4

It starts in the living room. The armchair across from the three-piece living room suite is soaked with black blood. The woman must have sat there for a while, severely injured and bleeding from a deep wound, before managing to jump up. A last, futile attempt to escape the unavoidable, because she only made it to the balcony door. Maybe she wants out, fleeing, jumping. Flight impulses are irrational. The dried blood on the bright laminate is smeared with bare footprints and heavy shoes. He catches her, pulls her back and flings her across the room to the bay window.

Judith prowls around. He must be furious. Enraged. The situation slips through his fingers, gets out of control. He doesn’t get what he wants, even though it had almost been within his grasp. He points the gun at his victim. He aims. He pulls the trigger. Once. Twice. The window has a bullet hole. So does the wall, between the windowsill and the radiator. He misses her. Is he playing with her?

Borg falls to the ground. Rises again. Drags herself through the connecting door into the bedroom. Brushes the frame with her wounded body and tries to close the door. In vain. He kicks the door open. Raises the gun. Shoots. Once. Twice. Shoulder and arm. Ragged splotches of blood on the wallpaper. But Borg is still alive. Why doesn’t he finish her off? Is he talking to her? Yelling at her? She slides down the wall, a wide, rusty trail marks her collapse. She doesn’t give up. Crawls further. He stands over her, the gun cocked. Hits her. Kicks her, she rolls up, rolling over the cheap chenille rug to the bed, panicked and instinctively looking for shelter, and he watches her dying, until he raises his gun one last time.

A white chalk outline marked the position of the body between the wardrobe and the single bed. A dried puddle of blood with rosy edges where her head had lain. Judith knelt down. She discovered the scar left by the bullet and the scratches from the tools of the technicians that had dug the slug out of the floor. The crumbs strewn around everywhere were the remnants of cerebral matter. Borg had been shot at point blank range.

Staggering, she stood up and lurched to the window. She ripped it open, leaned out and drew the heavy, warm air into her lungs. Something under her soles crunched, and she hoped that it wasn’t bone fragments or parts of the ear canal.

‘This is a job. Nothing more.’

Dombrowski’s voice rang in her ears, as if he was standing next to her. She remembered the blood. Blood everywhere. Streams of blood, knee-deep and choppy, on the tiles, on the floor.

‘This stuff is damn hard to get rid of.’

There had been four of them. One after another had left the room. In the end, she was the only one left. That afternoon Dombrowski had returned and saw the results. A gleaming bathroom with black grout.

‘It’s porous, girl. No one goes at it with scouring powder. What breaks down protein compounds?

‘Hydrogen peroxide in a fifteen per cent solution or a chlorine bleach solution.’

‘And why don’t you use chlorine?’

‘Because it’s all gone.’

He growled in dissatisfaction. ‘Where are the others?’

She shrugged her shoulders. Dombrowski looked around the training room in which he had spread buckets full of pig’s blood that morning, to no little amusement at the theatricality. This is where he put them to the test. This is where it was revealed who had the chops to become a disinfector, pest controller or crime scene cleaner. The room looked like new. Except for the grout.

‘Couldn’t stand the sight of blood, eh?’

That was before Dombrowski had had his bypasses. He offered her a filterless. She took off her safety goggles. Then they sat next to each other on the edge of the bathtub and smoked a while.

‘What about you?’ he interrupted the silence. ‘Why can you handle it?’

He was the first person who’d asked her. Judith pushed the cleaning bucket in front of her feet a smidge to the right. She tapped her ashes into the water and shrugged her shoulders.

She was clean. After completing the last round of rehab she had started at Synanon rehabilitation agency as one of many untrained employees who had to fight their way back into a world with alarm clocks, work schedules and the binding nature of agreements. But the exit was a dead end. No one wanted her on the real labour market. A glance at her résumé was to recognise a system of failure in a string of short, fitful false starts. She had run out of chances by her early thirties. When she heard a rumour that Dombrowski was looking for people for his special training and wasn’t finding them, she’d applied for the test. Using short sentences he had explained what it was about: transforming the horrible into the bearable.

