The Sinner (29 page)

Not far away a man and a little boy were playing football. The
boy, who wasn't much older than his grandson, kicked the ball
maladroitly in his direction. He picked it up and threw it back. The
youngster smiled at him, and it occurred to him that his grandson
would soon have little to smile at. Or maybe he would!

It was likely that Marita and her young son would move in
with them if her marriage were really on the rocks. A sobering
thought, and one that temporarily overshadowed all else. Goodbye
to domestic peace and tranquillity! He had no objection to a few
building bricks on the living-room floor, no objection to childish
laughter or tears, but his restful evenings on the sofa would be a
thing of the past once his daughter was back home.

He pictured the way it used to be: the living-room table strewn
with nail varnish, lipsticks, mascara and all the other stuff she
daubed on her face. He had asked her innumerable times to apply
her war paint in the bathroom, but no! The light was too poor, she
said, and Mechthild backed her up. "Leave her alone, Rudi. Must
we have the same fuss every evening?"

Barely an hour later he was sitting in his daughter's apartment, determined to save whatever could be saved. His son-in-law wasn't
there, and his attempts to intervene were cut short. "Stay out of it,
Rudi, you've no idea what this is all about."

Mechthild, who was holding their grandson on her lap, kept
saying: "Yes, but what are you going to " She never got any
further; Marita had it all worked out. She wouldn't hear of
coming home, of swapping a spacious apartment for a room in
her parents' house or life in the big city for their claustrophobic
suburban ambience. The financial aspect presented no problems:
Peter would have to pay up, naturally. Three thousand marks a
month, Marita envisaged.

"There are smaller sums," said Grovian.

`And larger," said his daughter. `And with an income like his, at
least he'll know what he's slaving away for." Thereafter she forgot
he was there and talked exclusively to her mother. She spoke of
gross neglect, of irreconcilable differences, of a man with nothing
on his mind but bits and bytes, RAMs and ROMs, the Internet
and other such nonsense - a man with whom you couldn't hold a
sensible conversation, still less enjoy a night out on the town.

"But that's how it is when a man works for a living and wants to
get on in his profession," Mechthild said feebly. `A wife has to grin
and bear it sometimes. Still, she gets something out of life too."

Yes, said Marita: nappies, saucepans and, just for a change, the
two-year-olds' playgroup twice a week. Grovian couldn't listen to it
any more. He kept trying to draw comparisons, but there weren't
any. His daughter and Cora Bender were like day and night, fire
and water. One of them didn't need his advice - didn't even want
to know what he thought. Keep out of this, Rudi ... What was a
man to do when such limits were constantly imposed on him in
private? His only option was to bury himself in his work.

On Monday morning Grovian did precisely that. He had a
longish discussion with the DA that evening, and by Tuesday he
had assembled sufficient material to confront her with her lies once
more and chip away at her wall.

It was late afternoon when he entered the cell. He saw her start
at the sight of him and was just as startled himself. The last two days had transformed her into an apathetic creature, seemingly
incapable of any reaction.

He began with the district hospital at Diilmen. That had only
cost him a telephone call and a few minutes' waiting around on
the line.

He had spoken with Georg Frankenberg's father the afternoon
before. He couldn't get through to Ute Frankenberg, who was still
unfit to be interviewed, but it was doubtful if she could tell him
much in any case, having met her husband for the first time only
six months before their marriage.

`And I hardly think," he said with a faint smile, "that he would
have discussed his previous affairs with her."

In his head he could hear the DAs voice: "I respect your commitment, Herr Grovian, but I must urge you not to investigate so
one-sidedly. Let us assume that the woman really didn't know her
victim."

But she must have known him! In the past two days, Grovian had
compiled a few details that indicated as much. To call them evidence
would be an overstatement. Facts would be a better description,
and one of those facts was the body of a young woman.

There really was one - with two broken ribs! No missing persons
report had been filed in Buchholz at the time in question, but then,
Cora had stated that she'd never seen the girl there before. The
missing persons report could be anywhere. Only the authorities
at Luneburg had documents relating to an unknown female aged
fifteen to twenty at most.

Her skeletonized body had been found near a military training
area on Luneburg Heath, cause of death unascertainable. No head
injury, larynx and hyoid bone intact. In the police pathologist's
opinion, the ribs could have been broken after death, possibly by
animals - a frequent occurrence.

The corpse must have been lying in the open for at least
three months. Naked! No articles of clothing had been found
at the scene, nor had anything else that might have facilitated
identification. Appeals for information were published, but to no
avail. The local police assumed that the girl had been a hitch-hiker. Given that Cora Bender and her helpful aunt had lied through
their teeth, however, it was quite conceivable that she was the girl
from the cellar. It didn't take much imagination to see that, just
some intuition, a little knowledge of human nature and an ability
to memorize casual remarks and assign them due importance at
the crucial moment.

Provided, of course, that Cora had been persuaded to go for a
drive with Johnny and his fat friend back in May, not in August.
That would fit. It was strange how she and her aunt had harped
on about August.

Grovian intended to consult the CID's central records office and
check all the missing persons reports for the time in question. A
name would have made things considerably easier.

He had, in fact, elicited two names from Winfried Meilhofer on
Monday morning: Ottmar Denner and Hans Bockel.

"Do they mean anything to you, Frau Bender?"

She shook her head. He continued to smile, just smile and be
friendly and speculate on why she and her aunt should both have
cited August as the source of her troubles. Why? Because they knew
that the body had been discovered, he would have bet on it! Because
they didn't want to be associated with it - because they dreaded
what might happen if such a connection were established.

