But Emma’s father had never been a friend. Not in her childhood, not during her studies and certainly not now that she was a married psychiatrist. His work had always been more important. His files, witnesses and cases. Leaving the house too early in the morning, and back too late for supper in the evening. Or not at all.
Although he’d retired a while ago, he only just about managed to send her a card for her birthday. And even that – she would bet – had been dictated by Mama, with whom he now lived in Mallorca. Phrases such as ‘I’m missing you’ or ‘I hope we’ll get to spend more time together this year’ were simply absent from the lexicon of someone as irascible as him. He’d be more likely to write:
‘Get out, right now, or I’ll hurt you.’
And now a similar threat was scrawled across the mirror in her hotel bathroom.
Could this be a coincidence?
Of course!
Before the knock at her door Emma had already found a logical explanation for the incident.
A trick!
The guest who’d occupied the room before her must have scribbled with their greasy fingers on the dry mirror to give the next person a fright. And they’d succeeded.
So well that she’d practically screamed the hotel down. The joker would no doubt have been shocked by the violence of Emma’s reaction, but they couldn’t have imagined that the words on the mirror would have awakened an old trauma.
Back then it wasn’t what her father said that had unnerved her most, but the fact that Arthur had come out of the cupboard for the first time that night. The motorcycle helmet, the needle, his voice… everything had seemed so real.
And sometimes it still did in her memory.
‘You okay?’ the woman asked her, continuing to stare at Emma with a mixture of concern and patience. Then she said something that sounded as kind as it did ghastly, and Emma didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘Client make trouble?’
Oh God.
Of course.
She’s a prostitute.
Which explained why she was dressed up to the nines. Half of the conference were staying at Le Zen; the hotel was full of men on their own in single rooms. How many of them had booked an escort for tonight? Scumbags like Stauder-Mertens, for sure, who would definitely use every opportunity they got when away from their wives and families.
‘Need help? I can…’
‘No, no. It’s very kind of you, but…’
Emma shook her head.
… but I’m not a prostitute. Just a jumpy psychiatrist.
How sweet that the woman wanted to help her. How awful that she seemed to have experience of violent punters. And of beaten-up whores who howl on the floor of hotel bathrooms.
Emma smiled, but she didn’t think it looked sincere. In the woman’s dark eyes she could see that her doubts had not been dispelled, which is why Emma decided to tell her the truth.
‘Don’t worry. I’m alone in my room. But I thought somebody had crept in here and secretly watched me take a shower.’
‘Peeper?’
‘Yes, but it was just a stupid joke by the previous guest.’
‘Okay.’
Although the escort girl still didn’t look convinced, she shrugged and glanced at the Rolex on her wrist. Then she left with her first grammatically correct sentence: ‘Take care nothing happens to you.’ She must have heard this often from colleagues.
Emma thanked her and closed the door. Through the spyhole she saw the woman make her way down the corridor to the right.
The lifts were in the opposite direction, which meant her ‘appointment’ must be almost at hand.
Her heart pounding, Emma secured the door with all the available locks and levers. Only then did she realise how exhausted she was. First the lecture, then the mirror and now the conversation with the Russian prostitute. She longed to relax. To be able to sleep.
Especially in Philipp’s arms.
Why couldn’t he be here with her now, so they could joke together about this absurd situation?
Emma briefly toyed with the idea of calling her best friends – Sylvie or Konrad – as a bit of distraction, but she knew that both of them were on a date. Not with each other, of course, as Konrad was gay.
And even if she could get through to either of them, what would she say? ‘Sorry, but I’m slightly anxious because my mirror’s steamed up’?
Was steamed up, she discovered when she went back into the bathroom to clean her teeth.
The steam had vanished, likewise the joke message.
As if it had never existed.
4
Emma froze.
Streaks were all that remained of the condensation that had dissipated, leaving ugly edges on the silvered glass. Without thinking she wiped the patches away with a cloth, but immediately felt annoyed for not having breathed against the mirror to bring the message to life again.
Then she felt annoyed that she wasn’t sure of herself any longer.
‘What on earth is wrong with you, Emma?’ she whispered, her head pressed into a towel.
She hadn’t imagined the message. It was just a silly prank. No reason to feel so nervous.
Emma switched off the light in the bathroom without another glance at the mirror. She hung the kimono in the wardrobe and swapped it for some pyjamas. But she couldn’t resist the paranoid impulse to check the wardrobe for secret hiding places (there weren’t any). And as she was up, she could also take a peek behind the bed, inspect the curtains and try the locks again. All the while watched by Ai Weiwei, whose eyes had been photographed in such a way that they held Emma in his gaze wherever she moved to in the room.
She knew that all of this was displacement activity, but she felt better for having given in to her irrational stress symptoms.
When she finally crawled under the freshly starched bedclothes after her ‘patrol’, Emma felt tired and heavy. She tried one last time to contact Philipp and left a message on his voicemail that said, ‘Dream of me when you’ve listened to this.’ Emma set the alarm and closed her eyes.
