Under the Ice

by Gisa Klönne

  If David is responsible for Charlotte’s death, why did he bring Judith here? But if he has nothing to do with it, why has he run away?

  A woman in the wilderness, alone and crazy. Lost in her own inner world, cut off from all human contact. A messed-up life. Hope turned to chaos. Is that how it was? Is that what happened to Charlotte?

  Cold moonlight emerges from the treetops. Judith switches off her iPod and listens to the loons’ song. Now it sounds like a death lament, and perhaps that is appropriate. It is a death lament and she, Judith, is holding the wake, because she has something to make amends for – because Charlotte once trusted her.

  Judith’s skin is smarting from the sun and the air and the fire. She bathes again; the water is warmer than the air now. Black water, strewn with stars. She hadn’t known there was anything as beautiful as this. She hadn’t known you could get drunk from looking at the stars.

  She dries herself at the fire, smokes, and drinks whisky in small sips. She watches the flames and the floating stars until her eyes begin to droop. She tries not to think of Division 11, of Cologne, where it will soon be morning, of time which cannot be stopped. In her dream, David comes back to her and she yells at him, yells her questions into his face – yells her disappointment, her anger. She yells on and on, but he doesn’t reply.

  Part Three

  Smouldering

  Sunday, 31 July

  Manni’s sleep is leaden, a merciful blackout. The jingling of his phone jolts him back to the house where he grew up. Football certificates and photos of his karate teams still hang on the hopelessly petty middle-class wallpaper, along with a Pirelli calendar which once seemed the acme of coolness to his twenty-year-old self. ‘Leave the lad,’ Manni’s father had said when his mother had got worked up about it. As far as Manni can remember, it was one of the few times that Günter Korzilius took his son’s side. Seven o’clock. Manni gropes for his phone. When did he fall asleep? He can’t remember – sometime after his mother had stopped crying. Sleep hasn’t revived him; it’s numbed him. He feels as if he’s under a bell jar.

  ‘We’ve got the boy,’ Thalbach announces, and without giving Manni a chance to react, he begins to dictate coordinates. Königsforst, pond, dead, Manni notes on the back of the Pirelli calendar, when he has found a pen at last. And directions on how to get there.

  ‘They have a massive staff shortage problem in Division 11,’ Thalbach says, winding up. ‘People on holiday, people off sick – and this tourist murderer doesn’t show any sign of slacking either. I’ve told Millstätt you can investigate for him – Krieger will join you tomorrow.’

  Downstairs, his mother and aunt are sitting in the kitchen, and for a moment it seems to Manni that the two sad figures in black have been sitting there all night waiting for him. They look on in silence as he takes clean plasters out of a drawer and ministers to his knuckles. The breakfast table is laid for three: coffee, jam, honey, rolls, butter and boiled eggs.

  ‘Sunday breakfast,’ his mother says. ‘Life has to go on. We’re going to church later. Sit down, Manni.’

  She hasn’t reproached him, has hardly said a word since he picked her up at the hospital the night before last. She’s only clung to him, sobbing quietly to herself in silent determination. Her favourite sister arrived in the morning and, after a decent period of time had elapsed, Manni slunk off to declare Frank Stadler wanted. It turned out to be unnecessary; the man had come to headquarters of his own accord.

  Yes, Stadler admitted, when Manni confronted him with the evidence given by Messrs Snack and the bank statement from his wife. Yes, he had been at the motorway lay-by on Saturday afternoon. He had met a friend there, a very good friend who was in financial difficulty. He hadn’t mentioned it, because he had wanted to protect him – that wasn’t a crime, was it? But he hadn’t seen Jonny; he had nothing to do with his disappearance and certainly wasn’t mixed up in drugs. Did they want to search his house? Not for the moment, Manni replied through clenched teeth and, once Stadler’s friend had confirmed his statement, he had no choice but to let the man walk free. His second interview with Big Chief Petermann proved equally unproductive.

