Page 54 of Anatomy of a Killer
‘Yes, why?’
‘She’s not with Sarah in the hospital anymore?’
‘No, she left early this afternoon. She wanted a hot bath and a nap.’
Jakob flips shut his laptop and both of us spring to our feet in sync. We don’t need to discuss our plan; both of us realise we have to see Kerstin at once. Maybe we can make her understand how important it is to decipher Sarah’s words without her feeling under attack again. It’s worth a try– maybe we’ll get lucky and find Steinhausen in his hideaway before he disappears.
We leave the inn at a canter; I stop when we’re halfway across the marketplace.
‘What’s up?’
‘Sarah,’ I say, grabbing Jakob’s sleeve. ‘Right now she’s alone in the hospital.’
‘No chance, I bet Schmitti or Nathalie are there while her mum—’
‘Takes a nice hot bath?’ What an absurd thought; I shake my head. ‘No, Nathalie definitely isn’t there. I just met her out shopping.’
Jakob gestures to me to go on. ‘Somebody will be there for sure. And the police will have posted someone outside her room.’
‘Hopefully.’
‘For sure.’
As the butcher’s is a residential house too, we start by ringing at the front door– in vain. So we decide to try through the shop. The lights are off even though it’s already getting dark outside, and we can’t detect any movement inside. On a whim, Jakob tries the handle; the shop is indeed open. A bell above the door announces our entry.
‘Hello?’ Jakob calls out. ‘Frau Seiler?’
Our footsteps squeak on the tiles and the drinks fridge buzzes monotonously. A blueish light illuminates the empty counter, the only, inadequate source of light in the room.
‘Can you smell that?’ I whisper. A strange, unpleasantly sweet aroma.
‘That’s what freshly slaughtered meat smells like,’ Jakob whispers back. ‘It hangs around. I know it because my grandad was a butcher too. His house smelled like this even years after he’d retired and closed the shop.’
We come to the corridor behind the counter, separated off by a plastic curtain.
‘Frau Seiler!’ Jakob calls out again. When there’s still no answer, he raises his eyebrows at me. I point my chin at the curtain, but he’s hesitant.
‘What if she’s in the bath?’
‘If she is, she’s hardly likely to have left the shop open, is she?’
Jakob shrugs.
‘Let’s call it investigative journalism,’ I say, pushing ahead.
A cold, dark corridor, tiled like everything here. I think of Nathalie, who told me how she had to hose down the tiles after an animal had been slaughtered.
‘Frau Seiler? Are you here?’ There are two rooms on either side of the corridor; straight ahead are the stairs to the living quarters. ‘It’s us: Ann and Jakob from the newspaper!’
Who– cowed by the darkness, the smell and the fact that everything in this house is washable– advance very slowly until they finally come to an open door on the right-hand side. It’s a cold store with a flickering light, dim but satisfactory enough to see. I thrust my hand blindly behind me, for Jakob, for support. Someone makes a sound, probably me too. Someone shouts, ‘Shit!’ probably Jakob, who now pushes me to the side and rushes into the room. Towards the body lying on the floor. In all that blood on the washable tiles.
RECORDING 06
Berlin, 7 May 2021
I’m assuming your silence means you don’t want to share your childhood experiences with me. Ah well, listen in and I’ll begin. My childhood. With your love of cliché, you’ll feel vindicated now, but in truth I did have a strict upbringing. I wasn’t beaten and nor were there any other unjust punishments. But it was all about discipline, obeying the rules and being able to show what we’d achieved. My brother, in particular, always felt he had to prove himself. We competed with each other from an early age and soon we went beyond the usual benchmarks, such as school grades or good behaviour, which your parents would praise you for. I vividly remember the time I was sitting in a tree in our garden, boasting how high I’d climbed. In response, my brother climbed over the rose trellis and on to our garage roof. Then he took a run up and jumped down. But he landed badly, breaking his left ankle. I won’t forget the noise, nor his screams. I’d never heard him make such a sound before, never heard anyone do it, in fact.
Did you like the sound? The girls must have screamed too.
