The Sinner (43 page)

The three of them had sat in Grit Adigar's modern, airy living
room while Melanie dredged her memory.

She had once seen Cora at the Aladdin with Johnny Guitar. On
Magdalena's birthday. Grit sought to contradict her daughter on
that point. "You must be wrong," she said. "Cora would never
have gone out that night."

"I know what I saw, Mother," Melanie said reproachfully. "I
was surprised myself - I even spoke to her about it. She was on
her own, and ..." A touch of jealousy manifested itself. Johnny
Guitar was a blond Adonis, a fascinating youngster. Melanie
obviously wouldn't have kicked him out of bed herself, although
he was to be treated with care. He always went around with a fat
little acolyte.

Melanie had once seen a girl come back into the Aladdin
after going for a drive with the pair - in tears! She retired to
the ladies' with a couple of girlfriends. Melanie was curious, so
she eavesdropped on them. "The swine!" she heard the girl say
between sobs. `Johnny didn't lift a finger - he simply let him do it.
I'm going to report them!" Someone else said: "You'd better keep
your mouth shut. We did warn you, but you went with them of
your own free will."

They all kept their mouths shut. However, Johnny had found it
harder to pick up girls after that, and it could only be a matter of
time before he changed his stamping ground. Melanie doubted
whether Cora had learned of his dangerous reputation because
she was always with Horsti.

But not that night. Johnny promptly seized his opportunity, and
Cora became absolutely infatuated with him. They danced and
necked. Watching them, Melanie made up her mind to warn Cora
before Johnny talked her into going for a drive. But then a miracle
occurred: his fat little friend also got lucky that night. She saw him dancing, almost without a break and always with the same girl. She
was new to the Aladdin, blonde and rather plump but quite cute.
Just right for a boy like him.

"We left around half-past ten," Melanie said. "He was still
dancing with her, and Cora was with Johnny. I didn't want to spoil
her fun. Besides, I thought nothing much could happen if she was
in a foursome. That was the last time I saw Cora. Johnny and his
friend never reappeared after that either."

Horst Cremer confirmed and amplified those particulars. He had
last seen Cora the first weekend in May. She told him she couldn't
meet him for another two weeks. She gave no special reason. She
certainly didn't say anything about her sister being worse, but then
she very seldom mentioned her sister at all.

Horst had stayed at home on the night of 16 May. On 23 May he
waited in vain for Cora to show up at the Aladdin. He hung around
outside her parents' house for the next two evenings, hoping to get
some explanation from her. Also without success. He didn't dare
ring the bell; he was too intimidated by the horror stories she'd told
him about her martinet of a father.

He tried his luck once more on the last Saturday in May, but Cora
still didn't show When he asked around, he was told that she'd
done the dirty on him on the sixteenth. Melanie Adigar wasn't
the only one who'd witnessed the start of her liaison with Johnny
Guitar. Several other people claimed to have seen her get into a
car with Johnny and his fat friend later that night, accompanied by
another girl whom nobody knew

This information had instantly reminded Rudolf Grovian of the
skeleton on Luneburg Heath. Nothing much could happen if she
was in a foursome? Like hell it couldn't!

He failed to discover the make of the car in question. Melanie
Adigar had no precise recollection of it. "They didn't always turn
up in the same car. It may have been a silver Golf on one occasion,
but that would have belonged to the little fatty. Johnny went in
for classy motors like Porsches or Jaguars. Once I saw him getting
out of an American job, no idea what make. Lime green it was, I
remember, with huge fins and lots of chrome - an oldie, a regular show-off's car. I remember thinking his daddy must be rich or in
the second-hand car business."

Horst Cremer couldn't provide any information about the car
either. No one had mentioned a make. She'd got into it withJohnny,
that was all. Horsti had begun by drowning his sorrows in drink.
Until the middle of June he wavered between despair and the hope
that Cora would make it up with him. Johnny was notorious for
coming to Buchholz for one reason only: to pick up girls.

Horsti spent every weekend at the Aladdin and kept watch on
her parents' house night after night. One Sunday at the end of
June he took the plunge. Instead of hanging around on the street
corner he rang the doorbell.

"It was answered by an unkempt old scarecrow of a woman,"
he told Grovian. "I asked for Cora, and she said: `There isn't any
Cora in this house, not any more. My daughter has disappeared.' I
couldn't believe my ears."

Grovian couldn't either. Disappeared? At the end of June,
when her aunt and the neighbour were convinced that Cora had
remained at her dying sister's bedside until 16 August?

However, Grit Adigar and Margret Rosch suddenly weren't so
sure any more. After what her daughter had said, Grit Adigar
started backtracking. She hadn't actually set eyes on Cora between
May and August. It was odd, now she came to think of it. Wilhelm
seemed to have taken a sudden dislike to her popping in, but she
hadn't thought twice about it when he shooed her into the kitchen.
She'd believed him when lie gestured at the ceiling with a mournful
expression and murmured: "Cora never stirs from her side." Why
should Wilhelm have been lying?

Margret asked herself the same question. If Cora had already
disappeared on 16 May, as Grovian surmised, why had Wilhelm
merely spoken of her getting into bad company when he called his
sister the following day?

Wilhelm was past being consulted, so Grovian had tried his
luck with Elsbeth Rosch. Margret, who had moved into the house
after her brother's death, reluctantly left them to it in the kitchen.
Elsbeth informed him that Magdalena was sitting at the Almighty's feet, her beauty blossoming afresh now that every stain and every
sinful thought had been eradicated from her earthly body.

