She had kept quiet at the time. Thought about the Dorfkrug. What would have become of her and her husband, if Gietmann and the whole lot of them had gone drinking and bowling somewhere else? No, it had been the right decision at the time. But now? Now they’re all dead. And Mahler? Tsk. He can stay away too.
She still remembers it exactly. In bed that night, she had said to her husband: Karl, there’s something that doesn’t make sense. Why can’t they just call the police and say, We found the woman dead?
It’s not our business, he said. We have nothing to do with it.
That’s right, she replied. So we don’t need to lie when the police ask us.
That made him angry. Stupid woman, he shouted at her. Do you want to ruin us?
Shifting forward, she stands up and goes to the front room. You can’t just sweep a day like today under the carpet. It goes deep into your bones.
If Lena saw the killer, they’ll catch him soon. Then there will be peace again.
Mahler and the others are sitting at the bar. Mahler has already put away a few beers. But that’s what he always does. It’s on the Gietmann family’s tab, so he treats himself generously.
“I’m closing up now.” She goes behind the bar.
“What’s up with you? It’s not even eight o’clock. Made so much out of Gietmann’s funeral you can afford to close early?”
She takes his empty glass from the counter and warns him. “Watch what you say, okay? Otherwise this is the last time you’ll sit at this bar.”
He sits up. “Hey, hey. I didn’t mean any harm. I’m sorry. Just one more for the road, okay?” He runs his hand over his face. “This has affected us all, and me particularly. Believe me.” He nods sympathetically at his reflection in the glass door behind the bar.
“Yes, I believe you. Especially because you’re probably the last one on his list.”
Like an owl on the watch for danger or prey, his head turns quickly in her direction. “It won’t come to that. They’ll catch him today, you can bet on that. If it’s true that Lena saw the whole thing, they’ll catch him.”
Ruth pours out two more beers. Mahler orders some schnapps to go with them and asks if she wants anything. She pours herself a double Asbach brandy and gets out a pencil.
He covers the coaster with his hand. “You can put that on the funeral tab.”
She stands in front of him, holding her pencil. “Did you just offer me a drink or not? If not, I’ll pour it back into the bottle.”
He rolls his eyes and uncovers the beermat. She picks up her glass and offers a toast.
Hard times are ahead for Mahler. Without Gietmann, Jansen, and Lüders, he’ll have to pay for his own drinks.
The heavy curtain in the entrance flaps for moment. She calls out, “I’m closing up!”
Chapter 62
Böhm pushes the curtain aside. Van Oss and Steeg follow him.
“Good evening, everyone.” Böhm looks around briefly. “Are these the last of your guests?”
Ruth nods. Mahler does not look up. He is staring at his schnapps.
“Yes, but they were just leaving.”
“We’d like to talk to you and Herr Mahler.” He gives the man next to Mahler a friendly nod, and he slides off his stool and hurries to the exit.
For a moment there is silence. Böhm feels the tension in the room, which seems to emanate from Mahler. Hostile, lurking tension. Like a cornered animal before its final leap for freedom.
Steeg goes over to the large table opposite the bar. On it, next to the ashtray, stands a six-inch-tall bronze figure of a farmer, holding a sign over his head. Stammtisch, it says. The regulars’ table.
“Come.” He slides onto the wooden bench under the window. “Let’s make ourselves comfortable here where the regulars drink. Where it all began, you might say.”
Ruth Holter goes to the entrance and locks up. She opens the cabinet beside the counter and snaps several switches down. Lamps go off around her with each click. First the exterior lighting, then the lights in the room, then the buffet at the back. Only the lamps hanging low over the tables shed any light now.
Böhm and Van Oss sit down near Steeg, one at each end of the long table. Van Oss places a tape recorder on the table.
“Herr Mahler, Frau Holter, we’ll be recording this conversation.” For the tape, he dictates the place, the time, and those present.
Mahler swivels on his stool. “What’s the meaning of this? What do you want from us? Have you finally caught that pig or not?” He looks at Böhm with glassy eyes, clings to the bar, and gets down from his stool. “I know the truth, you see.” He pulls a chair out and sits down a couple of feet away from the table. “Lena was there, after all. She must have seen him.” He leans forward menacingly. His jacket is stretched tight over his upper arms.
