Through my study window I look straight out onto Lake Starnberg. I am glad I was wise enough to make sure of a nice view when I bought the house. God knows there aren’t many people as reliant on a view as I am. I only have the one—though that’s not quite true because it changes every day. Sometimes the lake seems cold and unfriendly, sometimes enticing, and at other times it looks positively enchanted, so that I have no trouble at all imagining the water nymphs of local legend swimming with one another below the surface.
Today the lake is a mirror for a few coquettish clouds in an otherwise pure blue sky. I miss the swifts that in summer grace the sky with their giddy acrobatics. They’re my favourite creatures. They live and mate and even sleep on the wing, never still in an unending sky—so wild, so free.
I’m sitting at my desk, thinking over the things that I have set in motion. In a few months, the journalist Victor Lenzen will interview mysterious bestselling author Linda Conrads. They’ll talk about the new book—her first ever crime novel.
An interview with Linda Conrads is in itself a sensation. For years, the press has been asking for interviews and offering ridiculous sums of money, but the novelist has always declined. No wonder the media are so keen to talk to her; almost nothing is known about the writer concealed behind the name. She hasn’t given readings for years, turns down interviews, lives cut off from society, doesn’t have a Facebook or Instagram or Twitter account. If it weren’t for the books that are published with such pleasing regularity, you might almost think Linda Conrads didn’t exist. Even the author’s photo and biography on her novels’ jackets reveal nothing, unchanged for a good ten years. The black-and-white photo shows a woman who is maybe pretty, maybe ugly, who could be tall but then again could be short, a woman with either blonde or brown hair, and eyes that are green or perhaps blue. It shows her from a distance, in profile, and the brief biographical note states only my birth year and that I live near Munich with my dog.
That the former foreign correspondent Victor Lenzen is to have an exclusive interview with Linda Conrads is going to cause quite a stir.
I plan to challenge my sister’s murderer with the only means at my disposal—literature. I am going to haul him over the coals with this book. And I want him to look me in the eye with the full knowledge that I have seen through him, even if no one else has. I am going to prove Victor Lenzen guilty and find out why Anna had to die. No matter what it takes.
That is the momentous task I have set myself. I am working on a crime novel in which I describe a murder that resembles the murder of my sister down to the last detail.
I have never had to write such a complex book: on the one hand, I want to stick as closely as possible to the truth; on the other, I must invent a story that leads to the murderer’s arrest—an ending that has so far been denied to me in real life.
I’ve never tried to recreate reality in my books before. I would have considered it a waste. I have always had a prolific imagination, a head full of stories wanting to get out.
If my parents are to be believed, I was fond of making up tales even as a child. It was a catchphrase in our family: Linda and her stories. I remember once telling a primary-school friend that I had been for a walk in the woods with my mother and that, as we’d been picking wild strawberries, we’d caught sight of a small, spotted fawn in a clearing, asleep on the grass. I’d wanted to go up and stroke it, but my mother had held me back and told me that the fawn would smell of human afterwards and its mummy might reject it, so it was better to leave it to sleep in peace. She told me how lucky I was to have found a little fawn like that—it was very rare.
I remember how impressed my friend had been by the story. She went to the woods often and although she sometimes saw deer she’d never seen a fawn. I was so proud—I really had been tremendously lucky. I remember my mother taking me aside when my friend had gone home and asking why I told such stories. She said it wasn’t nice to fib, and I told her indignantly that I hadn’t been fibbing. Didn’t she remember the fawn? I could, clearly. My mother shook her head—Linda and her stories—and told me we’d seen a fawn like that in a film the other day. And then it all came back to me. Of course, a film!
Imagination is a wonderful thing, so wonderful that I make a great deal of money out of it. Everything I’ve written so far has been as far removed as possible from myself and the reality I know. It is odd to let other people into my life now. I console myself with the thought that these aren’t really scenes from my life but a displaced reality in which I immerse myself. A lot of the details are different, partly because I make a conscious decision to change them and partly because, after all this time, I can’t be certain of every single detail. Only one chapter—the one everything revolves around—will be authentic: a night in high summer, Anna’s flat, deafening music, blood and vacant eyes…
The book ought really to begin with that chapter, but I haven’t yet been able to face going back to that place. Yesterday I promised myself I’d write the chapter today, and today I’ve put it off until tomorrow.
