Men of good repute, psychopaths, murderers. By now Blum is convinced that they are responsible for Mark’s death. There can be no doubt about it, everything fits.