The Sinner (16 page)

At that time, "since Magdalena's birth" meant eight years ago.
Wilhelm was fifty-nine but looked considerably younger. He was
a tall, powerfully built man. "It's not just me," he told Margret in
a low voice. "It's Cora. She's nine now, and getting older all the
time. I'm worried about her." Although Wilhelm certainly hadn't
meant this the way Margret construed it at first, a shiver ran down
her spine.

She set off for Buchholz two weeks later and tried her luck with
Elsbeth. But all her efforts were in vain. Elsbeth listened placidly,
her hands folded on her lap. "I'd let him if I had the strength for
another child. My time isn't up yet - I could still conceive, but
how am I supposed to cope? No! We all have to make sacrifices.
Wilhelm is a man. He must bear it like a man."

Wilhelm must have coped somehow, probably by resuming his
visits to the woman who took money, Margret didn't know exactly.
He had never raised the subject again, just made a couple of
references to his fears for Cora, who was beginning to display signs
of puberty.

It hadn't been pleasant to wonder if Wilhelm was putting the lid
on Elsbeth's insane treatment of Cora. Her own brother! Even if
he were at the end of his sexual tether, he surely wouldn't lay hands
on a child! Not his own daughter!

Margret found this hard to believe but had made a half-hearted
attempt to discover the truth. She ran into a brick wall. If Cora
didn't want to say something, wild horses wouldn't drag it out of
her; Margret had discovered that even then.

It was predictable that disaster would strike sooner or later. From
Margret's point of view, disaster had already struck five years ago -
on 16 May, Magdalena's birthday, to be precise. Cora had seemed
to vanish from the face of the earth for six whole months.

With a shudder, Margret remembered the phone call in December of that year. Her niece's voice: "May I come to you?
I can't live here any longer. I don't think I can lire any longer,
period." She recalled Cora standing outside her door with the
needle marks in her arms and the dent in her skull, recalled the
nights, well into the following March, when she used to have to
jump out of bed and hurry into the living room, her first step
being to grab Cora's wrists to prevent the girl from harming
herself. Frightful nightmares followed by raging headaches and
resolute silence. Whatever had happened to Cora, she couldn't
talk about it. She made one reference to an accident the previous
October, but that was all.

She needed the assistance of a competent physician, but she
wouldn't let anyone near her. Margret almost had to go down on
her knees before she would agree to let Achim Mick examine her.
Achim said that the headaches were probably caused by the injury
to her head and expressed surprise that a wound sustained in
October had healed so well. As for the nightmares, lie surmised that
they resulted from some traumatic experience. A good psychologist
could probably help, he said.

Cora rejected this idea, and somehow she managed without any
help. These days there was no need to worry about her. Cora was
doing fine - she visited Margret every other Sunday accompanied
by Gereon and her little boy, full of news about her own home and
her exhausting work at the office.

It delighted Margret every time to hear how enthusiastically
Cora had taken to such an unfamiliar job. Gereon Bender was no
ideal husband in Margret's opinion. She thought him a fool, but
since marrying him Cora had had something useful to do and no
more time to brood. Her problems seemed to be over. She always
made an equable impression when they came visiting, and they
were due to come again this Sunday.

Margret had spoken with her niece on the phone just before
lunch on Friday. Cora had sounded a little on edge. Lately she'd
often sounded a bit edgy on Fridays, and no wonder, after a week's
stressful office work.

Shortly before eleven, just after the movie started, Gereon
phoned. He'd never called her before, so that was a bad omen
in itself - the second tonight. He gave her a garbled account of
what had happened, but all she caught at first was a single word:
police!

She thought Cora had been hurt in some way. It would never
have occurred to her that she could hurt someone else. Cora was
rebellious by nature and tended to make an aggressive impression,
but at heart she was gentle as a lamb. And lambs don't kill; they're
born victims.

Margret continued to hold the receiver to her ear long after
Gereon had hung up, feeling sure she'd misunderstood. She tried
to call back but there was no reply, either from her niece's house
or from that of her parents-in-law It was a while before she could
bring herself to call directory enquiries and ask the number of the
district police headquarters. After that she needed a brandy.

It was like before. She wavered between not wanting to know
and the need for certainty, between a desire for a quiet life and the
knowledge that Cora had no one to vouch for her. No help could
be expected from Gereon. His final words had made his position
clear: "I'm finished with her."

Margret brewed herself some coffee and drank two cups to offset
the brandy. Then, at long last, she dialled the number and stated
her name and business. No information could be given over the
phone, she was told, and there was no possibility of her speaking to
the officer in charge of the case. That was information enough.

Rudolf Grovian turned off the recording machine when a deep
sigh conveyed that she'd said enough for the time being. It was a few
minutes after eleven. She was looking tired but highly relieved. He
was familiar with this effect from other interrogations. The coffee
had been ready for ages. He rose and went over to the sink, picked
up the mug and rinsed it out thoroughly under the tap so she could
see. Then he shook off the drops. There wasn't a clean cloth around
for drying up, needless to say. Nothing was ever to hand when you
needed it.

"Milk and sugar, Fran Bender?"

"No thanks. Black, please. Is it nice and strong?"

"Black as pitch," he said, and she smiled faintly and nodded.

He filled the mug and brought it over to the desk. His manner still
accorded with normal interrogation tactics. No one, not even Grovian
himself, noticed that there was something different about it.

"Would you like something to eat as well?"

