You helped build your prison, Lena.
I peer over at Matthias Beck, a vein protruding on his forehead. He’s totally silent, mesmerized. But I suspect it’s just a matter of time. He won’t be able to stick this out, not for long.
“I lived for our weekends in the cabin. And I thought she felt the same way.” Rogner runs his hands roughly through his dark hair. When he jerks his hands back down, it’s now all shaggy where it was neat. “But I was mistaken. After a while she came up with more and more excuses as to why we couldn’t meet. She didn’t have time, she had to revise for exams. She had to go to a birthday party. Father, mother, grandmother—all of a sudden there were these endless birthdays. She also stopped answering the mobile phone I’d bought for her. For both of us, as I didn’t want Simone to get wind of anything.” He snorts, sounding both scornful and perplexed. I sense him getting ever more caught up in his story, this story becoming an experience he’s now reliving. “Who does she think she is?” his voice now drones through the room. “Who does she think I am? I’m the best journalist in the country, I know when someone’s lying to me. She’s lying. So I follow her. And I’m right. She’s meeting her ex-boyfriend again. Just when I’ve told my wife about us. I finally told her, just as Lena wanted. She wanted me to decide. So I told Simone I was leaving her. That I wanted to live with Lena.” He breaks off. At this moment, something happens; I can feel it. All of a sudden he looks unbelievably old. It may be just my imagination, or the unfavorable angle at which the gloomy light from the cooker hits his facial features and distorts them.
“That’s why,” Matthias Beck says, clearly having twigged something.
Rogner nods.
“I couldn’t stop some papers writing about it. Luckily, people in our business tend to be concise when reporting on suicide, to avoid encouraging other poor, desperate souls.” He rubs his brow, wearily, perhaps in the hope of banishing the images from his head. But in vain.
“Carbon monoxide poisoning. She took our barbecue into the bathroom, sealed the room completely and then lit some charcoal. It’s me who finds them when I come home from work. They’re lying in the bathtub, Pascal in Simone’s arms, almost like they’re asleep. But they’re not. They’re dead.” He takes his hand from his head. The expression that now flashes across his face suggests he’s come up with an idea. “Lena’s all I’ve got left now. I’m never going to relinquish control again. No more disasters like that again, I promise you, Pascal. From now on, Papa’s always going to take good care.”
It’s silent for a moment, and the silence assumes a tension that’s almost unbearable. As if an invisible, deadly gas were swirling around this room, just as it had in Rogner’s bathroom. Then Rogner clears his throat, and he appears to have returned from the past, he’s back with us, in the kitchen where the inevitable end is being played out.
“Lena wasn’t even startled when I intercepted her on the way home from a student party. Hey, Lars, she said and laughed. She stank of alcohol and grass. Haven’t seen you in ages. It had been precisely thirteen days. Thirteen days during which I’d buried my family and converted the cabin. She thought I was joking at first when I took her there. She thought it was a game, even something sexual, perhaps. A little goodbye game. Until I told her about Simone and Pascal. Then it dawned on her. She was never going to leave the cabin. For the first time in her life she was going to take on some responsibility, I’d make sure of that.”
“You … you wrote articles about her,” Matthias says, unable to believe what he’s hearing.
When Rogner looks at him I can see that the pain has vanished from his face at a stroke. He’s grinning again.
“That was my way of letting you know what sort of a girl your daughter really was. Besides, it meant I was always close to the investigation. That’s quite important when you’ve committed a crime and are not particularly keen on the truth coming to light.”
I can see Matthias Beck struggling. The vein on his forehead is throbbing; his lips are moving without any sound. And yet the question, this one question, comes out—probably all of us suspect it’s going to be the last one.
“Why did Lena have to die?”
Rogner sighs as he leans back in his chair and puts his head back.
“You think I killed Lena,” he begins cautiously. “But that’s not the case. It was an accident, not long after Sara was born. Our little one. In the beginning she just screamed…”
HANNAH
You always have to listen carefully, especially when Papa’s talking. I put the red crayon away some time ago. But that’s partly because my subject has moved. The woman’s not lying on the floor anymore, but sitting by the wall between Grandad and Mama. The carmine crayon won’t work for those patches on her face anymore. I’d need the claret one. Papa slammed her head really hard against the wall in the hallway. So hard that it went Bam! But no matter how big the wound is, blood generally dries very quickly. Speedy clotting of the blood raises the chances of survival when you’re injured. Once we had a mama at home who had a bleeding disorder. She bled a carmine red color for almost three days non-stop. Cleverly we laid her on a plastic tarpaulin, otherwise she’d have probably made everything dirty. Anyway, Papa’s just been telling the sad story about the boy in the bathtub. He was my brother, just like Jonathan’s my brother. I listened carefully, even though I know the story. Papa told it to me after the thing happened to Mama and Sara. He cried and said you always have to protect your family, otherwise you lose them. I bet he said that because I couldn’t stand Sara and felt very ashamed of this. Now he’s telling Grandad, Mama and the woman about Sara and how she did nothing but cry when she was born. Soon after that the coughing began too. Luckily, though, that didn’t last long. I remember how happy I was the first time she was quiet, because I thought we’d finally be able to sleep through the night again. “It’s not good,” Mama said, but she was wrong. Sleep is very good, and most of all, it’s important, as it allows the body to regenerate. “She needs to go to hospital!” She’d been saying this to Papa for a few days now, but Papa said, “It’s nothing, it’s just a minor cold. She’ll get better again soon.” Usually such words would satisfy Mama, but not that evening. She insisted that Sara had pneumonia. Pneumonia is an acute or chronic inflammation of the lung tissue, caused by a bacterial, viral or fungal infection. Papa said she wasn’t a doctor. And not a good mother either if she couldn’t make Sara better again. Mama cried, loudly.
