The Lie (55 page)

That was the moment when she was afraid Lilo had realized. But Lilo had never bothered much about Susanne Lasko and was convinced anyway that pregnant women had other things on their mind, especially when their marriage had broken down. Apart from that, she thought Michael had perhaps only told Jo about Kemmerling's first wife and the circumstances of his divorce.

It was the last embarrassing incident. Nor were there any more threatening situations. She had no more contact with Hardenberg. And Wolfgang didn't manage to nail Hardenberg, officially no customers of Alfo Investment had been defrauded out of their money. As Dieter had promised, he made every effort, with Hardenberg's help, to return the money to the other eight investors. And in seven cases he was successful. That in return Heller's murder went unpunished was hardly just, but Dieter saw no way of handing Hardenberg over to the authorities while at the same time protecting Nadia Trenkler.

 

At the end of April there was €1,600,000 left in a bank in Zurich. 1,300,000 of that had once belonged to a Josef Maringer, the rest was interest. And Josef Maringer no longer needed his money. In the meantime he had died and there were no heirs in sight, though Philip Hardenberg wasn't told that when he transferred the amount to Luxembourg, where Nadia Trenkler had arranged a safe deposit for herself.

Dieter said, “If you don't want the money, then Hardenberg'll get it. We mustn't let that happen. I think you've earned it. At least it would mean you won't have to be worrying about the future.”

She wasn't anyway. It was a relatively pleasant life, amusing, varied and yet empty. She learned a lot about art, music, current events. She improved her English talking to Pamela on the phone. On Mondays she had French lessons with a high-school teacher, although she had no idea what the point was. She had no more conversations with Jacques Niedenhoff, nor with the young man with whom Alina passed the time after her separation from Nadia's father.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays she had private piano lessons. Wednesdays was aqua aerobics for pregnant women. Her diary was full. Sometimes she called these activities occupational therapy to stop herself going mad thinking of a man for whom and by whom she'd almost been killed.

She met her mother regularly every second Friday in a café near the old folks' home. Agnes Runge came in a taxi so that Nadia Trenkler didn't have to show herself in a place where people had known Susanne Lasko. These afternoons were times when she allowed herself a few tears. Just tears, no sobs, so her mother wouldn't notice.

For her mother, everything had ended in a straightforward way. Susanne had told Michael the truth and he'd sent her away. But he provided for her generously. And by this time she'd come to see that it was essential Johannes Herzog didn't find out. And, anyway, it wasn't that important for Johannes.

Lilo knew about these afternoon meetings and found it touching that she spent a little time with the old lady and didn't hold the things her daughter had done against her. And the continued contact with Susanne Lasko's ex-husband - in Lilo's eyes Dieter was an interesting person to talk to and Nadia had always had time for people like that.

At the beginning of May Laura Trenkler was born. Everything happened at breakneck speed. She hardly had time for the pain, she just managed to get a taxi and when it was over she didn't know what to do with all the flowers. Even Dieter sent a bouquet. He didn't come himself but rang up to congratulate her and to say that his daughter had a cold and he didn't want to spread the germs.

Lilo and Jo were her first visitors. Jo completed the formalities for her and took a few photos, tears in his eyes. Then Wolfgang came, at first
alone, then with Ilona. Ilona told her not to use disposable nappies. She should think of the mountains of rubbish.

She couldn't think of anything any more, only remember - seven years of marriage which for her consisted of a few days and nights in Paris. The rest had just been one long fit of trembling.

Edgar Henseler brought her a bouquet for which there was no vase big enough. Old Barlinkow came specially from Berlin to offer his warmest congratulations and his best wishes for her daughter. Instead of flowers Hannah - she still didn't know her surname, but intended to find out as soon as she could - brought her an amulet, supposedly an Indian good-luck charm.

And then Jutta Kemmerling came. By that time she was back in her apartment. The news of the birth had reached Danny Kemmerling's second wife by a roundabout route: Jo had given Michael one of his photos and Michael had shown it round the lab. “It would be nice,” Jutta Kemmerling said, “if you'd let him see his daughter now and then. He won't ask you himself. But it is usual.”

“We're not usual,” she said. “And I don't think he wants to see me.”

She was wrong.

Lilo had found her a home help so that she could take things easy. Lilo was also looking for a babysitter, so she could get out again. And when the bell rang on a Wednesday evening at the end of May, she assumed it would be the art student Lilo had told her to expect. She pressed the buzzer for the outside door then went and waited in the corridor. The light above the lift went on, the lift arrived, the door slid open.

Michael looked almost the same as on the Sunday of her dress rehearsal, wearing jeans and a casual white polo shirt. All she could feel was the thud of her heartbeat. And he didn't know where to look. He looked her in the eye very briefly then approached, head bowed. “May I…” He broke off and gestured helplessly with both hands. “… come in?”

Leaving the door open, she preceded him into the living room and stood in the middle of the floor. He sat down in an armchair, kneading his hands, and asked hesitantly, “Is it really my child?”

“There's been no one else in the last few years.”

He bit his lip, nodded thoughtfully and cleared his throat. “I talked to Lasko a few days ago.” What he'd talked to Dieter about, he didn't say.
Nor had Dieter mentioned the conversation. Abruptly he asked, “May I see her?”

