Page 64 of Anatomy of a Killer
‘Are you feeling unwell? Do you want to sit down?’
She shakes her head, very slowly, as if mechanically. ‘In November. It happened in November.’
‘What happened in November?’
‘He. . .’ She falters.
‘Speak, Nathalie! I want to help you!’
‘Nobody can help us.’
‘Yes, I can! I’ll do everything possible, I promise. Now, please just talk to me.’
Nathalie looks at me for a long moment. I open my mouth to implore her again– the truth, please, I beg you!– but it doesn’t work; I’m silent as if under a strange spell. Her gaze works it way deeper and deeper, first into me, then through me. ‘He kidnapped Lenia from a playground and took her to a hut in the Königswald,’ she begins, in a voice that sounds monotonous, almost trance-like. ‘When he took his eye off her briefly, she saw her chance and ran off. She’d made her way through the woods for more than a kilometre when she came across some walkers. She told them she was lost. Luckily she knew our address by heart.’
My stomach churns and I don’t feel steady on my feet. I’m not mad; I’ve been right the whole time.
Nathalie closes her eyes. ‘When the two walkers brought her home, I knew at once that something dreadful must have happened,’ she continues as if everything were playing out again behind her closed lids, now, at this very moment. ‘Can you see her breaking down in my arms, Ann? Her tiny body shuddering and quaking? Can you hear her crying so terribly? There, there, my darling, it’s okay. Your mummy’s here. What happened? Tell me, Lenia, speak to me! She is speaking. Oh God. . .’ Nathalie, her eyes still closed, is now swaying so badly that I’m finding it hard to keep hold of her. I push her forwards to the sofa; I want her to sit down. ‘It must have been the ribbon murderer. That’s how he works, that’s his pattern. He kidnaps little girls and takes them away to kill them. What has he done to my baby? And what. . .’ She sobs intensely. ‘What are we going to do now? What if he means to snatch her back? If he looks for her and finds her? Can we trust the police to protect us from him? Those same people who’ve been trying to catch him for fourteen years but failing time and again? We have to go away, my angel, far, far away. Don’t worry, okay? Your mummy will make sure you’re safe.’
I flop down wearily beside Nathalie, take her hand and hold it tightly. She opens her eyes and is back here with me now, back in her sitting room.
‘So then you left Berlin?’
Nathalie nods. ‘I decided to rent a car and leave our one outside our block so nobody would notice we’d gone. That would give us a head start. . .’
‘Your mother was the only one you told.’
‘Yes. I packed everything that would fit in the boot and we just drove off, heading south. It was pure coincidence that we came to Schergel, but I thought at once that this would be the perfect place. Remote, insignificant, just the tiniest of dots on the map. We would be safe here. At the entrance to the village was a sign about renting rooms and holiday homes– ask at the inn. Right away I thought Brock was a money-grubbing show-off, but that also had its advantages. He likes cash as he can slip it past the tax authorities. When I put a few notes on the counter he didn’t even insist on seeing my ID, let alone make me sign any sort of agreement or other form. Two hundred and thirty euros a week for both apartments, which is basically the entire holiday home. That would be tricky once my savings were used up, but what kind of a problem is that compared to. . .’
‘It’s okay.’
‘No, Ann, it’s not okay. It’s hell.’ Now she in turn squeezes my hand so firmly that I can feel my knuckles. ‘I had to lie to them all, all those people who were so kind to me, the entire village. But people notice if you shut yourself away altogether, and you end up achieving the exact opposite of what you’d intended. So you integrate a bit, to stop drawing unnecessary attention to yourself. To avoid questions and suspicion.’
‘That’s why you invented the story about your violent ex-husband.’
She shrugs. ‘They all took pity on us and Kerstin even offered me the job at the butcher’s. We needed the money, and now I was always able to find out what people were gossiping about in the village. In case—’
‘He came back,’ I say, finishing her sentence. ‘Nathalie. . .’ I wonder how to put this and why I’m finding it so difficult, because basically both of us know: it’s happened. The man she wanted to protect her family from has tracked her down.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Nathalie says, beating me to it. Something I can’t understand. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘My. . . ?’
Freeing her hand from my grip, she strokes my cheek instead. ‘Since his arrest, they’ve only shown his picture in the papers and on the telly with a black bar over the eyes. But Lenia is sure. The nose, the mouth, the grey hair. She recognised him. It was him, Ann. It was your father.’
For a moment I’m falling, but the moment is short and I land on my feet. Because I’ve been doing a lot of falling recently, because it’s something you learn. But most of all because I don’t believe what she’s saying. It’s not true. Is it? Dear God, please don’t let it be true. ‘Let me speak to Lenia!’
‘No way! You haven’t got the slightest idea what we’ve been through! Because of your father, Ann!’ Nathalie leaps up from the sofa, as do I.
Lenia must be mistaken. Of course she’s deeply traumatised. Just like Sarah, who’s silent, Nathalie’s daughter is processing her trauma by pinning it on my father. As the alleged ribbon murderer, he’s been in the press so often, always that same photograph with the black bar over his eyes. It’s the perfect projection screen, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
‘Please, Nathalie! You’ve got to understand that I have to be absolutely certain! This is about someone’s life!’
‘Yes, my daughter’s! I want you to go now, at once!’ She hurries into the hallway, wrenches the key and throws open the door. ‘Get out of here!’
‘Nathalie. . .’
‘I’ve told you to go!’ She’s got a glass in her hand; I don’t know where that’s come from. But it doesn’t matter, nothing matters now.
