Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2)

by Gabi Kreslehner

  He took a drink of coffee and peered into the cup before setting it down on the table.

  “The early years were easy,” he said. “I often didn’t even notice them. Either of the girls.”

  He fell silent, smiling ruefully. “I know that doesn’t sound quite . . . honorable, but maybe you understand how it is. You leave the house in the morning while the children are still asleep and when you come home in the evening . . . Well, as I said.”

  He shrugged.

  Yes, Herz thought, I know.

  Yes, Franza thought, I know.

  “We had a housekeeper,” Brendler continued. “A very respectable, warmhearted woman. Sabine. A real gem, you could say. She had no children of her own. She took care of the girls, since my wife worked, too. In the hospital, as an internist. And so they simply grew up—elementary school, high school. They were always side by side. Often I thought how lovely that Gertrud had gotten a sister in such a simple way, someone her own age in the bargain. Someone to share everything with, who saw everything from the same point of view, with whom there was no need to explain everything.”

  Someone who represented competition, Franza thought, someone who could make life hell when it came down to it. Because she took everything you’d rather have had for yourself. Because she was always the first.

  “I remember one day when they came to my office,” Brendler said. “It was a late afternoon in winter, already dark outside. They must have been around fourteen or fifteen. They had done some work for school, I can’t remember what subject. Gertrud burst in first—she’d received the best grade and wanted to tell me about it there and then. She was so delighted. Hanna came after her slowly, a smile on her face, and sat on my desk, swinging her legs. She stretched a little, and for a brief moment the ceiling light caught her hair and lit it up like a fireball. She noticed me looking at her and looked back at me. At that moment I realized that she had let Gertrud win. With the grade. And with a number of other grades. Often.”

  He fell into a pensive silence, probably seeing her there, legs swinging in her blue jeans.

  “For a brief moment it hurt.” Brendler’s face crumpled in momentary pain, then he composed himself again. “I believe I really saw her for the first time that day. And from that moment . . . always.”

  Asshole, Franza thought. Stupid asshole. She imagined Gertrud as she had been when she was a child, as a teenager, how it must have become increasingly obvious that she would be in the shadows, that her life had become a bad movie and that there would always be someone saying: Smile! Smile more brightly! Smile more convincingly! Poor girl, poor little girl!

  Brendler shook his head, smiled an involuntary smile. “I don’t know how that woman, my secretary, produced this child. She was a very ordinary woman, nothing outstanding about her, but her child, her daughter . . .”

  Silence.

  “Yes?” Franza asked carefully. “Her child?”

  “Was blessed by the gods,” he said slowly. “I can’t put it any other way. Blessed by the gods. That’s how it seemed to me.”

  “That’s how it seemed to you?” Franza gasped.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. Everything she touched turned to gold. She tried everything, and she could do it all. It was a pleasure to watch her, a pleasure. She was . . . she attracted everyone’s attention. And if that wasn’t enough, she also had an enchanting way about her. She was lovable, funny, clever, full of life.”

  Suddenly, it became difficult for Gertrud. Suddenly, there was someone close to her who could do everything better. Who was developing better. Who was more beautiful. Gifted. A butterfly. A miracle.

  “She was a real miracle,” Brendler said. “She was a miracle to me and I began to compare the girls, and in making comparisons . . .”

  He fell silent.

  Asshole, Franza thought. “Wasn’t Gertrud doing well?” she asked.

  He shook his head, scarcely perceptibly.

  “Gertrud wasn’t doing well, in fact,” he said in a whisper, as if he didn’t dare to speak the words out loud, as if they were as poisoned as he was.

  He stood and took a step toward the hedge.

  “I never said anything to her,” he said to the garden, and then turned back and raised his hands beseechingly. “You have to believe me, I beg you! I never said that to her! Never! But . . . she must have sensed it. And my wife did too.”

  “Did you and Hanna—” Herz asked.

  Brendler raised his hands defensively.

