The bit of apple peel stuck between her teeth would already be on its final journey.
14
“Twins,” Felix said looking miserable. “That will be tough.”
Franza’s eyes opened wide. “You’re kidding!” she said.
“Nope,” he said. “It’s true. Even Angelika is shocked now.”
They were drinking coffee from the vending machine. The coffeemaker had finally died, and no one had bought a new one. It was Wednesday morning, ten o’clock, and Franza had shown up for work on time, no detours to Port. She was haunted with thoughts of the girl, who wanted to be recognized, wanted her name back.
They’d gone through every missing person’s report. Nothing. They would give her picture to the newspapers.
“She’s due early November,” Felix said. “Then we’ll have five of them. Imagine that! Five! Unbelievable!”
He sniffled a little and shook his head. “She had an appointment with the gynecologist yesterday afternoon, and that’s when she got the big news.”
Franza pulled the container of cookies out of her bag. “Here you go,” she said. “Our daily sugar ration. You can have it every day from now on if you want. Makes you happy.”
He nodded and made a face. “I appreciate it,” he said, “but I’ve got a toothache on top of everything else. Since yesterday. Since I ate those things you baked. I’ve hardly slept, popping pills all night. And then this news.”
He groaned. “Do you think you could call your husband and ask if he can fit me in?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly, “if that’s such a good idea. It could be more painful than necessary for you. Maybe you should look for a new dentist.”
Felix looked at her with surprise. “Why is that? I always see Max.”
Well, Franza thought, if “always see” means every five years and only when it’s urgent, then yes, “always see” is true.
“You could almost say he is my family dentist,” Felix mused aloud and examined his tooth with his tongue, the pill-popping finally having the desired effect.
“Explain,” he said next. “Come on, out with it. You know who the expert is in questioning here. So, what have I done? Why can’t I see Max anymore? Why can’t Max touch my teeth anymore?”
Franza sighed and drummed on the desk with her fingernails. Ancient pictures of Max and Ben laughed out of an ancient picture frame. Even back then things hadn’t been right. All right, she thought, he won’t let me get away with it anyway. She swallowed and prepared herself. “I believe he thinks I’m cheating on him. And I believe he suspects you.”
“Me!” Felix gave a surprised laugh. “Hallelujah! Now that’s some news.”
He took a cookie, nibbled carefully, pushed it into his left cheek immediately, and washed it down with coffee.
“And? Are you?”
“What?”
“Cheating on him.”
Franza remained silent. Felix grinned and shook his head. “Franza, Franza!” he said. “You’re something else.”
They did it standing up, Franza and Port, they did it lying down or sitting, elaborately and precisely, as lovers do.
They did it like lovers.
They had been relying more and more on words lately. She didn’t object. It felt dangerous.
“Don’t you love your husband anymore?” Felix asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “So much has happened over the years. I don’t know.”
Felix nodded like he knew what she was talking about. “We’re past forty,” he said. “Doesn’t everything change then? Over and over? Doesn’t everything have to change over and over again? And when you face death all the time . . .”
He took a sip of coffee, staring straight ahead. “Angelika,” he said, “used to be scared a lot. At night. Lying awake. But not anymore. Now she has the children.”
Franza nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I know what you mean.”
“The girl,” Felix said. “I gave her picture to the newspapers.”
“Good,” Franza said. “Good.”
15
The rippled surface of the Danube mirrored the trees on the bank. Occasionally, fish jumped in the clear waters along the edge. You could see rocks, sand, leaves, driftwood, and the shadows of the bushes at the bottom.
Yellow dots sparkled in the green meadow, sometimes purple, poppies glowing, elder flowering.
“Come!” Marie said. “Come here, my Ben!”
A jogger wearing a burgundy-red T-shirt dashed along the water’s edge and was gone as fast as he’d come. Another came along, slower, exhausted. They heard his breathing, his steps. He gave them a nod, and they nodded back.
“I used to come here a lot,” Marie said. “I loved it. The quiet, and that all you heard was the wind and the trees. And then the frogs croaking. Or the ducks. I can’t tell the difference.” She laughed.
“Frogs,” Ben said, grinning. “They’re frogs, you city slicker!”
“Is that so?” she laughed. “Country bumpkin!”
He put his hand on her arm.
“You’re nice, Ben,” she said in the middle of the kiss. “Will you come to Berlin with me? To wish me luck?”
“Yes,” Ben said. “Of course. Of course I’ll come.”
He leaned back and looked into the sun. Everything was clearer when Marie was around. She was clarity personified to him, clearing his mind, his feelings, his life.
“I’m going to study biology,” he said. “And when I’m finished, I won’t get a job, because you can’t get a job with just a biology degree. My father is going to sell his practice because I’m not taking over, and then he will generously give me a monthly allowance, which will see us through while you’re becoming a famous actress. Someday you’ll make it big, and then you’ll bring home the money, and I’ll be a stay-at-home dad and raise our children, and I’ll bring them here regularly so that, when they’re older, they’ll know that frogs croak and ducks quack. By then, my father will have moved to Sweden. My mother will keep chasing murderers till the day she dies.”
