Under the Ice

by Gisa Klönne

  ‘And why the newspaper cutting?’

  They exchange looks of exasperation.

  ‘Animal lover or madman – either way, this suitcase was recently buried,’ says criminal technician Klaus Munzinger, who has slipped in unnoticed.

  ‘An exhumed dachshund?’ Thalbach asks in disbelief.

  ‘Can you tell from the soil where the suitcase was buried, Klaus?’ Bruckner asks.

  ‘We will be able to when we have a matching sample. At the moment we’re trying our luck with samples from Frimmersdorf and Königsforst.’

  Which means more waiting, Manni thinks. Too much waiting around in this case – too many ifs. ‘We must find out who the suitcase belongs to as soon as we can,’ he says out loud. That and a thousand other things. For example how the dachshund got to Frimmersdorf. How it died. Whether, against all odds, the forensics team have found any usable evidence at Königsforst lay-by? It’s time too that they found someone to corroborate or disprove Jonny’s stepfather’s forest walk. And Manni must talk to Big Chief Petermann again. Last time he told Manni he’d just got back from Holland – and Frimmersdorf is on the way to Holland.

  ‘Carmen,’ says Klaus Munzinger.

  ‘Carmen?’

  ‘It’s hidden away on the edge of the suitcase lid – written in faded ink, in a child’s handwriting. This type of suitcase itself was a big seller in the sixties.’

  Thalbach reaches for his papers. ‘Thank you, Klaus. A Carmen who was a child in the sixties – she should be traceable. I’ll pass that on to the press.’

  *

  Old Martha’s Cottage is shut up and empty. Judith tries first Atkinson’s mobile and then David’s, but both calls go straight to voicemail. Frustrated, she drives back to Cozy Harbour. For the moment she has no choice but to wait for David to get back. To pass the time, she telephones her way through the list of nature parks that Atkinson gave her yesterday. Perhaps he’s right and Charlotte really is working on a Ph.D., even if Berthold disputes it. But if she is, she’s not doing it in a Canadian nature reserve; no one in any of the parks has heard of a German scientist who’s interested in loons.

  At about one, Judith locks up the blue wooden house, puts the key under the mat and saunters down to the restaurant where the mute television is still on and the men on the barstools look as if they haven’t moved since yesterday. Judith orders mineral water and the dish of the day – cheeseburger and Caesar salad – and takes her glass out onto the terrace. The air is clear – not humid like in Cologne – and the midday heat is pleasant. Judith puts her feet up on a wooden bench and smokes. The sun and all the missed sleep make her feel lethargic, although her restlessness remains. She senses that she is getting closer to Charlotte’s secret – and, in a way that still isn’t clear to her, it feels as if she’s going to find something else as well, something to do with herself, something she lost a long time ago, without even noticing. She hears the water plane a little before she sees it; it loops round, drops down and ploughs through the water in a flash of silver before making for the wooden jetty, engine throttled. Soon afterwards, David is standing in front of her.

  ‘You’re still here.’

  ‘Yes.’ She stubs out her cigarette.

  ‘I’d hoped you would be.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure, though.’

  ‘Yes. I mean, no – I mean, me neither.’

  Christ, what a feeble exchange. Yes, no, yes – she’s behaving like a teenager in love. But that is exactly what she feels like; she wants to hug this stranger, lose herself in him. At the same time, though, she wants to remain cool, question him, keep control, heed Margery’s warning. Very cautiously he takes her hand and she feels the same strange rush of energy as before.

  ‘I need something to eat. How about you? Are you hungry?’

  ‘I’ve just ordered a cheeseburger.’ Another banal sentence. It isn’t his body – or not only his body, not only his hand. It’s his eyes – eyes that smile and yet cannot conceal their acquaintance with darkness. He releases her hand, goes inside to order at the counter, comes back. They are the only customers out here, and sit down at one of the picnic benches. Again David reaches for her hand, but this time she pulls away.

  ‘Charlotte Simonis,’ she says, and thinks she sees the shadows in his eyes darken.

  ‘Charlotte Simonis.’ David looks out at the water.

  ‘An old school friend of mine. She’s registered as missing in Germany – that’s why I’m here. I’m worried about her. I want to find her.’