Dombrowski looked down at his powerful mover’s hands.

‘Death isn’t the brother of sleep. And even less ash and dust. It’s decay, rot, putrification. It stinks for a while, and then something new comes along. Nothing was ever truly lost on our planet. If you know that, then it’s more than just a job.’ He stood up. ‘You can start tomorrow if you want.’

Nothing was lost.

Maybe that would have been the right answer to Kai’s question. Maybe she should have told him that the difference between getting up and staying in bed was as significant as the difference between everything and nothing. And that every day she fights against nothingness anew, and still hadn’t figured out why it paid to fight.

She could see into her apartment from the bedroom. The moon was already visible, bright in the evening sky. She banned herself from thinking about dark spots and examined the building opposite her. A man was standing on one of the many yellow balconies, watering flowers. Two storeys below, someone had started up his smoky grill. Children were playing between parked cars. Stop-and-go traffic on the autobahn. Hertha Berlin FC had won and drivers were honking their horns and swinging their scarves out their windows in euphoria. There was an apartment on the eighth floor of the violet building that needed to be cleaned so that someone could move in two days later. Such is life.

Half-full yet looking somehow deflated and exhausted, the bin bags stood in the middle of the hallway. The hooks on the coat hanger were empty; no shoes, no doormat. Fricke had probably stuffed any personal effects the homicide investigators and CSI hadn’t taken with them into the bin bags.

The black traces of fingerprinting ‘soot’ still clung everywhere, the door frame, walls, light switches and door handles. Laundry soap was the best thing for that. She raised her hand and carefully ran it over a smudged, dark spot. She found the red print of a hand underneath the dirt.

The armchair in the living room couldn’t be saved – that was a case for Fricke. Thinning agents were necessary because the blood had caked long before. Chlorine, magnesium oxide and gasoline would be sufficient for the walls and carpets. Pumice, soda and chrome polish for the bath and kitchen, possibly sewing machine oil if the grout darkened and the appearance needed to be evened up. Oil was also good against the sticky remnants of the seal. Maybe a bottle of ethyl alcohol to be on the safe side. She’d need the trolley if she didn’t want to keep going up and down. There was a pair of gloves underneath the bed. Fricke must have overlooked them. Judith kneeled down and wanted to pick them up, but then she paused. Pink terrycloth slippers, carefully placed in the middle, exactly a millimetre apart. Shaking her head, she took them and carried them into the hallway with the bags. Then she inspected the cupboards and wardrobes again. They were empty. There was a towel hanging on the door of the bathroom, black spots of rust indicated the people from CSI had used it to dry off. Hastily removed disposable gloves and adhesive paper lay in the bin. The medicine cabinet was sealed. Judith tore the sticker and inspected the contents. Nothing special, except for the four tins of Florena cream, smudged by CSI dusting everything. She took the bin and threw everything inside, including the two rolls of toilet paper stacked on the tank. She paused once again. There wasn’t any roll in the holder. Instead, someone had torn off the paper, piece for piece, and stacked it carefully on top of the tank. Corner on corner. A quirk that had nothing to do with frugality.

Judith looked at her watch. Time to go home. Tomorrow was another day. She grabbed the bin and emptied it into one of the sacks. Then she called the elevator, dragging the sacks behind her and pressed the button for the ground floor. Fricke could go to hell. He was probably already drinking his post-work beer. The thought of something cool made her throat seem even more dry. A sack fell over. A neat little stack of undergarments fell out. Cotton, washable at all temperatures, ribbed, ironed. A hint of lavender wafted up to her nose. The elevator suddenly started moving with a jolt.

She watched the blue plastic sacks in a daze, as if they might suddenly transform themselves into something else – a picture behind a picture, a door behind a door, and then Judith saw it, and the scent of lavender and floor polish filled her nose. The sun shone onto the floor through a tall window. The shadow of its wings drew a gigantic cross. The elevator doors opened in front of Judith like an iron curtain.

