Dear Child: The twisty thriller that starts where others end

by Romy Hausmann

  I blinked away a few stupid tears. I wouldn’t get very far in any case. He must be coming back soon; why else would he leave the light on and door open? All I could do was wait. With great difficulty and so far as the restrictions of my shackles would allow, I tried to change the position I was sitting in. My body had become uncomfortable. A rough wooden wall pressed into my back. My legs felt swollen, my neck stiff and my shoulders were burning from my arms having been stretched out to one side for hours. The sink I was bound to lay on my right. The position of my arms was similar to that of a baseball hitter waiting for the ball. And waiting. And waiting. My heart was racing. Where was he?

  He was fetching the knife.

  *

  This was what they did, wasn’t it? The madmen. The psychopaths. They went to fetch a knife, an axe, a chainsaw, with a smile on their lips. They had their own mad code, and his question ‘How are you, Lena?’ had in reality been a very different one.

  In his reality he’d asked me whether I was ready to die, and I’d shown my acquiescence with that silent nod. I’d given him my permission. At this very moment he was probably admiring the long, broad blade of his favourite knife. Angling the handle so he could see his face reflected in the metal. Imagining how easily it would slice through my flesh, how effortlessly it would sever stubborn muscles, arteries and veins.

  I hyperventilated into my gag. At any moment he would step through the door with a knife in his hand. I would be dead before the hunt to find me had even been launched. ‘Typical,’ my mother would think, when yet again I failed to turn up for coffee at the weekend as promised. Just ‘typical’, not ‘something must be wrong’. What about Kirsten? Kirsten might even believe I was not coming on purpose. ‘She’s always been a drama queen . . .’ I heard her voice say in my head.

  At any moment.

  Now. The door. He was back.

  My eyelids began to flicker. My heart and my breathing were going so quickly that I felt dizzy. I drew my legs up and shuffled backwards against the wall. As if through a thick pane of frosted glass I saw him come closer, closer, until he was standing right in front of me, holding something – not a knife.

  ‘Are you thirsty, Lena?’

  It took a few seconds before I realised what he was saying and saw that the object in his right hand was not a knife, but a bottle of water.

  ‘Are you thirsty, Lena?’ he said again.

  When he held out the bottle I nodded in time to the intense thumping inside my chest, and growled like a greedy animal in the hope that he would remove the gag. But he just stood where he was, towering over me, waving the bottle in front of my eyes. And smiling.

  I shook my head helplessly. He lowered his right hand, then held out his left, which was holding a packet of hair dye. The woman in the picture looked delighted with her new, bright blonde hair. The sight of her triggered a feeling, a bad feeling that started in the pit of my stomach and gradually engulfed my entire body.

  He nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘First we’ll dye your hair and after that you can have a drink.’

  I calculated my chances. After two or three days without water, you’ll be dead.

  ‘Take all the time you need to think about it.’

  He shrugged and turned to go.

  I squealed into the gag and thudded the floor with my bound feet.

  He turned around slowly.

  ‘That is the right decision. And because right decisions are always rewarded, you may have a sip now.’

  He placed the packet of hair dye on the edge of the sink, squatted down, put the bottle of water beside me and untied the gag. Then he picked up the bottle and unscrewed the cap. With one hand he lifted it to my mouth, with the other he supported the back of my head. A sip was a sip, I had to realise. I thanked him all the same and sucked up a stray drop from my bottom lip.

  ‘And now we’re going to make you beautiful.’

  His knees clicked as he stood, and he went over to the shelves behind him. When he turned around again he was holding a pair of scissors.

  ‘I think this is one big misunderstanding,’ I began with a croaky voice, as he cut the cable ties from my wrists. ‘You must have mistaken me for someone else. I’m not Lena.’

  He stopped in between cutting the third and fourth cable tie.

  ‘My name is . . .’

  ‘Be quiet!’ he barked, so loudly that I gave a start. There was a snip and the last cable tie released my hands.

  ‘How many times have I told you not to lie to me?’

