‘But even I don’t know why I fibbed about that,’ she said, then corrected herself straight away. ‘Well, yes, I do. I wanted to take the wind out of the sails of a colleague by the name of Stauder-Mertens. He’s an arrogant arsehole who was trying to make me look ridiculous with his questions. It was really stupid of me, but…’
She left the second ‘but’ hanging in the air, because there was nothing that could undo her deception.
‘Those critical questions from a colleague may have been the trigger for your lie. But not the cause,’ Konrad said.
‘I know that.’
She turned to the window and gazed at the snow on the lake. Wished she could be out there. Floating lifelessly, beneath the ice.
‘Of course you do,’ Konrad said, still pressing her. ‘Pseudology is your specialist subject. You know the circumstances that can give rise to pathological lying.’
‘Konrad, please…’
Emma turned back and looked at him imploringly, but the criminal defence lawyer knew no mercy and enumerated the symptoms: ‘Neglect in childhood. Rejection by one’s parents, one’s father, for example. A highly fertile imagination that allows one to escape into a world of make-believe where one invents a substitute attachment figure, who might be called Arthur.’
‘STOP!’
Emma threw the blanket from her knees. ‘Why are we bothering to talk if you don’t believe a word I say?’ she cried and was about to leap up from the sofa. But, overestimating her strength, she teetered back, knocking over her teacup.
Fat drops fell from the coffee table onto the white part of the rug. A stain wouldn’t have been so obvious on the once-dark black threads that had faded to brown over the years.
‘I’m really sorry, Konrad. Christ, I didn’t mean it.’ More tears filled her eyes, and this time she didn’t bother fighting against them.
‘It’s not a problem,’ she heard Konrad say, who’d jumped up instinctively, and basically he was right. It was a minor stain, which would easily come out in cleaning, yet she felt as if she’d defiled the thing most sacred to him.
Why did it have to be the O rug?
She knew what the old, round thing meant to Konrad. He’d brought it back decades ago from a trip to Tibet when he was a student. It had been his first major acquisition, his lucky charm – and she’d soiled it.
‘Where are you going?’ Konrad asked, when she tried to get up from the sofa again.
She pointed at the door beside the exit that led to Konrad’s private loo.
‘To get some water and soap.’
He shook his head gently, her old friend and mentor once more. Again the change had occurred in a split second, and even if he wasn’t smiling he sounded as warm and friendly as before: ‘The rug isn’t important, Emma. What is important is that you tell me the truth.’
‘I am trying, but you’re scaring me.’
Konrad shrugged as if meaning to say, ‘I know, but what can I do?’
‘Don’t feel intimidated by me,’ he said gently and sat down again. ‘I’m just playing the advocatus diaboli here. During the trial the public prosecutor will try to faze you with quite different tricks.’
Emma swallowed, wishing he’d hug her, or at least hold her hand, but he just watched her sit back down. Only then did he stand up again, take a large handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wipe the glass table. He ignored the dark stain on the floor. ‘The prosecutor will reveal all your dark secrets, which is what he must do. After all, he wants to see you locked up in prison for life.’
‘I know.’
Emma scratched the top of her forehead, resisting the urge to check the length of her hair. She wiped her nose with a tissue, then said, ‘I didn’t intend any of it to happen, do you believe me?’
Konrad tapped his lips, then pursed them and replied after a brief deliberation, ‘Normally at this point I always say that it’s not important. That it doesn’t matter to me whether my client’s lying or telling the truth. But in this case it’s different.’
‘Because we’re friends?’
‘Because I don’t yet know the whole story, Emma. Tell it to me! And not just what I already know from the files. You need to go deeper and talk about things that you find painful.’
Emma’s eyes glazed over.
Looking right through Konrad, of course she understood what he meant. He wanted to hear about the bodies.
Alright then…
Her eyes focused again, wandered across the fire and the huge desk to the window, beyond which lay a lake she’d probably never walk on again in her life.