  Manni sits down at the breakfast table, rams his knife into a roll, spreads butter on it and cracks open an egg that his mother has hard-boiled especially for him. She prefers hers runny, and her solicitude riles him, although he knows he’s being unfair. Why can’t she just mind her own business and leave him in peace? She watches in silence as he slices the egg, lays it on the roll, adds salt, presses the other half of the roll down on top, and then jumps to his feet and fetches a bottle of orange juice from the fridge. He hadn’t told her that he’d been transferred to Missing Persons; it would only have worried her, and he hadn’t wanted her talking to his father about it. Now he can’t explain to her how important it is that he make the most of this chance to return to Division 11.

  ‘I have to go,’ he gabbles into the women’s silence. ‘Be back as soon as I can.’

  The boy is lying on the shore of a popular fishing pond not far from the shelter where he probably had to look on as his dachshund died of an ecstasy overdose and then had its ear cut off. Manni squats down. The boy’s wet clothes correspond exactly with the missing persons’ report. His wet hair is blond. There’s no doubt that this is Jonny Röbel. He looks strangely peaceful, if you ignore his swollen lip and a shimmering yellow bruise under his left eye – almost as if he were asleep. He certainly doesn’t look as if he’s been dead for a week.

  ‘We spotted him as soon as we got here,’ says one of the two witnesses. ‘He was floating face down on the water, right up against the duck house. I went straight in and pulled him out – tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late.’ The man swallows. It’s only now that Manni notices the wet hair, the police tracksuit bottoms, and the patrol officer’s jacket draped around his bare shoulders. The man’s own clothes are dripping from the saddle and handlebars of a bicycle. On the grass beside the bike is an array of fishing gear.

  ‘Did you meet anyone on the way to the pond? Did you notice anything?’

  Both fishermen shake their heads. The boy, they say, can’t have been more than a night in the pond. Joggers and walkers come this way all the time and the pond is a favourite fishing spot.

  The forensics team arrives with Karl-Heinz Müller who is wearing a beret and, even from a distance, smells of suntan oil and lemony aftershave.

  ‘Did you have to find the boy the day of the boules tournament?’

  Without waiting for a reply he pulls on latex gloves and begins his first examination of the corpse. As so often, the work seems to lift his mood; he is soon whistling Hildegard Knef’s ‘Let it Rain Red Roses for You’. Experience has taught Manni that it’s better not to pester Karl-Heinz with questions at this sensitive stage. He goes over to the forensics team who are scanning the banks of the pond, although there is little hope that they will find anything of any use. The ground is dry as dust and the wood gets as many visitors as an amusement park. A frogman is preparing to investigate the murky water; maybe the perpetrator was stupid enough to throw something in.

  Manni returns to Karl-Heinz. He ought to be relieved, but he isn’t, although it’s not long since he was praying for the boy to be found, dead or alive. That was when the call had come from the hospital. Manni pushes the memory aside. I must drive to the Stadlers’, he thinks. Take them the news of Jonny’s death. There’s no point putting it off.

  ‘What happened to your hands? Go boxing and forget your gloves?’ Karl-Heinz takes a silver pocket ashtray out of the back pocket of his designer jeans and lights himself a Davidoff. He eyes Manni closely.

  ‘You don’t want to know what my opponent looks like.’

  Karl-Heinz raises an eyebrow.

  ‘What about the boy? Can you say anything yet?’

  ‘At a cautious estimate I’d say he’s been dead for between one to three days – but somewhere cool; not in this pond. Rigor mortis is already easing off; there
are the first minimal signs of putrefaction, and very reduced lividity – that’s striking.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Could indicate high blood loss – either as a result of severe injuries, which I couldn’t see any sign of – or as a result of internal bleeding.’

  ‘Internal bleeding – caused by drugs?’

  Karl-Heinz knocks ash into his ashtray. ‘I’ll talk about causes after the post mortem. Who’s in charge at Division 11?’

  ‘I’ve been asked to do it.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Judith’s coming back tomorrow.’

  Karl-Heinz takes a drag on his cigarette. His expression in inscrutable.

  ‘See you at the autopsy,’ is all he says.

  *

  The day they find Jonny, Detective Inspector Manfred Korzilius will look a touch more serious; his voice will be deeper, he won’t try to hold her gaze the way he usually does. He will inform her of Jonny’s death, in appropriately sober words; he will ask her to identify Jonny, like in the crime dramas on TV. She will get up and put Jonny’s torch in her handbag and go with him. She won’t cry; she won’t be able to cry. No matter what the police show her, she’s sure she won’t be able to cry.