"They do to me," Grovian said. "I think Hans Bockel and
Ottmar Denner are Billy-Goat and Tiger respectively. Denner was
the group's composer, I'm told, and composers like to immortalize
themselves. One of the numbers on that tape was called `Tiger's
Song'. Remember? You described it as your tune."

The DA had poured scorn on his theory. Billy-Goat and Tiger?
As fictitious as the district hospital at Dulmen! She merely shook
her head again, but he pressed on regardless: "I also find it
interesting that Ottmar Denner came from Bonn. He studied at
Cologne University with Georg Frankenberg and lived at home
while there. At that time he drove a silver VW Golf GTI with
- logically enough - a BN licence plate. We're currently trying to
discover his whereabouts, but it isn't easy. It appears lie may have
gone abroad - a development aid job."

He had interviewed Ottmar Denner's parents only a few hours
ago. And got nowhere. They claimed not to know where their son
was at present. Ghana, Sudan, Chad - somewhere or other. His
request for a photograph had also been rejected. Why did he need
one? What was Ottmar charged with, if anything? The father had
been a fat, forceful little man who knew his rights and those of his
son.

Grovian had envisaged laying out five or six photographs on the
desk and asking her to pick out Johnny's fat friend. No such luck!
However, as things stood she would probably have shaken her head
at a photo as well.

They still hadn't discovered anything about Hans Bockel. Grovian
assumed that Bockel was the one from north Germany, but if he'd
ever had any connection with a house in Hamburg, there were no
reports of it. Nor could he have been a fellow student of Georg
Frankenberg. There was no such name on the university roll.

Instead, there was a statement from Frankenberg's father.
Grovian had been unable to interview his mother - she was still
too traumatized - and Professor Johannes Frankenberg denied all
knowledge of the names Denner and Bockel. His son's flirtation
with music had been just a brief episode, a craze that had lasted
only a few weeks. Georg had soon realized that his time was too
precious to waste on playing around.

And in May five years ago Georg Frankenberg had been at home
in his father's private clinic, recovering from a fractured arm. The
clinic's records stated that he had broken it on 16 May. Precisely
the day on which Cora Bender - according to her original version,
which fitted the discovery of the body so neatly - had yearned to
make his acquaintance at a disco in Buchholz.

According to his father, Georg Frankenberg had come home for
the weekend on Friday night and suffered a bad fall on Saturday
morning. Fortunately, it was a simple fracture, and his father's
clinic was only a few yards away. It hadn't even been necessary to
call in another doctor.

Professor Frankenberg's statement had sufficed to convince the
DA that Cora Bender's retraction was simply a belated adherence to the truth. It didn't convince Grovian. The timing of the broken arm
had galvanized him. Records could be doctored if you headed your
own clinic and knew that your son was in trouble. May 16, of all
days! Another date mightn't have aroused his suspicions, but ...

"Professor Frankenberg is a respectable man," he told Cora.
"He won't be too easy to discredit. We can only hope that Ottmar
Denner and Hans Bockel will confirm your story if we locate
them."

Till then she had merely listened, wishing he would go to blazes
but secretly admiring his obstinacy. He shrank from nothing, not
even from harassing the father of her victim.

She'd panicked when he mentioned the silver Golf GTI, but she
soon recovered her poise. It had to be a coincidence that Johnny's
friend had driven the same car as a friend of Georg Frankenberg.
It was a typical young man's car, after all. Meantime, the chief was
watching her intently.

"Nobody can confirm anything," she said. "I told you a pack of
lies."

Grovian hadn't heard her voice for two days. In front of the
magistrate it had sounded resolute and hostile, cold and indifferent.
Now, her harsh, unemotional tone and hunched, introverted pose
counselled caution.

He shook his head emphatically. "No, no, Frau Bender, lies don't
deposit dead bodies on the edge of a military training area. I've
found the girl who was in the cellar with you. A dead girl with two
broken ribs, Frau Bender, and you heard them snap."

He'd saved that till last, intending it as a bolt from the blue in
the event of her not admitting anything, but perhaps it was just
a damp squib. If she really hadn't made that trip until August,
the dead body was irrelevant. But her reaction conveyed that it
was a skyrocket rather than a damp squib. She came to life from
one moment to the next, and he saw her bosom heave before she
spoke.

"Don't talk nonsense! Use your head, man! I can't have heard a
thing in all that noise - if it had been the way I said. It wasn't, but
let's assume it was. There'd have been five people down there and
deafening music. I don't know what a snapping rib sounds like, but
it can't be as loud as all that."

Her hands started to shake. She clasped the left with the right.
He remembered that from three nights ago. It was the preliminary
alarm signal. Or, as prior experience of her prompted him to
regard it, the precursor of a truth she was unwilling to face. Reason
bade him pay the closest attention, but, at the same time, raised an
admonitory finger: "Stop it, Rudi. Leave it to the shrinks."

"You're a ..." she said hoarsely. Either the appropriate term
eluded her, or she considered it too coarse. Instead, she asked: "Do
you think it's right, what you're doing? Some nerve, bullying his
father like that! The poor man must be finding it hard enough as it
is. Does he have any more children?"

He shook his head, watching her series of changing expressions,
the rubbing and kneading of her hands. Her voice broke, and her
shoulders sagged, her head too.

"Then you must leave him alone. What's done is done. It won't
do anyone any good to discover that a girl died. All right, a girl did
die, but it had nothing to do with me. I only have the man on my
conscience."