Woman of the Dead (10 page)

‘No one wants to say too much, lass. Those who did know won’t want to talk about it, understand?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they’d been to the knocking-shop, and that doesn’t go down well with their wives.’

‘You mean the locals came for massages as well?’

‘That’s what they called it.’

‘But you don’t know who, of course. And you can’t prove that it was prostitution.’

‘I know what it was. I was the Annenhof’s, shall we say, factotum for years.’

‘But you can’t give me the name of anyone who could confirm what you say?’

‘I don’t want to start a war here in the village, lass. But I can tell you one thing, they went at it like the clappers in that cellar for years. And just before they were going to get busted, Schönborn sold the hotel. He could smell a rat, knew his time would be up in a month or two. The deals on the side, the knocking-shop, and God knows what else.’

‘These are just rumours, though? You’ll have to give me something more for two hundred euros.’

‘You can have another schnapps if you really want. Cheers, lass.’

‘I’m looking for a photographer.’

‘Like I said, there are only devils here. You won’t find a photographer in this place.’

‘A photographer who had something to do with the Annenhof. Does that mean anything to you?’

‘Oh, that’s easy. I’ll be happy to help you out there.’

‘You will?’

‘Schönborn’s son is a photographer. I’m sure he had a massage or two on his visits home. Arrogant little dickhead. His name is Edwin.’

‘Schönborn’s son is a photographer?’

‘That’s right. What’s the matter with you, lass?’

‘Can it really be that simple?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, but yes, Schönborn junior is a photographer. He has a studio in Innsbruck, quite the little artist, he is. All financed by Papa. Junior is a layabout.’

‘Hackspiel.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve really earned those two hundred euros.’

‘Fine. We should have another drink to that.’

‘Yes, we should.’

Blum drinks. She never imagined it could be so simple. To think that her man is the son of the former hotelier, or at least there’s a possibility he is. The man who took the photos. One of the five torturers, perhaps Mark’s murderer. He was often at the hotel while Dunya worked there, he came at weekends, says Hackspiel. He used to have a good time with his friends, partying in the mountains; he was the boss’s son and acted the part. Hackspiel dislikes him, hasn’t a good word to say about him. Edwin Schönborn was a professional daddy’s boy, spoiled rotten. Hackspiel tells stories. None of them make Schönborn a murderer, yet Blum feels that she is on the right track. Hackspiel refills their glasses, and tries to persuade Blum to buy a devil mask. Blum just smiles. The alcohol is warming her, she is excited, planning her next steps. She will go to see Edwin Schönborn, find out whether he has anything to do with it. Or whether it is all just coincidence.

Blum keeps drinking. She doesn’t consider how she is going to get home, she sits on the shabby sofa listening to the devil-carver. Much of what he says is nonsense, she guesses, but a lot of it must be true. This crazy old man may have brought her, instantly, to where she wants to be. She wants to believe in this, the simplest solution; she suspects that Mark did the same, that he was investigating the most obvious suspect. Edwin Schönborn had the opportunity to abduct Dunya and the others, he knew his way around the hotel, he could have anaesthetised her. It would have been possible for him to plan and carry out the abduction without attracting anyone’s attention. Edwin Schönborn, son of one of the most influential men in the Tyrol. Blum will go and see him. Tomorrow. As soon as the world stops swimming before her eyes.

Seven large glasses of schnapps later, Blum can’t take any more. She can’t ride the bike either. She wants to, but Hackspiel won’t let her, takes the key away and pushes her back on the sofa. You’re staying here, lass, he says. Then he calmly goes on carving. Blum makes a brief phone call to Karl, asking him to put the girls to bed and see to Dunya. The bike broke down, she says, a tyre burst, she can’t start for home until morning. He mustn’t worry, and please will he kiss the girls goodnight for her. Then she just lies there watching Hackspiel’s knife sink into soft pinewood. For an hour she watches a devil emerging from the wood. Blum sees him taking shape, slowly opening his mouth and baring his teeth. A devil comes into the world. Devils have taken Dunya’s life away, men in masks, men without a story, men without names. They are everywhere, on the walls, in Blum’s head; she is afraid to close her eyes. Everything is spinning, and however hard she tries to keep her eyelids open she can’t. They are too heavy, the devils push them down. Everything goes black.