  ‘Loons, look!’ He points at two black shadows flying over the harbour, one behind the other, their wings beating ponderously. ‘It’s rare to see them so close; they’re usually very timid.’

  ‘Charlotte Simonis wanted to watch loons. You took her into the wilderness on 24 May.’

  ‘How do you know? Who are you?’

  ‘Judith. Judith Krieger. A former schoolmate of Charlotte.’

  ‘Krieger – warrior.’

  ‘Don’t get started on the Amazons, please. Your office told me you flew Charlotte out on the twenty-fourth. But they couldn’t tell me where you’d taken her. I tried to call you.’

  ‘I didn’t have any reception. What’s the office doing passing on customer data?’

  ‘It wasn’t me who asked; it was the police.’

  ‘The police.’

  A waitress puts plates down in front of them. David has gone for the dish of the day too, but doesn’t seem as hungry as he said he was. He ignores the steaming burger and stares at Judith.

  ‘So the police are looking for Charlotte Simonis.’

  ‘I’m looking for Charlotte. I only went to the police to find out whether there were any unidentified dead bodies that fitted Charlotte’s description, and they asked around a bit for me.’

  ‘And how did they get onto me?’

  ‘God, David, through her motel, through your office – it doesn’t matter. I want to find Charlotte and you flew her – or didn’t you?’

  ‘OK, yes, I flew her. But I can’t tell you where.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I promised her.’

  ‘Charlotte’s visa expires next week.’

  ‘Please, Judith. My customers pay me to fulfil their wishes with absolute discretion.’

  Discretion. Fulfilling wishes. What wishes? Lonely city dwellers’ longings for love. What had Margery Cunningham said? David Becker is a bit too smart. Judith puts down her cutlery. Too roughly – it clatters loudly on the edge of the plate.

  ‘This isn’t about customers’ wishes. The fact is, no one has seen or heard from Charlotte Simonis since 23 May. She might be in danger. And you’re the last person to have seen her alive.’

  Again David looks out at the water. ‘She’s well.’

  ‘Take me to her.’

  He shakes his head. ‘She doesn’t want that.’

  ‘I want her to tell me that herself.’

  ‘She wants to be alone.’

  ‘You know where she is, then.’

  ‘What’s going on here, Judith? I feel as if I’m being interrogated – as if I’d murdered your friend. You’ve started talking like a cop. What is this? Yesterday afternoon was – I don’t know. And now?’

  ‘Yesterday was wonderful.’ Judith feels a twinge in her stomach. ‘But I didn’t know that you could take me to Charlotte. And I have to find her.’

  ‘She’s where she wanted to be.’

  ‘I have to see her.’

  Spots of light in his eyes, fleeting shadows. She wants to trust him, doesn’t want to destroy everything by thinking about the past and the future. She wants the present with him for as long as she can have it. Her body can’t be deceiving her.

  They eat in silence. It’s not until the waitress brings them coffee and Judith rolls herself a cigarette that David begins to speak. At first, he says, he’d thought Charlotte wanted the same as all the other tourists: a few days’ adventure – bonfires, canoeing, wild
animals. Instead she had asked him to take her to a lake far away from any roads or tourist routes – to a secret place where she could set up camp for the rest of the summer and watch loons.

  ‘I fly up there every two weeks and take her supplies,’ David ends. ‘She pays me generously – for the deliveries, but above all for my discretion. I can’t betray her.’

  ‘Atkinson. Terence Atkinson. Does he know where Charlotte is?’

  ‘Atkinson? Why do you ask?’

  ‘It’s because of him that Charlotte got into loons in the first place. It’s because of him that she’s here.’

  He nods. ‘Maybe it is.’

  ‘Has she mentioned him?’

  ‘She doesn’t talk much.’

  Silent Charlotte. Solitary Charlotte. Alone in the wilderness, alone with the loons – alone at the only goal she has been able to reach unimpeded. Is this the end of Judith’s search? The solution? I should be relieved, thinks Judith. I’ve found her. I was right – the loons are the key. So why can’t I shake this feeling of danger?

  David reaches for her hand. Again, the heat as he touches her.

  ‘I still have to speak to Charlotte,’ says Judith.

