It was Annelise who opened the door. I was busy tidying the kitchen. Washing dishes is one of the few occupations that really calms me down.
“There’s someone to see you.”
I knew at once that something wasn’t right. Annelise’s tone was icy.
I turned, dish soap up to my elbows. “Who . . .?”
Standing in my kitchen, with his hat in his cold-reddened hands, was the last person in the world I’d have expected to see.
“Hello, Max,” I said, letting the water run over my hands. “Would you like a coffee?”
“Actually,” he replied, “I’d like to offer you a coffee. And I’d like to show you a few things concerning that business we . . . spoke about. It won’t take long.”
Annelise’s face turned red and she left the room without a word.
Max looked at me, embarrassed. “I hope I didn’t . . .”
“Wait here,” I murmured.
Annelise was sitting in my favorite armchair. She was looking at the blanket of snow and at Clara, who was building her umpteenth snowman.
“What more does he want of you?” she hissed.
“To apologize.”
Annelise turned to look at me. “Do you take me for an idiot?”
She was right. What was that “business” Max wanted to talk to me about if not the Bletterbach killings?
“If you want, I’ll throw him out without a second thought. But I also owe him an apology.” I kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll keep my promise. I don’t want to lose you.”
Was I really convinced I’d be able to keep a safe distance?
That Max and I would shake hands like two civilized people and when he brought up the subject of the Bletterbach I would cut short the conversation, thank him, and return home with a clear conscience?
I think I was.
I was sincere and that’s what persuaded her. But wasn’t there a voice inside me, a bothersome voice that, as Annelise lightly stroked me, implored me to kick Max out of the house and get on with washing the dishes?
“Do what you have to do, Salinger. But come back to me. Come back to us.”
* * *
“Let’s take mine.” Max pointed to the Forest Rangers’ Land Rover.
“Max,” I said. “If you want to apologize, I accept your apology. And I want you to know I’m really sorry I stuck my nose in your business. That was a mistake. But I have no intention of talking to you about the killings. I promised my wife I’d forget all about it, OK? It’s water under the bridge.”
Really?
Then why did I feel my heart pounding? Why couldn’t I wait to get in the vehicle and start listening to what Max had to tell me?
Nine letters: “obsession.”
Max kicked a heap of snow and shook his head. “I hit you that night because I realized you’re in this Bletterbach business up to your neck. And if you got to the point of having to make promises to Annelise, that means you’re in it worse than I feared. Don’t lie to me, Salinger. I can see it in your face, as clear as day.”
There wasn’t a single word that didn’t correspond to the truth. Part of me was still hooked on the Bletterbach killings. Sooner or later I’d start to dig, to investigate, to ask questions.
And what would happen to my family then?
Was it at this point that I gave in?
No.
I continued lying to myself.
“You’re wrong.”
“Don’t talk bullshit, Salinger. It’s what you’re hoping for, that I’ll give you more information, gossip, clues.” Max approached and pointed a finger at me. “And it’s what I intend to do. I’ll show you so many blind alleys I’ll put you off once and for all, so that you don’t end up like Günther.” A sigh. “Or like me.”
“I promised, Max.”
A weak protest. The troublesome voice was muffled. Distant. Almost like weeping.
“Come with me and you’ll be certain you won’t break that promise.”
I turned toward the big windows of the living room. I raised my hand to wave at Annelise’s silhouette. She did the same. Then she disappeared.
“Why?” I asked in a thin voice.
“I want to spare you thirty years of pain, Salinger.”
* * *
There wasn’t much traffic, just a couple of jeeps and a black Mercedes going in the opposite direction. We passed Welshboden, and at a crossroads Max turned onto a dirt road that climbed between the trees.
It was just after two in the afternoon when we got to the Krün family home.
“Welcome to the land of my ancestors.”
“So this is where you grew up?”
“Did Verena tell you that?”
“She told me something about your childhood. She told me about Frau Krün.”
