Page 3 of Views
“It was stupid of me to even look at my phone.”
“Spit it out,” Yasira demands.
“Well...” Steven sighs. “Have you heard about the girl who disappeared without a trace a few days ago? Somewhere in Saxony-Anhalt? It was in the news this morning.”
Yasira nods. She remembers the report, but didn’t read it. Partly because she already deals with enough crime at work, partly because missing girls are her Achilles’ heel. Since she has a daughter herself, she finds it even harder to maintain the necessary distance when it comes to crimes involving minors. They touch too closely on the primal fear that something might happen to her own child.
“Her name is Lena,” Steven continues.
“Lena,” Yasira repeats. After a short pause, she asks: “What happened? Has she turned up again?”
Steven makes a crumpled face. “Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Well, there’s this... this video that’s going viral right now. It’s terrible and...” Steven hesitates briefly, probably searching for the right words. “... and it’s explosive.”
Bundeskriminalamt: Federal Criminal Police Office. —Trans.
District of Berlin. —Trans.
RAGE
“What video?” asks Yasira.
“Three migrants,” Steven begins and immediately corrects himself, “I uh... I mean displaced persons...”
Who actually came up with that, Yasira wonders. This new language code? It was undoubtedly well-intentioned, but whether it has helped or harmed more is open to debate. In the end, isn’t it just a linguistic distinction that allows Malte, a third semester philosophy student, to feel morally superior to his great-aunt Erna in the backwoods, even though it was Erna who persuaded her husband Heinz, against his declared will, to take the pregnant Syrian woman for an ultrasound? While Malte has never... But she’s probably cynical again. Malte doesn’t beat anyone up or set fire to asylum seekers’ shelters. Malte isn’t the problem.
“... so these three filmed themselves raping the girl,” Steven continues.
Yasira closes her eyes and shakes her head slightly. She breathes in and out deeply. Of course, her thoughts immediately turn to Zara. What if something like that were to happen to her daughter? She opens her eyes again.
“Show me!”
“It’s really gruesome. I don’t know if you...”
“Steven,...” Yasira says calmly, “I’m a chief inspector at the BKA, Department for Serious and Organized Crime!” There, now it was out. “I’ve seen things that would keep you awake for weeks. A video can’t shock me. Give me the phone!”
Steven hands her his smartphone without any further resistance. She presses play.
After the first few seconds, Yasira knows that this video will change everything. It is the drop, the spark, the detonator. Steven is right. The video is explosive.
Her criminally trained eye immediately focuses on the details. The crime scene is a small clearing in a forest. The recording is dark, but everything and everyone is still recognizable. So it didn’t happen at night, because you can’t see shit in the forest at night. Dusk probably. Currently that would be around six p.m. The three men are Black, probably in their mid-twenties, and the girl is white, slim, brunette. Under eighteen, Yasira estimates. Probably younger. Just slightly older than her own daughter. Maybe just as old. She’s lying on a table at one of those rest areas found along some hiking trails. The ones with benches attached to the table. The girl’s flowered dress is torn. Her whole body jerks with every jolt. She is sobbing. It’s heartbreaking. Her name is Lena.
Lena.
Yasira has often found that knowing the victim’s name makes the crime even more unbearable. She wants to cry along with her—at the same time clenches her fist. The men are obviously drunk. Beer bottles are on the benches. The brand is unrecognizable. Two of the guys are holding Lena down. The one on the left has a gray baseball cap on his head, the visor facing backward. The one on the right is wearing a sweater with a cute comic dog on it. Snoopy. All you can see of the rapist at first is his back and his curly hair. The two accomplices holding Lena laugh, then the one on the right points toward the camera and says something. He speaks French with a heavy accent. Yasira can’t understand him. But it’s clear that the rapist only now realizes that he’s being filmed by a fourth man. He turns around and lets go of the girl. You can see his face, he is angry and approaches the camera. He curses loudly, the man who is filming backs away, but the rapist grabs the camera and the picture goes black. The video is less than a minute long. Perfect TikTok length.
Yasira hands the phone back.
“Shit!” she mumbles.
Some unfortunate colleague will have to ring Lena’s parents’ doorbell, is the first thing she thinks. There are few things worse in her job. Being the bearer of bad news always makes you feel somewhat responsible for the person in front of you being thrown into this bottomless, inner abyss of despair. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. What if one day a colleague has to ring her doorbell with bad news about Zara? No, no. Don’t even think about it.
“I’m sorry,” says Steven. “I shouldn’t have... I wish I hadn’t clicked on that.”
“Poor child,” murmurs Yasira.
