Under the Ice

by Gisa Klönne

  *

  Again Charlotte’s villa is threatening to stun Judith into a dull stupor. ‘Gavia immer, common loon,’ she reads in an ornithological handbook, ‘found mainly in Canada and North America.’ There are two English reference books on birds in the study and a folder of academic articles on the subject, but nothing personal belonging to Charlotte or her father – and certainly not to a man named Terence. The folders which once contained Charlotte’s Ph.D. notes (or say they did) are now empty. But Judith finds a list of university telephone numbers and makes an appointment with a Professor Wolfram, Charlotte’s former supervisor. Reluctantly he agrees to meet her later in the day. For the first time in months she misses her warrant card.

  On the way to the university she buys a bottle of water and stops off at Melaten Cemetery. In a florist’s shop at the gate, she buys a bunch of snapdragons. There is something hopeful about the flowers, even if they are beginning to hang their heads by the time Judith reaches the familiar grave and arranges them in a vase. Judith rolls herself a cigarette. She has come here a lot in the last six months. She thinks of her ex-boyfriend Martin – Martin of the spicy pasta sauces and unwavering sympathy, who now has a job in a hospital in Erfurt. He was polite enough to ask her to go with him, but they both knew it wouldn’t work out. He had always been telling her to go and visit Patrick’s grave. By the time she got round to it, it was too late to save their relationship, but for some reason the hours in the cemetery have given her strength. Now, though, something has changed again – she can feel it, even if she can’t put her finger on it. She stamps out her cigarette and picks up the butt. The stone angel next to the birch tree smiles at her as if to say goodbye.

  Clusters of indolent students are sunning themselves on the university lawns. The campus atmosphere recalls the glossy images of Ivy League universities. Happier with higher education is the message, but inside the alma mater the lecture halls are as hopelessly overcrowded and shabby as in Judith’s day, and the professors clearly haven’t changed their strategy of coping with the hordes of students, but continue to cut themselves off from the masses. Although the grey-haired secretary seems happy enough to show Judith into Charlotte’s supervisor’s inner sanctum, Judith has a funny feeling that the search for Charlotte is going to be tough.

  ‘Charlotte Simonis, a sad case.’ Hans-Hinrich Wolfram, professor of zoology at the University of Cologne, waves Judith to a wooden chair in front of his cluttered desk and pokes around impatiently in a meerschaum pipe. He’s a scrawny homunculus of about fifty with intelligent eyes, thinning reddish hair and a goatee.

  ‘Why sad?’ Judith asks.

  ‘A talented scholar – no question – and then she went and scuppered all chances of a career.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Do you know how many students get funding to do a Ph.D. here?’

  ‘Very few, I presume.’

  The professor nods, as if she’s an exam candidate who’s given the right answer. ‘Charlotte Simonis stopped coming in. In the middle of term.’

  ‘Why?’

  Wolfram fiddles with his pipe. ‘To be honest with you, I never understood.’

  ‘But she must have given some reason.’

  ‘Her mother got cancer.’ A spray of saliva lands on one of the stacks of paper that cover the professor’s desk.

  ‘You didn’t believe her?’

  ‘Her mother had cancer. Is that a reason to chuck everything in?’ He gestures towards the dusty metal shelves, groaning under the weight of academic tomes and papers. ‘Her father was horrified too.’

  ‘Wilhelm Simonis.’

  ‘A first-rate geneticist, highly gifted.’

  ‘You knew him personally?’

  ‘A highly esteemed colleague of mine.’

  ‘Maybe he asked his daughter to care for her mother.’

  ‘I told you, he was horrified.’

  Maybe he lied to you, Judith thinks. Maybe you didn’t notice, because you didn’t want to accept that your hard-working assistant was more interested in doing her father’s will than in doing a Ph.D. But even if that was the case, what did it tell her about Charlotte’s disappearance? For a split second, Judith sees an adolescent Charlotte before her, cowering along the grimy school corridors as if seeking cover from snipers. She sees herself as a schoolgirl, pretending she hasn’t noticed. And now here she is in Charlotte’s former place of work, poking around in her life. What right does she have to be here?

