The Sinner (12 page)

Common assault, eh? Aloud he said: "Have you got something
against doctors?"

Out of the corner of his eye lie saw her shrug. After a few
moments she said: "I wouldn't go that far. I just don't think much
of them. They tell you some nonsense and you have to believe it
because you can't prove the opposite."

"Do you know what Georg Frankenberg's profession was?"

It didn't escape him that her voice was swimming in a puddle of
despair. "How would I, if I didn't know the man?"

That was the truth, the unadulterated truth. A stranger, but his
wife had had that tape! "I'll wind it on a bit ..." In her head
something was winding back. The chief wasn't giving her time to
reflect on how, when and under what circumstances the tune on
the cassette could have found its way into her head. It would have
been important to know that.

"Do you often get headaches?" he asked.

"No, only when I've slept badly."

"Would you like an aspirin? I think we've got some here." He
oughtn't to give her anything even as harmless as aspirin - she
could say he'd fed her something that had impaired her will. He'd
only asked to make a change from saying yes or no.

"No thanks," she said. "Kind of you, but aspirin doesn't help. My mother-in-law has some tablets. I take one occasionally, but
you can only get them on prescription. They're very strong."

"Then your headaches must be bad," he said, spooning coffee
into a paper filter. He inserted the filter, pressed a button and
turned to face her.

"Yes, sometimes, but not now" She shook her head. "I'm all
right, honestly. Hey, would you turn off the machine and clean the
jug first? It's dirty. See that film on the bottom? You must wipe it
off. It's no use just rinsing it out with water."

Her look of distaste was unmistakable. House-proud young
woman, Grovian thought with a trace of sarcasm that didn't
match his mood. "I bet you rinse out the jug every time," he said
quietly.

"Of course."

`And everything else in your home is spick and span as well."

"I don't get much time for housework, but I do my best to keep
everything clean."

"Your private life included?"

Although she was feeling so wretched she could hardly think,
she grasped what lie was getting at. Instinctively, her hands closed
around the scars on her forearms. Her voice was hoarse and
defensive. "What do you mean?"

"What I say. You don't like talking about the past, but your
husband can't have been the first man in your life. Were you happy
with him, Frau Bender?"

She merely nodded.

"So why did you tell him, only a few hours ago, that he should
never have married you?"

She shrugged, put a hand to her mouth and started to chew her
thumbnail.

"He beat you up," Grovian said, indicating her face. "Did lie
often hit you?"

"No!" The hoarseness in her voice had gone without her having
to clear her throat. "Gereon never hit me," she said firmly. "Today
was the first time, but put yourself in his place. What would you
do if your wife suddenly jumped up and stabbed a stranger with a knife? You'd also try to get it away from her, and if she resisted,
you'd hit her. It was quite understandable."

Grovian rubbed the bottom of the jug clean with his fingertips,
replaced the jug under the filter and pressed the button again. "I
can't put myself in your husband's place, Frau Bender, because my
wife would never do such a crazy thing."

Her reaction was fiercer than he'd expected. She stamped her
foot and shouted: "I'm not crazy!"

Her earlier outbursts hadn't been lost on him. He took her
renewed insistence on this point as a positive challenge to continue
along the same lines. "Maybe not, Frau Bender, but that's what
people will think if you provide no explanation for your actions.
No normal person kills a stranger just because some music has
got on her nerves. I spent a long time talking with your husband,
and

She muttered something he didn't catch, but it stopped him in
his tracks. "Leave my husband out of it!" she said fiercely. "He's
got absolutely nothing to do with this." In a rather more moderate
tone she went on: "Gereon is a decent man. He's hard-working
and honest. He doesn't drink. He isn't violent."

She bowed her head, and her voice lost strength. "He'd never
force a woman to do anything she didn't want to do. He never
forced me to, either. Only yesterday he asked if I felt like it. I could
have said no, but I ..."

Grovian was feeling rather mean and couldn't understand why.
Cora Bender had attacked a defenceless man like a maddened
beast. She'd gone berserk with her little knife and was showing no
hint of remorse or sympathy for her victim. Yet to see her sitting
there with her lips trembling, enumerating her husband's good
qualities, anyone would have thought she was the victim.

But then she smiled a self-assured, supercilious smile and exasperated him yet again with her habitual, introductory "Look. . ."

"Look," she said, "I've no wish to discuss my husband with you;
it's enough if he's made a statement. He has, and he'll have to repeat
it in court, but that'll have to do. We can settle the rest between us. I
don't see why any outsiders should be dragged into this."

More harshly than he intended, Grovian said: "Plenty of
outsiders will be dragged into this, Fran Bender. I'll tell you how
matters stand: you suddenly lost control of yourself, and you either
can't or won't explain why."

She opened her mouth to speak, but lie went on quickly: "No,
don't interrupt me again. I didn't say you were mad - no one has,
to date - but you did something incomprehensible, and it's our job
to find out why. We're obliged to do so by law, whether you like it or
not. We shall have to interview a lot of people. Your parents, your
parents-in-law - everyone who's close to you. We shall question
them all, and

He got no further. She made to jump up, gripping the seat of her
chair with both hands as if that were all that could keep her in her
place. "Your parents ..." The words reverberated in her head.

"I'm warning you!" she snarled. "Leave my father alone. You're
welcome to interview my parents-in-law, they'll tell you what you
want to hear: that I'm just a shameless, money-grubbing floozy. A
floozy - my mother-in-law called me that from the outset. She can
be an absolute bitch - she's always finding fault with me."

