‘That suitcase, Mother, my checked children’s suitcase – have you found it?’
Elisabeth resists the temptation to hang up. Seven in the morning – Carmen has never rung this early; unlike her mother, she isn’t a morning person. But she wants something from Elisabeth and isn’t going to give up until she’s got it. She’s always like that when she’s set her mind on something – unrelenting, merciless. Always has been. It never ceases to amaze Elisabeth that she managed to produce a being so different from herself.
‘I was too tired to go up to the attic yesterday,’ Elisabeth replies.
‘You said you’d look, Mother. You promised.’
‘You normally tell me to take things easy.’
‘Goodness, Mother, don’t you understand? Someone left a dead dog outside the church in Frimmersdorf, in a suitcase with my name on it. That can’t be a coincidence. I have to call the police – unless you can persuade me right now that the suitcase is still in the attic.’
‘All right, all right, I’ll have a look.’
‘I’ll ring again in a quarter of an hour, Mother.’
Barabbas pads across the kitchen linoleum and lays his head on Elisabeth’s knees. She scratches him behind his ears. She had done her best to protect him, but it wasn’t enough. She hadn’t even realised Carmen had written her name on the suitcase; the girl must have done it secretly when they were on holiday on the island of Juist all those years ago. Yes, that must be what happened; that would be just like Carmen. Mine, mine, mine – her daughter always had been possessive, even as a child. Now Carmen is a persistent woman of almost fifty. Elisabeth feels tears pricking her eyes. She can’t fetch Carmen’s suitcase back; it hadn’t occurred to her that her daughter would ever ask for it, and she knew nothing of the name in the lid. She had, of course, got rid of the address label and the flower stickers, and unpicked the monograms from the sheets. She’d never dreamed that the suitcase would be on the news. They’ll take Barabbas away; they’ll kill him – and it will be her fault.
The telephone begins to ring, shrill and harsh, like Carmen’s voice when she feels hard done by. Elisabeth forces herself to reach out her aching arm and pick up the receiver.
‘You’re right,’ she says, when Carmen says hello. ‘The suitcase isn’t in the attic. I remembered as soon as I got up there – I put it out on the street last year for the dustmen. Somebody must have taken it.’
‘You put my suitcase out for the dustmen?’
‘I’m sorry, Carmen, I didn’t think you were particularly attached to it.’ You never gave a toss about our holidays, Elisabeth wants to add, but she stops herself. You only ever wanted to get away from us, she thinks. But she mustn’t get into an argument now; she doesn’t have the strength. Every word is an effort as it is. And it’s important that Carmen believe her. It’s her last chance to save Barabbas.
‘I can’t believe that, Mother; you never put anything out for the dustmen. You never part with anything.’
*
Ignoring Tim’s protests, his father drives him right up to the school gate. Frau Keyser, his class teacher, is waiting at the entrance; now there really is no escape. Tim climbs wearily out of the Mercedes, feeling like a lamb to the slaughter. Frau Keyser smiles at him.
‘Everything all right, Tim? Feeling better?’
Tim nods. What else can he do? He botched last night, so here he is again. Next week the holidays begin at last, but there are still another six days of school to get through. The thought is unbearable. Behind him, somebody laughs. Tim’s shoulders stiffen and his heart begins to race. Don’t turn round, he tells himself. Don’t turn round. That only makes it worse; it’s what they want. He pleads silently with his father to leave, but his father lets the car window down and starts to talk to Frau Keyser. Tim slopes off. More laughter. Tim’s back aches from drawing his head in as far down between his shoulders as he can; he can’t feel himself move. It takes an inordinate amount of self-control not to hurl himself on the ground or press himself up against the grimy brick façade – close his eyes and pray to be made invisible or, better still, turned to stone.
‘Your dad says you miss your friend.’ Frau Keyser has caught up with him. She lays a hand on Tim’s tense shoulder, making him start. ‘We all miss Jonny. We all hope he’ll be back soon. Don’t give up hope.’ She nudges him in the direction of the art rooms, where Tim has his first two lessons. Art – there’s another subject that once meant quite a lot to him. Once.
The room falls silent when he enters. Do they all know? Have they all seen the shameful photos, stored them on their phones, gloated over them, laughed at them. shown their friends? Tim sidles to his seat like a scared animal. A few of the girls throw him curious, almost pitying glances – or is he imagining things? Lukas is leaning up against the wall by the window, a furtive look in his eyes.
‘Since when does your dad bring you to school, Rinker?’
‘Dunno, just today.’
‘Have you been telling lies again?’
Tim shakes his head. The art room is so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
‘Lies!’ Very slowly, Lukas pulls his phone from his trouser pocket. ‘Vik texted me a picture, a really funny one. Hang on a sec, where is it?’
‘No one here is looking at texts just now, thank you. Switch off your phones, please, and come and sit down.’ The art teacher isn’t standing for any nonsense. Their topic is Expressionism, and he wants them to start by painting something that is important to them – to follow their feelings. Loud groans and grumbles. But soon the whole class is at work, even Lukas. Tim stares at the sheet of paper in front of him. He knows that Expressionist paintings are colourful – as colourful as the fish he carved up yesterday evening.
‘What’s this, Tim? Is this a joke?’ The art teacher tears Tim’s picture from his pad and holds it up. Tim has covered the entire sheet in black paint. The others jeer.
‘What is this, Tim?’
The deep sea, Tim thinks. That’s what it’s like right at the bottom – no colours, nothing but black. But he doesn’t say it out loud, because nobody would believe him.
*
There’s something different about Martina Stadler. It isn’t her clothes; she’s still wearing the same T-shirt and baggy tracksuit bottoms as the day before, still clawing her slender hand into the woollen shawl that’s wound about her shoulders in spite of the heat. It’s something in her manner – something about the way she looks at him. She is composed and almost calm – and for some reason that Manni can’t put his finger on, that unnerves him.
‘Frank isn’t in,’ Martina Stadler tells him. Then, more softly, with a glance at the two little brats who are standing in the hall behind her, gawking at Manni, she adds, ‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘We have to talk,’ says Manni.
She nods, as if she’d been expecting it. ‘Go on into the kitchen, I’ll just . . . Leander, Marlene, come along, you can watch a video.’
How quickly you get used to a place, Manni thinks, taking up his usual seat at the kitchen table. Only a week ago he didn’t even know this family; now they have become part of his life.
‘The Lion King,’ says Martina Stadler. ‘That’ll keep them quiet for a while. They aren’t usually allowed to watch TV in the mornings.’ She sits down opposite Manni on the corner bench.
‘Jonny,’ Manni begins. ‘We still know too little about him.’
‘I’ve told you everything I—’
‘No you haven’t.’
She seems to freeze, but she holds his gaze with her inscrutable green eyes. Beautiful eyes in a beautiful face that is now ravaged by pain.
‘Who is Jonny? What makes him unique?’ Manni asks.
‘Leopold,’ a child’s voice pipes.
Martina Stadler leaps to her feet. ‘Marlene, what are you doing here? You were going to watch the film.’
‘Can we have some chocolate?’
Martina Stadler flings open a cupboard door, presses two bars of Kinder chocolate into her daughter’s hand and pushes her back out into the hall.
‘Blackmail,’ she says. ‘Little monsters. They know when they can get away with it.’ She sits back down on the corner bench and again seems to freeze in position. ‘Jonny really was like Leopold,’ she says stiffly.
