Page 33 of Anatomy of a Killer
‘I don’t want to talk about Eva.’
‘But we have to.’
‘No, what we really have to talk about is why, as our lawyer, you’re wasting the opportunity to put the police on to a very promising lead! Surely you want the real killer to be caught, don’t you?’
‘Anni,’ and this weary sigh– I can’t listen to it anymore. Leaning my head against the window, I switch off. Now Ludwig’s words are nothing but indistinct sounds, while the lights from the streetlamps and houses racing past are a blur in the darkness. It’s like a slipstream dragging me with it, into a different setting where there are also lights, lights on a Christmas tree. It’s only plastic but it’s tradition. A fire is crackling; I hear soft music and a little girl’s laughter. Christmas, Dad, like we used to celebrate it. As we might never be able to celebrate it again. Just as nothing might ever be the same as it once was. I don’t know if I can cope with this possibility, Dad. I’m so terribly scared.
‘Oh, my Beetle,’ you would say now. ‘Do you remember the story I once told you when you were a girl? The story about fear?’
Yes, but please tell me again. I’d love to have something I can believe in.
‘All right, listen carefully. . . Once upon a time, there was a farmer who set off in his donkey cart for Constantinople. On the way he was stopped by a hunchbacked old woman who begged him to take her along. He let her climb aboard, but when she was sitting next to him on the box and he was able to see her face, he almost jumped in horror. “Who are you?” he asked. “I am cholera,” the old woman replied. At once the farmer ordered her to get off his cart and make her own way. He was very frightened. But the old woman promised to spare him and only kill five people in Constantinople if he let her travel with him. As security she gave him a special dagger, the only weapon that could kill her. “We’ll see each other again in two days,” she said. “If I’ve broken my promise, you can kill me.”
‘Over the next couple of days, however, a total of 125 people died in Constantinople. And the farmer, who himself was fine, did indeed see the old woman again, and was going to thrust the dagger into her. “Don’t do that,” she said. “I kept my promise and only killed five people. It was fear that accounted for the other hundred and twenty.”’
Have you ever been afraid, Daddy?
‘Yes, my Beetle. That time you injured yourself with the sharp stone. I’ll never forget how I felt—’
‘Ann?’ Ludwig says, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Have you been listening to me?’
I say yes, to whatever.
‘All right then, would you prefer Thai or Chinese?’
‘What?’
‘What food should I order? You can’t have been listening to me.’
‘Yes, yes, I was. It’s just. . . I’m not really hungry.’
‘Your appetite will come when the food does. And no more buts now, or I’ll tell your father you nicked my folder.’
I shrug. Ludwig ought to know that it’s hard to faze my father; he’s had to put up with a lot from me. Ann and the cut wrist when she was six. Ann and her complicated puberty. Ann who does stupid things because she’s unhappy in love. Ann who turns the car over. When did he ever lose it, Ludwig? When did he ever scream at me? My father, who was always controlled, his analytical gaze. He would ask me why I did what I’d done and what I was feeling when I did it. I’d describe my despair, my anger, my fear and he would understand me.
‘Don’t forget he’s in prison now,’ Ludwig says, as if he’d read my thoughts. ‘You saw for yourself when you visited how much the circumstances have changed him. He’s got enough problems at the moment, don’t add to that list by becoming another one.’
I could object that I seem to be the only person making a serious attempt to solve his problems, but I hold my tongue. The last thing I want now is an argument; I don’t have the energy for it, not after the day I’ve had.
When Ludwig parks the car, I see that the Harberts’ house is as dark as ours; Elke and Caspian must still be at the hospital. Maybe I oughtn’t be on my own tonight. I think of my father, of Eva, of Zoe and Jakob and everyone whose company I would far prefer to Ludwig’s. But none of them are around. I sniff and persuade myself that an evening with Ludwig will at least give me the opportunity to convince him of my theory about Marcus Steinhausen.
‘Thai,’ I say, before reaching for the door handle to get out. ‘Some kind of curry with coconut milk, but not too hot.’
‘There we go,’ Ludwig says, smiling. ‘I’ll hurry.’
I close the passenger door and watch the car until the darkness has swallowed its taillights. Then I turn to face our house and my eye catches one of the upstairs windows: my bedroom. I can’t work it out at first, not in its entirety– only that something is different. The black shape doesn’t belong there and my curtains shouldn’t be moving.
I blink, confused. There’s nothing up there anymore. No black figure, no movement of the curtains. Just another figment of my imagination, I reassure myself. Just my overloaded brain short-circuiting again. All the same I should take a look, make sure. There’s no way I can let Ludwig come back to find the problem child still standing on the drive because she doesn’t dare enter her own house.
I approach the house tentatively nonetheless.
‘Do you remember the story of fear, my Beetle?’ I hear my father say inside my head. ‘The fear of fear gives rise to more suffering than the actual cause.’
Yes, Dad.
The silence is loud. It’s the metallic scraping of the key in the lock. It’s the sigh of the hinges as the door’s pushed open, and the whimper of the handle. It’s every single step that the heavy soles of my boots make on the tiled floor. It’s the sliding sound of the carving knife I take out of the wooden block on the work surface. It’s the clicking of my left knee when I climb the first step of the stairs and the groan of the wood on the second. It’s another step and yet another, getting louder with each successive one taking me up the stairs, until they end on the landing.
I stop. Listen. My room is the second on the right. I can’t hear anything. I’d just have to touch the wall next to me; that’s where the light switch is. I don’t do it; I don’t turn the light on. Something is stopping me, a feeling. I edge forwards to my room. The door is open. That was me, I think, I left it open.
