The Sinner E-Book

Petra Hammesfahr

• Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

"In this intelligent novel Hammesfahr has etched with precision the thoughts of a woman on the edge of madness."—Der Spiegel Cora Bender killed a man. But why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local police it was an open-and-shut case. Cora confessed; there was no shortage of proof or witnesses. But Police Commissioner Rudolf Grovian refused to close the file and began his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unraveling of Cora's past, a harrowing descent into a woman's private hell. Hailed as Germany's Patricia Highsmith, Petra Hammesfahr has written a dark, spellbinding novel. At the top of the bestseller list, The Sinner has been reprinted sixteen times and sold over 760,000 copies at home. Translated into eleven languages, this is the first Hammesfahr title published in English. Petra Hammesfahr, born in 1951, left school at thirteen, became pregnant by an alcoholic at seventeen, and began writing novels at the age of forty. Her first thriller was turned down 159 times, but eventually success arrived. Hammesfahr has written over twenty crime and suspense novels. She also writes scripts for television and film. She is married with three children and lives near Cologne.

Leseprobe

Petra Hammesfahr, born in 1951, wrote her first novel at the age of seventeen. She has written over twenty crime and suspense novels and also writes scripts for television and film. Her book The Quiet Mr. Genardy was her first bestseller and was made into a film. It was soon followed by the critical and commercial success of The Sinner. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the Crime Prize of Wiesbaden and the Rhineland Literary Prize, and lives near Cologne.

BITTER LEMON PRESS

First published in the United Kingdom in 2007 by Bitter Lemon Press, 37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW

www.bitterlemonpress.com

First published in German as Die Sünderin by Wunderlich, Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1999

Bitter Lemon Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Arts Council of England

© Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1999

English translation © John Brownjohn, 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of Petra Hammesfahr and John Brownjohn have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–1–904738–59–6

Typeset by Alma Books Ltd

Printed and bound by Cox & Wyman Ltd,

Reading, Berkshire

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

1

It was a hot day at the beginning of July when Cora Bender decided to die. Gereon had made love to her the night before. He made love to her regularly every Friday and Saturday night. She couldn’t bring herself to refuse him, being only too well aware how much he needed it. And she loved Gereon. It was more than love. It was gratitude and utter submission – something absolute and unconditional.

Gereon had enabled her to be a normal young woman like any other. That was why she wanted him to be happy and contented. She used to enjoy his lovemaking, but that had stopped six months ago.

It was Christmas Eve, of all times, when Gereon had taken it into his head to install a radio in their bedroom. He had wanted it to be a special night. They’d been husband and wife for exactly two and a half years and the parents of a son for eighteen months.

Gereon Bender was twenty-seven, Cora twenty-four. A slim five feet ten, Gereon looked fit and athletic, although he played no games, he never had time. His hair, ash blond at birth, had darkened little since then. His face was neither handsome nor ugly. It was an average sort of face, just as Gereon himself was an average sort of man.

Cora Bender was just as unexceptional in outward appearance, discounting the scar on her forehead and her scarred forearms. The dent in her skull had been caused by an accident, the gnarled skin on the inside of her elbows was the result of a nasty infection transmitted by hypodermic needles while she was being treated in the hospital – or so she’d told Gereon. She had also said she didn’t remember any details. That much was true. The doctor had told her that lapses of memory were common in the case of severe head injuries.

There was a hole in her life. She knew it concealed some dark, squalid episode, but her memory of it was missing. Until a few years ago she’d fallen into that hole innumerable times, night after night. The last occasion had been four years ago, before she met Gereon, and she’d somehow managed to close it. She had never expected to fall into it again since her marriage to him. And then, on Christmas Eve of all nights, it had happened.

Everything was fine at first, what with the soft Christmas music and Gereon’s caresses, which gradually became more urgent and passionate. Her mood didn’t sour until he slid slowly down the bed, and when he buried his face between her thighs and she felt his tongue, the music swelled. She heard a rapid roll on the drums, the throb of a bass guitar and the shrill, high-pitched notes of an organ. Only for a fraction of a second, then it was over, but that brief moment was enough.

Something inside her disintegrated – or rather, burst open like a safe being attacked with an acetylene torch. It was an unreal sensation. As if she were no longer lying in her own bed, she felt a hard surface beneath her back and something in her mouth like an outsize thumb that depressed her tongue and caused her to gag unbearably.

Cora’s response was purely instinctive: she wrapped her legs around Gereon’s neck and squeezed it between her thighs. She was within an ace of breaking his neck or throttling him, but she didn’t even notice, she was so far away at that moment. It wasn’t until he pinched her in the side, gasping and panting and driving his fingernails deep into the soft flesh of her waist, that the pain summoned her back.

Gereon fought for breath. “Are you crazy? What’s got into you?” He massaged his throat and coughed, staring at her and shaking his head.

He couldn’t fathom her reaction. She herself was equally at a loss to know what it was she’d suddenly found so repulsive and distasteful – so terrible that she’d momentarily felt his tongue was the touch of death.

“I don’t like it, that’s all,” she said, wondering what it was that she’d heard. The music was still playing softly: a children’s choir singing “Silent Night” – what else, on such a night?

Her unexpected onslaught had quenched Gereon’s desire. He switched off the radio, turned out the light and pulled the covers over his shoulders. He didn’t say goodnight, just growled: “That’s that, then . . .”

He fell asleep quickly. Cora wasn’t sure later whether she had also dozed off, but at some point she sat bolt upright in bed and lashed out with her fists, yelling: “Don’t! Let go! Let go of me! Stop it, you filthy swine!” And her ears rang with the wild beat of the drums, the throb of the bass guitar and the shrill strains of the organ.