Blum parks outside the District Criminal Investigation Office. Since waking up she has thought of nothing else but the fact she needs help; the situation is too much for her. She must talk to Massimo, confide in him. Since she opened her eyes, she has been thinking she must tell him what she knows. She can’t and won’t be alone with it; she will put the matter in his hands. She wants to withdraw, look after her children, look after Dunya, help her apply for asylum, maybe find her a job.

It was still dark when she opened her eyes. Hackspiel must have fallen off his chair while he was carving. He was lying on the floor with his limbs outstretched, snoring. The rattle of his snores had woken Blum, roused her from her dreams. She was grateful, because the dreams were terrible. Waking up beside Hackspiel had been a relief. She got up quietly, put two hundred euros on Hackspiel’s chest, and went out into the tail end of the night. It was only five in the morning and the streets were empty. Blum had the autobahn to herself. Her decision became more and more concrete the closer she came to Innsbruck. Looking for the photographer on her own was dangerous; she knew what these men were capable of. Dunya was probably right to assume the worst, believing that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill again. Blum wanted to go home to her children, she didn’t want to endanger them. She must protect them, and Karl, and Reza, the people who were closest to her. If the story was true she must stop snooping around. She must go to Massimo, quickly, she thinks, as she rides at two hundred kph and with a headache through west Tyrol.

She asks for Massimo at reception. Blum knows he is on night duty; she phoned him yesterday just before setting off for Sölden. He asked how she was. She knows that Massimo would do anything for her, drop whatever he was doing, everything. His wife, his life so far. When he looks at her and touches her, Blum knows. And she is glad he is there, with his strong shoulders, when she feels wounded and small. Blum goes upstairs to the second floor; she knows her way around, she has often been here to collect Mark. Sliding down the banisters with Mark, laughing, chasing her down the steps. Blum opens the door of Massimo’s office and takes him by surprise. How glad she is to see his radiant expression, to feel his embrace.
You must help me
, she says.

It doesn’t take her long to persuade him to go to a café around the corner. He is pleased to see her, he drives away the devils in her mind, the images that Dunya has planted there. He takes her hand, because she is trembling. She lets him, and pushes the hair back from her face with her other hand. She wonders where to begin. What to say to him. Serve him the whole story for breakfast? Her head hurts. She must drink water, tell him all about it, now. She begins, cautiously, in Mark’s study, how she was tidying up his things, how she found the recordings, the woman’s strange voice. Massimo listens. At first he says nothing, listens intently, lets Blum talk. He doesn’t know what she is getting at yet, what is making her so incoherent. Until the moment she mentions Dunya’s name he just listens. Then he interrupts her lovingly and soothes her fears. Blum doesn’t get round to telling him what’s in the recordings on Mark’s mobile. Or that she found Dunya and has talked to her, that she is in Blum’s house waiting for her return. She doesn’t get round to saying that she has been to Sölden and suspects the photographer Edwin Schönborn of being one of the men who tortured Dunya. Or that Mark’s death may not have been an accident, but murder. She says none of that because Massimo turns everything upside down, brings bright colour to what was dark and gloomy. He reassures her, tells her that what the woman said was nonsense, she was an impressive liar but it was just the talk of a mentally ill woman. Massimo tells her it was all lies. He remembers Dunya very well, he says, and the director of the psychiatric hospital diagnosed her as deluded. Dunya was under the influence of drugs, and ran away from the hospital although everyone wanted to help her. Mark, Massimo, and many others.

Blum listens. Her mouth stays shut; she keeps everything she was going to say to herself. She is speechless, just looks at Massimo and hears the things he says. About Mark and about Dunya. Blum’s view of the world suddenly looks different again. What she believed, it seems, was nothing but lies. It was only Mark who insisted on believing that the woman was telling the truth. At the time, he advised Mark to drop his investigations and attend to more important things, but Mark wouldn’t listen. He was drilling for oil where there wasn’t any oil. It was just another attempt to rescue a pretty young woman on a boat. A pretty young woman in a bed, in the psychiatric hospital. Dunya.