  *

  ‘That Korzilius wants to question you again. You’re to give him a ring.’

  It’s only when Leander and Marlene are in bed that Martina breaks her silence and passes on the inspector’s message.

  Frank is leaning against the sink. He looks tired – ashen.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he says. ‘It’s too late now. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’

  ‘They’ve found Dr D.’

  ‘Where? When?’ Frank takes a step towards her to hug her. She raises a hand; it’s only a tiny gesture but enough to stop him. He stands before her like a little boy who’s been beaten.

  ‘Where? When?’ she mocks. ‘As if it matters.’

  He runs a hand through his hair – a helpless, mechanical gesture. ‘Please, Tina, tell me what you know. What happened to Dr D.?’

  She wants to scream at him, scratch his face, slap him – to make him lose control at last – to make him snap out of his cool aloofness, his bloody rationality, his fucking I’m-the-man-of-the-house masculine superiority that he thinks can help him get a grip on something that’s completely out of his control.

  ‘You want me to tell you what I know? Why don’t you talk to me for a change? Why don’t you tell me why you were all alone in the woods on Saturday afternoon instead of keeping an eye on Jonny? Just for starters?’

  ‘Please, Tina.’

  She kicks the kitchen chair, sending it spinning against the wall. It’s only a few weeks since she decorated the wall with a special marbling effect. Don’t you dare get tomato sauce on it, she had warned the children. Now she’s destroyed her sunshine-yellow effort herself; the wood-stained chair back has etched an ugly black mark in the wall. The two of them stare at this for so long that Frank starts when Martina finally answers his question.

  ‘Dead,’ she says. ‘Dr D. is dead. They found him in a suitcase in a kind of shroud under a statue of Jesus outside some village church.’

  Again her husband makes as if to step towards her. Again she stops him mid-movement.

  ‘I went to see Jonny’s friend Tim this afternoon. He’s sick. It’s fear, if you ask me, although he won’t admit it. Jonny was scared too before he went missing. What was he scared of?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’re imagining things. He was no different from usual.’

  ‘Yes, he was.’ She’s amazed that she is able to talk normally again, that she doesn’t burst into tears – that she feels nothing. ‘He was quieter than usual. Troubled. I asked Tim whether Jonny had problems at school, but he said he didn’t. So maybe Jonny had problems with us.’

  ‘You don’t know whether this Tim is telling the truth.’

  ‘You never liked Dr D.’

  ‘What the hell are you insinuating, Martina?’

  ‘You didn’t like him. Now he’s dead. You should be glad. No one to make a mess of your lawn any more.’

  Frank turns away from her and bangs his forehead against the cupboard above the sink.

  ‘Christ, Martina, you’re not starting all that again, are you? Do you seriously believe it’s my fault that Dr D. is dead and Jonny hasn’t come home? I thought we’d been through all this.’

  ‘Jonny’s dead – don’t try and tell me anything else. I want to finally know what you did on Saturday afternoon and what’s going on . . .’

  He storms past her, tearing his keys from their hook. Seconds later, the front door slams behind him.

  *

  The city is in a fever – like a twitching, overheated organ, it seems to Manni. The approaching dusk has driven people out of their houses and flats, and a jumble of smells – barbecued meat, perfume, asphalt and petrol – wafts through his open car windows accompanied by laughter and snatches of music. At Aachen Pond scantily clad students are disporting themselves on the grass and drinking beer. Barbecues are smoking away and the beer garden is chock full of people, all talking at once – beautiful, tanned young people who take happiness for granted. When did Manni stop feeling he was one of them?

  The traffic lights change to green. Manni puts his foot on the accelerator, drives past Melaten Cemetery and is soon manoeuvring his GTI into a parking space outside the Institute of Forensics. A hearse purrs down the slope to the basement where the mortuary and autopsy rooms are. Manni decides to go in at the official entrance and climbs the ugly concrete steps. He is greeted by unusual sounds – a metallic clack and a French chanson. Manni comes to the square between the washed concrete façades of the two wings of the building. After standing empty for years, an enormous gravel bed of several square metres has recently been planted with bamboo. Karl-Heinz Müller is standing in the middle of it, bending over to pick up a boule. He is wearing light brown, only slightly creased silk trousers and a pink polo shirt. A cigarette is tucked in the corner of his mouth. Manni saunters over to him and leans against the sun-warmed façade.

