The Package

by Sebastian Fitzek

  Her father’s words: ‘Get out right now. Or I’ll hurt you.’

  The voice in the cupboard: ‘He said that?’

  Her mother’s screams when she lost the child at four months.

  The morning-after pill.

  Her own voice yelling at Sylvia: ‘I was shaved and raped. There was a man in my room…’

  ‘Yeah, like Arthur in your cupboard…’

  Emma tore her eyes open. Fought her way back to the surface through the fog of torpidity.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Konrad said, still holding her hand.

  ‘How did she know his name?’ Her tongue weighed several kilos; she could barely move it any more.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Arthur. How did Sylvia know his name?’

  ‘Are you talking about the ghost now?’

  She looked at Konrad’s puzzled face.

  ‘Look, I didn’t even tell you his name. You heard it for the first time today when I told you about my row with Sylvia. When she came to my house and accused me of stopping her from having a child, she said something about me lying even as a child. When I made up Arthur. But I only met Sylvia after I’d been through therapy. I never told her about Arthur.’

  Konrad shrugged. ‘She had an affair with Philipp,’ he muttered. ‘She probably heard it from him.’

  Emma was blinking frenziedly. ‘Listen. Even Philipp knew nothing about it. I kept Arthur’s name to myself. After the therapy sessions in my younger days I never wanted to say it out loud again; it was a superstition. I thought that if I didn’t say it then Arthur would never come back, do you understand?’

  I only told my parents and psychiatrist about him. So how did Sylvia know the name?

  Emma was shaking. For a split second she knew the answer. And this answer pointed the way to such a terrible, blood-curdling truth that she just wanted to run screaming out of her room.

  But then the answer had vanished, together with her capacity to struggle any longer against a loss of consciousness.

  And all that accompanied Emma on her deep descent into sleep was a feeling of fear, far worse than the one when she’d accepted the package.

  51

  Dr Roth was delighted. The experiment he’d mostly funded out of his own pocket was a complete success.

  He was almost regretting not being able to continue, but the rehabilitation hall he was blocking was urgently needed and, in any case, no more success could be expected from this set-up.

  ‘We’re done then?’ Konrad asked beside him, watching two removal men like a hawk as they took away his sofa. After his chat with Emma the defence lawyer had gone for a walk in the park to get some fresh air. Now he looked refreshed.

  ‘The charade is over?’

  Konrad had to raise his voice because in front of and behind him cordless screwdrivers buzzed as they took apart the wall panels. The air was heavy with the aroma of wood shavings, a smell Roth had loved since childhood. He’d attended a school with a strong artistic focus. Carpentry was part of the core curriculum, which maybe explained his penchant for creative methods.

  ‘Yes, I think we’re done,’ Roth replied. ‘Unless Frau Stein disclosed something else to you that could be important for my work.’

  ‘Client confidentiality,’ Konrad grinned, but then waved his hand dismissively. ‘No, to tell you the truth she was all over the place. She expressed suicidal thoughts, so you’ve really got to keep an eye on her.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’re geared up for that possibility.’ Roth scratched his receding hairline. ‘I’m afraid that reaction was only to be expected.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’ve seriously rocked Frau Stein’s world.’

  Roth pointed to the bookshelf with the complete works of Schopenhauer. One of the cameras was still in the spine of The World as Will and Representation.

  ‘And at the moment she can’t see any way of putting it back in order,’ Roth said.

  ‘Hey, hey. Please be careful!’ Konrad excused himself for a moment and went up to one of the removal men who was trying to yank the round O rug from under the coffee table.

  ‘That’s for the dry cleaner’s, not the dustbin.’

  ‘Is that an enso?’ asked Roth, who’d followed him.

  Konrad gave him an admiring look. ‘Do you know about Zen symbolism?’

  ‘A little,’ Roth smiled, pointing to the black edging of the white rug. ‘In Zen art an enso, or circle, is painted with a single flowing brushstroke. Only those who are mentally composed and balanced can paint a uniform enso. For that reason, the way the circle is executed gives us a particularly good idea of the painter’s state of mind.’

