Page 13 of Anatomy of a Killer
I always find it painful to think of the police storming into this room during the course of their search. At first they only wanted to because the door was locked. I tried to explain the rationale behind it, tell them that this room was especially private, as intimate as an organ or a thought you don’t share, which belongs to you alone. They didn’t understand this, of course, and threatened to break down the door if I didn’t get them the key immediately. In the desk they then found the fricking newspaper articles; I bet the public prosecutor jumped for joy. An entire folder of reports on the ribbon murderer– of course this must be some sort of trophy collection. But that wasn’t the case. I know the file and also know that my father kept the articles for a lecture on ‘The Dark Side of Human Beings’. These cases were clearly a perfect way to underpin the often very theoretical discussion with true-life events. His students– most, at least– loved their professor for not torturing them with pure theory. At home we discussed the cases a few times too, most recently on the evening he was arrested.
On the kitchen counter was that day’s edition of a newspaper in which Jörg E., Saskia’s father, commented on the death of another girl.
‘Do you think the children realised that they’d die?’ Dad asked me. ‘Do you reckon their immature brains could comprehend this fact?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I think they hoped for a miracle right up to the last moment. Everyone would do that, wouldn’t they? No matter what age. Just think of Mum. Until the very end, she said,I’ll be all right.’ I shook my head. ‘But it’s good to have hope, if only to counter the fear. Something you can cling to before you enter oblivion.’
‘Oblivion? I thought you believed in God?’
‘I do. Well, God or something else– a higher power, yes. I just don’t believe we get a second round in the hereafter, so to speak. I believe in this one life, and when the lights go out here. . . well, they stay out.’
‘Or maybe they don’t. Euripides said, “Who knoweth if to die be but to live, and that called life by mortals be but death?”’
‘To establish this beyond doubt I’d have to sacrifice my own life, so no, thanks. I’m far more interested in finding out where the hell our pizzas are. I’m about to die of hunger here. . .’
The pizzas didn’t come, but the blue lights did. The police. They took my father away and searched the house, including this room. I don’t want to think how their mere presence defiled it. I want to think that there’s enough of my father here still to hold and guide me. Just as I sometimes can feel his residual warmth in his jacket when I put it on.
Having fished the key from the large vase that stands on a console table at the end of the landing, I unlock the door almost devoutly. And it is really true. Apart from the fact that documents and books torn from the shelves still lie scattered on the floor, and the drawers are wide open– I haven’t yet felt able to tidy the chaos left behind by the search team– I only have to take a deep breath. The smell of old paper. The wood of the desk. The leather of the sofa. Something comfortingly stale, and dust dancing in the sunlight– a huge amount of dust, because even our cleaning lady, who kept the rest of the house clinically clean, didn’t have access to this room. I breathe and sense his presence. Hang in there, Dad, just a while longer. I’ll find something to exonerate you. I’ll get you out of prison, I promise.
Confidens. (Ann, 7 years old)
Confidens is a bit like hope but that you know for sure that something is going to be good and your looking forward to it but with hope theres also the possibility that something wont be good. Like when I hoped MUMMY wood get better but she died. This means that confidens is better than hope and if you have the choice you shud always chose confidens.
I begin by tidying up– superficially, at least. The books go back on the shelves and all the paper into the drawers of the desk. I find a folder with short essays in which Beetle recorded her feelings in spidery handwriting, and a tatty wooden box. Inside is my old school ID card, a rosary with broken links, the torn ticket to my leavers’ ball, a sewing kit from a hotel on the Baltic, a few mussel shells and a flat, triangular stone that Dad gave me many years ago to remind me I’m strong enough to overcome the worst. My old talisman. I place it in my palm, feel its cool, smooth surface and trace its pattern. I’m confused as to how it could have ended up in this mishmash of meaningless things. Was I not going to keep it on me at all times? I ought to, especially in this situation, which has completely redefined ‘the worst’ as a term. I finish by sorting out the pen holder, and put the chair back in its place, not too far under the desk, but so that Dad could immediately sit on it if he came into this room right now to work. I’ve done it; I’ve created some order, both around me and inside me. My head is clear, my mind alert, my heart beating a nervy staccato. I sit cross-legged on the floor and spread out the contents of Ludwig’s folder in front of me. First there are the copies of all the documents– witness statements, résumés, forensic reports, summaries of the presumed circumstances of the crimes and the current state of investigation, including all the evidence– merely words, technical-speak lacking all feeling. But then come the photographs, beginning with those that the parents must have given to the police when their daughters were still classified as missing. Photos of animated girls in a variety of everyday situations, all of them with one thing in common: in every image they’re laughing. I start hearing it, only very softly at first, as if from a memory. But it doesn’t stop at that. I can see them as if they were real: a little blonde girl, dancing through the study in her tutu. Another, with brown plaits, holding up her huge cone of sweets as she gives me a proud smile, revealing the gaps between her teeth. A third, suddenly sitting on the leather sofa, with a puppy on her lap. That’s Saskia. I recognise her at once because her picture is always printed alongside that of her ubiquitous father. The room fills, the laughter growing louder and more real. I realise how badly mistaken I’ve been. These aren’t just ten ‘problems’ as I still thought this morning, but real people with names, families, interests and a future that’s been stolen from them. No first kisses, no first heartbreak, no finishing school, no becoming adults. Just a big black nothingness. Tears flow. Such injustice. Who’s responsible? Who played God and what gave him the right? Why should someone like that be allowed to live, to experience what he’s maliciously stolen from others?