  ‘I would have thought there were better places to play boules in this city.’

  ‘Cigarette break.’ Karl-Heinz sucks on his fag as if to corroborate this. ‘Have to practise where you can.’

  ‘Hm.’ Manni pops a Fisherman’s Friend in his mouth.

  ‘There’s a tournament in Südstadt on Sunday. We were in with a chance, but now my esteemed partner has gone and dropped out,’ says Karl-Heinz. ‘Last thing I heard from her was a text telling me she was off to Canada.’ He stamps out his Davidoff. ‘How is she? I expect you know more?’

  So Judith’s started playing boules with Karl-Heinz. He wonders whether there’s anything going on between them. Manni shoves the Fisherman’s Friend into his cheek with his tongue. ‘She’ll be back on Monday. She’s looking for an old school friend. That’s as much as I know.’

  ‘Everyone’s looking for someone. Seems to have become a bad habit these days. Or have you found your boy?’

  ‘If only.’ Manni thinks of the blue 2CV with the seventies oldies drifting out of the folding roof – of Judith’s black nail varnish and hippy curls. Pretty unlikely that a dapper bachelor like Müller is into that kind of thing. If he’s even into women at all. Get a grip, man – and whatever you do, don’t get started on Miss Cat’s Eyes again. Manni clears his throat.

  ‘Have you managed to find out what the dachshund died of?’

  The forensic pathologist taps his foot against a small wooden case containing three unused boules. He throws the jack into the gravel bed, and then his first boule. It comes down hard, scattering gravel a good fifteen centimetres beyond the wooden jack. ‘Your turn.’ Karl-Heinz grins challengingly at Manni.

  Manni’s first shot is a disaster and the second ends in the bamboo. But the third isn’t bad at all – only a few centimetres from the jack. Karl-Heinz gives him a look of approval. ‘Have to watch the bamboo though. It’s the boss’s pride and joy. Japanese stone garden. He’ll b
e having us all meditating next.’ He takes up another boule, bends his knees, screws up his eyes, swings his arm. ‘I know nothing about dogs. It’s not my job. But I sent a few samples to Toxicology all the same.’

  More waiting. ‘How long . . .?’

  The boule shoots out of Karl-Heinz’s hand and just past Manni’s last ball.

  ‘Merde. It’s not looking too promising for Sunday. I’ve put a bit of pressure on the lab technicians, we’ll know more tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘And the ear?’

  ‘Definitely not the cause of death.’

  ‘Can you say whether it was cut off before or after the dog died?’

  ‘Determining vitality in injuries occurring close to death.’ Karl-Heinz looks slyly at Manni. ‘A broad field.’

  ‘Witnesses heard the dog barking hysterically. Could have been our dachshund before his ear was cut off.’

  ‘Do you know where exactly it happened?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘So we don’t know how much blood was shed. The ear itself is virtually unusable. Too badly eaten.’

  ‘But now we have the dachshund.’

  Karl-Heinz takes his third boule, polishes it with a fluffy cloth, bends his knees again, bobs up and down, and takes aim. This time he manages to knock Manni’s best shot into the bamboo with a satisfying metallic clack.

  ‘Well, then!’ Karl-Heinz fishes around in the undergrowth for the dud boules, clearly oblivious to his boss’s will. ‘You’re lucky I have such a big heart.’

  Manni forces a smile.

  ‘There’s nothing on the head itself to suggest pallor due to bleeding and I’ve found no signs of cell formation under the microscope. So, post mortem, I’d say.’

  ‘The dachshund was already dead, then, when its ear was cut off?’

  ‘That would be my bet, yes. Only a bet, mind you. But I’m pretty sure about the bite wound.’

  ‘Bite wound?’

  ‘On the throat. There’s a slit artery, but it obviously didn’t lead to massive bleeding. No heartbeat, no bleeding – simple as that.’

  ‘What kind of bite wound?’

  ‘The position of the teeth suggests a large animal. A fighting dog, perhaps. Or an Alsatian.’