The Trap (15 page)

18

The thought that Lenzen might hurt Charlotte in some way sends a surge of nausea through my body. His threat is probably an empty one, but I can't stop thinking about it. I can tell by looking at Victor Lenzen that he's having trouble hiding his smug smile. Here he is at last: the monster from my dreams.

The rain outside has grown heavier; through the window I can see bullets of water riddling the surface of the lake. People in the real world will be grumbling about it. The more prudent among them will be going about under wind-bent umbrellas like oversized walking mushrooms. The rest will be dashing from shelter to shelter like scared animals, while the rain drenches their scalps.

‘Do you like animals?' I ask Lenzen, even before he's sat down again.

Carry on. Keep things moving.

‘I'm sorry?'

He sits down.

‘It's my turn. Before we were interrupted, you asked me what my dog was called and I said, “Bukowski”. Now I'm asking whether you like animals.'

‘Oh, we're still playing this little game, are we?'

I don't respond.

‘You're an eccentric woman, Frau Conrads,' says Lenzen.

I don't respond.

‘All right then,' he says. ‘Not especially. I never had a pet or anything, if that's what you mean.'

He glances at his notes, then looks me in the eye again.

‘I don't like the tone our conversation is beginning to take,' he says. ‘I'm sorry if I provoked you.'

I don't know what to say to this, so I nod.

‘Let's get back to your writing. What do you like most about your work?'

‘Creating my own realities. And, of course, providing my readers with something that gives them pleasure,' I say, with perfect sincerity. ‘What about you? What do you like most about your work?'

‘Interviews,' says Lenzen, and grins. He looks at his papers again. ‘Although—or maybe because you never appear in public—there's a lot about you in the press and on the internet.'

‘Oh yes?'

‘Do you read articles about yourself?'

‘Sometimes, when I'm plagued by boredom. Most of it is pure fiction.'

‘Does it upset you to read things about yourself that aren't true?'

‘No, it amuses me. The more off the wall, the better.'

That, too, is true.

‘My turn,' I say. ‘Two turns.'

I consider for a moment.

‘Do you think you're a good person?' I ask.

I'm fishing in troubled waters. Up until now, all my questions have slid off him. I don't know what I'm angling for. I had wanted to proceed in a structured fashion—find out what he looks like when he's telling the truth, then what he looks like when he's lying. And, finally, tighten the screws. But Lenzen is as slippery as an eel. Maybe I should try to provoke him.

‘A good person?' he echoes. ‘My God, you don't half ask some questions. No, probably not. But I make an effort every day.'

Interesting answer. Lenzen is silent, as if probing his words before eventually approving them. Keep firing.

‘What do you regret most in your life?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Then think about it.'

Lenzen pretends to ponder.

‘The things that led to the break-up of my marriage, I suppose. What about you? What do you regret?'

‘That I wasn't able to save my sister,' I say.

It's true.

‘Your sister's dead?' Lenzen asks.

Bastard.

‘Let's drop this,' I say.

He frowns, seems momentarily bewildered, but soon recovers his composure.

‘Where was I? Ah, yes. You say that the stories about you that are circulating on the internet don't bother you. Does criticism bother you?'

‘Only when it's justified,' I say. Quick, keep going. ‘What do you most regret
not
having done?'

He's back on track and replies immediately.

‘I should have been there for my daughter more when she was little,' he says, then presses right on. ‘A critic once wrote that your characters are strong, but that your plots lack verve.'

‘What's your question?' I ask.

‘I'm still formulating it. What bothers me much more than the plot, you see, are some of the characters in your latest book. There are two characters in your novel who are less vivid to me than the others, and they are, interestingly enough, the murder victim and the murderer. The murder victim is—forgive me if I exaggerate—a kind, naïve country bumpkin, while the murderer is a soulless sociopath who likes killing young women. Why did you draw such archetypal figures when you're so famous for your finely drawn characters?'

Every hair on my neck is standing on end.