‘Hello?’

She jumped. Peppi’s mistress stood in front of her. The dog strained at the leash.

‘Are you going to clear that away already?’

A deliveryman appeared behind the woman, who knew by her tone not to address her. With a furrowed brow, he examined the mailboxes, which were almost impossible to take in due to their sheer number, and with a sigh began to read them name by name.

Judith stared at the bag that had keeled over. Finally, she squatted down and collected everything. Tea towels, pillowcases, jumpers. A television guide, mockingly opening up to today’s programme, half-used cosmetics. All the while, Peppi’s mistress pressed the hold button and observed the proceedings with a stern gaze. She hoped the old woman cleaned up after her dog as fastidiously. She was taking it for a walk so often, it probably had the squits.

Judith dragged the sacks into the main hallway. She pulled out her pocket knife and began to remove the seal from Borg’s mailbox.

‘Excuse me,’ said the messenger. He was dressed completely in green, sweating, and appeared to be in a hurry. ‘I’m looking for Christina Borg.’

Judith lowered her knife. ‘Yes?’

‘Are you her?’

Relieved, he turned to her and pulled a large envelope out of his bag. She raised her hands in defence.

‘Christina Borg is . . .’ She paused. The envelope was light brown. ‘. . . no longer alive.’

He thrust the letter in front of her nose to indicate urgency. Judith reached for it hesitantly. The writing was in pen and written in the sort of hand that was no longer in style, reminiscent of a Victorian clerk. She turned it over and inhaled sharply. She stared at the address of the sender in disbelief. Yuri Gagarin Children’s Home, Strasse der Jugend 14, Sassnitz, 2355. Printed and real. An original, and she almost expected there to be a GDR stamp on it. But the mark and the stamp were new. The letter had been en route for three days, a very long time for express mail.

‘For Christina Borg?’

It was impossible. It couldn’t be.

‘Yes. She isn’t here?’

The messenger clearly considered Judith someone who was informed about Borg. Which was true, to a certain extent.

‘No. And she won’t be returning.’

‘Then it has to go back.’

He reached out his hand but Judith hesitated.

‘The address no longer exists. This home was closed as soon as the wall fell.’ Which was a good thing too. It no longer existed, even for Judith – until this letter had landed in her hands. And suddenly it became clear to her what had irritated her so much in the apartment and in the elevator. The slippers. The toilet paper. The linen, neatly stacked.

‘But I can forward it.’

The messenger scratched his head. ‘Registered.’

‘With receipt?’ Judith asked. ‘Then you have the sender after all.’

‘No, just registered.’ The man looked at his watch. ‘I have to go. What are we going to do?’

‘We’ sounded good. Judith unfastened the set of keys from her belt and opened Borg’s mailbox. It was empty.

‘Give it to me. I’ll take care of it.’

The messenger glanced at the name on the mailbox. The fact that Judith had the key seemed to make him trust her.

‘All right. Sign here, please.’

He pulled a clipboard out of his messenger bag. Judith scrawled an illegible scribble in the list of names.

‘Have a nice evening,’ she said.

The man nodded with relief. He left the building on squeaking rubber soles. Judith examined the envelope. Sassnitz. Sea gulls. Ships. The wide world and provincial narrowness. A port city way up at the end of the country. The ferries to Malmö, Ystad and Trelleborg. Narrow alleyways, crumbling houses. Banquet of the sea. Fish factory. Interzone trains. Train station. Cellar. Darkness. Cold hell.

It was so long ago.

