Under the Ice

by Gisa Klönne

  Don’t think of Carmen – not now. And don’t ever tell her what happened yesterday. She must keep quiet at all costs; she must protect Barabbas. But her memories persist – flickering silhouettes dancing before her eyes, teasing her, tormenting her. Barabbas rolling in the dirt. His sudden absence. A noise Elisabeth can’t interpret – a noise she isn’t even sure she heard. And something else that she saw and yet didn’t. Then nothing – only terrifying blackness and no Barabbas – and finally his hunched back and ears, that awful throaty growl. The dachshund, savaged to death. Without a collar, without an owner, one ear missing. Scabbed blood, where the ear should have been, but no bite marks; a clean cut. A fly trying to feed on the dog’s eye.

  Time creeps on as Elisabeth’s thoughts run wild. Barabbas is asleep on the grass, his head resting on her left foot. How familiar he is to her – how gentle – how innocent. And yet he killed. But Elisabeth feels no hate; only fear. She feels no disgust; only regret that she didn’t keep a closer eye on him – and that she beat him. It’s always the humans, she thinks – always the humans who are responsible for the real atrocities. Who cut off the dachshund’s ear? Who left it to its fate in the woods in that mutilated state? Or perhaps it wasn’t alone after all? The thought fills her with an anxiety she doesn’t understand. She groans. Tomorrow she’ll go and make sure the dachshund can rest in peace – make sure she hasn’t overlooked anything. Elisabeth shuts her eyes, begging God to give her strength.

  *

  The traffic on the road to the Severin Bridge is slow as the setting sun beats down through the open roof. Judith puts on the tuneful jazz of East German duo Friend and Fellow in an attempt to calm her nerves. Millstätt has summoned her to headquarters, which might be a good sign – but then again, it might not. I want my job back, thinks Judith. I don’t want him to transfer me. She lights a cigarette and tries to concentrate on the music, but it’s no good.

  Her afternoon has been spent doing routine work. She talked to Charlotte’s gardener and cleaning woman, and to several neighbours, but found out nothing new. She read through Irene Hummel’s photocopies over latte macchiato in a pavement cafe. She paced the villa again, trying to conjure up the images painted for her by Professor Wolfram and his secretary. An ugly duckling in the shadow of her father – hard-working, but without real ambition, timid and reclusive. And a charming young man who told her stories of another world, a frequent visitor to the house until he disappeared back to Canada and sent her a glimmer of hope in the form of a postcard. Then one day a real loon had turned up in a reservoir near Düren. It must have seemed to Charlotte like a message from Atkinson – no wonder she didn’t want to dissect the bird. Instead she had honoured the Canadian scientist’s memory by commissioning Piet to paint the loon – and presumably she had continued to dream of being an ornithologist at Atkinson’s side all the time she was nursing her father. Then Wilhelm Simonis died and his thirty-nine-year-old daughter dared to hang the sacred painting in his study. And she flew to Toronto; that has been confirmed by a travel agent round the corner from the villa. The return flight was booked for 25 June, but Charlotte let it expire.

  ‘I’ll ring this Atkinson – and the Canadian police too, if that’s what you want,’ Judith had suggested to Berthold.

  ‘No, you must fly to Canada,’ he had replied. ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she had said, hanging up.

  She reaches the district of Kalk and parks near the Cologne Arcades shopping centre. Vacant-faced teenagers, styled according to the norms of MTV, hang about outside this consumer temple which has been conjured out of thin air on the site of the chemical plant that was once the area’s main employer. No one put a stop to this cynical bit of urban development. Two barefoot drug addicts cower on the steps, oblivious to everything going on around them, trapped in their own wrecked worlds.

  There are new receptionists in the lobby at headquarters; they call Judith’s department to make sure she works there before waving her through into the area of the building closed to the public, where Division 11 has its offices. Judith hasn’t been here for six months, but everything is familiar: the squeak of the glass door as it clicks shut behind her, the sound of her footsteps on the stone floor, the slight shudder of the lift as it approaches its destination. She enters the combination code and pushes the door to Division 11. The code, at least, hasn’t changed, and the smell, too, is the same mixture of burnt coffee, cigarette smoke and paper dust. Somebody has overdone the aftershave. It is oppressively hot. The air conditioning is evidently unable to cope with the record-breaking summer. Something flutters in Judith’s stomach. She didn’t have lunch, and it’s almost evening.

