by Inge Löhnig
She went back into the bedroom and took up the diary again, reading up to the point where her mother wrote that she and Peter had decided to leave their partners. It will deeply hurt and offend Wolfi. He’s such a proud man. I have no idea how I’m going to break the news. But I still have time to think it over. Peter’s wife is going to a health spa for four weeks, although he’s got a heart condition and she’s only got imaginary migraines. We’re waiting until she comes back.
Caroline laid the diary aside. Mum had planned to leave Dad. Why hadn’t she? Had Peter led her on then chickened out when things got serious? But that would make his letters a charade, and they didn’t sound like that.
Brandenbourg. She knew that name from somewhere. She got up, switched on her laptop and went online. After two minutes she knew why the name was so familiar. Christian Brandenbourg was a well-known violinist, a member of the Munich String Players, who were famous for their exceptional recordings of Vivaldi. She even had one of their CDs on her shelf. If Christian had been twelve in 1963, she calculated, he could be Peter’s son. She fetched the CD, took out the sleevenotes and scanned his biography. Christian Brandenbourg had been born in Munich in 1951. Caroline put the disc in her CD player. Moments later there emerged the first strains of ‘La Primavera’, the first concerto from the Four Seasons.
*
Dühnfort reached Mariaseeon after a half-hour journey on the motorway and then back roads. The sun had long since sunk behind the hills, and the sky above the village was a deep blue. Houses, farms, barns and the old convent church, Maria Himmelfahrt, with its onion dome, stood like paper cut-outs against the darkening firmament. Dühnfort drove past the glowing shop windows of the pharmacy, bookshop and bakery, past the Postman’s Pub, which they’d used as a situation room last summer, and turned down the road that led to the lake.
To his left was Melanie and Franz Lechner’s house, which he’d rented when he had to give up his apartment in Pestalozzistraße. Next door was a small art-nouveau villa. It belonged to Agnes. He parked on the gravel driveway, fetched the wine and scallops out of the boot and went up to the front door. The copper beech stood out against the night sky. Last summer, a psychopath who’d been stalking Agnes had used it as a place to hide.
Two men had tried to destroy her when she’d rebuffed them. Dühnfort took a breath. He wanted to focus on the future.
Agnes answered the door. She wore jeans and a white cotton blouse, and was barefoot, as usual. Did she pad around the house like that in winter, too? Run down to the letterbox, perhaps? He thought it possible.
‘Hello, Inspector. Why are you just standing there?’ She stood on tiptoes and gave him a brief kiss on the cheek, while he suppressed the impulse to pull her close, kiss her and slide his chilly hands underneath her blouse and over her warm breasts. He wanted to hear her tinkling voice when she said, as she always did: Gosh, your hands are shockingly cold. He wanted to feel her body press against his, wanted to sink into her and forget everything. The hatred in Sabine Groß’s eyes, the jabbing knife, the seconds where he’d glimpsed the abyss, the fear that it would end like that one day. Pointless. Instead he took a step back.
‘I was thinking I’m about to become a serial killer.’ He raised the bag. ‘The scallops are still in their shells, although I ordered them pre-shelled.’
‘Then you’d better come in quickly so you don’t get caught.’
They went into the kitchen, the room he liked best in that old house, with its creaky floorboards and high ceilings. Dühnfort took the two bottles of Pouilly Fumé out of the bag and put one in the fridge. The other he uncorked, while Agnes took carrots and courgettes out of the vegetable drawer and placed them on the table. He poured two glasses, fished a large metal pan out of the cupboard, filled it with water and dropped the scallops in. Agnes had already spread a baguette with salted butter and put the plate down beside him. Then she fetched an apron from the hook on the door and handed it to him. Once he’d tied it on, they clinked glasses, ate a slice of baguette and got to work.
He wiped one of the scallops and placed it curved-side-down in the palm of his hand. Then he stuck a short, solid knife between the two halves of its shell, twisted it a little and opened it. Separating the flesh, he removed the white scallop from its orange coral. He preferred not to think that this procedure was killing the creature.
