Breathlessness, sweat-soaked skin, a pounding heart. Thronging images. A blond boy laughing, his arms around a shaggy dachshund. A desperate young mother begging for her son’s life on the evening news. The buzz of hungry flies. Scabbed blood, where there should be a floppy ear. The mark of a dog’s sharp teeth on a furry throat. Elisabeth is lying in bed, with open, stinging eyes. The night drags on tortuously slowly and she is at the mercy of the images. Her only comfort is Barabbas’s rasping breath in the passage – how would she get through the night without it? Someone cut an ear off the missing boy’s dachshund, the news reporter had said.
I must go to the police, thinks Elisabeth. I must tell them that Barabbas savaged Jonny’s dachshund to death and that I buried it. I’ll say I’m sorry. Maybe they won’t take Barabbas away from me – maybe they’ll let him live, at least. It would be wrong to keep silent; it would be a sin. A child’s life is more important than a dog’s.
She reaches out a hand and turns on the bedside lamp. Soon the blackbirds will start to squabble and a strip of light will appear in the sky to the east. But although Elisabeth is longing for morning, she knows that the day will bring no respite. She must go to the police. She heaves herself to a sitting position and then waits for her pains and dizziness to subside before getting up. Barabbas pads across the floorboards to say good morning. Side by side they go into the bathroom, where Elisabeth slips on her dressing gown. Then they head down the steep stairs to the kitchen.
It’s too early for breakfast, and in any case she has no appetite. She hears Carmen’s voice: You must drink, Mother. Obediently, Elisabeth pours herself a glass of milk and makes sure Barabbas has water in his bowl. Missing Jonny and his dachshund, Dr D., look up at her from the newspaper which is still lying open on the kitchen table. She can’t go to Cologne; it’s too far, and where would she leave Barabbas? But there’s a police station in Neurath too. Hello, Elisabeth hears herself say, I’d like to make a statement . . . The missing dachshund that’s lost an ear – I buried it in Frimmersdorf. She needn’t tell them Barabbas savaged the dachshund to death. Nonsense, the police are bound to find out and once she has them here in the house asking questions, she won’t be able to lie.
Elisabeth stares at the telephone. Perhaps a phone call would be enough. A phone call that would help the police find the dachshund – but not her and Barabbas. But can’t the police find out who’s calling and where they’re calling from? Not a phone call, then, but perhaps a letter – an anonymous letter. Ignoring the stabbing pains in her shoulders, Elisabeth heaves Heinrich’s old Triumph Adler onto the dining-room table and feeds a sheet of paper into it.
The one-eared dachshund is dead. Look for it in the woods near Frimmersdorf Power Station.
Will the police take the note seriously? Will they find the grave? No, it’s no good. She pulls the paper out of the typewriter and tears it to shreds.
The grey light of dawn is creeping into the garden. Elisabeth shuffles back to the kitchen, puts water on to boil for coffee, makes herself a slice of toast and opens a tin for Barabbas. What should she do? How can she tell the police without betraying Barabbas?
Coffee cup in hand, she steps out barefoot onto the dewy grass. Five o’clock. It is silent – the day is holding its breath. Only the bells from St Martin’s drift through the air and a blackbird calls in the cherry tree. Elisabeth walks slowly round the garden. My life, she thinks. My house. My dog. It will all come to an end – it has to. And it will happen soon. But not yet. I’m not ready to leave all this yet. I can’t betray Barabbas.
Elisabeth stops at the rose bushes. So beautiful, so transient. She dead-heads them, breathing in the sweet smell of their dewy buds. Perhaps there is a third way – a way that would require strength, a great deal of strength, but which might, if she could summon up that strength, succeed. The longer Elisabeth thinks about it, the more certain she is that she has found a solution. But she must be careful. She tosses the secateurs into her basket and hurries back to the house as fast as her back will let her.
*
They are suddenly there. At first they are only shadows, movements behind the bushes that edge his secret path and obscure the view of the school buildings and the playground. Tim feels his heart pounding and his mouth turn dry. He breaks into a sweat. Back to the bike yard, he thinks – right away. He turns round. No chance – Lukas is standing at the steel railings, about two metres away from Tim. He doesn’t say anything – just folds his arms in front of his chest and grins. Something rustles behind Tim and he wheels round. Viktor steps out onto the path, closely followed by his friend Ralle. And suddenly Daniel and Boris from Tim’s class emerge from the bushes too.
Just pretend nothing’s happened; sometimes that works. Hunch your shoulders, keep your eyes on the ground – hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing – remain stolid, go your own way and hope that you get to the classroom before long, that a teacher appears or that they leave you alone for some other reason. Tim looks about him in panic. Straight ahead isn’t any good; he’s no match for Viktor and Ralle – and Daniel and Boris look dangerous too. It’ll have to be back the way he came, past Lukas. It’s true, Lukas twisted Tim’s arm so hard the other day that he saw stars, but maybe if Tim’s quick and makes himself very small, Lukas will leave it at a kick, like at the level crossing yesterday. Then he’ll make a dash for the playground and hope there’s someone he can hide behind.
Tim walks towards Lukas. A mistake – he instantly hears footsteps behind him. Tim freezes in his tracks, his pulse racing. Lukas gives a slight shake of his head and plants his feet even more firmly on the ground.
‘Stay where you are, Stinker.’
Step by step, they move in on him from all sides – silent, self-confident and united. Closer and closer they come – too close, unbearably close. Blood pounds in Tim’s ears. The school bell rings, as if from another world.
‘Let me go. Break’s over. I must go to class.’ Tim’s voice tails off. He presses himself up against the railings and the sharp corner of a textbook bores its way through his rucksack into his back. There’s no chance of escape; he’s cornered. What do they want of him? What can he do?
Now they are so close he can see only their hard faces – and still they say nothing.
