Page 68 of Anatomy of a Killer
I shake my head; I just don’t get it. There’s only one thing I know: Nathalie’s lying. For some reason she’s still lying. And I’ve got to find out why. Apart from this, they can tell me as often as they like that my dad’s the ribbon murderer, but I’ll never be well and truly convinced of his guilt while words are still words and, like the evidence, don’t constitute clear proof. I stop and rummage in my rucksack amongst Nathalie’s things– the bread and now redundant cat food– for the packet of cigarettes I bought at the shop yesterday. Then for my lighter, but fruitlessly. I check my trouser pockets. For a moment I think I’ve got it, but it must still be in the jacket that the police took away for forensic examination. I take something else out instead: my old talisman that I found in the wooden box in Dad’s study. The stone that dug into my wrist almost twenty years ago. Which Dad saved after the bike accident and gave me later as a reminder of the terrible experience I’d survived. On the sharp side, some brown discolouration is still visible. My blood. This stone that seems to be a sign, an encouragement to follow my feelings. A minor miracle just when I need it.
A few minutes later, the incline to the upper common appears before me. The holiday house is already in view, a dead, black outline, as if it had been slotted into an equally black bay of trees. And right there. . . maybe it only occurs to me because I’ve just been thinking about smoking. A tiny, luminous red dot, the glow of a cigarette. Am I mistaken? I blink. It glows again, the little red dot in the gloom. Then something moves–someone!– from the cover of the trees and makes straight for Nathalie’s house. I instinctively squat and narrow my eyes, concentrating as hard as possible. Now I see it, I see it perfectly. A tall figure, not Nathalie this time. A man, creeping past the downstairs apartment. He stops, looks around. Gets moving again, approaches the steps. My brain is in overdrive: Steinhausen. He’s here.
I start running the rest of the way up the slope. Nathalie, Lenia and the grandmother. Unsuspecting, maybe still asleep in their beds. When the glass slides off the door handle and smashes on the floor, it’ll be too late. He’ll already be inside the house. I speed up, remember the mobile in my rucksack, and ponder: call the police or Jakob? It would take too much time. Time that Nathalie and her family don’t have. I reach the house, the steps. Then I think of the axe that Nathalie used yesterday evening to hack out the tree roots from the hole for the cat’s grave. She leaned it next to the terrace door. A weapon. I don’t mean to hurt anyone, just keep them at bay. But to get to the axe, I’d have to go past the front door and along three sides of the house.
The front door– relief. It hasn’t been touched. He wasn’t so far ahead of me that he could have cracked the lock, gone into the house and closed the door again from the inside. Besides, I didn’t hear the breaking of glass. I put my ear to the wood and listen. Nothing. Has he got in some other way? Through the terrace door, perhaps? Or has he only come to nose around, have a recce? Did he spot me and bolt?
I creep my way around, one wall after another, until I get to the terrace. The lantern on the cat’s grave.It’s just a little candle and yet it lights up the night.The axe. It’s gone. Did Nathalie put it somewhere else after I left? Or is it in the wrong hands? I look around nervously. The terrace door– also shut, with closed shutters. I peek through the slats. There’s flickering light in the sitting room, candles like yesterday evening. Have they been burning all night? A shadow flits past; I flinch. It could just be Nathalie. Or the killer. I want to undo the catch that keeps the shutters fastened on the inside. So I try to slide my hand through the gap, but it doesn’t fit.
My stone, my talisman! It’s flat, triangular, and large enough that I can hold it by the wide end and push the narrow tip under the catch until it flips to the other side with a clack. I open the shutters and get another shock. Through the window I see Nathalie wander over to the coffee table and pick up one of the candles. She looks like a ghost, she’s spaced out. Surely she must have noticed the shutters being opened only a metre and a half away from her? I knock on the window.
Nothing, she doesn’t react. Just stands there holding the candle, staring into the flame. I knock again. Now. Now her eyes see me and she tentatively comes closer; in the gloom of dawn she probably doesn’t recognise me immediately. I gesticulate wildly and mouth her name. I don’t want to be loud; someone apart from me is prowling around out here.
