The Lie

by Petra Hammesfahr

  A little later than usual they reached the car park at the old folks’ home. Johannes looked for a space and pointed. “There,” he said, indicating an empty place. The only one left. It was much too narrow for her.

  “It’d be better if you parked it yourself.” she said.

  “No. Any idiot can drive. You have to be able to park the thing as well. As a courier you’ll have to squeeze into much narrower spaces. Try reversing in, it’s easier.”

  Some ten minutes later the BMW was parked between two other vehicles. Susanne got out, trembling at the knees.

  “You see,” said Johannes as they went over to the building, “you can do it, no problem. See you at seven. Or let’s say half past, the car park’ll be fairly empty by then and you can practice a bit and drive back.”

  This time next week, she thought, as she thanked him for his offer.

  It was a terrible week, starting with her mother going on at her because she wasn’t her usual chatty self. “Susanne, there’s something wrong with you. Won’t you tell me what it is?”

  “It’s just my time of the month.”

  Agnes Runge was happy with that and prattled on about the little events in her life. Finally she asked Susanne how work was going and how her friend Jasmin Toppler and that nice Herr Heller were.

  All at once she felt like bursting into tears. All the lies and the two thousand euros missing from her mother’s account. It would have been so simple to say in January, “I’ve lost my job, Mother.” Her mother would have certainly supported her. And now she could have said, “Something funny happened, Mum. I’ve met a woman who looks exactly like me. Or, rather, now I look exactly like her. She was keen to splash out on it and now she’ll pay me five hundred if I…”

  This time next week! She was itching to talk to someone about Nadia Trenkler, but it was an itch she didn’t dare scratch. She could still hear her mother going on about fidelity in marriage. Her father had often said, “Why don’t you go dancing, Susanne. You’ll see there are more men around than your roving reporter. He’s never there for you. And don’t imagine he sticks to his marriage vows the way you do.”

  Every time her mother had jumped on him. “How can you say something like that? What Dieter does is neither here nor there. I don’t think it’s right for him to leave her alone all the time either. But at the altar she vowed…”

  To tell her mother she was acting as stand-in for a woman who was going to cheat on her husband was out of the question.

  At half-past seven she got behind the wheel of the BMW for the second time. Johannes was a mine of useful tips and she spent more than an hour, under his patient guidance, practising in the almost empty car park, going backwards, forwards, sideways into a parking space, doing three-point turns, reversing round corners and all the other driving-school manoeuvres. Then she drove out onto the country road and later - in first gear - along the acceleration lane and onto the autobahn.

  Johannes kept her amused with a stream of advanced driving theory: how to get a car that’s in a skid back under control, finishing off with a handbrake turn; how to travel for a short stretch on two wheels; how much you had to accelerate to jump like a horse over ditches or other obstacles, all tricks he needed for his part-time job as a stuntman. Then he even offered to come round during the week so she could practise on a piece of waste ground where he’d been working recently.

  It would probably have been more sensible to take a couple of ordinary driving lessons, to familiarize herself with city traffic and learn to drive up an autobahn approach road in third gear at least. But Johannes’s course in skid control was free, so she said yes.

  On Monday she spent half the day with the photos: interior and exterior views of Nadia’s house, parties in the neighbourhood, Nadia with Joachim Kogler, Nadia with Lilo Kogler, Nadia with Wolfgang Blasting, Nadia with Ilona Blasting, Nadia with a dozen unknown friends. For the first time it struck her that the blond man did not appear in any of the photos. Perhaps he was the one pressing the button. It was still odd.

  Although she and Dieter had only lived together properly as husband and wife for a year, there were several dozen snapshots from that time and the lovely photos that had been taken on their wedding day, both outside the church and in the photographer’s studio. Where they were now, she had no idea. She hadn’t wanted to take them when she moved out. Ramie, her successor, had presumably thrown them away by now. But she could still see them clearly in her mind’s eye: the promising young reporter in dark suit, silver-grey tie and white shirt, and herself all in white, as was right and proper, with her sumptuous bridal bouquet.