They’ll soon leave you alone. Jonny’s words were an empty promise, a lie. They’ll never leave Tim alone; he’s a loser, a failure, a nerd, a laughing stock – someone who deserves to be tormented. Useless at sport, too timid, a teachers’ pet. When he says something, the other kids don’t understand him, and he never understand their jokes and innuendos. Only Jonny understood him; he could talk to Jonny. Jonny didn’t make him feel like a zombie; he made him feel like a normal, likeable boy.
‘Leave me alone.’ His voice is a squeak – a far cry from the calm, self-confident manner he had practised with the bearded counsellor his mother had dragged him to when he’d come home from school in tears every afternoon.
‘What’s little Stinker getting so worked up about? We aren’t going to hurt him.’ Lukas’s voice is soft, almost friendly. ‘Do you think he doesn’t like us?’
‘He has a guilty conscience,’ says Viktor.
Now they’re all talking at once. ‘What’s he been doing this time?’ – ‘Has he been talking again?’ – ‘Has he been grassing to the cops?’ – ‘Look, he’s going to cry, the little toady; he’s going to pee his pants.’
Viktor grabs Tim by the chin and buries his fingers in his neck. At once the others fall quiet. Even worse than the physical contact is the boys’ hatred. Abruptly Viktor lets go of Tim, wiping his hands on his jeans as if they were dirty.
‘Rinker Stinker’s a peeping Tom!’ he says, sounding almost sad. ‘A peeping Tim! Tell us what you were doing with your binoculars at the quarry pond yesterday, you horny little wanker.’
‘I’m not a wanker!’
‘Oh no? Lukas saw exactly what you were doing. Staring at the girls’ boobs. You get yellow fingers from wanking.’
Tim looks at his hands. ‘I wasn’t wanking.’
The boys laugh. ‘He looked! God, he’s so stupid, he believes it and all!’ – ‘Rinker is a wanker!’ – ‘If he can find his thingy.’ – ‘Come on, Stinker, show us what you’ve got.’ – ‘Come on, pull your shorts down!’
As one, they close in on Tim.
‘Leave me!’ His attempt at a shout fails miserably. They’ve got him. They can do what they like with him, and he deserves it all; he was stupid enough to walk into their trap, wasn’t he?
They grab him and hold him firmly. They pull down his shorts and underpants, and a hand grasps him by the balls and squeezes. The pain sends tears shooting to Tim’s eyes.
‘Go on – cry, you wanker!’ They laugh and fumble around with him. Tim closes his eyes. He doesn’t put up a fight; he makes himself all limp, prey succumbing to its predators. ‘Quick, your phone, take a photo!’ – ‘No, a video.’ – ‘What a small dick – no wonder he has to go peeping.’ – ‘Don’t you dare peep at the girls again, and don’t you dare tell on us, Stinker, or you’re in big trouble.’
Then it’s over; they vanish as suddenly as they came. But Tim can’t open his eyes or pull up his pants and shorts. He stands there as if riveted to the spot, pressing himself harder and harder against the railings. I’m not here, is all he thinks – not here. None of that just happened.
Far away, an eternity later, the school bell announces the end of the sixth lesson. Other students – or a teacher – might walk past and see him standing here with his pants down. The realisation jolts Tim out of his paralysis. The factory, he thinks – Jonny’s secret hiding place. I’ll be safe there. He lumbers awkwardly along the railings to the bike yard where that morning, in another life, he left his mountain bike.
*
Languid turquoise waves lap on the sand. Georgian Bay, the light-blue patch on the map, is vast in reality too. A sea, Judith thinks. Or a mirage. She crouches down, dips her hand in the water and licks it, but it isn’t salty; it really is a freshwater lake, stretching all the way to the horizon. It’s warm, and she’s alone. In Cologne it’s already afternoon, but here the day is new, the sky cloudless, the water pleasantly refreshing. All the same, she gets back in the car. The village of Cozy Harbour, about three kilometres down a gravel track, is less spectacular than the lake. A few brightly coloured wooden houses, a supermarket with a petrol station, a Red Cross station and a restaurant on a shoreside promenade where a few seagulls are fighting over the remains of a hamburger. Fishing boats, expensive-looking yachts and a water plane bob up and down at the harbour landing stages. A man in jeans is balanced on one of the skids of the plane, his head inside the cockpit. Judith parks the car and teeters towards him along a silvery wooden jetty.
‘Hi, I’m looking for Terence Atkinson.’
The man leaps onto the jetty beside Judith with apparent ease. ‘Deutsch?’
She looks at him in astonishment.
‘Sorry, I just thought – your accent.’ He smiles.
‘I am from Germany, yes.’
‘My old homeland. David Becker – Trips to the Wilderness. Welcome to Cozy Harbour.’
His hand is warm and slightly rough, and clasps Judith’s hand neither too firmly nor too limply, but just right. That’s how a handshake should be, Judith thinks – or then again, maybe not, because it’s as if there’s something emanating from his hand – a kind of force field, a burning sensation, like when she deals the tarot cards.
She withdraws her hand; David Becker lets it happen. An amused, possibly puzzled smile dances in his eyes – and something else, something darker. Life has scored lines in his face, and his hair looks as if too much sun has partly bleached out the light-brown colour. Judith feels the absurd desire to stroke this man’s face, to touch him, feel his hands, his arms around her – feel that burning sensation again. Goodness, how tacky can you get? Pull yourself together, Judith. You’ve only just met this man. For all you know, he might have a wife and five children waiting for him in one of these peeling wooden houses; he might be a criminal, he—
‘Old Martha’s Cottage,’ says David Becker, pointing into the blue. ‘That’s his holiday house. It’s about a mile outside Cozy Harbour, you just have to follow the track out of the village. The third turning on the left leads down to the bay, where you’ll find the cottage.’
‘Thanks,’ Judith breathes. Tacky or not, her body is signalling with almost painful intensity that she would like to be close to this stranger – that it would bring happiness, a sense of security, if only for a few hours or a night.
‘Hang on!’ David Becker wriggles into the cockpit and disappears inside. A moment later he leaps back onto the jetty. The last time with Martin – the last time they’d hugged, had sex – how long ago was that? It used to seem easy to hug a stranger, but over the last few years she’s lost that sense of ease. Why is the desire returning now?