Grovian was unaware that she'd said her parents were dead. He
saw Werner Hoss make a sign but construed it as a recommendation
that the interview be discontinued, and that didn't suit him.
Why stop just when he was getting somewhere? The glacier was
melting, he could already hear its waters gurgling in his ears. Her
parents, her father ... He swiftly grasped that he'd touched a nerve.
When she went on, lie realized that more than one sore point was
involved.

Hoss scribbled something on a piece of paper. Parents dead,
Grovian read. Well, well, he thought, but he didn't have time to
dwell on it. Her voice had lost its stability and was fluttering like a
leaf in the wind.

"I didn't lose the child. It was a precipitate birth - the doctors
said it can happen to anyone. It's nothing at all to do with whether
you've slept with one man or a hundred. I haven't slept with a
hundred men. As a child I used to imagine their things rotted off
in due course."

She was gripping the fingers of her left hand in her right and
kneading them as if she meant to break them. Grovian watched
her with a mixture of fascination and triumph. Staring at the floor,
she went on quietly: "But it was nice with Gereon. He never forced
me. He was always kind to me. I shouldn't have married him
because I ... because l ... I used to have this dream, but I hadn't
had it for quite a long time, and I ... I only wanted to ..."

She broke off, raised her head and gazed into his face, her voice
hoarse with panic. "I only wanted to lead a normal life with a
nice young husband. I wanted what other women have, can you
understand that?"

He nodded. Who wouldn't have understood, and what father
wouldn't have wanted his own daughter to pursue the same aim:
that of leading a happy, contented life with a nice, respectable
husband?

That was the moment when a change occurred in Rudolf
Grovian's attitude. He didn't notice it at the time; in fact, he still
considered himself impartial days later, a conscientious policeman
entitled to feel pity when confronted by the misery of an offender.
Pity wasn't forbidden as long as you didn't lose sight of your
objective, and that he never did for a moment. The aim of his work
was detection and elucidation, rooting around in dark corners and
searching for evidence. It made no difference whether those dark
corners were located in a building, a patch of forest or a human
soul.

Grovian did not aspire to usurp the role of an expert in the latter
field, nor was it his intention to prove, by hook or by crook, that his
initial assumption was correct. He was just a man who had been
faced with a challenge, who failed to spot the preliminary alarm
signals emitted by a mind on the brink of derangement, who was
tempted and succumbed.

Cora Bender shut her eyes tight. `And that's the way it was
at first," she said haltingly. "It was all quite normal. I enjoyed it
when Gereon made love to me. I liked going to bed with him. But
then ... it started again. It wasn't his fault, lie meant well. Other
women like it - they're crazy about it. He wasn't to know what he was starting when lie did it to me. I didn't know myself till it
happened. I ought to have discussed it with him, but what should
I have told him - that I'm not a lesbian? But it wasn't that, I think.
I don't know, but ... I mean, I realize it isn't just women that do it
with their tongues. Men do it too, and everyone enjoys it - everyone
but me. And it never stopped. I thought it would be best if I went
for a swim. It would have looked like an accident. Gereon needn't
have felt guilty. That's the worst of it when someone dies - people
blame themselves. They can't rid themselves of the feeling they
could have prevented it. I wanted to spare him that. If the child
hadn't stopped me, nothing would have happened. I'd have been
long gone by the time she wound that tape on ..."

Still with her eyes shut, she started to thump her chest with her
fist. A note of hysteria came into her voice. "It was my tune! My
tune, and I can't stand hearing it. The man didn't want to hear
it either. Not that, he said, give me a break! He knew I fall into a
hole when I hear it - lie must have known. He looked at me, and
he forgave me. I could read it in his eyes. Father, forgive her! She
knoweth not what she doth.

"Oh, my God," she sobbed. "Father, forgive me! I loved you all.
You and Mother and ... Yes, her too. I didn't want to kill anyone.
I wanted to live, to lead a normal life."

She opened her eyes again, glared at him and shook her finger in
his face. "Remember this: it was all my fault. Gereon had nothing
to do with it, nor did my father. Leave my father in peace. He's an
old man, he's suffered enough. You'll kill him if you tell him."

In his own way, Father tried hard throughout those years. Even
though I disappointed him a hundred times and gave him a
thousand reasons to despise me, he never stopped loving me.
And he did something for me that no other father would have
done.

I don't mean what he did on my birthday that time, when I was
lying in bed feeling hungry and he came in swearing to himself.
Although even then he did something for me. When he saw I
wasn't asleep yet, he perched on my bed and stroked my head.
"I'm sorry," he said.

I was furious with him. If he hadn't given me that stupid bar of
chocolate I'd have had a bowl of soup. "Leave me alone," I told
him and turned on my side.

But he didn't leave me alone. He took me in his arms and rocked
me to and fro. "My poor little girl," he whispered.

I didn't want to be a poor little girl. I didn't want a birthday
either, just to be left in peace. "Leave me alone," I said again.

"I can't," he whispered. "One unhappy daughter is enough.
I can't do anything for her, that's the doctors' responsibility, but
you're mine. If you hold out for another half-hour, Mother is
bound to go to sleep. Then I'll bring you something to eat. You
must be as hungry as a wolf."

He sat on my bed for more than an hour, holding me in his arms,
and this time he didn't tell me anything about the old days. Mother
was still down below, praying for the last time that day. It seemed
an eternity before we heard her climb the stairs at last. She went to the bathroom. Soon afterwards the bedroom door closed behind
her. Father waited a few more minutes before he stole downstairs.

He returned with a bowl of soup. It was only lukewarm, but that
didn't matter. When the bowl was empty he put it on the floor, then
felt in his pocket for something: the rest of the chocolate.