On the other hand she had pictures in her head that would accompany her everywhere, no matter how fast she ran away from herself.
For example, the barrel with the severed limbs.
Yes, that’s a good idea.
Why don’t I tell him about the barrel?
But before that she had to explain how she’d come to be in the shed in the first place and why she’d had to leave the house for a second time, without noticing that she was being watched by the delivery man… Everything in good time.
And so Emma lay back on the sofa and obliged Konrad by going where she found it most painful.
Back to the house in Teufelssee-Allee, where soon she’d lose everything that had once been important to her.
30
Three weeks earlier
She stayed quite calm.
Emma had fallen asleep sitting up, her head had slipped to the side and was now resting on the edge of the sofa cushion, tipping the room about forty-five degrees anticlockwise.
The cup on the coffee table, the photo frame on the mantelpiece, the vase with dried flowers in the window – everything appeared to be defying gravity.
Including the man three paces away from her.
For a moment Emma thought she was trapped in a dream and to begin with she was surprised that she could dream with the sleeping pill. Then she was surprised that she was surprised, because normally she tended not to reflect on her state of consciousness while asleep. Eventually she realised that she’d opened her eyes and everything around her was real: the dust on the coffee table, the burned embers in the fire, the dressing gown that she’d soaked through with sweat in her short, but intense sleep. And the man with the chunky winter boots, dripping melting snow onto the floorboards.
The man!
Emma sat up so quickly that she momentarily felt giddy and the world started to spin.
She reached for the switch on the standing lamp and clicked it on. Warm, soft light flooded the living room, which had been in a dusky gloom.
‘Hello,’ the man said, raising his hand.
‘What do you want?’ Emma said, feeling for the scalpel in her pocket. Strangely she was far less frightened than she ought to feel looking at a man who’d entered her house while she was sleeping.
She was agitated, nervous, felt as she might before an exam she hadn’t revised for, but she was far from becoming paralysed with shock or even screaming. Not because she was resigned to her fate, but because the man looked less scary than the first time she’d seen him.
Not an hour ago.
Weeping in his bedroom.
‘Herr Palandt?’ she said, and the intruder nodded silently.
He’d been bald before, but now he was wearing a short, dark-brown wig that had turned black in the sleet.
He was tall, almost Sylvia’s height, and slim, even gaunt. His black raincoat hung over his sunken shoulders like a tarpaulin. It had yellow buttons, which looked curiously fashionable for someone who otherwise didn’t seem to care about his appearance. His cords, which were also far too thin for this weather, were several sizes too big, as if Palandt was having to wear an elder brother’s clothes. Yet he must be at least sixty.
The most striking thing about him were his glasses. Beige, plastic monstrosities with lenses so thick you could hardly make out his eyes behind them. Could he see anything at all without them?
‘What do you wa
nt?’ Emma asked again in the hope that Palandt hadn’t recognised her in his bedroom. ‘How did you get in here?’
Emma pushed herself up from the sofa cushions and felt as if she had to apologise, even though it was her neighbour who had intruded into her house, and trespass is a more serious offence than criminal damage, isn’t it?
‘I’m sorry. I hope I haven’t frightened you, but your front door was open.’
The front door?
Emma recalled lying howling on the floor and hearing Sylvia angrily slam the front door. So hard that she’d felt it in the living room.
Maybe it had jumped out of the latch again.
I didn’t check – stupid cow!
Palandt turned away from her and looked over at the desk.
At the package!
Ripped open as if by an impatient child at Christmas, its contents lay scattered amongst polystyrene balls on the desk.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said guiltily, pointing at the package. ‘I’m… well… I’m not in a good way. It was a stupid idea to look through the post after taking a sleeping tablet. I thought the package was for me. Sorry.’
‘No problem,’ Palandt said. His words sounded friendly and warm, but his voice was weak. ‘As I said, it’s me who should apologise.’