  ‘But I’m not lying—’

  ‘I told you to be quiet!’ His face had suddenly turned red and a blood vessel stood proud beneath the skin on his left temple, throbbing angrily. My gaze fell on the scissors that were still in his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said softly.

  He muttered something; I stared at the scissors.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ I asked cautiously.

  He reached up to the sink and swapped the scissors for the packet of hair dye.

  ‘I want to make you beautiful, Lena.’

  His words exploded in my head, paralysing my thoughts, a mental blackout. A shrill scream, a firm shove against his chest. His head hit the ceramic of the sink. ‘Fucking hell!’ My body threw itself forwards and somehow I got to my feet. The door, only a few metres away. I staggered on a pair of legs that hadn’t carried my weight for a while, my circulation, pull yourself together, movement behind me, the door handle so close. I reached for it, almost touching it, but then was torn away. His hand had grabbed my hair and jolted my head. I landed on my back and my scalp burned as if alight. I clung to his forearm, tried to get my footing, he was shouting and I was too. ‘What an ungrateful bitch!’

  ‘What do you want from me, you fucking madman?’ He dragged me back to the sink and let me fall hard on the floor. I doubled up and sobbed so intensely that I started retching.

  ‘The world is out of joint, Lena,’ he began, panting, but otherwise perfectly calm. ‘People have become ungrateful. Ungrateful and lacking in respect. Promises have become worthless, nothing is binding anymore. Who these days remembers the importance of rules, when all you hear is people saying there’s no need to stick to them? I’m not criticising you, Lena. You’re confused. Nonetheless, I have to make you aware of the consequences of your misdemeanours.’

  He paused to allow what he’d said to sink in. I heard him take a deep breath and a hunch I had made me do the same. Then I closed my eyes. The first kick was to my stomach.

  *

  Do you know, Lena, at that time I still had no idea what he meant by ‘rules’, but I had understood one of them. I had to be you, or I would be dead. Call it instant conditioning if you like. Call me cowardly, or crazy, I don’t care. But please don’t say it’s astonishing that when the policeman asked me my name there was only one answer I could come up with to begin with: ‘Lena. My name is Lena.’

  *

  ‘Surname?’

  The Cham policeman takes a small notebook and pen from his inside jacket pocket. The undertone in his curt follow-up question doesn’t escape me.

  I shake my head. Lena doesn’t have a surname.

  ‘Well, you’re not Lena Beck at any rate,’ Munich states, shifting to the front of his chair. I grab my forehead, where the scar has started to burn. I couldn’t say whether this is because of his penetrating stare or the sweat oozing from every pore of my body.

  ‘Who are you?’ Cham asks again, calmly, emphasising each word in turn.

  Within seconds my answer seems to have turned me into an impostor; I can’t ignore this. And maybe the suspicion in his voice is justified. Perhaps I am an impostor. Perhaps it’s not just your husband’s fault, but equally mine too. It’s still easier to convince myself that all those dreadful things happened to Lena rather than Jasmin.

  Some
where in the world Jasmin is leading a happy life. Breathing in the air after it’s rained. Squabbling over the first and last piece of a bar of chocolate. Taking in the bouquet of freesias. Dancing and bawling to David Bowie. After a long night’s drinking, sharing a beer and a curry sausage with some feckless aberration she considers to be love. Jasmin, untroubled and with all the freedom in the world, doing those lovely, silly things that life is made of. The things I tried to recollect when your husband was lying on top of me and I just wanted to die.

  I wipe the tears from my chin and sniff.

  Munich clears his throat.

  ‘Let me tell you something, Lena . . .’

  Matthias

  On the horizon the dawn is chomping light grey strips in the sky. I can literally see the new day devouring the night. It’s just before five o’clock. I’m standing at the window of the hospital room where we’re waiting for Gerd and Giesner. Karin is still sitting on the bed. In the window I can see the reflection of her dangling legs. Her head is bowed and she’s squeezing her hands in her lap. From time to time she lets out a gentle sigh. In my head I replay the last hour and try to understand. The woman we thought was our missing Lena is a stranger. My thoughts momentarily turn to Gerd again. Gerd, the failure, whom we have to thank for all this upset. He has swept the last pitiful remnants of our hope into a small heap and wilfully set fire to it. All that’s left now is ashes.