Grown-ups always have to lock children in their room before they start arguing. Probably they hadn’t planned to argue and besides, Papa had already said, “That’s enough!” But Mama still cried, and she got louder and louder.
“What’s wrong?” whispered Jonathan, who was also hiding behind the bedroom door. We’d just finished brushing our teeth when we heard the agitated voices.
“Sara’s causing trouble again,” I whispered back.
“I’ve said that’s enough!” Papa’s lion voice. Jonathan ducked.
“Please! I don’t have to go with her,” Mama howled. “I’ll stay here. Just take her to hospital.”
Papa grabbed Mama’s arm.
“If you don’t stop right now…” he hissed at her.
“She’s got a temperature!”
“She’s getting better.”
Mama spat in Papa’s face. And she had a lion voice too.
“You are a vile human being! You’re allowing your own daughter to die! She’s not going to survive the night!”
Papa tried to calm Mama down. She’d never had a fit as bad as this. He held her by the throat, which he’d often done when she had a fit.
Turning to Jonathan, I said, “Let’s go to bed.” We really wanted to stay up until Mama came to read us a goodnight story. But as soon as we were in bed, we fell asleep. We were so tired because we’d slept badly all those nights when Sara just screamed. But that night it was nice and quiet.
Papa is talking about this right now: “But that night…”
&nb
sp; JASMIN
“… it’s terribly quiet.” Rogner sighs sadly then pauses for a moment. “I know it shouldn’t have happened,” he resumes. “Not again. Once again I didn’t take enough care. I failed. Just like you failed, Herr Beck. Just as all good fathers fail from time to time.”
“Don’t you dare,” Matthias Beck snarls, in pain, it seems. Rogner shrugs—not callously, but more like a man who’s got to the end of his story and is wondering what to say next.
Silence fills the room. Silence, which is interrupted by a soft, disconcerting sound. All eyes turn to Hannah, who’s started sobbing. It sounds like hiccoughs.
“She still thinks it’s her fault,” Rogner says, getting up from his chair. “Because she couldn’t stand the baby. But she just hadn’t got used to the new situation.”
I watch him walk around Hannah and plant a kiss on her forehead.
“It’s not your fault that Sara got ill. None of it is your fault, my darling.”
Matthias Beck is straining to breathe. It’s hard to watch this, but maybe that’s how it is. Love. It’s love. No matter how sick, distorted and misunderstood, it’s still love. Love that spurs us on. That turns us into monsters, each in our own way.
“Lars,” I say, stifling a spontaneous retch. That’s what he’s called, Lars. That’s his name, and it’s the first time I’ve uttered it.
Kirsten tries restraining me. She grabs my arm, whispers, “No, Jassy, don’t.”
I shake her off. Get to my feet. Lars Rogner is here because of love. Love for his family. I’m standing now and my knees are shaking. But I’m standing. He didn’t stop me from getting up. He didn’t even make a move to. He watches me. I take a first tentative step toward him. He allows me to. I take a second.
“I want to go home,” I say.
“Don’t bother, Jasmin,” he scoffs. “You know it’s over.”
I shake my head.
“If it really were over, you wouldn’t have bothered coming here. And you certainly wouldn’t have brought Hannah. You said you wanted Lena to finally take responsibility. But you bear some responsibility too, Lars. For your children, for me. Hannah wants us to be a family again, don’t you, Hannah?”
He looks at his daughter, who gives a hesitant nod.
My hip brushes the work surface. Two or three more steps and I’ll be standing right in front of him.
“I want us to be a family too.”
He narrows his eyes. “That’s a really pathetic attempt, Jasmin,” he says. But he doesn’t try to attack me. Now I know I’m right. It’s love.
Just one more step.
And a grab with the hand.
“In hospital they found out that I’m pregnant.”
Lars Rogner cocks his head. Sizes me up and down. He’s the best journalist in the country; he knows if you’re lying to him. And he can see it. But when he opens his mouth to hurl his verdict at me, all that comes out is a stifled gasp.
My hip brushes the work surface.
The knife block is right there.
And the hope, which is fixing his gaze on mine. Which has made him blind, at that moment or perhaps always.
His lips get narrower. His pupils flicker. His eyes say he doesn’t believe me. The sharp, burning pain in his stomach. Lars Rogner isn’t divine anymore, he’s no god. Just a human being like the rest of us, with the spark of hope that allows us to be taken in by even the most pathetic attempts.
