Therapy

by Sebastian Fitzek

  Viktor wiped away the blood in the top right-hand corner and was able to make out the name of his bank. It was a printout from his savings account where he and Isabell kept the bulk of their money.

  ‘Read it carefully,’ advised Halberstaedt.

  The date and transaction number were printed on the left.

  ‘That's today!’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  ‘But it can't possibly . . .’ He knew there weren't any cash machines on Parkum. But it wasn't the date that concerned him most.

  Two days ago the account balance had stood at 450,322 euros.

  Yesterday someone had withdrawn the lot.

  34

  Room 1245, Berlin-Wedding Psychosomatic Clinic

  ‘And it hadn't occurred to you until then that Isabell might be involved?’

  Smoking was strictly forbidden in the clinic, but Dr Roth had fetched a cigarette for Viktor and was holding it next to his mouth.

  ‘No, and even then I dismissed the idea straight away. It was simply too distressing.’

  ‘And Isabell was the only one who could access the money?’

  ‘Yes, the account was in both our names. If someone had withdrawn our savings, she must have authorized the transaction. Either that, or the bank had made a mistake.’

  Dr Roth's bleep went off again, but this time he silenced it.

  ‘Aren't you going to answer it?’

  ‘It wasn't urgent.’

  ‘I see. Only the wife,’ chuckled Viktor.

  Dr Roth wasn't amused. ‘Let's focus on your spouse, Dr Larenz. Did you think about asking Kai to keep an eye on her?’

  ‘Remember the hoo-ha about the forged Hitler diaries?’ asked Viktor. ‘Remember how the newspapers fell for the scam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Years ago I met a journalist who worked for Stern. He was directly involved with the story.’

  ‘I'm not sure how this answers my question.’

  ‘He and I were waiting in the green room at a TV studio where I was booked to appear on a talk show. He wasn't especially forthcoming about the diaries, but we met up later in the studio canteen and after a couple of beers he was ready to talk about it. I'll never forget what he said.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said: “We staked our reputations on those diaries. We'd risked too much for them not to be real. It was a case of seeing what we wanted to see: we were convinced they were genuine because the alternative was too awful to contemplate. We weren't looking for signs that we'd been conned; we were looking for proof that we were right.”’

  ‘How does that apply to you and Isabell?’

  ‘I felt the same about my wife as he felt about the diaries: I wanted to trust her, so I did.’

  ‘You didn't look into it any further?’

  ‘Not right away. I had better things to do.’ He took a drag on the cigarette that Dr Roth was holding for him.

  ‘I had to get back to the mainland alive.’

  35

  ‘Help me, Viktor!’

  Three words. And the first thought that crossed his mind was that Anna had dropped the ‘doctor’ from his name.

  The horizon had closed in and was ominously close to the shore. Dark grey clouds hung heavy over the island, so low he could almost touch them, and the sky seemed intent on smothering the house. The full force of the storm was about to hit Parkum. By the time Viktor got out of bed to find out who was hammering on his door, the shipping forecast was reporting wind speeds of ten to twelve on the Beaufort scale. But Viktor was oblivious to the freakish weather raging around him. Before falling asleep, he had taken a couple of powerful sleeping pills in the hope of dozing for a few hours, free from pain or stress. When he opened the door, the parts of his nervous system that weren't under the numbing influence of the barbiturates were immediately focused on a new conundrum: Anna had turned up unexpectedly and Viktor had never seen such rapid deterioration in a patient's state of health. The woman who ninety minutes earlier had stormed out of his house in a fury was standing before him, hair matted, face wan and tired, and pupils dilated with fear. Her clothes, filthy and sodden, clung to her body, accentuating her pitiful state.

  ‘Help me, Viktor.’