  ‘Judith!’ Axel Millstätt comes out into the corridor, a stack of manila folders under his arm. ‘Go on in – I’ll be with you in a moment . . . Got to get this off.’

  Millstätt’s office is generously proportioned and immaculately tidy. Nothing personal on the walls, only a street map stuck with plastic flags and a magnet board covered in duty rosters, lists of phone numbers and information on current investigations. Two glasses and a bottle of mineral water are set out on a table. Judith goes over to the magnet board. An African of unknown identity has been stabbed by an equally unknown offender and left to bleed to death. A fifty-one-year-old banker’s wife from the upmarket district of Hahnwald has been literally boiled to death, probably by her husband. Investigation Team Tourist is hunting desperately for a serial killer who is targeting tourists in the city’s historic centre. On the eleventh floor of a tower block in Ehrenfeld a semi-decomposed corpse has been discovered; everything points to death following excessive alcohol consumption with no third-party involvement.

  ‘Not a lot’s changed, as you can see,’ says Millstätt, coming into the room.

  Judith turns round. ‘Yes, the usual madness. At least we’re unlikely to be made redundant.’ She hopes she sounds calm and businesslike.

  ‘They do their best.’ Millstätt smiles unpleasantly. ‘Last week I had some idiot from the ministry who stuck around in my office for hours, gassing on about synergies he’d like to see promoted here. I’m afraid I couldn’t help him.’

  ‘Although you were dying to, of course.’

  Millstätt gestures to the table. ‘Sit down. You’re looking good, Judith.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She puts the results of her official medical examination on the table. ‘I’m in good health too.’

  Millstätt’s chocolatey eyes wander to the envelope, but then fix on her face.

  ‘Officially . . .’

  ‘And unofficially.’ She sounds like an overeager schoolgirl; she can’t help herself. She didn’t come here to talk about her appearance; she wants her job back and that means convincing Millstätt that she can be trusted again. That crazy moment when she and Manni arrived too late in that bloody forest clearing suddenly seems like yesterday. It was then that Millstätt had transferred Manni, although she had begged him not to. But he was hardly going to listen to her, was he? Not after she’d messed everything up and applied for leave.

  ‘Quite a few of your colleagues are buggering off on holiday next week, two are off sick, and there’s no shortage of work. So don’t expect to be eased in gently or anything.’ Millstätt is still looking at her searchingly, as if he were weighing things up.

  ‘I don’t need easing in gently.’ Again she has spoken too hastily. She forces herself not to lower her eyes. What does he see when he looks at her? An unstable element or someone worth backing? Impossible to tell. She thinks of the truths bandied about in the circle of chairs: You can’t control everything in life; you can’t deny your feelings. Accept, let go, forgive yourself. It was always the same, always incredibly banal. She forces herself to hold Millstätt’s gaze. I want to come back, she thinks. You’re right, I wasn’t sure for a long time; I ran away. But that’s over now. Believe me, it’s over.

  Suddenly, Millstätt’s expression relaxes and, with an offhand gesture, he tosses th
e medical report into a filing tray behind him, as if to get rid of it once and for all. But of course it doesn’t work like that, she thinks, half an hour later, when she’s standing alone in the lift, pressing her forehead against the cool metal wall. Division 11 was once home to her; being a murder investigator had given her life meaning. Then, when Patrick was killed, death became intolerable to her. She thinks she’s over that now; she’s coming back. But that doesn’t mean she can carry on as if nothing’s happened. Not all her colleagues have as much confidence in her as Millstätt – and even with him she’s on thin ice.

  Her phone signals a text message as the lift descends with its familiar jerkiness. Judith stares at the display in disbelief: ‘Booked flight Frankfurt–Toronto tomorrow 1.05 p.m. Business Class. Open return. Call me, Berthold.’