Emma unconsciously shook her head, and so Palandt went on: ‘Yes, yes. I should never have just burst in here to pick up my package.’ He put his hand in the back pocket of his cords and pulled out Salim’s card. ‘I knocked, but couldn’t find a bell…’
‘It’s out by the garden gate.’
‘Oh, yes, right. I didn’t go back to the gate once I’d climbed the steps. I’m a bit unsteady on my legs, you see.’ He looked down as if checking that his scrawny legs were still attached to his emaciated body.
‘Anyway, when nobody answered I was worried that this house had been burgled too.’
‘Too?’ Emma asked, and all of a sudden it was there, the fear. Because of course she knew what Palandt was talking about.
‘Oh, I’ve been robbed several times, including today,’ her neighbour said, scratching the back of his head.
‘Today they even came into my bedroom and watched me.’
Emma turned cold. She opened her mouth, intent on posing the questions that an innocent person would ask immediately: ‘Who are you talking about? What did they want from you? Have you called the police?’ But no sound would issue from her lips.
Not when she saw the wig moving on Palandt’s head while he kept on scratching.
He muttered something that sounded like ‘this damned itching…’ and at the same time his monstrous glasses turned into an aquarium of tears.
Palandt had started to cry.
31
‘Would you mind…?’ Palandt sniffled and looked around as if he were searching for something specific in the living room, then he appeared to have found it, for he turned away from Emma and took a step to the right. ‘Would you mind if I sat down?’
Without waiting for an answer, he slumped into the armchair that stood at an angle to the sofa and where Philipp liked to read the paper on a Sunday. It was made of dark-green leather with concrete-coloured armrests, an ugly industrial look, Emma thought, that was totally out of place in this otherwise rustically furnished house. But it was an heirloom from Philipp’s mother and he was attached to it. Palandt appeared to be comfortable in it too; at any rate he gave a sigh of relief, wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand and closed his eyes.
Emma, who was standing indecisively beside the coffee table, was worrying that her neighbour would fall asleep when Palandt opened his eyes again. ‘I find it very embarrassing, Frau Stein, but I’m not especially well, as you can perhaps see.’
Frau Stein.
Emma wondered momentarily where the neighbour could know her name from, because it wasn’t on the door. Then it occurred to her that Salim must have written it on the delivery note.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked, although she was actually seeking other answers. Whether he’d found her mobile phone, for starters. What was wrong with his hair. Whether he was playing a game of cat and mouse with her and they’d just entered a quiet phase in which Emma was supposed to think that the weak, suffering Palandt represented no danger, whereas in truth he was just waiting for the right moment to go for her throat.
‘I’ve got cancer,’ he said tersely. ‘A tumour in my liver. Metastases in the lungs.’
‘That’s the reason for the medicines?’ They both looked over at the desk.
‘Morphine and GHB,’ Palandt said outright. ‘One takes away the pain, the other either stimulates me or helps me get to sleep depending on the dose. Today I probably took too much and missed the delivery man.’ He laughed sadly. ‘I’d never have thought I’d become a junkie one day. All my life I’ve played sport, eaten healthily, never drunk – well, I wasn’t allowed to in my profession.’
Palandt spoke quickly with that mixture of excitement and shame so typical of lonely people who after a long time finally find the opportunity to talk to someone, even if it’s a total stranger.
‘I was in the circus,’ he explained. ‘Daddy Longlegs they called me. Perhaps you’ve heard of me. No? Oh well, it was a while ago. Anyway, Daddy Longlegs like the spider, because I’ve got long legs too, but I can make myself very small. My God, I was really flexible. I used to get the loudest applause for my suitcase routine.’
‘Suitcase routine?’ Emma asked.
‘Yes, I could bend my body to fit into a small suitcase.’ Palandt gave a sad smile. ‘I had rubber bones back then. These days it hurts when I tie my shoelaces.’
Emma swallowed. She couldn’t shake off the thought of a man squashing himself into the farthest corner of a room to avoid being discovered before its occupant went to bed.
