Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) (10 page)

She fell silent.

“And then?”

A quick glance, a rapid decision. Again. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Shit,
Franza thought.
What was she about to say? What have I just missed?

“Lilli,” she began. “Lilli, tell me what you know, what you’re thinking! It could be important!”

Lilli laughed angrily. “Oh, stop all your police tactics! You’re beginning to get on my nerves!”

Franza suspected it was too late. Lilli was not going to say any more. She made another attempt. “Hanna?”

Lilli jumped up and grabbed her coat.

“I’m going,” she said, her voice cool and steady and full of arrogance. “I don’t know anything about Hanna. She’d already gone when I came on the scene.”

“Oh, Lilli.” Franza stood. “Why don’t you stay? It’s late. You can stay the night here. I have a guest room. We don’t have to talk anymore.”

Lilli nodded, a small smile. “True. We don’t have to talk anymore. So I’m going now.”

And she went. Purple velvet coat, over-the-knee boots, a pretty, tough, sad-looking girl. Franza stood on the balcony and watched her walk down the street. The sky was dark, there was a rustling in the trees, the start of rain. September rain—you could hear it pattering on the leaves. You could hear the wind, September wind, and yet the night air was slightly warm, the balcony slightly warm. With a blanket around her, it was fine.

Women were always cold in front of the TV and on the balcony, Franza thought. She was no exception. But she liked the quiet depths of the night, when the sound of a spoon stirring a cup of coffee sounded like a small, gentle circular saw. She liked sitting on the balcony at night, the lamp throwing a circle of light into the darkness. She felt shut away inside herself, shut off from the world, she could allow her thoughts to run free. If they would only continue, but they stopped as the night wind gradually penetrated through the blanket to reach Franza’s skin.

Tell me, Lilli,
she had asked. And Lilli had told her—but not everything. She had gone, the little rascal who stole perfume, who grieved for her mother because she had not caught hold of happiness with a firm grip.

If Franza hurried,
she
could still catch hold of happiness that night. With a firm grip or even a lighter one—whatever she felt like. She had to grin as she imagined her happiness. It was made up of a taut, youthful torso, a firm backside, eyes that shone with a mischievous twinkle, and lips that managed to reached the most impossible places.

Franza jumped up, all her tiredness vanished, and reached for her cell phone. Yes, she wanted this happiness. Now. Always.

15

They sat on the spacious terrace. The housekeeper had served coffee and then quickly withdrawn. It was September 13, the day after Gertrud was found.

“My wife will be coming soon,” said Hans Brendler, who, they now knew, owned a large successful law firm in the town, where he employed a number of attorneys.

Brendler cleared his throat, leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his eyes flickering as they sought out the coffee cup. He looked tired, at a loss, which surprised Franza.

Perhaps it’s because he’s not in charge of this situation—clearly not in charge—and he’s not used to that.

She arrived finally. Dorothee Brendler, his wife. She sat down with them, looking elegant, pearls at her neck. They gave Franza the impression they were choking her. She was surrounded by an aura of sadness, as immediate as autumn in the garden, and something else—Franza tried to sense what it was. Anger? Bitterness? Resignation?

“Start where you like, anywhere,” Herz said.

Franza was moved by the gentleness in his voice and once again felt a deep warmth for him.

“Start where we like,” Brendler said with a slight nod, giving his wife a look to which she did not respond. He cleared his throat. “Start anywhere. That sounds so easy.”

“We have time,” said Franza. “And we know how difficult this is for you both.”

But of course it was not true—they didn’t have time. Not an infinite amount. The dead were dead and could rest in peace, but there was still someone out there with whom they were concerned—at least one person. The murderer. Man or woman. And possibly another victim. Whom they could maybe still save.

Franza thought of the forensics team, who had returned to the crime scene to seek traces of another female, a red hair perhaps, lipstick on a glass that did not contain Gertrud’s DNA.

Franza thought of Arthur, who had observed the forensics team when they searched the pottery shop and the surrounding area, and who was now feverishly on the lookout for anyone who had known Gertrud Rabinsky, anyone who had noticed anything strange recently—visitors, maybe, who had not been seen there before. Anything.