  Those were her last three words that day. Before Viktor had time to react, she slumped to the ground, clutching helplessly at his blue woollen sweater. At first he thought she was having an epileptic fit. After all, there was a known link between epilepsy and psychosis. But, as he noted dispassionately, she wasn't trembling or flailing around. Nor was she displaying other typical symptoms such as foaming at the mouth or sudden incontinence. And she wasn't actually unconscious, just extremely dazed and unresponsive, as if she were spaced out on drugs.

  Viktor made a snap decision to carry her into the house. Scooping her up from the wooden porch, he was surprised by how much she weighed. She seemed ridiculously heavy for someone of her build.

  I've really let myself go, he thought, panting as he carried her to the spare room upstairs.

  As he ascended the staircase, the pounding in his head grew deafeningly loud. It felt as if his body were soaking up the barbiturates, absorbing the manufactured tiredness like a sponge. He seemed to be getting more ponderous by the second.

  The spare room was across the corridor from Viktor's bedroom. Fortunately he had arranged for all the beds to be made up prior to his arrival, so the room was ready for use.

  He laid Anna between the white linen sheets and helped her out of her grimy cashmere coat. Then he loosened her silk scarf and took her pulse.

  No problems there.

  Following a sudden impulse, he opened her eyelids and shone a pen torch at her pupils. Anna clearly wasn't well. Both pupils responded sluggishly. That in itself wasn't a concern and could easily be a side effect of her medication, but it proved that she wasn't faking her condition. Anna was either sick or suffering from exhaustion. Like him.

  What was wrong with them?

  He decided not to think about it for the moment and to get on with removing her sodden clothes. He was a doctor, a doctor acting in the interest of his patient, but he still felt uncomfortable when it came to taking off her trousers, unbuttoning her blouse and slipping off her silk underwear. Her naked body was flawless. He wrapped her hastily in a fluffy white bathrobe from the bathroom and covered her with a light eiderdown quilt. She was so exhausted that she fell asleep before he finished tucking her in.

  Viktor stayed for a while, listening carefully as his patient took deep, regular breaths. He was relieved to establish that she had suffered no more than a temporary breakdown and hadn't done herself serious harm.

  All the same, the situation made him nervous.

  He was ill and exhausted and now there was a schizophrenic patient in his spare room who quite possibly wanted to kill him. As soon as she woke up, he intended to confront her about what had happened to Josy, Sindbad and his money.

  Were it not for the sleeping pills and antibiotics sapping his strength, he would have erred on the side of caution and carried her back to the village without delay.

  Viktor considered for a moment, then came to a decision. He went to the telephone to call for help.

  Just as he picked up the receiver, a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the length of the beach. Viktor put down the phone and started counting. He only got as far as four when a deafening rumble shook the house. He hurried from room to room, unplugging electrical appliances in case of a power surge. After unplugging the television in the spare room, he waited for a moment, watching as Anna tossed, turned and sighed in her sleep. She seemed to be making a good recovery. In a couple of hours she would be back on her feet.

  She'll probably wake up while I'm asleep.

  He knew that he had to take action. The last thing he wanted was for Anna to hold him to ransom in his own house. He went downstairs to the telephone, pausing halfway to sit down for a moment and regain his balance.

  When he got to the si
tting room and picked up the phone, he was so exhausted that it took him a couple of seconds to realize that the line was dead. He put the handset back on the cradle and tried again, but the old-fashioned telephone refused to make a noise.

  ‘Godawful weather, godawful island.’

  The storm must have brought down the lines.

  Viktor sat down on the couch and tried desperately to come up with an idea. He had a potentially violent patient in the house. He didn't have the strength to walk to the village. And the telephone didn't work. He could feel the numbing power of the barbiturates spreading through his system.

  What was he to do?

  In the very moment that he thought of a solution, he fell asleep.

  36

  This time it was different. The nightmare didn't follow its usual pattern; something had changed. For one thing, Josy wasn't in the Volvo as they raced down the pier towards the raging sea. At first he couldn't make out who was sitting on the back seat of the car. In his dream, he was intent on identifying the young woman who was drumming her fingers against the door. At last he recognized her:

  Anna!

