by Helen Grant
Damn you, I thought sickly. I can’t even go in and out of my own front door in broad daylight.
I could outfox him, though. The bakery’s back door was accessible via a little alley which ran behind the building. If I went in that way, I could be through the kitchen and upstairs with all the doors locked before Julius even realized that I was home.
Then what? I asked myself. You can’t hide forever.
I turned off the Werther Strasse, half ran up the side street to Alte Gasse, then slowed my pace. I risked a glance over my shoulder, aware of how furtive my behaviour must look. The street was deserted; no sign of anyone following me. I reached the alley and looked back again, but still there was no one. Fumbling for my keys, I slipped into the alley. It was short, a bottleneck leading to a small yard where Achim Zimmer had habitually smoked his cigarettes. I actually had the back door of the bakery in my sights, was within a couple of seconds of reaching it, the keys in my outstretched hand, when it all went wrong.
Even if my nerves had not been strained to the extent that I was almost humming like an electrical wire, I would have jumped. All I was aware of was a movement glimpsed out of the corner of my eye and then, before I had time to think of turning, of trying to escape, I was struggling in his grasp. I didn’t need to look up into his face to know who it was. Julius had found me.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
For a moment I was too shocked to make any sound at all, but then I opened my mouth to scream and suddenly Julius’s hand was over it. Panicking, I tried to bite him, twisting in his grip but unable to free myself.
‘Shhhh,’ he said.
I kicked him as hard as I could by way of answer, but at close quarters it was hard to do any damage.
‘Steffi, stop it,’ he said.
I had no intention of stopping. I had no idea what Julius had in mind, but the mere fact that he had lurked here unseen, waiting to waylay me, said that it could not be anything good. Julius couldn’t hold both of my arms while keeping a hand clamped over my mouth. I managed to get the hand holding the keys free and tried to hit him with it, using the keys as a weapon. He saw the blow coming and took his hand away from my mouth for long enough to pluck the keys right out of my grasp. I drew breath to yell for help and found myself pushed back against the wall of the yard, with Julius’s face just centimetres from my own.
‘Don’t,’ he said.
I eyed him, ready to make a break for it the instant the opportunity presented itself.
Julius must have read my intention in my eyes. He held the keys up in front of my face. He saw me flinch back and rolled his eyes.
‘Calm down.’
He might just as well have been an executioner telling a condemned person to put their neck on the block. My pulse accelerated until I could feel the blood pounding thunderously in my head, a drumming that threatened to split my skull apart.
‘Look,’ said Julius, and his voice seemed to be coming from a long way away, muffled as though I were hearing him underwater. The pressure that was holding me against the wall slackened but he still had my arm in a steely grip. He was pulling me towards the back door of the bakery, my keys in his free hand. ‘I’m going to unlock the door, OK? Can you please not scream?’
I would have screamed anyway, but looking wildly around the bare yard I wondered who would hear me. Alte Gasse was deserted and none of the neighbours had a view into the yard. The kitchens might be a better bet – I’d spent half my life in there and knew where everything was: the heavy rolling pin, the knives, all the things that could be used as weapons. Julius knows them too, I realized with sudden horror. Julius was dragging me to the bakery door and if he got me inside, where my screams would be muffled, I was staking my life on the fact that I knew the place better than he did.
It was no use. The door was open and Julius was pulling me after him. I did my best to resist, bracing myself in the door frame, but the old stone threshold was worn smooth and my shoes just slid across its shiny surface. With horrible inevitability, my fingers unpeeled from the frame.
As soon as he had me inside, Julius closed the door and locked it. I looked around for another escape route, but he still had my keys clasped in his fist. There was no way to open the door connecting to the cafeteria area. I backed away from him, wanting to put as much distance between us as possible, to try to judge his moves before he made them.
‘Steffi,’ said Julius, ‘calm down, OK? I’m not threatening you.’
He took a step towards me and I slipped around the corner of one of the stainless-steel units, putting its reassuring solidity between the two of us.
