Under the Ice

by Gisa Klönne

  ‘We’ve arrested your father. He says he killed Jonny.’

  ‘Shit!’ Viktor looks at Manni in disbelief.

  Judith had assumed he’d done it to protect his son, but she was wrong. Hagen Petermann wants to control Viktor, to preserve the family honour and retain his power, even now, when everything is falling apart. Again Manni inches a little closer to Viktor. There are now about three metres between them, at least one metre too many.

  ‘Tell me what really happened, Viktor. Why did Jonny have to die?’

  ‘It was only for laughs. The stupid dog ate the pills and started dashing around and yapping like a mad thing. Then it suddenly died and Jonny said he’d grass on us. He was going to smear my old man and ruin the company. We locked him up to make him change his mind. We didn’t want to kill him. We even took him hamburgers. And then suddenly he was dead!’

  Manni thinks of Karl-Heinz’s autopsy report and of the bunker. You took him hamburgers, he thinks, and you beat him up. You couldn’t admit that Jonny was stronger and braver than you. But we’ll discuss the details later.

  ‘How did you get Jonny to the bunker and then to the pond?’

  Viktor lights another cigarette without taking his eyes off Manni. ‘In Ralle’s scooter trailer.’

  ‘And why the fishing pond?’

  ‘My dad said you were looking for Jonny’s old man. I knew he went fishing there. And seeing as you’d found the fucking dachshund in Frimmersdorf . . .’ Viktor sniffs, wipes his face with the back of his hand and takes a drag on his cigarette. He seems more relaxed now, like most perpetrators when they have finally decided to confess. He even takes two steps towards Manni, but then stops again, still outside Manni’s jumping range.

  ‘And Tim?’

  ‘Tim?’ The boy spits again. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Come on, Viktor. We’ve found him,’ says Manni.

  ‘Found him?’ Viktor looks uncomprehending and sucks at his cigarette. His astonishment seems genuine.

  ‘In the bunker on the grounds of your father’s company. You must have realised that it couldn’t go on like that – that you’d be found out?’

  Viktor shakes his head. Slowly, as if in a daze.

  And then Manni understands. He understands that Ralle Neisser has tricked him into suspecting Viktor and his father of abducting Tim. He remembers the factory hall, which Forensics had said was a kind of living room for Ralle. A factory hall with junk furniture where the forensics team had found not only fingerprints from Ralle, Viktor, Jonny and Tim, but also blood – Tim’s blood. For whatever reason Tim must have cycled there on Monday morning instead of going to school – and he must have met Ralle there.

  ‘You gave Ralle a key to your bunker.’ Even as Manni speaks the words he wishes he could take them back, because now the bewilderment in Viktor Petermann’s face gives way to the realisation that his best mate Ralle not only went behind his back, but also tried to pin a crime on him that he hadn’t committed.

  Viktor’s last defences crumble. He flicks his cigarette away in a wide arc and turns round to head for the edge of the roof. And Manni jumps. He knows he has no chance, but he jumps. He jumps as he has never jumped before. The pain explodes in his knee, and he flies through the air towards the boy who is about to jump too. And, as if by a miracle, Manni’s broken leg crashes down onto Viktor’s hip. The pain blinds him and they fall together and come down hard, but they are still on the fucking roof, if only just. And the boy screams and wants to free himself and put an end to everything – to fling himself over the edge.

  Manni lies on him, pinning him down; it’s all he can do. And after an incredibly long time, Judith and her squad colleagues arrive and pull them further onto the roof, away from the edge, back to life. Even then the young man in Manni’s arms continues to struggle.

  Wednesday, 3 August

  She had wanted her children to grow up to be strong and self-confident. That had been important to her. And Jonny had been strong; he was no victim. But it had turned out to be his undoing.

  Jonny’s death was tragic, the blond inspector had said. A prank that got out of hand because of a lack of responsibility, a lack of compassion, the fear of discovery.

  ‘A prank?’ Martina had asked, tonelessly.

  ‘The perpetrators are teenagers,’ the blond inspector had replied. He had kept talking and explaining and patiently answering her questions, although he looked knackered and badly injured.

