Dear Child: The twisty thriller that starts where others end

by Romy Hausmann

  The children reached for their toothbrushes, which were in two colourful plastic mugs on the shelf above the basin. I found the sight of these two mugs perverse. As I felt with my tongue the new gap between my teeth, I imagined this man, your husband, like thousands of other customers, standing by the toiletries and lovingly choosing designs that would appeal to your children. On the boy’s blue mug, a knight on a horse, and on the girl’s pink mug, a princess dancing in a meadow full of flowers. I pictured this man standing at the checkout, paying for the toothbrush mugs and nobody suspecting that they weren’t destined for a normal home, but for this hole where the inhabitants were locked up.

  ‘Cleaning the bathroom is, of course, the housewife’s job. But no worries, I’ll see to the toilet myself.’ I only realised later what he meant by that. As there was no running water in the cabin, we used a compost toilet where the faeces went straight into a container filled with bark mulch, which had to be emptied from time to time – outside. Obviously he couldn’t leave this task to the housewife, because outside didn’t exist for her anymore.

  ‘Right,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘The three minutes are up.’

  As if on command, the children spat froth into the basin in sync. Then, one after another, they washed their faces with water from the canister.

  ‘Mama’s going to take you to bed tonight,’ he told them with a lavish smile.

  ‘Yay, finally!’ the boy beamed, patting his cheeks dry with a towel.

  Your husband led me outside into the hallway. The girl followed us, closing the door behind her. I had no idea why we were waiting until the boy came out and the girl took his place in the bathroom. I realised he was allowing them to go to the loo unsupervised, and this gave me the whiff of another escape opportunity. Even though all I could think about was the toothbrush mugs with the childish designs. If I could break them somehow. Broken plastic can be very sharp – a weapon.

  *

  The children shared a tiny room with just about enough space for a bunk bed. The wooden walls were filled with paintings and spidery drawings the children had done themselves. I tried to make out the subjects of these pictures, but the light, again coming from a single bare bulb, was too dim. A window: boarded up, of course. The boy climbed up a ladder to the top bunk; the girl crawled into the bottom one.

  ‘You have to sit here,’ the girl said rather robotically, patting a space beside her. ‘That’s what you always do.’

  I looked over my shoulder at your husband, who leaned against the door frame, his arms crossed and a smile on his face. Tentatively I approached the bed and sat down, my head bowed and back bent, so as not to hit the top bunk.

  ‘And now you’re going to tell us a story. As always.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Look, Mama!’ The boy’s head suddenly appeared beside mine. He was dangling head first over the wooden board that prevented him from falling out at night. ‘I can fly!’

  ‘Stop it, Jonathan,’ the girl hissed. ‘That’s dangerous. And we want to hear a story now.’

  ‘Okay,’ he grumbled, swinging his torso back upwards. Above me the mattress bulged through the slatted frame as he got himself into a comfy position.

  ‘I want to hear something about aeroplanes!’

  The girl clicked her tongue.

  ‘It’s not your decision. I’m the older one, I get to choose.’

  ‘You always get to choose!’

  ‘Yes, and it’s only fair—’

  ‘Enough!’ All three of us flinched. Your husband. ‘No story tonight now. Get up, Lena.’

  ‘But Papa,’ I heard the boy above me say.

  ‘No. You two have no manners. Get up, Lena!’

  I don’t know why I stayed sitting down. Maybe it was his abrupt change of mood that paralysed me, or perhaps the overall situation, the shocking normality of an argument between siblings in these shockingly different circumstances. But I sat there, just staring.

  ‘Get. Up. Now. Lena.’

  I couldn’t breathe. Every word, and the way he emphasised them, felt like the stab of a knife into my lungs. I went flaccid, started breathing shallowly, almost panting. Then I noticed a gentle touch on my knee. Your daughter’s hand. I looked at her.

  ‘You have to get up now,’ she whispered, barely audibly. For a fraction of a second we looked each other in the eye. Then she swiftly rolled over, so I could only see her narrow back, and pulled the duvet over her shoulders. I stood as if in a dream, as if hypnotised by her voice.