‘Here’s our brochure, in case you need a guide. My phone number’s on the back.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘I must be on my way.’
‘Yes.’
She walks back over the weathered planks, amazed that her body obeys her. Is he watching her go? She doesn’t turn round – doesn’t want to know, because the uncertainty seems more bearable than the sight of an empty jetty or David Becker’s back. His voice catches up with her when she gets to the hire car.
‘What’s your name?’
He’s standing exactly where she left him a few seconds ago.
‘Judith.’
He nods and raises a hand. She waves back, starts the car and is still smiling when Cozy Harbour has vanished from the rear-view mirror and she is turning into the bumpy drive that leads to Terence Atkinson’s holiday house.
*
Waiting. Waiting for the day to pass – the heat, the light. Waiting for the last fishermen down by the river to pack up and go home to their televisions and beds. Elisabeth is sitting motionless in her kitchen. Will she have the strength to go through with her plan? What will happen to Barabbas if she makes a mistake? The newspaper is still lying open on the table; the boy and his dachshund stare out at her. Elisabeth closes her eyes, conjuring up Sunday morning again. She’d walked a long way out, further than she’d been for a long time. Once they’d put Frimmersdorf behind them, she’d let Barabbas off the lead. He’d run into the woods; she’d followed him. Then she’d heard him growling.
Is that what happened? No, it wasn’t like that. There was something else – a noise. There was somebody there. The boy in the paper? No, not the boy. Somebody else. But who? However hard she tries, she can’t remember.
As the day approaches its end, the light softens. Elisabeth leans on the kitchen table and heaves herself up. The dizziness comes and goes; her back shrieks. She forces herself to keep breathing until the pain is bearable. She shuffles to the fridge and eats some of the strawberries she picked in the morning. Barabbas needs to stretch his legs and do his business; later, when it’s dark, she won’t be able to take him with her. There’s the shopping to be done too.
Elisabeth holds Barabbas on the lead. He trots along willingly at her side, and she pulls the shopping trolley behind her with her other hand. It was a long time before she could bring herself to use this present from her daughter. ‘A granny trolley,’ she had protested, ‘I don’t need one of them; I’m not that old.’ But Carmen had refused to take the present back, and before long Elisabeth couldn’t manage without it.
For Barabbas’s sake, Elisabeth loops round to the playing fields when she’s finished her shopping. Behind the fields, the power station blocks the view – a hissing colossus of steel and stone, close enough to touch. Clouds of steam puff out of the cooling towers into the sky. O Lord, how beautiful Thy world is! it says on a stone cross beside the football pitch. Elisabeth has read the inscription so many times, but today she suddenly wonders which was there first – the cross or the power station – and what the crucifix with the suffering Christ means here, in the shadow of the cooling towers. Oh yes, she thinks, the world is beautiful, but we humans are destroying it – destroying what God gave us, because we can’t get enough. We want more electricity, more money, more land – more and more and more – and it will be the ruin of us.
Here, so close to the power station, she can hear the constant wail of the sirens, the rumble and shriek of the conveyor belts as they shunt the brown coal along, the constant hum of the transformer. She used to hear that hum even sitting in her garden. She and Heinrich had put up with it and learnt to live with it, because the power station provided Heinrich with work, and paid for their house and garden, and Frimmersdorf, a place dominated by slagheaps, ended becoming home to them, in spite of the ugliness of its scarred surroundings. After a time they stopped hearing the hissing and humming and buzzing and wailing of the power station, and learnt to limit their view to the garden and the river – and to the areas outside Frimmersdorf, where nature had, in spite of everything, been reclaimed and restored from the disfigured state it was left in by mankind and machines.
‘Frau Vogt?’ A man’s voice brings Elisabeth back to reality. Confused, she turns away from the cross. One of Heinrich’s former colleagues is standing in front of her, looking at her in concern. ‘Everything all right with you?’
‘Yes, thank you. I was just lost in thought.’
‘It’s the heat. Hard to know where to put yourself. The best place is down by the river, I find.’
He raises his fishing rod in a wave and heads off to fish. Elisabeth follows slowly. He’s gone grey, she thinks. He used to dash around on his moped and make eyes at the women. Now he goes on foot.
In a flash, the memory is back – the long seconds before Barabbas began to growl in the woods. In shocked horror, Elisabeth claps her hand to her mouth. There was a man. How could she have forgotten? Or had she repressed it? A man – she suddenly sees him before her again. A good deal younger than Heinrich’s former colleague, and yet something about the man she’s just seen reminded her of him, rekindled the memory.
It is only a similarity, only a vague similarity, she thinks, trying to calm herself. Go home and wait for it to get dark. See through what has to be seen through; you’ve got enough to do, dealing with that.
But the images refuse to be shaken. Someone was in the woods on Sunday morning – a man she’d seen before. In Frimmersdorf. Or is she imagining things? No, she’d seen him before, she’s sure of it. The longer she thinks about it, the more certain she is that, this time, her sieve-like memory isn’t playing tricks on her.
*
Old Martha’s Cottage looks as if it’s posing for a brochure published by the Canadian tourist board. Against a backdrop of turquoise water, a solitary white stone house is huddled on the banks of a natural basin. But the woman who opens the fly-screen door to Judith doesn’t smile like someone in a tourist-board brochure, especially when Judith asks to speak to Terence Atkinson. Her husband is in Montreal, she replies brusquely and, in any case, he doesn’t like being disturbed on holiday. No, she’s never heard the name Charlotte Simonis; she doesn’t know the person in the photo Judith shows her. But she does divulge her husband’s mobile number before disappearing back into the cottage, from where the muffled cries of quarrelling children are now emerging.
Judith steers the hire car back onto the gravel track. She dials Terence Atkinson’s number, reaches his voicemail and asks him to call her back. She looks down at the white cottage. It wasn’t hard to find, but that doesn’t mean Charlotte came here. Perhaps she hadn’t understood the loon postcard as an invitation after all; perhaps Charlotte’s desire for Atkinson is all a figment of Judith’s imagination. Judith thinks of David Becker on the jetty – of the woundedness she thinks she read in his eyes, and the strange feeling of familiarity. How can she desire a man she’s only spent five minutes with? Why this feeling that her life is incomplete without him? She must be nuts. Better hope it’s the jet lag.