  No one heard him shout because a hand was covering his mouth, stopping him from making a sound.

  What the hell is going on?

  Petrified, Viktor realized that the horrifying nightmare had given way to something indescribably worse. He was lying on the couch and the dream was real. He had woken up to find himself being smothered.

  I can't breathe, he thought. He struck out, trying to shake off his attacker, but the sleeping pills, combined with the effects of his illness, conspired against him, robbing him of the strength to fight back. It felt as if an invisible force were pulling him downwards, pinning his arms to his side.

  This is it. She's going to kill me.

  Halberstaedt was right.

  Grunting with exertion, he hurled himself to the side and kicked out wildly with one foot. He could feel himself being pushed further and further into the couch, then his foot connected with something soft and he heard an unnatural cracking and a muffled scream. Suddenly the hand lifted from his mouth and his lungs filled with air. The pressure on his chest was gone.

  ‘Anna?’ he shouted at the top of his voice, clutching at the air as if he were drowning. He slid off the couch and crawled across the floor.

  ‘Anna!’

  No answer.

  Maybe I'm still dreaming. Maybe none of this is real.

  Until now his thoughts had been clogged by flu and barbiturates, but at last he was starting to panic.

  Help! Light! I need light!

  ‘ANNA!’

  On hearing his own voice, he felt like a diver gradually returning to the surface.

  Where's the bloody light?

  Straightening up unsteadily, he reached out and ran his fingers frantically over the wall. At last he found the light switch and the sitting room was flooded in bright yellow light from the four spotlights on the ceiling. He waited for his eyes to adjust and scanned the room.

  There's no one here. I'm on my own.

  He walked slowly to the window. It was closed. He had almost reached his desk when the door slammed behind him. He whirled round. He could hear someone running barefoot up the stairs.

  ‘Help me, Viktor!’

  Three words uttered a few hours earlier by his unexpected guest. Now he repeated the sentence himself. He was in the grip of the same blind panic that had assailed him several times before. He stood rigid with shock, then stumbled to the door.

  What's happening to me? Was that her? Or am I dreaming?

  He stopped by the bureau in the hallway and rummaged around for the pistol. Gone!

  Upstairs, heavy footsteps pounded across the landing.

  He kept searching frantically and found the half-opened package at the back of the drawer, buried under a pile of handkerchiefs. Hands trembling, he ripped off the paper, grabbed two bullets and loaded the pistol. Spurred on by a rush of adrenalin, he sprinted upstairs.

  Just as he reached the landing, the door to the spare room slammed shut. He ran to the end of the corridor.

  ‘Anna, what are you . . .’

  Viktor threw open the door and pointed the gun at the bed. He went to pull the trigger and caught his breath. The sight that greeted him was so shocking, so unexpected that it was more than he could handle in his present state.

  He lowered the weapon.

  Impossible, he thought, backing out of the room and closing the door behind him. He was panting and gasping. Impossible, completely impossible.

  It didn't add up, and worse still, he couldn't explain it. The spare room, the room where he had seen Anna sleeping peacefully, the room whose door she had slammed only moments earlier, was empty. And Anna was nowhere to be seen.

  Half an hour later, when Viktor embarked on his second tour of the house to check the doors and windows, his fatigue had lifted. His uncontrolled shivering and rising temperature had cancelled out the effect of the sleeping pills. Besides, Anna had done her utmost to keep him awake. She had attacked him in his own living room and taken flight in the middle of a storm without stopping to get dressed. All her clothes and even his bathrobe were lying on the carpet in the spare room. She hadn't taken anything with her.

  Viktor made himself a pot of strong coffee. Four questions were playing tag in his head:

  What does Anna want?

  Did she really attack me?

  Why did she run away?

  Who is she?

  At half past four in the morning, he revived himself with a double dose of paracetamol and an ibuprofen. The day had only just begun.

