The Sinner (45 page)

"I stayed with her. I did all she asked. I painted her nails and we
listened to music. I don't know what happened, but I can still hear
her saying `dance for me!".

Her fingers had knotted themselves together on her lap. He
heard the knuckles crack and tried to make sense of what she'd just said. A mental blackout! Her stubborn denial amounted to
confirmation. His assumption was correct: she hadn't been at
home when her sister died. She hadn't heard of her death until
November ...

Her voice jolted him out of his cogitations. The words came
out in a breathless rush. "Dance for me! Live for me! Smoke a
cigarette for me! Prostitute yourself for me - pick the ones that
pay best. And, so you have something for yourself, go to the disco.
Choose yourself a boyfriend and go to bed with him, then tell me
what it was like. I told her about the lights in the Aladdin and the
way they flickered when the music got louder. Red and green and
yellow and blue."

She paused, then blurted out: "The lights in the cellar were like
that too! I can't go down there, please don't make me! I can't bear
it. Do something - do something! I don't want to go down there!"
She flailed the air with her arms as if trying to keep her balance.

He ought to have sent for Professor Burthe, but he dismissed
the idea as soon as it occurred to him. The professor was a busy
man. It was doubtful he could spare the time to explore the cellar
with her. He would probably consider a sedative injection more
appropriate.

Grovian felt quite capable of keeping the situation under control.
He sat down on the bed beside her. Taking her hands, he squeezed
them hard and tried to adopt a soothing tone of voice, although
his heart was in his mouth. She was completely beside herself. Her
eyes darted around the room; her bosom and shoulders rose and
fell convulsively in time with her rapid breathing.

"Steady, Frau Bender, steady. I'm here, I've got you. Can you
feel my hands? Nothing can happen. We'll go down there together
and look around. Afterwards I'll take you back upstairs again, I
promise."

It sounded crazy, but what else could he have said? Her hands
clung to his, trembling so violently that his own arms shook in
concert with them.

"Tell me what you can see, Fran Bender. What's in the cellar?
Who's down there?"

She described a room bathed in flickering, multicoloured lights.
A bar against the left-hand wall, a mass of bottles on a shelf with
a mirror behind it. In the opposite corner, the instruments and
amplifiers on a platform. "Tiger's Song". She danced to it, danced
all alone in the middle of the room. Against the right-hand wall, a
sofa with an ashtray on the low table in front of it.

"Tiger's Song". It was a wild tune, a wild dance. Frankie tossed
his sticks aside, went over to the sofa and sat down beside the girl.
Johnny inserted a tape, and the tune rang out once more. Tiger
went to the bar. Although he'd drawn the short straw again, he
didn't seem to mind.

She was still dancing, but not by herself any more. Johnny was
holding her in his arms and kissing her. It was like a dream, even
when he slid his hands up her skirt. She relished his touch. Not for
Magdalena this time, only for herself She couldn't always live for
them both.

Then they were lying on the floor. Johnny undressed her. Everything was fine. Frankie, still sitting on the sofa, took no notice of
them. He was talking to the girl. Tiger quartered a lemon at the
bar and sprinkled some white powder on the back of his hands,
then licked it off, washed it down with a jigger of colourless spirit
and bit into the lemon. Having done that three times, lie felt in his
trouser pocket and said: "I've brought something for us. A little
coke. Let's get comfy."

Listening to her, Grovian held her hands tight and squeezed
them in the hope that she could feel the pressure. She was still
lying on the floor. Frankie and the girl were watchingJohnny make
love to her. Tiger came sauntering over. He wanted his share. "My
turn," he said.

Johnny made no attempt to fend him off. The girl said: "Give her
a shot, it'll relax her."

The next few words were very clear: "Hey, what are you doing?
I don't want any! No coke! Take it away!" She started muttering
indistinctly, then jerked her head aside. "What are you doing?"
she gasped. "Stop that! Stop it at once! Are you crazy? Leave her
alone, damn you! Leave her alone!"

An electric shock seemed to run through her. "No!" she yelled.
"Stop it! Stop that!" Her cries were succeeded by whimpering.
She turned her head abruptly and gazed at him wide-eyed, but he
could have sworn she didn't see him.

"Don't hit her! Stop it, you'll kill her! Stop it, you swine! Let go
of me! Let go!"

He was thoroughly familiar with those words, or another version
of them, but he wasn't prepared for what came next. She wrenched
her hands away with astonishing strength, breaking his grip, and
sprang to her feet. It all happened so fast, he couldn't react in time.
She clenched her right fist and drove it into his neck. "I'll break
your neck, you swine!" she gasped. "I'll slit your throat!"

She was precisely duplicating the blows listed in the pathologist's
report. Once, twice, three times she struck him before lie managed
to catch hold of her wrist. No sooner had he grabbed it than she
lashed out with her left. It was a few moments before he succeeded
in grabbing that too and getting to his feet.

He held her at arm's length and shook her. "Frau Bender!" he
shouted. "Stop it, Frau Bender!"

She stood there for a full five seconds, staring at him with blank
incomprehension. Then she muttered something unintelligible
and passed out.

Professor Burthe didn't trouble to hide his anger at the fact that
a CID officer had, for the second time and in spite of warnings
to the contrary, bullied a severely disturbed person into a state of
collapse. "What on earth were you thinking of?" he demanded,
shaking his head. "Didn't I expressly warn you not to treat Frau
Bender like an ordinary criminal? That's the last time you'll
interview her! Frau Bender's attempted suicide was a direct result
of your interrogation technique, don't you realize that?"