Judith stares at the gravel track. Should she take a left and see if the Atkinsons have neighbours who know something about them? Drive back to Cozy Harbour and show Charlotte’s photo around? Carry on to Parry Sound where the next police station is? Hope that Atkinson rings soon and can tell her where Charlotte is? These are all possibilities – all sensible steps in an investigation. She puts her foot on the accelerator and steers the car to the right, back towards Cozy Harbour. The drive seems longer than on the way there – too long, although she’s driving faster. She parks by the harbour, exactly where she parked three-quarters of an hour ago, and gets out of the car. Boats, seagulls, silent houses. Water, glinting in the midday sun. The water plane is still there, but the jetty is empty. You idiot, she tells herself silently.
‘Judith.’
She turns round in a calm sweeping movement, because it’s his voice. He’s standing outside a squat house, painted blue.
‘I had to come back.’ Her voice is husky.
‘Yes.’
She steps closer, walking on cotton wool, like in a dream. Carefully, as if she were a timid animal, he takes her hand.
Again she feels the warmth, the strange sense of security.
‘I wanted to come back,’ she says, correcting herself – wanted to feel light again, although it hardly seems possible – I don’t know why. But of course, she can’t say that.
‘I’m booked on a flight in three hours. But until then we could . . .’
‘Yes.’
Inside, the blue house is flooded with midday light. The bare boards are shiny with wear. Pale canvas blinds hang at windows facing the harbour. There are kitchen units, a desk, a sitting area and an open door leading to a second room with a big bed. They stand at the door, still hand in hand. Like Hansel and Gretel, thinks Judith. Lost children, full of hope.
‘Wait.’
David Becker opens a cupboard, takes out clean sheets and makes up the bed. Judith leans against the wall and watches him. I want this, she thinks, although it frightens me. I can’t go now. Something has come to an end, something new is beginning. Maybe that’s why I’m here.
His body against her body, his hands on her skin, gentle and easy as a summer breeze. The smell of his skin, faint and yet overwhelming. The slight taste of salt. Warm breath. Heat making her body soft, making it melt and glow.
They don’t talk as they feel their way along each other’s limbs. Home, Judith thinks, when – after how long? – David enters her. And then she stops thinking altogether and there is nothing but desire and heat, and it feels like happiness.
*
‘Went evvywhere, I did,’ the man in the hospital bed mumbles. ‘Shpain, Turkey, It’ly Russia – evvywhere.’
Manni isn’t sure what to say. He’s at a loss. He is even less sure whether this seriously sick man who is his father – and who, against all prognoses, recovered consciousness earlier today – is more likely to be distressed or pleased if he takes his hand in his.
‘Evvywhere.’ The sick man’s lips are cracked. With every word, bubbles of whitish saliva froth in the corners of his mouth. His eyes are fixed on Manni. Manni moves his chair a little closer to the head of the bed. A bloody awful day is nearing its end. A bloody awful day that was little more than a bloody awful dead end. Still no sign of Jonny and his dog; it’s as if the earth has swallowed them up. No one’s come forward with useful information. Jonny’s stepfather is sticking to his statement that he went for a walk by himself on Saturday afternoon. He’s nervous, but that’s all; so far they haven’t been able to prove that he ever behaved inappropriately towards the dachshund, let alone that he mistreated it. Jonny’s best friend Tim is ill, and his rich pampered mummy has refused point blank to let the police anywhere near his sickbed. Meanwhile the forensic situation in Königsforst is deteriorating by the hour. If the dog squad were to find something after all this time, it would be little short of a miracle. And as if that weren’t enough, there was the fiasco with Miss Cat’s Eyes yesterday evening. He didn’t even manage to get her name off her.
Manni can’t bring himself to take his father’s hand. He feels empty. A mutilated dachshund, a panic-stricken boy, a few drops of blood and a baseball cap. The longer he thinks about it, the more certain he is that Jonny is dead. Earlier today he came across Millstätt and Thalbach talking about him in the lobby at headquarters; he heard his name clearly. The way they changed the subject as he approached and their exaggerated chumminess when they told him to have a nice evening were by no means reassuring. They’re going to take the case away from me, he thinks. They won’t let me back on the murder squad. Meanwhile old Krieger’s living it up in Canada, unaffected by transfer measures of any kind. Quite the contrary: Little Miss Brainy’s return is eagerly awaited in Division 11.
He starts when his mother touches his shoulder.
‘I’m just popping down to the cafeteria. You have a nice chat, the two of you,’ she whispers.
‘Yes, off you go.’ Manni forces a smile. His mother had sounded breathless with delight when she’d called this afternoon in the middle of his meeting and begged him to come straight to the hospital. His father had woken up, she said – it was a miracle. ‘I’ll come as soon as I can,’ Manni had replied. But that is just what he didn’t do, and now it’s evening – already nine o’clock – and the old resignation has crept back into his mother’s voice.
‘Evvywhere,’ the man in bed repeats with a wet mouth.
‘Yes, Dad, I know, you got around.’
‘Fer you!’
The air in the darkened room seems to have grown even heavier. Manni clenches his teeth. This isn’t the time or place to contradict his father. It never is.
‘I know, Dad, you wanted the best for us. You built the house for Mum and me.’
And when you felt like it, you beat us.
He needs a piss, for Christ’s sake. He needs to go home and shower and eat and sleep, if he’s to get anywhere tomorrow. The sick man dribbles more white bubbles; it looks almost as if he were trying to spit.
‘But yer didn’ care, lad. Threw yer life ’way.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘A cop. My own son . . . a cop. Bloody hell.’
‘Ruining your health on the road and letting yourself be messed about by haulage companies for a starvation wage isn’t much better.’