It didn't make much sense. He thought at first that Elsbeth had
forgotten her elder daughter, but then she told him about the
satanic creature who had duped them all. Who had frequented the
temples of sin instead of communing with God. Who had left her
ailing sister to her fate because she was dazzled by fleshly desires.
Exactly when the satanic creature had turned her back on her
parental home, Elsbeth didn't know

He could forget her blathering. The other two statements were
more productive, though not, unfortunately, from an evidential
point of view All that Horst Cremer had to offer was indirect
hearsay. He couldn't even recall who had informed him of Cora's
breach of faith. As for Melanie Adigar, she hadn't seen whether
Cora had left the Aladdin alone or accompanied byJohnny, his fat
little friend and the unknown girl.

She seemed glad that Grovian had spoken to her former boyfriend.
"How is he?" she asked in a voice fraught with melancholy. "What's
he doing these days? Is he married?"

She listened to what he had to say, wondered if Horsti had asked
after her and then, in her turn, started to talk about those nights at
the Aladdin. How she used sometimes to dance and sometimes to
stand on the sidelines. She laughed softly. "Horsti was a nice boy.
My conscience often pricked me because I only used him to keep
the others at bay. I was waiting for the right one to come along.
Mean of me, wasn't it?"

Grovian merely shrugged and let her run on. He cudgelled his
brains for a way of skirting the reef named Magdalena and steering
for 16 May all the same. Her time at the Aladdin and the brief scene
in the car park - that was all he wanted to talk to her about. The last
thing he wanted was to drive her back behind her wall as he had the
last time they spoke, when he'd watched her shaking her head for a
full fifteen minutes before he grasped that she'd switched off.

He had to know the sequel to her meeting with Johnny. There
must have been one. Johnny wasJohannes = Hans Bockel, that was
the only possibility. Bockel landed the girls, had his fun with them
and made sure his friends got their share. And if Cora had been
treated like the girl whose sobs Melanie Adigar had heard outside
the ladies', it all made sense.

Her infatuation had put her at the mercy of two other men.
Even if the fat boy had also had a girl with him that night, there
was still Georg Frankenberg. And however studious and serious
Frankie may have been, many another young man had lost control
of himself before him. It only remained to prove that his arm had
not been broken on 16 May, but somewhat later.

It hadn't taken much imagination to work out how the injury
was sustained, just a few sleepless nights in which Grovian had
pictured a young man coming home, beside himself with fear, and
telling his father about a dead girl, possibly two. His father calms
him down and asks a few questions. He learns that no one saw his
son with the girls, and that it happened a long way from home.
"Don't worry, my boy, we'll sort it out. You won't feel a thing, I'll
give you a local anaesthetic beforehand."

Grovian and his thoughts were far away in Frankfurt, in the
Aladdin and various other places, but not really with her. However,
he didn't appear to have missed anything of importance. She was
still talking about Horsti, who had really ceased to matter.

She sighed. "I hope he's happily married, I really do. He deserves
it. He always tried to do the right thing by me. He gave me a
cassette for my birthday, one he'd recorded himself. By Queen. We
already had it, but his recording was much better, no background
hiss at all. `We Are the Champions' and `Bohemian Rhapsody'.
Magdalena was so mad about them, she listened to nothing else for
a week. She adored Freddie Mercury's voice, and now he's dead
too, long dead. My God, why are they all dead?"

She clapped a hand over her mouth, abruptly wide-eyed with
horror. "I didn't kill him too, did I? I couldn't have, he was ill - very
ill. I think I read that somewhere."

Grovian had missed the connection; he thought she was still talking about Horst Cremer. Seeing her horrified expression, he
hastened to reassure her. "No, don't worry, Frau Bender, he's in
the best of health. His wife is expecting a baby soon, and he's so
looking forward to it. He couldn't be better, honestly. He's opened
a small service station."

"You're lying," she said. She bit her lip and shook her head. As
she did so, a picture took shape in her mind.

She forgot about the chief. All her attention was focused on the
little alarm clock on the bedside table. She could see it clearly. The
hands were registering a few minutes past eleven.

Magdalena hadn't heard her coming up the stairs because she
had the Walkman plugged into both ears and the volume turned
up as high as it would go. She sat up with a look of mingled
surprise and satisfaction. "You're very punctual. Nothing doing at
the disco?"

She went over to the bed, brushed a long strand of hair out of
Magdalena's eyes and kissed her on the cheek. "No, it was a dead
loss. I didn't feel like hanging around any longer. I'd sooner be here
with you."

Freddie Mercury's distorted voice was issuing from the tiny
earpieces in Magdalena's hand. "Bohemian Rhapsody". "Is this
the real life?" No, that wasn't it, that was a lie. "I've been tarting
for you for years; we'll soon have enough money." No, we won't,
because stealing takes too long. "I've given my boyfriend the push
- he kept bugging me with his stupid questions - but I've already
got another. His name is Horst, a really cool type." Crap! A little
runt everyone laughs at. "I'd sooner be here with you." The hell
I would!

I'd like to have stayed. Johnny was there. I've never told you
about him, and I'm not going to now Johnny belongs to me
alone. He's young and strong and so handsome, you've never
seen anyone like him outside a movie magazine. He looks like the
archangel in Mother's Bible. And I touched him, his shoulders, his face. I had my arms around his waist and his hands on the
back of my neck.