The Sinner (25 page)

"Never mind. Tell me something, do we possess a Bible?"

"That's enough, Rudi! It's nearly half-past three." Mechthild
turned over on her side.

"Do we or don't we?" lie persisted.

"In the living room," she said. "In the cupboard beside the
door."

So he went downstairs and, after turning out half the contents
of the cupboard, came across a dog-eared edition with doodles in
the margins. Evidently a relic of their daughter's schooldays, it was
among her old schoolbooks. He lay down on the sofa and read the
passage about the expulsion from Paradise. Then, remembering
that an apple had been involved, he went so far as to surmise that
Cora Bender's sole reason for taking some apples with her to the
lake had been a wish to swim until Judgement Day.

Her expulsion from Paradise meant expulsion from her fatherin-law's business and marriage to a man who had beaten her to
a pulp and was quite unconcerned about how the police were
treating her. When making his statement, Gereon Bender hadn't
asked how his wife was or what would happen to her.

Then he remembered a reference to Mary Magdalene. He read
a few lines on the subject and felt even more depressed. Mary
Magdalene had been a whore. That fact, coupled with Cora
Bender's heroin-taking and needle-scarred forearms, formed a
combination he didn't like at all.

At half-past five he raided the refrigerator for the makings of a
hearty breakfast and left a note for Mechthild on the kitchen table
informing her that he would contrive to come home for lunch.
It wouldn't take longer than that to deliver Cora Bender to the
examining magistrate, he felt sure, and that was precisely what he
intended to do - precisely what he should have done last night,
when she displayed the first signs of mental confusion. It was
unpardonable of him to have disobeyed his inner voice.

He was back in his office by six. Werner Hoss turned up shortly
afterwards. They collated the documentation for the DA, listened
again to the tapes, especially the last one, discussed them for a
while and came to no firm conclusion.

"The tape from Frankenberg's cassette player," said Grovian,
"has it been taken into safekeeping?"

Hoss grinned. "Want to listen to it?"

"No," lie replied, grinning too. "On the other hand, if it really
was his own composition ..."

Hoss dug out the tape from Forensics, and they listened to it briefly.
It was just music, rock music of a rather wild and woolly kind. To
Grovian's ears it sounded chaotic and monotonous, but if it had
some bearing on the murder, only the last number on the tape could
be relevant. They knew from Winfried Meilhofer that the machine
had switched itself off only a few seconds after the killing.

"We should try an experiment," suggested Hoss. "In other
words, play her a sample and see if she can identify it straight off.
I couldn't, not that kind of stuff"

Grovian firmly shook his head. "If it comes out that we've played
it to her, we can kiss the case goodbye."

A copy of the autopsy report arrived shortly before nine. A total
of seven stab wounds in positions that tallied with Cora Bender's
account. One in the neck, one severing the carotid, and one
through the larynx. The rest were comparatively superficial. Cause
of death: aspiration. Georg Frankenberg had choked on his own
blood before lie could bleed to death.

The DA, who turned up not long afterwards, requested a
thorough briefing.

"Do you have a confession?" he asked.

"We have a statement," said Grovian. He explained what he
thought of it and mentioned the fainting fit. That couldn't be
hushed up, nor did lie try to gloss over it. He described Cora's
alternate spells of clarity and confusion and ended with Margret
Rosch's account of her nightmares. "I'd like you to listen to this."

At a sign from Grovian, Hoss started the tape recorder. The DA
listened to Cora's voice with knitted brow Although he didn't pursue
the subject of her fainting fit, his expression clearly conveyed what
he thought: such things simply shouldn't happen. Having listened
to the halting voice on the tape for a while, he muttered "Good
God!" and tapped his forehead in a meaningful way. "Is she ...?"

Werner Hoss shrugged. Grovian gave an emphatic shake of the
head. The DA asked if they thought she was putting on an act.

"No!" said Grovian. He couldn't resist a little sideswipe. "You
wouldn't ask that question if you'd been there. These tapes should
be listened to by people capable of interpreting them. I mean
that. A transcript isn't good enough. She's carrying a lot of ballast
around, that woman." He pointed to a few major features of her
childhood, like her mother's religious fanaticism and her belief
that her father's "thing" would rot off in due course.

`And there's something else," he said. "We'll look into it tomorrow We don't have much to go on, just a few words, but we
should at least make inquiries. A girl from Buchholz may have
disappeared at the time in question. There may even be a corpse
with broken ribs up there."

The DA shrugged his shoulders. He skimmed through the
witnesses' depositions and the autopsy report. Then he looked
up and said: "We've got one corpse already, don't forget. It may
not have any broken ribs, but this stuff is more than enough for
me. It's rare for a person to remember so precisely where they
stabbed someone."

"What do you mean, precisely?" said Grovian. "She listed the
points at which a stab wound can be fatal. Her aunt is a nurse.
She lived with her for eighteen months, so she could have picked
up a bit of medical knowledge."

The DA regarded him impassively for a moment or two. "Odd
sort of conversations to have with an aunt," he said. `Anyway,
Grovian, she not only listed the relevant points, she skewered
them."

Grovian knew this, even though he hadn't seen it with his own
eyes. He also knew that remembering such precise details was
extremely rare, if not the great exception. No one committing
a crime in the heat of the moment recalled the exact sequence
of events, and this had been a crime of passion - it couldn't
be anything else, and he wanted the DA to share his opinion.
"Would you like a word with her?" he suggested. "I could send
for her."

The DA shook his head. "Let her sleep. She must have had a
tough night, but mine wasn't pleasant either. I don't care to prolong
it at the moment."

Arsehole, thought Grovian.

