The Sinner (35 page)

But that was something he would have to clear up with Margret
Rosch herself. He now turned to what interested him most:
Cora's fateful suicide attempt and ensuing medical treatment.
Unfortunately, Grit Adigar could tell him little.

Some man had telephoned her in November, a few days before
Cora returned. She hadn't caught his name. Too agitated to check,
she had run next door and called Wilhelm to the phone. Wilhelm
might remember the name, she said, having spoken with him at
greater length. All she could say was, Cora had come home in a
terrible state. From the look of her, the doctor who'd treated her
must have been a bungler. No responsible physician sent a patient
home in that condition.

Cora arrived in a taxi with Hamburg licence plates. The cabby
had to help her out. She could hardly stand, but he drove off at
once without giving her a second thought.

Grit shook her head. "She stood staring at the house as if
she'd never seen it before. Then she came tottering up the path.
I'd spotted her from my window, so I hurried outside and spoke
to her. She stared straight through me. Elsbeth opened the door.
She looked at her and said: `Cora is dead. Both my daughters are
dead.' Cora screamed. I'd never heard a person scream that way
before - like an animal."

She went on to describe how Cora had buckled at the knees,
then hit her head on the doorstep again and again. How Wilhelm
had come hurrying along the passage. How they had carried Cora
upstairs and undressed her. Her body was completely emaciated.
The fresh scar and the dent in her skull had healed well, unlike her forearms. "Magdalena can't be dead!" she kept whimpering while
they were undressing her. "She can't be, we're flying to America!"

Grit had got the feeling that Cora's mind was a blank - that
she'd completely forgotten about that night, presumably because
of some major trauma. She didn't seem to entertain the possibility
that Cora might really not have learned of her sister's death until
November because she hadn't come home at all that night in
August.

Grovian did. Johnny Guitar, he thought. The boywho had turned
half the female heads in Buchholz. Who had never looked at her
twice - until that night. After a three-month vigil at her sister's
bedside she ventured out, happy and relieved that Magdalena
seemed to be improving. And what a thrill when Johnny noticed
her at last! Horsti got the brush-off - maybe lie wasn't even at
the Aladdin that night. With a pounding heart she joined Johnny
and his fat little friend in the silver Golf, possibly accompanied by
another girl, possibly not.

For now, that wasn't the salient point. The trouble was: could
one believe that the fulfilment of Cora's dream had prompted her
to consign her ailing sister to her fate and drive off into the blue?
Hard to imagine, in view of what Grit Adigar had said. But there
was another question to which he'd hitherto attached insufficient
importance. Could a serious head wound have healed within a few
weeks? That was equally hard to imagine.

From Cora Bender's parental home he set off for the restaurant
that served good but inexpensive food. No luck: it was shut between
three and six, so he drove to the hospital in which Wilhelm Rosch
was fighting for what remained of his life and his sister was keeping
watch and ordering the nursing staff around. He was unable to
speak to Cora Bender's father. As for her aunt, she fiercely defended
her reticence.

What did a girl who had died of cardiac and renal failure five
years ago have to do with the Frankenberg case? Absolutely nothing.
The very mention of Magdalena's name was bound to cut the
ground from under Cora's feet. As a concerned and caring aunt,
Margret Rosch had preferred to leave this decision to her niece. If he would be kind enough to recall, she had told Cora: "Tell them
why you left home in August." That Cora hadn't done so spoke for
itself. It was a guilt complex of which a simple detective could have
no conception.

He swallowed the simple detective bit without protest. But
Margret Rosch gave him no time to rebuke her in any case. She
proved adept at diverting the simple detective's attention from her
sin of omission and steering him in another direction. On Monday,
even before uttering a word about Cora's act of folly, she had asked
her brother the name of the hospital in which her niece had been
treated.

Wilhelm knew nothing of any hospital. The doctor had given
him his name and an address in Hamburg on the phone. Later,
however, when Wilhelm sent him a letter of thanks, it was returned
"Unknown at this Address".

"Interesting, no?" Margret Rosch said in a milder tone of voice.
"Why should the man have given him a false name? What had lie
done to her? I can guess!"

She blew out her cheeks and shook her head. "Know what
annoys me most of all, Herr Grovian? That I didn't let Cora get
on with it when she was sitting in my kitchen with that stuff."

"What stuff?"

Margret Rosch sighed and gave an embarrassed little shrug.
"Heroin. I told you, didn't I, that she attributed her condition
to withdrawal symptoms? She'd got hold of some at the railway
station and asked me to fill the hypo. I took it away from her. At the
time I simply assumed she didn't know how to handle one because
the man had been injecting her. But now I think, if that had been
so, she would at least have seen how he filled the thing. She didn't
have the first idea. Try testing her if you don't believe me."

He didn't believe a word of it, neither the putative doctor with
the false name, nor the rest. Margret Rosch had had plenty of
time to liaise with Grit Adigar. The nice neighbour had prepared
the ground; the enterprising aunt was sowing the seeds. Their
intentions were obscure to him, however. As a nurse, Margret
Rosch could hardly be naive enough to believe he would entertain the likelihood that Cora Bender's fractured skull had been treated
by a first-year medical student.

He would have no choice but to question all the hospitals and
medical practices in the Hamburg area. A job for some subordinate
who enjoyed telephoning until his ear was sore.

Grovian lacked the information he needed to locate Horsti.
Besides, he was hungry. After concluding his conversation with
Margret Rosch he made another attempt to get a good and
inexpensive meal. It was a few minutes past six. The steak was not
only ample but excellent; the vegetables left nothing to be desired.
He had told Mechthild he might be very late, so she wasn't to wait
dinner for him.