  ‘Say goodnight to the children, Lena,’ your husband said, now smiling again.

  ‘Goodnight, children.’

  ‘Goodnight!’ came the reply in unison as he closed the door behind us. As with the bathroom door earlier, he took a key from the top of the frame and locked the door. He was locking the children in overnight. I put a hand in front of my mouth to stifle a gasp.

  ‘Right, then,’ he said with a smile once he’d replaced the key. ‘Now to us . . .’

  *

  I give a start. There is a loud ringing, which for a moment goes unnoticed by the others. Then Cham, who seems lost in thought, gives a slight start too, and his notebook and pen slip from his lap to the floor. He leaves them where they are and pats feverishly at his jacket, then puts a hand inside and fishes out a mobile.

  ‘Giesner,’ he grunts. I try to make out the fragments on the other end of the line, but the disruptive beeping of the ECG machine makes it difficult. He says, ‘Okay, wait a moment,’ takes the phone from his ear and gives me a penetrating look. ‘Our people have found the cabin. Is there anything they should be prepared for when they go in?’

  I shake my head. ‘I hit him, with a snow globe. I . . .’ I pause, grabbing the back of my head.

  ‘You knocked him out?’

  I nod.

  ‘Go in,’ Giesner orders into the phone.

  I sink back into the pillow and close my eyes. In my mind I hear a voice that says, ‘Can you see how nice it is here?’

  ‘Yes, darling, it’s really nice here,’ I reply silently and smile.

  Lena

  ‘Lena?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Do you think you could tell us more?’

  I open my eyes and try sitting up again. At once Munich leaps up from his seat to arrange the pillow behind my back so I’m comfortable.

  ‘Just give me a moment, okay?’

  He gives a sympathetic nod and Cham says, ‘Take all the time you need.’

  I ponder where I could begin again. I think about the things that can’t be said, Lena. I have to put brackets around those things that the policemen don’t absolutely need to know about. But you, Lena, you should know what he did to me.

  I look from Munich to Cham. Munich is rubbing his hands together awkwardly. With a sigh, Cham leans forward in his chair and picks up the notebook and pen which slipped from his lap when his mobile rang. I reckon they’re now expecting to hear about a rape, a really rough, brutal episode. It would be perfectly understandable if I had to compose myself before talking about it. What they can’t imagine are those other things.

  This is just for you, Lena.

  *

  ‘Right, then,’ he said with a smile once he’d replaced the key. ‘Now to us . . .’

  My shoulders tense, my back stiffens and I clench my fists. My expectations now were no different from those of the policemen who’d listened to my story up to this point.

  I thought of Kirsten and how she came back home last year, at that hazy, grey time between night and morning when everyone is in bed. Nobody hears your stifled screams, nobody crosses your path by chance, and there’s nobody to wrestle the beast from you or offer any help. I thought of how she slid down the wall in our hallway, with a deathly pale, bruised face and torn dress, and how I squatted beside her, but not daring to put my arms aroun
d her.

  ‘Why didn’t you fight back?’ I asked, because I was too stupid, or just too tired, not yet clear-headed, having been jolted out of my sleep when I heard Kirsten come crashing into the apartment. Because I’d been sleeping like everyone else, while Kirsten was attacked in a rear courtyard.

  Kirsten turned her ashen, unfamiliar-looking face to me and said, ‘Because at that moment, I was dead. I didn’t have a body anymore. No arms to thrash about with. No legs to kick him with. And my mind was elsewhere.’

  That’s what I was banking on, Lena. That beneath his body I would be dead at once, just hoping that it would be over quickly. I stood tall, clenched my fists and arched my back, even though it still ached after the pummelling and kicking your husband had inflicted on me earlier that day. I raised my chin and looked him in the eye. I thought of Kirsten, who had survived her own death. Who was so strong. I would be strong too. Even if he took my body, he wouldn’t have my soul.

