Sorry (22 page)

“I thought there was no one there,” he said by way of greeting, and pointed behind him with his thumb, “so I waited outside.”

“You could have frozen to death,” said Frauke, glancing at the kitchen window. There was no one to be seen.

“People like me don’t freeze that easily,” her father replied and tapped his chest with his left hand. “Premium steel, you know?”

He folded up his blanket and laid it on the bench.

“That was a joke.”

He tried to hug her. Frauke recoiled. She had had more than enough affection from one parent already.

“I know it was a joke,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

Her father pretended he hadn’t heard her.

“Tamara’s heart probably stopped when she found me outside the door. My, you should have seen her face. She probably thought I was dead. But this air makes you tired, too.”

“Dad, why didn’t you call me?”

“Your car wasn’t there. I thought you were bound to be back soon. I’m used to waiting. Tamara made me coffee, but I wouldn’t go in. Trouble brewing, right?”

He took one last sip from the cup and tipped the rest in the snow before setting the cup on the bench. It left an ugly brown stain in the immaculate white.

“What’s up?” asked her father. “Are you two fighting or not? You can tell me. I—”

“It’s got nothing to do with you.”

He raised his hands defensively.

“Fine, fine. That’s not why I’m here anyway. Your mother rang, she wants to talk to you.”

“I know, I just paid her a visit.”

“But how did you know …”

Her father fell silent and rubbed his hand over his face, he was tired as always, his eyes bloodshot.

“You two are a mystery to me,” he said. “I don’t understand you. Your mother called me this morning, she phoned me from one of the pay phones in the common room. I was to find you and tell you that she …”

He broke off mid-sentence. Frauke saw the tears and wondered how he could love her mother like that. After all those years.
No human being should love another human being like that
.

“What did she tell you?” he wanted to know.

She told him. She told him everything she had learned from her mother, and saw him switching from joy to grief. Joy that his wife’s mind had been clear for a few moments and that she had phoned him; and grief because she talked of the devil as if he were a welcome guest.

“Come on,” she said, “let’s go.”

• • •

In the street outside the villa she let go of her father’s arm and sat down in the car. She closed the driver’s door, started the engine, and turned on the heating. She breathed deeply in and out. She didn’t want to look at her father standing there on the edge of the street watching her. It wasn’t one of her best days. First she had dragged the police into the house in front of her friends, then she had got involved with her mother, and now this.
Maybe he’ll just go, maybe he’ll forget me, and we’ll never see each other again
. The passenger door opened, and her father slumped into the seat with s sigh.

“I’d just like to go to sleep,” he said. “Will you stay at my place tonight?”

“And what about your car?”

“I’ll collect it another time.”

His hand pressed her leg.

“Please, Frauke, I beg you.”

Frauke didn’t want to go back to her father’s and meet his new flame. No one should see her like that. Her father said he understood. So she took a room in a little hotel on Mommsenstrasse. No sooner had they walked into the room than her father lay down on one side of the bed and was asleep within minutes. Frauke sat by the open window and smoked. Her thoughts circled, they were like birds of prey waiting for a rash movement.

How could Meybach do that?

At around midnight she took a bath and had a pizza delivered. The question didn’t go away, the question wanted an answer. Meybach had made a crucial mistake. He had got too close to Frauke. He should have stayed away from her mother. Now things were personal, and Frauke couldn’t cope with that.

How could he? Just tell me, how?

For a while she watched her sleeping father, who had been passive all his life, and had always lived with the weary hope that his wife would be well again one day. As Frauke heard his steady breathing, she understood that she could never allow herself to be like that. No passivity, no weary hopes. She decided to aim straight for her goal. No nervous dancing around. Enough waiting. She hated being helpless.

She ate the pizza and waited to see if she would change her mind. But with every passing minute her confidence grew. The only snag was that she didn’t want to leave too early, which was ridiculous, because there was no wrong or right time to visit one’s own house.

Unless you want to be caught
.

