I take a step back; I stare at Anna on the floor, dead or dying. My God, what has happened? Somebody must have been here — where is he?
A breath of air wafts across my face and I look up, sensing a movement, and give a start. There is somebody there, disappearing through the terrace door. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, there’s somebody there. Don’t turn around. But he does turn around, and our eyes meet, and I know he killed Anna. The moment drags on, and then the man’s gone and all I can see are the curtains at the terrace door blowing in the wind like willow branches, and I avert my eyes and see Anna in a pool of blood — and my brain doesn’t understand what’s going on — how could it? I let myself in, because Anna didn’t answer, and I came into the flat and found Anna like this, dead and bleeding, and there was this man at the terrace door — oh my God, oh my God — and I thought he was going to kill me too — that I would die, like Anna — oh my God, please, please, dear God, I’m so scared, it smells of blood, there’s blood everywhere.
I pick up the phone and call the police. I’m trembling and whimpering, and I think of the man at the terrace door, in the dark, barely visible. I only saw him briefly, but those eyes — those cold, pale eyes — I’ll never forget, not as long as I live.
The police come. I sit there and stare at Anna, and the police ask me questions and wrap me up in a blanket. There’s this good-looking police officer with different-colored eyes, and I can’t speak at first, not at all. I don’t know what’s going on. But I make an effort — such a nice man, I’d like to help him, and I pull myself together and tell him about the cold, clear eyes in the dark and the terrace door and how it’s not possible that Anna’s lying there in a pool of blood, because Anna freaks out at blood. I ask him why and he promises to find out, and at some point there’s a stretcher and a photographer and more police, and then I’m in a police station and then I’m in bed and my parents are there — oh my God, oh my God, no.
Marc is there too. He sits down beside me and strokes my hair mechanically — it’s all so awful, my poor princess, oh my God. Later he makes a statement — the same statement as everybody else, the same statement my parents make, and all our friends. The story they have spun around themselves and would defend with their lives: a happily married couple and two inseparable sisters who adore one another. No, they never quarreled, never, not even when they were little, and certainly not as adults. Little fits of jealousy between sisters? Goodness, no, nothing like that — what nonsense, what a cliché. They loved each other, got on well, thick as thieves, the pair of them — adored one another, inseparable.
I repeat the story about the man with the pale eyes and forget it’s a story; I’d forgotten that, even as I was making it up. I tell my story and I’m good at telling it (Linda and her stories). I tell my story over and over again, I tell it for my life, and I get drawn into it, I become one of the characters — the murder victim’s sister, desperate and broken, lonely and withdrawn—
“She never really recovered, poor thing, the two of them adored one another. Inseparable, they were.”
But the truth is gnawing away at me, struggling inside, hurling itself about in me like a caged beast trying to break free. Still I believe in my story. I am my story; it’s a good story. And I grow ill; I can no longer leave the house, and I keep the beast locked away and continue to believe in the cold eyes and the stranger.
But the caged beast doesn’t give up, and one day it summons up all its strength — all its brute force — and makes one final attempt. I see a man who resembles the character in my story, and I’m forced to reflect, to return to that night, and I grapple with the man with the cold eyes and fight for a confession, but I will not get it into my head, I will not accept — will not, will not, will not accept — that the confession I am fighting for is my own.
That I am a murderer.
And the rest no more than a good story.
That’s how it could have happened. Something like that.
I stand at the window and look out onto the edge of the woods and the lake.
26
SOPHIE
Sophie stared at the telephone, willing it to ring, but it remained doggedly silent.
She went into the kitchen, took a wineglass from the shelf, filled it to the brim and sat down. She gave a start when she heard a creaking sound.
Only the floorboards. She tried to calm down, taking a gulp of wine and beginning to put her thoughts in order.
She had the feeling she was being followed. But was she really, or was it her nerves, which were now in tatters? No, there had been someone there that night, in the underground car park. And who knows how often he had pursued her since without her noticing.
Sophie looked at her mobile. Still no message from Jonas Weber. She let her index finger hover over the call button, then left it. What was the point? Jonas would only give her a lecture on how she should leave police work to the police and have a bit of confidence in them.
If any kind of progress were to be made, she would have to take the matter into her own hands — that much was clear. She got up and reached for her jacket, but then hesitated and sat down. She switched the TV on — and then off again.
If only she’d got to Britta’s a couple of minutes earlier. If she’d let herself in instead of wasting time ringing the bell. If she’d administered first aid straightaway. If, if, if. Sophie knew it was her guilty conscience driving her to keep busy. She simply had to find the man. But how?
Suddenly, it came to her.
It was essentially easy. She’d seen the murderer and he’d seen her. But while it was true that she hadn’t recognized him, he certainly seemed to know who she was. Somehow he must have found out, for he was following her — trying to catch her on her own so he could do away with the eyewitness to his crime. He wasn’t going to stop. The perfect opportunity hadn’t yet presented itself to him.
What if Sophie served herself up to him on a silver platter? What if she didn’t run the next time she sensed him behind her but stayed put instead?
No, that was completely crazy. Self-destructive.
Sophie leaned back on the sofa and took another gulp of wine. She reflected on the fear Britta must have felt in the last minutes of her life and told herself that fear was not a valid excuse for inaction.
She drank more wine and lay down, staring at the wall. She turned over and stared at the ceiling. The white grew whiter and whiter, gleaming and shimmering before her eyes. But there was something else. Sophie could make out microscopic dark spots, smaller than fruit flies, and yet more than mere specks of color, for when she looked more closely, she saw the black growing before her eyes, puncturing the white and getting thicker and blacker, until all at once she realized what was going on. There was hair sprouting out of the ceiling, thick and black like pubic hair, growing toward her. The ceiling was becoming porous; it would cave in on her if she continued to lie there like that, doing nothing.