‘Leopold?’
‘Leopold is a glow-worm. The main character in Marlene’s favourite book. Jonny often read it to the kids. They loved it. They had this bedtime ritual – first they’d look at the book and then Jonny would make light signals for them with his torch.’
Martina Stadler clasps the torch as if in confirmation.
‘What’s so special about this Leopold?’
‘He brings light to the others.’ Martina Stadler’s voice sounds very far away. ‘You don’t notice him at first, but when you’re scared of the dark, he’s suddenly there, switching on his little lantern for you. Leopold’s not scared.’ She smiles, an unnatural, tight-lipped smile. ‘Jonny was just the same. He had a real talent for looking on the bright side, because he had such a big imagination. Marlene and Leander worshipped him. After his parents’ awful death, he really did bring light to our lives – once he’d got through the worst phase of grieving.’
‘You talk about him in the past tense.’
‘He’s dead.’ She looks at him. ‘You know he is. Anything else is impossible.’
‘We don’t know what’s happened; we can only speculate.’ The dog squad has given up searching. Of course, that isn’t to say the boy isn’t buried somewhere in Königsforst. Or elsewhere. Manni’s seen it all before. A few bones, some scraps of soft tissue, hair, shreds of clothing – not much is left after a week in the open in the middle of summer. But they don’t even have that. No hot leads, no ransom note, no corpse – nothing at all, nada. Manni suddenly craves clarity, even if it would almost certainly mean he’d be off the the case.
‘Jonny would never have let anything happen to Dr D.,’ says Martina Stadler.
‘Maybe he didn’t realise what was happening. Maybe whoever did it was quicker than him.’
Martina Stadler shakes her head. ‘They were inseparable.’
And that, Manni thinks, must have made it all the more awful for Jonny when someone did hurt his dog – when he realised he couldn’t prevent it.
‘He would have protected that dog, whatever happened,’ Martina Stadler insists in a strangely monotone voice. ‘That’s just the way he was. If someone was in trouble, he had to help them. At the swimming pool, for instance, Jonny would intervene when the kids got into a fight, even if they were bigger than him. I always thought it was foolish but, oddly enough, he always got away with it. It was the same at school. He was the smallest, the youngest, highly intelligent – an obvious target for bullies. But, in fact, the others respected him.’
‘Are you quite sure about that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Parents don’t always know everything about their children.’
‘Jonny was happy. As happy as he could be, given the circumstances.’
He doesn’t believe her, but before he can probe any further, his phone begins to buzz – Thalbach, his boss. ‘We have a witness who knows something about this suitcase. It would be good if you could come straight away.’ It’s an order.
‘I’m in the middle of questioning someone and was planning to go on to the school afterwards.’
‘I’ve just sent Petra into the school. When can you get here?’
‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’ Manni glances at his watch, then at Martina Stadler, who pulls her shawl tighter, her face unmoved.
‘Frau Stadler, where is your husband?’
‘I don’t know?’
‘And that doesn’t worry you?’
‘He’s a free man.’
‘Did you tell him yesterday that I wanted to speak to him?’
She nods.
‘Frau Stadler, if there’s anything you’d like to tell me – anything about your husband . . . You don’t have to, of course, but it isn’t always a good idea to protect someone by keeping silent.’
It’s as if she doesn’t hear him.
‘Ask your husband to get in touch with me today. Otherwise we’ll have to put him on the Wanted List.’
Her silence accompanies him down the front path, past the chaotic mass of toys that are still strewn across the fake cobbles. It’s like a metaphor for the muddle of facts and witness statements that make up Jonny Röbel’s case.
On his way to headquarters, Manni rings the hospital. His father can’t speak, the nurse tells him, but his mother is there and will call him back. Only moments later, her voice is coming over the hands-free system, filling the car, which seems to be growing closer and stuffier by the minute – the perfect breeding ground for Manni’s guilt.
‘Your father’s dying. It’s serious, Manni. Come and make it up with him while there’s still time.’
‘I can’t. I’m working. I have to find this boy. I’m on the way to question a witness.’
‘Please, Manni. Give the living a chance. Don’t always be thinking about the dead.’
She begins to cry. He cuts her off.
The witness is sitting in the interrogation room, sipping a glass of water. Carmen Vogt is in her late forties – the co-owner of a travel agent’s that specialises in city tours. She is well groomed and discreetly chic but she has rather harsh lines around her mouth. Her mother-of-pearl fingernail taps the photo of the checked suitcase on the local news page of the Cologne Gazette.
‘That used to be mine. I wrote my name in the lid when I was little: Carmen. A colleague of yours has shown me a photo of the writing. There’s no doubt whatsoever.’
‘But you didn’t put the dog in the suitcase.’
‘No.’ She doesn’t smile. Perhaps she has no sense of irony.
‘When did you last see the suitcase?’
‘Years ago. As far as I can remember, it was always in my parents’ attic in Frimmersdorf.’
‘Who could have taken it?’
‘My mother says she put it out for the dustmen, but she can’t remember when. Sometime last year. She’s getting old.’
‘We’ll have to talk to your mother.’
For a second, Carmen has the look of a child caught doing something naughty. ‘Is that really necessary? She worries a lot and is sometimes rather confused. She certainly isn’t a criminal.’
‘Maybe it would help if you came with us.’
‘Now? That’s impossible. The last week before the summer holidays is always hellishly busy. Last-minute bookings – an awful trend. But what can you do? The customers—’
‘I need your mother’s name and address, please.’ Manni’s not in the mood for listening to excuses. Excuses, half-truths and objections. He makes a note of the address reluctantly dictated to him by Carmen Vogt. Now he has to go and interview a confused old lady; he’s spared nothing. But the suitcase is a lead and Thalbach expects him to follow it. And Carmen Vogt is right – the school holidays are looming. His witnesses will soon be away on holiday; the whole thing is a disaster.
Not enough time. Not enough time to sleep or think or work through the questions on his list. He must talk to this Tim Rinker, no matter what Thalbach’s instructions were. The boy must know something. Tim’s cousin, Ivonne Rinker, is in Jonny’s class, as is Viktor, Petermann’s son. Why didn’t Big Chief Petermann mention that his son and Jonny were in the same class? That’s something else Manni needs to get to the bottom of. But first he must put Petra Bruckner in the picture. He says goodbye to Carmen Vogt and rings his colleague on her mobile. Old Frau Vogt isn’t going to run away from him; he’ll stop off at Jonny’s school on the way to Frimmersdorf. Manni pushes aside all thoughts of his father. Later. This evening. One thing at a time.
There’s a knock at the door. Carmen Vogt is back. ‘Please don’t tell my mother I was here.’
‘That can hardly be avoided.’ Manni gets up. Women and their secrets. Women and their emotional mysteries. The suitcase is only one tiny piece in the puzzle, and even that tiny piece is creating new problems. This feels nothing like a breakthrough. He must tackle Petermann. And where the hell has Frank Stadler got to?
*
Tim doesn’t know where to go when the bell rings for break. Not to his hiding place by the fence – never again, after what they did to him there. Herr Mohr, the chemistry teacher, is on playground duty. Tim tries to stick close to him without attracting his attention. Viktor and Ivonne are sitting on the top step of the open-air atrium with Ralle. Viktor has his arm around Ivonne’s shoulder, his hand dangling casually in front of her breast, almost touching it. Apart from this, he ignores her, engrossed in his conversation with Ralle, but Ivonne doesn’t seem to mind. IPod plugs in her ears, she pops bubblegum bubbles and scrutinises her fingernails.