‘That's easy,' I say. ‘I don't regard those characters as clichéd archetypes.'

‘Don't you?' says Lenzen. ‘Take the murdered woman, for instance—Britta, as she's called in the book.'

My scalp contracts.
As she's called in the book.
He's practically admitting he knows that she really existed and that she had a different name in real life.

‘Do you consider the character of Britta realistic?' asks Lenzen.

‘Absolutely.'

Of course I do. Britta is Anna, Anna is Britta. She exists, she existed. I knew her as well as I know myself.

‘Isn't Britta more an idealised portrait of a young woman? A lily-white dream. Sickly sweet, clever, kind, and oh-so-virtuous. I mean, that scene where she reacts to the homeless man as a little girl, wanting to fetch all the homeless off the streets…'

Lenzen makes a noise of disparagement. I find it hard to stop myself from pouncing across the table at him and slapping him in the face. But I suppress the impulse. I decide to let him ask, not to interrupt him. I'm learning more from his questions than from his answers.

‘I have the feeling that Britta is an awful goody-two-shoes,' Lenzen continues. ‘That flashback where she tries to persuade her sister to stop wearing leather for the sake of the animals—it seemed to me almost like a parody. Britta's constantly taking other people to task and telling them what to do. I know you depict that in a positive light in your novel, but in real life, people like that get on your nerves and certainly aren't idolised the way they are in your book—if such flawless people even exist, that is. But how do you see it?'

I gasp for breath, make a huge effort not to let him provoke me. The bastard.

‘I think there
are
people like Britta,' I blurt out. ‘I think there are very good and very evil people and everything in between. It's possible that we're so obsessed by the nuances and the in-between that we block out the people at either end of the scale. We call them clichés or unrealistic. But there are people like that. Very few, of course.'

‘People like your sister?' Lenzen asks.

The temperature in the room soars. I break out in a sweat.

‘What?'

‘I have the feeling that we're talking about your sister here.'

‘Really?'

The white of the wall opposite shimmers before my eyes.

‘Yes, just a thought. Correct me if I'm wrong. But you've written this unbelievably idealised version of the relationship between two sisters, and you have a sister you say you weren't able to save. Maybe she's dead. Maybe you mean “save” in a figurative sense—you're a writer, after all. Maybe you weren't able to save her from drugs or from a violent man.'

‘What makes you think that?'

Salty saliva collects in my mouth.

‘I don't know. You're obviously very fond of this character, Britta, despite the fact that she's so awful,' says Lenzen.

‘Awful?'

Suddenly I have the most extraordinary headache. The wall opposite seems to be bulging towards me as if there were something trapped in there that was trying to get out.

‘Yes!' says Lenzen. ‘So good, so beautiful, so pure. A proper Disney princess. In real life, a woman like that would be unbearable!'

‘You think?'

‘Well, I certainly find it astonishing that the older sister—what's she called again? Sorry…'

My head is bursting.

‘Sophie,' I say.

‘That Sophie gets on so well with the character. When Britta tells her sister that her fiancé's not good enough for her. When she goes on and on to her about her great new job. When she's constantly nagging her about her weight and her appearance. Perfect Britta—the Disney princess up on her high horse. Seriously, if I were a woman—if I were Sophie—Britta would annoy me more. I might even detest her.'

I did, too, I think.

The realisation is a blow to me. Where did that come from? It's not new—I can feel it. It's a thought I've had more than once before, but subliminally. On the far side of pain.

What kind of a person are you, Linda?

I shouldn't think the thought, but I think it again. Yes, I detested her. Yes, she was smug. Yes, she was arrogant. Yes, she was always up on her high horse—Saint Anna. Anna, who could always wear white without spilling on it. Anna, for whom men wrote poems. Anna, for whom Marc would have left me, if she had wanted him, as she never tired of reminding me. Anna, whose hair smelt of shampoo even after a camping trip. Anna, whose name you could read backwards as well as forwards—Anna, Anna, Anna.