She washed her face with cold water and looked at herself in the mirror.

Now or never
.

She wrote a note for her father, pulled on her coat and went out into the snow.

Half an hour later she closed the front door. It was quiet, a pleasant, familiar darkness filled the rooms, and the smell of a wood fire lay in the air. Frauke took off her boots and left them by the front door.
No traces
. She laid her hand on the radiator in the hall. The warmth was still there, it would only fade at dawn. Frauke knew how chilly the villa felt after you woke up. The luxury of a shower, the boiler working to pump warmth through the house, a new day.

Without me
.

Frauke left the front door open a crack and stepped inside.

Please be where you always are, please
.

She stopped by the wardrobe and looked through the jacket.

Nothing
.

She reached for the coat.
Nothing
.

And now? What do I do now? I can hardly go upstairs and ask Kris if he could help me for a moment
.

Frauke thought for a moment, then took out her phone and tapped in Kris’s number in the dark.

Please don’t let it—

The sound of a ringing cell phone came from the kitchen. Frauke immediately hung up, the ringing noise stopped, and Frauke crept across the floorboards in her socks. Her footsteps were barely audible; the floor just creaked a little in the kitchen.

The phone was on a pile of magazines. She put it in her coat pocket and crept back out of the kitchen. As she stepped into the corridor, she was suddenly standing in front of herself. Her heart stopped painfully for a moment, then Frauke looked away from her reflection and stepped outside. Boots on, shut the door carefully, down the steps to the gate. The crunch of her footsteps in the snow was frighteningly noisy. She didn’t look back. She knew that no one was watching after her. She was confident that just as she was vanishing now, her footsteps would vanish over the next hour.

• • •

Her father hadn’t moved from the spot.
He could be dead
, Frauke thought, and rested her hand on his back. Warmth, the rhythm of his breathing. Frauke shut herself in the bathroom. She found the right number after a few seconds. Kris had given her not a name, but a sign: #.

Frauke pressed
CALL
.

Meybach picked up after the fourth ring.

“I was wondering when you would call. I wanted to thank you for the file, that was good work.”

“You are one sick fucker,” Frauke hissed. Silence.

“Hello?”

She looked at the display. Meybach had hung up. She pressed
REDIAL
. He kept her waiting and only picked up after the eleventh ring.

“Let’s start again from the beginning,” he said.

Frauke breathed deeply in and out.

“That sounds better, you’re relaxing.”

“How the hell could you go and see my mother?”

“Oh, it’s you, Frauke Lewin, lovely to hear from you. It must have struck you that I have a spot for you. From the very first day I knew we had a particular connection, you and I.”

“There is no connection between us. How dare you visit my mother?”

“She’s an interesting case. Other people’s pasts haven’t given me much, but your mother is a special case.”

“If you ever go back and—”

“Come on, Frauke, this isn’t about your mother.”

He fell silent. She didn’t want to ask, she asked.

“So what is it about?”

“About guilt, of course, what else? Don’t you get the irony behind this? You have an agency that apologizes, but there’s lots that you can’t forgive yourselves.”

“What do you know about us? You don’t know us. You know nothing about us.”

“I don’t know much. I’m being honest. But what do you know about guilt? What do you know about forgiveness?”

Frauke was confused, she had no idea what he was talking about.

“We are doing a job,” she said.

“Maybe that’s the problem. You were
just
doing a job. Perhaps we should leave it there. Do your job. I just need one more apology from you and then it’s quits, the job is over.”

“
QUITS
?
WHAT DO YOU MEAN QUITS
?” Frauke exploded. “
NO ONE’S GOING TO APOLOGIZE FOR YOU EVER AGAIN, YOU SICK—
”

Again that silence at the other end. Frauke hoped her yelling hadn’t woken her father up. She stared at the display and marched up and down the bathroom a few times. She could have called Meybach from the street, but she wanted to be near her father. As if he could offer her protection.

Seven rings later.

“It’s always a question of sympathy,” Meybach said.

