The Sinner (11 page)

Unwilling to leave him on his own, Meilhofer had accompanied
him to a bar. Music was playing in the background. Frankie
had maundered on about their dead patient and his inability to
understand how a young woman could die on them from one
minute to the next. Then, quite suddenly, he'd started to talk
about his music - about the wild, lost weeks he'd spent playing
the drums in a combo. How a friend had talked him into it, what
a great mistake it had been and how he would have done better to
concentrate on his studies.

It was hours before he'd allowed Meilhofer to take him home.
Once there he reverted to the subject of the girl he'd loved and
lost. Then he showed Meilhofer the tape Ute had played beside
the lake. He played it too, beating out the rhythm in the air with
his fists. "I have to listen to it every night," he said. "When I do,
she's here beside me. I can feel her, and when I feel her I can go
to sleep."

A strange man, Georg Frankenberg. Very earnest, very
conscientious, subject to occasional bouts of depression and overly
fond of fast cars. One might have been forgiven for suspecting that
his hold on life was tenuous. Meilhofer had more than once been
afraid he wouldn't survive the weekend. Then Ute had jolted him
out of his melancholia.

Having obtained this information about the victim, Rudolf
Grovian was hoping to learn something about his killer's background
from Gereon Bender. They had offered to drive Cora's husband
home out of consideration for the little boy, intending to follow and
interview him there.

Gereon Bender had vehemently opposed this. He didn't want
to be the great exception among the witnesses. Go home with a
police escort? Impossible! If everyone else had been summoned
to headquarters, he insisted on going there too. The child would
present no problem, he said, nor did he. The little boy was very good. He sat on his father's knee, nibbling a biscuit, and only once
asked for his mother. "Where's Mummy?"

The child's piping voice lodged in Rudolf Grovian's memory
for days, like a thorn in his flesh. "I've no idea why she snapped
so suddenly," Gereon Bender told him. "I don't have a clue. All
she ever said about her past was something about an accident.
We didn't have any problems, though. She clashed with my father
occasionally because she wouldn't knuckle under to him. She
always got her way, and she always said she was very happy with
me." The latter statement didn't entirely accord with the facts.

Berrenrath, the uniformed constable who had been one of the
first to reach the scene of the crime, had overheard something of
interest. When Cora Bender was being shepherded away from
Georg Frankenberg's body, her husband had shouted and sworn
at her. Quite unruffled, she'd turned to him and said: "I'm sorry,
Gereon, I should never have married you. I knew what I was
carrying around inside me. Now you're rid of me. You would have
been in any case, after today. I was going for a swim."

An informative remark, Rudolf Grovian thought. He had drawn
his own conclusions from it and collated some points that seemed
to confirm them: two independent allusions to an "accident" in
years gone by and two statements which, although dependent on
personal impressions, reinforced his suspicion that the victim and
his killer had met before that afternoon at the Otto Maigler Lido.

It didn't at first occur to Grovian that Georg Frankenberg's
reaction to the attack on himself might simply have stemmed from
shock and surprise. He proceeded on the obvious assumption.

When he confronted Cora Bender shortly after nine o'clock, he
saw a tremulous picture of misery with a bruised and bloodstained
face, one eye swollen shut and the other flickering with unadulterated
panic. "She'll sing like a canary, chief," Berrenrath had told him.
"She insists on confessing - wants to get it off her chest. She tidied
up your office. If I'd let her, she'd have waxed and polished the
floor for you." Berrenrath's knowledge of human nature was generally reliable.

Grovian had taken it for granted that she would promptly burst into tears and implore his sympathy - that she would supply a
rational motive for her act by recounting the tragic story of a love
affair that had turned out to be a big mistake - or something of
the kind.

Within minutes, however, he was finding it hard to preserve the
studiously calm and affable manner that had always served him so
well. He had a momentary urge to thump the desk with his fist and
call her to order. "Does that answer your question fully enough?"
What cheek!

She sat facing him like a block of granite. He couldn't see her
heart thumping or the reddish-grey mist in her brain. She still
hadn't answered his last question. It seemed she was going to
make good her threat: "That's all I'm saying." He waited for her
expression to match the words and harden. But it didn't.

The tension on her battered face abruptly eased, her gaze turned
inwards, the hands on her lap relaxed their iron grip and lay there
as though forgotten. For a minute or two she was just a nice young
woman in a white T-shirt, denim skirt and sandals, the next-door
neighbour to whom one would happily entrust one's children for
a few hours, the heart and soul of her father-in-law's family firm,
worn out after a hard day's work.

He eyed her irresolutely and addressed her twice by name. She
didn't respond. For a moment he felt an uneasy chill run down
his spine. The contusions on her face disturbed him. There was
something not quite right about her, despite her repeated denials
- that was beyond question, although he ascribed this more to her
physical than her mental state. He couldn't see that her mind was
balancing on a knife-edge. But several hard punches to the head...

"I thought he was going to kill her," Winfried Meilhofer had said.
Grovian couldn't exclude the possibility that she'd sustained some
internal injury that was manifesting itself only now, several hours
after the event. One occasionally heard of such things happening
after a fight. If she collapsed in his office ...

He shouldn't have relied on what she'd said. The woman did
need a doctor. She probably needed one that would also sound her
out on her putative intention to commit suicide.

Although it wasn't like him to pass the buck, he suddenly wished
the district attorney had come and made the decision for him.
Carry on questioning her, remand her in custody or take her to
the nearest hospital, have her head X-rayed so as to preclude any
subsequent charges of negligence.

