‘… but we really do know everyone here, and—’
‘And maybe he’s subletting, perhaps he’s a son-in-law living with his fiancée’s parents for a while and having his post sent here,’ Philipp said. ‘There are hundreds of potentially innocent explanations.’
‘Yes, you’re probably right. But still I’d like you to take a look at the package. You must know that photograph from the security camera in the lift at—’
Philipp’s face darkened and he let go of her hand. ‘Have you been on the internet again?’
As if he’d given the magic word it happened again.
Two floors above them.
There was a beeping.
The sad look with which Jorgo, leaning against the doorframe, had listened to their conversation, vanished and was replaced by expression of hard concentration.
Philipp, too, had put on what Emma called his ‘policeman’s face’: narrowed eyes, knitted brow, head to one side, lips slightly open, tongue pressed against the upper incisors.
After a brief exchange of glances in the interval between two rings, the two men nodded to each other and Jorgo said, ‘I’ll take a look.’
Before Emma could object, Philipp’s partner disappeared into the hallway. He climbed the stairs with confident steps, his hand on the belt holding the holster of his service weapon.
15
‘It can’t go on like this, Emma,’ Philipp whispered, as if he were worried that Jorgo might hear him two floors up. ‘You’ve got to make a decision.’
‘What do you mean?’
The distant beeping was gnawing at Emma’s nerves and she couldn’t concentrate on her husband’s voice. Nor could she deal with the horrific images in her head. Images of what might happen to Jorgo up there – a slit throat, for example, opening and closing, and each time the policeman unsuccessfully tried to scream a torrent of blood spurting onto the floor of the children’s room that would forever remain unfinished.
‘What are you talking about, Philipp?’ she asked again.
Her husband came up close and bent down so that his cheek touched her slapped one. ‘Therapy, Emma. I know you want to get over this alone, but you’ve crossed a line.’
Emma shuddered when she felt his breath on her earlobe. For a moment she thought she was remembering the tongue that, in the darkness of the hotel room, had buried itself in her ear, while she, paralysed, had only been capable of muffled cries. But then Philipp said softly, ‘You’ve really got to look for a therapist, Emma. I’ve spoken to Dr Wielandt about this.’
‘The police psychologist?’ Emma asked in horror.
‘She knows your case, Emma. Lots of people are familiar with it. We have to check the…’ He faltered, obviously because he realised he couldn’t finish the sentence without hurting his wife.
‘… check the facts of my statement. Say no more. So what does Dr Wielandt think? That I’m a pathological liar who invents rape stories for fun?’
Philipp took a deep breath. ‘She’s concerned that you were deeply traumatised as a child…’
‘Oh, shut up!’
‘Emma, you have a lively, exuberant imagination. In the past you saw things that weren’t there.’
‘I was six years old!’ she yelled.
‘A child neglected by her father, making up an imaginary substitute to compensate for his lack of affection.’
Emma laughed. ‘Did Dr Wielandt have to write that out for you or did you learn it by heart first time?’
‘Emma, please…’
‘You don’t believe me then?’
‘I didn’t say that—’
‘So now you also think I suffer from hallucinations, don’t you?’ she hissed, interrupting him. ‘I imagined the whole thing? The man in my hotel room, the injection, the pain? The blood? Oh, what am I saying, perhaps I wasn’t even really pregnant. Maybe I made that up too? And the alarm in the attic, that’s just in my head too…’
She fell silent abruptly.
Oh God.
The beeping wasn’t even in her head any more.
It had stopped.
Emma held her breath. Looked up at the ceiling that was urgently in need of a coat of paint. ‘Please tell me you heard it too,’ she said to Philipp and pressed her hand to her mouth. After her outburst the sudden silence felt like a harbinger of dreadful news.
‘You heard it, didn’t you?’
Philipp didn’t answer her, but Emma heard footsteps coming down the stairs. She turned to the door, where Jorgo appeared with a red face.
‘Have you got any batteries?’ he asked.
‘Batteries?’ she repeated, confused.
‘For the smoke alarm,’ Jorgo said, presenting her with a small nine-volt battery in the palm of his hand. ‘You need to change these every five years at the latest, otherwise they start to beep like the one in your attic.’
Emma closed her eyes. Happy that there was a harmless explanation for the beeping, but also disappointed in an irrational way. Basically, she’d had a nervous breakdown because of the signal from a smoke alarm, and this overreaction can only have reinforced her husband’s doubts about her mental faculties.
‘Strange,’ Philipp said, scratching the back of his head. ‘That can’t be right. I only checked the things last week.’
‘Not thoroughly enough, so it seems. So, Emma?’ she heard Jorgo ask, and for a moment she had no idea what he was getting at.
‘Batteries?’ he repeated.
‘Wait, I’ll have a look.’ She pushed past Jorgo and Philipp and was on her way into the living room when she suddenly remembered what she’d forgotten earlier.
Samson!
In all the kerfuffle she’d completely forgotten about him, and only now that she was looking at his sleeping blanket by the fireplace did she realise what her subconscious had been nagging her for.
Why didn’t he come when I called him?