Gereon woke up, grabbed her wrists and shook her. “Cora! Stop that!” he shouted. “What is all this shit?” She couldn’t stop, couldn’t wake up. She sat there in the darkness, desperately fighting off something that was slowly bearing down on her – something of which she knew nothing, only that it was driving her insane.

She didn’t recover her composure until Gereon had gently slapped her face several times. He asked her again what the matter was. Had he done something wrong? Still too bemused to answer right away, she merely stared at him. After a moment or two he lay back. She followed his example, turned on her side and strove to convince herself that it had just been an ordinary nightmare.

But it happened again the following night, when Gereon tried to make up for lost time, even though there was no radio in the bedroom and he made no attempt to do what he regarded as the supreme expression of love. First came the music, somewhat louder and longer lasting – long enough for her to realize that she had never heard the tune before. Then she fell into the dark hole and emerged from it yelling and lashing out. She didn’t wake up. That she did only when Gereon shook her, slapped her face and shouted her name.

The same thing happened twice the first week in January and once the week thereafter. Gereon was too tired that Friday night – so he claimed, at least – but on the Saturday he said: “I’m getting sick of this.” That may also have been his reason the night before.

In March he insisted on her going to a doctor. “It isn’t normal, you must admit. Something’s got to be done. Or do you plan to go on like this indefinitely? If so, I’ll sleep on the couch.”

She didn’t go to a doctor. A doctor would have been bound to ask if she had some explanation for this curious nightmare, or at least for why it happened only when Gereon had made love to her. A doctor would probably have begun to rake around in the dark hole – to persuade her to become aware of things. A doctor wouldn’t have understood that there are things too terrible to become aware of. Instead she tried a chemist, who recommended a mild sedative. This cured the yelling and lashing out, so Gereon assumed that all was well again. It wasn’t.

*

It got worse every weekend. By May her fear of Friday nights was like a wild beast gnawing away inside her. The first Friday afternoon in July was sheer hell.

She was sitting in her office, which was just a cubbyhole partitioned off from the rest of the storeroom. There was a light over the desk, and standing on the outskirts of the glow it shed was a fax machine displaying the time and date.

Four-fifty pm, 4 July . . . Ten more minutes to the end of office hours. Only another five hours or so, and Gereon would be reaching for her. She yearned to go on sitting there till Monday morning. As long as she was sitting at her desk, she was a smart, efficient young woman, the heart and soul and motive power of her father-in-law’s firm.

It was a family firm: just Cora, her father-in-law, Gereon, and an employee named Manni Weber. They were plumbing and heating engineers, and nothing functioned without her. She was proud of her position, having had to fight hard for her place in the hierarchy.

Her father-in-law had asked her to take over the office-work the day after her marriage. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. “What do you mean, you can’t? You’ve got a pair of eyes in your head; look at my books, you’ll soon pick it up. You didn’t think you were going to twiddle your thumbs in idleness, did you?”

Twiddling her thumbs had never been her style, and she told him so. The old man nodded. “That’s settled, then.”

Until then he’d had to handle the paperwork himself after hours. Her mother-in-law could just about answer the phone, which was little more than Cora herself could do to begin with.

The old man never offered her any tips or advice on how he’d done things hitherto. As for being guided by his books, they would have had to be better kept for that. There were times when he seemed to relish her helplessness, but she didn’t remain helpless for long.

She quickly grasped the essentials and persevered. Nothing was handed to her on a plate – she’d even had to fight for the wooden partition that separated her miniature office from the rest of the premises.

For the first year she’d sat at a discarded kitchen table in the corner of the big, unheated, eternally grimy room. She dared not complain, although the old man didn’t even pay her a wage. Gereon himself earned nothing but pocket money plus their board and lodging, and his car was registered in the firm’s name. If they needed anything else, he had to ask.

Even Cora’s pregnancy brought no concessions – not even a modicum of comfort. She continued to sit in the corner of the storeroom until the very last minute. When she went into labour she was working out an estimate for a gas central heating system – standing at the table because she couldn’t continue to sit any longer, her back was aching so much. Her mother-in-law got hysterical because everything went so quickly. A few fierce pains, then her waters broke, and she felt intense pressure in her lower abdomen.

She hadn’t wanted to go to hospital at first, but in the end she called out: “I need an ambulance! Call an ambulance!”

Her mother-in-law just stood there, pointing at the table. “You aren’t through yet, finish it first. No one gives birth in ten minutes; I was in labour with Gereon for a whole day. Father will be furious if that isn’t finished by tonight, you know what he’s like.”

She knew it only too well, having lived under the same roof since her marriage. The old man was a tyrant, an exploiter, and her mother-in-law a submissive creature who bullied anyone in a weaker position than herself. Gereon was just a follower of orders, and Cora a slave. She’d sold herself cheap, almost for nothing, in return for the illusion of a well-ordered existence.

And suddenly, as she stood hunched over the old kitchen table, watching the puddle spreading around her feet with one hand clamped between her thighs and pressed against her bulging belly, she’d had enough. Finish it first? No!

In the hospital she found time to reflect on her life at leisure and grasp that a well-ordered existence also had its drawbacks. In such an environment, any hope that her dreams would come true by themselves was futile. The only question was, how much of a risk could she afford to take? Still, she told herself, it would be easier with a baby in her arms. Those seven or eight pounds of humanity would be enough to support any demand she made.

She proceeded to put her ideas into effect when she came home a few days later. This earned her the reputation of a brazen, ruthless creature – a hussy with hair on her teeth, as the old man often called her. She certainly wasn’t that, but she could act like one if necessary. Besides, asking his permission would have achieved nothing.

She fixed up the office, complete with desk, filing cabinet and heating. She also took other liberties, like paying herself and Gereon a salary. The old man flew into a rage, accusing her of barefaced rapacity. “Where did you learn to pick other people’s pockets?” he demanded.