As so often when she was overtired yet completely overwrought, flittering lights and shadows filled the darkness she wanted to sink into.
As she drifted off to sleep Emma asked herself, Why did you say that? in a woolly memory of her lecture. Why did you say that you were the patient being tortured in the video? That had never been her intention, she just acted out of impulse because Stauder-Martens, the narcissistic old goat from Cologne, had pestered her.
Do you have more evidence than this fake patient’s statement?
Yes she did. Now it was out. Unnecessary shock tactics.
Emma rolled onto her side and tried to banish the images of the horde of men listening in the conference centre. She felt a pricking in her ear because she’d forgotten to remove her pearl studs.
Why do you always do things like that? she asked herself and, as so often in the transition between being awake and dreaming, she wondered why she was asking this question and what she actually meant by ‘always’, and while she was stuck in this analytical loop it suddenly happened.
She fell asleep.
Briefly.
Not even for two minutes.
Until the noise woke her up.
The buzzing.
In the darkness.
Very close, right beside her bed.
Emma turned over to the other side, opened her eyes and saw the light on her mobile. She’d placed it on the floor because the charging lead didn’t reach from the plug up to the bedside table. Grabbing the phone from the carpet was quite tricky.
Caller unknown.
‘Darling?’ she said, in the hope that Philipp was calling back from some office phone.
‘Frau Dr Stein?’
She’d never heard this man’s voice before. Irritation mingled with the disappointment at the fact she wasn’t speaking to Philipp. Who the hell was calling her this late at night?
‘I hope it’s important,’ s
he yawned.
‘I’m very sorry to disturb you. This is Herr Eigenhardt from reception at Le Zen hotel.’
On my mobile?
‘Yes?’
‘We just wanted to see if you’d still be checking in this evening.’
‘What?’
Emma groped in vain for the switch to turn on the bedside light.
‘What do you mean check in? I’m already asleep.’
Or at least trying to.
‘So it’s fine if we give the room away?’
Can’t he hear me properly?
‘No, listen. I already checked in. Room 1904.’
‘Oh, please accept my sincere apologies, but…’
The receptionist sounded bemused.
‘But what?’ Emma asked.
‘But we don’t have a room with that number.’
What?
Emma sat up in bed and stared at the tiny blinking light on the smoke alarm attached to the ceiling.
‘Are you having me on?’
‘We don’t have a single four in the hotel. It’s an unlucky number in the Far East and so…’
Emma didn’t hear the rest of the sentence as her mobile was no longer in her hand.
Instead she heard something that wasn’t possible. Right by her ear.
A man clearing his throat.
And while her own throat constricted with fear, she felt the pressure on her mouth.
She tasted fabric.
Emma was stabbed by something, then she felt a cooling liquid flow into the crook of her arm through the puncture.
The man cleared his throat again and when she was certain she was freezing internally she sensed the blades.
Invisible in the darkness, but unmistakeably close to her face because they were vibrating.
Bzzzzzz.
An electric carving knife, a saw or an electric corkscrew.
Ready to stab, slash or puncture her.
She heard the sound of a zip being unfastened.
‘I’m pregnant!’ she wanted to cry, but Emma’s tongue and lips failed her.
Immobilised, she was unable to scream, kick or thrash about.
Only wait and find out where she’d first feel pain.
And pray that this horror would soon be over.
Which it wasn’t.
5
Six months later
Emma opened her eyes and wondered how long the person opposite had been watching her sleep.
Professor Konrad Luft sat in his usual chair, his hands folded in front of his stomach, and his thoughtful gaze lay on her face with a melancholic heaviness.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. To begin with she didn’t know what her best friend was getting at, but then she noticed the side table by her bed. On it were the pills she’d been given in the psychiatric clinic, where the judge had committed her to the secure unit.
Just in case.
In case she felt pain as soon as she woke up.
She stretched her limbs beneath the covers and with her elbows tried to shift herself up in the hospital bed. Too weak, she sank back down onto the pillow and rubbed her eyes.
She’d slept throughout the journey there, which was no surprise considering all the pills she’d been given. The side effects alone would knock out the strongest elephant, and on top of that she’d been administered a sedative.
After waking up it took her a while to recognise her surroundings. The room where she’d spent so many hours in the past felt unfamiliar, albeit not as unfamiliar as the secure unit she hadn’t left over the past few weeks.
Maybe the strange feeling was down to the fact that Konrad had recently renovated his office, but Emma doubted it.
It wasn’t the room that had changed so fundamentally, but her.
The smell of paint and freshly oiled walnut parquet still hung in the air, some pieces of furniture had been moved around during the redecoration, but basically everything was as it had been on her first visit almost ten years ago. Then she’d slouched on the sofa in trainers and jeans. Today she was in a nightie on a height-adjustable hospital bed, almost in the middle of the room. At a slight angle, with a view of Konrad’s desk and the window behind.
