The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (29 page)

“A divorce?”

My father nodded; he did not need to explain that one.

“Why …?” I began, but I couldn’t get any further than that. The question wouldn’t shape itself.

“It’s grown-ups’ stuff,” said my father sadly. He opened his arms and I got to my feet and went to be hugged. The feel of the hardness of his shoulder through his shirt as I laid my head on it was somehow reassuring. I sniffed noisily into the thick fabric.

“Papa, Charles and Chloe laugh at me.”

My father said nothing, but his arms tightened around me.

“And I don’t want to go to school in England.” I ground my forehead into his shoulder. “And I hate English food, even Oma Warner’s.”

I felt my father’s shoulders heaving and for a moment I wondered what I had said that was so funny. Then I pulled back and looked at his face. And that was only the second time in my life that I had seen my father cry; the first was when Oma Kristel died.

A
fter that, the house took on the appearance of a vast military camp in the process of packing up and moving on, my mother playing the grim general who strode about among the crates and boxes, overseeing everything. We were not actually to move until the new year; a family with school-age children cannot be transferred from one country to another in a day or two, and furthermore my mother had agreed to stay in Germany for Christmas.

“That much she has agreed,” said my father dolefully.

At school, the news that Pia Kolvenbach was moving to England and that her parents were divorcing had circulated with lightning speed. Suddenly I was no longer ostracized for being the Potentially Exploding Girl, but the new attention was worse. I could tell that the girls who sidled up to me and asked with faux-sympathetic smiles whether it was true were doing it on the basis of discussions they had heard between their own parents, to whom they would report back like scouts. Soon there would be nothing left of me at all, nothing real: I would be a walking piece of gossip, alternatively
tragic
and
appalling
and, worst of all,
a poor thing
.

“Why’s your mother doing it?” Stefan asked me one morning. We were the last to leave the classroom after a hefty session of algebra. The
winter sunlight streaking through the windows was white and cold. “Has she got someone else?”

I looked at him stupidly for a moment, momentarily wondering what he meant; did he mean my mother had got other
children?

“Someone else?”

“You know,” said Stefan offhandedly. “Another man.”

“No,” I said emphatically, although I had never even considered the idea up until that moment. “Well, why’s she going?”

“I don’t know. Can you shut up about it?”

“Sorry.”

I shoved my math books into my schoolbag. “She says she hates Germany and she hates Bad Münstereifel.”

“
Na
, I hate it too sometimes.”

“Well, she
really
hates it,” I said, straightening up. “But I hate England, and I can’t see why I have to go and live there, just because she …” I bit my lip, willing myself not to burst into humiliating tears.

“It’s
Scheisse
,” agreed Stefan sympathetically. He hefted his bag onto his shoulder, and cocked his head toward the door. I trailed out after him, disconsolately. As we walked across the courtyard, he said, “Have you told Herr Schiller yet?”

I shook my head. “He probably knows.” Resentfully, I added, “Everybody in the entire town seems to.” It was true. Even though the adults were not quite as shameless as my schoolmates in approaching me with questions, I could tell that they were thinking about it when they looked at me. The attention was almost unbearable. When Frau Nett in the bakery gave me a free ice cream, an unprecedented piece of kindness, I knew it was just because she was thinking
Poor Pia Kolvenbach
. I would rather have dispensed with both the ice cream and the sympathy.

Walking up the Orchheimer Strasse, Stefan said, “We have to do something about … you know.” He threw a significant glance toward Herr Düster’s house.

“Stefan.” I felt exhausted. “I’m going. Don’t you understand? I’m going to stupid
verflixten
England.”

“That’s exactly why we have to do something.” Stefan sounded excited.

Without even looking at him, I knew he would have that eager expression that I found exciting and infuriating by turns, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. “We have to do something
now
, otherwise you’ll never know what happened.”

“I am never going to know,” I said bitterly.

“We have to find out before you go,” said Stefan.

“Oh, what does it matter?”

I looked up at the leaden skies, rolling my eyes in frustration. Our futile investigation, which now seemed like a child’s game in comparison to the fresh woes descending upon me, was just one more item on the long list of things I was never going to finish in the town where I had always lived. I was never going to sing at the school concert in the spring, I was never going to start a new school year at the
Gymnasium
, I was never going to take part in another St. Martin’s procession.

All the things that seemed so reassuringly solid around me were going to vanish like a dream, be rolled up like a map and stuffed into the storage space of my mind. When I was far away and in my unimaginable new life I could take the map out and unroll it and pore over the marks on it, the shapes, the figures, the landmarks, but they would all be theoretical, like something in a book about dead cultures. I would come back at some time in the future and visit the town, but my friends would be grown up, and I—I would be like Dornröschen, the sleeping beauty, who had slumbered for a hundred years while everyone outside the castle grew old and died, and the hedge of thorns grew higher and thicker until there was no way through it anymore. When at last I came back to the world I had known before there would be nothing to recognize.

“Pia?”

I realized I was crying and hurriedly began to search through my pockets for a tissue.

“I’m all right,” I said crossly. I blew my nose and we resumed walking.

For a while Stefan said nothing, then: “Pia, if you don’t want to come, I’m going on my own.”