Her heart was in her mouth, but she stood firm. “Either we get paid like other people or we go and work elsewhere, it’s up to you. Ask around, find out what other firms are paying, then you’ll see what a good deal you’re getting. Me, pick your pockets? Never say that again! I earn my money!”

It was an arduous business, getting her way with the old man, but she managed it. She had even, well over a year ago, squeezed a house of their own out of him. More than once she’d been afraid he would chuck her out, child or no child. “Go back where you came from!” Gereon had merely stood there, looking hangdog. He’d never once backed her up or uttered a word in her defence.

To her chagrin, Cora had realized soon after their son’s birth that her husband would be no help to her. That had ceased to matter now. Gereon was simply like that. He did his work. That apart, he liked a quiet life – and a bit of lovemaking on Friday and Saturday night. She couldn’t baulk at this because lovemaking was something good, something wholly normal and natural.

Eight minutes to five on 4 July . . . Cora still had another invoice to make out. She’d kept putting it off so as to occupy her mind for those last few minutes. A new central heating boiler. Gereon and Manni Weber had installed it on Wednesday, and there were two more scheduled for next week. The new anti-pollution regulations were compelling people to scrap their old boilers. The regulations had come into force several years ago, but many householders had jibbed at the expense and waited until the district chimney sweep threatened to put their old boilers out of action.

It was funny in a way, that attitude. You knew exactly what you were in for and did nothing. You simply waited, as if an old boiler’s emissions would conform to the stricter standards overnight, entirely by themselves and of their own accord – as if a hole inside you would close up from one minute to the next.

It had closed up four years ago, although not from one minute to the next. The process had taken a month or two. That was before she met Gereon, whose raids on her body kept dislodging the scabs that had formed in the previous few days.

Three minutes to five on 4 July . . . Nothing left to do but that invoice. Last Friday she’d been able to devote some time to the wage slips. Although only an illusion, it had kept her panic at bay. It wasn’t just fear or a simple sense of unease; it was a reddish-grey mist that filled her brain, pervading every cranny and jangling every nerve.

Five pm! Stiff-fingered, she removed the sheet of paper from the typewriter and carefully checked the individual figures. There was nothing to correct, just a bit of desk tidying to do. Last of all she turned the calendar over to next week. Monday! Till then two eternities loomed like a double death, and she was half-dead already.

*

Her legs refused to obey her. Walking like someone on stilts, she emerged from her tiny office and made her way across the storeroom, then out into the yard. It was very hot outside. The baby-faced sun was smiling down out of a cloudless sky. It was so bright, her eyes started to water, but not, in all probability, because of the glare.

Her parents-in-law lived in the house overlooking the street; her own home occupied the former garden. It was a sizeable house equipped with all mod cons, the fitted kitchen a dream in bleached oak. As a rule she felt very proud of it all. At the moment she felt nothing in the way of pride or self-assurance, just this terrible fear of going mad. To her, going mad seemed worse than death.

She busied herself with housework until just before seven. Gereon wasn’t home yet. On Fridays he regularly repaired to a bar with Manni Weber for a beer or two – never more than two, unless he switched to alcohol-free. They joined his parents for supper at seven on the dot.

At eight they returned to their own house, taking their son with them, and put him straight to bed. Cora’s mother-in-law had already dressed him in his pyjamas and a nappy for the night.

Gereon sat down in front of the TV and watched the news, then a movie. At ten he developed his nervous expression. He smoked one more cigarette. Before lighting it he said: “I’ll just smoke one more.”

His manner was tense and uncertain – he hadn’t known how to behave for weeks now. After a minute or two he stubbed out the cigarette and said: “I’ll go up now.” He might as well have brandished a whip or done something equally atrocious.

“Coming, Cora? I’m through.” It was all she could do to get out of her armchair when she heard him call her from upstairs.

He’d showered and brushed his teeth, run the razor over his cheeks and neck and dabbed himself with aftershave. Clean, fragrant and good-looking, he was standing in the bathroom doorway in his underpants, his erection all too apparent beneath the thin material. He gave a sheepish grin and stroked the nape of his neck, where his hair was still damp from the shower. “Or don’t you feel like it?” he asked hesitantly.

It would have been easy to say no – in fact she briefly considered doing so – but that would merely have postponed the problem, not disposed of it for good.

She wasn’t long in the bathroom. Her sleeping pills were on the shelf above the basin – stronger ones than the first batch, and the packet was almost full. She washed two down with half a toothmug of water. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she swallowed the remaining sixteen in the hope that they would be enough to finish her off. Going into the bedroom, she lay down beside Gereon and forced a smile.

He took little trouble, being eager to get it over quickly. His hand located the objective and checked its condition with a finger. The outlook was unpromising, and had been ever since the night he’d tried to kiss her there. Having become inured to this, Gereon had acquired a tube of lubricant, which he gently applied before mounting her and thrusting his way inside.

That was when the madness began. Absolute silence reigned, except for Gereon’s breathing. Restrained at first, it became ever louder and more hectic. Not a sound to be heard but his breathing, yet hear it she did, like the strains of an invisible radio. After six months the rhythm was as familiar to her as her own heartbeat: the rapid roll on the drums, the throb of the bass guitar and the high-pitched piping of the organ. The faster Gereon’s movements, the more the tempo increased until she felt her heart must burst. Then it was over, cut off at the very instant Gereon rolled off her.

He turned over on his side and fell asleep in no time. She stared into the darkness, waiting for the sixteen pills to take effect.