Now they’ve spotted Tim. They look down at him and start to grin. Ralle spreads his fingers to mime a phone call. Viktor slightly lifts the hand dangling at Ivonne’s breast and extends his index finger. Very gently he moves it back and forth, back and forth, just like they did yesterday with Tim’s penis, willy, dick . . . no, he won’t think about it – he can’t – he doesn’t want to be reminded of it. Heat fills his face. He turns round, sees Lukas, hears him laugh, begins to run. He must get away from here.
A hand grabs him by the shoulder. Tim thrashes about; the grip tightens.
‘Hey, Tim, where do you think you’re going?’ Frau Keyser asks. ‘The police have a couple more questions to ask you. Come along with me, please.’
Their eyes burn holes in his back. He hears Lukas laugh; he knows that Viktor is still waggling his index finger. He feels like a condemned man on his way to the guillotine, like in the illustration in his book on the French Revolution. But he knows it won’t be over so quickly for him.
Frau Keyser leads him into an empty classroom. Outside, in the corridor, the policeman in trainers and his fat, predatory-fish colleague look as if they’re arguing, but they fall quiet when they spot Tim. The policeman in trainers hurries over.
‘Hello, Tim. We were interrupted last time I was here. Come on, let’s sit down again and finish talking.’
The predatory-fish woman makes predatory-fish eyes, but she doesn’t follow him into the classroom. Frau Keyser pulls the door shut behind her and sits down at a desk at the back. The policeman in trainers leafs through a notepad.
‘Have you thought of anything else that might help us to find Jonny?’
Tim shakes his head.
‘Your cousin Ivonne is in Jonny’s class. Was it through her that you got to know Jonny?’
‘No, it was at chess club.’
‘Are Ivonne and Jonny friends?’
‘No.’
‘We talked about the Red Indian camp last time. You said Jonny was looking forward to it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why weren’t you a member of the Red Indian club?’
‘Dunno. It’s not really my thing.’
‘What isn’t your thing, Tim?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Do you think playing cowboys and Indians is silly?’
‘No, it’s not that.’
‘And it’s not because of Jonny.’ That isn’t a question; it’s a statement.
Jonny had once asked him to go along, but the thought of sleeping in a tent with a lot of children he didn’t know – no, he couldn’t, not even if Jonny was there.
‘Why didn’t you want to play cowboys and Indians with your friend, Tim?’
‘We did play, just not at the camp.’
‘Because you didn’t want to go to the camp. But why not? Because of the other children?’
‘Just didn’t want to.’
‘But Jonny did. Why didn’t you go too, if you’re such good friends, Tim?’
Tim stares at the desk in front of him. DOLLING YOU BITCH, someone has written.
‘Or was it that Jonny didn’t really want to go to this Red Indian camp with his father?’
DOLLING YOU BITCH.
‘Do you know what, Tim? I get the impression you’re scared of something. Jonny was scared too, the day he went missing. Don’t you think you can trust me a bit, so we can find your friend?’
‘Jonny’s never scared – he isn’t like that!’
The policeman in trainers runs his hand through his hair. It’s a casual gesture, but there’s nothing casual about the look in his eyes.
‘All right, then – Jonny’s never scared. But you’re scared, Tim. Is it something in the Red Indian camp that scares you? Something in the woods? Here at school? What is it?’
He wants the questions to stop, wants the eyes to stop looking at him, wants everything to stop. Frau Keyser hasn’t found out about his black picture of the invisible fish yet, or she’d surely have said something. Deep-sea anglerfish have antennae-like things on their heads, which light up at the tips when they want to bait their prey. The rest of the time they move around in the blackness, invisible. Young anglerfish are covered in a layer of gelatine to make them appear larger in case they are discovered by their enemies in spite of the dark. It looks as if the blackness flows through the gelatine, through the fishes’ bodies. Lovely, pure, protective blackness.
‘Tim, didn’t you hear my question? What are you scared of?’
DOLLING YOU BITCH. The photo of the deep-sea anglerfish is the only picture in the book that Tim didn’t carve up. They’ll soon leave you alone. Jonny, you traitor.
‘I think it would be better if you continued the questioning in the presence of Tim’s parents,’ says Frau Keyser from the back of the classroom.
Not that, not them too. Tim raises his head.
‘Jonny wanted to go to Radebeul.’
The policeman looks at him without a glimmer of surprise.
*
Wailing, droning, the whirr of propellers. Judith turns onto her side. It’s cold in the log cabin. She pulls the sleeping bag tighter around her. The droning doesn’t go away. There was no droning in the night – no man-made sound at all apart from their breathing. They had glided soundlessly over the black lake that reflected the stars. Wine by the fire, David’s arms, the smell of his skin, the loon’s song. Don’t forget this.
The droning moves away and becomes reality. Judith sits up with a jolt. She is alone and David isn’t there. The leaden light of morning is seeping in at a narrow window. The droning is the noise of a plane taking off, which is absurd, impossible. Judith tears open the sleeping bag, gets to her feet, stumbles outside. It smells of burnt wood and ever so slightly of kerosene. The pale jetty is deserted. Out on the lake, David’s Cessna is just taking off. Judith runs onto the jetty. The water plane climbs steadily, loops round and disappears over the treetops.
Dazed, she watches it go. As if drugged, as if in shock, unable to understand. Charlotte is her first thought. Charlotte has stolen our plane. But where would Charlotte have learnt to fly? What would she want with a stolen plane? And, more important, where is David, if he’s not in the cockpit of his plane? It makes no sense. The noise of the engine dies away and all at once there is no sound, not even the call of an animal. Silence envelops Judith – that peculiar silence that exists only where nature reigns alone.
She looks about her. The small clearing between the log cabin and the shore is empty, but there is smoke rising; David must have lit a fire. On a griddle in the embers she finds a tin pot filled with hot, freshly brewed coffee. The canoe is lying where they pulled it up onto land last night. In the hull is a Canadian dollar coin, a loony. Lucky charms, David called them yesterday. Well, isn’t that just great?
In the log cabin, David’s bag has gone. The small rucksack containing the few things Judith brought with her is lying on the floor. She switches on her phone. No messages. No reception. No connection possible. Bed, wooden benches, a roughly carpentered table, a few shelves – it would be hard to hide anything here. All the same, Judith carries out a systematic search of the log cabin. She finds a map under the bed and unfolds it. The log cabin is marked with a cross – or at least, that’s what she assumes. There is nothing for miles around – no settlement, no roads; only patches of blue in a vast expanse of green that merges with Killarney Provincial Park after what must be about thirty kilometres. Judith tips out her rucksack and feels in all the pockets. No message from David, no explanation – nothing. That leaves the cupboard, which is secured with a padlock. Judith breaks it open with her penknife. Inside is a shotgun, a packet of shot cartridges and several tins of food.