‘I bet I’m the first client of yours to have been wheeled in here on a hospital bed,’ she said.
Konrad smiled softly. ‘I’ve had some who couldn’t be moved so I went to see them. But in the clinic you refused all contact, Emma. You wouldn’t even speak to the doctors. So I obtained exceptional judicial authorisation.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, although there was no longer anything she could be grateful for in life. Not even the fact that she’d been allowed to leave her cell.
She’d refused to receive Konrad in the institution. Nobody was going to see her like that. So ill and broken. Locked up like an animal. The humiliation would have been too much to bear.
‘You’ve lost nothing of your pride, my dear Emma.’ Konrad shook his head, but there was no disapproval in his eyes. ‘You’d rather go freely to prison than allow me to pay you a visit. And yet now you need my help more than ever.’
Emma nodded.
‘Everything depends on how the conversation with your lawyer goes,’ they’d told her. The psychiatrists and the police officers, who would surely be waiting outside to take her back.
Did Konrad really have the power to alter her fate? Her old confidant, although ‘old’ had to be the wrong description for a sporty, almost athletic man of fifty-eight. Emma had met him in the first semester of her medical studies; his name had sounded strangely familiar. Only later did she recall why. Her father and Konrad Luft were colleagues and had joined forces to work together on cases that Emma had read about in the newspaper.
The case that brought her and Konrad together didn’t make it into the papers, however.
Emma’s ex-boyfriend, Benedict Tannhaus, had drunk one too many and harassed her in a bar near the university. Konrad, who regularly took his evening meal there, saw the guy groping her and actively intervened. Afterwards he’d given Emma his card in case she needed legal assistance, which was indeed the case as her ex turned out to be a persistent stalker.
Emma could have asked her father for help too, of course, but that would have meant swapping one abusive man for another. Although Emma’s father had never got physical with her like Benedict, his temper and uncontrolled fits of rage had become worse over the years and she was glad to have avoided contact with him since having moved into her student house. It was a complete mystery to her how her mother managed to stick it out living with her father.
They became friends during the lengthy process by which Konrad obtained a court order against Benedict. To begin with Emma thought that Konrad’s interest in her was motivated by other things, and in truth she felt considerably attracted by his paternal charm, despite the big difference in age. As he had in the past, Konrad still kept his prominent chin hidden beneath a meticulously trimmed beard and wore a dark-blue, bespoke double-breasted suit with hand-stitched Budapest shoes. His curly hair was a little shorter now, but still hung over his high forehead, and Emma understood perfectly well why this defence lawyer was contacted so often by well-to-do elderly ladies. They could not suspect that although he loved women, they had no place in his erotic fantasies. Konrad’s homosexuality was a secret he’d shared with Emma ever since they became friends.
She hadn’t even told Philipp about Konrad’s sexual preferences, albeit for selfish reasons, as she had to secretly admit. Because of his appearance and his charms Philipp was frequently the subject of female advances that he wasn’t even aware of any more, such as when a sweet waitress would offer him the best table in a restaurant or when he got the friendliest smile in the queue at the supermarket.
This is why it was sometimes good for Emma have her husband react jealously, when Konrad rang yet again to invite her out for brunch. Let Philipp believe that she had admirers too.
Konrad kept his secret to avoid damaging his reputation as a hardcore mac
ho lawyer. He would regularly appear at official functions with pretty law students. ‘Better the eternal bachelor unable to commit than the faggot in the courtroom,’ he’d said to Emma as an explanation for his secrecy.
And thus the adventurous, well-coiffed widows showed their disappointment when Konrad told them that he only took on criminal cases rather than divorces, and within his area of expertise only selected the most spectacular, often hopeless-looking cases.
Like hers.
‘Thanks for helping me out,’ Emma said. A cliché, but she was doing her duty and breaking the silence.
‘Again.’
She was now his client for a second time, following the stalking case. Ever since that night in the hotel, when she became the victim of a madman. A serial killer, who’d lain in wait for three women in hotel rooms, then shaven their heads with an electric razor.
… after having brutally raped them…
The hours Emma spent afterwards in hospital were scarcely better than the rape itself. Barely had she regained full consciousness than her orifices were again being manipulated by a stranger. Once again she felt latex fingers in her vagina and objects for taking swabs as evidence. Worst of all, however, were the questions put to her by a grey-haired policewoman with a poker face.
‘Where were you raped?’
‘In Le Zen. Room 1904.’
‘There is no room with that number at the hotel, Frau Stein.’
‘They told me that there, too, but it’s impossible.’
‘Who checked you in?’
‘Nobody. I was given the key card along with my conference documents.’
‘Did anybody see you in the hotel? Any witnesses?’
‘No, I mean yes. A Russian woman.’
‘Do you know her name?’
‘No.’
‘What’s her room number?’
‘No, she’s a…’
‘What?’
‘Forget it.’
‘Okay. Could you describe your attacker?’
‘No, it was dark.’
The Package Page 3