Böhm, Steeg, and Van Oss say nothing.
Mahler is not sober. Mahler is garrulous. “We pay you with our taxes, and what do you do? You wait around, giving upstanding citizens a hard time instead.”
Ruth is still standing by the cabinet. “Stop it, Günther.” She looks at Böhm. “Where’s the girl? How’s Lena?”
Böhm turns and looks at her grimly. “We’ve taken her to the station.” That’s the truth. Not the whole truth, but at least it’s not a lie. “I want to know, once and for all, what happened that day, the day Magdalena Behrens died.” He takes off his glasses, lays them on the heavy wooden surface, and rubs his eyes. “We can’t solve this case definitively if you won’t talk.” A fragment of truth. No lie.
Ruth comes over to him. She stands beside the table, resting both hands on the back of an empty chair. “I don’t know the whole story.” She pulls the chair back and sits down.
Mahler shakes his head absently. “Stupid woman.”
“Shut your mouth!” Steeg slams his open hand down on the table. Mahler’s bright-red face jerks up. He stares at him in disbelief.
“There was an argument, as usual. Behrens was pretty drunk. Lüders was standing at the bar, shouting ‘Johann, your Magdalena sure has a fine ass. She showed it to me today. But unfortunately I was busy.’” She speaks quietly, in a whisper. Old truths like this can only be told in a whisper, the way you turn the pages of an old book carefully, in case they turn to dust and are lost forever. “Everyone laughed. Gietmann said, ‘Johann has the biggest farm and lets her make the biggest fool of him.’ And everyone roared with laughter again.” She places her small, work-hardened hands on the table and clasps her fingers together. “Johann jumped up and ran out. He drove out of the courtyard like a madman.” She clears her throat. “Then, all of a sudden, it was quiet in here.” She looks straight at Böhm. “That’s when they realized they had gone too far.”
He nods at her encouragingly.
“So they all sat down at this table. I didn’t catch what they talked about, but after about half an hour Gietmann, Lüders, Jansen, and Mahler went off. ‘Better check on the little lady,’ Gietmann said.” She shrugs helplessly. “I don’t remember the time, but I think at least an hour went by before they came back. They said Magdalena was dead. They had found her dead. They didn’t want any trouble, so they weren’t going to call the police.” She looks at Böhm again. What she had to say next was the hardest. “Then Lüders said, ‘If the police ask questions tomorrow, we’ll say we were bowling till midnight.’” She swallows hard. “I asked, ‘If you found her dead, why can’t we call the police? Why should we lie?’” She takes her hands off the table. They fall limply into her lap. “Gietmann threatened me. ‘If you snitch, we’ll find somewhere else to do our bowling and drinking. You’ll soon have to shut down.’” She looks straight at Böhm again. Her eyes beg for absolution. “What was I supposed to do? That she was still alive, that she didn’t die till the next morning—I didn’t know any of that until yesterday.”
Steeg has leaned back to listen. Now he hunches forward. His voice has the sarcastic undertone Böhm dislikes. The tone that pokes into a wound like a nail int
o soft wood. “You know precisely what you should have done, Frau Holter. How do you expect us to answer?”
She flinches, then sits quite still for a few seconds. She pushes her chair back and looks at Steeg. “In any case, I’ve told you everything I know,” she says. “You have no idea what it was like back then.” A weak attempt at self-justification.
Steeg rolls his eyes. “Of course not.”
Mahler has sat still throughout, staring ahead. Even now he is sitting still, as if to prevent anyone from noticing him.
Böhm puts his glasses back on. “Herr Mahler, what happened at the Behrens farm?”
Mahler thrusts his lower lip forward and shakes his head. “I wasn’t in there, see? I waited in the car. All the rest you’ll have to prove, see? Prove! And a statement from that Behrens nutcase won’t be enough, I’ll tell you that right now.”
Böhm exchanges a glance with Steeg and Van Oss. “Why do you mention Anna Behrens?”