Her stomach, which felt as if it were filled with molten lead, rumbled and burned like fire. Then its hot, scalding contents ascended into her throat. She reached the bathroom just in time to vomit. Afterwards she cried herself to sleep – cried her way through a dream that rent her night into a thousand fragments. She was still weeping when Gereon turned on the light and shook her by the shoulder. “What’s the matter?” he asked, staring at her uncomprehendingly.

“I can’t take it any more,” she said. “I just can’t take it any more.” At breakfast she was still feeling nauseous and had a raging headache – she often did at weekends. Gereon made no reference to the incident in the night, just eyed her with a mixture of doubt and suspicion.

He’d made some coffee. It was too strong, and her tormented stomach rebelled once more. Gereon had also got the child up. He was holding his son on his lap and feeding him a slice of white bread thickly spread with butter and jam. An affectionate father, he looked after him whenever he could spare the time.

The little boy was cared for by his grandmother during the week. He also slept at the grandparents’ house, in the room that had once been Gereon’s. At the weekend Cora took him home with her. Looking at the boy as he sat perched on Gereon’s lap, she felt he was her finest achievement in life.

Gereon wiped the jam off his son’s chin and out of the corners of his mouth. “I’ll get him dressed,” he said. “You’re bound to want to take him shopping.”

“I won’t be going out till later on,” she replied, “and I’d sooner not take him with me in this heat.”

Only nine o’clock, and the thermometer was already nudging eighty degrees. Her eyes were almost starting out of their sockets, the pain in her head was so intense. She could scarcely think, and everything needed careful planning and execution. A spontaneous decision like last night’s wasn’t good enough: it left too much to chance. While Gereon was cutting the grass she went across to her mother-in-law and begged one of her strong painkillers, the kind you could only get on prescription. After that she cleaned the kitchen, bathroom, stairs and hallway more thoroughly than ever before. Everything had to be spick and span.

At eleven she left the little boy with her mother-in-law and made her way to the car with an empty shopping bag in each hand. The car seemed the simplest solution, but she dismissed the idea as she drove off. Gereon was dependent on the car. How else would he get to their customers on Monday? Besides, it wasn’t like her to destroy something that had cost as much as a new car.

Out of habit she drove to the supermarket. While filling the wire basket she debated other possibilities. Nothing occurred to her immediately. A dozen women were waiting at the sausage counter. She wondered how many of them were looking forward to tonight and how many felt as she did. None, she was sure.

She was the exception. She’d always been an exception, the outsider with the mark on her forehead. Cora Bender, twenty-five, slim and petite, three years married, mother of a two-year-old son to whom she’d given birth almost on her feet, just after getting into the ambulance.

A “precipitate delivery”, the doctors had called it. Her mother-in-law took a different view. “You only have to whore around long enough to pup that easily, you get so big down there. Who knows what she got up to before? It can’t have been anything good if her parents want nothing more to do with her. They didn’t even come to the wedding. You can’t help wondering why.”

Cora Bender’s shoulder-length auburn hair flopped across her forehead in a way that hid the dent in her skull and the jagged scar. Her pretty little face wore a questing, helpless expression, as if she’d merely forgotten to put some item of shopping in her basket. Her hands clutched the handle of the basket so tightly, the knuckles stood out white and sharp. Her brown eyes roamed restlessly over the contents of the basket, counted the pots of yoghurt, lingered on the papier mâché tray of apples. Six plump, juicy apples with yellow skins. Golden Delicious, the sort she liked. She liked life too, but hers had ceased to be a life. It had never been one, strictly speaking. And then it occurred to her how to end it.

*

That afternoon, when the worst of the heat was over, Gereon drove them down to the lake. Although he hadn’t been delighted by her suggestion, he hadn’t opposed it. He manifested his displeasure in another way, never guessing that he was only stiffening her resolve: he spent a quarter of an hour driving vainly around the dusty car park nearest the entrance.

There were vacant spaces further off, as Cora pointed out more than once. “I don’t feel like toting the whole caboodle all that way,” he retorted.

It was hot inside the car. They’d driven there with the windows up in case the child caught a cold. Cora had been calm when they set off, but all this driving around was making her nervous. “Come on,” she said, “be quick, or it won’t be worth it.”

“What’s the hurry? A few minutes here or there won’t matter. Maybe someone’ll leave.”

“Nonsense, no one goes home at this hour. Either park somewhere or let me out and I’ll go on ahead. Then you can drive around till nightfall, for all I care.”

It was four o’clock. Gereon scowled but said nothing. He put the car into reverse and backed up for a spell, although he knew she disliked it. At long last he parked so close to another car that the door on her side wouldn’t open fully.

She wormed her way out, relieved by the faint breeze that fanned her forehead. Then she reached into the stuffy car, retrieved her shoulder bag and hooked it over her shoulder, and released the little boy from his special seat in the back. She set him on his feet beside the car and went round the back to help Gereon unload.

They’d brought everything needed for an afternoon at the lido. Cora didn’t want anyone to assume premeditation later on. She clamped the blanket and sun umbrella under her shoulder-bag arm and carried the two folding chairs in her other hand. All that remained for Gereon to carry were the towels, the cold bag and the child.

The sunlight made her blink. The big car park was completely devoid of shade. There were a few bushes around the edge, more dusty than green. Her sunglasses were at the bottom of the shoulder bag. She hadn’t put them on in the car, just lowered the sun visor. The folding chairs bumped against her leg as she walked. A protruding piece of metal scraped the bare skin unpleasantly, leaving a red mark.

Gereon had already reached the barrier and was waiting for her. He was pointing to the wire-mesh fence and explaining something to the child. He was only wearing shorts and sandals. His chest was bare, the skin tanned and smooth. He had a good figure: broad shoulders, muscular arms and a narrow waist. Looking at him, she felt sure he would soon find someone else. He didn’t move when she got there, nor did he make any attempt to take anything from her.