‘A cop.’ Yet more dribble. Icy contempt – Manni has always felt it; now at last it’s coming out. Manni leaps to his feet.
‘Still better than being a lorry driver. Look at you – look where it’s left you. A man in a wheelchair who tyrannises his family and hates the world!’
‘Manni!’ Oh fuck, not her too. His mother’s voice is hysterical, imploring, shrill. Her hand claws his arm. ‘Please, Manni!’
‘A cop!’ His father spits again.
‘And what are you? A bloody pleb! You think your lorry cab is the centre of the fucking world, don’t you? Well, sorry, it doesn’t work like that. I already earn more than you! I have responsibility for human lives, for Christ’s sake, so you can bloody well stop insulting me!’
Whitish saliva. Wheezy breath. The beep of the monitors. Manni frees himself from his mother’s vice-like grip and she begins to sob softly. He desperately needs air; he must find a loo; he must get out of here. Behind him the door clicks shut. He begins to run.
*
She opens her eyes and takes David’s face in her hands. He’s dressed and smells as if he’s had a shower. Behind the white canvas blinds, the sun has moved a few centimetres.
‘I’ll be back at lunchtime tomorrow. Please stay,’ he says softly.
‘I—’
‘Or come again. There’s coffee and toast in the next room. The key’s on the table. If you can’t be here tomorrow, leave it under the doormat.’
‘Where are you flying to?’
‘Algonquin Park.’
‘Are there loons there?’
‘Loons? Of course.’
Judith sits up. ‘I must show you a photo. A school friend . . .’
He moves away from her. ‘I’m sorry, I really do have to go.’
A moment later, the front door clicks shut.
Judith gets up and goes into the bathroom. Three hours have passed since she entered this blue house – three hours that she has not used to look for Charlotte. It’s not a long time, but it feels like an eternity. Suddenly Judith is thirsty and ravenously hungry. She gets dressed, drinks several glasses of water and eats David’s toast with cheese and tomatoes. Food hasn’t tasted so intense for ages. She pours herself a mug of coffee and takes it out onto the wooden veranda. At her feet lies the dock of Cozy Harbour in the glaring afternoon light. Nothing has changed; only the water plane has gone.
Judith tries Atkinson’s mobile number again, but again she only gets through to his voicemail. The feeling of danger returns. Is Atkinson with Charlotte at this very moment – is that why his wife was so hostile towards a visitor from Germany? Judith rolls herself a cigarette. So far, all she knows is that Charlotte was in Toronto and visited Atkinson at the university there. That is clearly too little.
She tries to imagine how Charlotte spent her time in Toronto. A woman with no ties, who had given up her career not once, but twice – first because of sick parents, and then because of a wild bird that had strayed onto a German lake and died there thanks to careless humans. A socially inept woman – thirty-nine when she finally left home after her father’s death with nothing to her name but a house full of relics. At the very latest when she got to Toronto, she must have found out that the man who had sent her the encouraging postcard was married. What did she do? Put up a fight? Try to seduce him? Resign herself?
‘Thank you, Charlotte,’ Judith and the other schoolgirls had said when Charlotte had passed round handwritten invitations to her fifteenth birthday party. They were gobsmacked that she was inviting them all again when she’d been teased for weeks after her last birthday because of the lack of Coca-Cola. On the day of the party they had met up at Newmarket to buy a present and go on to Charlotte’s house. Or at least, that’s what Judith had expected. But instead they had said, ‘Fuck silly Charlotte and her boring middle-class house,’ and wandered off into town, where they helped themselves to perfume and cream samples in the department stores, tried on clothes and ate fries in Burger King.
Judith had joined in. Guiltily, it is true, but at the same time glad to be allowed to tag along, even if she found all the fuss about boys and make-up boring. In the evening she had rung Charlotte and wished her a happy birthday, mumbling something about a cold. It was decidedly feeble, and the flimsiest of excuses, but Charlotte seemed to take it as proof of her friendship. In those days she had followed Judith about like a loyal dog. And Judith had let her, always hoping the others wouldn’t notice. Neither she nor Charlotte nor any of the other girls in the class had ever mentioned Charlotte’s birthday again.
What a coward I was, Judith thinks. It’s true that I was young and scared of being ostracised. It’s one of the oldest laws in life that outcasts don’t form alliances with one another, because they adopt the norms of the stronger members of the community and believe themselves that they are abhorrent – and that joining forces with other outcasts would only make matters worse. All the same, Judith thinks, I could have resisted that law.
Again Judith steers the hire car along the gravel track and turns into the drive of Old Martha’s Cottage. This time, Atkinson’s wife is on the beach playing with two children. An attractive dark-haired man in Bermuda shorts is sitting on a rock with a bottle of beer in his hand, watching them. Judith stops in front of the cottage and gets out of the car. The professor’s wife makes a cross, waving gesture, as if to shoo away an insect. Judith ignores her and approaches the man on the rock.
‘Professor Atkinson, I’m looking for Charlotte Simonis, a German friend of mine.’
He plants the beer bottle in the sand and gets up. ‘I can’t help you,’ he says in German, almost without an accent. But his eyes express something else. Concern? Judith wonders. Alarm? Or fear, even?
‘I urgently need to talk to you,’ she insists. ‘Why didn’t you respond to my calls?’
‘Calls?’
‘I rang your mobile. I thought you were in Montreal.’
He looks at her in confusion.
‘Your wife said you were in Montreal.’
‘I didn’t want her to bother you on holiday, dear,’ Atkinson’s wife puts in. She must have worked out what Judith was talking about. Or can she speak German too?
‘I was out in the canoe.’ The professor gestures vaguely towards the bay. ‘I know nothing about any calls; I never use my mobile on holiday.’
‘Is there somewhere we can talk undisturbed?’ Judith has had enough of playing hide-and-seek. In the absence of a warrant card, she decides to go on the charm offensive, and gives the professor a smile.
‘I’m terribly worried about my friend. You couldn’t give me five minutes of your time, could you?’
‘If it matters that much to you.’ Atkinson ignores his wife’s poisonous looks. ‘Let’s go to my study.’
