Dear Child: The twisty thriller that starts where others end

by Romy Hausmann

  I’ll never forget the day I met a journalist in my office.

  ‘Lena is a model student,’ I said, showing him her semester reports as proof. ‘Even as a young girl she wanted to become a teacher. And so her studies are her top priority – besides her family, of course. Our relationship is very close.’

  A photographer the journalist had brought along took pictures of her reports and of me sitting upright in my chair, upright in every respect. Matthias Beck, then forty-eight, independent tax adviser with a successful practice, starched shirt and pinstripe suit, neat parting, rational, strong-minded.

  ‘We don’t know what’s happened to my daughter, but she’s already a victim in some way. So I’m not going to allow her to become the victim of a media smear campaign too.’ I’d specifically jotted down some notes beforehand, prepared in advance the sentences I was determined to say so I wouldn’t forget anything. ‘The way she’s presented in the media doesn’t reflect her character at all, and this type of reporting is also, in my opinion, hampering the police investigation.’

  ‘How are you coping with all of this?’ asked the journalist Lars Rogner, a smooth type with dark, gelled hair and a turned-up collar. This was a question I hadn’t prepared an answer to.

  ‘It breaks my heart,’ I said quietly, a lump in my throat.

  Rogner nodded sadly.

  ‘I can well understand that, Herr Beck. Terrible.’ Then he cleared his throat and asked, ‘How old was Lena when she started taking drugs?’

  A question like a fist, a hard right hand that hit me square on and made me slump into my chair.

  The following day, of course, Rogner’s paper didn’t publish the picture of Lena’s reports or a determined father sitting upright. It showed the heap of misery slumped in his desk chair. Father of missing party girl (23) from Munich: I knew nothing of her double life, ran the headline.

  Karin belted me when she read that. It took her almost a week, and half a packet of opipramol, before she finally believed me that I’d never said those words. After that I would get up earlier every day and get the paper from our mailbox before Karin did. I read it secretly in the garage, sitting on my fishing chair in case my legs gave way as I browsed all the rubbish about my daughter. When I was finished I waited a while for my circulation to return to normal. Then I would fold up the fishing chair, leave the garage and put the paper in our neighbour’s bin. I would force a smile on my face, go back into the house and make breakfast. Karin and I came to an understanding that I’d learned something.

  ‘At least she’s still in the papers,’ we persuaded ourselves. However painful it was, we shouldn’t care whether the police and people out there were looking for a model student or a wild party girl. The key thing was that they were still looking for her. The key thing was that she didn’t fall into oblivion. Nonetheless Karin made me promise that I’d keep my distance from journalists in the future.

  But now she’d found out that I’d intervened again. That it was me who’d passed Hannah’s photo to the press. It was a snapshot she’d let me take last week on one of my visits to the trauma centre after I’d shown her my camera.

  ‘Why the hell did you do it?’

  Karin is standing beside our dining table, her arms spread wide. I pick up the dishes she has already stacked and take them silently into the kitchen. Karin scurries after me.

  ‘Have you forgotten what happened the last time you got mixed up with those vultures? How first they tore Lena to pieces, then us?’

  ‘All I want is for them to keep away from Hannah,’ I say, making a pitiful attempt at an excuse as I run water into the sink to wash up. Karin’s incomprehension moans over the rushing of the water. Me of all people, who ought to have known better.

  ‘And I can’t believe you sent the photo to Lars Rogner!’

  Yes, Lars Rogner. It had to be him. After all, he was the only one who occasionally filed reports about the case once the world started turning again without Lena.

  ‘Look, he’s a father who’s experienced tragedy himself. If anyone understands what we’re going through, it has to be him.’

  Karin gives me a weary chuckle.

  ‘Are you talking about the story he told you back then? That his son supposedly died at the age of eight? Please. I bet that was just a ruse to win your confidence. Lars Rogner wasn’t thinking for one minute about Lena, or about us. All he’s ever been concerned about are his circulation figures, just like every other rag. And you can’t even see it.’

