Then the letter occurred to me again. “But how did he get ahold of that letter?”
“He inherited Tonio’s father’s apartment. And he found it all there. Our names. Photos. The letters. Tonio’s father kept it all, and his son found it. Strange, isn’t it?”
I still didn’t understand it. How could Tonio’s letter to me have ended up with his father? Gertrud explained. “I sent them to him. After I returned from Greece and you were off traveling somewhere in the world, I gave up our apartment in Munich. I didn’t know what to do with all the things but I couldn’t just throw them away. So I sent everything that involved Tonio to his father.”
Silence. I must have nodded. Those letters . . .
“Did you read them?” I looked at her cautiously, hoping . . . but knew deep down . . .
She nodded. “Yes, of course I read them. But only your letters. Not his. But yours, yes. And the more often I read them, the more I got the feeling”—she struggled for the words—“the feeling that they were intended for me,” she continued eventually. “As if you’d written them to me.”
My breath caught in my throat. What was she telling me? She looked at me, her eyes impenetrable. I shook my head. The letters came into my mind, the exact words.
. . . dear hanna . . . dear tonio . . .
That was how they began, our letters, every letter always the same. I remember.
. . . dear tonio . . .
In the letters our days were empty and full of sorrow: I was waiting for him, my beloved, with every fiber of my being, wherever he was, whatever he was doing. I was longing for him. I wrote that I missed him as soon as he left the room, that his body was my pitcher, my jug, that my soul had found its place in him as had my heart, that without him I was a small soft thing that fell apart, unraveled . . .
Astonishment spread through me. What did Gertrud say? As if they were intended for her? As if I’d written them to her?
I shook my head vehemently. No, I thought. No, that’s impossible. They could never have been written for anyone other than Tonio and Hanna at that time, when our love was already coming to an end, when it was already driving us apart, in different directions.
“No,” I said, loud and determined. “No, Gertrud, that will never be true, never. Don’t say that. It’s not true.”
Gertrud shrugged, turned away. I saw the letters before me, our handwriting, the color of the ink—changed according to our whims.
. . . dear hanna . . .
The days were empty and full of sorrow. He was waiting for me, his beloved. With every fiber of his being. Wherever I was. Whatever I was doing. He was longing for me. He missed me. He had always missed me. All his life. Always. And now. As soon as I left the room. My body was his pitcher, his jug. His soul had found its place in me and his heart had finally awoken. Because of me. He fell apart without me. And unraveled without me. As if he’d never been alive before . . . as if I’d never been alive before . . .
And he did fall apart. Did unravel. But at least he was alive. That was a consolation.
His death gradually came back to me. I slowly felt the blue swell in Gertrud’s kitchen, a haze; perhaps it was only the damsons, the schnapps we drank on meeting again, that made us cheerful and happy. It was all like a play, a drama of life and death.
I suddenly remembered the newspaper photo in black and white, the picture that had accompanied me around the world: a dead man and me, Tonio and Hanna. It was a crumpled piece of reality that grew truer and more painful, the grayer the shadows that concealed him became. It was not until the journey homeward, that final journey, that I tore up the photo, and bending out of the train window, I watched the scraps of paper get caught up by the nighttime airstream and rapidly, irrevocably vanish from my sight.
And now?
Reconstruction of a death. Back then. Everything that happened. A pain that still hurts, a wound that still bleeds. In the middle of September we were afraid of the final eruption of the memory.
“Let the past lie,” Gertrud had said. “Those old stories aren’t true anymore.”
She said it brusquely, almost nervously, and loudly enough to break the thread that tried to spin its way from back then to now. In the Indian summer the weavers of life spin their threads into time and time disintegrates and becomes as one.
52
They wouldn’t be needing a translator after all. They’d found all the documents about Tonio’s death in the apartment—translated police reports, letters, newspaper clippings—all translated and carefully filed by date and sequence of events. Ernst Köhler had meticulously documented the death of his only son for posterity, so that a picture could be formed of the accident that happened in Greece.
