The Sinner (33 page)

That wasn't all Gereon Bender had said. He admitted that his
marriage hadn't been too rosy in the last six months - another
respect in which he felt duped and deceived. "Cora always was a
bit of a prude. Still, I had the feeling that she enjoyed it but didn't
like showing it. But since Christmas ..."

Then came the radio in the bedroom and the highly disagreeable
results of his unwonted lovemaking. Although faintly embarrassed,
Gereon Bender went into detail, even using the specific term: oral
sex. "Don't get the idea I demanded it of her, I'd never have done
that. I simply wanted to make it special for her, and she almost
broke my neck."

Since hearing this, Grovian had once more entertained the
suspicion that had arisen during his interview with her: child abuse.
It went better with the drugs and her disgust. Her latest outburst
fitted too. "Leave my father in peace, he's an old man!" A dead
man, or so she'd told her husband.

He still believed the crux of her story: that she had sometime
witnessed the scene she described before she fainted. "I heard
her ribs snap ..." Nobody dreamed up a detail like that. But he
was alone in believing that Georg Frankenberg could have been
involved in this horrific episode.

Whenever Mechthild wasn't preoccupied with their daughter, she
tended to side with offenders and find a host of excuses for them,
culminating in the view that they ought really to be released. This
time, however, she agreed with the DA, Werner Hoss and the press.

An innocent man, and a doctor into the bargain, had had to die
because of some insane delusion. Mechthild considered doctors
inviolable. Although not infallible, they were people to whom you entrusted yourself and looked up with confidence rather than be
overcome with dread when they reached for a scalpel.

Cora Bender had snuffed out one of these estimable men - one
who, according to the press, had lived for his profession alone. In
Mechthild's opinion, his killer deserved short shrift. Having read
about the case in Monday morning's paper, she gratefully seized
on it as a means of avoiding any discussion of their daughter's
forthcoming divorce.

He hadn't spotted this at first, genuinely delighted that Mechthild
was once more, after many years, showing an interest in his work
and giving him an opportunity to get something off his chest - not
that it had eased his burdens.

True, she acknowledged that Cora Bender's childhood was a
mitigating factor, but when he'd finished she said: "I wouldn't like
to be in your shoes, Ruch. It can't be pleasant, having to give such
a pathetic creature the coup degrdce."

"I'm not planning to give her the coup de grace," he protested.

Mechthild smiled indulgently. "What do you have in mind, then?
She stabbed a doctor to death in front of a host of witnesses. You
can't just pat her on the back."

"If I can prove

"Rudi," she broke in, "don't kid yourself. You can prove what
you like, it'll just be a question of prison or a psychiatric ward."

She was right, he knew, but he didn't know if he would ever
find evidence of a link between Frankie and his killer. Five years
ago Cora Bender's world might have collapsed between May and
November, or some other happening might have prompted her
to tell a pack of lies and her aunt to clear off in a hurry after
conducting her voluntary reconnaissance operation. Until now,
nothing but good had been heard of Georg Frankenberg. A quiet
man, reserved and almost shy where women were concerned.

And Gereon Bender had said that Cora lied whenever it suited
her book. Naturally she lied when lying was her sole recourse. If
someone tried to kick her wall down, she tossed everything that
came into her head into a melting pot, gave it a vigorous stir and
slapped a ladleful of hotchpotch on the nearest plate. Then you had to sift through her offerings and determine the source of each
and every morsel.

It had now been established that she could have picked up most
of what she had presented as facts about Frankenberg's past while
down beside the lake. Most but not all. Winfried Meilhofer hadn't
mentioned the nicknames Billy-Goat and Tiger because he'd never
heard them before. Georg Frankenberg had always referred to
Hans Bockel and Ottmar Denner, nor had Meilhofer mentioned
the silver Golf GTI with the Bonn licence plates.

The car and the two names were still Grovian's only means of
establishing a link between Cora Bender and her victim, although
the names might merely have derived from her imagination. To
someone with a penchant for mind games, however, another
attractive possibility presented itself: Hans = Johannes = Johnny
Guitar. Winfried Meilhofer thought he remembered Frankie
mentioning that Hans Bockel was the trio's bass guitarist. If Georg
Frankenberg had been in his father's care with a broken arm on
16 May, Hans Bockel could well have met her on that day and
introduced her to heroin.

Grovian had little hope of gleaning anything of importance
from her father. He didn't intend to pressure him either. "Did you
sexually abuse your daughter, Herr Rosch? Are you responsible for
this disastrous state of affairs?" An expert witness could deal with
that later. He only wanted some information about the period from
May to November. And the name of the hospital where her head
injury had been treated.

When he pressed the bell, the door was opened by a woman whose
appearance matched the town. He gave an involuntary gulp: she
looked so trim and youthful. Then Cora Bender's words flashed
through his mind: "Mother is sixty-five." In her mid forties at most,
the woman in the doorway was smartly dressed and well made-up,
with short, stylishly cut hair. The tea towel in her hand suggested
that she'd been washing up.

He introduced himself without stating his rank or the reason for
his visit. "Fran Rosch?" he said hesitantly.

She smiled. "Heavens, no! I'm Grit Adigar, a neighbour."

He felt relieved but only slightly. "I wanted a word with Herr
Rosch. Wilhelm Rosch."

"He isn't here."

"When will he be back?"

Grit Adigar didn't answer. Instead, she asked: "What did you
want to speak to him about?" Before he could explain, she seemed
to catch on. She peered past him at his car, which he'd parked
beside the road, and gave a thoughtful nod. "It's about Cora,
isn't it? You're from the police. Margret said someone would
probably show up. Come in, we don't have to deal with this on the
doorstep."

She stepped back, and that changed everything.

