The Wages of Sin: A Kidnap, a Crucifixion, a Murderer on the Loose

by Inge Löhnig

  Agnes swallowed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she finally said. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. But it seemed so heartless how you wanted to get Jakob examined tonight at all costs.’

  Dühnfort’s stomach growled loudly. ‘Excuse me,’ he said with an embarrassed smile.

  At least he’s polite, Agnes thought. She was hungry too. She had eaten next to nothing all day. ‘I’ll make us something to eat,’ she said and stood up.

  ‘To be honest, that would be wonderful. I’ll help.’ He followed her into the kitchen.

  She took the tea-lights with her and held one up in front of the opened fridge. It was full. When she’d gone shopping the day before, she had suddenly felt like a helpless child. For a year, her mother had done everything for her. Cooked, cleaned, shopped. She didn’t know what she needed and she’d put everything in the trolley without thinking about it.

  ‘Just take out what you fancy. I’ll set the table.’

  She groped around for plates and cutlery. Then she lit a few more tea-lights and set them on the kitchen table. She watched Dühnfort take a large board and arrange German sausage, cheese, olives and tomatoes on it.

  ‘Does your offer extend to wine?’ he asked.

  A bit later, they were sitting across from each other with nicely chilled glasses of Soave.

  ‘What shall we drink to?’ he asked.

  ‘To Jakob being all right. To his happy family.’

  ‘To his guardian angel,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Nonsense. I’m no guardian angel. You should have read my unchristian thoughts when I handed Jakob over to his mother. Isn’t envy one of the deadly sins?’

  ‘If you hadn’t found him . . .’

  Why didn’t he finish his sentence? Agnes wondered. Is he reconsidering his opinion on the madwoman sitting across from him?

  ‘Would you be able to find the spot again?’ he said.

  ‘I think so.’ Agnes stood up and spread out the map, which was still on the worktop beside the stove. He came up beside her and put one of the tea-lights on the paper. Agnes felt the heat coming off his body. She bent over the map and showed him the location.

  ‘Do you know how far you can get with a car?’

  ‘Up to the chapel, I think. After that, the path is too narrow.’

  They sat down again. Agnes made a cheese sandwich and had a sip of wine.

  ‘And Jakob had no injuries?’

  ‘Just a few scratches. From the brushwood, I think. But I didn’t look at him that closely. He was freezing, so I put my jumper on him.’ I’m a ghost, he said. Agnes smiled at the memory.

  ‘Did he say anything that could lead to the kidnapper or his hiding place?’

  Agnes told him that Jakob had mentioned the hot chocolate that always made him tired and that he had poured it into a crack. Maybe he’d been sedated with some kind of sleeping pill. He’d be asleep now, anyway.

  ‘If Jakob didn’t drink all the hot chocolate, the sleeping pills wouldn’t have lasted as long as they were meant to,’ Dühnfort said, lost in thought. ‘The kidnapper brings him into the forest asleep, ties him up, leaves behind petrol and matches and then goes away. He must have forgotten something.’

  ‘You think he . . .?’ Agnes couldn’t say it aloud. Since she’d found the boy, she’d tried to suppress that particular image. She felt the ground give way beneath her and couldn’t stave off the memories: the street was cordoned off. Blue lights cut through the darkness. She rushed past the fire engine and emergency vehicles and ran into a policeman. She saw flames rising from the top floor. From her flat. Red-orange tongues that ate into the night sky. In the crowd of people: her neighbours. The caretaker turned away. Old Mrs Lackermeier’s eyes were wide. Agnes hurried through the crowd in search of Rainer and Yvonne. She couldn’t find them. Someone put his hand in front of his mouth and pointed upwards. It took a moment for her to understand. It was madness. Why wasn’t anyone doing anything? The fireman ran after her. ‘That’s suicide,’ he yelled and dragged her out of the burning building.

  Agnes had worked her body so hard that day that it spared her the panic attack. She felt the first signs of it, but they subsided like soft waves on the shore. Dühnfort looked at her again. She realised that she was trembling. She was embarrassed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It must be awful for you and I’m talking about it so thoughtlessly.’

  Agnes stood up and the chair nearly tipped over. ‘I’m going to make myself a cappuccino. Would you like one, too?’ Her voice sounded strange.