There had been three parties involved, none of them unknown to the detectives: Tonio Köhler, Hanna Umlauf, and Gertrud Rabinsky, or Gertrud Brendler as she was at the time.
The bare facts were that the three of them had spent a vacation on Kos at Gertrud’s parents’ house. The summer was coming to an end, and it was almost the start of the academic year. One night, two weeks after their arrival, Tonio, whom the proprietor of a nearby taverna described as nice and friendly if a little eccentric, had the crazy idea of going for a swim in the turbulent black sea. For several days there had been storm warnings—no swimmers and no boats out on the water. The fishermen cursed, the few vacationers still on the island at that time cursed, but people resigned themselves, it was the right thing to do. No one dared to pit themselves against the force of the sea.
Except Tonio. On that cursed night. First he got drunk, and then he staggered out into the water and threw himself into the waves, yelling and roaring with enthusiasm. He ventured farther and farther out, the waves bore him up, threw him back and forth until he was eventually dashed down beneath the surf.
Gertrud, who was recorded in the files as the only witness, had stated that nothing could have held him back, nothing. She had tried everything, but in vain. He had gone into the sea, in the storm, yelling and laughing. First the darkness had swallowed him up and then the sea.
Hanna had been asleep and had only found out about the accident the next morning. She was there when the coastguards retrieved the body that had been washed up on the beach. Before he was transported back to Germany, back home, they had tested his blood. The results showed that Tonio had 0.21 percent alcohol in his blood, but there was no trace of any other drugs. Recklessness was the final verdict in the files, fatal recklessness, brought about by excessive alcohol consumption. So it was self-inflicted. The records ended there.
“What a mess,” Felix said. “A real tragedy.”
“It must have been a great love between Tonio and Hanna,” Franza said.
She held up the pile of letters that had been beneath the photos tacked to the wall. The top photo was of an old man, who must have been the grandfather, and immediately beneath it was a picture of Tonio, who bore an amazing likeness to his son. To either side were photos of the two women in their younger days, with Gertrud positioned farther away from Tonio than Hanna.
They also found photos with more recent dates among the stacks of paper. The pictures of Hanna were taken from newspapers or the Internet, while the ones of Gertrud must have been taken by Tonio himself. They showed Gertrud outside her shop, working or chatting with customers. But they also showed her in the garden outside her house, with her children and husband. Tonio had worked his way into Gertrud’s life, spying on her, stalking her, an uninvited onlooker.
He had probably sat for hours in front of the little altar he had created around the photos. Was it here that he plotted his revenge? But revenge for what?
The fact that he had not had a father? That his childhood had been hard? And he now wanted to punish the women who had torn Tonio from his mother and therefore from him?
The detectives had no answers. Not yet.
“What now?”
Franza opened a window, positioned herself in front of it, and lit a cigarette.
“I have to calm
my lungs after that race up the stairs,” she said by way of excuse, grinning sheepishly.
Felix gave her the finger, but came to sit with her by the window and said, “Let me breathe some of it in. A little dose of nicotine every now and then—I just can’t resist it.”
“A minor rebellion against the nanny state?” Arthur’s spirits had risen again.
Franza shrugged. “So where do we go from here?”
“A search, of course,” Felix said, “with full fanfare. We have well-founded grounds for suspicion, so send the composite out to police stations nationwide. It should also be featured on the news. We also need a composite of his accomplice. Arthur?”
“What?”
“You know, what does she look like?” Franza asked. “You saw her, after all.”
“She’s a looker. Well, I think so.” He pulled a despairing face as he realized how inane that sounded.
Franza rolled her eyes. Men, she thought. “Good-looking? Is that all?!”
“Well,” Arthur stammered, “it all happened so quickly. She was wearing shades, her hair was . . .” He couldn’t recall any more.