“For me she was Omi, Grandma. She was an inflexible woman, but she was also fair, and she was very strong. We were poor, and to make sure I lacked for nothing Omi had to be hard with everybody. She was a widow bringing up an orphan. In the village, they took her hardness for arrogance. It wasn’t easy to see that there was something different behind that attitude. My grandfather’s death had broken her heart, but what remained was full of love. She had a huge heart, my Omi.” Max granted me a smile. “Come.”
The Krün family home was a mountain maso with a tiled roof that could have done with decent maintenance. Beneath the eaves you could see the remains of swallows’ nests. A twisted apple tree framed the front door, which squeaked a little on its hinges.
The interior was devoid of light.
“No electricity,” Max explained, lighting an oil lamp. “I have a generator, but I prefer to keep it for emergencies. I’ll make some coffee, if you’re OK with that.”
Once lit, the house took on a less spectral aspect. Above the fireplace was a damp-stained photograph.
“Little Max and Frau Krün,” Max said, as he made the coffee. “Please sit down.”
Apart from the table and a couple of chairs, the only other furniture in the room, the Stube—which was what they called this kind of all-purpose large room in Alto Adige (kitchen, bedroom, living room, all gathered around the ceramic stove that gave its name to the space: the Stube itself)—was a pair of metal filing cabinets.
Max saw where I was looking. “Thirty years of investigations. Testimonies cross-checked. Evidence collected. False leads. Possible suspects. Thirty years of a life spent collecting nothing. Thirty wasted years.”
“A nice slice of cake that tastes of nothing.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “You spoke to Luis?”
“I guess the style is unmistakable.”
“Here’s something that not even Luis has the courage to say: Kurt, Evi, and Markus aren’t the only victims of the Bletterbach. There’s also Günther and Hannes. Verena. Brigitte. Hermann. Werner. And me.”
I stared at the flames in the fireplace. I followed the trail of the sparks, which Clara called “little devils,” until I saw them burn themselves out on walls blackened by God knows how many years of smoke and flames.
Max sighed. “I’d close my eyes and hear Kurt’s voice. Or Evi’s footsteps on the floor, or Markus’s laughter. And when I opened them again, I’d see them. They were accusing me. You’re alive, they’d say.”
I shuddered.
You’re alive.
I lit myself a cigarette.
“I’d been left alone. Who could I have talked to? Verena wouldn’t have understood. Werner left, Hannes . . . Hannes did that terrible thing to his wife. There was only Günther. He wanted to know. And he drank. I also wanted to know. I wanted to find the son of a bitch who had condemned me to solitude and do away with him. I’d decided that I would strangle him. Time passed. Günther had his accident. I got married. Chief Hubner died. Verena didn’t want me to accept his post, but I wanted to become Chief Krün. I saw myself as the Saltner of Siebenhoch, you know what that is?”
It was a word I’d never heard before.
“In the old days every village had its Saltner,” he explained. “He was chosen from among the strongest young men to watch over the vineyards and the stables. It was a prestigious office. Everybody had to trust him: if even a single vote was cast against him, the young man was ruled out. There was too much at stake. If the Saltner had wanted, he could have come to an agreement with the outlaws and plundered a whole year’s harvest, condemning the community to certain death. I felt like the Saltner.”
I threw my cigarette into the flames. I’d smoked less than half.
It was making me dizzy.
“The Saltner protects his people,” I said, “and you wanted to do the same for the inhabitants of Siebenhoch.”
“I’ve done it all these years, but today . . .” His voice cracked. “The people who died down there were my best friends, Salinger, people I loved. But if I could turn the clock back, I’d take Verena and leave without turning round. To hell with the Saltner. To hell with Evi, Markus, and Kurt. Does that sound cruel? It isn’t. I’m sure that when you’ve heard the full story, you’ll realize it isn’t worth it.”
“You could leave any time you wanted. What keeps you in Sienbenhoch?”