  “No!” he said. “Never! Never! I never got too close to her. Not in the way you’re thinking. There was nothing erotic about this love. Not a spark. I never touched her. I loved my wife. I never had any desire for little girls. Never, at any time. Never. Ask my wife if you don’t believe me. She would have annihilated me if I had.” He nodded as if to emphasize his words, and then continued. “But Hanna . . . amazed me. I was so proud of her. I loved her. Yes. Like you love a daughter. She was my daughter. Nothing more and nothing less. My other daughter. My second daughter. My . . . special daughter.”

  He went quiet, suddenly feeling a great shame. Although that wouldn’t change anything.

  “She had so much . . . wisdom in her,” he whispered. “Such wonderful intelligence. A certain clarity. I don’t know. Something people just have. Or don’t.” He raised his eyes. “Do you know what I mean?”

  Franza and Felix exchanged a look. Neither knew exactly what he meant, but they nodded. He continued to talk, telling them how the girls went to study in Munich and how as the years went by Hanna visited ever more rarely, that they grew distant. He had always regretted it and never knew the real reason for it. He guessed that during their time in Munich a rift had grown between Hanna and Gertrud, which must have been the reason for Hanna’s ultimate withdrawal from the family. Or perhaps it was her marriage to Belitz, which he had never approved of.

  He’d followed Hanna’s career in secret and with pride, but no one in the family ever spoke of it. Brendler spoke only of Hanna, not of Gertrud.

  Franza felt a cramp in her stomach. She longed for a cigarette and at the moment vowed to flush the remaining five in the pack down the toilet, although she suspected she wouldn’t do it.

  Poor Gertrud, she thought, you really got the bad deal there. She wanted to hear it confirmed one last time and dealt him the final blow.

  “If you had had to choose between your daughters, which one would it have been?”

  He stared at her. She saw the horror in his eyes. He was well aware of his betrayal, and he was still committing it, again and again. He was caught. He turned gray and shook his head.

  “Please don’t ask that question,” he whispered, but Franza looked at him, merciless, impenetrable.

  He lowered his eyes, slowly, the fight gone out of him.

  “Yes,” he whispered without having to think about it. “Yes. Hanna. It would have been Hanna.”

  Felix stood up in the silence that followed and cleared his throat.

  “OK,” he said. “At least we now have a basic outline of the situation. That’s enough for today. If we need anything else, we know where to find you.”

  They went out to the car, and Brendler followed them, suddenly looking agitated and nervous.

  “Do you really think these old stories have anything to do with the death of my daughter? And with Hanna’s disappearance? Do you really believe that Hanna . . . ? That can’t be possible!”

  “We’ll find out,” said Herz. “You’ll have to be patient.”

  But Brendler took no notice.

  “Listen,” he beseeched. “Listen, I’ve tried to make things right. I’ve really tried. But I don’t know whether . . .”

  He shook his head.

  The detectives didn’t ask any more. They had heard enough.

  On the journey back into town they were quiet, each dwelling on their own thoughts.

  “But Hanna must have needed it, this love,” Felix said quietly. “A father. Something. Security. Everyon
e needs that. Otherwise you’re living in a vacuum. She had nothing, after all. No mother, no father. Zilch. They had to share, Hanna and Gertrud. Sisters always have to. It’s normal. People have to, don’t they? Learn to share.”

  Franza nodded. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. If that’s how it was. But he’d made his decision.”

  Silence fell again. They reached the town center and worked their way into the Saturday afternoon traffic. Somewhere a blue light was flashing, uniformed colleagues on duty, an ambulance, an accident.

  “The twins,” Felix said finally. “They’re everything to me.” He thought of his youngest children. The lights of his life. They had done what he had believed impossible, given a new completeness to his marriage, his life, his sense of fatherhood. Not that he loved his other children any less for it, but since the twins had burst into their lives some eighteen months ago, everything had been a little different.

  Franza laid a comforting hand on his knee.

  “That’s another story,” she said. “A completely different story.”

  He looked at her gratefully.