  ‘I take my hat off to you,’ Konrad laughed. The worker had now exited with the coffee table under his arm. The other packers too were taking items outside, leaving Konrad and Roth alone for the moment. ‘I didn’t know you were a philosopher manqué.’

  Roth nodded, seemingly lost in thought. His fingers grasped the threads of the enso rug again, then he stood up. For one last time he allowed his gaze to roam the replica office, then he asked Konrad, almost incidentally, ‘You were practically inseparable from her, weren’t you?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You always had to have her there. Be near her.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Konrad said, slightly put out.

  Instead of giving an answer Roth looked at the fluff in his hand, which he’d just plucked from the rug. The fibres were dark brown and unusually thin for a rug. Almost like hair.

  ‘In Philipp’s laboratory they found the trophies from all the victims, apart from Emma,’ the psychiatrist said, looking Konrad straight in the eye.

  The defence lawyer turned pale and seemed to age from one moment to the next. The firm ground of Konrad’s self-assurance had suddenly become a trapdoor.

  ‘What the hell are you getting at?’

  Roth replied with a question of his own: ‘Are you not surprised by all the time and money that’s gone into this, Professor Luft?’ The psychiatrist opened up his arms as if seeing the set-up for the first time. ‘A completely furnished replica lawyer’s office, HD television, hidden cameras and microphones. And all just to free a paranoid patient from her hallucinations?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Konrad asked flatly. His gaze wandered helplessly across the set, looking for a way out.

  But before he’d found one, Roth let the guillotine of truth come swishing down. ‘We were observing you, not Emma!’

  52

  Emma was swimming on the bottom of an oil-black lake, feeling seasick. And yet the waves upsetting her balance were borne by a strange melody.

  A voice, half whispering, half smiling.

  A madman’s voice.

  Konrad’s voice.

  ‘I love you, Emma.’

  Seized by an immense swell of nausea, Emma wrenched open her eyes and threw up right beside her bed.

  She was still woozy, seeing the world as if through frosted glass, but she knew who she was (a raped woman), where she was (in the Park Clinic) and what Konrad had confided to her.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after you,’ he’d said, holding her hand and believing her to be in a state of total unconsciousness, whereas in fact she was just hovering below the surface of sleep.

  ‘I’ll protect you like I’ve always done.’

  She kept drifting off, but each time his voice brought her back.

  Now that she’d vomited up her medication before it could make its way throughout her body, Konrad was no longer in the room.

  But his voice was still in her head. This eerie, whispering sing-song of memory.

  ‘I’m your guardian angel, Emma. I’ve been watching over you these last few months, just as I have for years and years. Do you understand? I killed the whores for your sake. To restore your honour.’

  Only now did the madness in his words make complete sense to Emma. She was still incredibly tired. But the pull of the psychotropic drugs was n
o longer trying to drag her so forcefully into the quagmire of her consciousness.

  ‘I wanted you from the first second I laid eyes on you. You were far too young, three years old, when you came to my practice with your father. It was furnished almost exactly as it is now. Even the rug was there. You loved playing on the O, but I bet you can’t remember as you were too small.’

  That’s why I felt so at home there from the start.

  Right then Emma had tried opening her eyes again, but couldn’t manage it.

  ‘I noticed at once that your father was no good for you. You tried to get close to him, but he was always gruff and cold. I, on the other hand, couldn’t show my feelings. I had to hide to be able to see you.’

  In my cupboard!

  ‘I watched you, cared for you, guarded you and protected you. I was the father you never had.’

  Konrad wasn’t just the Hairdresser.

  He was Arthur too!

  That’s how Sylvia knew his name. She didn’t get it from Philipp, but from the man pretending to be Arthur, Emma remembered her own, very sluggish thoughts, interrupted again and again by Konrad’s whispers.