Writing is strenuous, but in a good way. It’s my daily training. It does me good to have a real goal.
No one except me notices any difference. Everything’s the same: Linda sits in her big, lonely house and tells her agent and her publisher that she’s working on a new book. Linda does that once a year; it’s nothing special. Business as usual for my agent, Pia, who’s already been informed that a new manuscript is on its way and who is naturally delighted. (Although it does, of course, surprise her that I should suddenly want to change genre and write a thriller.) Business as usual for Charlotte, who at most notices how I’m spending less time reading and watching TV, and more time in my study. Business as usual for Ferdi, the man who tends my garden and may only notice that he’s come across me in my pyjamas less in the middle of the day. Everything is the same. Only the observant Bukowski knows that I’m plotting something and gives me conspiratorial glances. Yesterday I caught him looking at me with concern in his big, knowing eyes, and I felt touched.
It’ll all be fine, mate.
For a long time, I wondered whether to take anyone into my confidence. It would be wise. But I decided against it. What I’m planning to do is crazy. Any normal person would simply call the police. If I were to confide in Norbert, he’d tell me to do just that: Call the police, Linda!
But I can’t. If the police believed me at all, they would probably question Victor Lenzen, and then he’d be forewarned and I’d never get a look-in. I might never find out what happened all those years ago. I can’t bear that thought. No, I have to do it myself. For Anna.
There’s no other way: I must look him in the eye and ask him questions. Not polite questions, such as a policeman might put to an influential journalist who seems unimpeachable. None of your ‘Terribly sorry to bother you, but we have a witness here who thinks…’
None of your ‘Where were you on the…?’
Proper questions, such as only I can ask and only if I’m alone. Besides, if I were to rope anyone else into this business, I am well aware that it would only be out of fear and selfishness. Victor Lenzen is dangerous. I don’t want him coming into contact with people I love and cherish.
So I’m left to my own devices. In the end, there isn’t anyone (not counting Norbert and Bukowski) whom I one hundred per cent trust, anyway. I don’t even know if I can trust myself one hundred per cent.
So I haven’t told anyone more than the bare essentials. I’ve spoken to my agent, to the head of publicity at the publishing house, and to my editor. They were all perplexed that I want to write a crime novel, and even more perplexed that I want to give an interview, but they swallowed it. I still have to talk with my publisher, but the most important things are already underway. I have a deadline for the manuscript and a publication date.
All of that is good. Having a deadline to work towards has given meaning to my existence over the years and has more than once saved my life. It’s hard living all alone in this big house, and I have often thought about simply absconding—a handful of sleeping pills, or a razor blade in the bath…
In the end, it was always something as banal as a deadline that held me back. All that stuff was so real; I could always imagine what immense trouble I’d be causing my publishing house by failing to deliver. There were contracts and plans in place. So I carried on living and kept writing.
I try not to give too much thought to the fact that this book might be my last.
I have set a dangerous chain of events in motion by ringing up the newspaper’s editorial department. It was a clever move on my part because now there’s no turning back. It transpires that Lenzen works for a newspaper as well as in television, which is good because it would be counterproductive for him to turn up with a television crew. So I’ve arranged an interview with the newspaper—just the two of us. I return to Jonas Weber, the young police officer with dark hair and grave eyes, one brown, one green. And to Sophie, for that’s what I’ve decided to call my literary alter ego. Sophie reminds me of the way I used to be: playful, impulsive, incapable of sitting still for long. Early-morning walks in the woods, camping trips, sex in changing rooms, mountain-climbing, football matches.
I study the portrait of Sophie on the pages I’ve written. She looks like somebody who’d like to be challenged, who isn’t yet broken. That’s not me anymore. The eyes that discovered Anna’s dead body twelve years ago are no longer mine. Bit by bit, they’ve been replaced. My lips are no longer the lips I pressed together when I watched my sister’s coffin being lowered into her grave. My hands are no longer the hands that plaited her hair before her first job interview. I am someone else. That is not a metaphor; it’s the truth.
Our body is constantly replacing cells—substituting, renewing. After seven years, we are, as it were, new. I know that kind of thing; I’ve had a hell of a lot of time to read over the years.