  18

  She had arrived at nine, as she always did when she was on the early shift. She opened up the café and switched on the coffee machine—the usual routine. Vasco had long since begun cooking in the kitchen. She threw a final glance over the tables to make sure everything was in order, checking that the sugar dispensers were filled and the flowers in the vases hadn’t wilted. She went outside to make sure everything was set up there, as the weather seemed good enough for patrons to prefer their morning coffee alfresco. It was only then that she noticed the frenzied activity in Gertrud’s pottery shop. People she had never seen before were going in and out.

  She stopped, hands on her hips, a frown on her face. What was happening? The shop was supposed to be closed for another week!

  She and Gertrud had spoken about it on the evening before her holiday. She’d said she was going away for a few days—to the black beach on Kos, where her father had a house.

  “I need to relax,” she’d said. “Put everything to one side for a while. Without Christian, and without the children. Some me time, to get my act together. You know what I mean, Renate?”

  “Of course,” Renate had said. “I certainly do! You should do it. Enjoy yourself. A few days away and you’ll be a new woman.” She leaned back and sighed. “I could do with something like that myself.”

  Gertrud had nodded, and then started for the door. She hesitated, turned. “Why don’t you come with me? There’s plenty of room in the house.”

  A smile. One of those rare open smiles she sometimes granted. “What do you think?”

  Renate’s eyes had opened wide. What a wonderful idea! How tempting! But it wouldn’t work. She sighed.

  “Wow! That would be lovely! Yes, I’d love it, no doubt about it. But I don’t have time. You see . . .” She waved a hand expressively around the café.

  Gertrud nodded. “OK. It was only a spur-of-the-moment idea. But it’s obvious you can’t just drop everything and go. Would you keep an eye on the shop for me, please? I should be back next week. See you soon! After my holiday!”

  She waved and crossed the street to her car. On a sudden impulse, Renate ran after her.

  “Gertrud! Wait! Let me give you a hug! And wish you a lovely holiday.”

  They laughed and Renate hugged her. She felt good, soft but firm, the scent of herbal shampoo in her hair.

  Then she was gone. Renate stood there for a moment and thought of Greece, of Kos, of the sea and the black sand. She had sighed again and briefly closed her eyes before returning to the café.

  And now?

  What was going on?

  Hardly a week had passed. She ran a quick calculation through her head—no, it was only a few days, and there were all those people across the road. Not Christian or Lilli or Gertrud’s parents, and no sign of Gertrud herself.

  Ah well, Renate thought, running a hand through her short black hair as she impulsively crossed the street to the pottery shop.

  “Can you tell me what you’re doing here?” she asked, a little indignantly. The counter was full of papers, catalogs, and documents, which the men had clearly found in one of the cupboards. “Who are you? I’m going to call the police!”

  She reached for her cell phone. The four men regarded her keenly. One of them came over to her. He looked young and dynamic and quite kind in fact, but she nevertheless took a step back. He raised his arms.

  “It’s OK, it’s OK, don’t worry. You don’t need to call the police. We are the police. And you are?”

  She froze. The police? What was going on? What had happened?

  She gradually calmed down. “Can I see your ID?”

  “Of course.” The young man got his ID from his pocket. “I’m sorry.”

  Arthur Peterson, it said, but she forgot the name immediately in the face of what else she saw there, something far more important and, she slowly realized, horrific.

  “What’s happened?” she asked. “Please tell me what’s happened. Has something happened to Gertrud?”

  “Did you know her? Was she a friend?”

  “A friend? Yes, yes. Sort of.” She thought of the invitation to Greece. “We work more or less next door to one another. I run the café across the street.”

  She turned and pointed to the café. As she did so, she suddenly realized that he had spoken about Gertrud in the past tense.

  Later they sat at one of the outdoor tables at the café. She had brought Arthur a coffee and a schnapps for herself. She sipped it now, and when customers approached, she said, “We’re closed. Bereavement.”