  She recalls the loon in her dream. Its red, unblinking gaze was a message – but what kind of message? A warning? A reproach? A cry for help? I don’t know, Judith thinks – it was only a dream. But the concern she feels for Charlotte; her old fear of coming too late; the oppressiveness of the deserted, impersonal house – those are real. Get a grip, she tells herself. But Charlotte has forced her way into Judith’s thoughts like a recently discovered member of the family – perhaps a half-sister she hadn’t known about. You can’t get rid of relatives like that once you’ve found them; there’s no going back – no getting away from them. Once they’re in your head they’re there to stay, because however much you may dislike the idea, they are inextricably bound up with your own identity.

  Judith suddenly realises that she has been silent for too long. The professor is rummaging through a pile of folders. He doesn’t want to talk to Judith, he doesn’t want to wait for her questions and he certainly has no desire to talk about Charlotte – that is patently obvious. But she can’t let that deter her; she has to fathom Charlotte’s secret, if only so that she can stop having to think about her. She leans forward a little, determined to regain the professor’s attention.

  ‘Did you ever see Charlotte and her father together?’ The pipe bobs up and down in the corner of Wolfram’s mouth as he leafs through papers with growing impatience. ‘Of course I did. The institute isn’t exactly big.’

  ‘What was their relationship like?’

  ‘Neither of them wore their hearts on their sleeves, and they kept their private lives to themselves.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Listen. You told me you were worried about your school friend. I really don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve by delving into the past like this. Wilhelm is dead.’

  ‘So their relationship was not untroubled.’ Judith was once famous for her interrogation techniques. Now she feels the old power stirring. The words come easily.

  The professor realises that something has changed. He blows a furious cloud of pipe smoke into Judith’s face. ‘Wilhelm was a luminary – highly eloquent, highly charismatic – a star, as they say nowadays. And his daughter was . . .’

  ‘An ugly duckling?’

  ‘You could put it like that. Quiet. Hard-working. Talented. But without any of Wilhelm’s charisma.’

  ‘Did that make it hard for her here at the institute?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she argue with her father?’

  ‘They did once have an academic dispute.’

  ‘What was it about?’

  Wolfram looks pointedly at his watch. ‘This really is going too far. Let’s say that Wilhelm would have preferred it if his daughter had devoted herself to genetics or biochemistry rather than zoology.’

  ‘But she stuck to zoology.’ Judith isn’t prepared to let him off the hook yet.

  He darts a glance at her.

  ‘What was her area of research? What was her Ph.D. on?’

  ‘Behavioural research. The social structure of rats – although she was a highly gifted morphologist.’

  ‘Morphologist?’

  ‘In layman’s terms, she was extremely good at dissecting and preserving animals.’ The professor gives a thin smile, revealing a row of yellowing teeth.

  ‘Was she interested in water birds?’

  He looks at Judith in surprise. ‘What makes you ask that?’

  ‘Gavia immer – common loon. Does that mean anything to you in connection with Charlotte Simonis?’<
br />
  ‘That was later.’ He pushes a pile of papers into a worn briefcase, looks at his watch again and gets up.

  ‘Later?’ Judith shows no sign of preparing to leave. Perhaps he’ll simply walk off and leave her here. But she has a feeling he’ll want to protect his documents from her.

  ‘About three years ago.’ A point for Judith. The professor lowers his scrawny bottom onto the corner of the desk. ‘Frau Simonis came back to teach at the institute on a temporary basis after her mother’s death. She supervised morphological experiments.’

  ‘And dissected loons?’

  ‘That’s just what she didn’t do.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Gavia immer.’ Another spray of saliva. ‘A stray specimen turned up in a reservoir near Düren. Very unusual. Charlotte Simonis and some of our students watched it for days. But the bird died. They brought it here and Charlotte was supposed to direct the morphological examination. But she refused point blank – said it went against nature. Another Ph.D. student took over. The report will be knocking around somewhere, I’m sure. Ask my secretary.’

