The Sinner (9 page)

It had ceased to matter what her motive had been for going to the
lido. Things had turned out differently, and that was good. She
hadn't meant them to, certainly not during the drive there, and if
the woman at the turnstile had accused her of intending to kill a
man, she would have thought her insane. It had happened because
it had to. Realizing this, she felt a little calmer.

By contrast, the two policemen seemed taken aback by her bald
statement. She could tell that from their expressions but had no time
to reflect on whether she might have phrased it a little less bluntly.
The questions now came thick and fast. The chief asked them; the
man in the sports coat just sat there, never taking his eyes off her.

"Did you know the man?"

"No."

"You'd never seen him before?"

"No."

"You really didn't know who he was?"

"No."

That was the truth, and the truth was always right and good, but
the chief seemed baffled by it. He shot a puzzled glance at the man
in the sports coat, who shrugged his shoulders. Then, with a slight
shake of the head, he turned to her again.

"What made you want to kill him?"

"The music was getting on my nerves." Although not entirely
correct, that came closest to the truth.

"The music?" the chief repeated. The bewilderment in his voice
wasn't lost on her.

She hastened to be more specific, without having to mention
the tune. "Yes, they had a big radio cassette player with them. The
woman had turned it up even louder. That infuriated me."

The chief cleared his throat. "Why didn't you ask her to turn the
music down? Why did you attack her companion when she turned
it up?" That was the crucial question and she had no answer to
it. "I did ask her," she said. Then, because that didn't accord with
the facts, she swiftly corrected herself: "I mean, I didn't ask her
directly, I complained. She took no notice. Maybe I didn't speak
loudly enough. I didn't want to shout, I ... Well, I really wanted to
go for a swim. I wanted ... I ..."

This really didn't concern him - it was completely irrelevant.
She stopped stammering and said firmly: "Look, he was lying on
top of the woman! I couldn't have got at her, but anyway, I didn't
want to do anything to her, honestly not. I wanted to kill him, and
I did. We don't have to argue the point. I admit it. That's good
enough for your records."

"No," said the chief, shaking his head. "No, Frau Bender, it
isn't."

"If you'd been there," she retorted, "you'd know it's more than
good enough. You should have seen the man - he was all over her.
I couldn't just watch. I had to do something about it."

The chief stared at her. "We aren't talking about a man assaulting
a woman, Frau Bender," he said with a touch of asperity. "We're
talking about a man you stabbed to death - a man named Georg
Frankenberg - and I want to know why. So don't go telling me
you..."

She didn't register what else he was saying; her ears seemed to
be shrouded in gauze. She had a sudden vision of a prison cell.
A wardress closed the door behind her. Strangely enough, the
wardress had her mother's face. She was holding a lit candle in one
hand and a wooden crucifix in the other. The figure on the cross
was only glued to it.

The Saviour!

Georg Frankenberg, was that his name? His name wasn't
important, but she let it drift like an echo past Mother's face, past the candle and the crucifix, and waited for some connection to
establish itself. She felt that the chief would be satisfied and leave
her in peace if she said: `Ah yes, it's just occurred to me: I did know
him after all."

But the echo died away, leaving no vestige behind. Her expression must have conveyed this, because the chief's tone was plain
incredulous.

"Does the name really mean nothing to you?"

"No."

He sighed, scratched his neck and glanced uncertainly at the
man in the sports coat, who was sitting quite still, contemplating
the pot plants on his desk.

They already looked a little perkier. It might have been her
imagination, but she thought she could see their limp foliage
absorbing fresh strength from the moist soil. Water was the elixir
of life, after all. Father had often told her about the hard layer of
moorland soil that had to be pierced so the water wouldn't drain
away when it rained.

But moorland soil was not under discussion here, and the chief's
voice prevented her from dwelling on Father's stories. "So you're
telling us he was a stranger to you, a man you'd never seen before.
And just because he and his friends were playing loud music, you
stabbed him like a madwoman."

"Don't say that," she snapped. "I'm not mad, I'm completely
normal."

The man in the sports coat cleared his throat discreetly and
pushed his notepad across the desk. He leaned forward and whispered something, tapping a passage in his notes.

The chief nodded and looked up again. "You weren't annoyed by
the music, only by what the couple were doing, isn't that it? You just
said he was `all over her'. But it wasn't like that. Georg Frankenberg
was merely necking with his wife, and the initiative was definitely
hers. `Stop it, you filthy swine!' That's what you shouted as you
stabbed him. You meant the pair of them, didn't you?"

She registered only two out of all those words. They lodged in her
throat like a foreign body. It was all she could do to spit them out.

"His wife?"

The chief nodded. "Georg Frankenberg had only been married
three weeks. They got back from their honeymoon two days ago.
They were still in the first flush, so to speak, and very much in love.
It's only normal for newlyweds to kiss and cuddle, and nobody
takes offence these days if they do it in public. You were the only
person to get worked up about it. Why, Frau Bender? What gave
you the idea that Georg Frankenberg might hit his wife?"

Georg Frankenberg? Something was wrong - something wasn't
the way she'd instinctively expected. She had the same puzzling
sensation as she'd had after the murder, when the blonde pushed
her hand away. His wife! She felt utterly bewildered.

"Look," she said, "there's no point in telling me such things and
asking stupid questions. That's all I'm saying. It'll save a lot of time
if you take down my confession. I killed the man, I can't say more
than that."

"You mean you won't," said the chief. "However, we already
have several statements, and one of the witnesses says you tried
to put your arms round Frau Frankenberg after the murder. You
spoke to her too. Do you remember what you said?"