He resumed his seat across the desk from her, wondering where
on earth he could drum up something edible at this hour. He had a
brief vision of his sister-in-law's groaning dinner table. In addition
to the serious talk he'd planned to have with his daughter, the
evening's agenda had included barbecued spare ribs. Still, the fat
wouldn't have done his cholesterol count any good.

He watched her clasp the mug in both hands, then carefully take
it by the handle and put it to her lips. She took a tiny sip. "Fine, just
right," she murmured, and shook her head. "Many thanks, I'm not
hungry. Rather tired, that's all."

That was unmistakable. He should have granted her a breather
- she was entitled to one - but he only had a few questions left.
She'd avoided giving the smallest pointer that would have enabled
her story to be checked. No names apart from Johnny Guitar and
Horsti. No dance-hall name and no make of car, let alone a licence
number. It was typical of her refusal to involve anyone else.

But she must be made to understand that this wasn't good
enough. He needed a lot more than she'd disclosed, or the DA
would be bound to tap his forehead and draw attention to a few
inconsistencies. For instance, to the fact that Georg Frankenberg
came from Frankfurt. Born and raised there, he hadn't left his
parental home until he was called up for national service in the West
German army. After that he'd studied at Cologne University.

Buchholz? Why should Frankenberg have gone there? Grovian
found it hard to believe he'd strayed so far north purely to pick up
girls. He surmised that one of his friends came from Hamburg or
its environs. He'd unfortunately neglected to question Meilhofer
about the other two members of the group, but at that stage he
couldn't have guessed that they might be important.

He didn't ask whether she felt up to answering a few more
questions. All he said was: "The coffee will do you good."

It was pretty strong; he'd seen that when lie poured it out.
That was why he hadn't had any himself. Strong coffee gave him
palpitations.

He restarted the recording machine and - unaware of the
wound he was probing - reverted to the only specific detail she'd
mentioned. "So you first met Georg Frankenberg five years ago.
On May sixteenth, to be precise."

She eyed him impassively over the rim of the mug and nodded.
He did a quick calculation. At that time Frankenberg had been
twenty-two and in his first year at university. The summer term
began in March and lasted until mid July. The summer vacation
spanned August and September. That left the weekends. She'd
only mentioned weekends, and not every weekend.

A young man with a penchant for fast cars could have covered
the hundred miles or so in no time, and it was probable that Frankenberg had had wheels during his time at university. His
upper-class parents would have provided their offspring with all
he needed for an existence in keeping with his social status. His
father was a Herr Professor, a consultant neurologist and surgeon
who had for seven years headed his own clinic, which specialized
in plastic surgery. His son must have been expected to know whose
footsteps to tread in.

But the son had a bee in his bonnet. He preferred the drums to
the lecture hall, amused himself with a different girl every week
and eventually fathered a child on a girl of obscure parentage
who hadn't been an easy lay. Whether or not Frankie had really
been pleased to become a father was neither here nor there. His
parents certainly wouldn't have welcomed the news. It all fitted.
Grovian possessed enough imagination to be able to put himself
in Georg Frankenberg's place. Five years ago, whether to avoid
trouble at home or on orders from above, a young man had left his
pregnant girlfriend in the lurch. Sometime lie may have heard that
she'd thrown herself in front of a car. From his point of view, that
transfigured the whole affair.

His conscience must have pricked him badly. When he spoke of
that girlfriend later on - only once and obliquely - he pronounced
her dead, killed in a road accident. Which was one way of putting
it. But Frankie never forgot her. He'd often wondered what would
have become of her and his child if he'd stood by her, and when
she went for him beside the lake ...

Grovian didn't notice that his tone had softened appreciably. "We
at least need the names of the other two members of Frankenberg's
group, Frau Bender."

"I don't know their names," she said with a weary shrug. "He
called them his friends, that's all."

"Would you recognize them if you saw them again?"

She sighed. "The fat one, maybe, but not the other. I only saw
him once. He was already in the cellar when we arrived. It was
pretty dark down there and lie was sitting in a corner. I paid no
attention to him when he left with the fat one."

That was more or less what he'd expected, but it shouldn't be too difficult to discover who had shared Frankenberg's short-lived
dream of a career in music. The next point: "What make of car
was Georg Frankenberg driving when you knew him?"

She stared into her coffee mug. "I can't remember. I don't think
it was his car we went in that night. The fat boy was driving." After
a few moments she added hesitantly: "It was a Golf GTI, silver.
The registration number began with a B. BN, perhaps, I'm not
sure."

`And you headed in the Hamburg direction?"

She merely nodded.

"Can't you be a bit more precise, Frau Bender? How long did the
drive take? Where did you turn off the autobahn?"

She gave another shrug. "I'm sorry, I didn't notice."

"So you've no idea what part of Hamburg the house was situated
in?"

Her shake of the head exasperated him. "Can you at least
describe the place? Was it a detached house? What were the
surroundings like?"

All at once she flared up. "Who cares, after all this time? It's
pointless! Listen, I've confessed to killing him and explained why
I did it, so let's leave it at that. Why do you want to know all
these things? You want to look for the house? Good luck to you.
Hamburg's a big city."

She broke off, blinking nervously, and ran a hand over her eyes
as if brushing away an unpleasant vision. "It was a big suburban
house with a lot of trees around it," she went on with undiminished
vehemence. "That's all I know, honestly. I was very much in love
- I paid more attention to Johnny than I did to the surroundings or
the architecture. If I describe the hallway for you, you can ring the
doorbell of every big house in Hamburg and ask to see inside."