The Sinner (10 page)

I wanted to go shopping with Mother. I wanted her to ask me
which I would prefer: a candy bar or a bag of crisps. I didn't want
her to tell me, again and again, that I was a bad, greedy person.

The baby that had monopolized all the strength in her belly? I
hadn't done so deliberately, damn it all! I couldn't have guessed that
I would be followed by another child who also needed strength.

Sometimes I tried to get Mother to admit that she was exaggerating a little. I broached the subject very skilfully, but it was futile. If I told
her I'd realized how bad I was and was trying to mend my ways, she
merely looked at me as if to say: "High time too." When I told her
that children at school were laughing at me, she said: "Our Saviour
was also mocked, even when He hung, dying, from the Cross. He
lifted up His eyes to Heaven and said: `Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do.' What does that teach you?"

How I detested that question!

It was inadvisable to grant Mother even the smallest insight into
what I was really learning: reading, writing, arithmetic - and lying.
Ingratiating myself with the teacher so that she would intervene
when the others laughed at me too loudly and pointed their fingers
at me. Above all, I learned to hate my sister.

I really did hate Magdalena as fervently as only a child can.
Whenever I saw her lying in the kitchen and heard her groaning
and whimpering I hoped she was suffering the tortures of the
damned.

I continued to do so until that day in May, when I had been
going to school for a year. It was a normal day. No one had said
anything special to me that morning except the teacher, who shook
my hand during break. "Now you're seven years old too, Cora,"
she told me with a smile.

I came home at lunchtime as usual. Mother answered the door
and sent me straight to the living room. There was no lunch, no
saucepan on the stove, no loaf on the table. The bread was on the
top shelf in the larder, but the door was locked, and Mother kept
the key, her motto being "Lead us not into temptation".

She went upstairs to see to Magdalena. My sister had caught a
cold from me at the beginning of April and couldn't shake it off. Her
nose often bled without her blowing it or hitting it on anything; and
she spat blood even when Mother brushed her teeth. She vomited
frequently, yet she ate almost nothing. Her body was covered with
blue and red contusions, her hair was falling out, and she had
permanent diarrhoea. Mother dared not take her to Eppendorf for
fear she would need another operation. "Let us pray for tomorrow,"
she would say as we sat down to supper every evening.

Father came home late that afternoon. Tummy rumbling, I was
still seated in front of a bunch of fresh roses with such long stems
that they overtopped the crucifix by several inches. Thanks to
them, all we'd had for Sunday lunch was some bean soup without
so much as a slice of sausage in it. Father walked into the kitchen
and called me in a low voice. I saw when I joined him that he was
holding something in his hand.

A bar of chocolate! My stomach leaped at the very sight of it.
"For your birthday," Father whispered as he kissed me.

I knew what birthdays were from the other children in my class.
When Grit's daughters had a birthday, she threw a big party,
complete with cream cakes and potato crisps and ice cream. No
one had ever broached the possibility of my having a birthday.

Everyone had birthdays, Father explained, and nearly everyone
celebrated them. They invited friends, ate cake and were given
presents. He never took his eyes off the door as he spoke. We could
hear Mother moving around upstairs. She'd tried to get a couple
of spoonfuls of chicken broth down Magdalena a short while
before, but after the third spoonful Magdalena had brought it up.
Mother had had to change the sheets and carry Magdalena into
the bathroom to wash her.

We failed to hear her come downstairs. I'd just put the first piece
of chocolate into my mouth when she walked in. After two steps
she froze, her gaze commuting between my hand and my mouth.
Then she turned to Father.

"How could you?" she demanded. "One of them can't keep a
morsel down, and you stuff the other with chocolate."

Father hung his head. "It's her birthday, Elsbeth," he mumbled.
"Other kids are showered with presents. All their friends turn up
and bring something. Look at next door. Grit invites the whole
street in, whereas we "

He got no further. Mother didn't raise her voice - she never did.
"In this house," she said quietly, "only one birthday counts: that of
our Saviour. Let us now turn to Him and ask Him to grant us the
strength to resist our manifold temptations. How can He show us
compassion unless our hearts are pure?"

She put out her hand for the bar of chocolate. "Give me that,"
she said, "and light the candles."

The three of us knelt on the little bench for nearly an hour. Then
Mother sent me to bed. She asked if I was willing to go without
supper. I mustn't just say yes, she said. I must be genuinely prepared
to make that sacrifice.

Although terribly hungry I nodded, went upstairs and got into
bed without cleaning my teeth. I felt sick, had a tummy-ache
and wished that I could be really ill for once. Or die, possibly of
starvation.

I couldn't sleep, so I was still awake when Father came into the
bedroom. It must have been around nine. He always went to bed
at nine when he came home early from work, even in the summer,
when it was still light outside. What else was he to do? Other
people watched television in the evenings or listened to a radio
programme or read a newspaper or a book.

We had nothing of the kind apart from Mother's Bibles. She
had several: an Old Testament, a New Testament and a Children's
Testament. The latter contained some nice pictures and stories
about the miracles performed by our Saviour.

Mother would often read aloud to Magdalena from the book,
then show her the pictures and tell her that she would one day
sit before our Saviour's father on a little bench, rejoicing with
the other angels. She hadn't read to her in recent weeks, though,
because Magdalena was too weak. Whenever Mother started to
talk or read aloud, she turned her head away.

Just as Father shut the bedroom door I heard him mutter: "It'll
soon be over. If she doesn't stop all this nonsense then, I'll kick her
arse for her." And he drove his fist into his palm. He hadn't noticed
I wasn't asleep yet.