  Martina goes upstairs to the children’s bedrooms. There’s so little you can do, she thinks. She’d tried so hard and in the end it had all been for nothing.

  ‘Good night, my Tini,’ Leander whispers, putting his arms around Martina’s neck and hugging her tight. And she tolerates it and breathes in his sweet, familiar smell, and thanks to some superhuman power she is eventually able to extricate herself from the embrace of the son who is left to her, to wish him good night in return and slink out of his room. She looks into Marlene’s room, but the little girl is asleep, her toy elephant tight in her arms, her nose buried in the pillow, her hair tousled, the picture of a child’s primal sense of trust. A sense of trust such as surely can never return to this house again. And yet, thinks Martina, here it is, upstairs in these two rooms.

  On the chest of drawers in the passage is Marlene’s beloved Leopold the Glow-Worm picture book, and the sight of it tightens the steel clamp around Martina’s heart. Tomorrow afternoon Jonny will be transferred to the undertaker’s. This afternoon they told the little ones that Jonny and Dr D.’s journey wasn’t a normal holiday, but a journey into another world, far away, into heaven, from where they could look down on Marlene and Leander and watch over them.

  ‘Can Jonny really see me all the time?’ Marlene had asked, when the first shock was over. ‘Even at night when it’s dark?’

  ‘Yes, even at night,’ Martina had assured her, trying not to think of those awful hours of darkness and fear that Jonny had to go through in the bunker, alone and frantic with grief over the death of Dr D. – without any light. She had, of course, spared the children the burden of that knowledge. ‘Jonny has his torch,’ she had said, and the children seemed to find that reassuring.

  They have agreed to look out for Jonny’s light signal on the next clear night. Maybe we should even choose a Jonny star, thinks Martina. A Jonny star, a Dr D. star and a Leopold the Glow-Worm star, because Marlene and Leander are determined to give Jonny the Leopold book on his journey so he doesn’t get bored.

  Martina takes the picture book and puts it on the hall table. The torch, the book and Dr D. – those are to be Jonny’s grave gifts. Martina knows the dachshund isn’t allowed to be buried with Jonny, but she’ll find some way. Compared to the other challenges that lie ahead, it will be easy.

  Outside, daylight is fading and the air feels silky. It rained last night, but the sun came out in the afternoon. Nature follows its own plan, thinks Martina; it doesn’t care that human hearts break because they have loved and lost and have a funeral to organise.

  She crosses the patio and sits down on the steps leading to the garden, feeling restless, adrift, lost. She knows she must cry, if only to stop this steel clamp around her heart from destroying her love of Marlene and Leander. But the knowledge is purely cerebral, removed from her real self. She wonders whether things will ever be any different.

  Frank crosses the grass towards her. He must have been at the end of the garden by the swing in the walnut tree that Jonny loved so much. He looks horribly gaunt, and Martina feels a hot surge of shame at having wrongly suspected him.

  ‘When Jonny didn’t turn up to breakfast at the camp on Sunday morning, I got scared – awfully, irrationally scared,’ he says. ‘But I thought if I said anything I’d only be tempting fate. So I set off to look for him on my own before raising the alert; I knew his routes. That’s why I didn’t ring until so late. I didn’t want it to be true.’

  She doesn’t know what to do; she can’t even move. Frank comes closer and knee
ls down before her.

  ‘Please forgive me. I’m so sorry.’

  Shame, guilt, wasted love. The steel clamp flexes in Martina’s chest – her just punishment for failing to take care of either Jonny or her husband, a husband she can no longer find words for, let alone comfort.

  ‘Please, Martina, we’re still us,’ whispers Frank. ‘Leander, Marlene, Martina and Frank. A family.’

  It hurts, because it’s the truth. The truth she is going to have to live with. Martina feels something wet on her face. She can’t tell if it’s tears.

  *

  Manni saves the last report on the Jonny Röbel case and switches off his computer. He needn’t have come to headquarters, not today anyway, but he wanted to wrap things up, and the doctor had given him the all-clear. Only grazes, a torn hamstring and bad bruising on his knee. Slow to heal, annoying and, as Manni well knows, extremely painful – but nothing dramatic. He turned down the offer of crutches. He hobbles along the quiet, deserted corridor. Most of his colleagues are already in the beer garden, on their balconies or sitting in the school-holiday traffic jam heading south. Even Millstätt wasn’t in the office today. An appointment in Düsseldorf, his secretary explained when Manni handed her his request for time off.