Mahler frowns and falls silent.
“Herr Mahler, I asked you a question.” His voice rises. “Have you grasped that you’re the only one of the four men who were there that is still alive? Can you guess what that means?” A true statement and a question.
“I called her. So what?”
“Why did you call her?”
“Because of the pastureland,” Mahler blurts out. “I wanted to buy it, dammit.”
Böhm is suddenly on the alert. He exchanges another glance with Steeg and Van Oss, a glance that says, Don’t interrupt now. Let him talk. “What pastureland, Herr Mahler? What does a carpenter need pastureland for?”
“The pasture around the cottage. It’s building land, see?” He puffs his lips complacently. “Ruth is right. You really have no idea.” He pulls his chair forward and leans over the table. “Johann was a big farmer, but a conceited, arrogant one. That’s what this is about. Gietmann was on the local council, and when building land was being released, he put in an application. For us, understand? For our village. Back then they hadn’t started with the environment and all that nonsense. Still, permits were only issued for two sites. Gietmann’s fields in the south and the Behrens pastures in the west. And what does that puffed-up idiot Behrens do?” He laughs contemptuously. “He was going to object, see? Not his farm, he said. Lots of big talk. Centuries of family tradition. Property he’d never sell and all that shit. And the worst thing is, he was bone idle. Only the women did any work over there, and it was obvious he was going to have to sell sooner or later. But our esteemed Herr Behrens, who could afford an educated lady from east Prussia for his wife, seemed to have more pride than brains. Other villages had applied for permissions too, and if he had succeeded with his petition we would all have been crossed off the list, see? And Gietmann’s fields would have stayed fields.” Mahler is out of breath. His eyes are filled with naked hate. Hate that has been simmering quietly for years flashes out in blasts of heat, the kind of heat that consumes everything, without a flame. He licks his lips. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I didn’t do anything. You can’t do anything to me.” He turns to Ruth, who is sitting motionless beside him and staring at him. “Get me another schnapps, Ruth.”
She nods absently and stands up.
Mahler goes on. “A carpenter doesn’t get many jobs in a village like this. The farmers do most things for themselves. There was something in it for me too, understand?”
Ruth comes back to the table with a schnapps and a generous glass of cognac.
Mahler takes the schnapps from her hand. “That evening, while we were bowling, Gietmann tried to talk to him one more time, but it was no use. Lüders offered Behrens a deal. All his fields for the pastureland. Then the Behrens farm would be bigger than before. But Johann laughed at him.”
Van Oss frowned. “But . . . what was in it for Lüders?” He had spoken before he realized he had disobeyed Böhm’s warning. He looked at Böhm diffidently. “I don’t understand.”
Mahler was happy to go on talking. “Gietmann and Lüders were going to go into the construction business together. It was all planned.” He reaches for his schnapps and knocks it back. “I don’t need to go over what happened here again.” He leans back and looks past Steeg out the window.
There is a pause. The silence is broken by a regular tuk-tuk in three-four time. Böhm looks around. The beer tap is dripping slowly.
Ruth twirls the cognac glass with small, round movements, her gaze fixed in the depths of the brown liquid.
Böhm exhales audibly. “It’s true we don’t have to go over what happened here. But you do have to explain what happened on the Behrens farm.”
What Mahler says now, in his complacent, slightly soporific singsong voice, leaves all four speechless. As far as the rape is concerned, he explains, “That Behrens woman was arrogant. She had only herself to blame for what happened.” He taps the table with the knuckles of his right hand. “When we saw all that blood, we made ourselves scarce. We genuinely thought she was dead. In the car, Lüders had an idea. ‘They can’t prove anything against us,’ he said. ‘Johann’s the prime suspect, after all. If we stick together he’ll be locked up right away. By the time he comes out, the business with the building land will have long since been sorted out.’” Mahler stares at the tape recorder.
Van Oss reaches for it and pulls it toward him.