  ‘Okay, then,’ I blustered in a mixture of defiance and wantonness. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  I could see his face crumple, Lena. The features just slipped away, the entire construct collapsed and it took him a while to reassemble it. I’d caught him off-guard. His left eye twitched and the smile he assumed looked uncertain. But he was still stronger than me, he was the man who didn’t joke, he was God and I a mere worm, something he needed to prove to me. Grabbing me by the arm, he dragged me down the hallway back to the bathroom.

  ‘Your times for using the toilet are seven o’clock in the morning, twelve-thirty, five in the afternoon and eight in the evening,’ he said again, fumbling for the key in his trouser pocket. ‘It’s eight o’clock now.’ I could see his fingers trembling, only very slightly, but they were trembling. It was a blessed moment, Lena.

  He unlocked the door, I stepped in and turned around in the expectation that he would close the door again behind me. After seeing him let the children go to the loo on their own, I didn’t entertain the possibility that he might do any different.

  ‘Go on then,’ he said, motioning with his head. I staggered over to the toilet. This had to be a test, a trial of strength in return for the mini triumph I’d just had.

  ‘Do it!’

  I teetered backwards. Your husband stood in the doorway with repulsive nonchalance, his left hand propped against the frame, his head cocked, and wearing a smile from which all the uncertainty had disappeared.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Go to the toilet, Lena.’

  I pursed my lips and slowly shook my head.

  ‘I said, go to the toilet.’

  ‘Then get out of here. I’m not going to do it with you watching me.’

  ‘Oh yes, you will, Lena. Because you’re going to do everything I say.’

  When he took a step towards me I threw my hands up in the air and panted, ‘Wait. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ I wanted to fight, I wanted to be strong, I really did. But I couldn’t risk him giving me another beating today. He stopped and eyed me suspiciously.

  ‘I . . . I don’t need to.’

  No movement, just his gaze. I tried to hold it.

  ‘I said, 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 dropped my hands and nodded vigorously.

  ‘I know. I heard what you said. Seven in the morning, twelve-thirty, five and eight in the evening. But I don’t need to.’ I felt a passable smile dart across my lips. ‘I don’t need to,’ I said again. ‘We can go to bed straightaway.’

  It all happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to step out of the way, raise my arms, or even breathe or blink.

  Do you want to know, Lena? Do you want to know what your husband does when you refuse to go to the loo in front of him? Did this ever happen to you, perhaps?

  If so, then you know what it’s like to be wrenched to the ground. To curl up into a ball on the floor, your hands up to your face to protect the sore stitches on your forehead. You will have tried to take one last deep breath before he starts kicking you in the stomach. You will have screwed up your eyes in anticipation of a dreadful pain. But it doesn’t come. You will have taken another deep breath because it’s coming now, now, the pain . . . but no. No kicking, no pain, just a strange, rasping sound. You will have dared to take a peek through your splayed fingers and you’ll have seen him, your husband, standing over you, legs apart, his hand on the zip of his trousers. In fear, you’ll have forgotten to breathe for a third time, and now it’s essential because you’ve got to hold your breath as he relieves himself above you, over you, and it’s warm and burns your skin, seeping through your clothes; your clothes and your hair soak it all up. You know what it’s like to struggle but there’s no hope of getting away. The sensation as the last splashes hit you right in the face, you feel a drop on your tightly pursed lips, you hear that noise again, zzzzzzip, then he, your husband, says calmly, ‘I hope you now understand why it’s so important to stick to the times for using the toilet, Lena. Otherwise, you see, something might go wrong.’

  After that you were probably sick, Lena, and your husband made you clean the bathroom, unconcerned by how much you were trembling and retching in disgust. You cleaned the bathroom, on your knees, with wet hair and soaked clothes while he sat watching on the edge of the zinc bathtub, his legs crossed casually. Perhaps it took hours before he was satisfied with what you’d done. Afterwards you had to get undressed and stand in the bathtub. He washed you; you were dirty, after all. ‘Oh, Lena, how come you’re so dirty again?’ Then he dried you and took you to the bedroom.