  Martina Stadler has imagined it all so many times that she is taken aback by the panic that grips her when she really does find herself looking into Manfred Korzilius’s serious face. He lays a hand on her arm, as if to support her, an almost intimate gesture – and why not? she thinks; after all, we’ve been through a lot together this last week. He must have injured himself; the back of his hand is covered in plasters that are already soggy in places, and she thinks she can see pus at the edges.

  Frank is in the garden with the children and his parents. Martina sends the policeman into the kitchen where she has just started chopping up potatoes for a salad, and goes out onto the patio where Frank and his father are busy at the barbecue.

  ‘Frank,’ she says, and can see in his eyes that he knows it’s over.

  She turns round and goes back into the kitchen. She hears her mother-in-law’s unnaturally bright voice calling the children. She hears Frank’s footsteps behind her, stiff and reluctant. How strange that she has no urge to lean on him – that she feels closer to the messenger of death than to her husband.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Korzilius. ‘I’m very sorry . . .’

  He keeps talking, and Martina listens without really hearing what he is saying, because he is only confirming what she already knows. I must put the mayonnaise in the fridge if I’m going straight to Jonny, she thinks, or it will go off in this heat. Frank’s voice jolts her back to the kitchen.

  ‘In the fishing pond near the shelter, you say? You found Jonny in the fishing pond?’

  ‘Yes, why do you ask?’ Manfred Korzilius asks, and Martina realises that something about Frank’s tone has aroused his suspicions. She waits for Frank to say something entirely plausible, like: ‘You’d already searched the pond, that’s why I was surprised.’ She looks at her husband and waits, but he only shakes his head in silence and doesn’t reply.

  After being questioned at headquarters yesterday, he had apologised to her for not telling her about the money he’d lent Volker to help him out of a tight spot. He kept begging and begging her to forgive him, and she really had begun to hope. Out in the garden on her own last night, she’d given herself a severe talking-to for distrusting him and betraying him.

  The inspector is still waiting for an answer from Frank. She can see it in his eyes; she knows him well now. But she can see Frank’s eyes too and there is growing fear in them – the fear of a cornered animal. The realisation is a shock – another shock – and she bites her lower lip. It isn’t over yet, she thinks. I was wrong; it isn’t over by a long shot. Frank knows something about that pond; he knows something important that he is determined to keep quiet. The twenty thousand euros were only the tip of the iceberg.

  *

  The storm comes at dawn. Wind whips ash into Judith’s face; the fire has gone out. She gathers up her sleeping bag and throws her rucksack over her shoulder. There are crashings and rumblings in the trees, and the water around the island is seething; nothing can be seen of the stars it reflected earlier. The rain falls suddenly, as if from nowhere, hard and relentless. Judith pulls the canoe up to the rocks behind her, turns it over and makes a roof out of it by wedging the prow into a crevice. She huddles underneath while nature rages and flashes around her. She is powerless; seldom has she felt so much at the mercy of the elements.

  When the storm is over, Judith releases the canoe into the water. The food she brought with her is all gone, and her hope that David might return has evaporated. If Judith continues to sit around next to Charlotte’s mortal remains waiting for rescue she will go mad. She jabs the paddle into the water and suddenly thinks of her father who set off bravely into the unknown over thirty-five years ago and froze to death in Nepal, depriving his daughter for ever of the chance to remember him. All that is left of him is a photo from which he looks out at her with her eyes – another dead person who is bound up with her and shapes her life. There are so many – her father, Patrick, Charlotte too now, in a way, and of course all the dead people she comes across in her work on the murder squad. There must be some reason for her bonds with these dead people. But beyond that, there must also be some reason to live.

  Back on the other shore, Charlotte’s tent appears unscathed. Yesterday Judith had read about loons in her books – lonely birds, unexplained relics of an age-old era; shy birds that need water to fish and fly, but have to come on land to propagate their species, although they are ill-equipped for this by nature and at the constant peril of their enemies; ancient birds that need the solitude of a cold northern lake and are content to rely on their song to assure themselves of the existence of others of their kind on other lakes.

