Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) (20 page)

They called the traffic department, who said they’d check and report back.

“I wonder if it was Hanna?” Felix stood and went over to the window.

“You’re not getting prudish, are you?” Franza asked. “Don’t you think two women should love each other?”

“Of course,” he said, turning. “Love happens where it will. It’s beautiful wherever it happens. But it isn’t always a force for good.”

She nodded.

“Are you hoping it was Hanna?” he asked.

“I’d rather it was no one,” she said, her voice rising dramatically. “I’d rather the world was a happy and peaceful place where no murders are committed, no rapes, no muggings, no nothing.”

He laughed. Softly. Thoughtfully.

“I know,” he said. “A utopia of peace and happiness. But how would we earn our living then, my friend? Watering flowers? And how would all the other people who, one way or another, live off murder and death earn their bread? Police officers, lawyers, journalists, TV reporters, pencil pushers, actors, who knows who else. No, I’m telling you, however dreadful it sounds, it’d be missed by a lot of people.”

She took a gingerbread cookie from the T
upperware box in front of her and threw it at Felix, who caught it and stuffed it into his mouth.

“Let me have my dreams,” she said. “I don’t have many left these days.”

“All right, I will. I love it when you dream.”

He smiled.

She shrugged. “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what we want or what our dreams are, does it? Ultimately, it’s the truth that counts. Even if that sounds so dreadfully pathetic. So often you have no idea what the truth really is. It’s made up of so many layers and perceptions.”

She stopped talking, fixed coffees, and placed one in front of each of them. They ate cookies that crunched between their teeth and warmed their stomachs.

“Sometimes I do understand Sonja a little,” she said. “Her marrying Brückl. The fact that she’s happy with him. There’s something good about his clarity and pragmatism. No layers, no ‘Look for what you want and what you need, babe!’ Pow! It is what it is, period.”

Felix laughed. Then they went their separate ways. Franza to see Frau Brendler, to tell her the latest news, and Felix to see Hansen and ask whether there had, perhaps, been any developments in the search for Hanna.

43

“Come,” she said. And I went with her. She looked at me as she had back then. With those eyes. She took my hand and I saw us as children. And I had this longing. I went with her into the bedroom, into her bed. She put her arms around me. She lay behind me and put her arms around me. It was lovely. We used to do that when we were children. When I felt alone after my mother
. . .

I felt a longing—even if it was only for the past.

“We were happy,” she said. “Back then. Before. We were happy.”

Really? Were we happy?

I wonder now. Here in this quiet place, during these early fall evenings, in the prime of my life, so to speak.

If she was surprised when I turned up at her house that day, she didn’t show it. She let me in, showed me around the house. We ate bread, sausage, cheese. We drank wine, and I thought how all the many years had hardly left a trace. Her eyes were still a gleaming brown like dark, milky coffee. Perhaps she had a little more flesh on her bones, I don’t know. In the center of her brow, between her eyebrows, she had a deep furrow. Fine lines ran from her eyes, and her hair, though still long, was shot through with gray.

“Don’t you color it?” I asked her.

Gertrud shook her head. “I’m having it cut off.”

“Cut off?” I echoed. “What a pity. I can’t imagine you without long hair.”

We smiled at one another, felt our hearts beating in our throats, and recognized in each other the secrets of the years that we had not witnessed. I thought,
Nothing is lost if you carry it inside yourself.

Evening came, and cool air flowed through the windows into the house. Although the summer was waning, its scents were still in the air. It tasted of damson jelly, elderberry jelly, and the windowpanes reflected a vague light, the last of the day, shimmering in the dusk.

Eventually we began to talk about back then, about
infinity
, or what we believed to be infinite back then. We talked about the frenzy in which we found ourselves, about that love that enfolded us with a vehemence we were no match for, which had brought us together but which in truth actually divided us—so craftily and carefully that we didn’t notice it for a long time. Not until it was too late, not until death came to call.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t know how we could have believed that this love would make us eternal. What a word, anyway. Eternal! What’s it mean? Who would want it? To be eternal. Without end. Only children who know nothing.”

There was a tremor in my voice. I paused and looked at Gertrud, whose expression was impenetrable. She didn’t contradict me.

And I thought
backbackback
, twenty years back, more than twenty years
. . .