Pull yourself together, I told myself as I faced him across the dull metal surface. There has to be a way out of this. Think.
Julius put his hands up in a conciliatory look I have no weapons sort of way, then took a step closer. I moved along the side of the metal unit, ready to round another corner if he tried to come any closer. I had a sudden vision, vivid and absurd, of Julius chasing me around the kitchen, brandishing some bakery implement, a palette knife or an egg whisk, the pair of us running round in circles until one of us was too exhausted to run any more. I looked at Julius, at his superior height and long legs, and knew that he would be the winner in that race. There was no other option than to try to talk to him, to persuade him back from the brink of whatever he was planning.
I willed myself to calm down. It would be impossible to say a word, let alone convince him of anything, while my heart was thumping and my breath was coming in short and painful gasps as though I had tried to sprint uphill.
‘I …’ I began, and swallowed. I tried again. ‘Julius, whatever you’re planning, you don’t have to do it. I haven’t told anyone anything. I’m not going to tell anyone anything.’
He paused in his stealthy approach and I saw a momentary look of confusion on his face.
‘We can forget it, we can bury the whole thing,’ I said, then winced inwardly at my choice of words. Stay off burying and death, you idiot, I scolded myself.
‘I thought that too,’ said Julius. There was a tinge of sadness in his voice which was chilling. It seemed to me to hold all the spurious regret of the sociopath who says, Now look what you made me do. ‘But I don’t think we can just leave it there,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ I said, forcing myself to speak out boldly. ‘It’s finished. No one apart from the two of us needs to know anything about it.’
‘Steffi …’ Julius seemed about to say something, then thought better of it. He studied me for a moment. ‘We’ve been friends for ages, haven’t we?’ he said.
I nodded. I had no intention of contradicting him, though I wondered whether it was possible to consider yourself someone’s friend if so much of them was hidden from you, so much could not be understood.
‘I thought at one point we might be more than friends,’ said Julius. He sighed. ‘I just want to know – I need to know – why did you do it?’
I stared at him. ‘Why did I do what?’
He rubbed his angular face with one hand. ‘Achim Zimmer. Why did you do it?’ He shook his head. ‘If I could just understand …’
I began to see light. ‘Why did I –’ I couldn’t bring myself to say, Why did I curse him? It sounded too melodramatic. ‘Why did I want him dead, you mean?’
Julius nodded. I thought that now he didn’t look regretful, but actually unhappy, and for a moment I was thrown off balance. I couldn’t map the uncharted places of his mind, couldn’t guess what he wanted me to say. Was he blaming me for something he now regretted? Did he think in some twisted way that if he understood my reasons it would justify what he had done?
‘I had to,’ I said. ‘He was … threatening me.’ I found I didn’t want to describe what Achim had been threatening me with – it made me feel tainted, disgusting, as though I had fallen into a stinking pit of slime. Still Julius was looking at me hungrily, as though he expected – needed – to hear more. ‘It wasn’t just me,’ I said at last. ‘It was
– it was the other girls at the bakery too.’ I willed him to understand without my spelling it out. ‘And he’s been taking money. I couldn’t see where it was going to end. It just seemed the only way out. My dad’s in hospital, so I couldn’t go to him. Anyway, Achim wasn’t as bad when he was around. It was because Dad wasn’t there that he was …’
I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I even felt a surge of resentment under the fear. Why did he have to ask me about it anyway?
‘Why do you want to know why I did it?’ I said. ‘We agreed neither of us would go to the police.’
‘I know,’ said Julius. ‘But I’ve been thinking … and it’s a big thing, deciding not to tell anyone about something like that. Since we spoke – since I knew for sure –’ distractedly, he put up a hand and clenched a handful of his flaming hair – ‘I’ve wondered if I’ve done the right thing.’
‘It’s too late to worry about that now,’ I said. ‘We can’t change it, either of us.’
