Page 24 of Anatomy of a Killer
If the aorta is damaged, for example, it’s often only a matter of seconds. It’s more interesting when veins or smaller arteries are damaged. Then it can take hours.
(clears the throat)Back to Larissa.
Two hours and thirteen minutes.
Jesus, I didn’t mean that.
I got used to timing it, you see? Some girls, even though they were younger, smaller or more delicate, took longer to die. This must have partly been down to the fact that the cuts I made were always slightly different. I mean, I’m no surgeon and I didn’t have a scalpel either. All the same, an artery’s an artery, you’d think. Anyway, I came to the conclusion that dying isn’t just a physical process. Of course, when the body’s started dying, you can’t stop it. But I often got the impression that internal resistance was definitely able to prolong the whole thing.
And the sight of this– a defenceless girl struggling against death, all that blood– excited you?
Excited? Good God, I beg you. I don’t like the term, it always has a sexual connotation. And it’s empty too, so empty that it doesn’t even begin to express what I felt.
What did you feel?
Everything.
Ann
Berlin, 26 December 2017
That he’s already done the donkey work.
What does that mean?
He couldn’t tell us, he had to show us.
Okay.
We left the flat in Marzahn together with Rainer Meller. Beforehand, he told his two sons he had to go out for a while, and promised them pizza for lunch.
On the way to the stairs we don’t speak. Meller’s in front; behind him Eva and I go down side by side. I try to catch her eye a few times, but in vain. She looks withdrawn; perhaps like me she’s pondering what Meller has said. That he’s already done the donkey work. Surely all it means is that he’s tracked down Steinhausen– address unknown– off his own bat. I know this, it’s obvious. And yet I have to be careful not to form a picture in my mind showing Meller at night with a shovel, at his feet a hand sticking out of the dug earth begging for help and mercy. I know it’s absurd and that I ought to be happy to have an important lead thanks to Meller. Marcus Steinhausen, the oddball who pretended to his closest friends that he had a wife and daughter, even though he still lived at home with his mother. Who bought himself alibis for good reason. Assuming, of course, what Meller told us is correct. Well, we’re about to find out, and the mere thought of that makes me feel what could almost be described as elated. I still can’t quite comprehend what lies ahead of us, but I sense we’re on the right track. We follow Meller across the car park to his grey Volvo, a classic family car.
‘In you get,’ he says after unlocking the vehicle, and I’m just about to pull the handle of the passenger door when I feel Eva’s hand on my arm.
‘We’ll follow you in our car, Herr Meller,’ she asserts, pulling me along with her.
‘Have you gone mad?’ is the first thing I hear her say when we’re in her Mini and she starts the engine. ‘Were you seriously going to ride with that nutter?’ The car sounds disgruntled when she brusquely puts it into reverse.
‘It doesn’t matter how we get to Steinhausen. The main thing is that we get there at all.’
‘You’re wrong, it does matter! Meller is a very sick man.’ She guides the Mini to the car park exit behind Meller’s Volvo and indicates. Right, although I only notice this when she turns the steering wheel to the right too.
‘What are you doing?’ I thrust my hands to the side, ready to steer the other way. Meller’s Volvo turned left. Eva brakes so abruptly that the seat belt cuts through my thick jacket and into my chest. Deeply shocked, I let go of the wheel and point at the Volvo that stops by the side of the road a fair distance away. Meller must have seen in his mirror that we’d stopped. ‘Drive! He’s waiting!’
Eva shakes her head. ‘No way are we wasting any more of our time with this guy. I could smell the booze on his breath when we arrived.’
I roll my eyes. ‘For God’s sake. . .’
‘Come off it, how can you not see what his problem is? It’s so obvious.’
‘He wants to find out the truth, just like us! Honestly, Eva, what’s wrong with you? We’ve finally got a lead and you want to pull out?’
‘No, Ann, what the hell is wrong withyou? What was it you told me about those photos at Michelle’s? That she didn’t take another one of her daughter after her school induction and had to ask her parents so she could give an up-to-date picture to the police? Do you want to know how I interpret that? I’ll tell you. The moment Meller entered Michelle’s life, Larissa was completely ignored. It’s irrelevant that he adopted her after the wedding– she never got anything out of him except for his surname. Michelle and he had their fresh start as a couple, had their own child, the next was already on its way, and Larissa was merely a millstone around their necks. But then she was murdered and the two developed their own mechanisms for coping with their feelings of guilt. Michelle tries to function while Meller gets bogged down in completely fanciful theories. . . I mean, you were in that sitting room too! You saw the pinboard with the newspaper cuttings and that crazy web of woollen threads! And all the photos of Steinhausen! He’s persecuted him!’
‘And yet with all of this, he’s got further than the police. He found out that Steinhausen had no alibi, but he did have a motive. Think about—’
‘No, that’s precisely it!’ she interrupts me. ‘Hethinkshe’s found out that Steinhausen didn’t have an alibi. Do you really believe the police wouldn’t have checked it out in such a serious case? Meller’s a serious alcoholic who suffers from delusions!’
