“We have to meet.”
“I don’t want to meet anyone.”
“Good thinking. But in your situation, you won’t survive on your own. Listen, Daniel: You’re new here. You’re a lamb. You’re surrounded by enemies. What you need is a mentor.”
He gulped and said, “You’re a resident of Himmelstal. How can I trust you?”
“You don’t have any choice, Daniel. Without a mentor you’re lost. And believe me, I’m the best you can get here. There are plenty of worse choices. Far, far worse.”
“I’d rather not leave my cabin.”
“You don’t have to. Just open the door. I’m right outside.”
He went over to the window and peered through the curtain.
There she was, dressed in an orange parka with her cell phone pressed to her ear under the hood. She looked small and pathetic in the pouring rain. She was looking straight at him, and through the window he saw her lips move, as the voice on the cell phone half pleaded and half commanded: “Open the door now.”
He opened it. She pulled off her parka and hung it up across two chairs, then sat herself down neatly on one of the wooden armchairs as she shook her wet hair like a dog. Daniel sat down opposite her.
“So you’ve spoken to Gisela Obermann,” he said. “Is she your psychiatrist?”
“Yes.”
“Is it good practice for a doctor to discuss her patients with another patient?”
“Don’t get hung up on silly details. You can’t afford that. Your situation is serious.”
“Did Doctor Obermann tell you I’m suffering from multiple personalities as well?”
Corinne nodded.
“And do you believe that?”
“No. But as a theory it might actually work to your advantage. It’s made her better disposed toward you. She thought she’d discovered something important. All the research staff in Himmelstal dream of discovering something important. But now Gisela has been taken off your case and Karl Fischer has taken over. That’s not good. But you’ll have to make the best of it.” She shuddered as if she were freezing. “A cup of tea would be nice.”
“Sorry. I haven’t got any tea. I’ve got cans of baked beans, and water.”
She stood up and dragged a chair over to the kitchen counter, clambered nimbly up on it, and pulled down a large box of tea bags that Daniel hadn’t noticed before from the top shelf.
“Max didn’t like tea. I bought him this box so he’d be able to make tea for me when I came,” she said as she filled the kettle with water. “Do you want some?”
“Yes please. So you’ve been in this cabin before, then?”
“A few times. But we mostly used to meet at mine.”
She got out two mugs and put a tea bag in each. Daniel waited for her to say something more about her relationship with Max, but she didn’t elaborate.
“I feel like a guest in my own home,” he said as she put the mug of tea down on the table in front of him.
“Isn’t that what you are here in Himmelstal?” She gave him a wry smile. “A guest?”
“Who can’t go home,” he said bitterly.
She took a careful sip of the hot tea, then leaned back and said, “So. Gisela has told you what sort of place this is. Now do you understand why I seemed so uncooperative when you asked for my help to get out of here? I can’t get you out of Himmelstal. I can’t get myself out of here.”
“If Max comes back…”
She waved her hand dismissively.
“He won’t. I know him. You were his chance, and he took it. The doctors make all the decisions, so they’re the ones we have to convince. They have their weaknesses, just like everyone else. They’re vain, desperate to make their careers; they’re competitive and ridiculously fascinated by psychopaths. They see us as exotic animals, and Himmelstal is their very own Serengeti. Anyone doing research into psychopaths dreams of getting a grant to come here as a guest researcher. With the monsters right outside the door.”
“I’m not a psychopath,” Daniel said angrily.
He stood and began to pace around the cabin. Recently he’d been unable to sit still for long.
“Nor me,” Corinne said.
He stopped and looked at her.
“So why are you here, then?”
“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you some other time. Let me just say that someone made a mistake. But this is about you, Daniel.”
“You’re here by mistake, and I’m here by mistake,” Daniel snapped. “How many of us are here by mistake?”
“Not very many. The diagnoses were probably a bit sloppy in plenty of cases. But even if they aren’t all one hundred percent psychopathic, you can probably assume that they are. Just to be on the safe side.”
“I’m going to get out of here!” Daniel roared, banging his fist on one of the beams. It hurt, but he went on thumping it as tears streamed down his face. His sudden fury took him by surprise.
Corinne seemed unconcerned by his outburst. She drank her tea, then, when he had calmed down and sunk back onto his chair, she said, “Obviously you’re going to get out of here. But it might take a while. Until then it’s a matter of survival. I promise to help you, and the only help I’ve got to give is good advice. Don’t frown like that. A bit of good advice could be the difference between life and death for you.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but I saw the look on your face.”
“I’m listening,” Daniel said meekly.
“Okay.” She put her mug down hard, straightened her back, and took hold of her left thumb. “First: Keep to yourself. Don’t let yourself get drawn into any deals, pacts, friendships, or love affairs. But you mustn’t hide away. Go to the cafeteria every day and eat lunch. Sit on your own, but go. Do your shopping down in the village. Have a beer in the bierstube. Stand tall. Don’t try to avoid people’s gaze. Reply politely but don’t say much if anyone speaks to you. Don’t start any conversations yourself. Never show that you’re afraid or weak, but keep your distance if there’s ever any trouble. It was brave of you to overpower Tom and save Bonnard’s life, but to be brutally honest I don’t think he was worth it.”