What's going on here?

I struggle free, I surface, and I'm thinking straight again. I know what I'm up against; it's my guilty conscience—nothing but my guilty conscience, base and insidious. My guilt at not being able to save Anna. It's gnawing away at me, and to avoid being gnawed quite to pieces, my brain looks for a way out, even if it's as mean and shabby as the thought that my sister wasn't all that good.

How shabby, too, and mean, what Lenzen's just tried to do. And how shabby and mean of me to fall for it. I'm too agitated, too exhausted, too impressionable. My head is throbbing. I must pull myself together. Lenzen has taken one of my castles, but my king and queen are still in play. I try to concentrate. And, as I collect myself, I realise what I've heard, what he's said. The way he's talking: it's almost as if he harbours a personal grudge against her. Against Britta. Against Anna. And I realise something. My God.

It hadn't occurred to me. I had always assumed that the police would have caught the culprit, if there had been any connection with Anna—if she hadn't been an accidental victim. I thought that Anna had died because someone had taken advantage of a beautiful young woman who lived alone in a ground-floor flat and sometimes left her terrace door open. But maybe that wasn't the case. Maybe it wasn't cruel coincidence at all. Is it possible? Did Anna know the monster?

‘Be that as it may,' Lenzen continues, ‘I was utterly fascinated by the description of the murder—that is to say, the chapter where Sophie discovers her sister. It's terribly painful to read, very affecting. What was it like for you writing that scene?'

My right lower eyelid twitches. I can't stop it.

‘Difficult,' is all I say.

‘Frau Conrads,' says Lenzen, ‘I hope you're not under the impression that I don't like your book because that's not the case. The protagonist, Sophie, for instance, is a character I could wholeheartedly sympathise with for long stretches of the novel. There are, however, a few things that strike me as anomalous, so that I am, of course, thrilled to be able to take this unique opportunity to ask the author why she depicted things one way rather than another.'

‘Oh yes?' I say. It takes me a moment to get my nausea under control; I have to gain time. ‘What strikes you as anomalous, apart from the murder victim?'

‘Well, the murderer, for example.'

‘Really?'

Now it's getting interesting.

‘Yes. The killer is portrayed as a soulless monster—a typical psychopath. Then the gimmick that he must leave something at the scene of the crime—from a writer of the calibre of Linda Conrads, I'd have expected a more subtly drawn character.'

‘There
are
sociopaths,' I say.

I'm sitting right opposite one. I don't say that.

‘Of course, sure. But they're extremely rare, even if ninety per cent of all detective stories and thrillers seem to revolve around criminals of that kind. Why did you decide on such a one-dimensional character?'

‘I believe that evil, like goodness, really exists. I tried to convey that.'

‘Evil? Really? Isn't there evil in all of us?'

‘Maybe,' I say. ‘In some measure.'

‘What is it that fascinates you about criminals like the one in your book?' Lenzen asks.

‘Nothing at all,' I say.

I almost spit the words.

‘Nothing at all. A cold, sick soul like the murderer in my book holds no fascination for me whatsoever. Only the possibility of making sure that he ends up behind bars for the rest of his life.'

‘In literature, at least, you can make sure of it,' Lenzen smirks.

I say nothing.

You wait and see, I think.

See what? another part of me thinks. How?

‘Wouldn't a more complex psychological motive have been more interesting?' Lenzen continues.

It's been clear to me for some time that he's no longer talking about my book but about himself—that he's maybe even trying to justify himself. I know that, he knows that, and each of us knows that the other one knows. Maybe I should speak out, at last. Sweep all the metaphors and circumlocutions off the table.

‘Such as?' I ask instead.

Lenzen's eyes change; he's seen through my crude ploy. We both know that I'm asking him for his own motive.

He shrugs. Slippery as an eel.

‘I'm really no writer,' he says ingeniously. ‘But tell me, why didn't you kill your main character off at the end? It would have been realistic. And dramatic at the same time.'