Once again the weather has changed, and again the balance of power threatens to tip. Victor Lenzen is no longer cowering before me like a thrashed dog; he’s regained some of his self-confidence.
‘I have an alibi,’ he says.
We’re sitting in semi-darkness. The storm’s on its way. I can hear the thunder coming closer and closer, and I have a terrible feeling that something dreadful is going to happen when the storm reaches us. I brush the thought aside, telling myself that my grandmother was afraid of storms and communicated her fear to me; that it’s superstition and nothing more.
Lenzen is lying. He must be lying. I saw him.
‘I have an alibi,’ he repeats.
‘How are you going to prove it?’ I ask.
My voice sounds husky. Fear is creeping up on me, cold and merciless.
‘I remember that summer,’ Lenzen says. ‘2002. World Cup in Japan and South Korea. Brazil and Germany in the final.’
‘How are you going to prove that you have an alibi?’ I repeat impatiently.
‘I flew to Afghanistan on 20 August,’ Lenzen says. ‘I remember it very well, because my ex-wife’s birthday is 21 August, and she was pissed off because I was going to miss her party.’
My world begins to totter.
I grasp the pistol, steadying myself. Just another trick.
‘How are you going to prove it?’ I ask, forcing myself to breathe steadily.
‘I was reporting daily at that time, on the ground. The deployment of German troops in Afghanistan was still relatively recent; people were interested in what was going on in the Hindu Kush. I accompanied some soldiers at close quarters; the reports should still be on the internet—even today.’
I stare at him. Gooseflesh spreads over my body. I won’t believe him. He’s bluffing.
‘Look it up,’ says Lenzen with an encouraging glance at my smartphone, which is lying on the table in front of me, and I see through his trick. The bastard. He’s hoping for a brief moment of distraction to attack me again, to take the gun off me.
I shake my head and point my chin at Lenzen’s phone without loosening my grasp on the gun. I haven’t forgotten the rapid swooping movement with which Lenzen got over the table; I won’t be giving him another opportunity to do that.
Lenzen understands and picks up his phone. He begins to tap around on it.
I grow nervous. What if he wanted to get to his phone to call the police?
‘Any funny business and you won’t leave this house alive.’
Scarcely have the words left my mouth before I give a mental start. Why should he want to ring the police if he’s Anna’s murderer?
You’ve stopped thinking straight, Linda.
Lenzen frowns at me and goes back to tapping. At length he looks up, an inscrutable expression on his face, and pushes his phone across the table to me. I pick it up, without taking my eyes off Lenzen. Then I lower my gaze and read.
Spiegel Online. I read, scroll, read again, scroll up, scroll down. Compare the names, the dates. Spiegel Online. Archive. Victor Lenzen. Afghanistan. 21 August 2002, 22 August 2002, 23 August 2002, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 August 2002.
I read and read, over and over again. My brain’s searching for a way out.
‘Linda?’
I scroll up and down.
‘Linda?’
I hear his voice as if through cotton wool.
‘Linda?’
I look up.
‘How was your sister killed?’
My hands are trembling like an old woman’s.
‘How was your sister killed?’ Lenzen repeats.
‘She was stabbed seven times,’ I say, as if in a trance.
So much anger. And the blood—blood everywhere.
I don’t know whether I say it out loud or only think it.
‘Linda,’ says Lenzen, ‘you’ve got the wrong man. Please think about it.’
I can hardly concentrate on what Lenzen is saying; it’s all going too fast for me; I’m lagging three steps behind, still trying to come to terms with the fact that Lenzen has just come up with an alibi. It’s not possible, it’s just not possible.
‘Get it clear in your head what that means,’ Lenzen says, speaking slowly and quietly, as if he were trying to charm a poisonous snake. ‘You’re not seeing justice served if you shoot me. On the contrary: no matter what you do to me, the true murderer is still out there somewhere.’
That hits me like a bullet. But who was it, if it wasn’t Lenzen?
No. No. No. I saw Lenzen.
‘Linda?’ says Lenzen, jolting me out of my thoughts. ‘Please put the gun down.’
I look at him. At last I begin to understand.
From 21 August 2002 until at least 28 August 2002, Victor Lenzen was in Afghanistan. He had no opportunity to kill my sister.
My head aches, I feel dizzy, and I think to myself that it’s been going on for such a long time now: the pain, the dizziness, the hallucinations, the song—that damn song—the shadow in the corner of my bedroom, the sleeplessness, the blackouts. I understand, and the realisation is incredibly painful.
I am mad.
Or well on the way to becoming so.
That is the truth. That is my life.
The effects of extended isolation include sleeping disorders, eating disorders, cognitive impairment and even hallucinations. I read a lot—I know that kind of thing.