  *

  Manni pulls his office door shut behind him and hurries along the stuffy corridor to the stairs. He needs something to eat. He needs a break. He can’t put it off any longer; his stomach is rumbling, his head feels dull. He wishes he could drive home and have a shower and change his sweaty clothes; his nylon trainers are unpleasantly tight after dashing around the woods all day, but a proper break is out of the question. First he must go through the lists and interview notes that Bruckner left on his desk. He must get hold of Karl-Heinz Müller at Forensics and somehow get across to him that the analysis of what he thinks is a dachshund’s ear can’t wait, even if there isn’t a corpse to go with it. He has reports to write. He has to check the latest missing persons reports; he has to think about his interrogation of the Stadlers – and then there’s his mother who won’t leave him in peace. At some point he’s going to have to find ten minutes to call her, not that the prospect of plumbing the depths of her broken marriage to his obstinate, wheelchair-bound father is an alluring one.

  He leaps down the last steps to the ground floor, sprints towards the exit and crashes into a woman who must have come out of one of the lifts without looking right or left. Something clatters onto the floor and smashes. A phone, Manni realises – he must have knocked it out of the woman’s hand. She emits a savage curse and squats down to examine the damage.

  ‘Shit, fuck, sorry, I really didn’t . . .’ Manni bends down too and picks up a piece he identifies as the battery. He holds it out to her. The woman brushes unruly reddish curls out of her tanned face and looks at Manni. Really, he thinks, this is all he needs – a touching reunion is the last thing he has time for. But there’s nothing he can do about it – it’s Krieger.

  ‘Judith!’

  ‘Hello, Manni.’ She gets up, fragments of phone in her left hand. ‘If my address book’s gone, I’m done for.’

  ‘May I?’ He reaches out his hand, cursing himself because he has no time for this – but then again, he did almost mow her down.

  She hands him the pieces and smiles – once, he seems to remember, a rare event. In fact, he thinks, she looks altogether different – younger, positively attractive. It isn’t just the tan, which makes her complexion more regular and her freckles less noticeable; it’s something to do with the way she carries herself, something in her expression. She’s lost weight too and her clothes accentuate this – a tight black spaghetti top, a semi-transparent blouse, loose, sand-coloured trousers and Jesus boots. Her toenails are varnished black, which looks peculiarly sexy. Suddenly he realises he’s staring at Krieger and that she’s noticed. He swiftly turns his attention to her phone.

  ‘When did we last see each other?’ It’s as if she can read his thoughts. ‘Anyway, a lot’s happened since. I’m coming back next week.’

  Manni pushes the cover flap onto the back of the phone. Nothing seems to be missing or damaged, and he holds it out to Judith. Suddenly he is uncertain how to phrase the question he wants to ask, but again she answers before he’s found a way.

  ‘Division 11. I’ve just been to see Millstätt.’ She takes her phone, switches it on, taps around on it and gives a sigh of relief. ‘Looks good. Thanks for the repair work. Can I buy you a drink – or are you in a hurry?’

  ‘I was on my way to get a bite to eat.’ Manni’s too hungry to come up with an excuse and, besides, it’s not her fault he was transferred. In fact, he’d heard that she put in a good word for him with Millstätt, so he can’t blame her for what happened. Even so, just seeing her opens up the old wounds. Stop it, man, just stop it, self-pity won’t get you anywhere. He quickens his pace instinctively. If he hurries, if he does a good job, if he finds this boy, dead or alive, and doesn’t make any mistakes this time, maybe Millstätt will let him come back. And if he gets in Judith Krieger’s good books, that would at least give him a line to Division 11.

  His colleague walks beside him in silence and after a few minutes they come to Dimitri’s Grill in Taunusstrasse. Manni orders a kebab ‘with everything’ and a large fizzy apple juice; Judith orders Greek salad and mineral water. She’s on a diet, thinks Manni. Maybe she has a new boyfriend. He brushes aside the thought of Judith having sex. Dimitri has put blue-and-white folding chairs and tables from IKEA out on the pavement; they’re seriously uncomfortable, but at least they’re in the shade. Manni downs his juice in one draught, orders another and stretches out his legs. The pressure behind his forehead subsides, which is a good thing because Dimitri’s sirtaki music is wailing out onto the street, and Dimitri himself, as oblivious as ever, is whistling along to it as he saws strips of meat off the spit. The no-hopers and losers typical of the district shuffle past, shell suits apparently a compulsory fashion item for them even in the middle of summer.