“That would suit Lüders fine, or so he thought. He made a deal with old Frau Behrens. He was willing to say he had heard a strange car driving into the farm in the early hours of the morning. In exchange he would get the farm for fifty thousand marks, and a hereditary lease.” Mahler gave a throaty laugh. “The old woman would have signed anything to save her only remaining son’s ass. When he committed suicide, I suppose she had second thoughts, and in the end she led Lüders up the garden path. All those years he acted the big-landowner-to-be, mortgaging land that wasn’t his. And then—pfft!—he was left out of the will.” He flings out his left hand boastfully and stares defiantly at Böhm. “Whatever. I didn’t touch the Behrens woman. You don’t have anything on me. Besides, it was an accident and the whole thing was thirty years ago.”
Ruth jumps to her feet and starts pummeling him, shouting again and again, “You pigs, you goddamn pigs!”
Steeg can scarcely restrain her, but in truth he does not really try. Mahler stands up, picks up his jacket, and staggers out without a word.
Van Oss and Steeg look questioningly at Böhm.
He shakes his head. “The prosecutor has to prove it. The way he tells it, he had no part in the crime. He would have been under an obligation to report it, but the time for that expired years ago.” Böhm feels sick. He needs some fresh air.
They leave the bar together, Ruth locking up behind them. They have not said anything to her about Lena. She will hear the rumors tomorrow, and read it in the newspapers the day after at the latest.
They stop in front of the building. Böhm breathes in hungrily. Van Oss stares into the darkness toward the graveyard.
“Lena Koberg knows the whole story. How?”
Böhm lays a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll talk to Lena tomorrow morning.”
Steeg is looking for his car keys in his jacket pocket. “I’ve had it up to here for today. I’m hungry and I’d like to go home. You wanted the truth, Joop. Now you have it. Everything else can wait till tomorrow.”
“Yes, I certainly do.” Van Oss glances at his shoes. “But now I wish I didn’t.”
Achim raises his hand and heads straight for his car. Van Oss and Böhm get into the Mitsubishi.
“Shall I take you home, or do you want to pick up your car at the station?”
Van Oss does not hesitate for a second. “Home.”
Chapter 63
It is just after ten when he drives into the garage. The outdoor light clicks on. The inside of the house is in darkness. Brigitte’s car is not in the driveway. He turns off the engine and sits there.
The nausea that came over him when Mahler flung his hatred onto the t
able, like an old-fashioned gauntlet, is still sitting in his belly, making him feel slightly queasy. He leans back and stares into the darkness. He is quickly overcome with fatigue, a fatigue that does not need sleep but forgetfulness.
Brigitte, Lena Koberg, Jansen, Mahler, Ruth Holter. They all merge into one another in his unconnected thoughts, and he does not have the strength to fight them off. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and gets out of the car.
He does not turn on the light in the kitchen. In the glare of the streetlights he can see reports, small X-ray images, and Brigitte’s health insurance card lying on the kitchen table. Paper and plastic. So bland and harmless, lying there as if it has always lain there. As if the kitchen table were the only place it belongs.
He switches on the standing lamp in the living room, pours himself a large Glenfiddich, and sits on the sofa.
It had happened again. Brigitte was right. When Andreas died, they had tried a fresh start. They were going to make time for each other; they realized that time goes by like a breeze through the boughs of a tree. But then the pain over Andreas became duller, and the concept of their own remaining time had treacherously expanded into the distance. They started taking the people and objects around them for granted again, and he started looking beyond it all and into the distance, toward a horizon that was perhaps not even his. He had planned for a future without knowing whether he would even have one.
He sips at the whisky. The fluid burns in his throat and settles in his stomach, warm and soothing.
And then, today, he saw a form of escape. An escape that goes backward. Life in images of the past.
Mahler, who turned his guilt inside out, like a piece of laundry. The victims were the perpetrators, and it was important to protect that truth. And Ruth Holter! Ruth Holter, who saw and then quickly turned a blind eye. Who heard and quickly turned a deaf ear. For the sake of her business. They stand with their backs to the now, protectors of their adjusted history.
And then there is Lena. Lena, who apparently lives among pictures that lie so far in the past that they should never have touched her life.
To Clear the Air Page 18