  I stare up at the heavens, in a touch of Christian faith. You’ve been up there for a while, haven’t you, Lena?

  I don’t realise I’ve started sobbing until Karin’s face appears in the window beside mine. I feel her hand on my back. She lays her head on my shoulder and closes her eyes. We both know. Lena didn’t reappear this evening, so we finally have to resign ourselves to the notion that she’s not coming back, ever. It’s just that now, in the cold reality of the hospital, this idea suddenly feels so different from previous times when, at home on the sofa or in bed at night, we would go through what might have happened to our daughter. Up till now these have merely been theories with a certain room for manoeuvre. I understand that over the past thirteen years, this room for manoeuvre has been the one, tiny place we’ve been able to exist, had space to breathe. Now there’s no space at all, now we’re floating in a vacuum somewhere, up in the sky, like two sad astronauts who’ve had their air hoses severed. I reach for Karin’s hand. I don’t want to go adrift alone, out there in the empty darkness. Karin nods as if she’s able to read my thoughts. I embrace her, holding her as tightly as I can. Her heart beats against mine. The new day is in the sky. So her name is Hannah. You called her after my mother. That’s lovely, Lena. That’s really lovely.

  Lena

  ‘Student from Munich, twenty-three years old, one of those young, carefree girls. In her fourth semester studying to become a teacher. Her father swears blind she wanted to be a teacher from a very young age. I was certain she’d do something creative, like become a writer, perhaps. She had a very fertile imagination and used to come up with the wildest stories. Or an actress, that would have suited her too. At any rate, she was one of those girls who turned heads. Who could enter a room and only had to smile to make everyone speechless. Long, blonde hair, blue eyes, great figure. She disappeared on her way home from a student party. Without trace – she simply vanished into thin air. No witnesses, nothing. The last people to see her were other guests at the party, and they said she’d had a few drinks and maybe taken some other things too, you know. There were plenty of theories. The route home must have taken her along the Isar, across Reichenbach Bridge. Maybe she fell into the river and drowned. We had divers go down several times, but they found nothing. We checked out her boyfriend, but he couldn’t have had anything to do with her disappearance, even though for a long time Lena’s father refused to accept this. She could have been kidnapped too, but there was never a demand for ransom money. She could have just as easily fallen into the hands of a people-trafficking gang. Abducted and sold abroad. Sexual slavery, I’m sure you’ve heard of this. Well, as you can see, there are all manner of possibilities. But the fact is, we simply don’t know what happened to Lena Beck thirteen years ago. It remains a mystery to this day. Back at the time I promised her father that I’d find her. Do you know what they teach you during police training? No? Never make promises. Promises that aren’t kept break people. And this father is a broken man, believe you me. He misses her so much, still, every day. I miss her too, we all do. That scar you’ve got – Lena had one because when she was four or five she fell against the edge of a bookshelf. And it happened in my sitting room, can you believe that? Her father was beside himself. How did you get yours?’

  I think I take my first breath since Munich started talking about you. It seems to be the same for Cham: I hear him breathe deeply.

  ‘He did it to me,’ I reply, carefully touching the spot which will probably still mark me long after the cuts I sustained in the accident have healed.

  ‘Could you tell me who he is?’

  I nod.

  ‘The man who abducted me.’

  *

  The man who called me Lena and beat me.

  After the assault I lay curled up into a ball in my old place beside the sink. I held tightly in my fist the tooth I spat out as he was kicking me. I counted six kicks and three punches. Although he’d now left me alone, I could still see bright lights exploding before my eyes, no matter whether I closed them or not, fireworks ignited by pain. My body felt like one big bruise under constant pressure.

  He stood over me, massaging his knuckles.

