Page 29 of Anatomy of a Killer
Give and take. We helped each other.
Are you trying to suggest that you did the girl a favour by killing her?
For heaven’s sake, what a silly thing to say. I’m sure she would have liked to go on living if she’d had the choice. But. . . are you all right? You look a bit pale and we haven’t even started talking properly yet.
It’s fine, no problem.
Are you sure? Okay. Then give me your left hand.
My. . . ? What for?
You wanted to know everything in detail, didn’t you?
Ann
Berlin, 26 December 2017
I’m acquainted with death. I’ve seen its workings a few times. It launched a ruthless attack on my mother’s face, twisting her eyeballs upwards and wrenching open her mouth into an eternal, silent scream. It came for my grandfather while he was asleep; he was still smiling as if he’d just had a lovely dream. My uncle, who died of a brain aneurysm, looked surprised, as if he couldn’t believe it. Nine girls, mercifully from photographs only, who the killer left behind as if they were dolls fallen from a shelf; and Larissa, who was no longer recognisable. Now death has taken possession of Eva’s body. She’s lying on the cold concrete floor of this basement, her limbs contorted, her head in a pool of blood. Her eyes are closed as if in a slumber; they won’t open no matter how firmly I grip her shoulders, no matter how loud I scream. Death is limp, heavy and ungainly. It’s a whooshing in my head, like the roar of a waterfall. It’s a room that starts turning, slowly at first, then faster and faster; it’s a carousel and I can’t see where to get off. It’s a siren wailing in the distance, which against the roaring waterfall only creeps into my numbed consciousness as a muffled sound. It’s a sudden commotion in the basement: people, voices, someone pulling me away from Eva. She was the one who made the emergency call before Meller caught her with the mobile and forced her back down here. Now she’s dead. Dead. Slain by Meller when she tried to stop him attacking Steinhausen with the metal rod. Someone grabs my arm and asks if I’m all right, if I’m injured too. I can’t reply, I’m breathing as if through a straw, I stare and pant until everything blurs. Death lays two delicate little butterflies on my eyelashes, which flutter until I finally give in and shut my lids. Then I’m away, swallowed by a kind, empty blackness, and I thank death for this at least.
Shock. (Ann, 8 years old)
When you have a shock its like when something is switched off for a bit like a mixer or some other machine. Nothing works anymore, you cant move and you cant think either. Maybe your trembling but you dont notice it. A shock is normally bad but sometimes it isnt. Because there are moments when you woud rather not feel anything. You just have to watch out the shock doesnt last too long or too many feelings get stuck inside you and you get blocked up or explode.
I’m sitting in a row of hard chairs with brown, washable vinyl covers, my head leaning against a white wall, gazing up at the cold light of the neon tubes. My nostrils are irritated by the acrid smell of disinfectant; I try my best to breathe deeply and calmly. Even though I’d rather scream. Grab one of these fricking washable chairs and smash it against the fricking white wall until it shatters and splinters, until paint and concrete crumble, raging until I collapse with exhaustion, back into another restorative blackness. And when I wake up again, none of this will have happened, everything will have merely been a bad dream. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Drawing my knees up on to the seat, I close my eyes. Bad idea; behind my closed lids is Eva’s lifeless body, her head in a pool of blood. Stop it! I chide myself. She’s alive, she is alive! Her heart is beating as it ought to and the doctors have said that this sort of coma is perfectly normal with a serious traumatic brain injury. She might wake up in the next few hours. They told me I should call someone and get them to pick me up. But I don’t want to leave. I want Eva to sense I’m here. She can, can’t she? I’m sure she can.
Steinhausen’s being treated somewhere in this building too. I know nothing about his condition and whether he might have more injures than the ones I could superficially see in the basement. Nor do I know if the police have already questioned him about what happened, the circumstances surrounding events and, if so, how fruitful this was. I’m not under any illusion that the police will get more out of him than Meller, whose interrogation technique consisted of fists and a metal rod. No, Steinhausen will keep his mouth shut– especially now that he’s safe. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Even if I found out which ward and room he’s in, he’d only have to press the patient bell and I’d be carted away before I’d uttered a word. And what should I say to him anyway? What could I threaten him with to make him talk? I’ve got nothing. My only chance is to beg the police to check Steinhausen out again without appearing like a demented Rainer Meller.
My mobile buzzes. In a better reality my father would have sent me a message now:Just stay where you are. I’m on my way, my Beetle.I’ve no idea why I check, even though I know it can’t be from him. It’s only the notification that my battery is almost empty. And something else that I missed earlier: an unread message from this morning. From Zoe of all people:Nice of you to get in touch. I often wonder how you are. I’m fine. Do you remember. . .Zoe, who was desperate to do a term abroad in Cornwall. A few days ago she was accepted.It worked! PS, I miss you too.