The study is a tiny, wood-panelled room on the first floor of the whitewashed cottage.
‘You must excuse my wife. She sometimes worries that I’m overworked,’ Atkinson explains. ‘A little overprotective, you know?’
Jealous, you mean, Judith thinks. Still smiling, she puts Charlotte’s photo and the loon postcard on the table in front of Atkinson.
‘My friend visited you in Toronto a few weeks ago.’
Atkinson nods tentatively.
‘Had you invited her?’
‘No, her arrival was a complete surprise.’
Judith indicates the postcard. ‘You wrote: “One day we’ll make it come true”. She was once very taken with you. What exactly was to come true?’
‘That’s a long time ago.’
‘“One day we’ll make it come true”,’ Judith repeats.
Atkinson sighs. ‘Loons – common loons. I was often a guest at her father’s house when I was in Cologne, and Charlotte was always fascinated when I talked about Canadian fauna. That must have been what I meant – that I’d show her our loons if she ever came to Canada.’
‘But you didn’t think she’d actually come.’ Judith is no longer so friendly. Atkinson says nothing.
‘And then Charlotte did turn up after all. What did you do? Did you keep your promise?’
Atkinson darts a nervous glance at the door. Judith smiles at him again.
He sighs. ‘She wanted to watch loons – a long-term project for her Ph.D. thesis. I gave her a list of the addresses of our national parks.’
‘A list of addresses.’
‘I couldn’t – it was the middle of the semester. I have a family.’ Again Atkinson’s eyes wander to the door. ‘Charlotte understood.’
‘Are you in a relationship with her?’
‘No!’
For the first time, Judith has the feeling he’s telling the truth. Perhaps Charlotte wasn’t interested in Atkinson at all. Perhaps it really was the loons she was interested in, and she only wanted Atkinson to help her launch her new career as an ornithologist.
‘A list of addresses,’ she repeats. ‘Isn’t that rather little in the way of help, considering she’s the daughter of your old mentor?’
‘I’m a geneticist.’
‘Like Charlotte’s father.’ Suddenly Judith feels choked. Pull yourself together, she tells herself silently – it’s not your fault that Charlotte was let down by her father and this arrogant Canadian professor and God knows who else besides.
‘Did Charlotte ever come to Cozy Harbour?’
Again the darting glance at the study door. ‘No.’
She doesn’t believe him, but even with more smiles, a bit of flattery and another round of the old question-and-answer game she fails to crack Atkinson. And perhaps there isn’t anything to crack; perhaps it really was only the loons Charlotte was interested in; perhaps they’re the key. Was that what the loon in Judith’s dream was trying to tell her? No. That fixed red gaze was a warning – and maybe a call for help.
‘Where’s Charlotte now?’ she asks Atkinson.
The professor shakes his head, clearly relieved that the conversation is coming to an end. ‘I don’t know. I really have no idea.’ He gets up. ‘I must get back to my family. Let me see you to your car.’
*
Ten thirty p.m. Martina Stadler is exhausted, and yet wide awake. She pushes the duvet aside and reaches for Jonny’s torch on her bedside table. The spare room is even stuffier than the bedroom. She closes the door behind her softly and listens out. All is quiet in the next room; Frank is asleep. A week ago she would have sworn that her husband was incapable of committing a crime. Now she is no longer so sure. Another day has gone by – as unbearable as every day has been since Jonny has been missing. Again the blond inspector wanted to know where Frank was on Saturday afternoon. Again Frank remained doggedly silent. She had felt like shaking him and yelling at him, but she hadn’t had the strength.
She puts Jonny’s precious torch down on the desk and turns on the lamp with the bottle-green glass shade, an heirloom from Frank’s grandfather. Hesitantly she pulls open the drawers and pushes them shut again. Nothing but stationery – hers and Frank’s. It’s the first time she’s had cause to wonder where Frank might keep anything he wanted to hide from her. She opens the fitted cupboard where his boxes of model-making equipment are stacked and neatly labelled. Before Jonny moved in with them, Frank had pursued his hobby in the basement, and the attic up here had been Martina’s sanctuary. Then they had let Jonny choose his room, and when he decided on the basement, they’d had the cupboard put in for Frank, moved Martina’s grandmother’s bureau into their bedroom and carried Frank’s enormous desk up to the attic. Had everything started then? Did that act of surrender spark a bitterness that smouldered below the surface until it erupted into hatred, unbeknownst to her?
She opens and closes boxes. What does she think she’s looking for? A blood-stained knife? Ridiculous. A diary documenting what the blond inspector thinks he knows – that Frank hated Dr D. and maybe wanted rid of Jonny too? But Frank has never been a man of words. Money, she thinks. That would be my advice to a woman who has sudden doubts about her husband’s trustworthiness – check his phone, check his emails and, most important, check his bank statements. She switches on the computer, which springs to life with a loud beep. Did Frank hear that? She creeps to the door and strains her ears. Silence.
Frank and she share an email account, which he hardly uses because he has another, work address. Their joint current account holds no secrets either; as usual, they are only just in the black. That leaves the credit card account and the instant access savings account. After ten minutes of frantic searching, Martina remembers where Frank keeps his PINs and passwords. Laboriously she types interminably long strings of numbers into various online forms. At last the login is accepted. She clicks on ‘Account overview’, her heart beginning to race. The instant access account is an emergency pot of hard-saved money put aside for broken washing machines and other such eventualities; they had been planning to make an unscheduled mortgage payment from it at the end of the year. Now it’s empty. The day before Jonny went missing, Frank withdrew twenty thousand euros.
As if on autopilot, Martina clicks on ‘Print statement’; as if on autopilot, she folds the print-out and turns off the computer. She is shaking so hard that every move takes her for ever. She had gone poking around behind her husband’s back because, despite her great fear, she was convinced it was a way of reassuring herself – convinced she’d find only evidence of his innocence. Now she knows she was wrong, and this has thrown her completely. Jonny, she thinks. Please come back, Jonny. Her cold, trembling fingers fold the bank statement smaller and smaller, and still her heart is hammering away in her chest, as fast as a baby’s, although she has just lost an innocence she will never recover.