  Dühnfort stood beside her. ‘There’s no power.’ He took her in his arms as Michael sometimes did when she let him. She rested her head on his shoulder. His hair smelled of forest, his body of soap and slightly of sweat. She had lost her husband and child. She’d lost Rainer’s letters and poems. She’d lost Yvonne’s drawings and photos, her arts and crafts and her pottery. She had lost everything. Even Rainer’s clock. His childish Mickey Mouse clock. Everything was burned. There was nothing more for her to hold on to. She felt detached, as if she was floating in empty space, unsuccessfully searching for something to grab on to: the evidence of how things once were.

  I would probably build a shrine for Rainer’s Mickey Mouse clock if I had it now, Agnes thought. She suddenly saw herself kneeling in front of a sort of altar and looking reverently at that atrocity. A silly giggle came out of her. She couldn’t hold it back. She laughed until tears ran down her cheeks.

  ‘Tell me?’ She could feel Dühnfort’s warm breath on her neck, felt his arms holding her. She had never spoken about that evening. A psychologist from the crisis centre had offered to help, as had her parents’ priest. She turned them down. She kicked out the priest without hesitation.

  ‘It was last year. On the fifteenth of March,’ she began, her head still resting on Dühnfort’s shoulder. ‘I went to visit a friend in Pullach. We had cracked open a bottle of wine and then I didn’t want to drive, so I decided to stay at Kathrin’s. It usually ended that way when I visited her. Even so, I wanted to let Rainer know. But he didn’t answer. When I tried again later, there was a recorded message: “This number is temporarily unavailable.” ’ Dühnfort’s hands slid across her back. She could feel their warmth through the fabric. An almost forgotten feeling. She freed herself, sat back in her chair and took a sip of wine. He also sat down again.

  ‘I was worried,’ she continued. ‘So I went home. We lived in Neuhausen. A renovated penthouse flat in a pre-war building. When I turned onto Offstrasse, I saw the blue lights first and then the fire. It was already too late. The fire brigade couldn’t do any more.’ She held her head in her hands. Yvonne’s voice echoed in her skull: Mummy, but I want to! I want to, I want to, I want to! She continued. ‘All they could do was stop it from spreading to the neighbouring buildings and through the rest of our building. Our flat was completely burned out. According to the fire investigation experts, a cable that had been improperly laid behind a plasterboard wall started smouldering. The roof timbers caught fire and then everything must have gone up very quickly. Rainer and Yvonne had no chance. Yvonne was found in her bed, Rainer behind the flat door. The investigation into the owner of the building and the architect in charge of the renovation of the lofts was closed eight weeks ago. They were unable to prove who was responsible for the poorly laid cable.’

  ‘And you have nothing left?’

  ‘Just the clothes on my back and my car.’

  ‘And the picture?’

  ‘I’d had it framed and I took it round to my mother’s to show her and then forgot to bring it back.’

  * * *

  He was drinking the hot chocolate again. He startled himself awake from his nightmare. It was only a dream. He calmed himself down and felt around for the light switch. The electricity was back on. He glanced at the alarm clock that he’d recently started keeping beside his bed and was instantly filled with rage. Until a few months ago, he’d been woken every morning at six by the Angelus bells. But then here
tics had made it so that the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was only legally permitted to ring its bells at seven. So now an electronic beeping woke him up and he began every day annoyed.

  The alarm clock said it was three twenty. The storm was still blustering around the house. Rain drummed on the roof and against the windows, a constant pounding, as if it were an act of God. He stood up. His pyjamas stuck to his sweaty body. He took them off and went to put them in the washing machine. But he had to empty it first. The clothes he’d worn when he was getting rid of the evidence in the woods had got soaked through in the rain and he’d washed them immediately.

  He pulled them out of the washing machine, placed them in the dryer and turned it on. Then he stuffed the pyjamas into the machine and started the sanitise programme. He never normally did the washing at night. Everything had fallen into disarray. The thought reminded him that he still had to write down the new plan. Then he got into the shower. Hot water rained down on him. The windows fogged, thick steam enveloped him. He scrubbed his body until the skin was red. He would never manage to wash off this dirt. Then he rubbed his skin with oil and pulled on fresh pyjamas. Barefoot, he went into the kitchen. He warmed a cup of milk in the microwave.