“Blonde? Brown? Red? Short? Long?” Franza prompted. But it was no use.
“No idea.” Arthur sighed. “I’m really sorry. Long. No, short. Pinned up, perhaps. I don’t know. I just exchanged a few words with her and then she was gone. I can describe the other one a bit better. I talked to her for longer.”
“Except we don’t need her,” Franza said, trying to appear severe, but failing.
Arthur shrugged apologetically.
“Oh well,” Felix said as Franza crushed the cigarette out on the exterior windowsill. “At least we have Clyde. Bonnie can’t be far behind.”
“We also need to extend the search for Hanna,” Franza said. “What if he’s abducted her, has her hidden away somewhere?”
They were silent for a moment, trying not to imagine what could have happened, the events that could be unfolding.
“Well,” Franza said. “Let’s go. There’s a lot to do.”
They made to leave, pausing only to pick up the toothbrushes lying on a shelf in the bathroom so they could compare them with the DNA traces found in Gertrud’s kitchen.
They went by the apartment of Frau Steigermann again as they left the building.
The old lady turned out to be a tough nut to crack, insisting she knew nothing about Ernst Köhler’s grandson—no surname, no telephone number, nothing about his life.
Perhaps it was true, perhaps not. It was most likely true. Why would Tonio Whatever-his-name-was spend his time going from door to door, giving his name and address to his neighbors if he intended to commit murder?
They left. It had gotten late, and tomorrow was another day.
53
It had been close. Very close. He’d been on the john. Thank goodness he had his cell phone in his pocket, so Kristin had been able to reach him. She had gone out to fetch something to eat; the cupboards were all bare, everything eaten. Then things started happening fast.
He had added coffee and water to his grandfather’s coffee machine, one of the few things he hadn’t gotten rid of, and switched it on.
Then a few quiet moments in the john, then the sudden phone call. He had cursed, knowing that it was Kristin—no one else had the number of the prepaid SIM he’d bought when he disappeared from his old life.
He swore. “Can’t a guy even get a moment’s peace in the john?”
He briefly wondered whether to pick up, but did.
“Police,” she said, sounding only a little nervous. “They’re looking for you. There’s one here with a composite of you.”
“Shit,” he said.
“Don’t lose your nerve. Stay calm. He’s talking to a woman from the building who seems to know you. He’s going to go in, I’m sure of it. Try and get past him. Get out somehow. If he takes the stairs, you get in the elevator. Do it somehow. Don’t lose your nerve. We’ll figure this out.”
Her voice sounded like a metallic staccato in his ears, and he nodded ceaselessly, without thinking that she couldn’t see him.
“Are you still there?” she cried. “Say something!”
“Yes.” His voice was barely audible, as his heart was racing and there was a lump in his throat. “Wait for me by your car.”
“Hurry up!” she said. “Move!”
Then she was gone, and for a brief moment he felt more alone than he ever had in his life. Worse than when he left home, and when he left his hometown, and even when Gertrud Rabinsky was suddenly lying dead on her kitchen floor.
He could feel himself trembling and commanded himself to stop. It worked, amazingly, and he crept to the apartment door, carefully opened it, and listened for sounds from the stairwell. The elevator was not moving. Voices drifted up from downstairs. The voice of a man he didn’t know, the voice of a woman he did know—old Frau Steigermann from the apartment below. Then he heard a door, and the voices grew fainter until they could no longer be heard, swallowed up in the apartment.
He threw a quick glance along the corridor, felt a moment of regret as he suspected he was unlikely ever to return, stepped out into the stairwell, and silently closed the front door. No time to take anything with him, no time for sentimental good-byes. The elevator was there, no time wasted. He traveled down to the ground floor, cautiously pressed the button to open the door, saw no one; the way was clear. He slipped out, ran to the main door; it swung open, and he felt free—infinitely free.
Kristin was waiting in the car behind the building. He got in and she started it up.
“Everything will be fine,” she said and drove off.
