Page 7 of Anatomy of a Killer
The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, three metres wide: Schopenhauer, Seneca, Nietzsche and Camus; Munch and Macke prints on walls painted dark red with distemper. So that’s how he lives, the alleged killer. This is where he brought up his daughter, who claims she wasn’t aware of any of the dreadful crimes he’s accused of.
‘Maybe you should consider living somewhere else for a while,’ Jakob says when his eyes finally come to rest on me. ‘I mean, you’re right. At some point you’ll become the focus of press interest, seeing as you’re his daughter.’
‘No, that would be like making a statement. If I moved away, everyone would think I’m trying to distance myself from him. And I don’t want to do that, not at all. I mean, I know he’s innocent.’
Jakob looks pensive. ‘There’s another option.’
‘What?’
‘Instead of waiting for the press to come at you, you could make the first move yourself. Seek out a trustworthy journalist and give them an exclusive interview with your version of what happened. You’d be the one pulling the strings and you’d set the parameters.’
‘Trustworthy? Yeah, right.’
‘Ann.’ Jakob sighs. ‘You can’t hold it against people for wanting to know what happened. Let’s face it, nine girls have died and somebody is responsible.’
‘But not my father, that’s for sure.’
‘He’s the one who’s come to the police’s attention, though.’
‘Because he was unlucky! Really bloody unlucky, Jakob!’
‘Look, with these investigations, I mean. . . it’s not like they just pick out some name at random from the phone book when looking for a suspect.’ It takes both of us a moment to grasp what he’s just said. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. That was silly of me. I wasn’t trying to—’
‘Imply that my father’s guilty? Hurt me? Forget it, your opinion doesn’t bother me. You’re just some guy from the recycling centre. What do you know?’ I’ve no desire to continue this discussion, and my watch says I don’t have to either. ‘I should take a shower now, otherwise I’ll be late.’ I get up from the sofa. ‘Thanks for the beer. I’ll see you out.’
‘It’s all right, Ann. You don’t need to.’ The tone of his voice. And the expression on his face. I can still feel his disappointment long after the door has closed behind him.
Sadness. (Ann, 7 years old)
its not true that when your sad you always have to cry and your nose is runny. Sometimes sadness is much deeper inside and blocks the tears from coming. It feels very cold and dark like sitting in a tower, like the old tower Rapunzel sits in in my book of fairy tales, but without windows. And also theres no door. your really frezing and the cold makes you very tired. You want to get out of the tower becaus you know that the sun is shining outside. But you cant go out becaus youve forgotten where the exit is.
As he sets out the latest findings, my father’s lawyer, who was waiting for me in the meeting room, speaks softly, staring at his hands clasped on the table rather than looking at me. Larissa Meller is the latest finding, an unsolved case from fourteen years ago. Soon after my father’s arrest, they were already speculating that her death might be linked to the series of killings of young girls, but now the police are certain. Larissa was ten when, one June afternoon in 2003, she set off on her red bike from her home in Hellersdorf with a friend and never came back. A few days later, someone out walking found the bike near the ponds in Hönow; three months later a body was discovered in a wooden hut. Although the hut was only a few hundred metres from where the bike had been found, it was so overgrown that the police had missed it in the course of their large-scale search of the area. They immediately suspected the body might be Larissa’s, but it took weeks for a definitive identification. That June had been hot but very rainy too, and so the body was in a terrible state. They also found size 42 footprints, which were made in the rain then dried and preserved by the subsequent heat. At the time, the investigation stalled through a lack of further evidence, so of course it’s handy my father also happens to have size 42 shoes. Now Larissa is said to have been the first victim in the series of killings. Only in her case there were no ribbons leading to her body.
‘The police are speculating whether Larissa was the reason why the killer used red ribbons later. Maybe he felt bad that the mother had to see her child in such a state.’ He’s still avoiding looking me in the eye; instead he’s kneading his hands so firmly that the skin is turning red in places. ‘At any rate, neither her nor any of the other victims show signs of sexual abuse, which means the killer must have been driven by a different motive.’
Having listened silently in disbelief to the term ‘the killer’ being used as a synonym for ‘your father’, all I can think of saying is, ‘You’re his friend, Ludwig.’ It sounds like a question.
Ludwig Abramczyk used to be one of Berlin’s top lawyers. He’s sixty-two and has actually been in retirement for three months, which he’s spending at his hunter’s cabin in the Polish forest. He’s returned in his smart, tailor-made suit specifically for my father’s sake, and thus slipped back into his old role. Tohelp.
‘That’s precisely why I’m here, Anni. But he’s being very difficult. If you ask him what he was doing at any of the times in question, he either says nothing at all or just comes out with his philosophical stuff.’
‘Come off it. As if you could remember what you were doing some afternoon in June fourteen years ago.’
‘But he’s not even getting worked up about the charges, let alone making an effort to rebut them! He’s confronted with nine murders– ten, now, assuming that Larissa’s death is part of the series– and all he does is sit there in silence.’
‘Because he’s distraught! Clearly not even his best friend seems to think he’s innocent.’ I can see my accusation explode in Ludwig’s face. His friend Walter, with whom he spent endless summer nights on the terrace, or by our fire in winter, brandishing their whisky glasses, cracking jokes and having discussions. There was always a topic. Ludwig, who in his work as a defence lawyer had come face to face with so much human wickedness, and my father, who as a philosopher and anthropologist was fascinated by this wickedness, its motives and mechanisms. Barbecues in our garden. My father, often in his own world mentally, letting the sausages burn, and Ludwig, grabbing the tongs to take over just in time. And me, Walter’s daughter, little Anni who he’s known ever since she took her first wobbly steps on her chubby baby legs. Who he watched grow up, raised by the most loving father you could imagine. His goddaughter, now sitting opposite and who’s utterly disappointed in him.
‘Please don’t be unfair,’ he says, after I’ve said my angry piece. ‘You know full well that I’ll do everything in my power. But the longer he keeps quiet, the trickier it gets.’
I look up at the ceiling and see cracks in the concrete. Like the cracks in the photograph on our mantelpiece after the police search. Cracks that have marred our entire life.Because he was unlucky, is what I said to Jakob this morning. Unlucky that he happened to bump into an acquaintance in the Königswald just before the last body was found. Soon afterwards this very same acquaintance came across one of the notorious red ribbons, which the media had talked about so often in relation to a number of murders, and then the hut where the lifeless body of a seven-year-old girl lay in a huge pool of blood. Of course the man immediately called the police and, when asked if he’d met anyone in the woods, gave my father’s name. This in itself probably wouldn’t have been enough to arrest him. But there was also that fricking lecture he’d given a few years ago at the university, and especially the newspaper articles he’d used as a basis for discussion. Then the sighting of a dark Audi A6 near an earlier crime scene, and a black Audi A6 parked in our garage which is registered to my father. . .
‘Why?’ I ask Ludwig. ‘Why should he have committed those murders? I mean, he has a daughter himself, and you know I’m his whole life. He always loved and protected me, and would have been beside himself if anything bad had happened to me. As he would be now. So why should he, of all people, inflict such pain on other parents?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But isn’t that precisely the point? Isn’t it always about a motive? Evidence can be misinterpreted. It’s even possible to cobble evidence together maliciously if you’re out to harm someone, isn’t it?’
Ludwig nods, slightly reluctantly, it seems. Whereas I shake my head. ‘It wasn’t him. There was nothing in the world that could have made him do something like that.’