I did not reply.

“We have to do
something
.”

“Why is it always
we
?” I retorted. “Why don’t the police sort it out, or someone else?”

“They aren’t getting anywhere with it,” Stefan pointed out.

“And what makes you think we’re going to get anywhere with it?” I realized I had said
we
, as though I were still involved with the whole idea, and winced.

“We have to try.”

“We don’t have to try,” I snapped. I rounded on him. “The whole idea is
Scheisse
. Supposing he did do it? Then it’s crazy to even think of going in his house. We might be next.”

“Not if you come with me. The kids who’ve disappeared, they were all on their own.”

“Look,” I said irritably, “it’s absolutely crazy to even think about it. He’s put a new lock on the cellar door, anyway. So what are we going to do—walk up to his door, knock on it, and ask if we can come in?”

“Of course not.” Stefan sounded offended.

“Well, what?”

“We wait until after dark when everyone’s gone to sleep, and then we—”

“No,” I said emphatically, shaking my head. “No way.” I glared at him. “You really are stupid. I can see why—”

I was going to say
I can see why they call you StinkStefan
, but in spite of my anger something held me back, the muffled voice of conscience telling me that none of this fury I felt was really Stefan’s fault at all. My voice trailed off for a moment, and then I rallied. “Anyway, maybe
your
mother lets you wander all over town at night, but
mine
certainly doesn’t.”

I saw a shadow cross Stefan’s face and realized that I had hit a nerve with my gibe about his mother’s lack of interest, but I was feeling too raw myself to apologize.

Stefan looked at me for a long moment. When at last he spoke, his voice was low and urgent and not angry at all.

“Why do you care what your mother thinks anymore?” he said.

T
he plan was simple: we would wait until it was late in the evening and the white Christmas lights that were strung across the Orchheimer Strasse had been switched off. At a prearranged time we would slip out of our houses and meet in the narrow alleyway that ran between two of the old buildings on the east side of the street. If either of us arrived much earlier than the other, the alleyway would provide cover from any prying eyes, and we could also hide our bicycles in it.

“Bicycles? What do we need bicycles for?” I asked.

“In case we need to get away in a hurry,” said Stefan. “Like a getaway car.”

I felt a familiar twinge of disquiet; Stefan always seemed to talk about the venture as though it were a scene in an action movie.

“Are we going to have walkie-talkies too?”

He gave me a look of disdain. “Don’t be silly.”

I was going to bring a flashlight, and Stefan was going to raid his father’s toolbox to get a hammer and chisel to open the cellar doors.

“How do you know what to do?” I asked dubiously. “You haven’t ever done that before, have you?”

“No, but …” Stefan’s voice trailed off. I was relieved; I really did not
want to hear him say
they do it all the time in the movies
. I feared if I heard him say that I would lose my nerve altogether.

Once Stefan had opened the doors we would climb inside and pull them shut behind us, in case anyone should pass by or look out of their window; it was unlikely, since Bad Münstereifel was generally pretty dead by nightfall, but you could never tell. It would be just our luck if Hilde Koch were to get out of bed at midnight to ease her ancient bladder and couldn’t resist a peep out her front window.

“And once we’re inside?”

“We search,” said Stefan simply.

“What about Herr Düster?”

“Well, obviously we can’t search
upstairs,”
said Stefan impatiently. “But he’s not going to have hidden anything up there, anyway, is he?”

“Why not?”

“Serial killers never do,” said Stefan with authority. “He’s probably put the bodies in the cellar.”

“Yeuch,” I commented, shuddering. “And if we find something, what do we …?”

“We get proof.” Stefan said it firmly.

“Proof? You mean …?”

“We have to get something, and bring it out with us.”

“Stefan, if we find a dead body I am
not
touching it.”

“Who said you have to, silly? We can get a bit of the clothes or something.”

I gazed at him hopelessly. There really was no escape this time. We really
were
going to do it.

“All right,” I said.

I still thought I might put the expedition off. When Stefan brought the topic up again I prevaricated: there was no point attempting it with the weekend coming up—the Christmas market was open until late from Friday to Sunday, so the town center would be packed with people. There was a cold snap and snow was expected—we would freeze if we went out of doors at midnight, and we would leave tracks in the snow if we did. I had a couple of long days at school coming up and needed the sleep. I thought I had a cold coming on …

“Pech gehabt,”
said Stefan with a supreme lack of sympathy.

“It’s not just tough luck—I’m really sick …” I sniffed theatrically.

“Look, Pia.” He sounded excited. “Herr Düster has gone away. We have to do it
now.”

“Now?” I looked about me wildly.

“I mean tonight.”

“How do you know he’s gone away?”

“I heard that old
Schrulle
Frau Koch telling someone in the bakery at lunchtime. She said he left this morning and good riddance.” Stefan looked at me, his eyes shining with the fervor of a fanatic. “Don’t you see? This is our chance! We have to do it tonight.”

“OK,” I said. I felt sick.

The rest of the day passed in an agony of suspense. When school finished I deliberately walked home via the Marktstrasse, avoiding the Orchheimer Strasse, where Herr Düster’s house lurked like a trap. I wouldn’t let Stefan walk me home.