It’s not there.
28
JONAS
Jonas relished the feeling that spread through his stomach as he sped along the dark road. He was exhausted and wanted to get home.
His head was buzzing with all the facts his team had gathered that day concerning the second murder victim.
Apart from the physical similarity, there was no connection whatsoever with Britta Peters. The search for a culprit from the small circle of shared acquaintances had been called off for the time being. They would have to come up with another method of approach. It wouldn’t be easy.
After work, Jonas had let off steam as best he could with some boxing practice and had felt a bit better afterward. Since seeing Sophie Peters, however, the relaxation that goes with hard physical training had been blown away. She was the reason he was taking this case so personally. He wondered whether it was having an adverse effect on him — whether it made him overlook things, make mistakes.
Sophie had been different this evening. She had seemed gloomier and more vulnerable. It was only a feeling, but Jonas instinctively reduced the speed at which he was hurtling along the road. He’d seen Sophie’s face before him — her look of resignation. The way she’d said, “Goodbye, Superintendent Weber.” So sad, so final.
Should he drive back? Rubbish.
Sophie wasn’t the kind to harm herself.
Less than a quarter of an hour later, Jonas was lying fully clothed on his bed. He wanted to have a rest before going over the case again in his study. He could sense the emptiness beside him that his wife had left when she’d gone to live with her best friend to “get a few things clear in her mind.” Jonas closed his eyes. He had the feeling that he was at last stepping off the carousel of thoughts he’d been riding around on all day.
When his mobile pinged with a text message, he gave a groan. Maybe it was Mia? Picking the phone up from the bedside table, he didn’t immediately recognize the number, but eventually it dawned on him. Sophie.
Jonas sat up and opened the message.
It consisted of only two words: He’s here.
26
The website containing Lenzen’s alibi has disappeared.
I blink dazedly and recall that I looked at it on his phone, not mine. It was Lenzen who typed in the address, not me. Whatever I saw, I can’t find it now. I stare at the screen for a while. Then I take my laptop in both hands and hurl it at the wall. I rip the telephone out of the socket and throw that too. I yell, I kick my desk. I feel no pain. I grope about, blind with rage and hatred, grabbing everything I can lay my hands on — pens, stapler, ring binders — and fling them at the wall. I beat the wall with my fists until the white runs red. I feel nothing.
My study lies in ruins. I slump to the floor, amid the chaos. The heat in my body gives way to cold, and I start shivering. I’ve been turned inside out, my organs are turning to ice, shriveling up, growing numb.
Lenzen duped me.
I don’t know how he did it, but how hard can it be to set up a fake website?
Not much harder than playing a Beatles song on a small mobile device and pretending not to hear anything.
Not much harder than dosing yourself with an emetic to lend credibility to your shock.
Not much harder than spiking a woman’s coffee to make her amenable and disorientated and susceptible to alien ideas.
That must be what happened. It explains the hallucinations, the strange blackouts and the fact that I was suddenly open to absurd ideas — almost without a will of my own. It explains why it’s only now that I am beginning to see clearly again. Perhaps a small dose of bufotenine. Or DMT. Or mescaline. That would make sense.
How could I have thought even for a second that I might have harmed Anna?
The sun is falling onto the study floor. There is blood dripping from my hand. My ears are buzzing. I think of Anna; I see her before me quite clearly: my best friend, my sister. Just because Anna could sometimes be inconsiderate and vain and selfish doesn’t mean she wasn’t also naive and sweet and innocent. Just because Anna could sometimes be incredibly hurtful doesn’t mean she wasn’t also capable of being selfless and generous. Just because I sometimes hated Anna doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. She was my sister.
Anna wasn’t perfect. Not Saint Anna, just Anna.
I think of Lenzen. He was so much better prepared than me. I have nothing I can use against him and now he knows it. That’s why he came — to find that out. He didn’t have to come and talk to me. But Victor Lenzen is a wise man. He knew that if he didn’t, he would never find out how much I really knew — whether I had any concrete evidence against him, and whether I’d told anyone about him. How relieved he must have been when he realized that he was dealing with a woman who was lonely and unstable. His strategy was as simple as it was inspired: deny everything at all costs and make me feel as insecure as possible. It was enough to plunge me into doubt.
But now I have no more doubts. I listen. The voices have stopped arguing. There’s only one now. And that voice is saying it is unlikely that I saw my sister’s murderer on the TV after twelve years — highly unlikely — but not impossible. It is a highly improbable truth. Victor Lenzen killed my sister.
My anger is clenched tight like a fist. I have to get out of here.
29
SOPHIE
He stood before her. He had a knife.
She had turned to stone when she heard the noise in the hall, but she’d had the presence of mind to tap a message into her phone and send it to Jonas. Then she had held her breath and waited, listening.
Whoever was in the hall had done the same. There was no sound — not a creak, not a breath — but Sophie could sense someone’s presence. Please, let it be Paul, she thought, quite against her better judgment. Paul, come to pick up his stupid boxes at last, or to blubber and tell me he misses me. But please, please, let it be Paul.
It was then that she saw him. He loomed tall and menacing in the doorway, almost filling it, less than two meters away. Sophie caught her breath.
“Frau Peters,” he said.
She saw it all before her. He must have watched her as she walked through the dark streets and parks, and decided that it was too risky to approach her. She saw him outside the big block of flats where she lived, waiting for one of the other residents to come or go, and then slipping through the front door before it fell shut. She saw him almost noiselessly opening her door, perhaps with a credit card. She hadn’t locked it, as usual, although she was always promising herself she would.
Sophie was still rigid with fear. She’d heard the voice before but couldn’t say where.
“You killed my sister,” she gasped.
It was all she could think of to say, her brain was working so very slowly, and then, without meaning to, she said it again.
“You killed my sister.”
The man laughed a mirthless laugh.
“What do you want from me?” Sophie asked.
Even as she said it, she realized how stupid the question was. The shadow didn’t reply.
Sophie searched feverishly for a solution. If she didn’t do anything now, she wouldn’t leave the room alive. She must at least gain time.
“I know you,” she said.
“Ah, so you do recognize my voice?” the man replied. Sophie stared at him. Then the penny dropped.