  ‘And Charlotte?’

  ‘That was her last day at the institute.’

  The professor is suddenly determined to leave his office. Judith leaps up and bars his way. ‘So she left over a dispute.’

  ‘It was the second time she discredited herself as a scientist. She wasn’t interested in staying on.’

  The professor wriggles past Judith, opens the door and holds it open for her.

  ‘How did Charlotte’s father react? Was he disappointed? Angry? Sad?’

  The professor jams his briefcase under his arm. ‘If you really want to know, he laughed.’

  ‘You mean he laughed openly at his daughter? Here at the institute?’

  ‘I really don’t have any more time.’ The professor quickens his pace; it almost looks as if he’s running away.

  ‘Who’s Terence?’ Judith calls out after him.

  She can tell from the way his shoulders stiffen that he knows the name. But he hurries on down the corridor without stopping. She catches up with him as he’s pushing open the glass door to the staircase.

  ‘Terence from Canada. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  The professor sprints down the stairs.

  *

  Wolfram’s secretary is called Irene Hummel. She gives Judith a look that makes it clear she isn’t prepared to sacrifice a second of her precious time for a stranger. But her steely-grey no-nonsense attitude melts into almost schoolgirlish enthusiasm when Judith mentions the name Terence.

  ‘Terence Atkinson,’ she breathes. ‘Such a charming man. A brilliant academic, but very sensual too – everyone was a little in love with him.’

  ‘What about Charlotte?’

  ‘Yes, Charlotte was in love with him.’ Irene Hummel nods vigorously. ‘Insofar as such a shy person could be said to be in love.’

  The next few minutes prove productive. Irene Hummel turns out to be a keen observer of the Institute of Biology and its staff. Judith discovers that Terence from Toronto was a frequent visitor to the Simonis household and that, like Charlotte’s father, who had invited him to Cologne for a year, he was a geneticist. But he had also been a passionate nature lover, fond of regaling his colleagues with stories from Canada involving bears, beavers, elks and loons. He’d had a particular weakness for loons.

  ‘Do you think it possible that he invited Charlotte to Canada?’ Judith holds out the postcard to Irene Hummel.

  She examines the picture and studies the back with a frown. Then she shakes her head.

  ‘One day we’ll make it come true – that can mean anything or nothing, can’t it?’

  ‘It isn’t very specific. But combined with the image of the loon, I think it might be a kind of promise.’

  ‘Terence was very polite,’ Irene Hummel observes.

  ‘You think he didn’t mean what he said?’

  ‘I’m sure he wanted to be nice, no doubt about that.’

  Nice, Judith thinks. A young and charming colleague, a protégé of Charlotte’s father. What exactly did being nice entail? How serious was it? And, above all, how did Charlotte interpret his niceness?

  The secretary gets up and plucks a photo off the pinboard behind her.

  ‘That’s Terence,’ she announces, pointing to an extremely good-looking dark-haired man, as if the picture made any further questions unnecessary.

  *

  In spite of his efforts to hide it, Martina Stadler can sense the restlessness buzzing around Inspector Korzilius like a swarm of hornets. It’s a new restlessness and her body reacts to it immediately with a shudder. They’ve found him in the woods, she thinks, drawing the loosely knitted shawl tighter about her shoulders – her winter scarf which she got out of the coat cupboard last night when she could no longer cope with this biting cold which is gnawing at her body. She couldn’t bring herself to crawl into bed with Frank, to take refuge in his arms, his robust warmth. She looks at her husband’s face and it seems to have changed over night; it is more angular – harsher, somehow. He’s hiding something, and the police have noticed. They’ve been out in the woods all day long – with their dogs, Martina thinks, and the thought makes her shudder. Please, God, don’t let the inspector say something’s happened to Jonny. Please, I couldn’t bear it.

  She places the torch carefully on the kitchen table, offers the inspector a seat, pours him a glass of water, asks if he’s hungry. He says he isn’t, but she opens the fridge all the same and stares into it. It requires an inordinate amount of strength to shut it again, because she knows that once that’s done, she has no choice but to join him at the kitchen table and endure what she doesn’t want to endure.