  They’d had contact, of course. Konrad must have visited Sylvia when Emma was in a bad way, to discuss how they could help her. From one best friend to another.

  ‘Throughout your life I looked out for you, my darling. Like when your ex-boyfriend Benedict was hassling you, do you remember? I so often held my protective hand over you, but you weren’t aware of it. Then, when you were old enough, I showed myself to you. But I was worried you’d realise my true feelings and break off contact with a man who was so much older.’

  But aren’t you gay?

  ‘I only pretended to be gay. I lied so I could always be close to you, but unfortunately it kept us apart too. Oh, the desire I felt for you. All these years.’

  Until the night in the hotel!

  ‘I wanted you to leave Le Zen and go home, darling. Back to your husband who was in bed with a whore. So you’d catch him in flagrante. But you stayed. Even though I frightened you with the writing on the mirror, you wouldn’t go. So I cut your hair to stop Philipp from wanting you. To stop him from sleeping with you as he always did when you came home.’

  At this point Emma thought she recalled Konrad clearing his throat, just as he’d done that night in the hotel.

  ‘I didn’t rape you. It’s just that when you were lying in front of me, so peacefully…’

  Emma had to retch again. She threw the covers back and fell beside the bed when she tried to stand up.

  ‘No!’ she screamed at the voice of truth, which had taken hold inside her head.

  ‘I know, it was a mistake,’ she heard Konrad say. ‘But I couldn’t wait any longer, Emma. After all those years of abstinence it was perfectly natural, you see. And it was beautiful, all very gentle. An act of love.’

  Emma felt a powerful tugging in her abdomen. She sank to her knees and threw up again.

  When nothing more would come from her stomach the voice in her head had vanished too, as if she’d expelled Konrad from her body with the last of the bile.

  Gasping, she pulled herself up on the window sill and looked outside.

  She almost expected to see Konrad in the park, waving at her, but there was just a snowy landscape. Hare prints in the snow. A lantern giving off a gentle light.

  And the car.

  The old Saab stood covered in snow in the clinic car park where only the senior doctors were allowed to park.

  Emma looked at the door, wiped some spittle from her mouth with the sleeve of her nightshirt and made a decision.

  53

  The defence lawyer, once so energetic, staggered through the mock-up of his office like a boxer out for the count. He hadn’t said anything to Dr Roth yet. And he wasn’t able to look the psychiatrist in the eye.

  Konrad stood there, trembling. With his face to the false window, from which the television had already been removed and where only a chipboard recess was left as a reminder of the installation.

  Turning around, Konrad tried to support himself on the edge of his desk, but slipped and just struggled to fall into his chair.

  ‘You wove Emma’s hair into the enso rug,’ Roth said. Without reproach. Without the slightest hint of sensationalism in his voice. As a psychiatrist he’d come across far more disconcerting abnormalities in human behaviour.

  ‘That… that’s…’ Konrad stuttered, finding his voice again ‘There’s an explanation for that.’

  ‘I’m sure there is,’ Roth replied. ‘Everything will be explained. Including the issue of the room number. Was it 1903 or 1905?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Which of the two connecting rooms was it where you replaced the number on the door with 1904?’

  Roth could see beads of sweat on Konrad’s brow. He’d turned ashen and his skin had a waxy shimmer.

  ‘Yes, I know. Nobody likes it when people see through their tricks,’ Roth said. ‘Even though it was an excellent ploy to book both rooms via a foreign hotel portal for a family of four. At Le Zen, as in most Berlin hotels, you only have to present your credit card at check-in, so you just needed someone to pick up the key for you.’ Roth knitted his brow. ‘This is where we don’t know for sure how you did it. We’re assuming that this mother and her three children actually exist – a former client of yours, perhaps, who you invited to come to Germany. But who left a little earlier, which meant that on the day Emma was checking in you had free rein for your plans. You had all the time to put up the Ai Weiwei portrait, right over the frameless connecting door so that Emma wouldn’t notice there was access to the neighbouring room. You waited in there till she went to bed. Unlike in the past you didn’t have to hide in the cupboard.’ Roth gave a wan smile. ‘By the way, I like the name Arthur. I’m a fan of Arthur Schopenhauer too.’