  It had begun with a cup of hot chocolate. He had loathed the smell of it ever since. It was hot and sweet. And it had made him so tired that he sank into a deep sleep. A sleep during which he was haunted by chaotic dreams that made his heart race and covered his boyish body with cold sweat. A sharp pain. He wanted to wake up. But numbing tiredness wrapped around him and pulled him back into the stuffy darkness. He thought he would die.

  When he’d fought halfway back to reality, he was lying in a strange bed. He was in pain. It was dark and, for a confused moment, he thought he was still dreaming. There was the sound of steps and then the door opened. The light went on. It blinded him. The man that he knew only as his tormentor entered. He threw a bundle of clothes on the floor. ‘Get dressed,’ he said.

  Horrified, he realised that he was naked under the blanket. The tormentor came closer and leaned right over him. He could smell his breath. It smelled like coffee and cigarettes. He looked down at him from watery grey eyes. ‘How mistaken one can be about a person,’ he said, sighing. ‘You have evil in you. You are bad. Through and through. A rotten fruit.’ Fine droplets of spittle hit his face. His stomach turned inside out. He choked everything down again. ‘What have you done to me?’ the tormentor said softly. ‘You little devil.’

  It was his fault. But what? He was bad and didn’t know why. He wanted to be good. Tears welled up in his eyes. He swallowed hard. He only noticed the bloody welts on his body when he got home. Full of shame, he hid the signs of his disgrace. For years.

  He tore himself away from the memory, drank the glass of milk in one gulp. Sleep was out of the question. He’d had too many nights like this. He went into the living room and took a book from the shelf. But he didn’t open it.

  Yesterday, he’d sought advice and had found it as usual. And he shall be like a tree planted by streams of water, that bringeth forth its fruit in its season, and whose leaf doth not wither; and in whatsoever he doeth he shall prosper.

  This advice had filled him with confidence and he was ashamed of his doubts. The memory brought silent tears of joy and gratitude to his eyes. His time had come. Everything he had started would prosper. The repentance phase was over. They had understood the sign. He had thought it all out carefully. It would have been a sublime image: Jakob, crowned with flowers in the fiery candlelight, asleep at the feet of the virgin. That’s how he should have been found. By the brides of Christ and not that woman. She had ruined it. Who gave her the right to thwart his plans?

  Monday, 12th May

  ‘So, here you are again,’ Dühnfort said.

  Jakob was sitting at the breakfast table. There was a roll and a glass of milk in front of him. He was still wearing Agnes Gaudera’s jumper. The neckline had slipped over his shoulder and his face was still puffy from sleep. He looked up and stared blankly at Dühnfort.

  ‘Have a seat,’ Gabi Sonnberger said. ‘My husband will be here soon.’

  Dühnfort could see her relief. The shadows under her eyes had been replaced by a radiant glow and her stooped posture had become a springy gait. Even so, for a moment, there was something about her that still seemed tense to Dühnfort.

  He turned to Jakob. ‘Are you all right?’

  Jakob nodded.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  The boy shook his head hesitantly.

  ‘My name is Konstantin Dühnfort and I’m a police officer. I was looking for you. Of course, it wasn’t just me. Over two hundred police officers were looking for you. And we’re all happy that you’re OK. We’ve been wondering where you were.’

  Jakob wrapped his hands around his elbows.

  ‘Can you tell me where you were?’

  The boy slowly turned his head from left to right.

  ‘Someone hid you?’

  Jakob’s eyes widened as he nodded.

  ‘Do you know who hid you?’

  The boy nodded but said nothing.

  ‘Can you tell me who it was?’

  The boy nodded again. Dühnfort waited. Jakob climbed onto his mother’s lap. He closed his eyes and spoke almost inaudibly. ‘The black man.’

  ‘The black man,’ Dühnfort repeated and asked Jakob what he meant. ‘Did he have black skin?’

  Jakob’s eyebrows squeezed together.

  ‘Mr Dühnfort would like to know whether the black man is black like Jim Button,’ Gabi Sonnberger said.