My fingers twitch over the keyboard. Zoe is going away– that’s a painful thought. Although as far as I’m concerned, Zoe’s already been far away for much longer.
‘Ann!’ The voice cuts cleanly down the length of the corridor. I leap up from my chair. Elke and Caspian Herbert come rushing towards me. What the hell happened? How the hell could it have happened? Elke, whose forceful grip on my arm I can feel all the way to my bones even through Dad’s thick jacket. Her face, which has dropped in shock, her skin like a balloon emptied of air, and white, so white, almost as white as the walls here in the corridor of the neurological intensive care unit. In contrast to her eyes, which are huge, piercing and streaked with entire networks of red veins. Beside her stands the empty shell of Eva’s father, Caspian. He doesn’t blink, just stares at me with equally red eyes and a half-opened, speechless mouth.
‘What did you drag our daughter into?’ Elke says, shaking me; I don’t resist. It doesn’t matter that it was Rainer Meller wielding the metal rod, hitting Eva by accident. All that counts is that she was only in that basement because of me. ‘Look me in the eye!’ I can’t. My gaze sticks to the lapel of her purple woollen coat, and the fact that she hasn’t buttoned it up correctly is a further reminder of the enormity of the situation. Elke, who’s always so perfect and who would never, ever step out of the house so sloppily. Unless she got a phone call from the hospital urging her to come at once because something bad had happened to her daughter.
Unable to bear it any longer, I wriggle free and run down the corridor to the lift. I hammer the button, wait impatiently for the ding and squeeze myself into the cabin before the door has fully opened, obstructing those who are trying to get out. They grumble and curse but I don’t care; I simply have to get away from Eva’s parents, I need to get out of here, I want to go home. But not even this will be granted to me, it seems; the taxi stand outside the hospital entrance is empty. Just like my phone battery. I wait a while for a cab to arrive, but the driver won’t take me, saying someone else has booked him. ‘Public holiday,’ he explains curtly with a shrug. I’ve got no option but to go back into the hospital and ask if they can call me a taxi.
I join the queue of those waiting at reception. I’m nervous; I have to get back home before I completely lose it and break down howling.
‘Stop fidgeting!’ the woman in front of me hisses. It takes me a second or two to realise that she’s not talking to me, but the little girl beside her who keeps tugging at the sleeves of her coat.
‘Why can’t we go to the playground, Mummy?’
‘Oh, Amelie, it’s all wet because of the snow. Anyway, we have to ask about Daddy first,’ the woman explains, breathing a sigh of relief when the receptionist becomes free. My nose begins to run; everything is coming at once, liquefying. I never had a mother I could annoy. I only ever had my dad. I’m the girl with more than three hundred meaningless telephone numbers on my mobile. The girl who had her best friend back for a brief moment. Eva, who from the outset didn’t want us to follow Meller on to the construction site. Eva, who even tried to dissuade me.
Putting my hand over my mouth, I start panting. I need a taxi as soon as possible. I’m pushing forwards, ignoring the blue tape stuck to the floor to safeguard confidentiality. Soon I’m so close to the mother–daughter team that the woman would be able to feel my breath on the back of her neck if she wasn’t wearing a thick scarf. And then I hear it. ‘My name is Steinhausen. I’d like to know which ward my husband’s on.’
The ground opens up, the hole is deep and black. I plummet for a while, then the impact makes me realise what a Frau Steinhausen asking after her husband means. It means that Marcus Steinhausen was telling the truth in the basement earlier.
Please. . . home. . . my wife. . . daughter, I hear him in my mind, before I slapped him for these very words.You’re lying even now?
I can’t believe how readily I let Meller’s delusions influence me. It didn’t occur to me for even a second that Steinhausen, who’d always wanted his own family, might have actually acquired one in the meantime. And yet the assaults by Meller, both of them life-threatening, could easily have provided him with the long-awaited reason to finally cut ties with his mother and embark on a new life. Eva was right: I’m no better than the people who homed in on my father. Steinhausen is innocent. The lead I thought I had never actually existed.
Electricity shoots through my body and my legs blunder in the direction of the exit. I don’t want a taxi anymore, I just want to get out of here, fast. I don’t even mind walking, running until my body collapses.
‘Amelie, wait!’
Steinhausen’s daughter steps into the revolving door alongside me, then leaps out and makes for the playground that is to the left. The girl’s mother comes storming out behind her a few seconds later. ‘Not on the slide, Amelie! It’s full of snow! If you’re wet, they won’t let us see Daddy!’