  If these things happened to you too, Lena, then you’ll know that you can’t simply talk about them, because what they do to you is very different from the rough, brutal things which are awful, but not new. The police know about these things. They’ve heard about them often enough now to be sitting here beside me, their eyes lowered and rubbing their hands. Although they feel moved, such things are part and parcel of their job, and once they’ve jotted down the word ‘rape’, they’re done. No further details needed. A man lies on top of a woman and she probably feels pain. I can be one of these women, Lena. I will be one of them once forensics have combed their way through the cabin and inspected the sheets. There’s nothing I can do about that.

  But I definitely won’t be the woman who crawled around a bathroom on my knees in a pool of urine and vomit. I have put that in brackets. They are fixed and non-negotiable.

  *

  The policemen, meanwhile, are still waiting patiently for the inevitable part of my story. I nod as a sign that I’m ready to resume talking.

  ‘After he’d locked the children up for the night, he took me into the bedroom. A set of handcuffs hung from the right-hand bedpost. I wasn’t going to be getting out of there.’ I pull up the sleeve of my hospital gown and hold out my right arm to Cham and Munich in turn. There’s still a pale red ring of chafed skin around my wrist.

  ‘He shackled me to the bedpost, always. Even when we went to sleep. I think he did it to stop me from secretly getting up to look for the keys. Or trying to smother him with a pillow.’

  Cham jots something in his notebook.

  ‘So . . .’ he starts hesitantly, ‘. . . he, erm . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply.

  Just ‘yes’. That’s enough to confirm the roughness, the brutality, Lena. It’s that simple. Maybe at a later date a policewoman will try to find out the exact details. That’s what happened to Kirsten after she was attacked in the rear courtyard. They send the female officers because they think it’s easier to discuss this sort of thing with women. But ultimately all the female officers do is ask which orifice was involved and whether the woman conveyed clearly enough that she didn’t agree to the ‘intercourse’.

  ‘Did you say no?’ the policewoman asked Kirsten. This was enough for Kirst
en to ask back, ‘Are you being serious?’

  For a short while I have a bit of peace.

  Until Cham’s mobile rings again. I can’t make out what’s being said so I turn over and drift off. No handcuffs tonight . . . I smile, no handcuffs.

  *

  Cham clears his throat. The hand holding his mobile is now in his lap. The conversation is already over. Either it was very quick or I must have nodded off briefly.

  ‘What?’ I ask, trying to sit up again. This time Munich doesn’t help me with the pillow. I bet he’s thinking I’d rather struggle with it myself than have to be so physically close to a man, especially now.

  Cham waits until I’ve made myself comfortable. Then he says, ‘They’ve got the man. The boy too.’

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘They’ve got them,’ Cham says again, as if that were an answer. I nod all the same, say, ‘Thank God,’ and then, because it’s over, because it really is over for good, I add, ‘Jasmin Grass. My name is Jasmin Grass. I was born 28 March 1983 in Regensburg. My mother’s name is Susanne. She’s Grass too. Could you call her?’

  Cham looks surprised, but only momentarily.

  ‘Of course, not a problem.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I smile.

  ‘But there’s just one more thing, Jasmin.’

  My smile falters. The way he emphasises my name. His face.

  The beeping of the ECG machine takes on a new rhythm.

  ‘What?’ I ask cautiously.

  ‘You told us earlier that you knocked your abductor out.’ He glances at his notebook. ‘With a snow globe.’

  ‘Yes.’ I nod vigorously. ‘Why?’

  Cham says nothing, looks at Munich, looks at me, looks back at Munich and then hands him his mobile. Munich takes a close look at the display and then fixes his eyes on me.

  ‘What?’ I ask to the millisecond beat of the ECG machine. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Matthias

  For a moment there was peace, an unfamiliar acceptance, just Karin and I and the sky, where the new day was taking hold. This moment, as we clutched each other, was like an island, a tiny, welcome refuge. No doubt we wouldn’t be able to stay where we were for ever; soon the door would open and someone would come in – Gerd or Giesner, or one of their men, to jolt us back into reality. I realised this, but I tried so hard not to think about it that of course I couldn’t help thinking about it. And then it was Karin who completely ruined the moment.