Grovian couldn't summon up the energy to justify himself.
They'd already established that he hadn't said a word to her
about her father's death. Still unconscious, Cora Bender had been hurriedly carted off to undergo tests of some kind. He would have
given a great deal to undo that last half-hour with her. He failed
to understand how he could have indulged in such an asinine
experiment. "I'll take you back upstairs again, I promise ..."

Wrong! It wasn't as simple as that. He'd done his best, patting
her cheeks, calling her name and splashing her face with cold water
for several minutes before he could bring himself to leave her to
the doctors. And all the time he'd been thinking, despite himself, of
what would have happened had she been holding a knife.

He was feeling rather sick. Sick but satisfied as well. Had the
killing been premeditated? No, certainly not. If she hadn't
happened to be peeling an apple for her son, she would only have
attacked Georg Frankenberg with her fists and done what she'd
been prevented from doing years before - in a situation in which
every blow would have been delivered in defence of herself or
someone else.

He would have liked to discuss this with Professor Burthe, but
he couldn't get a word in. He was bombarded with technicalities:
schizothymia, psychical detachment, a deliberate distinction
between oneself and the outside world, a vulnerable, partly
apathetic withdrawal from one's fellow creatures, pre-eminence
accorded to the world of dreams, ideas and principles.

Impressive though this sounded, Grovian found it thoroughly
uninteresting. His own interpretation was only that of a layman
but far more cogent. After five years, self-defence was out. After
five years, Cora Bender's act was homicide - unless someone could
demonstrate that she had been in that confounded cellar at the
time of the killing, not at the Otto Maigler Lido. And he couldn't
prove that. That was the professor's job.

He submitted to Burthe's dressing-down without batting an
eyelid. The professor eventually calmed down and asked what
Cora Bender had been saying just before she passed out. Grovian
outlined the scene in the cellar and their preceding conversation.
He forbore to mention that she had attacked him, but he did touch
upon the subject of self-defence and her wish to defend the other
girl as well as herself.

When he had finished the professor gave a curt nod. It didn't
signify approval, far from it. Burthe was naturally familiar with
the cellar scene; in fact, he had heard two versions of it, one on
tape mentioning the broken ribs, and the other with the pimp on
the sofa.

There had to be a third version - one to which Cora Bender
was denying all access. This third version, said Burthe, must
embody what had really happened in the cellar. Her own desire
had probably rebounded on her. Consequently, the cellar episode
was unimportant. It was just a small part of a dark chapter in her
life, and she defended that entire chapter from intruders with all
her might, if necessary at the expense of her mental health. As if I
didn't know that already, Grovian thought to himself.

Professor Burthe talked at length about the difference between
truth and falsehood and Cora Bender's attitude to both. When
under pressure she began by telling the truth. When the pressure
subsided and she had come to terms with the situation, she sought to
turn it to her advantage. This she could only do by lying. However,
her lies created further pressure. The agitation she then displayed
might convince a layman that she was disclosing the truth at last.

That was what had happened when Grovian questioned her,
said Burthe. She had tried the same game with him, but he was an
expert - she couldn't pull the wool over his eyes. No one disputed
that Cora Bender had undergone some traumatic experiences at
the hands of a man - several men, probably - a few years ago. It
was also beyond doubt that she had been badly mistreated on one
occasion. Her self-destructive tendencies must have acted as a spur
to men of the appropriate disposition.

Grovian raised his first objection at that point. "If you're implying
that she went on the game, she didn't. Her sister expected or even
demanded it of her, if I understood her correctly, but she couldn't
do it."

The professor smiled an omniscient smile. "Most certainly she
could, Herr Grovian. After her sister's death she chose the worst
form of punishment she could think of. having sex with perverts.
She described a few of their practices to me. I've heard a thing or two in my time, but even I found them a bit much. No woman
confesses to such activities unless she's actually engaged in them,
you must admit. She was prompted by a yearning for atonement,
coupled with a subconscious desire for an incestuous relationship
with her father."

"That's nonsense," Grovian protested. It sounded feeble, he
could hear that himself, almost as if he were half-convinced of
Burthe's point of view He wasn't. It was only helplessness that
robbed him of speech - that and the self-assurance with which the
professor had spoken. He sounded as if he'd been standing there
watching.

Which he had-although only, of course, in the metaphorical sense.
Burthe stressed that what he was presenting to Grovian was Cora
Bender's inner belief. Being a trained and observant interviewer, lie
was capable of extracting grains of truth from a pack of lies.

"I'm afraid," Grovian said dryly, "that you've extracted a few lies
as well. I don't know why she told you such a load of nonsense, but
her chronology is all wrong. She was ..."

He wanted to explain what he'd just discovered - that Cora's
memories leapfrogged from Magdalena's birthday to the cellar and
from there to October - but Burthe silenced him with a gesture.
Timing wasn't the issue here, he said, nor was prostitution. There
was no reason to get worked up about it.

The only issues were Georg Frankenberg's death, Cora Bender's
motive and her ability to distinguish right from wrong. The latter
was missing. Cora Bender was incapable of guilt. She couldn't be
held responsible for her act. It had nothing whatever to do with the
man and his behaviour. The woman had been the trigger.

"It was his bad luck to be lying on top ..." Although Grovian
could hear her saying it, he shook his head. "I don't know what put
that idea into your head, Professor, but you're making a big mistake
if you dismiss the cellar episode so readily. I've now been through
it twice, and I myself am a trained and observant interviewer.
Frau Bender was raped and nearly killed by two men in a cellar.
Another girl was killed on the same occasion, very probably by
Georg Frankenberg. That's why he had to die."