  Among Nadia’s photos was one with “wedding” written on the back, though without that she certainly wouldn’t have recognized it as a wedding photo. It hadn’t been taken outside a church or in a photographer’s studio. Whether the building, the steps of which Nadia was hurrying down, was a registry office, was impossible to say. No flowers, no white dress, not to mention a bridal veil and wreath. In her elegant suit, her handbag under her left arm, it looked as if Nadia were just coming out of a business meeting. There was another figure a few steps above her, rather blurred, but apparently wearing jeans and a leather jacket. Perhaps the bridegroom, perhaps just some passer-by.

  In the evening she spent two hours driving on the bumpy but completely empty waste ground where there was no danger of her colliding with trees or other road users. Johannes did not teach her how to drive according to the Highway Code. Instead he got her to try several tricks that were as useful for driving in normal traffic as a freezer in Greenland.

  At first he found her much too timorous. After he had repeatedly assured her his BMW was used to much rougher treatment, she became a little more daring. And he praised the speed with which she picked things up and her quick reactions.

  On Tuesday she went for a long walk to calm her nerves. When she got back, she found Heller lurking on the stairs like an evil omen. Hands in his pockets and a broad grin on his face, he told her, “That guy came to see me recently, your opinion pollster.”

  “How nice for you,” she said, trying to get past.

  He took a step forwards and blocked the way. His grin became suggestive. “He was trying to tell me he only screws students. He said he was a student himself, doing the survey was going to pay for his next semester.”

  “I’m not interested,” she said.

  Heller’s grin broadened. “Well you should be. He was a snooper, you can take it from me. Look what I found after he’d gone.” He took one hand out of his trouser pocket and held it out. In the palm was a something like a small battery, those tiny round ones you put in your watch. “That’s a bug,” Heller insisted.

  “You ought to watch a nature film or a variety show now and then, instead of all those horror videos,” she said, squeezing past him and hurrying up the stairs.

  On Wednesday she flogged Johannes’s BMW round the bumpy waste ground again. On Thursday he let her practise in heavy traffic. On Friday evening he got her to scare the pants off HGV drivers on the autobahn with her overtaking. On Saturday she practised Nadia’s walk, Nadia’s smile, Nadia’s way of speaking, her mocking pout, her sparing but deft gestures and her defiant toss of the head until she was getting dizzy. She felt she had mastered them really well. The only thing that was still beyond her was the - to her ears - slightly deeper tone of Nadia’s voice.

  On Saturday night she dreamed of Michael Trenkler. It started off as a romantic dream of an excursion to the Eifel hills, but the outing ended in the empty disused factory, where he hit her again and again with the butt of a pistol and threatened, “If you move, you’re dead.”

  The worst thing was that it was Heller who found her. He played the heroic rescuer and demanded his due reward.

  On Sunday morning she found that her period had finished. About time too. After lunch she had a good shower, applied her make-up, did her hair and put on the clothes Nadia had bought for them in the boutique and which had so impressed Johan
nes Herzog the previous week.

  The weather was pleasant and she took her time going to the multi-storey, but she was still there before three. Nadia had suggested they meet on level two, but the red Alfa Spider wasn’t there, nor on levels one and three, which she checked, just to be sure. She went back out again and strolled up and down outside the entrance.

  When it was getting to four o’clock, she began to wonder whether Nadia was going to come. All sorts of things could have happened during the week. Perhaps Nadia had had a heart-to-heart with her husband, or he didn’t have to go into the lab that day. She wondered whether she should ring up, she remembered Nadia’s number from the visiting cards. She’d always had a good memory for numbers. She decided to wait until half past. A few minutes before her self-imposed deadline, the Alfa appeared.

  She ran back and up to level two, somewhat out of breath. Nadia had got out and gave a sigh of relief when she saw her coming. “I’m sorry,” she said, flustered, “I thought I wasn’t going to be able to make it.”