The panic attacks, the trauma, my tendency to lose myself in stories, my guilty conscience at not having been able to save Anna, my years of loneliness. It all makes sense. But that doesn’t make things any better.
The man facing me is innocent. All the things he said that I interpreted as references to the murder were no more than comments on fictional characters and a work of literature.
What have you done, Linda?
My throat aches. It’s tears rising—I remember the feeling, even though I haven’t cried for a good ten years.
I give a dry sob. Everything is spinning. The ceiling is suddenly full of insects, like a creeping, teeming carpet. I’m losing control. For a moment I forget who I am, or what I’m called and what’s going on. I’m so confused. But there is a voice.
‘Put the gun down, Linda.’
Lenzen. It’s only now that I become aware of the weight in my hand again, the gun.
Lenzen gets up, approaching me cautiously.
‘Put the gun down.’
I hear him as if through cotton wool.
‘Keep calm,’ he says. ‘Keep calm.’
It is over. I have no more strength. My horror at what has happened—at what I have done—overwhelms me. The phone drops from my hand and clatters to the floor. I’m trembling all over. My muscles no longer function; I slide off the chair—I would fall, but Lenzen catches me, holds me, and we go down together and sit there on the floor, gasping, sweaty, frightened. Lenzen holds me and I let him; I am numb, I am stunned; I have no choice but to let it happen. I wait, sitting it out. I am a knot—a woman-shaped knot, hard and tight. But then something happens: the tectonic plates of my brain shift and, slowly, the knot loosens, and I begin to cry. I sob and tremble in Victor Lenzen’s arms, I dissolve in his arms, salt in the sea. My brain is racing, it can’t process physical proximity; it isn’t used to it, although it’s been hankering after it for a good ten years. Lenzen’s body is warm and firm, he is taller than me, my head fits into the hollow between his throat and his chest. I whimper. I don’t understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. I let him hold me, I feel connected, alive, and the feeling almost hurts. Then he eases himself away from me, and once more I feel the ground disappear from beneath my feet.
Lenzen gets to his feet, looks down at me. I’m drifting, trying to get a hold on the shore.
‘But I saw you!’ I say feebly.
He watches me with complete composure.
‘I don’t doubt that you believe that,’ he says.
We look each other in the eye and I see that he is sincere. I see his fear and his relief, and something else that I can’t put a name to—maybe pity.
We are silent again. I’m glad I don’t have to say anything. My brain has ceased its unrelenting deliberation and has fallen quiet from exhaustion. A good thing, too—I don’t want to have to think about criminal charges and scandal and prison or the psychiatric ward right now. I only want quiet, for as long as possible.
I look at the face of the man before me. I seldom have the opportunity to have a really good look at a face. So I look at Lenzen and watch as the monster turns into a perfectly normal man.
I sit there, sniffing, and listening to my tears falling on the parquet. Then Lenzen takes a step towards the table and makes a grab for the gun. I watch him, but it’s not until he’s holding the gun that I realise I’ve made a huge mistake.
‘You still don’t believe me,’ he says.
It’s not a question; it’s a statement of fact. He looks at me for a moment, then says, ‘You really do need professional help,’ and turns and leaves.
Deep in shock, I stare after him. It’s a few moments before I am able to ease myself out of my stupor. I hear him open the front door, and the noise of the storm swells, as if someone had turned an invisible control knob. I hear his footsteps recede down the gravel path.
I get up onto legs that scarcely bear my weight and I go after him. When I see the front door wide open, my heart begins to race. What is he doing? I glance cautiously out of the door. I have no idea what the time is, how long we’ve been talking, how long we’ve been circling one another, but it’s been dark for ages.
I spot Lenzen in the moonlight, walking purposefully towards the lake, the gun in his hand. Between the lake and the edge of the woods he stops and seems to hesitate. Then he raises his arm and throws my pistol into the water. It seems to me that I hear the sound it makes as it hits the smooth surface, but that is impossible; I’m too far away. In the black and white of the moonlight I see Lenzen turn to face me. I can’t make out his features—he is only a silhouette—but I can feel his gaze. I wonder what I must look like for him from out there, a small blur in the doorway of my enormous, brightly lit house. We look at each other across the distance, and for a moment I think that Lenzen is going to turn and walk away. But he does the opposite: he begins heading towards me. He’s coming back of his own free will.
Stockholm syndrome is the name given to a psychological phenomenon in which hostages develop a positive emotional relationship to their aggressors. I know things like that; I’ve had a lot of time to read over the past decade.
I shudder—not only because of the cold that’s blowing in from outside, but because I realise that in this scenario I am the aggressor.
My God, Linda.
I have threatened an innocent man with a gun, hit him and detained him in my house. What’s more, I’ve recorded everything. I will never find my sister’s murderer. The best thing to do would be to put a bullet in my head. But Lenzen’s sunk my gun in the lake.