She switches off the desk lamp, the statement a small, stiff square in her cold hand. She pushes it into the pocket of her cardigan and gets up, clutching Jonny’s torch, but she is shaking so hard that her knees give way beneath her. She staggers to the sofa and sits staring into the darkness. They haven’t found Jonny yet; there’s still hope – isn’t there? She caresses the torch before switching it on. No light, not even a glimmer. Her heart bursts; fear rips at it – fear and the intuition that her fears are justified.
Then she feels nothing – only unfathomable darkness.
Somebody rattles the door handle – knocks – calls her name.
‘Martina, what’s going on? Why are you crying, Martina? Open the door!’
She totters through the blackness and grips the door handle. She turns the key in the lock and makes a dismissive gesture that freezes Frank’s blood.
‘The torch,’ she whispers. ‘Jonny’s dead.’
*
Superintendent Margery Cunningham looks like a cherub – small and round, with blond curls. But her handshake is firm, her eyes are steady, and her voice has the timbre of a nightclub crooner. She listens attentively to what Judith has to tell her about Charlotte Simonis – and that, Judith says to herself, really is a miracle, when you think that I’ve turned up at this police station in the middle of nowhere completely out of the blue. Either a miracle, or else an example of the Canadian friendliness mentioned in every travel guide, which I had so far taken for a myth. Or perhaps it’s simply the tedium of the silly season in a provincial police station which is to blame.
‘I’ll see what I can do for you,’ says the cherubic detective, whose eyes, surprisingly, are not cerulean blue, but dark brown. ‘We should know more by tomorrow.’
‘Today would be better,’ says Judith in English, surprised at how easily it comes back to her.
Margery Cunningham raises her eyebrows.
‘I think Atkinson’s lying. I’m pretty sure that Charlotte Simonis came to see him in Cozy Harbour. I’m going to drive there now and show her photo around. But maybe there’s no point; maybe something’s happened to her. Maybe,’ – Judith gestures towards the detective’s computer – ‘she’s already been registered as an unidentified dead body.’
‘You think there was a crime?’
‘All I know is that Charlotte may be somewhere in this area, and that Terence Atkinson isn’t telling me everything he knows.’
‘He’s a respected member of the community.’
‘You know him?’
‘I live in Cozy Harbour.’ The Canadian woman studies Judith with her head on one side, and then seems to come to a decision.
‘All right, then. My great-grandfather was German, and it isn’t every day I have a German colleague here asking me for help. Are you staying in Cozy Harbour?’
Judith nods.
‘Come for dinner at eight. I’ll know more by then.’
The Canadian detective scribbles an address on the back of her business card. ‘You follow the track past Old Martha’s Cottage and then keep going for another three miles or so to where it ends. That’s where I live.’
Cozy Harbour still has a sleepy air about it when Judith returns after half an hour’s drive, but the restaurant on the dockside is now open. Lethargic-looking men in baseball caps and checked shirts are sitting at the bar, drinking beer and looking out at the water. Mariah Carey is blaring out of the jukebox; the television above the bar is showing the news on mute. No, yes, maybe, perhaps – none of the men will commit to having seen the woman in the photo. ‘Rather a shy woman, quite tall,’ Judith insists. ‘An ornithologist interested in loons. Might have come to see Terence Atkinson.’ The men pass the photo around, gulp their beer, shake their heads.
Outside by the docks, Judith thinks for a moment that she sees the water plane. When she realises that she’s mistaken, the sense of unreality returns – the feeling that she has fallen out of time. Being with David, knowing that she felt at home in his arms and yet wasn’t going to be able to stay, has made her soft and vulnerable, probably because she is finding it increasingly difficult to keep her concerns and memories surrounding Charlotte in check, here in this vast empty country. Death. For a moment Judith is convinced that’s what the tarot card was trying to tell her – that instead of finding the beginning of a new and better life, she will find death. Stop it, she tells herself – you’re exhausted, that’s all. Besides, you’ve kept right out of things these few last months in Cologne. It’s no wonder you’re overwhelmed now.
But she doesn’t want to feel overwhelmed; she wants to find Charlotte. Before she returns to Cologne and resumes her work for the dead, she wants to get on top of this search, which is beginning to feel more and more like an official investigation. It’s as if solving the Charlotte Simonis ‘case’ would be a good omen for her future in Division 11, whereas failing to solve it – oh, stop it, Judith, don’t torment yourself. She rolls herself a cigarette and inhales deeply.
Besides groceries and toiletries, the supermarket in Cozy Harbour sells sheath knives, fishing rods and camping equipment. A back room behind a barred door serves as an off-licence. It is just opening; men in baseball caps and checked shirts who bear an uncanny resemblance to the men at the harbour bar are standing patiently in line to get their brown paper bags of liquor. Judith buys a bottle of red wine, a bottle of mineral water and a cup of coffee. She feels a nagging concern about the way Atkinson has shaken her off – and about her lack of leverage over him. Again she passes round Charlotte’s photo. Again, no one will commit to having seen Charlotte.
As so often, she strikes lucky just as she is beginning to give up hope. Yes, the cashier says, glancing at the photo Judith shows her as she pays. She remembers the woman. A foreigner – German or Scandinavian. A tall woman. She bought camping equipment and wanted to be told how everything worked – must have been about four weeks ago.
‘Did she tell you her plans? Was she with anyone?’
The cashier shakes her head.
‘Where was she going?’
The cashier smiles. She doesn’t know. ‘Camping, I assume, but I’ve no idea where.’
Judith has to get the cashier away from her customers and the till, and she needs a copy of the receipt documenting Charlotte’s purchase. But she isn’t authorised to do that, and realising to what extent her hands are tied without her warrant card makes her furious again. All she can do for now is to take a note of the cashier’s name and phone number.