  Konrad winced when the provisional office door opened with a loud crunch. A black-haired police officer with Greek features strode confidently in.

  ‘Professor Konrad Luft, I am arresting you,’ the policeman said. Jorgo Kapsalos stood two metres from the desk, his hand on the service revolver at his hip. ‘I don’t suppose I have to inform you of your right to remain silent.’

  Konrad looked up and gazed at the tall, broad-shouldered policeman as if he were an alien.

  ‘Why?’ he croaked.

  Roth, who’d stayed beside the sofa, fancied he could make out a smile on Jorgo’s lips, but perhaps it was just the diffuse light of the desk lamp that gave him this impression.

  There was nothing sadistic about Emma’s husband’s former partner. Although Jorgo had been deeply affected by Philipp Stein’s death, because he blamed himself for not having made the connections earlier, Roth didn’t think that Jorgo was driven by revenge. It was understandable, however, that he was feeling great satisfaction now at being able to arrest the Hairdresser.

  ‘How did you get onto me?’

  Jorgo shook his head and he felt for the handcuffs on his belt. ‘We’ll have plenty of time to discuss all that at the station when we take your confession.’

  Konrad nodded, acknowledging defeat.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ he said, letting his eyes marvel at the fake office where he’d thought he was helping Emma, whereas the whole time he himself had been under observation. ‘You pulled the wool over my eyes,’ the lawyer muttered. He looked towards the exit. None of the removal men had come back into the gym; they were obeying the orders Jorgo had given them.

  ‘It wasn’t about making Emma feel secure here, but me, here, in my familiar environment.’

  Even in the moment of his greatest defeat, Konrad’s intellect was working impeccably. ‘You would never have obtained a warrant to search my real office. You orchestrated that perfectly. I give you respect.’

  Konrad was supporting himself feebly on the desk, and already then Roth ought to have realised. But even more so when the lawyer breathed out heavily and let both arms fall beneath the desktop.


  Konrad was crestfallen, so severely affected by having been unmasked that perhaps he’d never recover. But his transformation had occurred too quickly, especially for someone who’d practised all his life being in control of his body and mind.

  We made a mistake, Roth thought, then heard these words echo, but with a slight time delay and in a different voice: they were coming from Konrad’s mouth.

  ‘But you made a mistake,’ he said.

  Within the twinkling of an eye the pistol that the defence lawyer had pulled from a secret compartment beneath the desktop was already in position. Konrad was aiming right between Dr Roth’s eyes.

  54

  ‘My desk. My secret compartment. My life insurance,’ Konrad said. ‘Actually intended for furious clients whose cases I lost. And when you look at it that way, this is about right.’

  The lawyer gave a sad laugh and gripped the pistol more tightly. ‘I will shoot,’ he said, and Roth knew he was being deadly serious.

  ‘I’ll pull the trigger and then rather than removal men you’ll need forensic cleaners specialising in spatters of brain.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Roth said, coming closer with his hands up. This was his area of expertise. Psychologically damaged individuals in extreme emotional situations.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘Answers,’ Konrad said with astonishing calmness, now aiming the weapon at Jorgo’s chest. Only a throbbing artery in his neck betrayed how worked up he was. ‘How did you come to suspect me?’

  With a quick glance at Roth, Jorgo checked that he could answer truthfully, then said, ‘We had no DNA, no evidence, nothing. We were poking around in the dark in the Hairdresser case. From the profile that Philipp had compiled we knew that it must be an “older, conservative-leaning man with a high level of education and a pronounced sense of order”.’

  Konrad nodded and with his free hand motioned to Jorgo to continue.

  ‘I’ve known Emma for years. I couldn’t see her as a deranged copycat just trying to get her husband’s attention. Even less that she’d turn violent for no reason.’