The charge for the car park covered the price of admission, but she’d stowed the tickets away. She put the folding chairs down and proceeded to rummage in the shoulder bag for her purse. She groped around in nappies and a change of pants for the child, passing two apples, a banana and a packet of biscuits on the way. Her fingers encountered a plastic yoghurt spoon and the blade of the little fruit knife, which almost cut her. At last she located the leather purse and opened it. Having extracted the tickets, she proffered them to the woman at the barrier and pushed through the turnstile in Gereon’s wake.

They had to make a long trek across the grass, which was trampled flat, threading their way between countless blankets, seated family circles and frolicking children. The shoulder strap was cutting into her flesh, the arm with the blanket and umbrella clamped beneath it going numb, and her leg hurt where the skin was being lacerated by the chair’s metal frame. But these were only superficial sensations; they had ceased to trouble her. She had finished with life. Her one remaining concern was to behave normally and do nothing that might arouse Gereon’s suspicions, although it was unlikely that he would fathom the significance of a telltale gesture or remark.

He eventually halted at a spot that conveyed at least an illusion of shade, thanks to a measly little tree with sparse foliage. The leaves were drooping as though asleep; the trunk was even thinner than a man’s arm.

She deposited the blanket, shoulder bag and chairs on the grass, put up the umbrella and stuck the end in the ground, spread out the blanket beneath it, erected the folding chairs and arranged them on it. Gereon stood their son on the blanket, then squatted down and removed the boy’s shoes and socks. Finally, he peeled off his thin shirt and pulled his coloured rompers down.

The little boy sat there with a pair of white underpants over his nappy. His fringe made him look almost like a girl. Looking at him, Cora wondered if he would miss her when she wasn’t there any more. She doubted it, considering that he spent most of the time with his grandmother.

It was a peculiar feeling, standing there in the midst of all those people. A large family lay stretched out on several blankets behind the little tree to their rear. Father, mother, grandfather, grandmother and two little girls of four or five in ruched bikinis. A baby sat kicking in a bouncy chair beneath a sun umbrella.

Just as she had in the supermarket, she wondered what was going on inside the other people’s heads. The grandmother was playing with the baby. The two men were dozing in the sun. The grandfather had spread a newspaper over his face; the father was wearing a cap whose peak shaded his eyes. The mother looked harassed. She called to one of the little girls to blow her nose, rummaging in a basket for some tissues. An elderly couple were seated in deckchairs on their right. Some children were playing with a ball on an open stretch of grass to their left.

Cora pulled her T-shirt over her head – she was wearing a swimsuit underneath – and let her skirt fall around her ankles. Then she felt in the shoulder bag for her sunglasses, put them on and sat down on one of the chairs.

Gereon was already sitting down. “Like me to rub some sun cream on you?” he asked.

“I already did, at home.”

“You can’t reach the whole of your back.”

“But I’m not sitting with my back to the sun.”

He shrugged, sat back and closed his eyes. She looked out over the water, sensing its almost magnetic attraction. It wouldn’t be easy, not for a good swimmer like her, but if she went on swimming until she was utterly exhausted . . . She got up and removed her sunglasses. “I’m going in,” she said. It was unnecessary to tell him that. He didn’t even open his eyes.

She walked across the grass and the narrow strip of sand and waded out through the shallows. The water was cool and refreshing. An agreeable frisson ran through her when she submerged and it closed over her head.

She swam out to the boom that separated the supervised lido from the open lake, then along it for a little way. She felt a sudden temptation to do it at once – climb over the boom and swim out. It wasn’t prohibited. There were a few groups of figures sprawled on blankets on the far shore, people who were reluctant to pay the admission charge and didn’t mind lying among rocks and scrub. The lifeguard on his little wooden platform kept an eye on them too, but he couldn’t see everything and wouldn’t be able to reach the spot in time if something happened out there. Besides, a person would have to shout for help or at least wave their arms. If a lone head in the midst of all this turmoil simply sank beneath the surface . . .

Some man was said to have drowned in the lake and never been found; she didn’t know if it was true. If it was, he must still be down there. Then she could live with him among the fish and waterweed. It must be nice in his watery world, where there were no tunes and no dark dreams, where nothing could be heard but faint gurgles and everything was a mysterious shade of green or brown. The last thing the man in the lake had heard wasn’t a drum, that was certain, only his own heartbeat. No bass guitar or shrilling organ, just his own blood throbbing in his ears.

After nearly an hour she swam back. It came hard, but she had already left most of her strength in the water. Besides, she felt she needed to play with the child for a while and explain to him, perhaps, why she had to go away – not that he would understand. She also wanted to bid Gereon a covert farewell.

*

When she got back to their patch the elderly couple on the right had disappeared. Only the two deckchairs were still there, and the expanse on their left was no longer unoccupied. There wasn’t a sign of the children playing ball. In their place, a pale green blanket had been spread out so close to her folding chair that it almost touched the tubular frame. Music was oozing into the afternoon air from a big radio cassette in the middle of the blanket.

Distributed round the radio were four people, all of them roughly her own and Gereon’s age. Two men, two women. Two couples, one of them seated with their knees drawn up, just talking, their faces visible in profile. The other couple were faceless at first. They were lying stretched out: the woman on her back, the man on top of her.

Only the woman’s hair could be seen. Platinum blond – almost white – and very long, it reached to her waist. The man had thick, dark hair that curled on the nape of the neck. His muscular legs were lying between the woman’s splayed thighs, his hands cupping her head. He was kissing her.

The sight abruptly froze her heart. She found it hard to breathe and felt the blood drain into her legs, leaving her head empty. Purely to replenish it, she ducked beneath the umbrella and reached for a towel, and just to drown the hammering of her heart, which had started to beat again, she stroked the little boy’s head, said a few words to him, dug his red plastic fish out of her shoulder bag and put it in his hand.