She suddenly realises she’s shivering, puts on her trousers and fleece jacket, hangs the shotgun over her shoulder and goes out to the fire, where she pours herself coffee and warms her hands on the mug. It’s still early, not yet six. A strip of reddish light is beginning to mingle with the grey above the lake. Maybe David just had something to see to and didn’t want to wake her. Maybe he’ll be back soon. Judith drinks the bitter black coffee in little sips. The shivering subsides, but the chill remains. She knows David won’t come back. Trips to the Wilderness – how ironic! For whatever reason, he has abandoned her in the wilderness. She let him blind her. Her body deceived her; she trusted someone she shouldn’t have trusted, and now her search for Charlotte has come to a premature and grotesque end – an end that will cost Judith her job in Division 11, unless she can somehow manage to get back to Toronto in forty-eight hours. Realistically, of course, she doesn’t have a chance.
*
The B59 is, by a long way, the ugliest trunk road Manni can remember ever having driven on. It cuts a dead-straight line through agricultural landscape designed for efficiency and devoid of nature. Overhead power lines span the road, vast pylons dwarf the houses. ‘National Energy Capital’ a sign says in the colours of the German flag as you drive into Grevenbroich. To the left of the road, the brown-coal power stations heave themselves out of the fields, crude blocks that puff steam from their chimneys and cooling towers – a never-ending mass of cloud, so viscous that it drifts down towards the ground before billowing up into the air and dispersing to whitish wisps of cotton wool in the dazzling midday sky. The Vectra’s air conditioning has given up the ghost, and the air coming in through the windows is at once searing hot and cloying. The relatively bearable dry heat of the past few days has given way to humidity, and there’s no respite in sight – no more than in the Jonny Röbel case.
Elisabeth Vogt gingerly opens the front door to Manni after he’s rung the bell several times. She looks up at him with no sign of confusion, a beautiful woman in spite of her great age – quite different from her tight-lipped daughter. Manni takes in her bright, alert eyes, her many wrinkles and a clear-cut profile with a straight nose and softly curved lips. When he first rang the bell, he thought he had heard the deep bark of a dog, but all is quiet now and he can’t see a dog anywhere. He hands the woman his warrant card and she studies it carefully, at arm’s length.
‘My daughter rang. You’re here about the suitcase.’ She returns the warrant card to him and leads the way into the darkened interior of the house. Her smooth white hair is twisted to a knot at the nape of her neck. She holds herself very straight, but you can tell that walking is an effort for her. Manni follows her into a kitchen-cum-living room. It smells of dog, but still Manni sees no sign of one.
The old woman takes a blue glazed earthenware jug, fills it at the sink and pours out two glasses of water.
‘Your daughter’s suitcase is our hottest lead to a missing boy,’ Manni explains. ‘The boy’s parents are desperate; it’s possible he’s in grave danger. We urgently need to find out how the suitcase containing the boy’s dead dachshund ended up outside the church in Frimmersdorf.’
‘I can’t help you. I put the suitcase out for the dustmen.’
‘When was that?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Had you rung up to have things collected? We could check that with the council.’
Elisabeth Vogt reaches for her glass. She suddenly looks uneasy. Her hand is shaking slightly. Is it age or is she trying to hide something? Manni has no idea. He can’t tell. He doesn’t know what to ask next either. All he knows is that he urgently needs to find Jonny Röbel, dead or alive.
Manni gets up. Elisabeth Vogt stares at him in silence. A door leads out of the kitchen into the garden. Manni steps out onto the unevenly paved terrace. A large rambling garden with herbaceous borders, vegetable beds and gnarled fruit trees stretches before him. The house next door is clearly unoccupied; the windows are boarded up, the garden has run wild. There are no neighbours on the other side. Power station clouds billow on the horizon; the rhythmic honk of a factory siren cuts through the busy hum of insects. Next to the terrace, garden tools lean against the wall of the house: a rake, a spade, a shovel. Remnants of earth cling to them. Manni looks at the beds. They don’t look as if they’ve been dug over lately – but what does he know about gardening?
He goes back into the kitchen. Elisabeth Vogt is still sitting there just as he left her, a stiff figure in a blue-and-white patterned dress, smelling faintly of eau de Cologne. Manni finishes his water.
‘So you didn’t ring the council. What do you think will happen when our criminal technicians compare the earth on your daughter’s suitcase with the earth on your garden tools and soil samples from your garden?’
She doesn’t reply. In the corner of her eyes is a glint of tears.
‘Frau Vogt, did you hear me? What do you think will happen then?’
Instead of replying she heaves herself up.
‘Do you have a car?’ Her voice falters, but she has it under control. ‘Come with me. I’ll take you there,’ says Elisabeth Vogt.
*
The baked beans Judith had for breakfast seem to have assumed a life of their own in her stomach. She rolls herself another cigarette. She has definitely smoked too much in the last two hours; the cigarette tastes awful, but right now she doesn’t care. The last place she can look for a note from David is the plastic bag of supplies which he winched into a tree last night with an improvised pulley, a little way from the fire – to keep it out of reach of bears. Judith hangs the loaded shotgun over her shoulder and pulls down the bag of provisions. No message – only two packets of pumpernickel, coffee, teabags, cheese, pasta, a plastic container full of tomato sauce, apples and a bottle of Canadian Club whisky. She isn’t going to starve then, for the time being, and in the evening she can get drunk – or maybe even before.
She goes down to the lake and washes the dishes, the shotgun close beside her. Since David has left, the natural world has lost all its romance. The thought that there are not only elks and racoons in the woods behind the log cabin, but also brown bears, makes her feel exposed – easy prey. Brown bears are very shy, David had said. They only attack humans if they or their young are threatened. But what constitutes a threat to a brown bear?
Judith is stuck here, alone in the wilderness, and apart from David, no one knows where she is. She was in a hurry; she trusted him; she was stupid. She ignored Margery Cunningham’s warning and didn’t even leave her a message telling her where she was going or with whom. She had felt strong, confident of success, certain that David would take her to Charlotte. She had been desperate to spend as much time with him as possible. Blind, that’s what she was. How long will it be before Margery starts to look for her? Will she even look for her? Coffee and nicotine form a bitter coating on Judith’s tongue. She’s too angry – or too hurt – to cry. She feels raw, skinned, filleted. She’s probably in shock.
She unscrews the bottle of Canadian Club and takes a gulp, then another, which she uses as mouthwash and spits out again. The burning of the alcohol is almost a relief. She puts the cap back on and spreads out the map. She doesn’t have a chance of crossing the forest on foot, but perhaps there’s a way through in the canoe. She could at least check to see whether her phone has reception on the lake, whether there are any other log cabins on this lake, people with radio transceivers, people who know the place and could help her. She studies the bay marked with a cross. In the blue patch in front of it is an island. In front of her, in the real-life lake, there is no island, only a loon that looks as if it’s trying to walk on the water. Wildly beating its wings, it carves a path through the lake, then takes off somewhat ponderously and vanishes over the trees.
Judith turns back to the map. If the island doesn’t exist, the map is useless; she can’t get her bearings. But the map must correspond with reality in some way. She feels like a child on a treasure hunt; she never did like those kinds of games. Tomorrow, David had promised, and she hadn’t doubted for a second that he would take her to Charlotte, or that he was speaking the truth – not for a second. She had trusted him. She had loved him. She had failed to ask the reason for the sadness she thought she could see in his eyes. Was it sadness or something darker? No point wondering now. Now she must act. Perhaps David had told her the truth about Charlotte, at least. Perhaps the cross on the map marks Charlotte’s camp. Maybe the island is close by and Judith can find Charlotte.