  ‘Can we continue now, Lena?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he bent down to me, grabbed my wrists and pulled me to my feet with a vice-like grip. I whimpered. I couldn’t stay upright on my legs and collapsed again immediately.

  ‘You’ve got to make a bit of an effort, Lena.’

  This time he took me under my armpits and heaved me up. Then he dragged me to the sink, which had a mirror on the wall above it. It was an old, very tarnished mirror, that barely showed anything save for my blurred face. But I could still make out the brown trail of dried blood that ran from my nose down to my chin. Looking for some support I propped myself on the sink and stared at the plughole.

  ‘Oh, Lena,’ he said to the back of my neck. ‘We really got off to a bad start, didn’t we?’ He put his arms around my waist and started unbuttoning my jeans.

  ‘We’d better clean you up first. You’ll feel like a brand-new person afterwards, just you see.’

  This, by the way, is one of those parts of my story that ended up on the pile of unsayable things, if you’re interested. An episode I’m dreadfully ashamed of because I simply failed to resist. I ought to have rammed my elbows into his side, pushed him away or at least screamed.

  Jasmin would never have let that happen to her. She wouldn’t have waited passively while he filled the sink with water from a canister. She wouldn’t have stood there naked, her arms out to the side and her legs apart, allowing him to wash her. She wouldn’t have let him scrub her body with a scratchy flannel until her skin was red and sore. She wouldn’t have put up with being dyed blonde without protest, or cried silently over her molar, which now lay in a small brownish puddle of blood and water splashes on the rim of the sink. He’d already noticed while undressing me that I’d wet myself at some point that day.

  ‘Tsk, tsk, you really must learn to get a grip on things,’ he’d said, his eyebrows raised and nose wrinkled. ‘You’re a grown woman, Lena.’

  Jasmin wouldn’t have apologised quietly. She would have spat in his face and shouted, ‘Fuck off!’

  I, on the other hand, nodded politely when he wrung out the flannel for the last time and asked, ‘That’s much better, isn’t it?’

  I let him dry me, rinse out the bleach, and towel and comb my wet, freshly dyed hair. I even thanked him when he handed me the bottle of water.
A reward, as he said.

  Clothes were lying ready for me on the shelves. I don’t know if he’d had them ready from the outset or brought them later. White underwear, sheer tights with a silky lustre, white blouse, knee-length dark skirt and shoes with straps, a size too small for me. I peered at my own things, which lay in an untidy pile beneath the sink, then back to the shelves, where my overnight bag sat right at the top, out of reach. It looked crumpled, like an empty wrapper. He must have taken everything out of it.

  ‘They say you should never judge a book by its cover,’ he began. I tried not to look when he bent down, holding the white panties, and directed my legs into them. I put my head back and stared at the ceiling.

  ‘But the truth is, tasteless clothes make a tasteless woman.’

  Between the wooden beams I spied a gratifying spider’s web to distract me from his caresses as he put on my bra. Incy Wincy spider climbed up the water spout, I hummed inside my head. My mother used to sing me this song when I was small and she still a mother. She would sit on the edge of my bed, twisting her fingers funnily to imitate the spider’s movements. Down came the rain and washed poor Incy out . . .

  ‘You are going to stick to my rules, Lena. Tidiness, cleanliness, discipline, respect, honesty, fidelity, loyalty. Whenever I come into a room you will position yourself so I can see you and you will stick your hands out. Do you understand? I want to check that your fingernails are clean and that you’ve got nothing hidden in your hands that could hurt me – or you, for that matter. Your times for using the toilet are seven o’clock in the morning, twelve-thirty, five in the afternoon and eight in the evening. I will help you with your personal hygiene. Unfortunately we don’t have running water here, only these canisters.’ He nodded towards the canisters I’d already seen. ‘But it’s fine so long as we’re not too wasteful. We have our own generator and are fairly well equipped otherwise. You’ll like it here.’

  With a rasping noise he pulled up the zip of my skirt and tugged from behind at the shoulder seams of my blouse before walking around me and running his splayed fingers through my hair.