  37

  Day of Reckoning, Parkum

  In certain situations, even the most rationally minded people behave in absurd and illogical ways. Nine times out of ten, a person in possession of a remote control will press the buttons harder if the battery runs low. But a nickel cadmium cell isn't like a lemon, and squeezing it firmly won't produce more juice.

  In Viktor's opinion, the same could be said of the human brain. Exhaustion, illness and other factors were liable to drain a person's battery, thereby slowing his thoughts. In such circumstances, concentrating harder was futile: no amount of effort could force a synapse to generate a thought.

  This was the attitude adopted by Viktor with regard to the previous night. None of what happened seemed to make sense. He could wrack his brains and consider the matter for as long as he liked, but poring over the details wasn't going to give him any answers and it certainly wasn't going to help his peace of mind.

  Charlotte, Sindbad, Josy. Murder.

  Everything hinged on a single question: Who was Anna Glass? He needed to get to the truth before it was too late. At first he toyed with the idea of calling the police, but what evidence did he have? His dog was dead, he felt ill, someone had tried to kill him and his savings had disappeared. But he couldn't prove that Anna was involved.

  On Monday morning, he would call the bank manager and put a block on his account. But it was only Sunday and he had neither the time nor the inclination to sit around and wait. He had to deal with the problem, and he had to deal with it alone. In spite of his near suffocation, he felt marginally better. But that was perturbing as well. What if his improved health were due to the fact that he had stopped drinking tea?

  He was in the bathroom when he was startled by a strange noise. It came from downstairs. Someone was at the front door. This time it didn't sound like Halberstaedt's waders or Anna's high heels. Seized by a sudden, irrational fear, he closed his fingers around the pistol in his pocket, crept to the door and peered through the spyhole. Who would be out and about so early on a Sunday morning?

  No one.

  Viktor stood on tiptoe, then crouched down and peered under the door. Try as he might, he couldn't see anyone at all. He reached for the heavy brass handle, intending to open the door a centimetre or so. At that moment, he heard a rustling by his right foot. He glanced down and picked up an envelope that some
one had slid through to him from outside.

  It was a telegram. Years ago, at a time when no one had heard of email or faxes, Viktor wouldn't have been surprised to receive a telegram. But what was the point of a telegram when everyone could be contacted twenty-four hours a day by mobile phone? Surely telegrams were obsolete? True, he couldn't get a signal on Parkum, but he usually had a functioning landline and email as well. Why would anyone send him a telegram?

  Viktor shoved the pistol into the pocket of his dressing gown and opened the door. Whoever had delivered the telegram was no longer in sight. The only living creature was a stray cat, its black fur wet and bedraggled, slinking towards the village. For a person to have disappeared like that would take an impressive burst of speed. The only cover was afforded by a forest of pine trees and spruces whose dripping branches seemed to block out the daylight.

  Trembling, Viktor closed the door. He wasn't sure whether he was cold, frightened or ill. He discarded his sweat-drenched bathrobe and left it on the floor. After wrapping himself in a thick woollen cardigan from the coatrack in the hall, he opened the telegram, ripping the white envelope to get to the message. It consisted of a single sentence. He had to read it three times before it made sense and even then it made him gasp with shock.

  SHAME ON YOU.

  The message was printed in block capitals in a 12-point font on standard post office paper. The sender's details were listed at the bottom. He sat down slowly. The words seemed to blur before his eyes. Isabell.

  Why on earth would Isabell send him a message like that? He turned the sheet over in his hands and examined it closely. It didn't make sense. Shame on me for what? What had he done? Had Isabell, who was still in Manhattan, found out something terrible about him? Had he done something so unspeakably dreadful that she couldn't bear to tell him on the phone? Why was she turning against him when he desperately needed her support?

  Viktor decided to call her in New York. He went to the telephone and held the handset to his ear: still no dialling tone. The line, his only means of contacting his wife, was out of order.