She puts out the fire and loads rucksack, sleeping bag, tins, whisky and apples into the canoe. The rest of the supplies she winches back into the tree; she doesn’t want to have anything on her that might attract wild animals. At the last moment, she takes an old straw hat from a hook in the log cabin, because it occurs to her that the sunlight on the lake will be intense. She shuts up the cabin and pulls the canoe into the water alongside the jetty where she had sat yesterday, almost forgetting how fragile and fleeting happiness is. The canoe rocks when she climbs in and it takes her a while to get to grips with the paddle. She suddenly remembers the digital camera which she had bought in Cologne especially for this trip. She digs it out and photographs the jetty and the log cabin. Nostalgia or proof – or perhaps both. She turns the canoe and pulls it away from the shore with fierce, angry strokes.
She was overtrusting, reckless, sentimental. She let herself be tricked. But she isn’t going to surrender without a fight.
*
Elisabeth Vogt sits beside him bolt upright, a composed prisoner who directs him with measured gestures. Out of the village along narrow roads, over a bridge, and past a clubhouse and a dog-training area. Just outside the village is a transformer station, and beyond that is Frimmersdorf Power Station, a giant behind bars. Goods trains rumble, and green metal belts on concrete stilts run towards them, apparently from nowhere.
‘Conveyor belts,’ Elisabeth Vogt explains.
She directs Manni through a narrow tunnel and they cross the river again. Now there are trees on both sides of the Tarmac road.
‘Here,’ the old woman whispers after a while.
They get out of the car and she leads him down a footpath into a small wood that seems out of place here. It’s perhaps two hundred metres to the river in one direction. On the other side, the power station looms; it’s only now that Manni realises how enormous it is, what a great many cooling towers it has.
Elisabeth Vogt pays no attention to the power station. She abandons the path and leads Manni between the trees, advancing slowly, as if searching at every step for a non-existent foothold. At last, she stops at a spot where the earth looks as if it’s been recently disturbed.
‘Here,’ she mumbles again. ‘This is where I found the dachshund. This is where I buried him.’
Manni looks about him. Young trees and an old woman who has trouble walking, yet makes every effort to hold herself straight as a soldier, her dress stained dark with sweat. There’s nothing else here; road and power station are out of sight. He sees only loose, crumbly earth and a witness with a look of fear in her wrinkled face.
‘When did you find the dachshund?’
‘Sunday morning. I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk. It was about five.’
On Sunday morning the dachshund was already dead. That might mean they’ve been investigating a murder case for almost a week without having a corpse. It might even mean that Jonny too is lying somewhere in this wood. Manni needs the forensics team and the dog squad; the searching will have to begin all over again – this time in Frimmersdorf. He dials the necessary numbers, describes the route. Elisabeth Vogt watches him, alert as a cornered animal. Manni puts the phone back in his pocket.
‘So you just walked into this wood and there was the dachshund?’
‘I came back later and buried him in the old suitcase. I couldn’t just leave him there.’
‘And then?’
‘Then I saw the reports in the paper – about the boy and his dog. There was no doubt that it was my dachshund. The ear was missing.’
‘Why didn’t you call the police?’
Beads of sweat on her forehead, tears in her eyes. ‘I’m only an old woman – they might not have believed me.’
‘We could easily have checked.’
‘I . . .’
‘So the night before last, you dug up the suitcase and left it outside the church?’
‘I only wanted to help.’
‘You can help us most by telling the truth.’
The woman sways slightly and looks very pale. Paler than pale.
‘Did you see anything apart from the dachshund that struck you as odd or suspicious? Did you meet anyone?’
She shakes her head.
‘Was the dachshund wearing a collar when you found it?’
More head-shaking. So many questions and no answers – or at least no proper answers. Enough to drive you up the wall. Flies buzz. Elisabeth Vogt is beginning to look very ill indeed. He takes her elbow and steers her back to the car. Whatever she has to tell him, she can tell him just as well at home. He certainly can’t be doing with a witness with circulatory collapse, and although he’s convinced that she’s hiding something from him, it seems unlikely that Elisabeth Vogt did anything to harm Jonny or his dog. No reason to hang around, then; there are other, more pressing questions. How did the dachshund get to Frimmersdorf in the first place? Are there witnesses who noticed a vehicle on Saturday night, or maybe even suspicious people? And why Frimmersdorf? Why this wood? It seems quite clear that the perpetrator knew the place well, because although Cologne is only forty kilometres away, no one would stray here by chance. But so far it hasn’t been possible to find evidence of a link between anyone from Jonny’s circle of relatives and acquaintances and this dump on the edge of the open-cast mining area of Garzweiler.
Elisabeth Vogt clearly doesn’t want him to accompany her into the house. He gives her no choice, asking if he can use her toilet and have a glass of water. She admits defeat and pushes the key into the lock. Immediately there are loud barks from inside the house.
‘You didn’t tell me you had a dog.’
Instead of answering, she keels over. Manni just manages to prevent her from hitting her head on the stone floor.
*
No island, no trace of human life, no mobile network. Nothing but conifers, rocks, water, sun and silence, broken by the occasional cry of a loon. Judith steers the canoe to the shore and pulls it up onto a smooth rock, the colour of bleached bones. She is drenched in sweat, and her arms, back and knees are aching from the unaccustomed strain. David had said you could drink the water, and she has no choice but to believe him. She scoops a mug of water from the lake and drinks, then strips off, dives in and lets herself float until she has cooled off. Less than a week ago she had been waiting outside Charlotte’s house for Berthold Pretorius in her 2CV, dreaming of a forest lake. Her instinct had warned her and she should have heeded it – should have put her foot on the accelerator and got away while the going was good. Instead, she let long-forgotten guilt draw her into the past – and the lake turned out to be a trap.
Again she studies the map. The lake is several kilometres long, curved round on itself slightly like a kidney, so that part of it is always hidden from view. She doesn’t know how many kilometres she’s come in an hour, but David had said Charlotte’s camp was close to his log cabin. If that wasn’t a lie and if the cross marks the spot where the camp is, she’s paddled in the wrong direction.
The way back seems twice as long, but at last she passes David’s log cabin. It looks just as she left it; there’s no water plane at the jetty. Seeing that gives her a pang of disappointment and she realises that she had, against her better knowledge, been hoping for a happy ending – hoping to find David there with an explanation for her, or perhaps simply with a bottle of champagne.
Her anger at being stuck here against her will – and at having only herself to blame – spurs her on, in spite of the pain in her right hand where a blister is forming. Three quarters of an hour later she spots the island, a dark, wooded mound in the water. She heads straight for it, and soon she can make out the green tent too, under a pine, on the edge of a stony bay across from the island, just as it is marked on the map. A red canoe lies upside down on the rocks; there is a place for a fire, with a tree stump beside it for sitting on, and a little way off there is a bag of supplies strung up in a tree. All the same, the camp has a deserted air to it.
Judith pulls her canoe onto land and fights back the urge to throw herself down on the ground, which is soft and springy with pine needles. She scoops water onto her face, fills her mug and drinks again. Then she tucks the shotgun under her arm and approaches the fire. The ash has blown away; what is left of the wood is charred and cold. She calls Charlotte’s name. Her voice echoes across the water and is swallowed by the woods, which seem to be listening, as if the forest animals haven’t seen a human being for a very long time and are now pricking their ears with bated breath as they watch Judith.