Agnes was sitting at the table, peeling carrots and cutting them into fine julienne strips. She caught his eye and smiled. ‘I’m assuming the picture you emailed me doesn’t mean you think I’m solid as a rock, does it?’
‘And you don’t really think I’m being strategic?’
‘No, I don’t. But I’d like a clean break. If you want to end our relationship, it’s only fair to say so.’
The word relationship struck him like an arrow, and he turned hastily to the next scallop. ‘I don’t want to end it. But it can’t go on like this. Maybe we can move our relationship onto a different footing.’
He heard the knife knocking against the wooden board as she cut the next carrot into strips. ‘You think I’m using you. You feel like you’re being eroded away by the constant barrage of the waves until you’re small and insignificant. Is that it? You’re a rock and I’m the all-devouring sea. Do you really think I’d play such silly power games?’
He hadn’t seen it like that. But Agnes’s interpretation of his picture contained a kernel of truth. The person with the stronger emotional connection to the other was in the weaker position. Vulnerable. But it wasn’t about that for him. He was afraid of losing himself in the relationship, giving up his goals and dreams.
‘Power? No. More a mismatch in expectations.’ He opened the next scallop, holding it clamped in his left hand. The plaster was damp, and the wound throbbed again.
‘You haven’t talked about this before. To be honest, though, I’ve got the same impression from you as you have from me. I’m just a little bedtime fun, and you don’t seem particularly interested in anything beyond that.’
Dühnfort turned round. Had he really given that impression? Was this all just a misunderstanding, because, as usual, he hadn’t opened his mouth? He couldn’t read the expression in her blue-grey eyes. In his trouser pocket, his phone began to ring. ‘Sorry.’ He took it out and answered.
‘Tino, how are you.’ It was his father. His voice sounded both flustered and happy. ‘Can you imagine it! I’m a grandpa. Victoria and Julius have had a lovely little daughter. He’s disappointed it’s not a son, but I’m just as pleased with a girl. There aren’t enough of those in our family. She weighs more than three-and-a-half kilograms. A cute baby, the prettiest one on the ward.’
Is he ever going to stop? thought Dühnfort. He’d rarely heard such a torrent of words from his father. At the same time he felt a surge of jealousy, and a sense of helplessness and failure. It was his dream too, but it was his brother who had done what seemed to edge further out of Dühnfort’s reach with every passing day. ‘That’s great news.’ He listened for a while longer, asked a few standard questions about the birth and the health of the mother, then ended the conversation. ‘Give my best to Julius and Victoria.’
Agnes was standing at the sink, washing courgettes. He went up behind her, put his arms round her and laid his head on her shoulder. It was warm in the little hollow, and it smelled faintly of salt and wind. If she loved him and would marry him . . .
Agnes pulled away and turned round, the courgettes dripping in her hand. ‘That’s exactly what I was about to say. If I’ve understood correctly, that was your dad on the line. You’ve just become an uncle, so you have a brother or a sister. We’ve known each other for four months, but you’ve never mentioned any siblings. You shut me out of your life. When it comes to the bedroom . . .’
It was all a misunderstanding. Relief broke over him in an enormous wave. He pulled her close and kissed her. She returned his kiss, dropped the courgettes into the sink and ran her damp hands through his hair. Tugging off the stupid apron, he
let his hands wander underneath her blouse. ‘Ugh, cold,’ she said. As always. It was like coming home at last. He’d never told her what he felt for her. ‘I love you.’ The words were out almost before he’d thought them. They broke the dam. He laid his head back in that wonderful hollow. ‘I love the little scar on your eyebrow, I love your courage and your independence. You’re the only woman I’ve ever met who knows how to cut julienne vegetables, and I love you for that too. I love you because my tummy fits perfectly in the little hollow underneath your ribs. I want to marry you and have children with you.’ His heart was suddenly pounding hard and fast. He took a step back, looked into her eyes and knew it all before she said it. In the grey-blue of her irises was a fearful light that sparked a dull ache inside him.
‘But you know . . . I’m not there yet. I like you a lot . . . madly, maybe I even love you. I don’t know . . . but I do know one thing: I can’t imagine being a mother again. My child is dead . . . I can’t replace her.’ As she spoke, she leaned back against the edge of the sink, creating the greatest possible distance between their bodies. ‘Just give us time. Let it develop.’