  She thought of Gertrud and how they’d had little contact in recent years, only in the last few weeks—goodness knew why.

  What would have happened if I’d said yes to Greece, she thought. If I’d agreed to go, there and then. If I’d closed the café, switched off the coffee machine, and left Vasco to hold the fort for a few days. If I’d taken Gertrud up on her offer and we’d caught the next available flight? Would that have prevented her murder?

  Renate sighed and wiped away the tears that fell relentlessly. Who knows, she thought. Who knows? Perhaps she would have drowned in the sea off that black beach.

  “I wanted to order some of those new cups she had,” she said suddenly, raising her cup. “The old ones are all chipped. Where am I going to get my new ones now?”

  Yes, thought Arthur, this phenomenon. It’s always the little things we miss first. The trip we planned but that never happened. The cups we’ll have to get from another pottery now. The vase we broke and never got chance to apologize about.

  Arthur had not been on the team for long, only a little over two years, but he’d made that discovery quickly—when the pain began, it began with the little things. Was it because they were easier to grasp?

  “You’ll work it out, I’m sure,” he said.

  “Yes, you’re probably right. How silly of me to be thinking of something so trivial.”

  She laid her hands across her eyes, and as she did so, she remembered the young man. The man who had come here for coffee two days in a row. He’d said he was visiting an acquaintance, and then he’d crossed the street and spoken to Gertrud. She’d looked shocked. So much so that it was visible from here, from across the street.

  Was she guilty because she’d served Gertrud’s murderer? Had it happened because she’d not been observant enough, not drawn the right conclusions? But how were you supposed to draw conclusions about a murder?

  “Of course not,” Arthur said, handing her a tissue. “No one would suspect anything of the sort. There’s no reason to feel guilty. In any case, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Could be sheer coincidence.”

  He took a drink of his coffee. “What did he look like, this man?”

  She described him, and as she did so, she had a vague feeling that he reminded her of someone. But the more she racked her brain about it, the more the image sli
pped from her grasp. Perhaps it would occur to her again when she went to the police station to have a composite picture made.

  “I’ll miss her,” she said as the young detective took his leave with a firm handshake. “She was a good person. Very reserved. Very quiet. You could say a little aloof, if you didn’t know her. Almost shy. She didn’t let people get too close too soon. But once you got to know her . . .”

  Her voice shook. She ran a hand over her cheeks again.

  “Yes,” she said quietly, “I’ll miss her.”

  19

  He had holed up in his grandfather’s apartment. He needed a new plan. There was a problem. A massive one. One that had not been foreseeable. He couldn’t have imagined a development like that. All the signs pointed to a storm breaking, and he was right in the middle of it. But he wouldn’t lose the game. Not him.

  At night he lay awake for a long time, the image of the woman before his eyes. It was not a nice picture. The blood. Her outstretched hand. The sound of the knife as it hit the floor.

  “Don’t go,” she had gasped, scarcely understandable. “Don’t leave me here like this! Please!”

  Then . . . there was no comma anymore. Period.

  He had fled out into the night, back into town to the apartment. Hunger gnawed at him, but there was nothing to eat, not even a slice of bread. The fridge was as empty as his head. He found the remains of a pizza from before, which he had devoured as soon as he got home. But he needed food: bread, cheese, butter. First, he needed a plan. A damned plan. But his stomach was growling. And his brain was on fire.

  He had seen many dead bodies before, a lot of death—it was part of his job—but this had been something else. More appalling. It had happened so quickly. It had been completely unforeseen because it had simply happened. It was something he had been unable to prepare himself for. In the face of death at the hospital, you could close off your heart and your head beforehand—create a makeshift defense, but a defense nevertheless.

  In his panic he thought of Kristin. They’d met six months ago at an exhibition he’d gone to by chance. She was standing with a group of people in the middle of the room, and he had recognized her at once. They sometimes rode the elevator together. He knew she was quite a big fish in the hospital administrative hierarchy, a lawyer, which, given her age, was quite impressive.