Page 47 of Anatomy of a Killer
A cup is thrust into my hand and sympathetic smiles come from both sides of the bed.
‘You gave us quite a fright.’
I can barely get a sound out, but Jakob seems to understand me. ‘Just after three o’clock this morning, Kerstin Seiler’s fiancé, Schmitti, found you on the lane from the village to the woods. You were completely frozen and torpid.’
‘He called my husband and tried to keep you warm until Peter arrived with the car to bring you back here,’ Frau Brock adds.
I shake my head in bewilderment. I recall my dream, ending with me curled up in the snow, and nothing else. There’s no Schmitti finding me, and no Brock heaving me into his car. There’s nobody carrying me up the stairs to room 113, taking off my wet clothes and putting me to bed in my underwear.
‘What were you doing?’ Jakob asks, but I just shake my head again. Looking for Sarah? For Steinhausen? I don’t know; I wasn’t even aware I’d left the inn.
The thermometer beeps.
‘Your temperature’s just a bit high, no cause for concern,’ Frau Brock says, smiling again. I still feel totally spaced out, and the sun is so blinding that tears come to my eyes. Seven o’clock sharp, I remember. That’s when we were going to meet at the butcher’s. To search for Sarah on the upper common. It would have still been dark then.
‘What’s the time?’
‘Just after nine,’ Jakob says.
‘What about the search?’
‘A few have set off already,’ Frau Brock says, getting up off the bed. ‘Your colleague and I wanted to make sure you were okay before heading out ourselves.’
‘What? No!’ Flinging the duvet aside, I leap up on to my wobbly legs. ‘I’m coming too! You’ve got to wait for me! I’ll get dressed in a jiffy.’
‘Oh, Ann. . .’ Jakob thinks I’m stubborn.
Yes, yes, I am, I always have been.
He also thinks I ought to take it easy.
Thanks, but no need. That was strange, last night, I realise. But let’s not get it out of proportion. It must have been my nerves, a little blackout; this sort of thing can happen after all I’ve been through recently. End of discussion, I hop into the bathroom, Jakob stays in my room.
Meanwhile Frau Brock has gone downstairs to make a breakfast I can take with me. I don’t want anything to eat and I’ve told her that, but she says I’ve got to get something in my tummy, even if it’s just a dry roll.
‘You haven’t told anyone about my dad, have you?’ I ask Jakob through the closed bathroom door. It’s horrible, this bathroom. Cramped and windowless, with ventilation that sounds like a broken hair dryer. There’s a yellowish light and it smells mouldy. I try to breathe through my mouth as much as possible.
‘As an explanation for your crazy little nocturnal outing, you mean? Of course not. I told them that we’ve spent the past few weeks researching a complicated story and you haven’t had much sleep. Talking of which. . . are you getting enough at the moment? Studies suggest that even after twenty-four hours without sleep, the human brain finds it more difficult to process information. Occasionally people develop symptoms similar to those displayed by schizophrenia patients, who are bad at distinguishing important things from unimportant ones, or unable to do so altogether.’
My reflection rolls its eyes and mutters, ‘He knows that, but he can’t distinguish an oleander from an olive.’
‘Ready,’ I call as I step out of the bathroom shortly afterwards. Jakob’s standing beside the desk where my mobile is. I see him pull his hand away– caught in the act.
‘You’ve had three or four calls this morning. Maybe you ought to see who’s been trying to ring.’
I do. It’s Ludwig who’s called and who also sent me a message:Where are you?
Very soon, I promise him in my head. Then I put the mobile in my rucksack and grab my coat.
‘How come Schmitti found me? Have you got any idea?’
Jakob looks at me. ‘Hmm?’
‘Well, you were all wondering what I was doing on the lane in the middle of the night. What about Schmitti? Why was he there?’
‘He said Kerstin Seiler had remembered something. Apparently there’s an old haystack where Sarah plays sometimes. When Schmitti went to take a look, he practically stumbled across you.
‘He was on his own?’