Under the tent’s awning, Judith finds a pair of sturdy hiking boots, size 42, and a camp stove. In the tent itself are several plastic bags containing underwear, socks, outdoor clothing, tampons and sanitary towels. Next to these are a sleeping bag, a canoeist’s lifejacket, a torch, a gas lamp, a pile of ornithological books – some of them German – and a pair of binoculars. In one of the books, a stamp establishes the identity of the owner as Professor Wilhelm Simonis. Judith takes the binoculars and crawls out again. She is now sure she has found Charlotte’s camp. There is no sign that the inhabitant has packed up and left, and yet she seems to have vanished.
Judith cocks the trigger on the shotgun and shoots into the air. She does this twice. If Charlotte – or anyone else – is within hearing, she wants them to know she’s here. She walks down to the water and scans the surrounding shores and the island through the binoculars. No movement, nothing. Only green silence. Judith longs desperately for sleep. She wants to go to sleep and forget everything – forget the pointless search, forget that time is working against her. And forget David – the way he touched her and looked at her and held her, making her all soft – too soft. She bathes again, opens a tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce, eats it cold from the tin, has an apple, smokes a cigarette. A loon and his mate swim into view, dive down, surface again. She looks at them through the binoculars – at their pointy beaks and their round eyes that contain no warmth, only cold fire.
The forest animals have evidently got used to her presence; there are squeakings and rustlings and whirrings on all sides. It smells of leaf mould and resin. About two hundred metres behind the tent, Judith finds a wooden box that has served as a latrine, a roll of toilet paper tucked beneath the lid. Is this what Charlotte wanted? No fellow humans, no comforts? Was she really able to put up with it, hour after hour, day after day, week after week? The sun is now falling on the bag of supplies in the tree, so that Judith suddenly notices the insects. A black, billowing cloud is buzzing around the bag, scattering and returning, clinging to the plastic, determined to find a way in.
Judith approaches slowly. The rope is rough in her chafed hands, and the knot too tight to undo. It takes her a long time to cut through the rope with her penknife, and then she can’t hold it any longer and the bag crashes to the ground with a squelching thud. The insects appear within seconds, and now Judith understands what’s driving them so crazy. It stinks – fermented and rotten. She holds her breath and opens the bag. At some point, the food in here must have been fresh. But that was quite some time ago.
*
They swing. They play tag. They play catch. Secretly, Martina had always dreamed of acting, but she wasn’t talented enough. None of the drama schools had wanted her, so she had studied social welfare, and then contented herself with acting in amateur productions and running drama projects for children. Never, though, has she done anything as challenging as this. Every gesture, every word, every laugh is a feat of strength; everything has to seem genuine and natural. She tells herself she’s doing it for Marlene and Leander – and probably for herself too, for her sanity, her survival.
Frank hasn’t been in touch with her and she can’t get hold of him on his mobile. He must have come back in the night and slept on the living room sofa for a few hours, but he had already left by the time she got up – maybe for work, maybe for his parents’. Are you sure you can trust your husband? Yes, she wants to scream, yes, yes, yes. But she went through Frank’s drawers again while the children were having their nap.
As the afternoon wears on, she can bear it no longer and puts Marlene and Leander in their pull-along cart. They protest vociferously – they’d rather go on their bikes or scooters, but Martina insists, suddenly in a hurry. She bribes them with ice cream cones and promises them they can play in the sprinkler when they get back from picking up Daddy.
There’s a sign on the door of the parish hall: ‘Today’s Men’s Discussion Group in the garden, behind the hall’. Martina sits down on the bench outside with Marlene and Leander. She is quite calm now. She will apologise to Frank for her lack of trust in him; they’ll go home together, and when the children are in bed, they’ll talk. There’s bound to be a plausible explanation for the twenty thousand euros – and for his whereabouts on Saturday afternoon. The first men are coming out of the garden in twos and threes. She puts her arms around Marlene and Leander. ‘Any second now,’ she says. ‘Any second now.’ But no one else comes out, and when they run round the building into the garden, there’s no one there except the vicar, in jeans and a T-shirt, stacking cushions into a neat pile. He’s a youthful vicar of about forty, and Martina and Frank had both liked him at once when he invited Frank to his fathers’ discussion group, not long after they’d taken Jonny on and were still having trouble readjusting.
‘Sorry, I’m looking for my husband, Frank.’
The vicar looks at her.
‘We’re here to pick him up.’
‘He doesn’t come any more.’
‘Doesn’t come?’
‘Didn’t you know? He stopped coming to the meetings six months ago.’
‘Marlene, Leander!’ Her voice sounds sharp. She drags the children back to the cart. The vicar follows her. ‘I thought he’d discussed it with you.’
Marlene and Leander realise something’s wrong; they climb back into the cart without having to be told. Martina sets off, singing to them to stop them asking questions. She’s amazed that her voice doesn’t break.
On Friday afternoons there was a drama course she would have liked to attend. But the discussion group did Frank good and they couldn’t always park the children at his parents, so Martina had gone without. The discussion group had made Frank more approachable, more relaxed. He had begun to shout less at the children. He and Martina hadn’t talked much about what went on at the meetings; he was never particularly forthcoming and she had learnt not to pester him with questions. But the men’s group had taken some of the pressure off him, and their marriage had improved. She soon noticed a difference and that was enough for her.
Are you sure you can trust your husband? Martina keeps singing. The songs pop into her head, one after the other. It must be the shock. Or else her maternal instinct. She doesn’t care which, as long as the kids keep quiet and laugh, and she is spared from having to think.
*
Sniffer dogs, criminal technicians, humid heat. The small wood next to Frimmersdorf Power Station is teeming with policemen; the locals throng at the barrier tape. A boy’s corpse next to their power station – that’s enough of a sensation to get them out of their houses. The only problem is that, apart from the dachshund, there is no corpse at present. Manni’s phone buzzes – how many calls is that now?
‘You’ll never guess!’ says Karl-Heinz Müller cheerfully.
‘What?’
‘What the dachshund died of.’
Too many unanswered questions, too little time – and now guessing games on top of everything else. At least Elisabeth Vogt’s condition seems to have stabilised. Father Lehmann is at her bedside and the doleful-looking Carmen Vogt is due to take over later. It was the best solution; the GP had ordered strict bed rest, but the old lady was determined not to go to hospital. ‘Barabbas, Barabbas,’ she had kept whimpering. It turned out to be the name of her ageing Alsatian. When Manni left, the faithful beast was lying next to her bed, licking her hand, which seemed to soothe her. But he won’t be able to question the old thing until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Manni clears his parched throat. He hasn’t drunk enough water and he’s sweating like a bull in a sauna.
‘Tell me what the dog died of, Karl-Heinz. I’m obviously never going to guess.’
‘I’ll give you a clue.’ The forensic pathologist puffs cigarette smoke into the receiver, loud enough for Manni to hear. Then he begins to clap – a quick, hectic, nerve-shattering rhythm. ‘Dff – dff – dff – dff,’ he hums in time to the beat. ‘Well?’
‘No idea.’ Manni can feel his patience slipping rapidly away.
‘Disco.’
‘Disco?’
‘Techno.’
‘Techno? Please, Karl-Heinz, it’s complete mayhem here.’