  ‘Please, Tina, I shouldn’t think the inspector has much time.’ Frank’s voice is deep and familiar, and so controlled it makes Martina want to scream.

  She walks towards the table, but can it be called walking? Her knees are like jelly; her feet so cold she can’t feel them. The chair makes an ugly scraping noise on the floorboards when she pulls it out, but she doesn’t care. She sits down and clasps Jonny’s torch with her cold fingers, resisting the urge to try it out again to see if it’s still working. It is her link to her sister’s son, the boy she learnt to love as if he were her own child, but who was also so much more than that – a living memory of his mother Susanne, a consolation.

  ‘I’d like to know whether your son’s dog has a licence number in its ear. You know, one of those tattoos,’ says Detective Inspector Korzilius. He really is nervous; his leg is jiggling under the table.

  ‘Yes, Dr D. has a licence number,’ says Frank. ‘Why, have you found him?’

  ‘It will make it easier for us to identify him if we do find him.’ The inspector fixes his eyes on the glass of water. He’s like Frank, she thinks – he’s hiding something.

  ‘I want to know what you’ve found in the woods.’ Martina’s voice is shrill; she sees the men flinch. She can’t help it.

  ‘We will let you know, of course, as soon as there are any developments in the investigation.’ This time the inspector looks at Martina, but it does nothing to reassure her; the pity she thinks she can see in his eyes surges through her body in another sudden shiver.

  ‘We’ve rung up all the animal shelters – Dr D. isn’t there.’ Frank talks to the inspector as if Martina weren’t there.

  ‘Can you look up the licence number for me?’

  ‘Of course.’ Frank jumps to his feet.

  ‘Saturday afternoon,’ says the inspector as soon as Frank has left the kitchen. ‘So far none of the Sioux of Cologne have made statements suggesting that Jonny was in the camp after 3 p.m.’

  ‘So he didn’t sleep in the camp?’

  ‘No. At any rate not in the Bear Clan tent where he’d left his rucksack and sleeping bag.’

  Cold – such cold and such fear. Jonny’s been out alone for two nights now. Her knuckles are all white from clutching the torch. No
sleeping bag, no jacket, no light. All alone. It’s not right. It’s not possible. There must be some explanation – some solution, some salvation.

  Frank comes back. Without a word, he places Dr D.’s dog licence on the table. The inspector glances at it, and his look is inscrutable. Finally he stops jiggling his foot and looks at Frank.

  ‘Herr Stadler, where were you between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday?’

  ‘Here and there at the camp and a bit in the woods.’

  ‘No,’ says the inspector. ‘You weren’t at the camp.’

  The day is like lead. It weighs down Elisabeth’s arms and legs, melts to a gooey mass in the heat and runs down her back, sending spasms of pain through her body. It gushes into her veins, thickening her blood and threatening to slow her breathing and hamper her movement. As evening approaches, she heaves herself up from the kitchen sofa and drags herself out to her chair under the cherry tree. Barabbas doesn’t leave her side, as if he scents disaster looming – as if to protect her from something. Elisabeth sits down on the grey, weather-beaten armchair and musters all her strength to fondle her dog’s neck. The Alsatian lays his muzzle on Elisabeth’s knees with a slight sigh and closes his eyes. He still trusts me, she thinks. He’s forgotten what I did to him. My dog, my companion, my friend. She sends a silent prayer of thanks to her Maker.

  It is very quiet; only the sound of the blackbirds overhead, squabbling over the cherries. No one came to cover it in netting this year. Next weekend, Carmen’s supposed to be helping to pick the fruit, but Elisabeth decides not to remind her. If the worst comes to the worst, the cherries will just have to rot. Hiding things from her daughter over the phone is one thing; Carmen in the flesh is quite another, and Elisabeth doesn’t feel up to seeing her cold-eyed daughter scan the house and its ageing occupant for signs of decrepitude.