Then she turned her chair so that her back was towards the foursome with the radio. Although their image continued to float before her eyes, it gradually faded, and she grew calmer. It was no concern of hers what the couple behind her were doing – it was normal and innocuous, and even the music wasn’t a nuisance. Someone was singing in English.

In addition to the music she could hear a woman’s high-pitched voice and the low, unhurried voice of a man, presumably the one sitting up. He hadn’t known the woman long, from the way he spoke. Alice, he called her. The name reminded Cora of a book she’d owned – for one short day – as a child: Alice in Wonderland.She hadn’t read it – she hadn’t had a chance to, not in those few hours. Her father had told her what it was about, but what he’d told her was as worthless as his promise: “Things will be better some day.”

The man behind her chair was saying that he planned to become a GP. He’d been invited to join a group practice – a good offer, he told Alice. Nothing could be heard from the couple lying down.

Gereon peered past her and grinned. Instinctively, Cora glanced over her shoulder. Still with his back to her, the dark-haired man was kneeling up beside the platinum blonde. He’d removed her bikini top and poured some suntan oil between her breasts. The little pool was clearly visible, and he was busy rubbing it in. The woman stretched voluptuously under his hands. She was enjoying it, from the look on her face. Then she sat up. “Your turn now,” she said. “But first let’s have some decent music. This stuff is enough to send you to sleep.”

Lying beside the platinum blonde’s legs was a brightly coloured cloth bag. She reached into it and took out a cassette. The dark-haired man protested. “No, Ute, not that one – that’s not fair. Where did you get it from? Give it here!” He made a grab for her arm. She toppled over backwards and he fell on top of her. They wrestled around, almost rolling off the blanket.

Gereon was still grinning.

The man ended up underneath with the woman sitting astride him. She held the cassette in the air, laughing. “I win, I win!” she said breathlessly. “Don’t be a spoilsport, sweetie. This is great stuff!” She leaned over, her long fair hair brushing the man’s legs, and thrust the cassette into the slot, then pressed the start button and turned up the volume.

The words “don’t be a spoilsport, sweetie” pierced Cora like a knife and set something inside her quivering. As the first bars of the music rang out, the blonde bent down and cupped the man’s face between her hands. She kissed him, her hips moving rhythmically against his crotch.

Gereon was getting his edgy expression. “Like me to oil you now?” he asked.

“No!” She hadn’t meant to be so vehement, but the woman’s movements and Gereon’s reaction to them were infuriating her. It was time to say goodbye to the child. She wanted to do so in peace, not in the immediate proximity of a bimbo who was all too vividly demonstrating where she herself had failed.

“They might at least turn the music down,” she said. “Loud music is forbidden here.”

Gereon looked scornful. “It’ll be forbidden to breathe here soon. Don’t get all worked up about nothing. I’m enjoying that music. I’m enjoying what goes with it too. At least she’s got some fire down below.”

She ignored this. Clasping the child in one arm, she picked up the red fish with her free hand. It soothed her and did her good, the feeling of his warm, firm body bundled up in its nappy and little white pants, the plump arm around her neck and the baby face so close to her own.

He flinched when she reached the lakeshore and put him down in the shallows. He’d been sitting in the heat for so long, the water felt cold. After a moment or two he squatted down and looked up at her. She handed him the red fish and he dunked it in the water.

He was a quiet, good-looking child. He didn’t speak much, although he had a relatively large vocabulary and could express himself clearly in short sentences. “I’m hungry.” – “Papa has to work.” – “Grandma is making blancmange.” – “That’s Mama’s bed.”

One Sunday morning shortly after they moved into their own house, when he was just a year old, she had taken him into her bed. He went back to sleep in her arms, and holding him had imparted a sensation of warmth and intimacy.

Now, as she stood looking down at his slender white back, at the little hand wiggling the red fish in the water, the bowed head and almost white hair, the delicate little neck, that feeling returned. If there hadn’t already been reasons enough, she would have done it for him alone, so that he could grow up free and unencumbered. She crouched down beside him and kissed him on the shoulder. He smelled clean and fresh from the suntan oil Gereon had rubbed into him while she was in the water.

She stood beside him in the shallows for half an hour, forgetful of the couple on the green blanket, forgetful of everything that might have disrupted their leave-taking. Then the lido gradually emptied. It was nearing six o’clock, and she realized that the time had come. If she hadn’t had the child with her she would have swum out into the lake without wasting another thought on Gereon, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave the helpless toddler alone on the lakeshore. He might have waded in after her.

She picked him up in her arms again, feeling the chill of his little legs and wet pants through her swimsuit and his firm, plump arm around her neck. He was holding the red fish by the tail.

She saw as she drew nearer that nothing on the green blanket had changed. The music was playing as loudly as before. One couple was sitting there, chatting away without any physical contact, the other lying down again.

Taking no notice of them, she changed the little boy into a clean nappy and dry underpants. Just as she was about to go, she was detained once more.

The child said: “I’m hungry.”

A couple of minutes here or there wouldn’t matter. She was totally focused on these last few moments with her son. “What would you like,” she asked, “a yoghurt, a banana, a biscuit or an apple?”

He cocked his head as though seriously debating her question. “An apple,” he said. So she resumed her seat and took an apple and the little fruit knife from her shoulder bag.

*

In her absence, Gereon had moved her chair so that she no longer had her back to the blanket but was sideways on. That way, he could see past her more easily. He was sitting there with his legs extended and his hands folded on his stomach, pretending to look at the lake. In reality, he was leering at the blonde bimbo’s breasts.