‘The chemo-toxicological analyses show acute MDMA toxicity at the time of death. MDMA 84 ng/ml serum, to be precise. A designer amphetamine which is sold as ecstasy.’
‘Jonny’s dachshund was on drugs?’
‘No doubt about it. As I said, this is an institute of forensics, not veterinary pathology; we did this analysis out of professional interest and because we’re nice people. All the same, I would venture to draw the following conclusion: the levels of MDMA in the dachshund’s blood would create quite a high, even in a human – maybe also cause circulatory collapse or even complete respiratory arrest.’
‘A techno dachshund. Incredible.’
‘Yup. By the way, the time of death was probably Saturday or Sunday. Any news on the boy?’
‘You can go back to playing boules for the time being, Karl-Heinz.’
*
Darkness is falling when Manni parks outside the Stadlers’ house for the second time that day. For once, Martina Stadler doesn’t look as if she’s shivering. Her bare wet feet are shod in rubber mules and her red hair is tied back in a ponytail. She’s holding a watering can in her hand. Only her stony expression tells you that her world has been turned upside down.
‘I don’t know where Frank is,’ she says. ‘I don’t know why he doesn’t get in touch with you. I’d be glad if the children didn’t find out that you’re here again. They’ve just fallen asleep.’
‘We have the results from forensic pathology. Your dog died of an overdose of the party drug ecstasy.’
The disbelief in her eyes seems genuine.
‘Is it possible that Jonny takes drugs?’
‘No. No way.’
Martina Stadler takes two bottles of beer from the fridge.
‘Alcohol-free,’ she says. ‘Let’s go in the garden. I have to finish watering the flowers.’
Manni sits down on the stone steps leading into the garden from the patio. For the first time today he thinks of Miss Cat’s Eyes. He’d like to watch her watering plants – even if he had always sworn up until now that all that mundane stuff in a relationship is a sure-fire way of dealing a death blow to eroticism. Maybe it wouldn’t have to be a shared garden to begin with, he thinks. Maybe she already has a garden. He drinks his beer and watches Martina Stadler wiping the froth off her lips, putting the bottle down on a stone, dead-heading wilted flowers, watering, pulling weeds and finally rolling up the garden hose.
‘I’m going to have to put your husband on the Wanted List, Frau Stadler. I need a photo of him.’
She nods absently, but when she begins to speak, her voice is dispassionate. ‘Can you wait till tomorrow? For the children’s sake? It will be a disaster for them when that gets about – another disaster.’
One night isn’t going to make a difference now. The ecstasy lead points more to the youth scene in any case. But who knows, perhaps Jonny turned to drugs because his stepfather was abusing him. Or perhaps the stepfather’s a dealer. Or Petermann – there’s that whole Holland business, which appears in a new light now they know that drugs are involved. Manni gets up. ‘All right, then, but can I ask you to give me the photo now?’
He waits in the kitchen while Martina Stadler searches for a suitable picture. He puts the beer bottles next to each other by the sink and thinks of Miss Cat’s Eyes, of another day without karate practice, of his parents. He remembers how angry his father used to get when he mowed the lawn, in the days when he was mobile. He would curse and ram the lawnmower into the edges of the flowerbeds, until Manni’s mother begged him through her tears to leave the gardening to her in future. Manni feels more tired than he’s ever felt before.
Martina Stadler is gone a long time. When she comes back, she gives him the photo and a sheet of paper folded into a stiff square.
‘The day before Jonny went missing, Frank withdrew twenty thousand euros from our account. I don’t know why.’
*
The sun has passed its zenith. The cloud of insects has taken over Charlotte’s bag of provisions. Judith leaves them to it. Day and night, sun and rain, life and death – in our everyday lives we can forget that we are, in spite of all our technological advances, at the mercy of all that. We curse the urban Moloch, glorify nature, and deny our own helplessness. It isn’t the big animals who have the real power in the wilderness, David had said. In May and June when the mosquitoes hatch it’s almost unbearable here; they eat you up. And sometimes in September there are gnats the size of a pinhead; you can’t see them, but you can feel them – and there’s nothing you can do about them.
Judith takes the binoculars and scans the island. Something in its still sublimity attracts her, and the longer she sits here in the camp, the more she feels drawn to it. Perhaps Charlotte felt the same; she’s sure to have made a trip to the island. Maybe Judith will find some trace of her there, maybe even an explanation for her disappearance. She pushes the canoe into the lake and only takes a few minutes to reach the island, with its hardy trees and its bone-white rocks, stained red where the water laps at them. Branches stick out of the water, stripped of their bark by the wind and the weather, bleached and intertwined. They look like a mythical Chinese dragon guarding the island. Judith ties up the canoe and is suddenly certain that this is Charlotte’s island; her presence is almost palpable. I can feel it, thinks Judith. I can feel that Charlotte was here. But the next moment she thinks of David and where her feelings led her with him – straight to disaster. It’s a good thing Manni isn’t here, she thinks. He’d laugh himself silly. She hangs the shotgun over her shoulder, gets out of the canoe and clambers up the rocky bank. The island isn’t very large – perhaps two hundred metres by three hundred – but Judith makes slow progress. As soon as she moves away from the shore, the trees stand shoulder to shoulder. Their knotty roots claw the ground, a mute struggle between plant and rock, a struggle for existence.
Out on the water, a loon seems to be keeping an eye on Judith’s exploratory efforts. At the western tip of the island, she understands why: a second loon is sitting on a nest. It opens its beak in a mute cry, fixing Judith with its cold red eyes. She draws back, certain now that Charlotte must have been here. A little later she finds a shelter, just big enough for one person to sit in. Dry fir twigs provide a screen, a dark-green tarpaulin serves as a roof. She crawls inside and peers out at the nest where the other loon is beginning to calm down. She tries to imagine what it must have been like in July, in the rain, at the mercy of the blood-crazed mosquitoes.
Time passes. The loon seems to have forgotten Judith; its mate comes on land and totters to the nest. At such close quarters, she can see how large the loons really are. According to one of Charlotte’s books, their wingspan can reach as much as a metre.
What was Charlotte looking for here in the wilderness? Did she really want to gather material for her Ph.D. and, if so, where are her notes? Judith crawls out of the shelter. She tries to move away without making a noise, but it’s impossible. The red eyes follow her, boring holes in her back. She straightens herself and quickens her pace, gripped all at once by a primal fear.
Branches lie strewn on the ground – dead, dried branches, faded to the pale brown of bones. Judith stops and looks more closely. Her breath is racing as, with the trained eye of a criminologist, she identifies fibulae, pelvis, ribcage and skull. In front of her is a person, or what was once a person; what has been left by the insects and the birds and God only knows what other animals.
Judith kneels on the ground. Tears stream noiselessly down her face. She doesn’t know why. She has found Charlotte’s camp. She has found Charlotte – or what is left of her. She has documented all her findings with photographs. Very cautiously, Judith extends a hand to stroke Charlotte’s skull.
She knows now that David is not going to come back. He’s on the run.
*
Before driving to the hospital, Manni makes another detour to Königsforst lay-by. The car park is in some way connected to Jonny Röbel’s disappearance and he isn’t going to give up until he’s worked out how. Reality is a construct made up of the sum of the various ways of looking at it. The same marriage can be one person’s happiness and another’s prison. A lay-by can be a lay-by or a drug-trafficking spot. And what Manni’s mother calls his ‘last chance’ usually turns out to be rather less final than she insists.