Chaos in the background. Kirsten screaming. Matthias Beck yelling.
We block it out.
Just him and me and the moment in which I ram the knife into his stomach. It cuts everything, including meat.
MATTHIAS
“No! Don’t!”
I crawl over to Rogner, who’s now lying on the floor. He’s still breathing, albeit slowly.
“Tell me where Lena is!”
I press my hands on the spot where the red stain has seeped through the white material of his shirt and is getting visibly bigger.
“Please!” I beg.
There’s a rattling in Rogner’s throat.
“Call an ambulance,” I bellow at Jasmin Grass, who’s standing beside the body, staring at it as if paralyzed, the knife still in her hand. “I promised her mother I’d bring her home,” I keep imploring him.
The hint of a smile darts across Rogner’s face.
“From one father to another. Please!”
Rogner’s breathing is getting shallower. His eyelids begin to flicker.
I take my hands away from his stomach.
Somebody touches my shoulder. Jasmin Grass’s friend.
“Leave me alone!” I shout.
“The wood,” Rogner whispers hoarsely. “Behind your garden. She loved the garden.”
“Garden? Do you mean the plot of land outside of Germering? Grandma Hannah’s garden, yes?”
Rogner makes a sluggish movement with his head, which I take to be a nod.
I nod too, hastily.
“Behind our garden is Germering Forest. There, yes?”
“On the edge of the wood,” Rogner wheezes in confirmation. “So she can always look at the hydrangeas.”
“That’s where you buried them, is it? Will I find Lena and Sara there?”
“She loved the hydrangeas,” Rogner says, his eyelids twitching.
For some reason, I mumble, “I know.”
Then the smile darts across Rogner’s face again, quite clearly this time. His head falls to the side, his eyes stare vacantly. I sit beside him, his blood on my hands, his blood on my shirt.
After 5,013 days.
Ciao, Paps! See you soon!
I’m hit by a wave, which surges through my body. I jerk and sob and cry for my child. As if through a veil, I see Hannah, who’s got up from her seat at the kitchen table, and now moves to Rogner’s other side. She stretches out his limp left arm and sits on the floor, his arm around her. Puts her hand on his chest and her head on his shoulder. Whispers, “Goodnight, Papa.” And closes her eyes.
Gruesome discovery of corpses in Germering
Germering (MK)—Yesterday afternoon the bodies of three adult women and an infant were recovered from a communal grave in a wooded area near Germering. According to Chief Inspector Gerd Brühling, two of the bodies were those of Lena Beck, the Munich student missing since January 2004, and of her newborn daughter.
So far nothing is known about the identities of the other two women. According to Brühling, an initial forensic inspection at the site suggests that the two unknown women were bludgeoned to death. The cause of death of Lena Beck and her daughter has not yet been determined. All the bodies were taken yesterday to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Munich, where further examinations are now due to take place.
“Our intention is to identify the two unknown women as quickly as possible,” Brühling said. “We have to assume that they were reported missing by their families, who now deserve closure.”
JASMIN
“Really quite dry, isn’t it?”
Kirsten puts down today’s edition of Bayerisches Tagblatt and reaches for the bread basket. The swelling on the left-hand side of her face has gone down, leaving just a bruise that sometimes shimmers through the skin. The cut she sustained from Rogner is healing well. Ignaz strokes my legs, purring loudly as if he’s being powered by a small motor. My apartment, the “crime scene,” is still sealed off. I’m living with Kirsten at the moment—“for the time being,” as we’re calling it.
“What else do you expect them to write? That their very own star journalist was a murderer?” The thought that there were two other women sends shivers down my spine. Even though the police are bound to find out their identities soon, the question of why they had to die will perhaps never be solved. Perhaps they put up greater resistance, fought for their lives more doggedly than I did. Showed the angry god such defiance that all he could do was resort to extreme measures to prove his absolute power to himself and his children. Or they had to die because in his eyes thei
r performances as Lena simply weren’t convincing enough. Thinking about it now, I remember my first day in the cabin, when I awoke on the sofa, having blacked out in the storeroom.
Do you know what it sounds like when you bash someone’s head in, Lena? It’s like dropping a watermelon on to the floor. Bam!
Those words terrified me and I didn’t think for one second that they were empty threats. I didn’t doubt that he really had heard this horrific sound before. Several times, as it turned out. My thoughts are with the families of the two women, who will have to learn to live with the holes in their lives. And with the fact that they’ll never get to the bottom of it all. I know how difficult, how cruel that is. Unless, of course, Hannah and Jonathan bring themselves to talk about it one day. But first they’d have to be capable of understanding all that happened from a different perspective. Dr. Hamstedt thinks there’s a chance. She compares the view the children had of the world in the cabin with a view through a keyhole. The door is open now, just a crack for the moment so as not to overwhelm them. But the more the door is opened over time, the broader their view of things will become. One day, she thinks, they’ll manage to get things in the right perspective, even though that could take a long time and would also mean coming to terms with the fact that their father was a murderer.
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