‘And then?’ he asked, in a voice that was strange to him, taking a step back. ‘Then you’ll tell me in six months or three years or however long I’m stupid enough to play this game that you’re sorry.’
‘I can’t offer you more than time. If that’s not enough for you . . .’
‘It isn’t. I want clarity. Either there’s a chance of us becoming a couple – a real one, not just in bed – or we’re ending it now.’
She looked him in the eye and her face lost all softness, tensing, her expression hardening. ‘Nobody pressures me. Nobody, no matter how much I . . . never again.’
Saturday, 18 October
Albert was still sleeping when Babs left the apartment with Leon and Noel and took them to school. The buses had already arrived, among a swarm of parents, children and teachers, a cheerful hubbub. She said goodbye to the boys, running a hand through their hair. A hug or a kiss would have been so embarrassing. So would staying and waving them off. ‘Mum, you don’t have to wait.’ Noel turned away and got onto the bus to find a seat for himself and Leon.
Leon hesitated beside her. ‘You’re not getting a divorce, right, Mum?’
‘Don’t worry. Parents fight sometimes, your dad’s right about that. But then you smooth things over.’
Noel yelled at Leon to hurry up. Grabbing his rucksack, Leon climbed aboard. In the open doorway he waved at his mother, and then he was gone.
Babs drove home, picking up breakfast rolls from the baker on her way, then went upstairs. In the stairwell she bumped into Caroline. She looked terrible. Pale and haggard. ‘There you are. I thought no one was in.’
‘The boys are going on a school trip. I just took them to the bus. Albert’s still sleeping.’
‘Like a log, apparently.’
‘Maybe he’s in the shower. Have you had breakfast?’
Caroline shook her head. ‘I need someone to talk to.’
They went upstairs. Babs put down the bag of rolls in the hall, slipped out of her coat and hung Caroline’s on a peg. As she did so, she noticed Albert’s coat was missing. The bedroom door was ajar, the bed empty. Albert was gone. Where could he be going at eight in the morning? She went into the kitchen. No note on the table. Yet again, he’d simply vanished. Who did he think she was? His cleaning lady and housekeeper and occasional proper fuck? ‘Bastard!’ She reached for the phone and dialled his mobile number.
Caroline watched her. ‘You’re practically sending out sparks. What’s wrong?’
Albert had switched off his mobile. Babs banged the receiver back into its cradle. ‘Albert seems to be stepping into his father’s shoes. I think he’s got a girlfriend.’
While she brewed coffee and Caroline laid the table, Babs poured out her heart. ‘On Wednesday he disappeared after a fight and only returned on Thursday evening. With roses, but still. He spent the night at your parents’ place. He says. And yesterday evening we had a dreadful row. I lumbered him with the kids, that’s how he sees it.’
‘Oh, Babs.’ Caroline hugged her. ‘I feel like everything’s falling apart.’
‘I think he’s having an affair with his receptionist. And now he’s gone again, and he hasn’t even said where he keeps going. After the row yesterday he simply left. He didn’t come back until one in the morning.’
The coffee was ready. Babs put it on the table and poured one for Caroline, then one for herself. ‘I didn’t ask him where he was. I don’t want any more arguments.’ She passed Caroline the bread basket. ‘Sorry. I’m offloading all my problems on to you, and you’re the one who needs to talk.’
Caroline looked pale. There were deep shadows under her eyes, and the corners of her mouth had frozen into a tense expression. ‘I simply can’t believe that Bertram’s dead, that he shot himself. If only he hadn’t taken the gun from that Russian. If only Albert had phoned my mobile instead of babbling into the answering machine at my flat. He knew I was in Frankfurt, and everyone calls me on my mobile anyway. I practically missed his message. There are so many ifs that could have prevented this, and none of them happened. Why not?’
There was no answer to that. Babs squeezed Caroline’s hand. ‘Don’t blame yourself. You both wanted to help him. Nobody could have predicted he’d really do it, and so quickly at that.’