But in Le Zen there wasn’t a single corner to hide in. Not even for a contortionist.
Emma looked at the window. Snowflakes spun beneath the head of the streetlamp like a swarm of moths around the light in summer. She felt a dull ache pressing against her forehead from the inside. Emma couldn’t help thinking that even half of one of those pills on her desk would be enough to kill the pain, however severe the migraine became that was now brewing.
Noticing that Palandt had followed her pensive gaze over to the package, she said, ‘It’s none of my business, but, well, I’m a doctor.’
Palandt gave a squeaky laugh. ‘And you want to know why I order these cheap copycat drugs on the black market?’
Emma nodded.
‘It was a stupid idea,’ Palandt explained. ‘I never had any health insurance, you see. What was the point? All my life I was healthy and if things took a bad turn, I thought, I could live off my savings in my mother’s house.’
‘Frau Tornow?’
‘That was her maiden name. She took it again after the divorce. Did you know her?’ Palandt appeared to be delighted and he smiled softly.
‘We bumped into each other on the street from time to time,’ Emma said. ‘I haven’t seen her in ages.’
‘She’s in Thailand,’ he said. ‘In a nursing home right on the beach.’
Emma nodded. That made sense. More and more German pensioners were spending their retirement years in Asia, where you could get better healthcare for far less money. And where it didn’t get as cold in winter as at home. ‘I’m supposed to be looking after the house in her absence.’ Palandt was about to add something, but put his hands to his mouth abruptly. A sudden coughing fit shook his entire body.
‘Sorry…’ He tried to say something, but had to keep interrupting himself and didn’t seem to be getting enough air.
Emma fetched him a glass of water from the kitchen. When she came back his face was bright red and he was scarcely intelligible as he wheezed, ‘Would you mind giving me a pill?’
She handed him the morphine from the desk.
Eagerly he swallowed two pills at once, then coughed for a further thirty seconds until even
tually settling down and relaxing.
‘Excuse me,’ he said with jittery eyelids. He’d briefly removed his glasses to dry his tears with the back of his hands. ‘Sometimes I wake up with such bad pain that I can’t help crying.’
Palandt put his glasses back on the bridge of his nose and smiled apologetically. ‘I know I look like a scarecrow with these on, but if I didn’t wear them you could get up and leave the room and I’d continue chatting to the sofa cushions.’
Emma spontaneously wrinkled her nose and sat back down on the sofa.
Is that true?
It was probably the reason why he was behaving so naturally towards her. Particularly as when he woke up earlier he may have been suffering the pain he was talking about. Without his glasses and with tears in his eyes he wouldn’t have been able to see her standing beside his bed.
Maybe he hasn’t found my mobile yet?
Emma’s paranoid self wanted to see things in a different light, of course, with Anton Palandt as a gifted actor merely feigning his illness to lull her into a false sense of security, after all, he is wearing a wig! But she was longing for a harmless, logical explanation for all the mysterious occurrences she’d experienced and witnessed today, and so Emma asked her neighbour bluntly, ‘Did you lose your hair because of the chemotherapy?’
Palandt nodded. ‘Yes, it looks ghastly, doesn’t it?’ He lifted the toupee briefly and Emma could see age spots dotted all over his head. ‘It’s a cheap thing off the internet and itches like hell. But I don’t dare go out into the street without it. With a bald head I look like a rapist.’
He gave a throaty laugh and Emma tried to put on a brave face by raising the corners of her mouth too.
A coincidence, her hopeful self said. ‘He’s playing with you,’ her paranoid identity countered.
Emma bent forwards on the sofa, as she used to do in her therapy sessions when she wanted patients to believe they had her undivided attention. ‘You said the foreign medicines were a bad idea? Do they not work?’
Palandt nodded. ‘They’re cheap copies. I should never have got involved with the people who supply me with them.’
The Package Page 13