The summer had settled in with its luminous colors, the evenings still glowing with that light that flooded the squares and streets, fountains reflecting the sun until it set, a golden disk that shattered when I threw in a coin and wished Tonio would be mine forever.

“Woe betide you if you don’t make me happy!” I’d said, playfully threatening, dipping my hand in the water and splashing him. Darkness came to the alleyways late. Standing beneath an archway, I decided that I would have a daughter one day, and her name would be Lilli. She would grow up to become a woman, not a creature of seaweed and trinkets, but a woman. When she needed help, I would give it, I decided as I felt Tonio’s breath on my skin. I was certain—God, I was so certain that I already spoke to her in my thoughts, chatted, laughed beneath that archway as Tonio brushed his lips over my neck, the hollows of my shoulder blades. I called her by her name, Lilli, even though she was light-years away, light-years—but at that moment I knew that sometimes dreams did come true.

Back in Gertrud’s kitchen—drops of jelly on her knee—we talked about love and what we had taken for love back then. I shook my head, said, “No.” That love was not really love, only a brief intoxication—nothing more. An unfortunate chain of unfortunate events. A mistake. Not wishes that had come true, no, never.

Gertrud didn’t contradict me. We lay on the terrace. It grew cold, and we wrapped ourselves in blankets.

“Nevertheless, I never again loved anyone like I loved him,” I said. “And I never suffered so much because of anyone else.”

We wrapped ourselves in blankets and snuggled together. Because after those words we couldn’t go indoors, nor could we look one another in the eye.

44

“I don’t know whether Tonio would have been for life,” said Dorothee Brendler. “I don’t think so. But when someone dies at such a young age and in such a way, they become an unattainable legend.”

Franza was sitting with Dorothee on the terrace beneath the damson tree. The last fruits were falling, rotting. Dorothee had left the hotel and moved into Gertrud and Christian’s house to take care of Moritz. She was needed all the more with Christian in custody.

The place seemed normal, orderly. The kitchen floor was scrubbed. There was nothing to suggest that this had been the scene of a tragedy. Only the jelly jars, perhaps, which still stood in rows along the shelves, and the silence that lay like a black veil over the garden and over the house.

“Things seem back in order quickly,” Franza said.

Dorothee shrugged. “What else could we do? Isn’t it important to get back to normal? To get Moritz back to his life?”

“Yes, it probably is.”

“He doesn’t cry,” Dorothee said, and Franza heard the absence of her grandchild’s crying in Dorothee’s own voice.

“Moritz?” she asked.

“Yes, Moritz. He doesn’t shed any tears. He doesn’t cry.”

She shook her head, as though to erase her calmness and elegance, leaving her a person beginning to grieve, facing the ruins of a life she had believed was good.

“Give him time,” Franza said, although she knew such things were easy to say but difficult to do. “Give yourself time.”

“Yes. Maybe.”

“I’ve talked to Lilli,” Franza said. “She told me her mother always lived with a sense of panic about her. As if she didn’t feel secure. As if she and Lilli were threatened by something. What do you make of that?”

Dorothee shook her head vehemently. “What garbage! What gives the child that notion? And you’re mistaken about Christian. He didn’t kill my daughter. I’d swear to it.”

“What about Hanna?”

Another shake of the head. “No. Not Hanna either.”

“Who, then? What do you think? Do you have any ideas? It must have been someone.”

She shook her head. “No, I have no idea. Perhaps it was just an ordinary burglar and you’re following completely false trails.”

Franza was silent for a moment. She knew Dorothee didn’t believe this theory herself, so there was no need to contradict it. Next question.

“Did you know that Tonio had a son?”

Dorothee Brendler froze for a fraction of a second, and Franza noticed with surprise that her eye twitched. But it was over in no time, and she looked as she had before.

“A son? What do you mean?”

Was Franza mistaken, or was there a tremor in Dorothee’s voice?

“A son,” she said. “In his thirties. Does that come as a shock to you?”

Dorothee cleared her throat. “No. No, not a shock. But I’m surprised. No, I didn’t know. A son?”

“Did you know of any previous relationships of Tonio’s? Before Hanna.”

Dorothee shook her head. “No. No, I honestly didn’t. I didn’t know him particularly well. I rarely saw him.”