‘We should have given him the money. If Dad had just said he’d changed the will . . .’ Caroline began to tear up a bread roll. ‘I feel like I’m being ripped apart, into tiny little shreds. Next week’s the board meeting, too. I don’t know how I’m going to cope. And I fought with Marc.’
‘Was it very bad?’ asked Babs. ‘Or can you patch things up?’
Caroline shook her head. ‘He knew that I suspected him of . . . oh my God, I can’t even say it out loud.’ She dropped her head into her hands and groaned. ‘I’m such a silly cow. I thought he only wanted to marry me to get a leg up in business.’
It couldn’t be true. What had put that idea in her head? And then she couldn’t hide her thoughts from him. The phone began to ring. If that was Albert . . . Babs got up. ‘I’ll be right back.’
But it was Marc. ‘Is Caroline with you? I can’t get hold of her. This Bertram H. the newspapers are saying shot himself – that’s not your Bertram, is it?’
‘Yes, it is. Caroline’s here now. She’s not doing well.’
‘Can I talk to her?’
‘Of course.’ Babs went into the kitchen with the phone. ‘It’s Marc.’
Caroline’s head jerked up in surprise, and she took the receiver. ‘Marc. I’m so sorry,’ she began.
Babs didn’t want to disturb her, so she went to make the beds. Did Albert regret what he’d said? Perhaps he hadn’t meant it like that. He and Caroline were in an extraordinary situation. How could she expect him to carry on as normal after such a terrible series of blows? Instead of taking the strain off him, supporting him and comforting him, she’d saddled him with household problems she could just as well resolve by herself. Right now it was all just too much for him. Surely it was understandable he’d overreacted last night? Her – what had he called it? – banging on about justice and morality must have sounded like she was taunting him. His father had been murdered, Bertram had shot himself, and Albert was tormented with guilt because he hadn’t prevented it – and she was talking about morality. What had Caroline just said? I’m such a silly cow. Me too, thought Babs.
*
Bertram had, in fact, been to the petrol station to buy a bag of charcoal. He was clearly recognisable on CCTV. So there was an explanation for the presence of his fingerprints on the boot. Still, the murder had taken place one day later, and the traces in the car did come from Bertram’s bicycle, and there was no explanation for that.
Dühnfort bought a cup of coffee and a bar of dark chocolate, thanked the manager and left the petrol station.
His vehicle was parked next to the ca
rwash. Dühnfort got in, put the CCTV recording in the glove compartment, broke off a square of chocolate and put it in his mouth. Just before eight. The fog was beginning to lift. Dühnfort removed the cover from the paper cup and drank the hot coffee.
Last night he’d got no sleep. He’d made the stupidest of all possible mistakes by pressuring Agnes and giving her an ultimatum. Then he’d acted like a total idiot, leaving without a word and letting the door slam behind him. The whole night he’d tossed and turned in bed, ashamed of his stupidity and the unreasonable way he’d left, until at six he couldn’t take it any more and got up. Roughly half an hour later he’d left his flat.
Dühnfort emptied the coffee cup and dialled Alois’s number. ‘Has the traffic footage come in yet?’
‘Not yet.’ Alois’s voice sounded blurry, as if he’d just been asleep.
‘What’s taking so long?’
‘I’ve already told you.’
‘Shall I go and look for them myself? Or are you finally going to get your arse in gear?’
‘Don’t usually hear that kind of language from you.’ Something rustled in the background. ‘Relax, I’ll leap straight out of bed and see whose arse I need to get in gear. Bye.’ Alois hung up.
Dühnfort took a breath. He couldn’t act like that. It wasn’t his style; he shouldn’t take his frustration out on his subordinates.
He started the engine and headed for the motorway, images from the crime scene running through his head. An isolated location. No curious neighbours, no passers-by to notice anything. Just one old lady, living a hundred yards away.
The motorway slip road was approaching. Dühnfort, following a spontaneous impulse, drove straight past it. When he reached Heckeroth’s cabin a few minutes later, the sun was breaking through the clouds. Raindrops sparkled in the grass, the roof tiles shone like burgundy, and a gust of wind plucked orange leaves from the sycamore, sending them fluttering to the ground. Dühnfort drove on, to the neighbour’s house.