  ‘He didn’t just lose his son. His wife suffered severe depression and she killed herself and their child! It’s true. I read about it—’

  ‘You’re just saying that now because you don’t want me to ask you how gullible I think you are. If there were any truth to the story, he wouldn’t have done anything like that to us.’

  I sigh.

  ‘Come on, Karin, it’s okay. Maybe I didn’t think the photo thing through particularly well. But all I wanted was for people to see that Hannah’s a perfectly normal child. Not a zombie or the daughter of a monster. She’s Lena’s daughter.’

  I turn off the tap, roll up my sleeves and start scrubbing the pan Karin fried the steaks in.

  ‘Glasses, plates and cutlery first,’ she says, shoving me aside. ‘Pots and pans always at the end, otherwise the water gets filthy right away. Give me that.’ She puts her hand into the water to get the washing-up sponge in my hand. ‘I do understand, Matthias. You want to protect her, just as you wanted to protect Lena. But this isn’t the right way. You’re just going to cause more harm. And didn’t you say yourself that the little girl needs peace and quiet? So why drag her into the public spotlight? And, if the worst comes to the worst, us too?’

  I take the small kitchen towel from the oven handrail and dry my hands.

  ‘Rogner doesn’t know that the photo’s from me, if that makes you feel better. I created a new email address specially.’

  Karin chuckles again, but she still doesn’t sound amused.

  ‘Of course you did. Because you knew full well that if I found out you’d got involved with that riff-raff again you’d spend the rest of your days sleeping on the sofa.’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  I hang the towel back on the rail and roll my sleeves down.

  ‘Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll make sure of that, I promise.’

  ‘That’s something else I’ve been worried about,’ Karin responds, sighing. ‘But please promise me that you won’t make any solo efforts in the future . . .’ She breaks off when there’s a ring at the door.

  ‘Who can that be at this time of night?’ she whispers, then slaps a hand over her mouth, opens her eyes wide and gives the answer herself. ‘Gerd!’ she gasps. ‘They’ve found Lena’s body.’

  For a few seconds my senses fail me; the finality makes my chest constrict, blood rushes in my ears. My wife’s eyes are like saucers. They’re glassing over. The hand in front of her mouth is starting to tremble.

  The path from the kitchen through the hallway to the front door becomes contorted in slow motion. I sense Karin at my back, I can hear her breathing heavily. It’s a long way to the front door, and it’s strenuous. I try to comprehend that these will be the final steps I take as the father of a missing daughter. That the steps I will take in future will be as the father of a dead one. Gerd was right: there is a difference between conjecture and knowledge.

  Jasmin

  I press my lips together and stare at the ceiling. I hear Kirsten’s heels again, this time at small, jittery intervals. I don’t have to turn my head to know that now she’s standing in the doorway, staring at me incredulously. She didn’t make it as far as the chest of drawers.

  I picture her placing her hand on the squeaky door handle less than two minutes ago, the bedroom door handle, the door which for good rea
son is always open and has been closed recently for an even better one. I picture her face and how her heart must have burst when she entered the room.

  The white walls papered with you, Lena. With your story.

  The walls papered with all the articles I could find about you on the internet. Three hundred and twelve articles. That represents almost an entire packet of printer paper, a change of cartridge, my work for the whole of last night.

  I blink weakly when I hear Kirsten’s footsteps, now getting closer, tentatively, circumspectly, as if approaching a dangerous animal.

  ‘Jasmin,’ she says again.

  What else should she think, Lena? How can she not think I’m a madwoman, an obsessive? How could she avoid thinking I was wallowing in my misery? I’ve locked out the sun, freedom, the world. I ought to take a shower. Go to the dentist because of the hole in my jaw where I’m missing a molar. Go and have my hair dyed. Or at least ask Kirsten to get me a colourant from the chemist’s. All her life Jasmin had brown hair. Jasmin ought to open the windows to take a glimpse at the sky, any sky. After her escape from the cabin Jasmin ought to be alive. That’s what all the papers are saying. The victim, Jasmin G, survived her four-month ordeal.