“You won’t get any sympathy from me. You’re a murderer. Murderers don’t deserve sympathy. And don’t think I don’t know who you are. My mother gave a precise description of you. The police know all about it.”

“Frauke, you insult me. I know your every footstep, so stop bluffing. And anyway no one’s going to listen to a woman who’s been living in a closed institution for fourteen years, and who gets visits from the devil from time to time. But that isn’t the point either. I can tell you what I look like. You
know
what I look like. But what good will a description do you? Are you looking for me or something?”

She couldn’t get her head around it. She felt so furious that the pressure in her head nearly tore her in two.

He’s fucking with me, this sick fucker is fucking with me
.

“I want us to meet,” she said urgently.

“Say that again.”

“I want us to sort this business out between us. Whatever your plan is, you’ll get it from me as long as you leave my friends out of it.”

“How do you know you can give me what I need?”

Let me do it
, cried a voice in Frauke’s head,
let me take the burden off my friends, just let me do it
.

She went on speaking as quietly as possible.

“I have no idea what this woman did to you, but it seems plain to me that it’s a matter of revenge.”

No reaction. Frauke heard his breathing. Meybach didn’t agree with her, but he didn’t deny it either. Frauke went on.

“I can help you. I can give you what you’re looking for.”

“And that might be?”

“Absolution.”

She knew he was smiling.

“Perhaps we should meet, then,” he said.

Frauke tried to sound normal, but the words came too fast.

“Where and when?”

Meybach laughed.

“You’re under pressure, aren’t you?”

Now it was Frauke who came close to hanging up.
I’ve betrayed my friends, I have nowhere to live now, you bastard, and you’re asking me if I’m under pressure!

“Maybe I’m the one who can grant absolution,” Meybach went on.

“Yes, maybe,” Frauke lied.

After that he told her where she could find him; then he hung up, and Frauke stared with surprise at the display on Kris’s phone for a few moments, before she kissed it.

I’ve got you
, she thought,
now I’ve got you
.

Which is why six hours later Frauke is sitting on a fallen tree trunk on the shore of the Krumme Lanke, shivering pitifully. So far there hasn’t been a single stroller or jogger. Only the ravens switch from one tree to another, as if they were impatient too.

It’s 10:33. Meybach said he would be there at ten. Frauke looks around, the forest is a dark wall behind her. She doesn’t think Meybach will come from there. The snow would give him away after only a few steps.

He’ll come along one of the gritted paths, and then I’ll sort everything out and I’ll—

Kris’s cell phone rings in her coat. She takes it out. The display shows #.

“So there we are,” Meybach says by way of greeting.

“I’m here, where are you?”

“To be perfectly honest, I found it rather difficult to trust you. Who’s to say that you wouldn’t turn up with another police unit?”

“I’d never—”

“I know you would if you could. But you’ve probably taken your toll on the policeman’s nerves, am I correct?”

Frauke looks behind her.

“You were watching us?”

“I always had an eye on you all. It was very daring of you to call on your old friend in the criminal investigation department.”

Frauke starts sweating.

“I did all that on my own,” she says quickly. “I’m … I’m losing it. The others had nothing to do with it. I’ll make up for it.”

“We’ll see.”

“I thought we were going to meet.”

“We
are
meeting,” says Meybach, and a moment later there’s a whistle. The ravens rise up out of the trees. Frauke sees a man standing on the opposite shore. A hundred meters away. Perhaps less.

“That’s not fair,” she says.

“What’s not fair? Did you want to shake my hand?”

No, I wanted to slit your fucking throat
, Frauke wants to answer. She narrows her eyes slightly and sees that he’s wearing jeans, a black jacket, a cap, and has his phone pressed to his right ear.

Frauke walks closer to the shore of the Krumme Lanke. Her eyes hurt, she’s concentrating so hard on seeing Meybach. But however hard she tries, he stays a blur, as if he were a mirage that could dissolve into nothing at any moment.

“Why didn’t you bury the body in some forest or other?”