  Gavia. There are five species. The main range of the largest, gavia immer, known in German as the ‘ice diver’, is northern America. ‘Ice diver’ – perhaps it was this name that caught Charlotte’s fancy; the notion of a hidden life, an other-worldly life, deep down under the ice at the bottom of a cold lake. But loons can’t survive under the ice, because they need air to breathe.

  Strange birds, Judith thinks – solitary, shy, forgotten by evolution. Perhaps Charlotte had felt similar, a stranger wherever she went – at school, at university, even at home, where there was a place for her dolls and her parents, but none for her. But what happened here in the wilderness? Was she forced to acknowledge that she didn’t belong here either? Is that why she is dead? What part did David Becker play? And Terence Atkinson? If it hadn’t been for Atkinson, Charlotte would never have travelled to Canada. She had loved him, and it was presumably her love that had set her dreaming of studying loons. Did Atkinson kill Charlotte? Did David Becker? And why had she never put up a fight? Or had she put up a fight, but lost nevertheless, like a loon that comes too close to mankind and ends up choking on a fishing hook – or loses its bearings trying to escape in a semi-frozen lake and suffocates under the ice, oblivious to the cold?

  Bloody hell, now I’m coming over all sentimental, thinks Judith. I’m letting my imagination run away with me instead of concentrating on the facts. She leaves Charlotte’s camp behind her without going ashore again. Yesterday she had carried out another thorough search; without criminal technicians to help her, there’s no more she can do, neither for Charlotte nor for herself. Somehow or other I’m going to get out of this place, she promises her old school friend. Then I’ll find Becker and Atkinson, and even if I can’t head investigations here in Canada, I won’t give up until I know what happened to you. This time I won’t let you down. She paddles past the camp and steers the canoe back to David’s log cabin. Perhaps she overlooked something there that could help her.

  Soon the sun is gaining strength, dispersing the clouds and veiling the surface of the lake in a golden mist. It is, in its chilly way, indescribably beautiful – a subl
ime, self-sufficient beauty that holds no comfort.

  The log cabin is exactly as Judith left it. She searches it once more, meticulously, doggedly, increasingly angrily – and again, fruitlessly. Her plane to Germany took off an hour ago. Her last chance to be back at headquarters on time is a flight to Düsseldorf that leaves Toronto at 6.30 p.m. She has another ten hours – not enough.

  Restlessness and anger drive her outside onto the jetty. She walks to the end and looks back. A few hundred metres behind the log cabin the ground rises slightly – why hadn’t she noticed before? Judith pushes her phone into her pocket, checks that the shotgun is loaded and hangs it over her shoulder. The forest is dense; brushwood tears at her sodden trousers.

  Judith fights her way through the undergrowth. After only five minutes, she can no longer tell whether she’s walked in a straight line away from the cabin, or in a pointless loop back to the shore. She keeps stopping, bending back branches, examining her phone’s display, noting with satisfaction that the ground really is rising. Then she comes out into a boggy clearing and, as if by a miracle, a tiny signal bar appears on the top left-hand corner of her display, auguring reception.

  The battery is almost flat; one bar will have to do. What promise the buzz of a ringing tone seems to hold. But instead of Margery Cunningham’s voice, there is only white noise. Judith tries again with the same result. She has no choice but to speak her message into the void, asking for help, trying to describe where she is. She sends the same message in the form of a text.

  Time passes, precious time. The phone remains silent; the signal bar quavers and dies – and with it, Judith’s hope. She stumbles back to the log cabin and lights a fire to dry her wet clothes. She eats pumpernickel from David’s bag of provisions, makes instant coffee, rolls herself a cigarette. Soon, even that will no longer be possible; her tobacco supplies are running out. She tries to fight back the panic that grips her at the thought, throws wet wood on the fire, cocks the trigger on the shotgun and shoots into the air like yesterday, because even the most pointless act is more bearable than sitting around doing nothing. The shot echoes and dies away, leaving her alone again. Perhaps somebody will hear the shots at some point, or see the smoke. Perhaps Margery has got her message and is already on her way. But it is extremely unlikely.