He was bound to choose himself a bimbo like that when she’d gone, she reflected. The thought should have infuriated her, but it didn’t even sadden her. The part of her that could feel was probably dead already, killed off – not that anyone had noticed – sometime in the last six months. Her sole concern was how to make things easier for herself.

She mustn’t fight the water. Jutting into the lake at the far end of the lido was a small, scrub-covered headland. Once beyond it she would be hidden from view. Then out to the middle of the lake, duck-diving from the outset. That would sap her strength.

The radio cassette was belting out a drum solo. It flailed away at her brain, although she took no notice of it. Holding the apple firmly in her hand, she felt the nape of her neck prickle and her shoulder muscles tense, felt her back stiffen and go cold as if she were lying on some hard, cold surface instead of sitting in balmy air, felt something like an exceptionally thick thumb force its way into her mouth, just as it had at Christmas, when Gereon had meant to give her a special treat.

Swallowing hard, she took the knife and cut the apple into four quarters, three of which she deposited on her lap.

Behind her, a voice she recognized as Alice’s said: “It’s really hot stuff.”

“Yes,” said the man sitting beside her, “you wouldn’t think it of him today. It was five years ago, of course. That was Frankie’s wild and woolly phase – it only lasted a few weeks. He doesn’t like being reminded of it, but I reckon Ute’s right, it’s great music – nothing to be ashamed of. Three friends, they were. A shame they never made the big time, just played in a cellar. That’s Frankie on drums.”

Frankie, friends, cellar, drums . . . The words rang briefly in her head, imprinting themselves on her memory.

“Were you there at the time?” Alice asked.

“No, I hadn’t met him yet.”

Gereon stretched. He glanced at the piece of apple in her hand. “He’ll never eat all that. You can give me the rest.”

“I’m eating the rest myself,” she said. “Then I’m going for another swim. There’s another apple in the bag; you can have it.” A last piece of apple! Golden Delicious, the kind she’d loved as a child. The very thought made her mouth water.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the blonde on the blanket sit up. “Hang on,” the woman said, pressing a button on the cassette player, “I’ll wind it on a bit. This is nothing compared to ‘Tiger’s Song’! You won’t hear anything better.”

The dark-haired man rolled over and made another grab for her arm. Cora saw his face for the first time. It meant nothing to her. His voice too was just as unfamiliar when he protested again, more vehemently this time. “No, Ute, that’s enough. Not that, give me a break!” He sounded very much in earnest, but Ute laughed and fended him off.

Cora thought of her house. Her mother-in-law was bound to go through it with a fine-tooth comb, but she wouldn’t find any cause for complaint. Everything was spick and span. The firm’s books were in order too. No one would be able to say she’d been slapdash.

She removed the core from the piece of apple and peeled it as thinly as possible, then handed it to the little boy and picked up the next piece, intending to peel and core it for herself. At that moment the music started again, even louder than before. Involuntarily, she glanced sideways. She saw the blonde subside onto her back, grasp the man’s shoulders and pull him down on top of her, saw him bury his fingers in her hair and adjust her head to a convenient angle. Then he kissed her. And the drums . . .

The remains of the apple fell to the grass as she jumped up. Gereon gave a start when she began to shout.

“Stop it, you filthy swine! Stop it, let go of her! Let go of her!”

At the first words she hurled herself sideways and fell to her knees. As the last words left her lips she stabbed the man with the knife.

Her first thrust caught him in the neck. He gave a startled cry and swung round, grabbed her wrist and held it for a moment or two, staring at her. Then he let go and merely went on staring. He muttered something she didn’t catch, the music was too loud.

That was it! That was the tune in her head, the prelude to madness. It rang out over the trampled grass, over the horrified faces and frozen figures of those around her.

The second thrust caught him in the side of the throat. He stared at her wide-eyed but made no sound, just clutched his neck with one hand and gazed into her eyes. The blood spurted between his fingers, red as the little plastic fish. The blonde screamed and tried to crawl away beneath his legs.

She stabbed him again and again. Once in the throat, once in the shoulder, once through the cheek. The knife was small but pointed and very sharp. And the music was so loud. It filled her head entirely.

The man who had merely been sitting there, talking with Alice, shouted something. It sounded like “Stop that!”

Of course! That was the whole point: Stop that! Stop it, you filthy swine! The seated man put out his hand as if to catch hold of her, but he didn’t. No one did a thing. It was as if they were all frozen in time. Alice put both hands over her mouth. The blonde whimpered and screamed alternately. The little girls in frilly bikinis clung to their mother. The grandfather removed the newspaper from his face and sat up. The grandmother snatched up the baby and clasped it to her breast. The father started to rise.

Gereon got out of his chair at last. An instant later he was standing over her. He punched her in the back and tried to grab the hand with the knife just as she raised her arm once more. “Cora!” he yelled. “Stop that! Are you crazy?”

No, her head was clear as a bell. Everything was fine, everything was just as it should be. It had to be this way: she knew it beyond all doubt. And the man knew it too; she could read it in his eyes. “This is my blood, which was shed for you for the remission of your sins.”

When Gereon hurled himself at her the seated man and the father of the little girls came to his aid. They each held an arm while Gereon wrested the knife from her grasp. Holding her by the hair with one hand, he forced her head back and punched her in the face several times.

Gereon was bleeding from two or three cuts on his arm. She had stabbed him too, although she hadn’t meant to. The seated man yelled at him to stop, which he eventually did. But he gripped her by the back of the neck and clamped her face against the other man’s bloodstained chest.

No sound was coming from inside that chest, nor was there much sound in general. A few more rhythmical beats, a final drum solo just before the tape ended. Then came a click. A button on the cassette player popped up, and it was over.