“Wow,” she said, grinning. “What a plan!” She pulled him to his feet. “Come on!” she cried, “Let’s jump into the water.”
“What?” he squealed. “In the cold! Never!”
He put up a fight, they wrestled. “Let go!” he said. “Way too cold.”
“So what?” she said, certain of victory. “We’re wearing warm clothes!”
She pushed and pulled to get him in, and it was as cold as he’d expected. “You frog!” he shouted, and she laughed.
On the hill the yellow wheat rolled gently like an ocean, stretching far down toward the western bank.
After they hung their clothes on the bushes to dry, and the shadows had dissolved into the black mass that was the Danube, they made love. Her hair fell onto his face, and he buried his nose in it; he closed his eyes and felt her touch, which was like foam on the dark river waters.
16
The blood on the stones was the girl’s, DNA analysis confirmed. Traces of her blood were also found on the shoes.
“Well!” the coroner said. “We have a young woman, early to mid twenties. Before the accident she would have been in relatively good health, maybe a bit malnourished, but that’s nothing unusual for a female that age.”
He stopped, raised an eyebrow, and grinned suggestively as he glanced at Franza’s twenty pounds too many. She parried with an indifferent smile. “Look at yourself, Borger.”
He cleared his throat, patted his belly, and continued to grin. “Whatever you say, Franza, my dear. Shall we go for a bite to eat later? You know I adore your hips.”
He turned and grinned at Arthur, their young colleague, who remained discreetly in the background—not because he was discreet by nature, but because he was feeling sick to his stomach and trying not to let it show. “You know, I love her hips!”
Arthur had no choice but to return the grin, but didn’t really know what to s
ay. He hemmed and hawed and then finally mumbled, “They are nice hips.” He cursed himself inwardly because he could feel how he was blushing.
Franza and Borger laughed, and Franza was surprised to see Borger looking Arthur up and down with interest. She was sure Arthur had noticed, too, and maybe that was why he’d turned red. Arthur was smart and easily drew the right conclusions. He had potential, and Franza and Felix were training him as their successor.
As their successor! That sounded as if they were almost ready to retire even though they still had a good twenty years to go.
But that’s the way it went. They had to train good people, had to give them time to grow and to develop their instincts and personalities. That didn’t happen overnight. It took time, and Arthur was someone they were willing to invest their time in because they had high hopes for him. He was hungry and tough when necessary, but he also possessed a certain sensitivity—a rare combination.
“Well,” Borger said. “Shall we go eat?”
He turned to Arthur. “You’re welcome to join us, of course.” His voice quivered a little.
Franza shook her head and tapped her forehead. “How can you think of food right now?”
“Oh, come on,” Borger said, “ever since you rejected me in favor of that gum plumber, I constantly think of food. Considering how cold it is in here”—he gestured around the room—“I have to keep up my strength.”
She nodded and smiled, suddenly feeling a wave of calm and composure coming over her. She secretly called him tie-Borger, because she had never seen him without a tie. Every time she saw him she decided to get him an especially classy one for next time, but she always forgot. They’d known each other since their college years and had even lived in the same dormitory for a few months. They liked each other, and their banter at the many wakes and burials they had attended made the deaths easier to bear.
“All right,” he said, turning his attention back to the girl lying on the metal table in the hospital’s pathology room. She seemed distant, more distant than on the autobahn, but Franza knew this phenomenon. Lying on metal tables beneath bright lights, they were pale and ashen, all color drained from them. Some took on a greenish hue. Often it was here the victims would regain their dignity—here, where it was returned to them. Even as every last secret was being stolen from them, their loss was atoned for by finding the clues to their death.
“So young!” Borger said, turning serious. “Sad.”
Franza nodded, carefully taking a strand of the girl’s hair between her fingers. Dark brown bordering on black. As she’d thought.
“And you still don’t know who she is? No one reported her missing?” Borger asked, looking doubtfully at Franza.
Franza shook her head. “No, no one.”
“Maybe she’s not from around here. Maybe she’s from God knows where and no one has missed her because everyone thinks she’s gone on vacation. It happened on the autobahn, after all. Autobahns lead into the unknown.”
For a moment Franza was astonished at Borger’s poetry. She shook her head again. “I think that’s unlikely. Would you go on vacation wearing a dress like that? Sitting in the car for hours? I can’t see it. To me, it’s precisely the dress that narrows our area of interest. But let’s wait and see. Her photo’s in the newspaper today.”
“You’re probably right,” Borger said. “Shall we begin?”
Franza nodded.
“So,” he began, “death occurred almost immediately, thankfully, you could say. The injuries were definitely fatal, and there was nothing anyone could have done. She didn’t have the slightest chance.”
He paused, remaining silent for several moments, and then continued. “The car must have hit her with full force. The pelvis and thighs have multiple fractures, everything is crushed. Moreover, some of the inner organs are pretty roughed up, too, meaning that several systems failed at the same time, complete shutdown, multiple trauma. Ruptured intestines, ruptured liver, ruptured aorta.”