“What was he like?”

Dorothee raised her head, gazed into the distance, looked up at the sky. “What was he like?” She smiled. “Well, as I said, I don’t know much, but
. . .
he was rather
. . .
unusual. In every respect. Incredibly charming on the one hand. Very likeable. I can understand how Hanna fell in love with him. But on the other hand
. . .
he was a very difficult man.”

Tonio had a fire inside him, a flame that scorched his heart and drove him to ask questions to which he was unable to find answers. Questions that plunged him into a loneliness he was unable to cope with, that tore him apart. His mother had abandoned him when he was ten. She returned to her homeland, to Rome, because Germany was too cold for her, because she was freezing all the time. He still had his father, who did his best. Every summer vacation he sent his son to Italy, where the extended family took him noisily into their arms. When the vacation was over, Tonio would return, warmed through by the sun, tanned—and the girls would secretly sigh with a desire to comfort his unapproachable heart. A heart that remained unapproachable until Hanna opened it up.

“Perhaps that was what linked them,” Dorothee said. “The fact that they both lost their mothers so early. But this son you speak of. What exactly are you saying?”

“A young man has turned up,” Franza said. “It seems he’d been trying to make contact with Gertrud. A witness said he had a very strong physical resemblance to Tonio. It’s therefore highly probable that—”

“Oh my God!” Dorothee started. “Then perhaps he was the one who
. . .
”

Her whole body began to shake; she was unable to control it. Franza jumped up.

“Are you feeling unwell? Can I get you a glass of water?”

But Dorothee pulled herself back together and waved her away.

“No, thank you,” she said. “Perhaps you could just leave me in peace now. Perhaps you should go. I’m simply tired. Exhausted. One new discovery after another. As if it weren’t all bad enough already.”

She turned inward.

What’s she afraid of?
Franza thought.
What’s scaring her? And what isn’t she telling me?

“OK,” she said. “I’ll go now. Thank you for the coffee.”

Dorothee nodded, but was no longer aware of her presence. Franza left, sensing her own tiredness, the sleep she was lacking. She thought about stopping to see Lilli but dismissed the idea.

45

“Nothing,” Hansen said. “Absolutely nothing. The appeal on the evening news yesterday yielded nothing, either. A whole load of calls, but they were all to do with some photos of her in the paper. Not a soul has seen her since she checked out of the hotel. It’s as though a magic spell has been cast.”

“The perfect disappearance.”

“Or the second murder victim.”

“I don’t know,” Felix said. “Somehow I don’t believe that. It wouldn’t fit. If that were the case, we’d have found her body as well. Why would someone kill two women but only remove one body?”

“Because he was interrupted?”

“Hm. Possible, yes,” Felix said. “Shit, time’s marching on. Maybe there’s a madman running around out there while we’re just marking time.”

“Or could it be that Hanna committed the murder? Out of some kind of desire for revenge from the weird love triangle they
shared?”

“Or maybe it really was Rabinsky?”

They fell into a baffled silence. This damned case was turning into a jumble of disparate threads that refused to be pulled together. Too many people in the frame, too many possibilities, too much obscurity.

“Belitz is at the end of his tether,” Hansen said. “Rapidly going to pieces. I think he’s got some kind of illness, he looks so green.”

Felix nodded. “Poor devil.”

“Maybe his younger woman wore him out,” Hansen said with a grin and a sideways nod.

Felix laughed. “Come on now, you’re only jealous!”

His cell phone rang. Arthur. Interpol had been in touch, he said. The Greek authorities were going to fax over the old reports from Tonio’s drowning, and Arthur was in the process of tracking down someone who could translate them from Greek to German. He was also going to check the address of Ernst Köhler, the father of this ill-fated Tonio.

“Excellent,” Felix said. “Good work.”

They agreed on a time for a meeting that evening and hung up. Felix glanced at the clock. Already approaching four. His cell phone rang again.

It was his colleague from the traffic department. They had a shot of Christian Rabinsky. He’d been caught by the speed camera driving back into town at around eighty miles per hour. It was ten minutes after ten. Gertrud had still been alive at that time. He couldn’t be the murderer. He was in luck.

Felix felt a glow of satisfaction and rose to pass on the good news.