A couple of noisy teenagers kicked empty beer cans along the road. Wearing heels that were far too high and far too cheap, two girls giggled towards Landsberger Allee. Friday night. Jeans and a sweatshirt clung to Judith’s body, which screamed for a shower, wine with lots of ice cubes and her bed. She hoisted the sacks onto the floor of the van next to the boxes of books and sat down in the open door, envelope in hand. The word ‘Sassnitz’ pulsed behind her temples. The scent of lavender and dust mixed with the city steaming from the heat. She lit a cigarette. The smoke bit into her parched throat, and she inhaled so deeply that she became dizzy for a moment.

She ripped open the envelope and held a file from the home in her hands. A thin, light green leaflet made of woody paper. Printed on the front, the name Judith Kepler. She still didn’t understand. Her hands began to shake. The documents were carbon copies of an original that was produced with a mechanical typewriter. A photo was pasted to the first page. A little girl around the age of five with long, blonde, angelic curls and unnaturally big blue eyes. The photo must have been taken from identification papers because the remains of a stamp was still visible in the lower right corner. Judith stared at it until her eyes burned. Then she read the first lines of the admission form.

. . . apartment in a state of neglect . . . child’s clothing dishevelled and dirty . . . mother feeble-minded alcoholic . . . to be committed to YGKH . . . for two years . . .

The words dissolved – they liquefied. Judith blinked. Her cheeks burned as if she had just been given two sharp slaps. Just like back then, when she had dipped her spoon once too often into the jam jar. When her shoelaces had come undone. When she had been caught not going straight back to the home after school, but had walked to the train station instead. To the train station, not the port. How could that be explained? Yearning for the sea and the horizon, sure, but the station? The station, again and again. Over the years Judith forgot what had drawn her there. But it always ended the same way. Trenkner’s gloating, poorly concealed joyful anticipation when she drove Judith ahead of her down the stairs to the cellar, pushing her into the dark, dank room, and beating her until the child was a whimpering ball. You’re slovenly and dirty. Antisocial and squalid. She had heard these words so often that one day she started to believe them.

Was there hatred? Yes. Were there questions? Thousands. Answers? None. There was only a grave in Sassnitz, but no one who could or wanted to remember the person who had died. Marianne Kepler. Died shortly after her daughter had come to the home. A small granite stone, almost enveloped by moss.

The last time Judith had stood in front of it was more than ten years ago, searching desperately for a feeling inside that was more than emptiness, pain and absolute indifference. She had felt like a monster when she didn’t find it. Back then she had filed a request to access the records. She wanted to know more about herself than just her date of birth, the day she was admitted to the home and the name of her mother next to the ‘X’. But nothing was found except a few file cards with the transit stations of her life. 1989, people had explained and shrugged their shoulders. The wall coming down. The shredders had been running day and night in children’s homes, not just in the Stasi headquarters. We’re sorry, Ms Kepler, but we were unable to find more than the basic data on your admission and release at the former city council. She had gone down to Bachstrasse, but the houses there were crumbling and the people no longer recognised her. She’d asked around and never received more than friendly indifference. Marianne Kepler. A forgotten name. And her, Judith. A forgotten child.

Judith raised her head. The coarse cries of the teenagers echoed over the building walls. They sounded like the mating calls of an unknown, carnivorous species. Her apartment lay on the other side of Landsberger Allee. She needed wine. She needed music. But above all, she needed to find out about what Christina Borg had to do with the slumbering monster inside of her.

Judith turned back her carpets and emptied the rubbish sacks onto the bare floor. Then she climbed over the evenly distributed piles, a fogged-up glass of wine in hand, and sat down on the couch. The file from the children’s home lay next to her. She was tempted to read it again and again. But first she had to find out who Christina Borg was. She took a long sip and examined the things in front of her.

Fricke had been right. It wasn’t much. One mound was made up of clothing. Not expensive, not flashy. H&M, Zara, Mango. Cheap, international products that could have been bought anywhere in the world. Trendy, middling income, inconspicuous lifestyle. No relatives, Fricke had said. So this was everything Borg had owned. Perhaps there was more in the evidence room at the police station, but the police normally only take things like computers or phones. After a thorough search, they would leave all the private things behind that weren’t considered evidence.