‘Can’t we?’ He tried to approach me again, his face so regretful that for a moment I almost let him get close to me. I realized what he was about to do and moved as quickly as I could, putting the metal unit between us again.
Julius stopped, but he put his hands palm down on the stainless-steel surface and leaned towards me. ‘You could still talk to the police,’ he said in a quiet voice.
I looked at him and wondered whether this was a ruse. Was he trying to gauge whether I would really keep his secret? Was he pushing me to see how easily I would cave in under pressure? And if I did …
‘I’m never going to do that,’ I said.
‘Then help me understand,’ said Julius.
We faced each other across the metal unit.
‘It was Max’s idea,’ I said at last. ‘Klara Klein, I mean. I didn’t have anything against her. It was just – I don’t know – we thought it would be funny …’
‘Max is involved? Max Müller?’ Julius interrupted me.
‘Well, of course he is. You know he is.’ I was beginning to feel disorientated. Were we talking at cross-purposes? My mind skipped back to that day in the woods, when Max and the others had chased me down the hill and Julius had helped me hide. I had told Julius about the curse on Klara Klein; he knew my friends were involved.
‘Scheisse.’ To my amazement, Julius slumped back against the kitchen wall and put his hands over his face. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him. He looked like someone who had just received a catastrophic piece of news.
I could have chosen that moment to make a break for it, to try to grab the keys from him, or seize the rolling pin, or go for the telephone extension on the wall by the door. But it was beginning to dawn on me that there was something here I had failed to grasp, something small but absolutely fundamental as the axle-head on which the whole wheel turns. I was still wary, but more than anything I was curious.
‘Julius?’
I saw him react to his name, but he didn’t look at me.
‘You know Max was involved. Max and the others. The curses – the one on Klara Klein and the one on Achim and the other ones – you know about them, don’t you?’
Julius put his hands down and the face he turned towards me was fierce and haggard.
‘“Max and the others”? You mean Jochen and Timo?’
‘… and Izabela and Hanna,’ I supplied.
‘All of you?’ he said, and his voice was thick with horror. ‘All of you were involved?’
I stared at him. ‘Julius …’
‘Six of you,’ he said. ‘Six. It was hardly self-defence, was it?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Steffi, this changes everything.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
‘I said I wouldn’t talk to the police,’ said Julius. ‘I said it was up to you. But I thought it was just you – just you against Achim. I knew what he was like. I could see that it could be self-defence. But six of you …’ He looked away, as though the sight of me was contaminating his eyes. ‘Six against one really is murder.’ He put up a hand to rub the side of his face and I saw that it was trembling. ‘Steffi, I would have kept your secret forever if it had been only you. You know that. But not if it’s Max Müller’s secret too – and all the rest of them.’
‘Julius, it was a stupid game,’ I said. ‘At least it was at the beginning.’
‘A game? It was murder.’
‘Maybe it was,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t do it.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Look, I know I have to take some of the responsibility. I wrote those things. I should have stopped when the first one worked.’ I shook my head. ‘No, I shouldn’t even have written the first one. I should have told Max to write it himself if he really wanted to hex someone. But it’s not like I actually killed anyone myself with my own hands.’
There was a silence. Then Julius said slowly, ‘You’re telling me you didn’t kill Achim? But you said you had to. He was threatening you and the other girls. You said you were desperate.’
‘He was threatening me,’ I said. ‘So I wished him dead. I hexed him, like Klara Klein and –’ I was going to add, Frau Kessel, but I thought better of it. ‘He died,’ I finished. ‘Just like she did. Only I didn’t actually kill either of them.’
‘You were admitting you hexed him,’ said Julius, more to himself than to me.
‘Yes.’
‘Then who actually killed him?’
‘I …’ I wondered if it would be wise to say what I had thought or not, and decided to go ahead anyway. ‘I thought it was you.’
‘Me?’ Now Julius looked stunned. The shock on his face was so undeniably real that I began to feel that I had done something incredibly stupid.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You confessed. Last night. You said it was you.’
