The Trap (5 page)

If my parents are to be believed, I was fond of making up tales even as a child. It was a catchphrase in our family: Linda and her stories. I remember once telling a primary-school friend that I had been for a walk in the woods with my mother and that, as we'd been picking wild strawberries, we'd caught sight of a small, spotted fawn in a clearing, asleep on the grass. I'd wanted to go up and stroke it, but my mother had held me back and told me that the fawn would smell of human afterwards and its mummy might reject it, so it was better to leave it to sleep in peace. She told me how lucky I was to have found a little fawn like that—it was very rare.

I remember how impressed my friend had been by the story. She went to the woods often and although she sometimes saw deer she'd never seen a fawn. I was so proud—I really had been tremendously lucky. I remember my mother taking me aside when my friend had gone home and asking why I told such stories. She said it wasn't nice to fib, and I told her indignantly that I hadn't been fibbing. Didn't she remember the fawn? I could, clearly. My mother shook her head—Linda and her stories—and told me we'd seen a fawn like that in a film the other day. And then it all came back to me. Of course, a film!

Imagination is a wonderful thing, so wonderful that I make a great deal of money out of it. Everything I've written so far has been as far removed as possible from myself and the reality I know. It is odd to let other people into my life now. I console myself with the thought that these aren't really scenes from my life but a displaced reality in which I immerse myself. A lot of the details are different, partly because I make a conscious decision to change them and partly because, after all this time, I can't be certain of every single detail. Only one chapter—the one everything revolves around—will be authentic: a night in high summer, Anna's flat, deafening music, blood and vacant eyes…

The book ought really to begin with that chapter, but I haven't yet been able to face going back to that place. Yesterday I promised myself I'd write the chapter today, and today I've put it off until tomorrow.

Writing is strenuous, but in a good way. It's my daily training. It does me good to have a real goal.

No one except me notices any difference. Everything's the same: Linda sits in her big, lonely house and tells her agent and her publisher that she's working on a new book. Linda does that once a year; it's nothing special. Business as usual for my agent, Pia, who's already been informed that a new manuscript is on its way and who is naturally delighted. (Although it does, of course, surprise her that I should suddenly want to change genre and write a thriller.) Business as usual for Charlotte, who at most notices how I'm spending less time reading and watching TV, and more time in my study. Business as usual for Ferdi, the man who tends my garden and may only notice that he's come across me in my pyjamas less in the middle of the day. Everything is the same. Only the observant Bukowski knows that I'm plotting something and gives me conspiratorial glances. Yesterday I caught him looking at me with concern in his big, knowing eyes, and I felt touched.

It'll all be fine, mate.

For a long time, I wondered whether to take anyone into my confidence. It would be wise. But I decided against it. What I'm planning to do is crazy. Any normal person would simply call the police. If I were to confide in Norbert, he'd tell me to do just that:
Call the police, Linda!

But I can't. If the police believed me at all, they would probably question Victor Lenzen, and then he'd be forewarned and I'd never get a look-in. I might never find out what happened all those years ago. I can't bear that thought. No, I have to do it myself. For Anna.

There's no other way: I must look him in the eye and ask him questions. Not polite questions, such as a policeman might put to an influential journalist who seems unimpeachable. None of your ‘Terribly sorry to bother you, but we have a witness here who thinks…'

None of your ‘Where were you on the…?'

Proper questions, such as only I can ask and only if I'm alone. Besides, if I were to rope anyone else into this business, I am well aware that it would only be out of fear and selfishness. Victor Lenzen is dangerous. I don't want him coming into contact with people I love and cherish.

So I'm left to my own devices. In the end, there isn't anyone (not counting Norbert and Bukowski) whom I one hundred per cent trust, anyway. I don't even know if I can trust myself one hundred per cent.

So I haven't told anyone more than the bare essentials. I've spoken to my agent, to the head of publicity at the publishing house, and to my editor. They were all perplexed that I want to write a crime novel, and even more perplexed that I want to give an interview, but they swallowed it. I still have to talk with my publisher, but the most important things are already underway. I have a deadline for the manuscript and a publication date.

All of that is good. Having a deadline to work towards has given meaning to my existence over the years and has more than once saved my life. It's hard living all alone in this big house, and I have often thought about simply absconding—a handful of sleeping pills, or a razor blade in the bath…

In the end, it was always something as banal as a deadline that held me back. All that stuff was so real; I could always imagine what immense trouble I'd be causing my publishing house by failing to deliver. There were contracts and plans in place. So I carried on living and kept writing.

I try not to give too much thought to the fact that this book might be my last.

I have set a dangerous chain of events in motion by ringing up the newspaper's editorial department. It was a clever move on my part because now there's no turning back. It transpires that Lenzen works for a newspaper as well as in television, which is good because it would be counterproductive for him to turn up with a television crew. So I've arranged an interview with the newspaper—just the two of us. I return to Jonas Weber, the young police officer with dark hair and grave eyes, one brown, one green. And to Sophie, for that's what I've decided to call my literary alter ego. Sophie reminds me of the way I used to be: playful, impulsive, incapable of sitting still for long. Early-morning walks in the woods, camping trips, sex in changing rooms, mountain-climbing, football matches.