It was late that morning when Berrenrath woke her. She didn't
know he could have been tucked up in bed at home long ago, and
it wouldn't have interested her particularly if she had. Last night
his kindliness had possessed a certain value. Now he was just a link
in the chain with which she had been fettered to the past.

She had a stale taste in her mouth, but her head was quite clear
again. Cold, too, as if her brain had frozen in the night. Her fear
- and with it every other sensation - was now encased in a block
of ice.

She asked for a glass of water and was given one. Mineral water,
which did her good. She sipped it slowly. Not long afterwards
Berrenrath escorted her back into the chief's office.

There she was offered some breakfast. The chief was waiting for
her, as was the other man, this time wearing pale grey slacks and a
check shirt with an unobtrusive pattern. Both men looked weary,
and both seemed concerned that she should really be feeling all
right. On the tray set before her was a plate of open sandwiches
topped with cheese and sausage. She wasn't hungry. The chief
urged her to eat something, at least, so she obliged him by taking
a mouthful of salami sandwich and washing it down with plenty
of coffee.

Then she asked his name. "I'm sorry, I had so many things on
my mind yesterday, I didn't take it in."

The chief stated his name, but in his case the name didn't matter.
He'd driven her to the brink of insanity, thereby demonstrating the
extent of his power over her and her mind. After him, no one else
would be strong enough to do that to her.

He announced that they were going take her to the district court
at Bruhl and hand her over to the examining magistrate.

"You'll have to wait a while, then," she said, looking at Werner
Hoss. Expressionlessly, she went on: "You had your doubts about
my story last night - rightly so."

They listened closely, never taking their eyes off her, as she calmly
proceeded to retract her whole edifice of lies aboutJohnny Guitar.
She concluded with a tiny little new lie: in October five years ago
she'd neglected to pay sufficient attention while crossing a road and
been knocked down by a car.

She saw Werner Hoss give a satisfied nod. The chief shot him a
furious glance and shook his head. Then, very cautiously, he raised
the subject of his interview with her aunt. Margret had told him
she'd been terribly mistreated, he said, and she herself had hinted
as much.

It was a blow to learn that Margret had lied to her and talked
after all - that she'd dished the little dirt she'd picked up from
Father about the end of the affair. Terribly mistreated, yet! And
she'd advised her to tell the truth about what happened from
August onwards! From August onwards the truth couldn't hurt
Margret. "Think of yourself for once!" Margret had been thinking
of Margret, no one else.

"What is all this nonsense?" she burst out. "I hinted at nothing.
Did I say I'd been mistreated?"

The chief smiled. "Not in so many words." He asked her to
listen to a passage from one of the tapes, but only, of course, if she
felt up to it.

"Yes, sure," she said. "I feel exactly the way someone in my
position should."

He turned on the tape recorder, and she listened to her quavering
voice: "He went on hitting her until she was dead - I heard her ribs
snap...

"My God," she said, "I sound awful - quite bemused. But you
did badger me, you must admit. That quack you foisted on me
said I'd been subjected to intense emotional pressure, that's why
I fainted. Ask him if you don't believe me. Or ask Berrenrath, he
heard it too. But don't worry, I won't lodge a formal complaint
against you. You were doing your job, I realize that."

Grovian nodded. He glanced at Hoss with an indefinable
expression. It was either a plea for understanding or a demand
for silence, which amounted to the same thing. He drew a deep
breath, trying to assess her state of mind. She seemed quite lucid,
and she could save him a lot of work if she wanted to. All she had
to do was name the girl the fat boy had gone off with.

He proceeded with extreme caution, intimating that he
understood what had prompted her to retract her story: a fear of
having to confront some terrible truth once more.

Her lips twisted in a mocking smile. "You haven't understood a
thing. The fat boy didn't have a girl. It was Johnny who went off
with her. The fat boy trailed around after them like a little doggie
who's only allowed to sniff a bone."

"So Johnny existed," said Grovian.

"Of course, but not for me. He never even spared me a
glance."

Grovian injected a touch of paternal reproof into his voice.
"Fran Bender, your aunt said

He got no further. "Cut it out!" she snapped. "Margret doesn't
have a clue, she wasn't there! Forget all that crap and listen to the
first tape instead. That's where you'll find the right answers. I'd
never seen Georg Frankenberg before yesterday. I overheard his
friend talking about him, that's how I was able to tell you something
about his music and the cellar."

"No," he retorted. "You spoke about a cellar years ago - you
dreamed about one. You aunt was certainly there then. And you
didn't faint last night because I'd subjected you to pressure. I did
pressure you, I don't deny it, but that wasn't why you fainted. You
remembered the cellar. You couldn't bear it, you shouted, and you
begged me to help you. I want to help you, Frau Bender, but you
must meet me halfway. Your aunt said. . ."

She pursed her lips and nodded. On her battered face, the grin
that accompanied the nod looked strangely pathetic. "I could tell
you something about my aunt that would make your ears flap. She
did something - theft, I think it's called. But you'd never guess what
she stole, not in your worst nightmare. Margret lied to you just as I did, take it from me. She can't afford to tell you the truth. Forget it,
though, I don't want to get her into trouble. I had a few nightmares
while I was staying with her, that's true, but they had nothing to do
with Georg Frankenberg. They were about quite different things."

"I know," he said. "They were about goats and pigs and tigers.
And worms and suchlike. It doesn't take much imagination to
interpret them. To me they sound like rape."

Grovian couldn't have explained how he came to prompt her in
this way. He caught a puzzled glance from Werner Hoss.

She laughed aloud. "Rape? Who put that idea into your head?
Margret?" She emitted another little bark of derisive laughter.
"Who else! It's too annoying she only said it to you. She'd have
done better to discuss it with me; I'd have had a story ready for her
- one that would make me as innocent as a lamb."