“Isn’t every person’s life worth saving?”
She looked up at the ceiling in despair.
“Dammit, Daniel. André Bonnard raped and murdered little girls; the youngest one was three years old. The value of such people’s lives is worth discussing, and I’ll be happy to have that discussion another day. But you have to be careful. Getting caught up in fights is dangerous. Being a witness to fights can be just as dangerous. See nothing, do nothing. You have to be selfish. Is that clear?”
He kept quiet and simply nodded.
Corinne took hold of her left index finger and said, “Then you have to think about your body. Eat properly. And exercise. Hard. You never know when you might need a strong, agile body. You might end up in a situation where your life depends on your physical condition. But there’s no need to let anyone else know what good shape you’re in. So don’t go to the gym. I never do any exercise there, as you can probably imagine. Women are in short supply here in Himmelstal. You don’t want to stand there in a tank top and hot pants twisting your body this way and that among a crowd of rapists and sadists. The clinic management fully understand my attitude and let me have a little gym in my apartment in the village. It’s not much, mostly weights, but it works well enough for me. You’re welcome to come and exercise there if you like.”
“Thanks.”
His anger had subsided and he was now listening intently to everything she was saying.
“That’s the body done. Then there’s your soul.” She let go of her index finger and grabbed her middle finger instead. “You need to take care of that as well. I understand that you read a lot?”
“How do you know that?”
She smiled.
“You can’t even have a beer in the bierstube without reading at the same time. I don’t think I’ve ever se
en one of our clients with a book before. And there’s a book on the table now.” She nodded toward the paperback. “You were sitting here reading when I called, weren’t you? It’s from the library, so you’ve already found your way there. Good. Keep it up. I have a different way of getting away from it all.”
“What?”
“The church.”
“You’re religious?”
She threw her hands out.
“Call it what you like. There’s a mass every evening at six o’clock, and I go there every day when I’m not performing. We’re a small but dedicated congregation. We sit in the pews as far away from one another as possible, listening to the priest, singing hymns, lighting candles.”
“The priest?” Daniel said. “Is that the Father Dennis who puts his sermons on the Himmelstal website?”
Corinne nodded.
“He might not be a theological genius, but we don’t have a lot of choice. I don’t go for his sake anyway. The inside of the church is actually very nice. If you like you could come with me one evening.”
“No thanks. That sort of thing’s not for me.”
“You might change your mind. What else? Well, be careful, obviously. But you are already. Keep your door locked. Don’t open it if you’re not expecting anyone. Don’t go out at night. Don’t hang around on your own in lonely places. And of course, I don’t suppose I have to say this: Don’t tell anyone who you are. We need to convince the doctors of your true identity. But as far as the residents of Himmelstal are concerned, you’re Max.”
She stood up and pulled on her parka. It was at least three sizes too big.
“Oh, yes. One more thing,” she said, putting her boots on. “Has Samantha been to see you?”
“Here? In the cabin? No,” Daniel said.
She looked at him and sighed.
“You need to get better at lying if you’re going to survive here. You’re blushing like anything.”
“That was a long time ago. I actually thought it was a dream,” he muttered with embarrassment.
“I’m not begrudging you anything, but like I said: Be careful.”
She unlocked the door, pulled her hood up, then turned toward him with her fingers on the door handle.
“See you,” she said, then slipped out into the rain.
36
THE NEXT day was sunny, and the snow-capped mountaintop was glistening in the west. Daniel had decided to heed Corinne’s advice and eat lunch in the cafeteria. With his back straight and his eyes fixed firmly ahead, he walked down the slope and through the park, which smelled fresh after the rain yesterday and last night.
Outside the care center there was plenty going on, as usual at this time of day. People were hurrying along the footpaths, alone or in groups. Two hostesses were heading off toward the village, one of them talking animatedly on her cell phone. But nowhere could he recognize any of the faces he had seen around the big table in the conference room. He hadn’t heard anything from the doctors since he had been discharged from the ward. Not from Doctor Fischer, nor Doctor Obermann, nor any of the others.
He looked up at the imposing edifice of the care center and tried to identify which room he had been in. The conference room was on one of the upper floors. Gisela Obermann’s room was right at the top. The ward in which he and Marko had been locked for their tests had to be on one of the lower floors. And the ward where he had been treated for his burns was probably somewhere in the middle.
But the glass façade was so impenetrably shiny that he couldn’t even identify any floors or windows from where he was standing. All he could see was a mirror image of the valley: sky, treetops, and the rock face opposite.
In the cafeteria he chose to sit outside on the paved terrace. He had selected the table carefully before he even went in and joined the line with his tray. There were only a few diners sitting outside, and the table wasn’t too close to them, but not too isolated either.
He had just started eating when someone sat down at the next table. Daniel recognized the village barber. His shirt was unbuttoned down to his chest, and his bangs had been blow-dried to an untidy reddish brown mop that partly covered the wrinkles on his forehead. The barber took a cautious taste of his lasagna and let out a groan of delight.