  Judith is sitting in her cubbyhole smoking, her eyes shut, her bare feet up on the desk. The black nail polish on her toenails has splintered; her curls are tamed by a blue scarf twisted into a headband. She looks vulnerable, young. He wonders who this man with a criminal record is – the one she’s so interested in and was arguing with in English on the phone earlier. She opens her eyes, sensing his presence.

  ‘Sorry.’ He suddenly feels like a voyeur. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She makes to put her feet on the floor.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ says Manni, sitting down on the visitors’ chair without bending his right knee – an unsatisfactory manoeuvre he needs to work on.

  Judith takes a drag on her cigarette. ‘What’s the truth?’ she asks softly. ‘Did Viktor really know nothing of Tim’s abduction? Is Hagen Petermann innocent?’

  The big chief has withdrawn his confession; he had left no fingerprints or DNA inside the bunker and he can’t be prosecuted for something his son did. The various roles played by Tim, Jonny, Viktor and Ralle are less easily established. The truth is, Manni thinks, there are far too many coincidences in this case. It was coincidence that Jonny found out about Petermann’s blackmail, and coincidence that he happened to meet Viktor and Ralle in the woods shortly afterwards. It was coincidence that Tim took refuge in the very place where Ralle Neisser was hiding on Monday morning.

  ‘I don’t like all these coincidences,’ says Judith, as if Manni had spoken out loud.

  ‘It’s not just coincidences,’ he says.

  ‘I know. And the coincidences are only one factor. The truth is what happened next.’

  ‘And what happened before,’ says Manni, thinking of the expression in Viktor’s eyes when he asked him what his dream was – of the boy’s screams when they had lain on the edge of the roof, and of the hideous seconds when he himself had believed it was all over. Why did Viktor become a murderer and Manni a policeman? Is that coincidence too? There is no satisfactory answer; it’s best not to think about such things.

  ‘Millstätt has just got back from Düsseldorf and wants a quick word with us,’ says Judith.

  Manni heaves himself up and hobbles along next to her. Millstätt and his soft spot for old Krieger – he would ring her rather than him. Nothing’s changed. The truth, he thinks, is also the things that cannot be spoken; all the atrocities in the bunker that you want to explain away, to whitewash – for the boy’s relatives, but also for yourself.

  A pedestal fan is swirling warm, stale air around Millstätt’s office. Their boss is leaning by the window and motions to them to take a seat. Towering stacks of files cover his desk. The reports on the Jonny Röbel and Tim Rinker investigations are on top. It’s over, Manni thinks. We’ve come full circle. Millstätt eyes him, taking in the plasters on his hands and chin, his stiff leg stretched out in front of him.

  ‘You asked for time off,’ he says. ‘You could have taken sick leave.’

  Manni shakes his head. ‘It’s not as bad as all that,’ he says. ‘I just need a bit of a break.’

  ‘I hope it won’t stop you from attending a small celebration on Friday. Your colleagues are clamouring for a hero’s party. And it’s time we had a welcome-back party too. For both of you.’

  Back in Division 11. It’s official. And his colleagues want to celebrate with him – it is exactly what Manni has been dreaming of.

  ‘I can’t make Friday,’ he says.

  Millstätt looks at him. Suspicious, surprised, disapproving – Manni can’t say and to his own surprise he doesn’t want to. He worked his balls off and Millstätt kept him guessing. There’s no reason to get overexcited.

  ‘Well, Detective Chief Inspector Korzilius. Then we’ll have to find another date,’ Millstätt says at length.

  Manni stares at him. Detective Chief Inspector. Is this it, at last – his long-awaited promotion? I must have misheard, he thinks, but Judith jumps up and hugs him and Millstätt smiles and shakes his hand and Manni hears himself say ‘Thank you’, so it seems he must have heard right after all.