  “I won’t be able to get there by five,” Susanne said.

  “There’s no need,” Nadia said. “We had one hell of a row. I wouldn’t want you to have to go through a sequel.”

  Nadia took the remote control for the garage out of the car. It was new and very complicated, one of Joachim Kogler’s inventions, the prototype. Whether it would find a market was doubtful, but Nadia was fascinated by the technological toy and spent five minutes explaining how it worked, emphasizing that she always drove into the garage because of the important data on the laptop she kept in the car.

  There followed a further lecture, this time on the house alarm system. It was permanently switched on and had to be deactivated pretty quickly since it went off if the code wasn’t keyed in twenty seconds after entering the house. Since Susanne would be coming in through the garage, she had no time to lose. The keypad was in the hall closet where they kept their coats. It was on a black box that was hidden behind a leather jacket. She was to push the jacket to one side - on no account was she to take the hanger off the hook - and key in the combination.

  Then Nadia took off her two rings and Susanne slipped them onto her finger. Nadia took out her ear studs and Susanne put them through the holes she’d had pierced. Nadia took off her watch and put on Susanne’s. Nadia opened her handbag, took out her mobile, a packet of cigarettes and a disposable lighter then picked up Susanne’s bag. The cigarette case and the gold lighter stayed in Nadia’s bag.

  “You don’t have to smoke today,” Nadia said. “Not later on either, if you don’t want to. It’s enough if you light one and put it down in the ashtray. I do that quite often.”

  “When should I be back here?” Susanne asked.

  “Not here,” said Nadia. “I’m going to call a taxi and go to your flat. You’ve no objection, I hope?”

  She shook her head. Nadia took a laptop bag and the document case from the back seat of the Alfa. “I’ve brought something to stop me getting bored. Take as much time as you need. It doesn’t matter when I get home. Michael will probably spend the night in the lab. How many driving lessons have you had?”

  “Almost every day,” she said - truthfully this time.

  Nadia nodded. “Great.”

  Thanks to Johannes Herzog’s thorough training, she got there sooner than expected. It was only a few minutes past five when she reached the narrow country lane with the young trees. Far ahead of her the luxuriant greenery appeared through the summer haze, rapidly growing larger. She found Marienweg immediately and drove past the Kogler’s house with its open, well-tended garden. Joachim Kogler was in the front garden, doing something with a reel of cable. She recognized him from the photos, his wife too. She was standing in the doorway and waved to her.

  She ignored her, concentrating on the middle house. It wasn’t as grand as the photos suggested, but it was a snow-white villa. Beside the wide drive leading to the double garage was a narrower one which must belong to the Blastings’ property. A low fence separated the two.

  She stopped in front of the garage door. She didn’t even attempt to open it with the complicated remote control. For such a short stay it wasn’t worth rushing round to reach the alarm in the hall in time. And neither Nadia’s important papers nor her laptop were in the car at the moment. She got out, locked the car by pressing the key, put the key in her handbag, took out the house keys and went round the front.

  Lilo Kogler was about twenty yards away and giving her a suspicious look. She must have been feeling offended because she hadn’t responded to her friendly wave. Joachim Kogler had straightened up and was also looking across at her. She raised her arm and sketched a wave, smiled and nodded casually then hurried on to the front door. She was getting palpitations from the fear that they might speak to her and she would have to answer, the higher tone of her voice revealing her as a cheap imitation.

  Strange that Nadia hadn’t been concerned about that at all. She must have noticed the difference in their voices as well. On the other hand, since she was to respond to everything Michael Trenkler said to her with icy silence or a scornful laugh, the risk was slight.

  There were seven keys on the ring, each with a different colour marking. Since Nadia had told her to go in via the garage, she’d forgotten to explain which key fitted the front door. She tried the red one. It wouldn’t go in. And now Lilo Kogler was on the lawn, with her husband. They were whispering to each other and staring in her direction. They had probably realized something wasn’t quite right.