  Jakob shook his head.

  ‘Do you call him that because he wears black clothes?’ Dühnfort asked.

  Another nod. Jakob’s lips were pale and narrow. He turned round on his mother’s lap, threw his arms around her neck and buried his head in her shoulder.

  ‘That’s enough for now.’ Gabi Sonnberger stood up with her son in her arms. The boy needed time and it would be better if Beatrice Mével, the psychologist, spoke to him. She was trained to interview children who’d been through a traumatic experience. She knew how to make them less anxious while at the same time eliciting from them any information that might be relevant to the police. Dühnfort looked at the clock. In ten minutes, Gina would arrive to accompany Jakob and his mother to the examination.

  Gabi Sonnberger saw him looking. ‘I still have to get Jakob dressed. My husband will go with him. The coffee is fresh. Help yourself to a cup.’

  Dühnfort watched her. She hesitated for a moment at the door as if she wanted to say something, then turned round and left the kitchen.

  The black man. That certainly was a start. Dühnfort poured himself a coffee and took a sip. Then he reached for the newspaper on the windowsill. He nearly let out a chuckle when he saw the front page.

  HALLELUJAH! was written across the page in large letters above the smaller headline: Jakob: Saved By A Miracle. The photo dominating the front page showed Gabi Sonnberger with Jakob in her arms and Beppo Sonnberger with tears in his eyes. Further down, there was a box with a red border that had the headline: The Angel Of Mariaseeon. Agnes Gaudera was in one of the photos. It showed Jakob clinging to her as she tried to close the church door. The light of the setting sun streamed in and lit her from behind. Her long hair and bright clothing glowed in the backlight, giving her an almost unearthly appearance. But the glow couldn’t be down to backlighting alone; the image had to have been computer-enhanced. The reporter had insisted on mentioning the tragic loss that ‘the angel of Mariaseeon’ had suffered a year earlier. Dühnfort skimmed the article. Rainer Gaudera, founder of xSoft PLC, had been a successful entrepreneur.

  A pampered woman, Dühnfort thought. I can have nothing to offer her. He was annoyed by the thought, drained his cup of coffee and continued reading. The reporter had done his homework and described the disaster in great detail. Dühnfort hoped that Agnes Gaudera wouldn’t see this paper.

  Yes, he lik
ed her. He’d liked her from the first instant, when she picked herself up and said everything is fine and he could tell that it wasn’t. He thought about the previous night, when he’d held her in his arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world. That wasn’t his usual style. Very dashing, he thought. Her frailty had probably awoken his protective instincts. He’d already had that happen to him twice before. The first time was during his studies, when he was head over heels in love with Kim, a Japanese music student. She was new to Hamburg and had trouble with the language, with the bureaucracy and with German food. He’d organised a language course for her, took care of the administrative stuff, learned Japanese cooking and made sure that she got the free room in the shared flat. After almost two years, she’d spoken German well, loved eating French food and was dating the junior manager of the largest car dealership in Hamburg.

  And then Konstanze. Also a delicate, seemingly helpless person. She had become a teacher because she feared she wouldn’t be able to survive in the private sector. She’d earned her living in a school that was practically a world of its own and had no idea how things worked in the real world. The fact that Dühnfort had no regular hours, had to work overtime and, even worse, wanted to, and found it impossible to switch off when he got home, had led to regular rows. As the problems piled up, she’d looked for someone new. Brutal. But that was the past. He had learned his lesson.

  Dühnfort heard the front door slam and then footsteps in the hallway. Gina came into the kitchen. He folded up the paper.

  ‘The door was open,’ she said. ‘Good morning, boss,’ she added and then pointed at the paper. ‘All that’s missing are the wings and halo. Why did she take the boy to the church, of all places?’

  ‘She’d promised to take him to his mother and she was in the church.’

  ‘By the way: mission accomplished.’ Gina reported that the angel of Mariaseeon had an alibi. Melanie Berger had seen her new neighbour unloading the removal van between 3 and 5 p.m. ‘Ms Berger also happens to be Jakob’s kindergarten teacher,’ Gina added. ‘What gave you the idea that Mrs Gaudera could have something to do with Jakob’s abduction?’