“This is how lasagna should taste. Loads of cheese. There’s no need to go to the restaurant to get good food. Because most things are just as good down here in the cafeteria, don’t you think?” he said to Daniel.
“Yes, absolutely.”
Daniel had made up his mind to agree to everything that was said, or at least not to disagree.
The barber tasted his wine—one glass was included with lunch, for those who wanted it—then smacked his lips together. Daniel caught a whiff of aftershave as the man leaned toward his table and winked conspiratorially over the rim of the glass.
“We don’t have it so bad, do we? Out there…” He gestured with one hand toward something vague in the distance and snorted derisively. “Nothing but problems! I don’t want to go back out there.”
The chair scraped on the slabs as he moved it closer to Daniel. He quickly dabbed his mouth with his napkin to catch some melted cheese.
“People think you go to hell if you kill someone. If only they knew that you end up in Himmelstal instead. If people could see us, then every last fucker out there would be a psychopath.”
“Maybe.”
“When I committed my first murder, I ended up in prison. Awful place. Terrible people, terrible food. We worked in a laundry, washing hospital sheets soaked in blood and shit. Disgusting! When I committed my second murder, they said I was ill and I ended up in a hospital. A madhouse, basically. Not a nice place, but better than prison. We were made to sew and listen to Mozart. After my third murder they said I was a psychopath and I got sent to Himmelstal. Now I’ve got a nice little two-room apartment down in the village. With a view of meadows and the river. My own barbershop. I only work mornings these days. I spend the afternoons lying by the pool or playing a bit of tennis. In the winter I strap on my skis and set off down the slopes. I’m not complaining, definitely not.”
“No, I can understand that.”
“I wonder where you end up after the next murder? The Bahamas?”
He let out a shrill laugh.
“Well, good to see you,” Daniel said as politely as he could, then stood up with a stiff smile.
“Oh, don’t go,” the barber said, grabbing his arm. “Look, you haven’t even finished. You should never leave any of a lasagna like this on your plate.”
He pushed Daniel down onto his chair again, moved his own chair even closer, and said in a low voice, “I know what you think of me.”
“I really don’t think anything.”
“Yes, of course you do. You think I’m a spy, don’t you? An infiltrator.”
“Certainly not. What do you mean, a spy?”
“There are spies in the valley, surely you knew that? They get close to people. Find things out.”
“I didn’t know that. Who are they spying for?”
“The doctors, of course. They make out they’re tough. Boasting about how many people they’ve murdered. But it’s easy to be tough when you can call for backup whenever you want, isn’t it? You know Block, the one who disappeared? A hired thug, mass murderer, and all the other things people said he was. Used to hang around with Kowalski and Sørensen. But as soon as things got a bit heated, a car full of guards would show up. Conveniently for Block. Do you think that was coincidence? I don’t.”
“How do you mean, that it wasn’t coincidence?”
“He called them. Not with his cell phone, obviously. But somehow.”
The barber quickly finished his wine and glanced suspiciously over his shoulder. Then he leaned closer to Daniel again and whispered, “He had a gadget.”
“What sort of gadget?”
“It looked like an MP3 player or something like that. Every time the guards came, he’d been fiddling with it just b
efore. And the guards were there instantly. As if they’d been hanging around nearby.”
“And now he’s disappeared?” Daniel said carefully.
The barber nodded.
“Exactly. And isn’t it funny that the guards spent so long looking for him, really thoroughly? I mean, people go missing here every now and then, but they don’t usually make such a fuss, do they? They count on a certain number of losses. But when Block disappeared, it was like the doctors had been hit by an earthquake, and the guards searched through every resident’s home. No, Block wasn’t one of us. He was one of them.”
“You might be right.”
Daniel began a fresh attempt to stand up with his tray, but the barber put his arm around his shoulders and whispered, “I knew it all along. There was something not quite right about him. We spoke once. About killing and so on. He pretended to know what I was talking about, but he didn’t have a clue, I could tell. Not a clue. A mass murderer?” He snorted right in Daniel’s ear—a hard little puff of breath against his eardrum—then pulled him even closer and hissed, “He’s never killed so much as a hamster. You can tell that sort of thing, can’t you?”
He leaned back and looked at Daniel with renewed interest.
“If you want to keep that hairstyle, it’ll soon be time to get it cut again. I presume you’ll choose a professional this time? And what’s this? Have you stopped shaving?”
The barber stroked Daniel’s cheek gently. Daniel had to stop himself from knocking his hand away.
“I like it like this,” he muttered.
“Are you going to grow a beard? You should know that a well-cared-for beard demands professional attention. As does a slightly longer haircut.”
He smiled and playfully tousled Daniel’s hair but suddenly stopped with the palm of his hand on Daniel’s head.
“What’s this?” he said, standing up and leaning over Daniel’s crown. “I could have sworn you were counterclockwise.”
“What?” Daniel said, confused.
“That the hair on your crown grew counterclockwise. Hmm,” he said, sitting down again. “I must have gotten it wrong. That’s what happens when you abandon your barber.”
The Devil's Sanctuary Page 21