“We have time,” she repeated softly, smiling a little. She turned her face to look at the pattern of shadows formed by the breeze in the leaves—sunny, shady, sunny, shady. It was still, so still. It was that early fall morning stillness that could calm the spirit.

There was a small clink of porcelain. Dorothee Brendler set her cup down and interlaced her fingers. “You took her into your heart,” she said, and her voice was like porcelain. “More than your own daughter. I’ll never forgive you for that.”

There was a further moment of stillness, and the pain reached his face, too. It was quite clear for the first time, and Franza knew this pain would last a lifetime. Hans Brendler opened his mouth to say something, his eyes imploring Dorothee, but she was unrelenting. And distant. And she raised her hand. “No,” she said. “Be quiet. I can’t listen anymore.”

Dorothee stood, placing a card on the table.

“You can reach me at this number if you need me.” She nodded to Franza and Herz and left. Into the house. Into the stillness. Then they heard a car departing.

“She’s leaving me,” Brendler said emptily. “She’s leaving me, too. She told me this morning. She was only here for your visit.” He fell silent, and then said again, “She’s leaving.”

He listened to his own voice and stared at the French doors through which she had disappeared, as if he could still see her. Not so much as a shadow remained, not a single trace.

Franza looked up. The sky was blue, bluer than dreams of longing, bluer than the blue of memory.

16

Here again. I walk the old paths. I’ve been away for twenty-two years. Away from a life that, an eon ago, I thought would turn out well. But we deceive ourselves. Your world comes crashing down, and nothing can bring it back. I never hated you, Gertrud. I had forgotten you. That was far more effective. But perhaps I should have hated you.

. . .
dear hanna
. . .

That’s what a letter like that can do to you. An ancient scribbling that would have been thrown away if it weren’t for pointless sentimentality. Today people send e-mails that are quickly deleted so no one can find them, so they can’t invade the security of a future life.

Here again. Walking the old paths. It was such a long time ago.

The river is still the river, as is the terrace outside the café. We came here, and here, and here. The tables are unchanged, the same pictures on the walls. The bathrooms have been remodeled, something that should have been done even back then.

So little has changed. The eyes of the young girls still sparkle on the dance floor, the lights shimmer. They feel light, as if they’re floating, just as we did back then, as I did, feathers in the wind as the lights shimmered. Our high heels clicked on the asphalt. We were young, young as the summer and just as radiant. Our hair shining, we were curious, everything was so distant.

I stand here now. This is where it happened. My eyes are young, joyful, and shining. Tonio is holding me tight, sinking into me as I breathe in his breath that tastes of brandy and cigarettes. Everything is easy, everything is beautiful, love is a fountain, splashing but deep.

. . .
and if one day we have nothing left, it will have been plenty—a truth between the lines, between us, the trace of a love, a vast longing . . . dear hanna . . .

Yes, I was
dear hanna
, and if I fell, Tonio caught me. But then he himself fell into the raging blackness of the sea, into the wind, into the storm, clear and direct, leaving no shadow, no shading.

17

“Do you have any children?” Hans Brendler asked. “Do you love them all equally?”

The officers made no reply. He wasn’t expecting one. He sank into his memories, diving in and pulling one out: the story of his failure, his guilt.

“She was
. . .
” he said, trailing off. “From the beginning she was so
. . .
”

Hanna’s mother had been his secretary. Some people suspected she had also been his lover, but that wasn’t true. It wasn’t an affair, nothing of the sort. He had no need for affairs. He was married to a clever, attractive, lovable wife whom he loved and who loved him. They had the daughter they had always wished for, both had good careers, money, a beautiful house—what more could they want?

But then something dreadful happened.

“She simply collapsed,” Hans Brendler said. “She simply fell from her chair in the middle of a dictation and lay there. As if dead.”

She wasn’t dead. She came round a little but not completely. She moved her head, groaned. Her face was a strange color, had a strange expression. He hardly recognized her. He called an ambulance.

She survived but never fully recovered from the damage caused by the stroke. She was left mute and partially paralyzed, with no memory of her previous life. She was thirty-two and had no relatives. In recent years she had lived completely alone with the child, with Hanna.

What was to be done with her? With the child?