Max paused for a few seconds. “The Bletterbach killings have become the purpose of my life.” A bitter grimace crossed his square face. “That’s the kind of obsession I’m trying to save you from. If thirty years ago someone had shown me the contents of those records, if someone had warned me . . . then maybe everything would have been different. For me and for Verena.”
I remembered his wife’s words. The anguish they had conveyed to me.
I thought of Annelise. And of Clara. I saw her growing up with a father who was ever more distant, and sick.
Come back to us.
“Tell me.”
Max stood up. The filing cabinet opened with a clatter. “Let’s start with the official investigation,” he said.
“It was the Carabinieri in Bolzano who carried it out.”
“Captain Alfieri and Deputy Prosecutor Cattaneo. I never met Cattaneo. He was just a voice on the telephone. Captain Alfieri was a good man, but you could see he’d have preferred to be dealing with something else. From an investigative point of view, the Bletterbach killings were a major hassle. Starting with the scene of the crime.”
He showed me a yellow folder. It was as thick as a dictionary. He drummed on it with his fingers.
“This is the final forensics report. It’s more than four hundred pages long. I had to ask the doctor in Aldino to help me figure out some passages. Wasted effort. No organic traces, no fingerprints, nothing. The rain and mud had washed everything away.” He put the folder back in the filing cabinet. “And anyway, by the time the report was ready, both Cattaneo and Alfieri had already figured out that nobody would be arrested for the murders.”
“But you,” I said, “you wanted to find the bastard.”
“I became insistent. Quite insistent. But it was like beating my head against a wall. Nobody wanted to hear about the Bletterbach. I even laid my hands on Captain Alfieri.”
“Luis told me about a few suspects . . .”
“We’re getting there. First I want to show you something else.”
He pulled out a file. He turned it without opening it and slid it toward me.
He gave me a sign of encouragement. “The scene of the crime. Open it. Look.”
The first photograph was like a kick in the face. The others were no less so. Most were in black and white, a few in color. All were revolting.
“God . . .”
Max took them gently from my hands. Then, like the most obscene of conjurers, he started showing them to me one by one.
“This is the tent. Kurt had chosen this point so that . . .”
I remembered Werner’s words. “So that the wind wouldn’t blow it away.”
“Would you like something strong to drink? You look pale.”
I dismissed the idea with a gesture. “Who did this backpack belong to?”
“Markus. As you can see, it’s torn. We reckoned Markus had thrown it at the attacker to defend himself. He was the only one who tried to run away. Look at these.”
Another photograph.
More horror.
“These are Markus’s boots. His body was found barefoot. He was wearing a sweater. No jacket. And Kurt, too. Actually, Kurt was in his vest. You see this? It’s his backpack. It’s possible they’d only just gone to bed when they were attacked.” Max stopped for a second. “I was the one who identified it. The backpack was a gift from me. You can’t see them, but I’d had his initials sewn on just here.”
He jabbed at the snapshot.
Then another photograph. And another.
“Kurt. Kurt. Kurt.”
Every time he uttered his friend’s name, he slid another photograph across the table.
“The pathologist said the killer wounded him without killing him immediately. Kurt was probably the first to react and the killer didn’t want the others to get away. Or else, and this is another possibility, he wanted to punish him for his heroism. Rendering him harmless and leaving him time to see what he was about to do. He hit him, then killed Evi, followed Markus, and came back.”
“Followed?”
“Markus managed to run away. Just for a short time.”
I stared at the photographs on the table.
I pointed to the wounds on Kurt’s body. “Did he torture him?”
“According to the pathologist, by the time the killer came back to him, he was already dead. These marks were inflicted post mortem. He kept attacking the corpse.”
“As if he were the intended victim?” I ventured.
Max gave a half smile. “That’s what I thought too, Salinger. Then I began to think the intended victim was Evi. Then Markus. It’s a bloody circle.” He stopped and stared at me. “The photographs of Evi are . . .”
I nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Evi.”
I think I screamed. I stood up, ran out, and buried my face in the snow. I threw up everything I had eaten for lunch. Then I screamed some more, that much I remember.