Borger fell silent and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. A fan was humming on the ceiling. Arthur was trying to get used to the air, to the smell of disinfectant and chemicals, and to the indefinable something that seemed to be hovering in the room.
“What was the cause of death in the end?” Franza asked.
Borger looked at the girl pensively. “Loss of blood,” he said. “A girl her age has about six pints of blood. It doesn’t take long to lose that, only a few minutes.”
He looked up and into Franza’s face. It affects her, he thought, yes, we’re not getting any younger, this sad look about her mouth . . .
“The blood on the stones in the rest area is hers, then. Can you elaborate?”
He nodded. “Yes, we were lucky. Insofar as after the collision she landed on the grass beside the road and her head and face received very little damage. There’s only this one conspicuous wound on the back of her head, and that definitely wasn’t due to the accident. The laceration caused the blood on the rocks that we saw.”
He paused again, clearing his throat. “Additionally,” he said, with unmistakable satisfaction in his voice, “I found tiny traces of moss in the wound. We can say with absolute certainty that it is the same moss that’s on the rocks in the rest area.”
He nodded a few times. Then he continued, “You see these marks?” He pointed to several dark bruises on the girl’s throat.
Franza nodded slowly. “Strangulation marks.”
“Exactly. She must have been strangled, and then fell or was pushed, and hit the back of her head on the rocks.”
Franza frowned. “Did she try to fight off her attacker?”
“There’s no one else’s DNA under her fingernails, if that’s what you mean,” he said regretfully.
She sighed, and he studied her face again. Yes, he thought, this is new, this look about her mouth, the tired eyes. Her hair, however, was as blond as ever. Still shiny with the same reddish tinge, though maybe she just had a good hairdresser. Well, he thought with resignation, it can’t be helped, we’re getting old. And he realized with surprise how familiar the thought was to him, and how often he’d thought it before.
“What happened next?” Franza asked, noticing Borger’s intent gaze. “She was lying there . . .”
He nodded. “Yes. And was most likely unconscious.”
“Because of the impact.”
“Because of a commotio cerebri.”
“Concussion.”
He smiled mischievously. “Yes.”
“And how long did this unconsciousness last? How long was she lying there?”
He thought it over for a moment. “Maybe half an hour. Probably less. However, she had a considerable amount of alcohol in her blood, which would’ve dulled her senses further.”
“Meaning?”
“That I can’t tell you precisely. It could’ve been less, but also more. But more likely less.”
“Could he have thought she was dead?”
Borger stopped again to think, scratching his chin and moving his head from side to side. “Yes,” he said finally. “Definitely. If you’re not familiar with death, and if, on top of that, you’re panicking, not in control of yourself, then yes, I believe that could happen.”
“When she woke up, did she know what had happened?”
He shook his head. “Not necessarily.”
“Temporary amnesia due to concussion?”
“That’s right.”
“And how far back would that reach?”
“Can’t say for sure. But she certainly didn’t know right away that she’d received a blow.”
“That means she woke up and had no idea where she was or why she was there. She only knows it’s dark and she’s got a pounding headache. Something’s wrong with her head. She touches her hair, feels something sticky and wet, and assumes logically that it’s blood, because what else could it be. She panics, wants to escape from the dark, maybe someone’s still lurking in the bushes, she hears the noise
from the road, sees lights approaching, walks toward them and . . . bam!”
Borger nodded. “A realistic scenario.”
Franza looked up from the dead girl on the dissection table and into Borger’s face. “Was she raped?”
“No.” Borger shook his head. “But she did have intercourse. No traces of sperm, however. A condom was used. But I’ve got something else of interest to you.”
He lifted the dead girl’s arms and turned them so Franza could see the other side. They were covered with scars both above and below the elbows.
“Wow!” Franza said quietly.
“You know what this is?” Borger asked.
She nodded. “Of course. Self-mutilation. She was cutting herself.”
“You’ll find plenty more on her inner thighs.”
“How old are they?”
“Years. No fresh scars.”
Franza picked up the sheet that was folded back on the girl’s hips and pulled it up to her face, thinking farewell, fly away home. Then she carefully put down the sheet and nodded.
Borger understood and signaled to his assistant, who had waited discreetly in the background. The assistant unlatched the dissection table, wheeled it out of the room, and took the girl back to the cold storage.
“OK,” Franza said. “That’ll do for now. Can you let me know when your examination is finished?”
“Sure.” Borger nodded.
“I’ll go ahead,” Arthur said from the back of the room, and they realized they’d forgotten about him. “I’ll wait by the car.”
“Everything all right?” Franza asked.
“Are you OK?” Borger asked. “Do you need a sip of water?”
Arthur held up both hands. “No, no, I’m all right. All I need is a little fresh air.” And then he was gone.
“Well,” Borger said, folding his arms on his chest and following Arthur with his eyes. “He’s still young.”
“Yes.” She smiled, a little puzzled. “How about you?”
He pulled himself together, swaying a little. “Sure, sure. Well? What do you say? Would you like to come with me to get something to eat? There’s this new Italian place.”
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