I study the portrait of Sophie on the pages I've written. She looks like somebody who'd like to be challenged, who isn't yet broken. That's not me anymore. The eyes that discovered Anna's dead body twelve years ago are no longer mine. Bit by bit, they've been replaced. My lips are no longer the lips I pressed together when I watched my sister's coffin being lowered into her grave. My hands are no longer the hands that plaited her hair before her first job interview. I am someone else. That is not a metaphor; it's the truth.

Our body is constantly replacing cells—substituting, renewing. After seven years, we are, as it were, new. I know that kind of thing; I've had a hell of a lot of time to read over the years.

Now I'm sitting on a doorstep in the dark with Sophie, shivering, although it's a warm night. The sky is clear and starry. I watch Jonas and Sophie share a cigarette and I'm sucked into my own story; I lose myself in the characters. There's a kind of magic in sharing a cigarette with a stranger. I write and watch the two of them and almost feel the urge to take up smoking again.

The scene collapses when there's a ring at the front door. The shock goes right through me. My heart begins to thump like mad and I can feel how thin the membrane is that separates my newly won determination from my fear. I am frozen mid-movement—my hands poised above the keys of my laptop.

I wait apprehensively for a second ring but still jump when it comes. And at the third, and at the fourth. I'm scared. I'm not expecting anyone. It's late in the evening and I am alone with a small dog in a big house.

A few days ago I rang up the newspaper where my sister's murderer works and enquired after him. I have drawn his attention to me. I have done something stupid and now I'm scared. The doorbell keeps on ringing, and my thoughts begin to race. What should I do? I can't think straight. Should I ignore it? Play dead? Call the police? Creep into the kitchen and fetch a knife?

Bukowski begins to yap; he comes bounding up to me, wagging his tail—he loves visitors, after all. He streaks towards me and jumps up at me, and the angry ringing subsides for a moment. At the same time, my brain kicks back into action.

Keep calm, Linda.

There are a million explanations for why someone should ring my doorbell at half-past ten on a Thursday evening. Not one of them has anything to do with Victor Lenzen. Why would a murderer ring the doorbell? The whole thing is bound to be innocent. It's probably only Charlotte who's forgotten something, or my agent who lives round the corner and occasionally drops in, although rarely as late as this. Or perhaps something's happened nearby. Maybe someone even needs help!

I am functioning again. I rouse myself out of my paralysis and hurry down the stairs to the front door. Bukowski comes with me, still yapping and wagging his tail.

I'm glad I've got you, mate.

I open the door. Before me stands a man.

8

I stare at Norbert, who still has his finger on the bell.

‘About time,' he says and pushes past me without a word of greeting. A first breath of winter comes in at the door with him. I want to say something but don't get that far.

‘Have you gone completely mad?' Norbert snarls at me.

Bukowski jumps up at him. He adores my publisher. That isn't saying a lot because Bukowski likes everyone. Norbert is fuming, but he softens for a moment to ruffle the dog's coat before turning to face me again, the furrow back between his eyebrows. If I'm honest, I'm bloody glad to see him, furious or not. Norbert may flare up easily, but he's also the kindest person I know. He simply gets hot under the collar about everything: politics, which is getting more and more stupid; publishing, which is getting more and more corrupt; and his authors, who are getting greedier and greedier. Everyone knows Norbert's outbursts and his heated tirades, which, when his blood is really boiling, he lards with juicy expressions from his beloved France:
putain!
or
merde!
or sometimes, if it's really bad, both at once.

‘What's going on?' I ask, when I've begun to recover from the late-night intrusion. ‘I thought you were in the south of France.'

He snorts.

‘What's going
on
? That's what I'm here to ask you!'

I really and truly have no idea why Norbert is so furious. We've been working together for years. We're friends. What have I done? Or is there something I've forgotten to do? Has my work on the thriller made me overlook something important? My mind is blank.

‘Come on in first,' I say. ‘I mean, properly in.' I lead the way to the kitchen.

I switch on the coffee machine, pour Norbert a glass of water and put it down in front of him. He has taken a seat at the kitchen table, but he gets up again when I turn to face him, too cross to keep still.

‘Well?' I ask.

‘Well?' Norbert echoes, in a tone that makes Bukowski back away in confusion. ‘My author, Linda Conrads, who's had my support as a publisher for over a decade, has taken it upon herself to abandon the marvellous literary novels she's been writing with pleasing regularity for years, and to piss off her readers and critics (not to mention me) by making her next book a blood-and-guts thriller. No consultation, no nothing. As if that weren't enough, Her Ladyship has to rush off and tell the press, without once talking it over with her publisher. Because she is obviously of the opinion that I am not just the head of a pretty big, pretty lucrative business with a pretty large number of employees, who works his balls off day after day, not least for her and her books, but that I am, above all else, one thing: her very own printing press.
Putain bordel de merde
!'