  She tried the green key. It went in, but she had no opportunity to find out whether it would have turned in the lock. The door was opened from inside, a hand grabbed her arm and jerked her into the hall.

  Her response to the initial shock was to close her eyes. When nothing else happened and she opened her eyes again, she found she was looking at the face of the blond man. Michael Trenkler, who else? He was wearing jeans with a sloppy polo shirt and looked so ordinary that the sight of him offset the grandeur of the imposing residence. The only thing she found disturbing about him was the fact that he should have long since set off for the lab.

  He closed the front door and, with an exaggerated gesture of invitation, said, “Do come in.” She didn’t move, she could feel the pulse of her heartbeat in her throat, her fingertips and toes. With a swift movement, she threw her head back and tucked her hair in behind her left ear. It was a gesture she’d often observed in Nadia. It showed off the studs. Fortunately it didn’t show their effect on her. She’d had her ears pierced too recently and her lobes were already starting throb.

  The blond man leaned back against the door and fixed her with a stare she couldn’t quite interpret. It could have been mocking; it could have been absolutely furious. “That was quick. Did Mr Moneybags stand you up?”

  He obviously took her for Nadia. She sketched a nod and looked round. The walls were white, the floor was white, all the doors were white and the lattice windows beside the front door had white frames. It was so bright it hurt her eyes.

  “Great,” he said. “And why didn’t you put the car in the garage? Have you got to go out again?”

  She shook her head and rubbed her aching wrist. He gave a mocking grin. “Do forgive me, I didn’t mean to grab you like that. But I didn’t want to run the risk of you stopping for a lengthy chat with the neighbours. As you can well imagine, I haven’t got that much time at my disposal.”

  His voice was oozing sarcasm. She turned away and ran over the ground-floor plan of the house in her mind: hall, lavatory, closet, living room, dining room, drawing room, kitchen. It had sounded large and spacious. It was.

  The kitchen was on the right. On the left was a gently curving staircase going both up and down to the basement. Before it was an open space with a six-foot-tall palm standing sentry outside the coat closet. In the closet was the aforementioned leather jacket on a coat-hanger. She heard Nadia’s voice telling her the alarm was always on. Not a word about what happened when the
door was opened from the inside. By now at least eighteen seconds must have passed. Even though it meant she had to pass close to Michael Trenkler, she set off, keeping her eyes fixed on the green palm leaves.

  He made no move to stop her - or do something worse - he just gave a puzzled frown when she carefully moved the jacket to one side. On the wall underneath it was the box Nadia had told her about. But she didn’t get the chance to have a closer look and certainly not to key in the combination since he pushed himself off the wall and was beside her with a couple of steps. “Did you take a vow of silence while you were out?” he asked.

  Quickly she put her handbag and key ring down on the chest underneath the coat-rack and slipped past him back into the hall. Let him deal with the black box, if it was necessary. With one more step he was beside her again. “You don’t have to speak, it’s enough if you nod or shake your head.”

  His head on one side, he looked her in the eye. Just ignore him, she told herself, and headed quickly for the living room.

  “Stop playing the drama queen,” he said. “I don’t need money to burn. I thought the matter was closed.”

  The furnishings of the room, into which her flat would have fitted four times over, were vaguely familiar from the photos. An elegant three-piece suite in a contemporary style, with a low table on a large rug by the open French windows. Outside them a few well-cushioned chairs gleamed in the afternoon sun.

  “Christ, Nadia,” he said, “be reasonable. We’re doing fine and I just want to stop anything changing that.”

  Her heartbeat had gradually returned to its normal rhythm. What he was saying seemed to be nothing more than the usual kind of stuff after an argument between husband and wife. The “Nadia” from his lips sent waves of relief though her brain and sharpened her eye for detail. On the wall over the three-piece suite was something that might be the Beckmann. It looked like a sheet of paper painted black in which a child had made holes. The holes had been sprayed with gold paint. This work of art had a thin metal frame, which must have cost a fortune itself.