The other pile was made up of daily basics and domestic waste. Empty bags from the bakery, a couple of yoghurt containers, scraped clean. Dish towels. Toiletries. A bottle of body lotion with the lid carelessly screwed on had expired. Maybe that’s where the scent of lavender came from. Dishes – two coffee mugs, one of them used, a cereal bowl, plates, cutlery. Books. A city atlas of Berlin, a picture book about Rügen. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci koden. Anna Bovaller, Svärmaren. Pia Hagmar, Som i en dröm. Judith leafed through the novels. They were all in Swedish.

Judith stuffed everything back into the bags. The TV guide fell to her feet when she picked up the book. A two-week guide, opened to the last day on the programme, Friday, today. She scanned over the colourful pictures and show times. The bottom of the page caught her eye. Three to One, the talk show with Juliane Westerhoff.

The guests: blah, blah, blah. One name was circled along with his picture. Quirin Kaiserley, former spy. Judith retrieved the bottle of wine from the fridge, topped up her glass and fell back onto the couch. It was the only show Borg had marked.

Borg probably liked to watch talk shows, or perhaps was a fan of Westerhoff. She was on every week, just like clockwork, and beaming tirelessly and with a steely determination would declare to the republic what kind of machinations she had uncovered. Over time, the shows and topics blurred into one another, and you got the vague feeling of having heard it all before. So why would someone mark a Westerhoff show weeks in advance?

She examined Kaiserley’s picture once more. He didn’t look unsympathetic. More like an intellectual Harley-Davidson biker than a spy. She was about to toss the paper in the bag and look at what little Borg had apparently brought along to Germany from Sweden, when it occurred to her that Swedes don’t watch German talk shows. Judith grabbed the remote control.

‘You claim Rosenholz is only an incomplete picture?’

Juliane Westerhoff, made up like a waxwork model, was taking a good-looking man in his early fifties to task. It was Kaiserley. He was saying something about microfilms and informants. The debate about the statute of limitations. Judith sat up. An unpleasant man made a comment. The moderator dug deeper and Kaiserley looked as if he was explaining to four-year-olds why bad boys had stomped on their sandcastles.

‘Do you have evidence?’

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Not yet. But I will find it.’

The camera panned over to the audience. Judith turned up the volume. The Stasi issue frequently bubbled up out of the dregs of the summer silly season. Quirin Kaiserley. Former BND agent. Intelligence expert. Years ago, there’d been a scandal when someone had quit the spooks and started washing their dirty laundry in public. Was that him? She topped up her wine again and watched with interest as Kaiserley was put through the wringer, good and proper. He appeared to be a good loser, because when Westerhoff said farewell with a few parroted phrases and the credits were scrolling across the screen, she saw him shaking hands in parting with the other guests.

She turned the television off and reached for the children’s home file again. She examined the photo of the child that she once was. Antisocial. Feeble-minded. The old scars throbbed.

She took the wine bottle, nearly empty, opened the glass door to her tiny balcony and stepped outside. At this height there was a light breeze that ran through her hair. It was still very warm. A tropical night, as the weather broadcasters did not tire of saying, as if the country was transformed into a botanical garden in which cockatiels bustled about instead of blackbirds. She raised the bottle and drank a sip. Christina Borg, a Swedish woman, came to Germany, and got hold of Judith’s file, abracadabra, and was killed. And no less than five hundred metres from this balcony.

The realisation hit Judith with such force that she was within a hair’s breadth of dropping the bottle ten storeys. It was so clear. So unequivocal. As apparent as the labels sewn in the underwear and the number that you carried around with you the rest of your life, as if it were tattooed onto you. Borg, she thought, and squinted in order to make out the apartment in the sea of buildings on the other side. My God. Why did you come here?

She found the story on the other side of Landsberger Allee. The windows were brightly lit, and a black shadow darted through the rooms.