Page 6 of Anatomy of a Killer
This is where I grew up and this is where I moved after Zoe booted me out of our flat. My home, although since the police were here, it’s no longer what it once was. For three whole days, officers turned the whole place upside down in search of potential evidence, and their approach was anything but gentle. They even broke one of the photos from the mantelpiece; now there’s a big crack in the glass, behind which my father and I are grinning in front of the Eiffel Tower. Every time I catch sight of the picture now, it breaks my heart.
Jakob didn’t have a clue about any of this when he parked his car in our drive last night. ‘Wow, what a lovely house!’ he said, but that wasn’t true. Without Dad there, it was just empty and dark, like an ugly black hole in the middle of the neighbouring houses, all lit cosily. All of a sudden I didn’t fancy getting out anymore.
‘Tell me about your idea,’ I said.
‘What idea?’
‘You know, the one you were going to surprise me with at Big Murphy’s this afternoon.’
He grinned. His idea was two six-packs waiting behind the passenger seat. . .
I blink. In a blur I can make out our coffee table, on it a dozen beer bottles, some of which have toppled over. The crystal bowl, which still had chocolates in it on the evening Dad was arrested, is overflowing with cigarette butts. The absurd idea of getting up and sorting out the chaos before Dad comes home shoots through my mind. He’d be especially upset by the cigarette butts. Although my asthma isn’t that bad, I still have it. I sit up, prop my elbows on my thighs and bury my head in my hands. Construction work is going on inside my head: hammering, drilling, sawing and planing, all at once. I can also hear the clatter of crockery coming from the kitchen, and soon afterwards the hum of the coffee machine.
I can’t believe it. Not only that Jakob now knows where I live, but that I actually invited him in, him and his beer. We spent the evening and the night together. And he’s still here.
‘Good morning!’ as if on cue, somewhere amongst the din of the building site in my head. I hear the clinking of glass on glass, Jakob clearing the coffee table. Several times he goes from the sitting room to the kitchen and back again. I stay where I am until the table is clear and there’s a cup of coffee on it.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Hungover.’
‘Surprise, surprise,’ he says, laughing. ‘I stopped counting when you got to your sixth bottle.’
I reach for the cup, not so much because I need a slug of coffee, but more to distract from my embarrassment. Jakob sits opposite me on the coffee table, so close that our knees are almost touching.
‘What’s the time?’ I ask, after a while spent blowing on my coffee and trying to get my head right. I need to be in Moabit at eleven. I’m allowed to see my father, but only according to the strict rules of custody visits: 1. Discussing the crime is forbidden. 2. A prison guard will be present throughout the visit. 3. Everything will be recorded on video.
‘Just gone nine,’ Jakob replies, pointing at the clothes I had on yesterday and slept in too. ‘So you’ve got plenty of time for a shower beforehand.’
Beforehand– it takes a moment for the word and its meaning to settle. But then they do and I put my cup back on the table in horror. Coffee sloshes over the rim.
‘Don’t worry, Ann. Nothing happened last night. You slept here and I slept over there,’ he says, nodding to the second sofa opposite mine, separated by the table. But I know at once that this isn’t true. Something did happen last night. The worst. And Jakob knows it too. A sense of unease spreads, as if the entire living room were being flooded by a viscous liquid, the level rising and rising continually until it comes up to our chins.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I can imagine how dreadful the situation must be for you. Actually, no. . .’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Actually, I can’t even begin to imagine. It’s just. . . if you need a friend, I’ll be there for you.’ He raises his hands and adds, ‘No ulterior motive, I give you my word.’ I don’t feel reassured.
Yesterday evening.
The images in my head are hazy and shaky, as if they’d been taken by an ancient camera. The sound is like it’s canned. Lou Reed is playing on the record player. Bottle tops are popping. I’m being silly and want to dance. I want to be normal again, totally naïve. Let go of everything for a moment. I’m circling like an aeroplane in a blue sky; the sun is shining. Here it’s much nicer than outside in the cold, black orbit. Here it’s warm and I’m not on my own. I want to break free, rid myself of all my baggage. Slurring my words, I confess to him that the story of the German student with an existential crisis is only half the truth. That the real reason I’m working at Big Murphy’s is because I’m terrified of going mad if I surrender to my misery. That I invented a child out of cowardice and pure egotism because I want there to be at least one place– even if it’s just a grubby fast-food outlet– where I can be someone else apart from my father’s daughter.
Who they say is a murderer.
Who they say has a scheme. Little girls and red ribbons that lead to their bodies.
They make a half-hearted attempt to disguise his face then print it in their rags and write about deep cuts and huge pools of blood. I don’t believe a word of it, not one of their despicable lies, and yet. . . it’s so painful, so unbelievably painful. It’s a pain that tears at all my limbs, trying to dismember me alive. A pain that puts my heart out of sync and drives my head mad, and I don’t want this anymore, I can’t go on like this, I really need a break. So, Lou Reed, sing, sing for me, sing louder, just let me dance and forget it all. And you, Jakob– my only friend, even though we haven’t known each other that long– I’m so glad you’re here, for everyone else has gone. I don’t have Zoe or anyone else anymore. Thanks for dancing with me and giving me strength. Because tomorrow’s going to be a difficult day. I have to be in Moabit at eleven, where he’s being held on remand, but soon, after the trial, he’ll be transferred to Tegel where he’ll remain, like the proper criminals, the real monsters, permanently, for life, unless a miracle occurs and they realise their mistake. Come on, Jakob, let’s dance some more. Give me a moment elsewhere. Just you and me and the beer and Lou Reed. . . and then the film snaps– it all goes black. My memory of the rest is hazy: Jakob carrying me to the sofa, covering me with a blanket and maybe whispering some nice words in my ear: ‘Goodnight, Ann. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.’
That was yesterday evening.
I sniff– a really pathetic sound. It suits me. ‘I didn’t mean to tell you everything, you know.’
‘I realise that.’
‘You have to promise me to keep it to yourself. Enough people know already. The university, the neighbours, friends– or should I say, those who used to be friends.’
‘What? How? Your father’s name has never been published.’
‘But the police questioned everyone who knows us. And these people aren’t exactly stupid. Of course our friends recognise his photo in the paper, whether or not he’s got that ridiculous black bar over his eyes, which is supposed to preserve the last remnants of his supposed human rights. I’m just waiting for the moment when one of them decides to talk to the press, thereby unleashing the entire mob on me.’ The sensation-seeking, the vindictive. The press pack camping outside our house and following my every move. Parents like Jörg E., the father of little Saskia, who will try to track me down and make me pay for the alleged crimes of my father. Merely thinking about it makes me shudder.
His gaze sweeps our living room. The dark green velvet sofa I’m sitting on, the other one he spent the night on, and between them the small mahogany table. The fireplace and all those framed pictures on the mantelpiece: pictures of us, Dad. It’s a little journey through time in photo format, with changing shades and styles of hair– you turn greyer and I more colourful; you seem to shrink as my body stretches; fashions change, everything changes, apart from one thing: in each of these pictures we’re laughing and very close.