I felt Max lift me up and take me back inside the house. He sat me down on the chair next to the fire. He slapped me once, twice. I got my breath back.
“I’m sorry, Max.”
“It’s only human.”
I pointed at the photographs. “But this isn’t.”
“I meant your reaction.”
I lit a cigarette. “Why did he cut her head off?”
“Of all questions, Salinger, that’s the most pointless. There’s no answer.”
“There has to be.”
Max sat down. “Supposing you found the killer. Supposing you had him in front of you and you could ask him: why? What do you think he’d say?”
“I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know.”
“And what if that was his reply? ‘I don’t know.’ What if there wasn’t a reason? Or if there was a reason it was so stupid as to seem ridiculous? What if the killer replied: ‘I did it because I didn’t like the rain.’ Or ‘because my dog told me to.’ Or ‘because I was bored.’ How would you react?”
I understood what he was saying, but I didn’t agree. “Finding a motive means finding the killer.”
“That may be so. But without any leads? It’s pointless racking your brains about the motives. That’s what I thought. Find the culprit and the motive will come by itself. Better to concentrate on the suspects.”
“How many?”
“All of them. Nobody ruled out.”
He opened a drawer in the filing cabinet and took out yet another file. On the cover were the words: “M KRÜN.” “This,” he explained, “is the investigation into the suspect Max Krün.” He opened a map on the table. “Look. I’ve marked everything. Our route. Kurt’s possible route, or rather, three different routes that Kurt could have taken. Possible escape routes.”
“And these numbers?”
“The timetables. Those in red are the possible timetables of Kurt, Evi, and Markus. Those in black are more precise because they refer to our rescue team. These on the other hand are photocopies of a report into a road accident. As you can see, there isn’t only my signature on it. The other one’s the signature of the fire chief.”
“The accident before the birthday party?”
“A truck overturned just below Siebenhoch.” Max indicated the road that led out of the village, two kilometers below the Despar, in the direction of Aldino. “It was carrying weed killer. It took us three hours just to straighten it and free the roadway: if the load had spilled it would have been a real mess. I was in a hurry, I didn’t want to miss Verena’s party, but we did everything with the utmost care. We took a Polaroid for the insurance. This is it.”
It showed an overturned truck, the registration number perfectly recognizable.
“Nineteen and twenty. The date and hour on the back weren’t written by me, but by the fire chief. We parted company around eight. A few minutes later, I was in the barracks, doing other paperwork. Around nine, I went home, changed, and rushed to Verena’s birthday party. At ten thirty, we cut the cake. You see?”
A group photograph. The clock behind the cheerful faces clearly showed ten thirty.
“Did anyone see you when you were in the barracks?”
“No. The two alibis confirmed are eight o’clock and ten thirty.”
“A gap of two and a half hours. What time was established as the time of death of Kurt and the others?”
“According to the coroner, between eight and ten. Now look.”
Max drew my attention back to the map of the Bletterbach. He took a ruler and started measuring.
“As the crow flies, it’s about ten kilometers from Siebenhoch to the murder scene. Ignoring the lack of roads, the difference in altitude, and that hell of water and mud, a good walker could have got to the spot where we found the bodies in two hours, two and a half. How long to kill them? The report doesn’t say, and nobody knows. But we do know that Kurt tried to defend himself and Markus ran away. Shall we say ten minutes? Twenty? Plus another two hours or so to get back. How long is that?”
“Five hours, more or less. Not to mention the self-regenerating storm and all the rest. The defendant Max Krün is acquitted.”
Max nodded.
“It’s absurd,” I added, with a shudder.
“Absurd?”
“That you subjected yourself to such a trial.”
“That’s what I’m trying to save you from, Salinger.”
I didn’t think I would ever get to that degree of paranoia. It did occur to me, though, that Max had had thirty years to dig that pit for himself. Whereas I, in less than three months, had already come close to breaking up my marriage.
Max had piled more files on the table. “The serial killer angle. Did Luis tell you about that?”