Now I’m sitting on a doorstep in the dark with Sophie, shivering, although it’s a warm night. The sky is clear and starry. I watch Jonas and Sophie share a cigarette and I’m sucked into my own story; I lose myself in the characters. There’s a kind of magic in sharing a cigarette with a stranger. I write and watch the two of them and almost feel the urge to take up smoking again.
The scene collapses when there’s a ring at the front door. The shock goes right through me. My heart begins to thump like mad and I can feel how thin the membrane is that separates my newly won determination from my fear. I am frozen mid-movement—my hands poised above the keys of my laptop.
I wait apprehensively for a second ring but still jump when it comes. And at the third, and at the fourth. I’m scared. I’m not expecting anyone. It’s late in the evening and I am alone with a small dog in a big house.
A few days ago I rang up the newspaper where my sister’s murderer works and enquired after him. I have drawn his attention to me. I have done something stupid and now I’m scared. The doorbell keeps on ringing, and my thoughts begin to race. What should I do? I can’t think straight. Should I ignore it? Play dead? Call the police? Creep into the kitchen and fetch a knife?
Bukowski begins to yap; he comes bounding up to me, wagging his tail—he loves visitors, after all. He streaks towards me and jumps up at me, and the angry ringing subsides for a moment. At the same time, my brain kicks back into action.
Keep calm, Linda.
There are a million explanations for why someone should ring my doorbell at half-past ten on a Thursday evening. Not one of them has anything to do with Victor Lenzen. Why would a murderer ring the doorbell? The whole thing is bound to be innocent. It’s probably only Charlotte who’s forgotten something, or my agent who lives round the corner and occasionally drops in, although rarely as late as this. Or perhaps something’s happened nearby. Maybe someone even needs help!
I am functioning again. I rouse myself out of my paralysis and hurry down the stairs to the front door. Bukowski comes with me, still yapping and wagging his tail.
I’m glad I’ve got you, mate.
I open the door. Before me stands a man.
4
SOPHIE
The air was the consistency of jelly. It had engulfed Sophie the moment she stepped out of her air-conditioned car. She hated nights like this, when the heat was so intense she couldn’t get to sleep because her skin felt sticky and she was bitten to death by mosquitoes.
She was standing at the door to her sister’s flat, ringing the bell for the second time. She’d seen light on in Britta’s flat when she’d parked the car, so she knew she was in. Britta probably wasn’t opening on principle: she objected to surprise visits, considering it plain rude to breeze in unannounced when you could at least ring from your mobile on the way.
Sophie took her finger off the bell and put her ear to the door. She could hear music inside.
‘Britta?’ she called. But there was no reply.
Sophie was reminded of her mother, who worried at every little thing—organising a search party whenever either of her daughters was the least bit late, or envisaging lung cancer at the slightest cough. Sophie, on the other hand, was one of those people who believe that true misfortune only ever befalls others. So she shrugged her shoulders, rifled through her handbag for her bunch of keys that held the spare to Britta’s flat, and opened the door.
‘Britta?’
It was only a few steps down the hall to the room where the music was coming from. Sophie went in and stopped, rooted suddenly to the spot. What she saw on the floor was so overwhelming that she couldn’t immediately take it in.
There was…Britta. She was lying on her back, her eyes wide open, an incredulous expression on her face. At first, Sophie thought her sister had had a bad fall and needed to be helped to her feet. She took a step towards her. Then she saw the blood and stopped again, her body rigid. The living room was a black-and-white stage set. No air, no sound, no colour. Only this horrific still life: Britta’s fair hair, her dark dress, the pale carpet, shards of glass, an overturned tumbler, white flowers, a black high-heeled sandal slipped off a foot, and blood, also black, spreading out around Britta’s torso.
Sophie gasped and at once the music was back. All you need is love, la-da-da-da-da. There was colour again, too, and all Sophie saw was deep, gleaming red.
While Sophie was trying to process this picture, she became aware of something moving in the corner of the room. She turned her head in panic and saw that it was only the curtains at the terrace door fluttering in the breeze. But then she saw the shadow. He stood quite still by the door, like an animal lying in wait, almost invisible. He looked at Sophie. Then he vanished.