“My wife was the first to say it out loud. ‘We’ll take Hanna in,’ she said. Just like that: ‘We’ll take Hanna in. You’re a lawyer,’ she said, ‘you’ll be able to arrange it all.’”

And he arranged it all. There was no registered father, no grandparents, no other relatives. The youth welfare office agreed immediately, and also to Brendler’s agreement to bear the cost of permanent care in a nursing home for his former secretary. It was only possible because the law firm was a long-established one that had brought in a lot of money for his father and grandfather before him.

“And then?” Herz asked.

“And then
. . .
” Brendler echoed, tapping into his memories. “Then it all started.”

He took a drink of coffee and peered into the cup before setting it down on the table.

“The early years were easy,” he said. “I often didn’t even notice them. Either of the girls.”

He fell silent, smiling ruefully. “I know that doesn’t sound quite
. . .
honorable, but maybe you understand how it is. You leave the house in the morning while the children are still asleep and when you come home in the evening
. . .
Well, as I said.”

He shrugged.

Yes,
Herz thought,
I know.

Yes,
Franza thought,
I know.

“We had a housekeeper,” Brendler continued. “A very respectable, warmhearted woman. Sabine. A real gem, you could say. She had no children of her own. She took care of the girls, since my wife worked, too. In the hospital, as an internist. And so they simply grew up—elementary school, high school. They were always side by side. Often I thought how lovely that Gertrud had gotten a sister in such a simple way, someone her own age in the bargain. Someone to share everything with, who saw everything from the same point of view, with whom there was no need to explain everything.”

Someone who represented competition,
Franza thought,
someone who could make life hell when it came down to it. Because she took everything you’d rather have had for yourself. Because she was always the first.

“I remember one day when they came to my office,” Brendler said. “It was a late afternoon in winter, already dark outside. They must have been around fourteen or fifteen. They had done some work for school, I can’t remember what subject. Gertrud burst in first—she’d received the best grade and wanted to tell me about it there and then. She was so delighted. Hanna came after her slowly, a smile on her face, and sat on my desk, swinging her legs. She stretched a little, and for a brief moment the ceiling light caught her hair and lit it up like a fireball. She noticed me looking at her and looked back at me. At that moment I realized that she had let Gertrud win. With the grade. And with a number of other grades. Often.”

He fell into a pensive silence, probably seeing her there, legs swinging in her blue jeans.

“For a brief moment it hurt.” Brendler’s face crumpled in momentary pain, then he composed himself again. “I believe I really saw her for the first time that day. And from that moment
. . .
always.”

Asshole,
Franza thought.
Stupid asshole.
She imagined Gertrud as she had been when she was a child, as a teenager, how it must have become increasingly obvious that she would be in the shadows, that her life had become a bad movie and that there would always be someone saying: Smile! Smile more brightly! Smile more convincingly!
Poor girl, poor little girl!

Brendler shook his head, smiled an involuntary smile. “I don’t know how that woman, my secretary, produced this child. She was a very ordinary woman, nothing outstanding about her, but her child, her daughter
. . .
”

Silence.

“Yes?” Franza asked carefully. “Her child?”

“Was blessed by the gods,” he said slowly. “I can’t put it any other way. Blessed by the gods. That’s how it seemed to me.”

“That’s how it seemed to you?” Franza gasped.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Everything she touched turned to gold. She tried everything, and she could do it all. It was a pleasure to watch her, a pleasure. She was
. . .
she attracted everyone’s attention. And if that wasn’t enough, she also had an enchanting way about her. She was lovable, funny, clever, full of life.”

Suddenly, it became difficult for Gertrud. Suddenly, there was someone close to her who could do everything better. Who was developing better. Who was more beautiful. Gifted. A butterfly. A miracle.

“She was a real miracle,” Brendler said. “She was a miracle to me and I began to compare the girls, and in making comparisons
. . .
”

He fell silent.

Asshole,
Franza thought. “Wasn’t Gertrud doing well?” she asked.

He shook his head, scarcely perceptibly.

“Gertrud wasn’t doing well, in fact,” he said in a whisper, as if he didn’t dare to speak the words out loud, as if they were as poisoned as he was.

He stood and took a step toward the hedge.