  Survived.

  ‘Jassy?’

  Kirsten sits on the edge of the sofa. I make no attempt to look at her; my gaze is fixed stubbornly on the ceiling.

  ‘Why did you do that? Why have you stuck up all those newspaper articles? What are they for?’

  I close my eyes.

  ‘Jassy . . .’ Kirsten sounds as if she’s started crying. I feel her hand on my cheek. ‘You’re not well. You need help.’

  Scream as loud as you like, Lena. Nobody’s going to come and help you.

  ‘You need to go back to hospital, Jasmin.’

  They’ve forgotten you, Lena. You’ve just got us now.

  For ever and ever and ever.

  A shudder shoots through my body when Kirsten grabs my shoulders and begins to shake me.

  ‘Open your eyes, Jassy! Look at me!’

  Open your eyes, Lena. I know you’re awake.

  I obey.

  ‘Can you hear me, Jassy?’ A pale horror has bleached Kirsten’s healthy glow, leaving just the ample rouge marking her cheekbones like a failed attempt at warpaint. ‘Can you hear me?’

  I nod feebly. A single tear uses the momentum from this movement to free itself from the corner of my eye.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ I whisper.

  ‘Nothing that happened is your fault.’

  I shake my head. Another tear is released.

  ‘It’s my fault, that’s what they’re trying to remind me. Because of me the children don’t have a father anymore. Nor a home.’

  ‘Yes, right, the letter.’

  A second later Kirsten leaps up from the sofa. ‘Chest of drawers,’ I hear her murmur, before her heels fly across the laminate again. I wipe my eyes with the heels of my hands and sniff. For a while this remains the only noise, no footsteps, nothing suggesting any movement in the bedroom, no drawer being scraped open. Fleetingly I wonder if Kirsten’s actually here or whether her presence might have just been another trick played by my deranged mind. I struggle to my feet, breathe away the pain that’s flared up again and shuffle into the bedroom.

  No trick, she is here, really here. Only she hasn’t made it as far as the chest of drawers. Instead she’s sitting on the mattress, head back, her gaze sweeping the walls. With difficulty I sit down beside her. It’s pointless to deny how I feel. The walls are papered with my state of mind, it’s so obvious.

  ‘He never told me the reason,’ I begin, my voice cracking, once I’ve sniffed again and wiped my eyes. ‘I mean, I can imagine why he chose me. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was unlucky enough to look a bit like her.’ I gesture with my head at all the photographs. There’s barely an article which didn’t include a photo of you, Lena, and it’s almost always the same one, a snapshot. It looks as if you’d just turned around, as if you’d spun around a millisecond before the shutter was pressed. You’re brushing a few blonde hairs from your face and laughing; everything about you is laughter and so carefree. Last night, when my printer was working, whirring away non-stop, I even fancied I could hear your laughter, very quiet to begin with, like a breath. Then each time the printer spat out another image, it seemed to be closer and louder, as if you were here, with me in the same room.

  ‘Why did he choose her, Kirsten? Did she remind him of somebody too, just as I did? But in that case, how come she was allowed to keep her real name and I wasn’t? Or did he actually know her?’

  ‘Maybe she was just a coincidental victim, just like you in the wrong place at the wrong time. Do you think you’d feel better if you knew the reason?’ She shakes her head. ‘After I was attacked in that courtyard, I asked myself this same question a thousand times over. Why me? Why did it have to happen to me? I imagined the man watching me in the club. Maybe he was sitting in the bar, smiling at me as I served him a drink. And maybe I even smiled back in the hope of a decent tip. I really convinced myself that this is what happened, but as you know, I was completely wrong. The guy who raped me was never in the club. He didn’t wait until my shift was over and then follow me. He was just a guy I bumped into on the way home. As the police established later, he’d been partying in a different club and was drunk.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘He could have met anyone that night, or no one. He met me. Fate.’ She shrugs. ‘Sometimes there simply isn’t a reason, Jassy. Sometimes two people cross paths in a most unfortunate way and all you can do is accept this and somehow carry on.’