She was conscious of Gereon’s grip, of the numb places on her face where his fist had struck her, of the blood on the chest beneath her cheek and its taste on her lips. The platinum blonde was whimpering.

She put out a hand and rested it on the woman’s leg. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “He won’t hit you. Come on, come away. Let’s go. We shouldn’t have come here. Can you get up by yourself, or shall I help you?” The little boy on her blanket started to cry.

2

I didn’t cry much as a child. Only once, in fact, and then I didn’t cry but screamed with fear. I haven’t given it a thought in recent years, but I remember the occasion distinctly. I’m in a dimly lit bedroom with heavy brown curtains over the window. The curtains are stirring, so the window must be open. It’s cold in there. I’m shivering.

I’m standing in front of a double bed. One half is neatly made up, the other, nearest the window, is rumpled. The bed emits a stale, sourish smell as if the sheets haven’t been changed for a long time.

I don’t like it in the bedroom. The chill, the stench of months-old sweat, a threadbare runner on the bare floorboards. In the room I’ve just come from there’s a thick carpet on the floor, and it’s nice and warm. I tug at the hand holding mine, eager to go.

Seated on the tidy side of the bed is a woman wearing an overcoat and holding a baby in her arms. The baby is wrapped in a blanket. I’m supposed to look at her. She’s my sister Magdalena. I have a new sister, I’ve been told, and we’re going to look at her. But all I see is the woman in the overcoat.

The woman is a total stranger to me. She’s my mother, whom I haven’t seen for ages. Six months – a long time to a small child. My memory doesn’t go back that far. And now I’m supposed to remain with this woman, who only has eyes for the bundle in the blanket.

Her face frightens me. It’s hard, grey and forbidding. At last she looks at me. Her voice sounds the way she looks. She says: “The Lord has not forgiven our sins.”

Then she folds back the blanket, and I see a tiny, blue face. “He has put us to the test,” she goes on. “We must pass that test. We shall do what He expects of us.”

I don’t believe I could have registered those words at the time. They were often told me later on, that’s why I still remember them so well.

I want to go. The woman’s odd voice, the tiny, blue face in the blanket – I want no part of them. I tug again at the hand holding mine and start crying. Somebody picks me up and hushes me. My mother! I’m firmly convinced that the woman who takes me in her arms is my real mother. I cling to her and feel relieved when she takes me back into the warm.

I was still very young – only eighteen months. It’s easy to work that out because I was one year old when Magdalena was born at the hospital in Buchholz, like me. We were both born in the same month: I on 9 May, and she on 16 May. My sister was a blue baby. Immediately after her birth she was transferred to the big hospital at Eppendorf and had an operation on her heart. The doctors discovered that Magdalena had other things wrong with her. They did their best for her, of course, but they couldn’t put everything right.

It was thought at first that she had only a few days to live – a few weeks at most. The doctors didn’t want Mother to take her home, but Mother refused to leave her on her own, so she stayed on at Eppendorf. But my sister was still alive after six months, and the doctors couldn’t keep her there indefinitely, so they sent her home to die.

I spent those first six months living with the Adigars, our next-door neighbours. As a little child I firmly believed that they were my family – that Grit Adigar was my real mother and had handed me over to the woman in the overcoat because she wanted to get rid of me. Grit took me back with her at first but not, alas, for long.

Although I don’t have any detailed recollections of this period, I’ve often wished I could remember at least a little about the weeks and months I spent with Grit and her daughters, Kerstin and Melanie.

Grit was still very young. She must then have been in her early twenties, having had her first child at seventeen and her second at nineteen. Her husband was seldom at home. Several years older than her, he earned a good living at sea. Grit always had plenty of money and plenty of time for her daughters. She was a cheerful, uncomplicated person, almost a child herself.

In later years I often saw her pounce on her daughters and roll around on the floor with them, tickling them until they squirmed and giggled so much they could hardly breathe. I believe that she must have done the same to me in the days when I was in her care; that I played with Kerstin and Melanie; that Grit took me on her lap in the evenings and cuddled me the way she cuddled her own children; that she fed me cake in the afternoons or told me funny stories. And that she said: “You’re a good girl, Cora.”

But those six months are a blank, like the few more weeks I spent with Grit after Mother returned from the hospital with Magdalena. All that has lodged in my mind is a sense of having been shunted aside – cast out and expelled from Paradise. For the only licensed inmates of Paradise are the angels of purity who obey God’s word to the letter, question none of His commandments, never rebel against Him and can look at the apples on the Tree of Knowledge without coveting a bite.

I couldn’t do that. Easily led astray, I was a weak, sinful little creature unable to control the desires aroused in me and covetous of all I set eyes on. And Grit Adigar, or so I thought, had no wish to live under the same roof as such a person.

That was why I had to say “Mother” to a woman I disliked and “Father” to the man who lived in our house. But him I was very fond of. He was a sinner like me. Mother often called him that.

I carried my sin around inside me. Father’s was on the outside. I often saw it when he relieved himself while I was sitting in the bathtub. I don’t know how I came to believe that that appendage was his sin. Perhaps because I didn’t possess such a thing, nor did Kerstin and Melanie Adigar. Because I considered myself entirely normal, Father’s bit extra meant that he wasn’t. It made me feel sorry for him, and I often got the impression that he wanted to get rid of the thing.

We slept in the same room, and one night I woke up because he was so restless. I think I was three years old; I can’t recall exactly. I was very fond of Father, as I said. He used to buy me new shoes when the old ones pinched, tuck me up at night, sit with me till I went to sleep and tell me stories of long ago, when Buchholz was still a wretched little moorland village. Just a few farmsteads, and the soil so poor and the cattle so emaciated they couldn’t make their own way to pasture in springtime and had to be hauled there on wagons. And then the railway came, and everything got better.