  As Judith and Manni eat, they talk about this and that, both making an effort to avoid the controversial topic of disciplinary transfer, and not to let the pauses get too long. Judith, Manni realises, isn’t happy about being allowed back to Division 11 when he’s still at Missing Persons, although she doesn’t say so in so many words. She tells him she’s spending her last days of leave tracking down a missing classmate who seems to have disappeared in Canada. In return, Manni outlines his hunt for Jonny Röbel. It does him good to get even a fraction of his thoughts off his chest, and Judith’s precise questions and her way of listening to him make him miss the work in the murder squad. Stop it, man. They order Greek coffee and get the bill and Judith insists on treating him. Then they say goodbye in a side street, where Judith unlocks a dark blue 2CV and fiddles around with the roof. Her retro fetish, of course – he’d almost forgotten, but it goes perfectly with the painted toenails. He recalls her seventies record collection, which he inadvertently sampled on his only visit to her flat, at a time when the one-time star investigator of Division 11 was at her lowest ebb and he was still convinced he had everything under control and Millstätt on his side.

  ‘New car?’

  ‘A small fit of nostalgia. A thirty-ninth birthday present to myself.’

  ‘Very nice. But weren’t they green and white?’

  She blushes a little, but smiles. ‘I had it repainted; it isn’t a service vehicle.’

  Service vehicles. It’s past 7 p.m. and he’s in with a chance of landing something that doesn’t look as if it’s ready for the scrap heap. That decides him. The deskwork can wait and he can make phone calls from the car. He’ll go and check out the motorway lay-by before it gets dark, and find out whether there’s a negotiable path from there to the shelter where fourteen-year-old Jonny Röbel maybe looked on in blind horror as some heartless bastard cut off his dog’s ear. Is Frank Stadler capable of such brutality?

  On Saturday afternoon Stadler was away from the camp for longer than he claimed – that’s the upshot of their interviews with the other campers. But a solitary walk does not in itself constitute a crime; after all, plenty of the Sioux of Cologne, including Big Chief Hagen Petermann, say they were out alone in the woods. And neither Stadler nor any of the other amateur Indians has a previous conviction. What happened in Königsforst? Manni asks himself for what must be the hundredth time. The terrain around the hut is extremely hard going, full of s
crub and brambles; the dog squad hadn’t found any more leads when they knocked off. The lay-by, Manni thinks. I should have insisted they check that too. The boy and his dachshund must have gone somewhere; they can’t have vanished into thin air. Maybe someone drove off with them – in which case we can turn over every stick in Königsforst and we still don’t have a chance in hell of finding anything. Or perhaps there was no crime and the boy simply hitched a ride somewhere?

  His ex-team partner gets into her retro banger. The engine jerks to life with a shallow-chested cough and she waves and chugs off, a snatch of seventies rock drifting out of the folding roof to him in goodbye. When does she get back in Division 11? What was it she said? In a week? Can he solve the Jonny Röbel case by then? Can he save the boy? And what if Jonny is dead – will Detective Superintendent Judith Krieger start back at work with Manni’s investigation file on her desk? Manni digs a Fisherman’s Friend out of the packet and crunches it between his teeth, the hotness numbing the inside of his mouth, vying with Dimitri’s garlic sauce. The heat hangs heavy on the asphalt, and the other passers-by drag themselves along like zombies, but Manni quickens his pace.

  *

  ‘Where were you on Saturday afternoon?’ Martina Stadler asks in a husky, whispery voice that even she finds sinister. Somehow, in all its monstrous unbearableness, the day has passed. She is doomed to wait. Jonny is alive – she can feel that – but all is not well with him; he’s in danger and she can do nothing to save him. No one seems to know a thing; no one seems to have a clue where Jonny is. Marlene and Leander spent the afternoon at Frank’s parents’, but to avoid unnecessary worry, she and Frank decided the children should come home to sleep. Frank went to fetch them and they forced themselves to act out a semblance of ordinary life, telling the little ones that Jonny and Dr D. were only on holiday. Supper, play, bath, bedtime story – the usual ritual. Never had it required so much strength. Never had it seemed so meaningless to Martina. And almost as soon as the kids were in bed, that blond inspector had come round and asked his awful questions.