Beyond her lay a dim, narrow passage lined with wallpaper as
old as the house itself. On the left was a flight of stairs covered with
threadbare carpet. A thin strip of daylight issued from the door
straight ahead, which was standing ajar. On the right, another
door. It was also open, but Grovian didn't see this until he was
almost level with it.

The room beyond, whose window overlooked the street, was the
living room. The snow-white net curtains were invisible from the
inside, obscured by a pair of heavy brown curtains that plunged the
room in gloom. Standing in the doorway was another woman.

He gave a start when she suddenly stepped forward. Her shrewish
face was framed by long grey hair that reached to her waist and
looked as if it hadn't been washed for weeks. It smelled like that
too, enveloping her in a sourish, musty odour. Tall for a woman,
she would have topped Grovian by a couple of inches if she'd held
herself erect, but her shoulders seemed to sag under an invisible
burden. Her scrawny frame was loosely encased in a faded floral
apron.

Grit Adigar gripped the woman's shoulder as she passed her.
"That wasn't part of our bargain, Elsbeth. Finish off your lunch
first, then you can pray some more."

The woman didn't answer. She was eyeing Grovian with her
head a little on one side. "Is he looking for the whore?" she asked.

"No, he wants a word with Wilhelm. I'll deal with it."

Something akin to a smile appeared on the woman's thin lips.
She gave a slow, deliberate nod. "The Almighty's patience was at an
end. He has punished Wilhelm. He has robbed him of his voice and
strength and confined him to his bed. He'll never leave it again."

There was an immense difference between hearing Cora Bender
talk about her mother and seeing and hearing the mother in person.
Grovian felt his skin crawl, despite the summer heat. The thought
of a child being exposed to that sanctimonious voice, day after day,
gave him the shivers.

`All right, Elsbeth." Grit Adigar tightened her grip on the
malodorous creature's shoulder and propelled her in the direction
of the kitchen. "You're going to sit down at the table and do the
Almighty's bidding. He likes empty plates. Dumping all that good
food in the dustbin would be a waste, and you know what he thinks
of that."

Grit Adigar turned to Grovian. "Pay no attention to her. She
was bad enough already, but since Monday she's been completely
round the bend. And if you're wondering who she was calling a
whore, it wasn't Cora. She meant Margret. To our saintly Elsbeth,
any woman who has an affair with a married man is a whore."

A superfluous explanation, he thought. And whenever anyone
offered him an explanation unasked, he pricked up his ears and
wondered why.

The three of them sat down at an old kitchen table. The dresser
beside it held a large number of framed photographs, all of Cora
Bender. On her own, with her little boy, with her husband, with
both. A wedding photo, a snap of her in the maternity ward, a
view of the new house. Grit Adigar, who had followed the direction
of Grovian's gaze, produced another unsolicited explanation.
"Margret sent photos regularly. That's Wilhelm's altar. He could
sit here looking at them for hours. He dreamed of her paying a
visit sometime - of being able to see his grandson in the flesh - but
she never did. I think he realized he'd never see her again."

A good opening, he thought, for a frontal attack on the point
that kept cropping up. A neighbour might be more communicative
on the subject than her parents or an aunt who had seen fit to
disappear after making a voluntary statement.

"Did Wilhelm Rosch sexually abuse his daughter?"

Grit Adigar glared at him indignantly. "Wilhelm? What on earth
gives you that idea? Only a policeman would suggest such a thing
- he'd sooner have castrated himself with his own hands. Cora was
the apple of his eye. It broke his heart when she went away, and on
Monday, when Margret ..."

She recounted what had happened. Margret Rosch had turned
up two days ahead of him. Her intentions had been of the best. Far
from going to ground, she'd left for Buchholz late on Sunday night,
intending to break the news to her brother gently and in person.
But news of that kind could not be broken gently: Wilhelm Rosch
had suffered a stroke. His condition was critical, and Margret had
remained at the hospital with him.

Everything had happened so fast on Monday, there'd been
no time for explanations. Margret had called Grit Adigar only
once from the hospital. There was little hope that Wilhelm would
survive, she said, and it was possible that someone from the police
would turn up because Cora had done something immensely
stupid.

"Did she try to kill herself?" Grit asked.

"No."

She buried her face in her hands and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thank God," she muttered. "I thought she might have tried it
again, because Wilhelm was so ..."

Again! To Grovian, it sounded as if this woman knew far more
than an aunt who'd had little contact with the family. She could
be just as helpful to him as Cora Bender's parents. Above all, she
might be willing to tell him what she knew.

But Grit Adigar wasn't prepared to cooperate without more ado.
First she wanted to know what Cora had been getting up to. It
sounded innocuous, the way she put it, but the faint smile quickly
froze on her lips.

Grovian decided to be frank with her. He outlined the situation
in a few brief sentences. Grit swallowed hard, and it was several
seconds before she recovered her composure. "Good God!" she
said eventually.

Elsbeth Rosch, who had been bending over her plate with an
apathetic expression, looked up. Her soft voice acquired a sharp
edge. "Thou shalt not take His name in

"Shut up, Elsbeth!" Grit snapped, breathing heavily. "This man
- what was his name?"

"Georg Frankenberg."

"Never heard of him."

He showed her a photograph. She shook her head. She hadn't
seen a silver Golf with Bonn licence plates either.

"How about Hans Bockel and Ottmar Denner, or the nicknames
Frankie, Billy-Goat and Tiger?"

She gave a regretful shrug. "They don't mean a thing to me."

`Johnny Guitar?"

A fleeting smile. "That does mean something to me, but you
ought to ask my youngest girl about him. All I know is, Johnny
turned half the female heads in Buchholz a few years ago. My
Melanie was no exception. He was a musician. Girls rate musicians
higher than motor mechanics."