He’s standing right in front of me.
‘Now do you believe that I’m not going to hurt you?’
I nod feebly.
‘Why don’t you call the police?’ I ask.
‘Because I want to talk to you first,’ he says. ‘Where can we sit?’
I lead him into the kitchen. The coffee cups and newspapers that the photographer arranged on the table in another age, another lifetime, are still there. As if the birds hadn’t fallen from the sky after all.
‘Why did you throw the gun in the lake?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know,’ Lenzen replies. ‘A displacement activity.’
I nod. I know what he means.
‘I…’ I begin, and immediately falter. ‘I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how I can apologise.’
‘You’re trembling,’ says Lenzen. ‘Sit down.’
I do as he says and he sits down opposite me. Once again we are silent for a long time. The silence is no longer a trial of strength; I simply don’t know what to say. I count the wrinkles on Lenzen’s forehead. When I’ve almost reached twenty, he jolts me out of my thoughts.
‘Linda? If I may call you Linda…’
‘Anyone I’ve held at gunpoint has the right to call me by my first name,’ I say.
I cringe at my pathetic attempt at a joke.
Lenzen ignores it.
‘Do you have anybody you could ring up?’ he asks. ‘Family? Friends?’
It’s only now that I realise what a mellifluous voice he has. It sounds like the dubbing voice of an aging Hollywood actor, but I can’t think who.
‘Linda?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I have the feeling you shouldn’t be on your own right now.’
I stare at him. I don’t understand. I attacked him; he has every right to call the police. Or retaliate.
‘Unless he really does have something to hide and would rather not get involved with the police.’
It’s not until after the last word is out of my mouth that I realise I didn’t think that; I said it out loud.
Lenzen takes that on the chin too. He seems to have resigned himself long ago to the fact that I’m completely insane. And I am, too—insane, mad, a public menace.
Bestselling author, 38, shoots journalist, 53, during interview.
Lenzen has an alibi. Lenzen is innocent. It’s going to take me some time to get used to this new state of affairs.
‘Maybe your parents,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Maybe you could give your parents a ring. So you’re not on your own.’
‘No, not my parents. My parents and I, we…’
I don’t know the end of that sentence.
‘We don’t talk much,’ I say eventually, although I had been going to say something else.
‘How unusual,’ says Lenzen.
His suntanned hands lie on my kitchen table and I feel a terrifying urge to touch them. I tear my gaze away. His pale eyes are resting on me.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, when his remark finally gets through the membrane that surrounds me.
‘Well, you told me your sister was murdered. And, of course, I’m no expert, but a tragedy like that normally welds a family together rather than driving them apart.’
I shrug. The word ‘normally’ has no meaning in my world. ‘With us, it’s different,’ I say.
It’s no business of his, but it does me good to say that. My parents aren’t interested in me; they’re not interested in my books. They won’t even let me buy them a bigger house. All they’re interested in is their dead daughter.
Lenzen sighs. ‘I have a confession to make, Linda,’ he says.
Every hair on my neck stands on end.
‘I wasn’t entirely honest with you regarding the premise of this interview.’
I swallow hard, can’t say a thing.
‘I knew about your sister.’
I’m gobsmacked.
‘What?’ I croak.
‘Not the way you think,’ Lenzen says quickly, holding up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘I came across the murder case when I was researching for the interview. In fact, I’m surprised no one had unearthed it before, but then the internet wasn’t as crazy at that time as it is nowadays. There wasn’t such detailed documentation of everything.’
I can’t follow him.
‘Well, at any rate, I know about your sister’s case—a dreadful affair. I understand you, Linda; it’s not easy coming to terms with a thing like that.’
‘But you pretended you didn’t even know I had a sister.’
‘I’m a journalist, Linda. Of course I didn’t start by laying all my cards on the table; I wanted to hear what you had to say first. Put yourself in my position. A woman who was the main suspect in a murder case many years ago writes a book in which that very murder is described down to the last detail. It’s a bloody sensation! But if I’d known that you’re so’—he falters—‘that you’re so fragile, then…’
His words seep into my consciousness.
‘The main suspect?’ I say flatly.
Lenzen looks at me in surprise.
‘I was never under suspicion.’
‘Hm,’ says Lenzen. ‘Well, I suppose that whoever finds the corpse is automatically one of the main suspects to begin with, and that it doesn’t have anything to do with you as such.’
I swallow. ‘What do you know?’ I ask.
Lenzen squirms. ‘I don’t think I…’
‘What do you know? Who have you spoken to?’ I yell. ‘I have a right to know! Please,’ I add softly.
‘All right then,’ he says. ‘I spoke to the policeman who led the investigation. And you were indeed the main suspect for a long time. Didn’t you know?’