I thought you believed in God?
Not in moments like this, I’m sorry.
Leaping to my feet, I run into the bathroom to throw up, retching so loudly that the noises echo off the tiles. Noises that capture and drown out everything. Even the footsteps on the stairs. The footsteps along the landing. The footsteps that stop outside the open bathroom door. I simply didn’t hear them, and only realise when a shadow looms in the corner of my eye.
Us
Now don’t look so sad, my sweetheart! We talked about that yesterday, didn’t we? I realise you’d rather have had a proper Christmas, with a tree and lots of presents like you’re used to. Last year, for example, you got a pink bicycle with a Princess Lillifee pennant that stuck up from the pannier rack like an antenna. You were so thrilled, riding up and down the snowy drive. I almost cried watching your unsteady legs on that bike, and every time you pedalled, the pennant would move above you like a dodgy windscreen wiper. But we have to be grateful for what we’ve got, and we are, aren’t we? Yes, we are. We’ve got us– and Cosmo. Look, Cosmo’s here! Your favourite teddy with a button in place of his left eye. Listen to what he has to say: ‘Hello, little princess, it’s me, your Cosmo. I don’t think our new home’s bad at all.’ And Milly, I even thought of your little Milly. Can you hear her purring? She feels happy here too. . . No? You don’t want to smile? Not even a teensy-weensy little bit? But you’ve got such an enchanting smile. . . Oh, I know! I know what’ll cheer you up! Let’s give you a bath, my angel. We’ll give you a bath and make you pretty! Brush your sweet locks and put on an especially beautiful dress in honour of the day. I’ll make us something delicious and we’ll eat together, by candlelight. How about ravioli with tomato sauce? It’s unhealthy and gooey, but what the hell. We make our own rules here, don’t we? Aren’t we happy? Yes, we are, my sweetheart, we’re unbelievably happy.
Ann
Berlin, 25 December 2017
Her.
The shock is like a blast, a violent inner explosion. I try to jump up but my body is sheer chaos; my legs just twitch and my hands can’t get a hold. By contrast, she stands there in the door, tall and superior, a faint smile on her lips. She’s not saying anything, which is the worst thing. I want to ask her how she got in. What the hell she thinks she’s doing here, in our house and in general, after all these years. Maybe I’d ask too whether she’s real or just a hallucination like the girls in the study. Only my mouth feels blocked and my throat constricted. And she, she’s making no move to help me and resolve the situation herself. She seems to be enjoying the fact that I’m squatting beside the loo, looking surprised and incapacitated. I manage no more than an ‘Eva’, but even that’s too much. It feels as if I were opening the door to a storeroom that’s been piled high with rubbish for years, eventually getting so full that I had to press against the door with all my body weight to close it. Now I’ve opened it again and its entire contents come spilling out, battering me. Years, images, memories.
‘You still remember me, then,’ she says, her grin getting wider.
Of course I do, even though she’s changed a lot. Her hair, once long and strawberry-blonde, has now been dyed dark brown and only comes down to her chin. She looks pale, as if made from porcelain. She’s also lost weight– too much, in my opinion. She’s thin like one of the lines on her wide pullover and her narrow jeans. But she’s genuine, real, I can’t blink her away. Eva, the ugliest, meanest person on earth. She broke my heart when she went off with Nico back then.
I try to restore some order to myself, starting with my body. Bracing my feet on the floor, I reach for the rim of the sink and pull myself up. I hope she doesn’t notice that every fibre of me is trembling. I don’t want her to think of herself as my wound; I’ve been taken by surprise, that’s all, and she’s not even a scab anymore.
‘What are you doing here? How did you even get in?’
She shrugs. ‘Your bell seems to be broken, I tried a few times. . .’
I nod. I switched the bell off a while ago now. Nobody ever came who I wanted to let in anyway. Usually it was Eva’s mother inviting me to dinner yet again.
‘. . . so I wandered around the house, like in the old days, and saw that the terrace door was open.’ The terrace door– I must have forgotten to close it properly after being completely thrown by the red ribbon on the oleander. ‘You should really be more careful now that you’re here on your own.’ The amused look, the supercilious tone; she’s trying to provoke me, and she’s succeeding too.
‘What about you, Eva? Do you think it’s normal to march into a strange house?’