‘I didn’t,’ he said, frowning.
‘You did. I asked you if you had been here that night and you said yes. And I asked you why you did it and you said – you did it for me.’
‘I can’t have said that,’ said Julius. Then it dawned upon him and he put his hands to his head, clutching at his hair. ‘I meant I was there because of you. I was passing and I just wanted to check everything was OK.’
I stared at Julius with what I eventually realized must have been an expression of almost idiotic open-mouthed astonishment. I shut my mouth, but still I couldn’t stop staring at him. He really didn’t do it, I thought, and on the heels of this thought, like a dog nipping at the ankles of a sheep, came the question, Who did do it, then?
‘You were there that night but you didn’t do it,’ I said wonderingly. ‘Did you see anything?’
Julius shook his head. ‘I didn’t see who was in there, at the back of the bakery. I saw Achim’s car parked out in front. It seemed a bit odd, with the bakery being closed, but I thought maybe it was going to open in the morning after all, maybe he had come in to work.’
‘Was that all?’
‘No. I heard someone – well, it sounded like laughing, but it was out of control. Hysterical, perhaps, I don’t know.’ Julius looked a little embarrassed. ‘I thought it might have been you. So …’ He hesitated. ‘I went round the back. I swear I wasn’t going to eavesdrop. I just wanted to be sure you were OK.’
Now I went around the stainless-steel unit, went right up to Julius, and clutched his arm.
‘Did you see who it was, the person who laughed?’
He shook his head. ‘No. The window at the back has frosted glass, doesn’t it? I couldn’t make anyone out.’
‘Are you sure it couldn’t have been Achim laughing?’ I knew the answer to that one already. I had heard the laugh myself and I was ready to swear on my parents’ lives that it had not come from Achim Zimmer’s throat.
‘Absolutely. And it definitely wasn’t you?’
‘I swear it wasn’t,’ I told him. I pushed my hair back from my face and gazed up at him, willing him to believe me. ‘Look, I heard it too.’
‘Who did you think it was?’
‘I don�
��t know.’
I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth, that I had actually entertained the insane idea that it might have been some sort of manifestation of Rote Gertrud, the long-dead witch of Schönau. All the same, the thought kept nagging away at the back of my mind: If it wasn’t Julius and it wasn’t me, who was it?
‘We ought to tell the police about this,’ said Julius.
He was looking at me carefully and I guessed that this was a final test to see what I would do. If I had been the one who was closeted in the kitchen that night with Achim, I wouldn’t want the police involved.
‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘Only we’ll have to explain why we didn’t go to them before.’
Julius considered. ‘We can tell them the truth, that I thought maybe it was you, and it wasn’t until we talked that I realized it wasn’t.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, but suddenly I wasn’t thinking about what happened the night Achim died or when we should talk to the police. An ugly thought was burgeoning in my mind like a grotesque weed.
I’ve cursed Julius. I’ve cursed him – and he didn’t do it.
‘… Steffi?’
I realized Julius was speaking to me.
‘What?’
‘Do you want to go to the police station now?’
‘I …’ I knew that my hesitation was quite likely to arouse doubts in Julius’s mind again, but I couldn’t help that. All I could think about was calling Hanna and somehow getting back to the witch’s house, removing that piece of paper with Julius Rensinghof, leave Bad Münstereifel forever inked on it. Because if it wasn’t Julius who had been carrying out the scrawled wishes and curses I had left in Rote Gertrud’s house, that meant someone else altogether was doing it – and that meant …
He’s in danger.
Briefly I considered putting the whole matter before him, begging him for help. But that would mean telling him what I had done, that I had cursed him, too. No time now to think about all the implications, to think about the fact that now we both knew each other’s innocence there was nothing to stop us picking up where we had left off, with something as yet undefined between us. I had to get back to Gertrud’s house and I had to do it immediately. I thought quickly and opted for a lie.