For a few seconds I watch him go, then I throw back my shoulders and head back to the dining room. I come to an abrupt halt when my eye falls on Lenzen’s coat. I’d better give it a quick frisk—you never know. I glance at the dining-room door. I can’t hear anything. Quickly, I search the coat pockets, but they are empty. My heart skips a beat when a sound comes from behind me. I spin round.
Victor Lenzen is standing in front of me. He looks at me searchingly.
‘Everything all right?’ he asks.
His gaze is inscrutable.
‘Everything’s great. I’m looking for a tissue,’ I say, pointing at my cardigan, which is hanging on the hook next to the coat.
For a moment we stand there, neither of us saying a word. The moment drags on. Then Lenzen’s face brightens and he smiles at me. What an actor.
‘I’ll wait for you in the dining room.’
And he turns around and is gone.
I take a deep breath and count to fifty. Then I, too, return to the dining room. Lenzen is sitting at the table; he gives me a friendly look as I go in. I’m on the point of telling him we can continue when the landline starts up again. Who can it be?
‘Maybe you should answer it,’ says Lenzen. ‘It seems to be important.’
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Maybe I should. Please excuse me.’
I walk into the living room and approach the mad ringing. I give a baffled frown when I see the Munich number on the display. I know the number; I dialled it just the other day. With trembling fingers, I pick up the receiver, well aware that, in the next room, Lenzen can hear every word I say.
‘Linda Conrads.’
‘Frau Conrads,’ says Professor Kerner. ‘I’m glad I’ve got hold of you.’
He sounds strange.
‘What is it?’ I ask, instantly alarmed.
‘I’m afraid I have rather bad news for you,’ he replies.
I hold my breath.
‘You enquired about the traces of DNA at the scene of your sister’s murder,’ Kerner continues. ‘Well, I was curious and looked into the matter.’
He hesitates. A dark foreboding creeps over me. If he’s going to say what I think he’s going to say, I don’t want to hear it. Least of all now.
‘I’m afraid that the DNA traces from the murder are unusable,’ says Kerner.
Everything goes black. I sit down on the bare floorboards, gasping for breath.
As if through cotton wool, I hear Kerner telling me that, unfortunately, it does occasionally happen that samples of DNA get contaminated or go missing. He’s very sorry. It was before his time, otherwise it certainly wouldn’t have happened. He had deliberated for a long time whether or not to inform me but, in the end, he had said to himself that everybody deserves the truth, even if it’s not pretty.
I try to breathe normally again. In the next room, the monster is waiting. Apart from Charlotte, who is still upstairs playing with Bukowski, we are quite alone in this big house, and my plan has come to nothing; all the DNA samples in the world can’t help me now. No more safety net. Just Lenzen and me.
‘I’m sorry, Frau Conrads,’ says Kerner. ‘But I thought you ought to know.’
‘Thank you,’ I say lamely. ‘Goodbye.’
I glance out of the window. The cold, sunny dawn that greeted me this morning has turned into a grey day with low-hanging clouds. Somehow I find the strength to get up and return to the dining room. Lenzen turns to look at me as I enter the room. That dangerous man is so cool and collected that it’s hard to believe. He watches my every move, like a snake lying in wait, and I think to myself:
I need a confession.
17
SOPHIE
Thick, matronly clouds were hanging low over the houses opposite. Sophie looked out of the window at the sky where a few swifts were darting about. Out there, somewhere under that sky, Britta’s murderer lived and breathed. The thought had a cold, metallic taste. Sophie shuddered.
She wondered what it would be like never to leave the flat again. To never again have to set foot in that terrifying world. She brushed the thought aside and looked at her watch. If she wanted to get to the party anywhere near on time, she was going to have to get a move on. She used to love parties and had enjoyed giving her own. Since Britta’s death, however, she was glad not to have to laugh and make conversation.
That was exactly what was expected of her today. Her new gallerist, Alfred, with whom she hadn’t been working for long, was throwing a lavish garden party to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. The upside was that most of the guests would be from the city’s art scene—eccentric artists, wealthy art lovers—people, in a word, with whom Sophie had nothing in common other than her love of painting, and who, for the most part, she didn’t know. Nobody, not even her host, knew that her sister had died recently, so no one would embroil her in one of those embarrassed conversations of condolence. At least she was safe from that.
All the same, she had come close to not going. It had been Paul who had thought cancelling would be rude, and that it would also do her good to take her mind off things.
Now Sophie was standing in front of her wardrobe faced with the difficult task of choosing something to wear. The dress code on the invitation demanded summery white; Sophie had worn nothing but black over the past weeks, and going in white felt like fancy dress. She sighed and took out a pair of white linen trousers and a white top with spaghetti straps.
It was a humid evening. The clouds had passed without fulfilling their promise of rain and cooler temperatures. When Sophie and Paul arrived at Alfred’s villa, the party was already in full swing. The garden was large and surrounded by dense trees and shrubs like a natural clearing somewhere in the woods. A myriad of lights twinkled in the bushes and trees, giving the garden and the thronging people an unreal quality.
There was nowhere to sit apart from a small swing seat in a remote corner of the garden, where two men were snogging, lost to the world. Beneath an enormous chestnut bearing innumerable lanterns like ripe fruit, a dance floor had been improvised, and next to it a small stage had been put up for the live band, which was nowhere to be seen. Piped music from the speakers was drowned out by the hum of voices that hung over the scene like the soft drone of bumblebees. Now and then the crowd parted to let through the waiters with trays of drinks and canapés. They, too, were dressed in white, in keeping with the dress code, and would hardly have been distinguishable from the guests if not for the dainty antlers they all wore on their heads.
Sophie decided to give in to Paul’s pleas and switch off as best she could. She drank a cocktail—then another and another. She ate a few canapés. She wished her gallerist a happy birthday. She helped herself to another drink.
Eventually Alfred stepped onto the small stage. He made a speech, thanked his guests, opened the dance floor, asked the band onto the stage and dedicated the first song of the evening to his wife. Sophie had to smile when Alfred and his wife—the only one dressed not in white but in bright red—blew each other kisses. Her smile died on her lips, however, when the four-man band struck up the first bars of the Beatles’ All You Need is Love. The world disappeared, a chasm gaped, and Sophie was swallowed up.