The file contained a few newspaper articles. A few faxes. Crumpled maps. Pages written in nervous, barely legible handwriting.
“What are these?” I asked.
“Notes. Transcripts of telephone calls, to be precise.”
“Who with?”
“The prosecutor’s office. I helped them look for a connection with the Bletterbach.”
“Did you find one?”
“The man in question wasn’t in Siebenhoch, but in Nova Ponente. Close, therefore plausible. But in December ’85. A two-week skiing holiday with his wife and children.”
“He had a family?”
“Does that seem so strange?”
A wife and children. I absorbed that, too. “No, I guess not.”
Max closed the file. “Guilty, but not of the Bletterbach killings.”
The next file was much thicker. He took out an A3 sheet to which some ten numbered passport photographs were attached. Each number corresponded to a caption referring to annotations on other papers.
“And these?”
“Poachers active at the time. Markus was a big pain in the ass. My fault, I suppose. I was twenty-three, practically a child. To make myself look good in his eyes, I invented a whole lot of adventures chasing poachers. Bullshit to impress the boy and feel stronger than I was. In reality, the hunt for poachers began and ended in Chief Hubner’s office.”
“No stakeouts in the woods or anything like that?”
“Nothing like that,” Max said, amused. “Chief Hubner would pick up the phone, call the poachers, and ask, ‘Catch anything last night?’ That’s all. But I knew who they were and I investigated all of them. And got nowhere. They were poachers, not killers. There’s a big difference between killing a stag and murdering a human being.”
“And the drug story?”
Max showed me another file. “Not much. Markus was caught with a little hash in his pocket. Not even good quality. One of his schoolmates had sold it to him. Chief Hubner gave him a slap on the wrist and dismissed the case. Do you think it’s possible to kill someone for a few grams of hash?”
“But you investigated anyway.”
Max scowled at me. “Obviously.”
He didn’t need to say any more.
“Verena?” I asked doubtfully.
“These are her movements that day. A trip to the hairdresser’s. Two errands for her mother, here and here, then home to make the cake with a few friends.”
“And besides, she’s too delicate.”
“You never know.”
I thought of Annelise. Where was she in April ’85? In her cradle. She was a few months old. A solid enough alibi.
But was it enough for Max?
“Werner? Here he is,” Max exclaimed, opening a drawer in the cabinet. “Günther? Here you go. Brigitte? Of course. Hannes? I had a good motive for Hannes, too. Since Kurt had moved to Innsbruck, the two of them had stopped talking to each other. I ruled him out, too, though. He’d spent the day outside the village, for work. It’s all written here, you can help yourself if you want. I also investigated Evi and Markus’s father, Mauro Tognon.”
“You tracked him down?”
“Of course,” Max replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “A real piece of shit, if you want my opinion. And it isn’t only my opinion. I have his criminal record. His business card said he was a ‘traveling salesman,’ but he wasn’t. Tognon was a con man and a card shark, with a history of violence. Especially to women. And that was his luck.”
“How do you mean?”
“In ’85, he was in prison. Attempted murder. Of one of the many poor women he’d seduced and then had fun mistreating.”
“A real son of a bitch.”
“You can say that again.”
From his shirt pocket he took the telegram. The one Verena had shown me.
Geht nicht dorthin!
Don’t go down there!
I hadn’t forgotten it and I hadn’t forgotten the name of the man who had sent it.
“Who is Oscar Grünwald?”
“I knew Oscar Grünwald. I met him a couple of times when I took Markus to Innsbruck to see his sister. A retiring, solitary character. Evi liked him a lot. I thought he was a bit odd. She introduced him to me as an important scientist, but I later discovered he wasn’t that at all. He’d been thrown out of the university and scraped a living as best he could. Dishwasher, gardener, tourist guide. He was a geologist, but he also had a second degree. In paleontology.”
“He studied fossils,” I said, thinking of Yodi.
And of the Bletterbach.
“You’ve also made the connection?”