A delivery van is parked next to Mr Snack’s. Two men are unloading boxes. Manni goes over to them, waving his warrant card.
‘We’ve got papers – all in order, all clean,’ says Mr Snack.
The first time Manni questioned Mr Snack he had forgotten to ask whether he had employees. A beginner’s mistake – unforgivable. Manni pushes his warrant card back in his pocket. Both men have assumed a silly, butter-wouldn’t-melt expression: ain’t done nothing, don’t know nothing, only playing – an old trick.
‘Can I have a Coke, please?’ Manni asks. ‘A cold one.’
Taking his time, Mr Snack climbs into his van and produces a bottle.
‘On the house.’
Manni looks at Mr Snack’s partner. ‘Saturday afternoon,’ he says. ‘Were you here?’
The man squints questioningly at Mr Snack.
‘Everything’s in order here,’ he asserts.
Manni drinks a gulp of Coke. ‘I can happily check up on that; I have a good friend on the environmental health board. But some simple information would do me.’
He lays photographs of Jonny and Frank Stadler on one of the high tables. ‘Was either of these people here on Saturday afternoon?’
‘The boy was here, with a dog,’ Mr Snack’s partner says. ‘He went to the toilet.’
‘And then?’
‘Dunno. Didn’t notice.’
‘Was the boy alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sure?’
Mr Snack taps Frank Stadler’s picture. ‘This one here bought a bottle of water off of me, but I didn’t see the boy. Most people who come here stand at the tables, but this one here’ – he gives Stadler’s photograph another tap – ‘must have wanted a bit of peace and quiet. He went and sat over there by the edge of the woods and talked to some other bloke. Hardly ever see anyone sitting there.’
‘Talked. Just talked? Or did anything change hands?’
‘If it did, I didn’t notice.’
‘And the boy wasn’t with them?’
‘I didn’t see him.’
‘How did the two men arrive at the lay-by?’
‘Dunno. In a car?’
‘What kind of car?’
‘No idea.’
‘And the boy?’
They stare at him, clueless.
Manni takes down their details. ‘You’ll have to come to headquarters tomorrow – we need to record your statements.’ He gives the men his business card. ‘Give me a ring if anything occurs to you in the meantime.’
The picnic bench where Stadler and Mr X allegedly sat is indeed isolated; all the other tables are near the parking bays. The forensics team might even find fingerprints here, but it’s unlikely. This case is getting Manni down; even the smallest success brings new questions with it, makes more work. Who did Frank Stadler meet here and why? It can’t be coincidence that Jonny was at the lay-by at the same time. Jonny the scout. Jonny the Brave, the fighter for justice. Perhaps he was watching his stepfather. Perhaps he discovered something he shouldn’t have done and had to die. If, that is, he did die. Dead or alive, Manni has to find the boy, for Christ’s sake. And he has to confront Frank Stadler. But of course he can’t do that until he’s found him. Why does he have to do all this on his own? Why is there no one in Division 66 – apart from that lame arse Bruckner – to help him?
Manni’s phone begins to buzz – a Bonn number that seems vaguely familiar.
‘Herr Korzilius? Manfred Korzilius?’
The undertone in the stranger’s voice is like a punch in the stomach. Manni knows what’s coming; he would like to be mistaken, but he knows that tone.
‘I’m very sorry, Herr Korzilius. Your father passed away half an hour ago . . .’
. . . without suffering . . . a second stroke, last night . . . didn’t recover consciousness . . .’
Shit.
‘. . . your mother, Herr Korzilius, she’s not in a good way. We’ve given her a tranquilliser. Can you come as soon as possible?’
Once Manni’s father had brought him a whole bag of yellow gummy bears from one of his trips. Manni hid in his bedroom and ate them all in one go. Afterwards he felt sick and couldn’t eat any supper. His father had belted him one. When Manni got a place at the grammar school, his father thought he was wasting his time. At the school leavers’ celebrations, Manni had persuaded himself that his father was proud of him, but the old man didn’t say a word; he only put away too much beer and schnapps. It was the same a few years later when Manni joined the force.
Policeman. Throwing your life away. Manni lurches across the grass to the Tarmac and into the toilets. He staggers into one of the stalls and pukes a sticky spume of Coke and kebab into the steel toilet bowl. He pukes until there’s nothing left inside him and he tastes bile; he beats his fists against the wall until his knuckles bleed. His mother was right – he’s too late.
A considerable time later, he washes his hands and face, straightens himself and stares into the stainless-steel mirror that throws back a pale, distorted version of his face. Blood drips into the basin and runs between dirty streaks to the plughole. There goes your life, he thinks. He can’t cry.
*
Darkness comes, bringing with it the sounds of night. The wind has dropped again. The lake reflects the last light of evening, then the first stars and the fire that Judith has lit on the island shore. There are no signs of a violent crime on the island. There are no traces of violence on the bones. But how can she determine the cause of death with any certainty, when any number of injuries and clues could have disappeared with the flesh and the tissue?
A woman alone in the wilderness. Hour after hour. Day after day. Perhaps she exchanges the odd word with the pilot who brings her food. If she’s in the mood, she paddles over to his log cabin when she hears his plane, but if she isn’t quick, he’s gone before she’s got there. What did she do when she found herself longing for words, for physical contact – perhaps only for the sound of her own voice in a conversation?
A woman sitting by the fire, talking to herself. A woman alone in the wilderness. A woman and a man in the wilderness. He’s the only person who knows where she is, and she pays him to keep quiet and to bring him food. Perhaps one day she asks for something he doesn’t want to give her, so he kills her. Perhaps that’s what happened. Perhaps Charlotte’s story with David began in exactly the same way as Judith’s.
Judith drinks a gulp of whisky, listening to ‘Messin’’ by Manfred Mann. People mess up their lives – their relationships, their careers. Judith turns up the volume on her iPod and sings along – the same song, over and over. It helps her forget her loneliness. It’s a song she has always listened to, all her life, ever since she first heard it on the record player she had saved up for. Back in the days when she and Charlotte were in the same class, when Judith would escape from the tyranny of her classmates to the safety of her room after school – to her music and her dreams.
If David is responsible for Charlotte’s death, why did he bring Judith here? But if he has nothing to do with it, why has he run away?
A woman in the wilderness, alone and crazy. Lost in her own inner world, cut off from all human contact. A messed-up life. Hope turned to chaos. Is that how it was? Is that what happened to Charlotte?
Cold moonlight emerges from the treetops. Judith switches off her iPod and listens to the loons’ song. Now it sounds like a death lament, and perhaps that is appropriate. It is a death lament and she, Judith, is holding the wake, because she has something to make amends for – because Charlotte once trusted her.
Judith’s skin is smarting from the sun and the air and the fire. She bathes again; the water is warmer than the air now. Black water, strewn with stars. She hadn’t known there was anything as beautiful as this. She hadn’t known you could get drunk from looking at the stars.
She dries herself at the fire, smokes, and drinks whisky in small sips. She watches the flames and the floating stars until her eyes begin to droop. She tries not to think of Division 11, of Cologne, where it will soon be morning, of time which cannot be stopped. In her dream, David comes back to her and she yells at him, yells her questions into his face – yells her disappointment, her anger. She yells on and on, but he doesn’t reply.