He spent just over an hour in the agreeably unpretentious
restaurant, trying to picture what it had looked like in its Aladdin
days. The friendly waiter couldn't help. He'd only lived in Buchholz
for the past two years and had never heard of Johnny, Billy-Goat or
Tiger, let alone Frankie or Horsti.

Grovian set off on the long drive home just after eight, slightly
wiser than before but not a step further - far from it. He encountered a total of four tailbacks on the return trip, despite the lateness of the hour. Thanks to those and the various roadworks, the
drive took him seven hours. He got home at half-past three in the
morning.

Mechthild was asleep. There was a note on his pillow asking him
to call Werner Hoss urgently, but it was too late even for that. He
slipped into bed as stealthily as possible. His eyes were smarting
with fatigue, his head throbbed, his neck and shoulders were
completely tensed up. He was asleep in less than two minutes.

Next morning he learned that Cora Bender had tried to terminate
the investigation in her own way. The news hit him like a whiplash.
He couldn't have felt worse had he handed her a loaded pistol.

Half a packet of paper handkerchiefs! How could he have
imagined, even for a moment, that he had the least inkling of what
went on in her head?

He sat at his desk for several minutes, just sat there staring at the
coffee percolator. A fresh brown film had formed on the bottom of the jug. At half-past nine he left the office and bought a bottle of
detergent and a scouring pad at a supermarket. Then he not only
scrubbed the jug but also polished the old machine until it looked
like new And he didn't even see it.

All he saw was her hand gripping the innocuous little packet of
tissues. He also heard her voice: "You can't imagine what happens
when I talk to you - it all comes alive again."

Now he could imagine. At least he now knew what spirit he had
conjured up: Magdalena.

She was lying on a bed. Her arms and legs had been pinioned
with broad cloth restraints. Her head was aching and buzzing from
the violent blow she had dealt it, and they'd given her a sedative
injection. That she could remember. She had fought like a wildcat,
lashing out with her fists and feet, biting and screaming almost
uncontrollably.

Some of this had lodged in her memory, but her impressions of
it were too vague to preoccupy her. Now that they'd brought her
to this room, she lay quietly on her back, drowsing. Although she
could feel the restraints on her ankles and wrists, the stiffness in her
limbs and the big plaster on her forehead, none of it mattered.

There was no room for tears even when her head gradually
cleared. Her heart was beating, and she was breathing. She could
even think, yet she had ceased to exist. She had missed eternity
by a few minutes and ended up in the worst place imaginable: a
psychiatric ward.

Although her bed was not the only one in the room, the others
were unoccupied. Not unused, though. The rumpled bedclothes
testified to the fact that their users were permitted to move around
freely elsewhere. But not her! Most shameful of all was the nappy.
She could feel it distinctly.

At some stage the door opened. A pair of hands swiftly checked
her restraints; an impassive face looked down at her. "How are you
feeling?"

She turned her head away, not wanting to feel anything any more.
Two or three tears appeared from nowhere and seeped into the
pillowcase. Two or three more trickled down her nose and onto her
compressed lips. She licked them off with the tip of her tongue.

She was thirsty, but she would have bitten off her tongue rather
than ask for a sip of water. Her throat hurt, it was so dry and so
sore from the rough treatment it had received. So was her nose.
Everything had been scraped raw.

The early-afternoon light was very bright. One of the barred
windows had been opened a crack, and sparrows could be heard
twittering outside. The succulent sound of rubber-soled shoes
receded in the direction of the door, leaving her alone again. Alone
with her thoughts and memories, her fear and guilt.

Conscious of every heartbeat, she wished it would be her last.
She concentrated hard. If one could survive by willpower alone, as
Magdalena had done for eighteen years, why shouldn't one be able
to die by willpower alone? No use, her heart went on beating.

Later the door opened again. It was still light outside. Someone
came in with a tray. The Last Supper. Except that it wasn't the last
for a woman free to make her own decisions: it was the first for a
zombie. A feeding cup and an open cheese sandwich cut into bitesized cubes. One hand gripped her chin, another held the spout of
the cup to her lips. She turned her head away indignantly, spilling the
contents on her pillow A smell of peppermint filled the air. A man's
expressionless voice said: "If you refuse to eat and drink, you'll be
force-fed. Now, are you going to open your mouth or aren't you?"

She didn't open it. Her thirst had become almost unbearable;
her throat was completely parched, her tongue swollen.

Whoever it was that had brought the tray went out again. The
door closed, but not for long. It opened again, and this time HE
came in.

She knew who he was as soon as he bent over her. He radiated
professional expertise like an aura. It shone in his eyes, issued from
him with every breath. "I possess the knowledge and the power! I
am the one who can save you from eternal damnation. Trust me,
and you'll feel better."

With a last vestige of defiance, she thought: "Wrong, you arsehole. Got a pack of cards with you?"

His voice sounded friendly. "You don't feel like eating?"

She wasn't sure if she should answer him. Who could tell what
he would deduce from her replies? He might never release her
from this room, from this nappy, from his clutches.

She decided to try after all, just to show him what a tough nut
she was. A drug-addicted whore case, hardened by life on the
streets. Her raw throat didn't share her intention, so it was only a
croak: "Thanks, I'm not hungry, but I'd be grateful for a cigarette
if you've got one."

"I'm sorry," he said, "I don't have any with me. I don't smoke."

"What a coincidence," she croaked. "We've got something in
common: I don't smoke either, I gave it up years ago. All I thought
was, with a cigarette I'd at least get one hand free."