  ‘But they caught the guy who raped you. You had the opportunity to ask him why he did it. Even if all you found out was that there was no real reason.’ I stretch out my legs and wiggle my toes through my thick socks. My feet are cold, just as everything about me is cold and refuses to get warm again.

  Are you freezing, Mama?

  ‘I can’t ask my abductor because he’s dead. I don’t even know his name.’

  ‘The police will find that out soon enough.’

  ‘Do you know how long the police have been investigating this case? And no matter what they believe they’ve found out, all of it will still just be conjecture. He’s dead. Don’t you get that, Kirsten? She was his original victim, his reason, his motive.’

  ‘Jassy—’

  ‘How will I ever get closure if I don’t know the reason for it all?’

  Kirsten nods at the wall opposite. ‘Do you think the answer you’re looking for is in those newspaper articles?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think I just want to know who she was.’

  Kirsten laughs. I haven’t even mentioned how weirdly comforting it feels to be surrounded by your story and your photos. How it makes being on my own bearable because I don’t have to go through it on my own anymore. You went through the same thing, there are two of us. You’re here, Lena. You understand me.

  ‘Half of it is nonsense anyway. Just think about it, Jassy. They’re now writing that you were tied to a leash and fed from a dog bowl. Do you in all seriousness believe that by reading a few articles about Lena Beck you’ll know more than the police?’

  ‘Probably not,’ I say quietly.

  Kirsten makes a vague gesture with her hands. ‘You might as well pin up the articles relating to your own case, but you don’t! Because you know damn well how much of it is rubbish.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kirsten gets up, shaking her head, and goes over to the wall opposite.

  ‘Leave it!’ I shout when she takes out the first drawing pin. ‘Please, Kirsten. It helps me.’

  ‘No, Jassy. It doesn’t help you, quite the opposite. You won’t ever make any progress if this is the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning.’

&nb
sp; ‘Please,’ I say again.

  Kirsten sighs and pushes the drawing pin back into the wall.

  ‘Are you going regularly to your therapist?’

  ‘I’ll call her tomorrow, I promise.’

  Kirsten lowers her eyes and rubs her forehead again with a sigh. Then she looks up again suddenly, as if she’d remembered something important.

  ‘Chest of drawers, you said. Second drawer.’

  Matthias

  It’s not Gerd outside our door. It’s Mark Sutthoff, and now everything happens in quick succession. I try to close the door again, but he’s got his foot in, and in the background Karin bellows, ‘Matthias!’

  Mark Sutthoff in my house.

  Mark Sutthoff hugging my wife. My wife hugging Mark Sutthoff. As I stand in the hallway it feels as if I’m swaying.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Matthias, please,’ Karin says.

  ‘I’m sorry to turn up so late and without letting you know, but I’ve tried ringing several times and never got an answer.’

  ‘We unplugged the landline,’ my wife explains, now with a hand on Mark’s back, leading him into the living room. ‘Those people from the press. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing, it was unbearable. When did you get back to Germany, Mark?’

  I follow the two of them like an abandoned dog.

  ‘I just landed. I hired a car at the airport and drove straight here.’

  Mark, taking off his coat and throwing it over the armrest of the sofa as if he were at home here. Making himself comfortable on my sofa, his legs crossed casually. Requesting a glass of water, or a tea – but only if it’s no bother – when my wife asks him if he’d like anything. I start grinding my teeth when Karin scuttles into the kitchen to put the kettle on: ‘It’s no trouble at all, Mark.’