  Outside, the city is quivering in anticipation of another warm summer’s night and Judith folds back the roof of her 2CV with childish delight. Jazz songs accompany them on the drive to Manni’s flat, flowing sequences of notes, full of promise and regret. Detective Chief Inspector Manfred Korzilius. That too is a truth, thinks Manni. A wish comes true, and however pleased you know you are, all you can manage is a tired grin.

  A woman standing at a set of traffic lights reminds him of Miss Cat’s Eyes. I’ll go to the beer garden and she’ll be there, he thinks. We’ll drink a beer or two and talk about life. We’ll go to the dykes, moor somewhere, look at the cows and fuck. Later, when I’ve buried my father.

  *

  Judith parks her car outside Melaten Cemetery, walks the familiar route to Patrick’s grave and sits down on the stone bench. Her body is heavy, and her tiredness hits her again with full force. She longs to be able to sleep again, to have at least one night without thinking about the dead, about the atrocities of children who haven’t learnt to love themselves or others, about responsibility and things left undone and guilt and how it’s all connected. She had been so obsessed with saving the boy Tim – with getting there on time for once. She had thought things would be better afterwards.

  But what she found in the bunker was a tensed-up, maltreated body, coldness and darkness, stench and horror. It was a while before Judith realised that the horror was her own – that the boy on the mattress was past feeling horror.

  ‘Tim is strong, we mustn’t give up hope,’ his psychologist Joachim Wallert had said. ‘But of course he has a heavy burden to carry.’ The burden of memory, Judith thinks. We can’t eradicate what has happened, even if we learn to live with it and look ahead. We can go on living, but the scars remain. Perhaps that is what killed Charlotte – an excess of old wounds. The insidious loss of vitality. Not the man who made her empty promises and then wanted to get rid of her. Not David.

  Karl-Heinz Müller is standing outside the Institute of Forensics, throwing boules in the gravel bed. Judith sits down on the concrete ledge and pours herself a drop of his red wine.

  Karl-Heinz polishes a boule and bends his knees. With a satisfying metallic clack, the boule knocks a competitor away from the jack. Karl-Heinz straightens himself. ‘How about that?’

  ‘I’m impressed.’

  He sits down next to Judith and lights himself a Davidoff. ‘You know I can’t tell you much about your photos.’

  ‘It’s all I have. The Canadians won’t let us have the bones.’

  ‘They’ll know what they’re doing.’

  ‘They say they can’t determine the cause of death.’


  ‘Do they have any tissue residue, fractures, bullet holes?’

  Judith shakes her head. ‘Charlotte must have been lying dead on that island for weeks.’

  ‘Cause of death not ascertainable.’ Karl-Heinz helps himself to more red wine. ‘Sometimes cases like that keep me awake at night. When that happens, I drive to the institute and rummage through my personal archive of unsolved deaths.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  ‘When morning comes, I’m none the wiser.’

  ‘Perhaps Charlotte killed herself. I sometimes have such strange dreams. But she was lying on the island, her canoe was on the opposite shore and she couldn’t swim. So someone must have taken her to the island.’

  ‘It might have been an accident. The canoe might have drifted to land and been tied up by someone. She might have starved to death on the island.’

  ‘But why wasn’t she wearing any clothes? And why didn’t the person who pulled her canoe ashore look for her?’ Judith’s voice sounds husky. She tries to push aside the images of the island. Starving to death without rescue – what a horrific way to die.

  Karl-Heinz looks at her. ‘This isn’t just about your school friend, is it?’

  It’s about the fact that my bloody body is still longing for the man who probably killed Charlotte, thinks Judith. It’s about the fact that something in me refuses to believe that a man I once loved is capable of leaving a woman to starve to death in the wilderness. I really ought to know better; that’s my job, after all.

  She puts her wine glass down on the concrete ledge, rather too forcefully. I’m making a fool of myself, she thinks. I’m mixing up the cases. Tim, Charlotte, Ivonne, myself – past and present. I’m going mad, like that night on the island, alone with Charlotte’s bones. I’m seeing ghosts. Black-and-white ghosts with glinting eyes – ghosts that cry like lost souls and try to lure me to the bottom of a lake. Me or Charlotte, I don’t even know whose dreams they are. She feels the pathologist’s eyes on her back as she walks back to her 2CV. Without looking round, she raises her hand and waves.