‘Which policeman?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know whether I can tell you,’ Lenzen replies. ‘Is it really that important?’
I see a face before me—one eye green and the other brown. No, it’s not possible!
‘No,’ I say, ‘not that important.’
I’m hot; the air is electrically charged. I long for rain, but there’s no rain coming. The storm has simply passed us by; it will break elsewhere. Only the wind can still be heard, whistling round the house.
‘In any case, it’s clear that you’re innocent,’ says Lenzen. ‘They were never able to prove anything against you. You didn’t have the hint of a motive.’
I can’t believe we’re talking about whether I’m guilty or innocent.
‘And, of course, it’s really not your fault that you can’t leave the house,’ Lenzen adds.
‘What?’
Again, I feel a jolt of fear.
‘What’s that got to do with any of this?’
‘Nothing, of course,’ Lenzen hastens to assure me.
‘But?’
‘It was only a casual remark.’
‘You’re not the kind to make casual remarks,’ I reply.
‘Well, some of the people investigating your sister’s murder case back then interpreted your…retreat as, well, how can I put it…as an admission of guilt.’
‘My retreat?’ My voice cracks with anger and despair; I can’t help it. ‘I didn’t retreat! I’m ill!’
‘What I’m telling you isn’t my opinion. But there are people out there who don’t believe in this obscure illness; they see a murderer who has fled from society. There are those who think you live in a kind of self-imposed solitary confinement here.’
I feel dizzy.
‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ Lenzen says. ‘I thought you’d heard it all long ago. It’s a good story, that’s all.’
‘Yes,’ I say.
I’ve run out of words.
‘The worst is the doubt. A vestige of doubt always remains,’ Lenzen says. ‘That’s the awful thing. Doubt is like a thorn you can’t get a hold on. It’s terrible when a thing like that destroys families.’
I blink.
‘Are you trying to tell me that my family—my parents—think I’m a murderer?’
‘What? No! God… I would never…’
He doesn’t finish the sentence.
I ask myself when I last spoke to my parents—really spoke to them, not just the I’m-fine-how-are-you? farce. I can’t remember. Lenzen is right. My parents have distanced themselves from me.
And there are people out there who have told Victor Lenzen they think I killed my sister.
I remember how nervous Lenzen seemed when he arrived, and I understand why. He wasn’t unsure of himself because he felt guilty, but because he was wondering how mad, how dangerous, the woman he was about to interview was.
Victor Lenzen didn’t come to my house to interview a world-famous, bestselling author. He came to find out whether said author is not only eccentric but also a murderer.
We were both after a confession.
A painful burning sensation spreads through my abdomen, rises up to my throat and breaks out of my mouth in a hollow and utterly humourless laugh. It hurts, but I can’t stop; I laugh and laugh until the laughter segues into sobs. I am overcome by the fear of being stark raving mad.
My fear is a deep well that I have fallen into. I’m suspended vertically in the water. I try to touch the bottom with my toes, but there’s nothing there, only blackness.
Lenzen watches me, waiting until the fits of laughter subside. Only the pain remains. I suppress a whimper.
‘Why don’t you hate me?’ I ask when I can talk again.
Lenzen sighs. ‘I’ve seen wars, Linda. Fighting, the aftermath of fighting. I’ve seen what it looks like when nothing will ever be right again, prisoners of war, children with their limbs blown off. I know what it looks like when someone is deeply traumatised. Something in you has broken, Linda; I can see it in your eyes. We’re not so different, you and me.’
He is silent for a moment, appearing to deliberate.
‘Linda, do you promise me you’ll leave me in peace?’
I can hardly speak for shame. ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Of course.’
‘If you promise me that you’ll leave me and my family in peace, and if you’ll promise me to seek psychiatric treatment’—he seems to hesitate before making up his mind—‘if you can promise me those two things, then no one need know about what’s happened today.’
I look at him in disbelief.
‘But…what will you tell your editor?’ I ask stupidly.
‘That you didn’t feel well. That we had to break off the interview. And that there won’t be a repeat.’
My brain can no longer keep pace.
‘Why?’ I say. ‘Why are you doing this? I deserve to be punished.’
‘I think you’ve been punished enough.’
I look at him. He looks at me.
‘Can you promise me those two things?’ Lenzen asks.
I nod.
‘I hope you can make peace with yourself,’ he says.
Then he turns and leaves. I hear him take his coat from the hook in the hall and go into the dining room to fetch his jacket and his bag.
I know he’ll be out of my reach as soon as he crosses the threshold. I know I’ll never see him again and that there will be nothing more I can do.
And what were you thinking of doing?
I hear Victor Lenzen’s footsteps in the hall, hear him open the front door. I stand in the kitchen and know I’m not going to stop him. The door falls shut behind him. Silence spreads through the house like floodwater. It is over.