He thought of the girl. “Lilli,” he said.
Kristin waved him off. “Doesn’t matter. No time to worry about her now.”
54
Tonio’s death.
So sudden and unexpected. Not a natural death.
To think of it again, to experience it again, even in my mind, is hard. Still. Some memories weigh heavy. But I’m finally up to it.
Gathering the scenes together, looking for lost jigsaw puzzle pieces. Early autumn. Tonio’s death.
A house in Greece, white with blue doors and window frames, near the beach, but not too close. Just near enough to the village.
All of us in that house, by that sea. Blurring of time.
The landscape no longer surrounded us with the glaring colors of summer. The mildness of fall was in the air, the sun red gold, no longer sharp and scorching. The sea was still warm, and it felt good, with a thousand shades of blue and green.
How beautiful the first few days were! The waves rolled gently in, spraying sea water onto the black sand, where the droplets gleamed like sparkling gemstones. Sometimes large ships steamed by in the distance, and the waves were lashed into wild breakers, spitting out bizarrely shaped stones.
“These stones are like messengers from another age,” we would joke. “These stones are the dead, the drunks, the ancient Greeks whom the sea is spitting out again. Odysseus, maybe, and Helen and Menelaus and Cassandra the seer.”
Perhaps that was too much. Perhaps we tempted fate and the gods wanted their sacrificial offering.
The storm came and nothing felt right anymore. There was no hanging around on the beach, no bathing. It was too cold, too windy. We were restless, and there was a bad atmosphere in the house. Tonio kept opening the windows, letting the wind in so you could hear the roaring sea and the storm around the house. The curtains billowed and the windows rattled in their frames.
The dishes piled up in the kitchen: plates with the remains of meals that attracted the flies, open wine bottles containing stale dregs, hardened bread.
I don’t know why we didn’t manage to keep the place in order. Maybe it was this outward chaos that got us all mixed up, too.
Tonio and I spent hours in bed, night and day, without a care for Gertrud, who took care of herself.
“Why doesn’t she go to the village?” Tonio said in anno
yance whenever I expressed concern that we shouldn’t leave her alone for so long. “There’s a whole crowd of single guys there. Why doesn’t she just enjoy herself?”
I said nothing. I didn’t tell him I could see in her eyes what she felt for me, could feel it whenever she was near. But Tonio probably knew it anyway. He became aggressive toward her, angry, surly. He refused to leave me alone with her, watched us continually.
Maybe Gertrud had also heard us in our room, in our bed. We were never quiet. We laughed, moaned, sighed. Tonio said, “That’s what fucking’s all about.” And so it was. But maybe she heard us and it stirred up resentment, sadness in her.
And then it was that night. I know little about what happened. Nothing, really. I was asleep. And when I awoke in the morning, everything had changed. When I awoke, Gertrud was sitting on the other side of the bed. I saw her back, saw she was trembling.
You trembled, Gertrud, you didn’t turn when I spoke to you, you didn’t react. I sat up, turned to you. You cried, quietly, soundlessly, but in a way that shook your whole body.
I asked nothing, merely looked out of the window. I noticed right away that the storm had abated. I thought, good, we can swim again, perhaps not today, but tomorrow. Then everything will get back to normal, everything will be good again between the three of us.
But then . . .
. . . then I noticed the activity on the beach, over where we had always gone swimming, where the waves washed around us, lapped at our feet and gently splashed our legs.
There was activity on the beach. There were people there, lots of people, crowding around a single point. I got up and started walking, feeling nothing—slowly at first. But then . . .
I don’t know why I began to run those last few steps up to the wall of people. I don’t know why, Gertrud.
Then I saw him lying there, where they had laid him out. He was so still, so silent, already so stiff.
55
Dr. Borger, the coroner, enjoyed an excellent dinner and treated himself to a cigar, with an espresso and a cognac. It was then that he made a very interesting discovery.
Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) Page 20