“The Bletterbach is a vast open-air fossil collection.”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
“Why on earth had he been thrown out of the university?”
“Academic differences, let’s call it that. It took me a while to find out. Innsbruck University is very secretive about its internal affairs. Plus, apart from the telegram, I had nothing to go on.”
“What did Captain Alfieri say?”
“Alfieri didn’t know about the telegram.”
“How is that possible?”
“The telegram could have been evidence for or against, depending on how you looked at it. Or else a coincidence. It didn’t mean anything.”
“That’s not true,” I retorted. “To me, it seems obvious. Grünwald knew someone would kill them in the Bletterbach and tried to warn them. It says clearly: Geht nicht dorthin! Don’t go down there!”
Max was unfazed. “Or it could have been a threat. Don’t go down there or else . . . Have you thought of that?”
“Anyway, it was worth investigating, don’t you think? Maybe the Carabinieri . . .”
Max clenched his fists. “Nobody was interested in finding out who killed my friends. It was obvious from the start. Those were the years of bombs. The Carabinieri had other things on their minds. If I’d taken the telegram to Alfieri and told him about Grünwald, it would have been a waste of time. Only one person could find the murderer. Me. The telegram was my reminder to myself. My sentence. Because if instead of forgetting all about it and putting it away in my pocket, I’d paid attention to it, I might have saved them.”
“That’s what torments you, isn’t it?”
“That, too. As I see it, this telegram makes me guilty of dereliction of duty. In other words, I’m an accessory to murder.”
“That’s ridiculous, Max.”
“I looked for Grünwald. I looked for him everywhere. I spent a whole lot of money. I couldn’t find anything. He’d vanished. The telegram is the last proof of his existence.”
“A person can’t just vanish like that. He must have had friends, acquaintances, someone.”
“I was dealing with the most solitary person in the world, Salinger. More so than me,” he murmured. “At least I had three ghosts to keep me company.”
* * *
It had grown late. Max put the files back in the cabinet and locked it, and we got back in the gray Forest Rangers Land Rover, the heat turned all the way up.
“It isn’t true,” I said once we were inside. “You weren’t alone. Verena was with you.”
“Verena’s something else. Verena’s the reason I didn’t end up like Günther.”
He started the engine and we set off. We said nothing more until we got to our destination.
Max parked and switched off the headlights.
I listened to the engine ticking over.
“Verena would have liked children,” Max confessed, looking straight ahead of him. “She would have been an excellent mother. I said we couldn’t afford it, even though it wasn’t true. I said the time wasn’t right for it. I kept putting it off. The real reason was fear. I was scared that what happened to Hannes would happen to me. One fine day, you wake up and go to the woods to recover your son’s body.”
I saw Clara waving at me from the living room window. I waved back.
Time to get out.
I made to open the car door.
Max stopped me. “That day, I called you a murderer. You’re not a murderer. I know what happened on the Ortles. It wasn’t your fault.”
I didn’t reply. Not immediately, at least. I was afraid my voice would crack.
“Thanks, Max.”
It was good to hear myself say that.
“You have that child, Salinger. You can be happy. These aren’t your people. This isn’t your place. Don’t you think . . .”—he pointed to my daughter in the window—“. . . you have something better to fight for?”
* * *
That night I was inside again. Inside the Beast. In spite of the sleeping pills.
I didn’t scream. I woke weeping, with the feeling I had lost everything that was worth living for. Beside me, Annelise was sleeping peacefully, with a placid expression I found enchanting.
I embraced her, clung to her. By the time my heartbeat slowed, I’d even managed to stem the tears. Trying not to disturb Annelise’s sleep, I got up. In the bathroom, I opened the cabinet and looked through the blister packs of drugs I was pretending to take every morning. Those pills weren’t my salvation, they were only a chemical substitute. I closed the cabinet again. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. I would double the dose of sleeping pills, if necessary. But I wouldn’t let chemistry decide my emotions.
I can do it, I thought. I can do it all by myself.