Under the Ice

by Gisa Klönne

  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.’