The chief's name was Rudolf Grovian. A lot of people mispronounced it deliberately, Grobian being the German for "roughneck", but he wasn't a violent man. On the contrary, he knew there were times when he should have been tougher in his private life.
Now fifty-two, he had been married for twenty-seven years and a
father for twenty-five.

His daughter had always been a rebellious creature who made
impossible demands and rode her parents roughshod. It was his
fault for leaving his wife to bring her up alone. Mechthild was too
soft and too gullible. She couldn't bring herself to put her foot
down and believed any old rubbish she was told. If he ever said
anything, all he got was: "Oh, go easy on her, Rudi, she's still so
young."

Later on, when she was older but still refused to listen to anyone,
least of all to him, Mechthild changed her tune to: "Oh, don't get
so het up, Rudi, think of your blood pressure. Girls are like that at
her age."

Having now been married for three years, his daughter was riding
roughshod over a nice, conscientious young husband. They'd had
a son two years ago, and Rudolf Grovian had hoped she would
come to her senses, acknowledge her responsibilities and moderate
her demands.

Only that Saturday he'd been compelled to accept, to his
chagrin, that many hopes aren't worth the time devoted to them.
He'd spent the afternoon at a birthday party for his wife's sister.
His daughter had turned up with their grandson, but not his sonin-law.

Rudolf Grovian overheard some scraps of conversation between
his wife and daughter that aroused his direst fears. The word
"attorney" cropped up a number of times, and he wasn't naive
enough to persuade himself that a traffic accident or rent dispute
was involved.

He'd made up his mind to have a serious talk with his daughter
during the evening, although lie knew it was pointless and would
only put his blood pressure up, but he was called away before he
got the chance. In his job, it happened from time to time.

Rudolf Grovian was a detective chief superintendent and head
of the homicide division. Age-wise and in other respects he could
have been Cora Bender's father. As it was, he was the chief whose questions were taking her back, not forwards - thrusting her slowly
but steadily back into the midst of the madness she feared more
than death.

It was a baneful encounter for both parties: the policeman who
was an often irritable and sometimes guilt-ridden father in his
private life, and the woman who lived with the knowledge that
fathers cannot help, and that they only make things worse if they
tryy

Rudolf Grovian might have been more irritable than usual this
Saturday, but he set to work with his customary impartiality and
detachment.

As soon as he was informed of the incident at the Otto Maigler
Lido, lie drove to police headquarters and sent for all available
officers to conduct interviews, even those who did not usually deal
with capital offences.

Although it was the weekend, things moved swiftly. The whole
team was distributed around the adjoining interview rooms. Grovian
conferred with everyone so as to form an initial impression of the
case. His men were careful to mention every last little detail.

But it all came down to the actual crime. There was no indication
of what had prompted the disaster. In such cases, as Grovian knew
from experience, the trigger was to be found either in the past or
in the nature of the perpetrator. He had never dealt with or heard
of a case in which a woman launched a frenzied attack on a total
stranger.

Women drowned their children, brained their husbands in their
sleep or poisoned or smothered their invalid mothers in a mood of
desperation. Women killed those with whom they were intimately
connected, and all that Grovian heard between seven and nine
o'clock on Saturday evening seemed to fit the usual pattern.

The most important statement he obtained came from Georg
Frankenberg's friend and colleague Winfried Meilhofer, a fellow physician at the Uniklinik in Cologne. Meilhofer was a down-to-earth
person who, despite his shock, indulged in only one remark of a
non-factual nature. According to him, the woman had attacked
Frankenberg "like an avenging angel".

Meilhofer himself had felt rooted to the spot and unable to react,
he said. Besides, it had looked as if Frankie could cope with the
woman by himself. After the first blow, which would definitely not
have been fatal, he'd gripped her wrist.

This was confirmed by the father of the two little girls. "I still
don't understand it. A big, strong fellow, he was. He grabbed her,
then he let her go! I saw the whole thing quite clearly. She didn't
break free - he could easily have hung onto her, but he let her
butcher him without lifting a finger. And the way he looked at her!
I felt he must know her and know exactly why she was doing it."

Winfried Meilhofer had merely shrugged when told of the man's
supposition that Georg Frankenberg had known or recognized
Cora Bender. "Possibly, I don't know Only the husband and child
were there when we arrived. The woman turned up later - she'd
been swimming, I think. I noticed her because she was staring at
Frankie and Ute so oddly. I got the feeling she was startled. But I
don't think Frankie spotted her. I was going to point her out to him,
but then she sat down and took no more notice of us, and I paid no
more attention to her. When it happened, Frankie stared at her and
said something, I didn't hear what. I'm sorry I can't tell you more,
Chief Superintendent. I'd only known Frankie for two years, and
he seemed a quiet, level-headed person. I can't imagine he would
have given a woman grounds for such crazy behaviour. `He won't
hit you,' she told Ute. Frankie wasn't the type of man to strike a
woman. On the contrary, he tended to put them on a pedestal."

Winfried Meilhofer went on to mention an allusion Frankie had
once made to a girl he'd known and fallen head-over-heels in love
with as a first-year student. Apparently, the girl had been killed in
an accident.

"He didn't expressly say so," said Meilhofer, "but I gathered from
the way he spoke that he was present when the girl died and took a
long time to get over it. I don't think he had another affair until six
months ago, when he met Ute. Till then he lived for his work."

Meilhofer went on to recall an incident that typified Georg
Frankenberg's attitude to women and his profession. Just over six
months ago they had lost a patient, a young woman who died of a pulmonary embolism after a routine operation. You had to
accept that such things happened, but Frankie couldn't. He went
berserk and broke two of the girl's ribs in his efforts to revive her.
Afterwards he got drunk and wouldn't go home.