Page 76 of Anatomy of a Killer
‘Yes.’
‘Lenia saw her illness as a wicked dragon and her mother as her protector. Nathalie believed she’d failed at the crucial moment. And because she couldn’t get over this, she projected the guilt on to someone else. A sort of defence mechanism. She even told the people at the funeral director’s that Lenia had been a victim of the ribbon murderer.’
‘But at the time she still realised Lenia was dead?’
Fester nods. ‘At that point, yes. But when the grave was dug and Lenia was laid out for the burial, her mind finally went to pieces. She snatched the body and then. . .’
‘She invented her own story,’ I say, finishing Fester’s sentence.
‘One step after another into madness,’ he says, putting his hands in front of his face and beginning to sob.
I stroke his back. ‘What about Nathalie’s mother? Nathalie said she didn’t just come here with Lenia, but with her mother in tow as well.’
‘Nathalie’s mum is in a care home in Berlin,’ Fester sobs into his hands. ‘They didn’t get on.’
I try putting myself in Nathalie’s shoes; I think aloud.
‘Nathalie knew that people would have become suspicious if she’d worked at the butcher’s and left her little daughter at home alone. So she invented a babysitter as well.’ The tears come to my eyes too. ‘I’m so sorry about all of this. My suspicions ought to have been raised earlier.’
He looks up and gives a faint shrug. ‘How could they have been? We see what people make us believe.’
‘No, that’s not the problem. It’s that we accept it far too easily.’ I immediately think of the bloodstain on Nathalie’s trousers. I’ll always wonder whether Kerstin Seiler’s life could have been saved. WhetherIcould have saved her, but failed at the crucial moment too. I also think of all those weeks that Nathalie lived here amongst people who regard themselves as a community. They were all curious and yet nobody was really interested. And I’m no exception in this regard. I was focused only on Steinhausen and proving my theory that he’s the real ribbon murderer. In the end was I just thinking of myself too?
‘Look who we’ve got here,’ we hear a female voice say behind us. We turn around. A policewoman has just come out of the front door, holding a black kitten. ‘This sweet little thing was hiding under the bed the whole time.’
‘Milly!’ Fester calls out, getting up in visible pain.
It comes to me in a flash. ‘I know where you’ll find Lenia!’
Do you remember. . . ?
Beside Mummy’s grave.
Let me tell you a story. It’s by a very wise man called Plato. He was a philosopher—
Like you?
Yes, but he was far more important. He did what I try to do: find answers, for himself and other people, to the fundamental questions in life. For, as I’ve said, nothing in this world is clear and simple. Just because we don’t see something, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and vice versa. And even if we can agree on the existence of something, we still interpret it in different ways—
Tell the story now.
I see the little madam is impatient. Okay then. We humans are sitting in a dark cave. We’re tied up so that we can look in one direction only– at a wall where we see shadows. We think the shadows are real; we don’t know any different, after all. And yet, in truth, these shadows are the outlines of what’s happening behind us, cast by the light from the cave entrance. But we don’t know this, because the way we’ve been tied up means we can’t turn around. Only if we’re able to free ourselves can we go to the light and see the things as they really are. But here’s the crux: quite apart from the fact that our shackles are tight and unbreakable, we’ve got used to them. Just like our eyes have got used to the darkness inside the cave and would hurt really badly when they were first exposed to the light. Basically we’ve got used to what we consider to be our reality, and it would be painful for us on so many levels to have to admit that we were wrong. That our reality doesn’t– in reality– exist and never has existed. . . Oh dear, look at that face you’re making. Maybe you’re still a bit too little for this story.
I understood it, Daddy. You have to be brave about the real things.
Not bad, my Beetle. But most importantly, we always have to think very carefully about things. Our senses– sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch– can deceive us. With those alone, we’ll never fully understand the world. We have to think. And feel. . .
Feel. . . I wish I didn’t, Dad. It’s too much. Too much pain, grief and despair. I don’t know what to do with it all. I’m still sitting on the steps, running the point of my stone along the scar– only very gently, without any pressure. The stone that taught me how to feel in the first place. Something that right now seems like a curse. On the other side of the house, behind the terrace, they’re excavating the grave where Nathalie claimed to have buried Milly. I hear the cutting of the spade, which is loud in the frozen ground, and finally Fester howling like a wounded animal. I know he’s suffering, suffering immensely, but now that he’s found Lenia, he’ll be able to find peace too. Unlike me. My story doesn’t have an ending; there’s only one thing I’ve managed to establish for sure: the feelings I’ve allowed to guide me over the last few days, the instinct I’ve been following blindly, have deceived me. Steinhausen was never here. Although I know I’ve helped someone achieve certainty, what about me? And you, Dad?
Realisation. (Ann, 24 years old)
Sometimes it hits you like a lightning bolt, suddenly and powerfully, as if at the flick of a switch, a flash of light in the dark night. An awareness, like a revelation, to which even your body immediately reacts, with shock, panic, a racing heart and sickness. But the biggest, the most important realisations sometimes come very quietly, very superficially and softly, like a gas you’ve been breathing in for quite a while before you suffocate from it. And yet it was all there from the very beginning. . .
Last summer. The evening after a perfect day, our tiny balcony, bare feet, a bottle of wine. The view over the city, the prospect of our future. A little cottage with colourful shutters and a garden she would allow to become elegantly overgrown.
‘Either you can stay here in Berlin, devoured by longing, or you can come with me,’ Zoe said, having already hatched a plan. She would apply for a semester abroad in Cornwall, a first step towards her dream. ‘The only thing is, it’s difficult to get one. The selection process can take up to a year.’ In the end, it only took half a year. . .
Because I loved her. Because Cornwall was so important to her and she was so excited: ‘Here, this is for you.’