The DA was engaged on another case. A man had been arrested
in a Cologne bar on suspicion of having split open his girlfriend's
skull with an axe. The DAs response to Grovian's phone call had
been faintly indignant: "I'm in the middle of an interrogation. I'll
come and pick up the papers tomorrow morning. When you're
through with the woman, take her to the examining magistrate in
Briihl. All clear so far?"

Nothing was clear so long as she disclaimed all knowledge of
her victim. However, the witnesses' statements would be sufficient
for the examining magistrate. Everything else could be left to an
expert psychologist. One was bound to be called in. Let him break
his teeth on her.

Something inside Rudolf Grovian urged him to offload her as
soon as possible. There was something about her that not only
infuriated but - although he would never have admitted it -
disconcerted him. The longer he remained silent, the more clearly
he felt it: a first smidgen of doubt. What if she were telling the
truth?

Nonsense! A respectable wife and mother, stabbing a total
stranger for some trivial reason? Out of the question.

She was toying with her wedding ring. A residue of dried blood
was still visible under her fingernails. She began to dig it out. Her
hands started trembling again. She raised her head and looked at
him. A child's expression, helpless and forlorn.

"Did you ask me something?"

"Yes," he said, "I did, but you seem to be past concentrating.
I think we'd better call it a night, Frau Bender. We'll talk again
tomorrow"

That was the best solution. She might be more amenable after
a night in the cells. Equally, she might use the time for another
attempt to carry out her original intention. Going for a swim, indeed! But there were other methods. He would have to instruct
his men to watch her incessantly. The smallest pointer in that
direction would clinch the matter as far as he was concerned. Like
when his daughter announced her intention of getting married.
He'd breathed a sigh of relief and told himself: "Peace at last."

"No, no," she said quickly, "I'm fine. It's just that there are
so many things going through my head at the same time." The
tremor in her hands intensified, communicating itself to her arms
and shoulders. "Forgive me for not being with it. I couldn't help
thinking of my husband. It really upset him. I've never seen him
so angry."

She sounded as if she'd put a dent in his bumper. Noticeably
flagging now, she stared at her hands. She seemed wholly intent
on preserving her composure. He wondered what would happen
if she lost it. A fit of weeping? The truth at last? Or a repetition of
the scene beside the lake?

His doubts recurred, somewhat more pronounced this time.
What the devil was she? A young woman suddenly confronted by
some distasteful reminder of her past, or one of those walking time
bombs that convey a normal, innocuous impression for years on
end, only to explode for no discernible reason? Would she attack
him?

He was closer to her than his sidekick, Inspector Werner Hoss:
the man in the sports coat, who was seated behind his desk like
a graven image. Hoss was duty officer tonight, and he wasn't
normally as reticent. But then, he normally agreed with everything
Grovian said. Not this time, though.

When the three of them had been standing outside the door
- when Berrenrath had predicted that the woman would sing like
a canary, and Grovian briefly outlined his opinion of what had
happened, based on his assessment of the witnesses' statements
- Floss had shaken his head. "I don't know It would have to be one
hell of a coincidence. A woman is unhappy in her marriage and
plans to kill herself. Just then, she bumps into someone she once
had an affair with. I can imagine something inside her snapping
when she was confronted by what the Frankenbergs were up to."

Cora's voice jolted Grovian out of his deliberations. "Please
might I have some coffee now?" she asked in a timid, humble
voice.

He felt tempted to refuse. No, no coffee until we've wrapped this
up. Come on, young woman, tell us what's going on in your head.
You can't act as if you'd merely swatted a wasp that was trying to
snack on your ice cream. You meant to drown yourself out there,
didn't you? But a man had to die first. The man was young - he'd
made it his vocation to save lives - and you attacked him like a
rabid dog. Why?

Instead, he asked: "Would you like something to eat as well?"

"No thanks," she said quickly. `Just some coffee, please. I've got a
headache, but it isn't too bad- I mean, I'm in full possession of my
faculties. You needn't think I'll claim I was in such a state I didn't
know what I was doing or saying."

Her assertion was inaccurate. She felt like someone on a roller
coaster. Her thoughts roamed from Gereon to her father, from
her father to her mother, from her mother to Magdalena, from
Magdalena to the subject of guilt. She didn't want any coffee, just
a breather in which to estimate the height of the mountain that
had so suddenly loomed up in front of her.

Too much was happening all at once. She was overwhelmed
with old memories and new impressions. Nothing remained of
the peace and contentment, the boundless relief of those first few
minutes. It wasn't over - she hadn't filled that yawning hole. Still in
the midst of it, she seemed to feel its black walls steadily converging
on her.

"How long have you had this headache?"

Rudolf Grovian rose to his feet with a mixture of resignation and
reawakening professional ambition. It was a question of intuition
and experience. He must carry on! Her voice, demeanour and
sudden submissiveness were familiar to him - he'd encountered
them a hundred times before. First they acted defiant, then they recognized the hopelessness of their position and tried to gauge,
by making some innocuous request, how much goodwill they'd
already squandered.

He went over to the coffee machine, took the jug and held it under
the tap. Behind him he could hear her tremulous breathing.

"Only a few minutes. But it really isn't too bad."

"So you didn't have it at the lido?"

"No."

"We ought to call a doctor and get him to look at your injuries,"
he suggested.

"No!" She spoke like a stubborn child refusing to put on a warm
scarf. "I don't want a doctor, and if I don't want one, you can't call
one. Doctors can't examine people against their will. That would
be common assault."