He was furious now, but she didn't care. Georg Frankenberg!
And his wife! If the chief said so, it must be true. Why should
a policeman lie - what would he gain? And Gereon hadn't even
glanced at her afterwards.

He was probably lounging in front of the TV at this moment,
watching a movie. That was his life, working and watching TV. But
he was more likely to be still sitting with his parents in the living
room, and they would all be furious with her. The old man: "She
was a minx, I saw that the moment she walked into the room. We
should have sent her back where she came from."

And Gereon's mother: "You should divorce her. You must, if
only because of the neighbours. We can't have them thinking we
want anything more to do with such a creature."

And Gereon would nod. He not only nodded whenever his
parents made a suggestion but acted on it too, unless someone
pointed out what nonsense it was.

There was no one there to tell him anything any more, but he
would soon find someone else. He was a healthy, good-looking
young man. He owned a house and earned a decent living: she'd
seen to that. One day he would take over the business and become
his own boss. He was a good catch, not only financially.

He didn't drink much, wasn't given to violence and avoided
arguments. He was affectionate - yes, he was. She could have slept
with him for years and decades to come, if only he hadn't tried to
kiss her that way on Christmas Eve. Any other woman might have
enjoyed it.

He was welcome to a woman who could love him the way he
deserved. Who enjoyed being in bed with him. Who couldn't
wait for him to go down on her and would do the same to him.
Although it pained her to imagine it, she hoped with all her heart
that he would soon find such a woman. He was a philistine, yes,
but a thoroughly normal man. And she ... She was normal too.
Absolutely normal, and had been from an early age. Grit Adigar
had said so.

That was the worst thing I had to come to terms with as a child:
that none of my family was normal. I can't recall when I first
realized I was a part of it and that nothing would ever change, nor
do I remember if that realization dawned on a particular occasion
or was a gradual process. I simply knew, at some stage, that that
frightful creature was my biological mother. If I'd had to show my
face in town with her, I would have denied her just as Peter denied
our Saviour. But that made no difference to the facts or to anything
else in my miserable existence.

Father tried to make things a little more bearable for me, but
what could he do? There was the day I went to school for the first
time. Father had bought me a satchel and a blue dress in Hamburg.
It was a pretty dress with little white buttons down the bodice, a
white collar and a belt.

Vanity being yet another sin, I had to burn it before the altar in the living room - in a tin bucket. Mother stood alongside with a
watering can in case the house went up in flames.

Father shook his head that evening when I told him. Mother was
a Catholic, lie said, and Catholics are a bit stricter than most. And
later on, when we were in bed, he told me about the first school in
Buchholz.

It had been built in 1654, he said, and consisted of only two
rooms. The schoolroom doubled as the teacher's living room.
The local inhabitants didn't send their children to school because
they needed them to work in the fields - because they themselves
couldn't read or write and didn't think it mattered much. These
days everyone knew how important it was to be able to read and
write, Father said, and it was up to every schoolchild what became
of it.

That was his way of saying: "Make the best of things, Cora. I'm
afraid I can't help you."

He said it didn't matter what clothes you wore, only what was in
your head. Children in the old days went to school barefoot and
in rags. Well, I possessed shoes and didn't have to wear rags on my
first day at school, but I still felt like a scarecrow compared to all
those dolled-up little girls.

I set off with the new satchel on my back, like the rest, but in
an old, sack-like frock that Mother had dug out of the cupboard
as a penance, even though it was too small for me. I smelled of
mothballs and went to school empty-handed. All the others turned
up clutching bags of sweets in the traditional German manner.

Luckily, Mother had no time to accompany me to school that
first day, but everyone knew It's incredible how quickly such things
get around.

I was an outsider from the first because I had an invalid sister.
Yes, she was still alive. The doctors expressed surprise at her
survival every few months, but that didn't worry Magdalena. It
was her form of revenge, I often thought. I'd eaten up her strength
in Mother's belly, so she stubbornly lived on.

I had no friends. Even Kerstin and Melanie Adigar wanted
nothing to do with me in the playground; they were scared of being jeered at too. During break I used to stand there alone
every day, week after week. The others played and horsed around,
whereas I had to commune with myself and pray to the Saviour
for forgiveness and strength for myself and mercy and another day
of life for Magdalena.

Her condition had worsened since I started school. I often came
home with a cough or a cold or a sore throat. She regularly caught
them, even though I didn't go near her. I had only to sneeze, and it
would hit Magdalena like a hammer blow

Mother attributed her more frequent illnesses to the fact that
I had less time to pray than before. The morning was out, she
said, so I must at least do my duty during break. And I did. The
knowledge that Magdalena was my own flesh and blood had
crippled me somehow It meant that I would bear the same stigma
for as long as she lived.

I didn't wish her dead, honestly not, but I wanted to have some
girlfriends who would play with me in the schoolyard and come
home with me in the afternoons. I wanted to go for walks on
Sundays and sit in the ice-cream parlour with my parents - with
a mother who'd taken the time to wash, do her hair and put on a
pretty dress. I wouldn't even have expected her to paint her nails or
use lipstick occasionally, like Grit Adigar.

I wanted a father who could laugh. Who didn't always tell me
about the old days, about things that had long been dead and
decayed. Who didn't have to slink into the bathroom at night to
wrestle with his sin. Who sometimes referred to tomorrow or next
weekend. Who would once, just once, say: "Let's pay a visit to
Hamburg Cathedral! Let's have some candyfloss and a ride on the
Big Wheel!"