Blum says nothing. What Dunya told her, what she was convinced of ten minutes earlier, no longer matters. There is only one thought in her head, and it calls out loud. Why did Mark meet Dunya when everyone advised him against it? Why is there that regret on Massimo’s face? What does he know? What did Mark do? Blum is afraid everything will fall apart, that Mark will hurt her. She takes Massimo’s hand and asks him to tell her the truth, sparing nothing. She wants him to tell her whether Mark was in a relationship with Dunya. But Massimo says nothing, only that Mark was his friend. He is evasive. He won’t say whether Mark was unfaithful to her, whether he was risking their life together. He asks Blum to forget the whole thing, dismiss the recordings as the fantasies of a lost soul and think no more of them. He asks her not to doubt Mark, not for a second.

Blum gets up and goes, goes without saying goodbye. Through the door and out into the street; she needs fresh air, she wants to understand what has just happened. She walks on, putting one foot in front of another, leaving the motorbike behind. Air. Walk on and on. Mark is tearing her heart apart again, the noise becomes unbearably loud, the hurt throbs. Every memory she has of Mark is threatened by what Massimo has said. And by what he hasn’t said. She doesn’t want to, but she pictures Mark and Dunya in a hotel room. After the fourth meeting they couldn’t help themselves, they were in love. That notion, which was there from the beginning, burrowing through her body like a worm, is back. He isn’t here, can’t justify himself, can’t take her in his arms and tell her to wake up. And stop dreaming.

Blum hasn’t shed tears for days, she has felt close to Mark again because she was doing what he had done. She was trying to follow the same trail as him: they had the same end in view, the same instinct. That Dunya was more than a homeless drug addict. That every word she said was the brutal truth. He had believed that and so had Blum. She still does, even if jealousy cripples her and almost takes away her breath. The idea that her memories might be tainted drives Blum down the street. She must calm down, she must think clearly. Stop doubting Mark. Stop doubting Dunya. Everything happened as she said it did. She believes this woman. She believes in Mark. He met her because he wanted to help her and for no other reason. Never mind what Massimo says. Never mind how impossible it all sounds. Never mind if she is the only person in the country convinced that the cellar and those men exist. Blum has seen the truth in Dunya’s eyes. She will take a deep breath, go back to her motorbike and ride it home. She will hug the children and look up that photographer’s number. She will find proof of Dunya’s story. She will convince Massimo with facts that show the story is more than a web of lies. That Mark felt nothing for the woman, nothing at all, except pity.

Dunya spent the whole day in bed. Karl kept looking in on her as she lay nestled in Nela’s pink sheets, safe and protected by the fragrance of the little girls. She slept for hours on end, and only when Karl insisted that she must eat something did she leave the children’s room. When Blum called to say that she wouldn’t be home that night, Dunya was already asleep. Karl says she was almost like a wounded animal taking refuge in a corner. Dunya was friendly, and kept thanking them for their hospitality, but she wanted to be alone. She said as little as she could to Karl and Reza; she always had a smile for the children, but there was nothing more that she could give them. Karl asked Uma and Nela to be considerate of Dunya, telling them that their mother’s friend was very tired, and it had been a long time since she had had a good sleep. He couldn’t think up a better explanation.

When Blum got home five hours ago, Dunya was still asleep. She lay in bed like a small child, curled up, legs bent. Blum stood beside the bed as she did when Nela was in it. She looked down at Dunya and felt the very last of her doubts disappear. There she lay, broken, helpless, like a torn scrap of paper. It was probably the first time in years that she had slept in a proper bed, a bed where she had nothing to fear, where no one would hurt her. Her face was peaceful; she was clinging firmly to the quilt. Blum closed the door and went upstairs to Karl. He was running through the apartment with the children on his shoulders.

Blum takes her time. She makes owls with the children, sews little fabric bags, stuffs them with paper and gets the children to stick on eyes, noses and beaks. Owls. The girls love owls. Goodness knows why, but they run happily round the house holding their little fabric owls.
We’re flying, Mama. We’re owls, Mama. Tu-whit, tu-whoo
. At this moment nothing in their faces shows that they miss their father. That they have realised he won’t be coming back. They are simply having fun with owls. Because they don’t want the forest where the owls are flying to burn down, because they’re not strong enough to run for their lives in the fire. So they don’t want to talk about it or be reminded of it. Because it hurts so much. The natural way is to ignore the truth as best they can. Not to keep reviving the sorrow, the tears, the longing for Papa. Playing with owls, with stuffed cats and dogs, immersing themselves in picture books and laughter. But sometimes
as best they can
isn’t good enough.