Page 67 of Anatomy of a Killer
Schergel, 29 December 2017
When I wake up, it’s not quite yet light. My right eyelid is stuck and there’s a stain on the pillow. Blood? I sit bolt upright and make a sound that wakes Jakob. He reaches past me to the bedside table and switches on the light. Then he stares at me and leaps out of bed. Soon afterwards I hear the rushing of water in the bathroom, then he comes back with a handful of damp, scrunched-up loo paper. It burns when he puts it on my face. Now I understand; it is actually blood on the pillow. And I also understand what’s happened: the stitches have unravelled and my eyebrow has opened up again. My sleep was very restive, which is no surprise given that I was chasing my father through the woods. I’ve been brought back down to reality with a bump. Yesterday, Kerstin Seiler’s murder, my visit to Nathalie, the end of the world. I knock Jakob’s hand away from my face; I can’t take being touched.
‘Going for a shower,’ I say, getting out of bed and gathering up my clothes that I put on the radiator to dry. Yesterday Jakob asked me what we were going to do now. All that’s certain is that we have to go to the police station in Bad Kötzting this morning to give our statements about finding Kerstin’s body. And that Jakob promised Brock a conversation with me.
On the way to the bathroom, my attention is caught by the bedroom door. There’s a water glass on the handle. ‘Jakob?’
‘Oh, that.’ He wanders past me into the bathroom, and again I hear the sound of running water, briefly this time. ‘Just a security measure. I mean, there’s a killer running around in the village.’
Fascinated, I go to inspect the construction close up while Jakob comes back from the bathroom. I hardly notice that he’s filled the kettle. ‘If someone presses the handle from outside. . .’
‘The glass falls off and smashes on the floor.’
‘An ingenious alarm system.’
I know someone else with an alarm system like that. Nathalie, who suddenly had a glass in her hand when she threw me out of her house yesterday. I didn’t see where it had come from– perhaps because she’d just taken it off the handle? There’s a click behind me and then the sound of water heating in the kettle.
I spin around. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Why not? I mean, breakfast doesn’t begin until half past seven. Or have you been rationing them?’ Laughing, Jakob dangles a tea bag over his cup. ‘If you insist, I’ll give you one from my room later.’
Do sit down. Would you like some tea?
‘You need electricity to make tea.’
‘Yes,’ he says, laughing again. ‘Or fire. But I reckon we’ve got enough problems in this village already without setting light to the place. Especially now that everyone knows who you are. Brock is going to fall on you like I will his breakfast buffet. God, I’m absolutely famished. . .’
His words fade beneath Nathalie’s voice in my mind. Yesterday evening:Something’s up with the electrics. Nothing’s been working since this afternoon, no light, no cooker, nothing.And yet she offered to make me a cup of tea just a moment later.
‘Ann?’
‘What?’
‘Would you like one too?’
Without responding, I rush into the bathroom with my pile of clothes. No time for tea, no time for explanations.
When I come back out, the television is on. A children’s programme. Jakob’s back in bed, the remote control on his bare tummy. He’s fallen asleep, an empty teacup on the bedside table. For a moment I stand there, looking at him, unsure whether to wake him and ask him to come with me. Then I realise I’ve already made my decision– yesterday, when I only told him about half of my conversation with Nathalie. Just like I kept to myself what occurred to me about the glass on the door handle, and the kettle.
I don’t have a choice.
I silently put on my boots, grab my rucksack and leave the room. It’s quiet in the pub– the breakfast preparations don’t seem to be underway yet– and it’s tranquil outside too, on the marketplace. I imagine Brock and his wife lying in bed, the whole village still asleep, exhausted from the previous day and all the beer that was drunk during the meeting.
I have to be sure, Ihaveto be. So I make my way yet again up to Nathalie’s house on the upper common. I walk briskly; my shadow, leading its own life beneath the light of the streetlamps, is making me feel uncomfortable. I look back over my shoulder several times, and several times I hear crunching footsteps in the snow that aren’t there. But Jakob’s right: a killer’s still running around this village. He might be lying in wait for me behind the corner of the next house or the next tree, and nobody would see anything happen. So much for the village guard that Brock said would be up and running yesterday evening, doing round-the-clock patrols. I quicken my pace. Something is more important than danger. The minutest of possibilities, the last straw.
The shutters closed even during the day.
No electric light that might draw attention to the fact that this house is being lived in.
The glass over the handle as an improvised alarm system.
Nathalie’s lightning reaction as she grabbed the axe. As if she were on permanent alert and prepared for everything.
But most of all, this: why hasn’t she gone back to Berlin if she’s so sure that the man she believes to be her daughter’s abductor has been locked up in prison for almost seven weeks?
And who’s she afraid of?
The answer: Kerstin Seiler’s killer, of course. But why should she be his next target? Her house is outside the village; nobody unfamiliar in this area would find it. So the killer must know her.
