Page 26 of Anatomy of a Killer
‘A building site?’ Stupidly, Eva blinks a few times, as if there were a chance her eyes were playing tricks on her. ‘What on earth are we doing here?’
‘That’s what we’re about to find out,’ I say, annoyed. I unclick my belt before she parks the Mini beside Meller’s Volvo at a construction fence, which separates the huge site on the southern fringes of Henningsdorf from the access road.
‘Ann, please. . .’ It sounds like she’s imploring me, but I’m already out of the car. Behind the fence is a space, covered in snow, that ends in a huge crater. Around it are a handful of weather-beaten construction trailers, and behind them, the half-built shell of a tower block. I can’t see a crane or any other construction machinery, but the walls of the shell are already covered in plenty of graffiti, some of which has already faded. Work seems to have stopped on this building site some time ago. Kati comes to mind. The nine-year-old girl whose body was found in a place just like this back in 2005. What was it Michelle said?When, in 2005, the body of another small girl was found–as it happened, on a construction site where Rainer and Marcus had worked together a few years earlier–that was that, as far my husband was concerned. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
It couldn’t be a coincidenceechoes around my head.
Meller has come up to me. He’s holding a torch. ‘In 2000 they built a trading estate in the north of the city, but soon after the construction work began, it proved to be too small.’ He nods at the huge area of wasteland, even more desolate beneath its covering of snow. ‘Everything here was supposed to be bigger, more modern, but scarcely had we got going than we ran into problems with environmental protection. Apparently it’s a nesting area for red kites, which was never on anyone’s radar before. . . What’s happened to your colleague?’
I follow his eyes to Eva’s Mini. She’s still sitting in the driver’s seat. ‘Hang on a sec.’
A moment later I’m knocking on the side window, while silently mouthing, ‘Come on!’ Eventually she gets out.
‘I think this is the building site where Kati’s body was found,’ I whisper to her as we follow Meller, a few metres behind him. ‘He hasn’t said as such, but it would fit.’
‘And what are we actually doing here?’ Eva whispers back. ‘Did he give you any idea when you were chatting just now?’
‘No, but think about it. If this really is the building site in question, then perhaps Meller has belatedly discovered something else here to link Steinhausen to Kati’s murder.’ Although I’d been assuming that Meller would take us to Steinhausen, I’m happy to go along with this scenario if it helps exonerate my father.
‘Mind how you go!’ Meller calls out over his shoulder. ‘There’s all sorts of building rubble and metal bars lying around here that you can’t always see because of the snow.’
I raise my hand to signal we understand.
‘Where the hell is he taking us?’ Eva whispers, but I can’t answer that either.
Until we get to the shell.
Until, under Meller’s supervision, we’ve squeezed through a makeshift entrance hung with a stubborn tarpaulin and made our way down what seems like endless corridors into the underground part of the building. Until we’ve arrived at a basement room sectioned off by another tarpaulin and also blocked by an upright old mattress. Until we enter the room and Meller waves around the torch he switched on to make it easier for us to find our way in the darkness down here.
Now we’re hit by the realisation of where Meller has brought us: to the place he’s keeping captive the man he believes killed his stepdaughter. To Marcus Steinhausen, who’s sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. His hands are behind his back, probably tied to the chair, and his ankles secured to the legs. Marcus Steinhausen with a bloody gag in his mouth. The left-hand side of his face bruised and swollen around the eye. A scabbed-over cut on his forehead and brown stains on the inner thighs of his jeans. All of this makes it obvious that he must have been down here at Meller’s mercy for a fair while. He lifts his head feebly and blinks lethargically with his sunken eye into the torch beam.
Eva clutches my arm. I look at her, she looks back, her eyes wide in horror and her mouth agape, speechless. I freeze– my heart has stopped beating and I’m no longer breathing. This can’t be true, it’s fake. Reality has been ruptured and I’m just having a bad dream, like I did in the car earlier.
Light!
We jump when the room is abruptly flooded with brightness. Meller has switched on a construction lamp that hangs by a long cable from one of the metal ceiling girders. As it swings it makes a freaky interplay between light and shadows. Rumbling and buzzing at the back of the room, a box has come to life. It looks like an outsized chainsaw, only without the blade– a generator, I assume. To our left another chair is against the wall, an empty half-litre bottle of cola on the seat and a pizza box on the floor beside it. I try to picture Meller sitting on this chair opposite Steinhausen, enjoying his pizza in front of a man who’s been going mad with hunger and thirst down here for God knows how long. But I can’t. Not even my imagination, which effortlessly concocted the horror story of the doctored family photos for our meeting with Steinhausen, is capable of that.
‘Right then, ladies.’ Meller’s voice drones over the hum of the generator. ‘Let’s get this fucker to talk.’ He checks the pockets of his anorak in turn, but evidently doesn’t find what he’s looking for. ‘Shit. I’ll be right back.’ Before we can react, he’s left the room.
Steinhausen is writhing in his chair. Although the sounds he’s making are muffled by the gag, he’s clearly panicking. It seems as if he knows the fate that’s awaiting him. Eva comes to her senses first. Letting go of my arm, she hurries over to Steinhausen. It’s only when I realise she’s trying to untie his hands that I shudder and follow her to have a go at the cable ties binding his ankles to the legs of the chair. My fingers are sweaty and shaky, and the acrid smell of all the excretions that have collected in his trousers makes me turn away briefly every few moments. The teeth of the cable ties are still not budging.
‘I can’t do it, Eva! I can’t get him free!’
‘You have to, for fuck’s sake.’ I don’t know whether that’s aimed at me or her, now that she’s likewise realised we need some scissors or a knife to set Steinhausen free. The fact that neither of these are to hand has an even more unthinkable implication: any minute Meller will be back and then we’ll have to watch him. . .
I pause in my thoughts.
Steinhausen, who may be the reason why my father’s in prison, being presented to all the world as the ribbon murderer.
‘Ann!’ Eve must have noticed my hesitation. As has Steinhausen, who also realises that time’s running out, and now that my hands have stopped fiddling with the cable ties has started waggling in his chair and shouting louder into the gag.
‘No chance without scissors,’ I say, slowly getting up again to remove the gag, which is sodden with blood, snot and spit.
‘I’m calling the police!’ Eva says, whipping the phone out of her coat pocket.
Steinhausen gasps for air like a fish out of water. His top lip is swollen and sore, his bottom one seems to be one big scab. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters, barely intelligibly.
‘No reception down here!’ Eva.