Back in the hire car, Judith wedges the polystyrene cup between her knees and turns once more onto the gravel track leading out of Cozy Harbour. She resists the temptation to drive down to Old Martha’s Cottage and confront Atkinson with the cashier’s statement. Until she can prove he was with Charlotte, he isn’t going to admit it.
The next turning leads down to a bay that is deserted and undeveloped. The water still stretches all the way to the horizon, but the intense turquoise has turned to a velvety dark blue. It is a little after seven – past midnight in Cologne. The call of a seabird rends the air – wistful, plangent and alien. The bird itself is nowhere to be seen. Purposefully, Judith strips off her clothes and dives naked into the water. She swims away from the shore with powerful strokes. Again the bird’s exotic cry rings out. Judith still can’t see what’s making the sound, but it no longer disturbs her, because in some timeless way it seems to belong to the bay. She rolls onto her back and floats on the waves until she feels refreshed.
Margery Cunningham has changed out of her skirt and blouse into jeans and a scarlet checked flannel shirt. ‘Let’s eat first; I’m starving,’ she proposes in her smoky voice after hellos have been said. Her wooden house looks tiny compared with the barn beside it which, Margery tells Judith, her husband Sean uses as a carpentry workshop. Next to the barn is a dusty pick-up truck, and next to that are several stacks of planks and logs. Margery uncorks the red wine and thrusts two glasses into Judith’s hands.
‘We’re having a barbecue on the beach – grilled corn on the cob and hamburgers – the real Canadian experience. The others are already there.’
‘The others?’
‘My husband and the kids.’
‘Don’t we need a third glass?’
‘Sean doesn’t drink.’
The barbecue turns out to be a bonfire. A rug has been laid out on the warm sand, the sun is going down over the water and there is an alluring smell of corn on the cob and meat. Sean looks Native American, and the children are dark like their father, but with something of Margery’s angelic softness in their faces. They eat in comfortable silence. Judith suddenly realises how hungry she was. For pudding, the kids skewer fluffy white marshmallows onto sticks and toast them over the flames.
‘Want to try?’ Margery points at the bag of marshmallows. ‘Every Canadian child’s dream.’
‘Think I’ll give them a miss.’
‘Let’s go down to the water, then.’ Margery takes the bottle of wine, breathes a kiss on her husband’s cheek and gets up.
A piece of driftwood washed smooth by the water provides them with a back rest. The sky explodes in reds and purples. Judith lights a cigarette and gives one to Margery. They sit and smoke, watching the colours from the sky spreading in the water.
‘I’ve never wanted to leave. I wasn’t cut out for city life.’ Margery sips her wine.
‘I think I know what you mean.’ Judith lets sand trickle through her fingers. ‘It’s all so grimy and hemmed in. At home in Cologne I sometimes find it hard to take too.’
‘But trying to find a man here is like playing the lottery. All the good ones leave for the city; only the alcoholics stay behind.’
‘How did you and Sean meet?’
Margery laughs her throaty, nightclub laugh. ‘In prison. I was on patrol duty and arrested him for drink-driving. In the morning, when he was halfway sober, I could see that like so many members of the so-called ‘First Nation’ he had a serious alcohol problem, but I could also see that he was a good sort. “Come back when you’re sober,” I told him. And he did – six months later. He’s been on the wagon ever since.’
‘Weren’t you scared?’
‘Scared?’ Margery stretches out her legs. ‘Yes, I was. And then there was the gossip. But I tried to listen to what my heart was telling me – that Sean was good for me, that he was better than most of the men here, that he’d stay on the wagon, that we’d make it. And I wanted kids. Sounds banal, doesn’t it?’
Judith smiles. ‘Yes.’
‘As time went on I got less scared. I stopped panicking every time he stayed out late. I guess I’ll never stop being scared completely, but I can live with that. What about you?’
Scared? Oh yes. Scared of love and what it might lead to. Scared of the emptiness after love has run its course. Scared that living people will turn into dead people.
‘I don’t know. I was on my own for a long time. Now I’ve met someone, but it’s all very recent and I can’t say the circumstances are in our favour.’ That isn’t enough, but it will have to do for the time being. Judith feels Margery’s eyes on her, sympathetic and wise. She stubs out her cigarette.
‘The cashier in your supermarket is sure she sold camping gear to Charlotte a few weeks ago,’ Judith says after a while.
‘That tallies with what I’ve found out. Charlotte Simonis was here. From 16 to 23 May she had a single room at the Moonshine Inn, a motel between Cozy Harbour and Parry Sound. I haven’t found an unsolved death that fits her description. By the way, her tourist visa expires next week. So in all probability, she is still in Canada; at any rate there are no records that she has left the country legally.’
‘But where is she?’
‘She wanted to go north, to watch loons. That, at least, is what she told the receptionist at the Moonshine. Nothing more precise.’
‘Shit.’
‘Not so fast. I know how she travelled north. On 24 May she returned her hire car in Parry Sound and booked a flight with a company called Trips to the Wilderness. It’s a small business which specialises in transporting private people who want individualised fishing trips, panoramic flights, camping tours, things like that. Unfortunately, no one in the office was able to tell me where exactly Charlotte was flown to. The pilot who took her won’t be back until tomorrow lunchtime.’
‘What’s he called?’
‘David Becker. He’s from Germany, by the way, and lives in Cozy Harbour. Easy game for you.’
‘David Becker!’
‘What? Do you know him?’ It’s only a question, but the undercurrent in Margery’s voice fills Judith with apprehension.
‘Yes,’ she says cautiously. ‘Or rather, not really – not very well. Only since this morning.’
Silence. She can almost hear Margery waiting for her to resume talking. But what can she say? That instead of questioning this potentially key witness about Charlotte’s whereabouts, she jumped into bed with him? She gropes for her packet of tobacco.
‘What do you know about Becker, Margery?’
‘Nothing. There’s nothing against him.’
‘But?’
‘He’s a loner. Came here a few years ago. Divorced, I think.’
‘And?’
‘It’s more of a feeling. He’s a bit too smart for my liking. The tourists love that – the women tourists, I mean.’