She opens the door, visibly surprised. ‘Ann? What are you doing here, after—’
‘After our argument yesterday evening? Let’s just forget that, okay?’ I push my way into the room and immediately lock the door behind me. ‘There’s someone here, Nathalie! I saw a man creeping around the house. Just now.’
‘What? Who would. . . ?’ She falters, her face suddenly vacant. ‘Are we in danger?’
‘I’m afraid we are. You lied to me, didn’t you?’ I slip the rucksack off my shoulder and drop it to the floor, prompted by the crazy thought that I might be about to get into a fight, and will need to be as agile as possible– no unnecessary encumbrance on my back.
Nathalie looks away.
‘It’s okay.’ I reach for the candle, which has started shaking alarmingly in her hand, put it back on the table and pick up instead the torch that is there too. ‘None of that matters now. We’ll call the police and barricade ourselves in here till they come. It would be best if we took one of the upstairs rooms. Where’s your family?’
Nathalie points behind her. ‘We’re just having breakfast. Ann. . .’ She grabs my arm. Her grip is so desperate, so tight that I feel it in my bones. ‘I’m scared.’
‘I know. Me too. But we’ll get through this, okay?’
Nathalie lets go of my arm. I switch on the torch.
‘We should keep the overhead light off. We mustn’t serve ourselves up to him on a platter. If he wants to get us, he’s going to have to work for it.’
Nathalie looks horrified.
‘I’m sorry,’ I quickly add. ‘That was inappropriate.’
I hurry across the sitting room. It’s not hard to find the way to the kitchen; the house is small and the ground floor is probably only half the size of the apartment I shared with Zoe. The beam from the torch jerks haphazardly, staccato impressions, one per heartbeat. The furnishings, like those in the sitting room, aren’t much cop in here either– the veneer is already peeling away from the nut-brown kitchen units. A fridge with a children’s drawing stuck to it with magnets, together with signature: Lenia. A sink with days’ worth of dirty dishes piled in it. A bin, its lid gaping open like a mouth stuffed with food. Empty tins of preserved food like the ones Nathalie bought masses of at the grocer’s yesterday. The breakfast table laid with two plates, two cups, two sets of cutlery. A carton of milk, a pot of tea or coffee, crispbread, butter, jam. I’ve no time to think or embark on lengthy explanations. ‘Come on!’ I call to the old woman and little girl. ‘We’ve got to. . .’
I falter.
Both of them ought to be staring at me now. Me, a strange woman in their house, a shock this early in the morning. The moment when everything falls apart, weeks of playing hide-and-seek, of uncertainty and permanent tension, but also the slight hope that they might have come through it all, and finally the great misapprehension. They ought to be beside themselves, terrified, confused, shocked. They ought to besomething. But they’re not.
The kitchen’s empty.
I wave the torch about in disbelief. Finding a light switch, I push it. It’s as I’d suspected: Nathalie lied about the electricity. The kitchen is bright, but remains empty.
‘It happened in November,’ I hear a voice behind me. Dropping the torch, I whip around and look directly at Nathalie. ‘He kidnapped Lenia from a playground and took her to a hut in the Königswald.’
I nod as if on autopilot. That’s precisely what she said yesterday, even using the same words. ‘But where. . . ?’ I ask, my throat constricted. Because there could still be a rational explanation for why there’s nobody at this table, no Lenia, no grandmother. A different explanation from the one that’s brewing in my head, like a storm suddenly filling a clear sky with darkness.
Nathalie says nothing.
I pant. Now I understand. The storm is raging. ‘She. . . she didn’t make it, did she? She couldn’t escape because the ribbon murderer killed her just like the other girls in Berlin.’
Her face twitches with incomprehension. She staggers past me to one of the chairs, where she places a hand on the backrest. As if someone were sitting there.
‘Don’t worry, my little princess,’ she says with a soft voice, her eyes staring into the void. ‘Nobody’s ever going to part us again.’ Then, directed at me, ‘Not even her.’