Samson just raised his head wearily and seemed to smile when he saw his mistress. Emma was horrified by his sad expression. His breathing was shallow and his nose dry.
‘Are you in pain, little one?’ she asked, wandering over to the shelves where the electric thermometer was in the bottom drawer. She glanced at the desk and all of a sudden was unable to think about Samson’s condition any more.
Not when she saw the desk.
Where the package was that Salim had given her earlier.
Wrong.
Where it ought to have been.
Because in the place where she’d put it before opening up her notebook, to take yet another look at the lift photo of the Hairdresser, there was nothing to be seen now.
The package for A. Palandt had vanished.
16
Three weeks later
‘And then they left you alone?’
Konrad had barely moved while listening; he hadn’t even uncrossed his legs or unclasped his hands in his lap. Emma knew why: he’d told her when she’d once remarked on his bodily control.
With difficult clients – those who had something to hide – the merest distraction would disturb their flow.
I’m one of those for him now.
Emma was no longer a daughter-like friend, she was a difficult client whose statements had to be meticulously scrutinised.
‘So in spite of the fact that the package had disappeared without trace Philipp and his colleague left?’ Konrad clicked his fingers. ‘Just like that?’
‘No, of course not just like that.’
Emma turned to look at the window. The lake was buried beneath a thin layer of snow. From this distance it looked inviting for ice-skating, but Emma knew how deceptive the appearance could be. Every year people fell through the ice on the Wannsee, having overestimated its strength. Luckily she didn’t see anyone bold or reckless enough to tempt fate today, the miserable weather playing a part. There wasn’t a soul to be seen on or around the lake. Only a few ducks and swans had flocked by the shore, defying the prevailing sleet that bathed the entire scene in a
sad grey.
‘I lied to Philipp,’ Emma said by way of explanation. ‘I told him that my nerves must have been playing a trick on me and probably I hadn’t drunk enough. Hence I blacked out and hallucinated about a package that never existed.’
‘And he believed that?’ Konrad asked doubtfully.
‘No, but when I took a diazepam in front of him he knew I’d sleep half the day.’
‘You take that for anxiety disorder?’ Konrad asked. Emma remembered he was a lawyer rather than a doctor. In her head she could already see him working on a theory of diminished responsibility due to excessive tablet consumption. And yet he had far more in his hand than paltry substance abuse to plead mental incapacity on her behalf. But they’d come to that in good time.
‘Yes. Lorazepam would have actually been my drug of choice. It’s newer, takes effect more rapidly and doesn’t sedate you as much as diazepam, which makes you incredibly tired. But unfortunately it was all I had in the house.’
‘So you took your pill and then the two of them went to the conference in Bad Saarow?’
‘After they’d checked the smoke alarms in every room and thus done a search of the entire house including the basement, yes.’
Emma couldn’t say whether it was his tightly pressed lips or the growl in his voice, but she clearly sensed that Konrad seriously frowned on her husband’s behaviour. The two men had never got on, which wasn’t helped, of course, by the fact that Emma had ignored Philipp’s ‘sugar daddy’ comments and had even cultivated his jealousy. For his part, Konrad had often raised an eyebrow about the vulgar ‘peasant’ who would pass over the phone without saying hello or barely shake his hand on the rare occasions they met.
In this specific instance, however, Konrad’s criticism of Philipp as an oaf was unjustified. If he’d been in Philipp’s shoes and she’d implored him in the same way, he’d have found it difficult to refuse her request too.
‘I need my peace and quiet, Philipp. I’d be even more stressed if I knew you were missing your lecture just because of me. I’ve taken my medicine now. You’ve searched the entire house and, anyway, Sylvia’s popping by this afternoon to check on me, so please do me and yourselves a favour and leave me alone. Okay?’
None of that was a lie, and yet none of it was honest.
‘Did the medicine work?’
Konrad poured her some tea. He’d soon have to replace the tealight in the warmer as the wick was virtually swimming in wax.
‘Oh boy, did it work.’
‘You felt tired.’
Emma took the cup offered to her and sipped some tea. The Assam blend tasted bittersweet and furry, as if it had been left to brew for too long.
‘The diazepam almost floored me. I felt sleepy like before an operation.’
‘And free of anxiety?’
‘Not to begin with. But that was also because…’
‘What?’
‘Something… something happened. As they were leaving.’
Konrad raised his eyebrows and waited for her to continue talking.
‘Jorgo. He gave me his hand…’
‘And?’
‘And he put something in mine.’
‘What?’
‘A note.’
‘What did it say?’
‘The nicest thing that any man had said to me in ages.’
‘I love you?’ Konrad asked.
Emma shook her head.
‘I believe you,’ she said, pausing to allow the words to take effect.
Konrad didn’t appear surprised, but with his well-trained poker face that didn’t mean much.
‘I believe you,’ he repeated softly.
‘Jorgo had scribbled that on a tiny piece of paper. And that I should ring him. I was speechless when I read the message as soon as they were out of the door.’
‘What happened then?’
Emma winced before answering Konrad. ‘You know what happened.’
‘I want to hear it from your mouth.’