“I never said anything to her,” he said to the garden, and then turned back and raised his hands beseechingly. “You have to believe me, I beg you! I never said that to her! Never! But
. . .
she must have sensed it. And my wife did too.”

“Did you and Hanna—” Herz asked.

Brendler raised his hands defensively.

“No!” he said. “Never! Never! I never got too close to her. Not in the way you’re thinking. There was nothing erotic about this love. Not a spark. I never touched her. I loved my wife. I never had any desire for little girls. Never, at any time. Never. Ask my wife if you don’t believe me. She would have annihilated me if I had.” He nodded as if to emphasize his words, and then continued. “But Hanna
. . .
amazed me. I was so proud of her. I loved her. Yes. Like you love a daughter. She was my daughter. Nothing more and nothing less. My other daughter. My second daughter. My
. . .
special daughter.”

He went quiet, suddenly feeling a great shame. Although that wouldn’t change anything.

“She had so much
. . .
wisdom in her,” he whispered. “Such wonderful intelligence. A certain clarity. I don’t know. Something people just have. Or don’t.” He raised his eyes. “Do you know what I mean?”

Franza and Felix exchanged a look. Neither knew exactly what he meant, but they nodded. He continued to talk, telling them how the girls went to study in Munich and how as the years went by Hanna visited ever more rarely, that they grew distant. He had always regretted it and never knew the real reason for it. He guessed that during their time in Munich a rift had grown between Hanna and Gertrud, which must have been the reason for Hanna’s ultimate withdrawal from the family. Or perhaps it was her marriage to Belitz, which he had never approved of.

He’d followed Hanna’s career in secret and with pride, but no one in the family ever spoke of it. Brendler spoke only of Hanna, not of Gertrud.

Franza felt a cramp in her stomach. She longed for a cigarette and at the moment vowed to flush the remaining five in the pack down the toilet, although she suspected she wouldn’t do it.

Poor Gertrud,
she thought,
you really got the bad deal there.
She wanted to hear it confirmed one last time and dealt him the final blow.

“If you had had to choose between your daughters, which one would it have been?”

He stared at her. She saw the horror in his eyes. He was well aware of his betrayal, and he was still committing it, again and again. He was caught. He turned gray and shook his head.

“Please don’t ask that question,” he whispered, but Franza looked at him, merciless, impenetrable.

He lowered his eyes, slowly, the fight gone out of him.

“Yes,” he whispered without having to think about it. “Yes. Hanna. It would have been Hanna.”

Felix stood up in the silence that followed and cleared his throat.

“OK,” he said. “At least we now have a basic outline of the situation. That’s enough for today. If we need anything else, we know where to find you.”

They went out to the car, and Brendler followed them, suddenly looking agitated and nervous.

“Do you really think these old stories have anything to do with the death of my daughter? And with Hanna’s disappearance? Do you really believe that Hanna
. . 
.
 
? That can’t be possible!”

“We’ll find out,” said Herz. “You’ll have to be patient.”

But Brendler took no notice.

“Listen,” he beseeched. “Listen, I’ve tried to make things right. I’ve really tried. But I don’t know whether
. . .
”

He shook his head.

The detectives didn’t ask any more. They had heard enough.

On the journey back into town they were quiet, each dwelling on their own thoughts.

“But Hanna must have needed it, this love,” Felix said quietly. “A father. Something. Security. Everyone needs that. Otherwise you’re living in a vacuum. She had nothing, after all. No mother, no father. Zilch. They had to share, Hanna and Gertrud. Sisters always have to. It’s normal. People have to, don’t they? Learn to share.”

Franza nodded. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. If that’s how it was. But he’d made his decision.”

Silence fell again. They reached the town center and worked their way into the Saturday afternoon traffic. Somewhere a blue light was flashing, uniformed colleagues on duty, an ambulance, an accident.

“The twins,” Felix said finally. “They’re everything to me.” He thought of his youngest children. The lights of his life. They had done what he had believed impossible, given a new completeness to his marriage, his life, his sense of fatherhood. Not that he loved his other children any less for it, but since the twins had burst into their lives some eighteen months ago, everything had been a little different.

Franza laid a comforting hand on his knee.

“That’s another story,” she said. “A completely different story.”

He looked at her gratefully.