There was no reason to refuse, but she couldn't go with him. His unexpected appearance had triggered off a whirl of contradictory emotions. After all the months, she thought she'd left the worst behind her. But the only things that had really faded were his hands on her throat and the icy cold.

He stayed in the nursery for almost half an hour. Then he came back - holding the baby. He claimed it had been awake. She didn't believe him for a moment. He sat down in the armchair again, his daughter in his arm.

“If you expect me to apologize, I'm going to have to disappoint you,” he said. “I expect an apology from you.”

“I've done nothing I have to apologize for.”

He gave a harsh laugh and, looking down at the baby, said, “No? And what do you call this here? That was the twelfth of September.”

“Or the thirteenth,” she said. “Given the way my life's gone, I rather assume it was the Friday. And I've already told you how it came about. If you'd left me alone on the Thursday it would never have happened.”

He let that go. Getting worked up, he said, “I'll never understand why she did it. But I would like to know why you agreed to go along with it. What did your think you were doing, getting into bed with a stranger and letting his wife pay you for it? She did pay you, didn't she? How much did she offer?”

“I'm sure I wasn't as expensive as your studies,” she said.

With a derisive grin, he declared, “You seem to have learned a lot from her.”

“I hadn't any choice. Will you go now, please.” She took a step towards him and stretched out her hands for the baby. “Give her to me.”

“No!” He shook his head. “First of all I want an answer. If you were there on the twenty-eighth of November, then it was you in the bath on the Friday morning. And I'm sure she didn't pay you to tell me you loved me and to hurt yourself with that confession. In that moment why didn't you tell me who you were?”

“And how would you have taken it - in that moment? D'you think you'd have been over the moon?”

She got no answer to that. “Have you any idea,” he asked, “what it feels like to have lived with a stranger, a woman you don't know, and not notice for weeks? And if there hadn't been all that nonsense with Jacques, who knows how long it would have gone on for.”

He was too loud, the baby in his arms began to whimper.

“Give her to me,” she asked again.

He didn't react, but went on as if he hadn't heard her. “When we came back from Paris, I thought it was the best time we'd ever had together. Everything was different, that was what it was of course. But actually it was the way I'd always wanted things to be with her. I thought she'd finally seen reason. Why didn't you clear off in Paris, as your ex urged you to? Why did you take the risk of staying with me? You didn't do it for the money alone, did you?”

She thought she knew what he wanted to hear. But she'd already told him that. And he hadn't believed her. When she didn't reply, he took a deep breath. “I don't even know what to call you.”

“You don't need to rack your brains over that if you go now.”

He looked at the moaning infant. Finally he got up and handed her the baby. But he didn't leave, he followed her into the nursery and stood beside the table, watching as she changed its nappy. She decided to leave breast-feeding it until he'd gone. But he still didn't go and she couldn't let her child go hungry because of his obstinacy.

He only left the nursery when she put Laura back in the cradle. She stayed there for a moment, waiting for the front door to open and close. There was silence. When she went back into the living room he was standing by the balcony door, looking out. He must have heard her steps, for he turned round. His voice sounded firm, assured, as if he'd thought out what he was going to say carefully. “I've let you have what you wanted, her name, even her money. In return, I want the child.”

“Sorry,” she said, “you're not Rumpelstiltskin.”

He smiled. “No, but I do have a few cards up my sleeve and I'm not going to be done again and certainly not done out of my daughter. We're not legally divorced. If you want to sue for divorce, I'll fight for custody of the child - and no holds barred. I wouldn't hesitate to cite your drink problem or the reason why you lost your job. There's a whole load of reasons I could give why you're totally unsuited to bringing up a child.”

“My drink problem?” She shook her head in disbelief. “I don't believe it. I simply don't believe it. I've never had a drink problem. Are you trying to play the macho man? It would have been better if you'd done that with her. You tried to kill me. How do you think a divorce judge will respond to that?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I could tell them who you really are. But I don't want to do that. I want to…” He broke off and started again. He didn't know how to put it, he said. It was only the baby that mattered. The baby was very important to him. But it wasn't just that. He wasn't going to say he loved her, because he hated lying. He just wanted her to come back and give him a chance to see if he could love her.

During the past few months he'd had plenty of time to think - about his feelings for Nadia, about the two days in September, the Friday morning in November, the time in Paris, which she hadn't used to make a bid for safety. He didn't want to live with an illusion, just with the woman whom he had thought all the time was Nadia.

Cora Bender killed a man on a sunny summer afternoon by the lake and in full view of her family and friends. Why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local police it was an open-and-shut case. Cora confessed; there was no shortage of witnesses. But Police Commissioner Rudolf Grovian refused to close the file and started his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unravelling of Cora's past, a harrowing descent into a woman's private hell.

 

Hailed as Germany's Patricia Highsmith for her bittersweet family crime novels where the innocence of childhood collides with horrors enacted by adults, Petra Hammesfahr has written a dark, spellbinding novel which stayed at the top of the bestseller list for fifteen months.

 

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BITTER LEMON PRESS

 

First published in the United Kingdom in 2009 by

 

Bitter Lemon Press, 37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW

 

 

First published in German as
Die Lüge
by
Wunderlich, Rowohlt Verlag GmbH,
Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2003