‘I, I…’
She closed her eyes. Pictured her front door. From the inside. Saw her hand stretching out for the handle, turning the key twice.
‘I did the unthinkable,’ she said, completing her sentence.
Konrad nodded slowly. ‘For the first time in six months?’
‘Yes.’
Konrad bent forwards. ‘Why?’
She raised her head and looked him straight in the eye. She could see herself as a tiny reflection in his pupils.
‘Because of the blood,’ she whispered. ‘All of a sudden there was blood everywhere.’
17
Three weeks earlier
Emma was kneeling in a pool of red in the middle of the living room, halfway between the fireplace and her desk. She felt strangely calm. The blood had gushed out, completely unexpectedly in spite of the wheezing and panting that had preceded it.
A deep breath, a spastic convulsion of the upper chest muscles. A sound as if a living creature were being breathed out of the body, then Samson vomited at her feet.
‘My poor darling, what’s wrong?’
As she stroked his head she could feel him shivering, as if he were just as cold as her. Philipp and Jorgo had been gone barely half an hour, in which time she’d turned the house upside down again looking for the package that had actually disappeared.
But that’s impossible!
Unbelievably tired, her back soaked with sweat, Emma had returned to the living room from the hallway, having searched it yet again. In a moment of desperation, she was going to check beneath Samson’s blanket to see whether the dog might have thought to take the package to his sleeping place. Instead she’d found him in this pitiful state.
‘Hey, Samson. Can you hear me?’
The husky started retching again.
In normal circumstances Emma would have been scared witless and slapped her hands over her mouth, terrified that this desperate situation was too much for her. But now the first diazepam tablet was smoothing the largest waves of anxiety without eliminating them altogether. It was like being anaesthetised at the dentist’s. You no longer felt the shooting pain, but there was a general, dull ache just waiting to flare up again the moment the injection wore off.
What now?
She looked outside. A jackdaw came to rest on a bare magnolia and seemed to wave at her, but of course Emma was imagining it. Heavy snow was still falling and Emma couldn’t make out the bird’s eyes.
It was more her subconscious telling her what she had to do.
‘You’ve got to leave the house!’
‘No!’ she said, but she could barely hear herself because Samson was being sick again. This time it was accompanied by less blood, but that didn’t make it any better.
‘Yes, and you know it. You’ve got to get out, Samson needs help!’
‘No way.’ Emma shook her head and went over to the desk where her mobile was.
‘Who are you going to call then?’
‘Who do you think? The emergency vet.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course, just look at him.’
She looked at Samson.
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ said the voice in her head, which sounded like a precocious version of her own. ‘He probably doesn’t have much time left. But is that what you really want to do?’
‘Save him?’
‘Put yourself in danger,’ the voice said.
As if thunderstruck, it took Emma a while to digest these words. Then she put her mobile back on the desk.
‘You’re right.’
I can’t call anyone.
Because it wouldn’t just be that one call. At some point there would be a stranger at her front door. A vet she didn’t know, but who she’d have to let in, because she could hardly send Samson out into the cold to be examined. And in the end she’d have to go with him to the veterinary clinic after all when it turned out that they wouldn’t be able to treat him at home.
‘Fuck,’
she cursed.
Samson was now lying on his side, almost in a foetal position, and panting. His tongue was hanging wanly out of his mouth and his nose was completely dry. A string of blood ran from his black muzzle to the parquet floor.
‘What on earth is wrong with you?’
And what should I do?
She couldn’t let a stranger into the house, not in her condition. But the only logical alternative – to leave the house – was at least as terrifying.
For a moment Emma wondered whether she ought to ring Philipp, but that would put paid to his conference for good, and Emma didn’t want that.
Maybe it’s just a virus?
As Emma stroked Samson’s white coat she was hardly able to feel his ribs when he breathed. It could be a lung inflammation, but the symptoms were too drastic and had come on too suddenly.
At least she now knew why Samson had been so limp the whole time.
My poor bear, it looks more likely that someone…
She jumped to her feet, flabbergasted by this shocking thought.
… that someone poisoned you!
Emma couldn’t get out of her head the image of Salim asking her if it was okay and giving Samson a treat.
No, no, no. That’s nonsense.
Emma’s thoughts were flowing into her consciousness at half speed, a typical effect of the sedative. She was still capable of reasoning, but everything took twice as long.
But not Salim. He gives Samson something every time, and nothing ever happened before.
Outside, the jackdaw had left its perch. Emma could see just its tail feathers as it flew exactly in the direction she had to move in now too.
Dr Plank’s veterinary practice was just one block towards Heerstrasse.
But she’d have to wear something warm, put Samson on a lead, even carry him perhaps, although this was not what made her so worried.
The biggest problem was that she’d have to open the front door and leave the protection of her own four walls for the first time in almost six months.
‘No, I can’t. It’s inconceivable,’ she said, which of course was a paradox because she’d just been mulling it over in her mind. She was also thinking that she’d never manage to tear down the wall that had built up between her and life outside, and take not just one but several steps into a world she wanted nothing more to do with.
The Package Page 8