Bernhard Aichner - Woman of the Dead - A Thriller

In the first two years, before they had the children, Blum and Mark had gone on holiday in that car. They had slept in it on the beach in Sardinia. Blum had made pretty curtains for it herself. They were happy in the white hearse, they had made love and listened to the sea. They had left the boot open and smoked. She was smoking now. A cigarette in her hand and music on the radio because the dead can’t smell a thing. Because Mark is close to her again, because she can sense him, because she wants him to be with her when she meets the man. Blum draws on her cigarette and closes her eyes. At the red lights she sees Mark, smiling, taking the cigarette out of her hand and throwing it on to the beach. Kissing her. How warm it is against his skin. Blum hears hooting and doesn’t want to open her eyes. She doesn’t want to, but she must. The lights are green again; she is meeting Schönborn in five minutes’ time.

Dunya remained silent. She said nothing, only nodded. Blum didn’t have to ask more questions or play the conversation to the end. Dunya flinched when his voice came over the little loudspeaker. Edwin Schönborn frightened her and Dunya looked small, everything about her shrunken. Yes, that’s the man who raped me repeatedly. No, there isn’t any doubt about it. I’m certain. Yes, it’s him, I could pick out his voice in a crowd. His voice and the click of his camera. Dunya didn’t say this, she just lowered her eyes. She was afraid of being punished, of feeling a fist in her face. Yes, he hit me. Again and again. Everywhere, anywhere it would hurt. His fists, his shoes, his head against mine. In the girls’ room she lay wordless and trembling and Blum hugged her. He had been so easy to find. Blum had been right on target, she had deceived him and challenged him. She had started something and now she was going to finish it.

Blum throws her cigarette out of the window. In three minutes’ time she’ll be with him, on her own and without a plan. She has no alternative. When she was sitting opposite him in his studio, the idea spontaneously came into her mind to pick him up, take him somewhere, in capacitate him and bring him back home somehow. It was a crazy idea, she didn’t have the faintest idea what she was letting herself in for. But Blum resolves to question him, get all he knows out of him, the names of the others, a confession, evidence, a tape recording. He knows who the others are. He knows whether Mark was murdered, and if so who did it. She keeps seeing Schönborn in her mind’s eye, keeps hearing him say filthy bitch . Blum made him show his true self, unmasked him, saw him switch from amiable host to disgusting, slobbering pig. A cruel man, with nothing but contempt for the rest of mankind. In two minutes she’ll be with him, he’ll be waiting for her outside the State Theatre. She knows he’ll be there, he’s not going to miss a chance like this.

All afternoon and evening she wondered how to go about it, how to make him tell her what he knows. How can she knock him out before he overpowers her? She must be fast, do it while he still trusts her and is thinking only with his cock. She must get him into the preparation room, where no one will disturb them. Reza is away and won’t be back until tomorrow. Karl and the children don’t go into that room, so they will be entirely alone. She will talk to him when he comes back to his senses.

She has looked for a place in this small city where she can knock him unconscious without being seen. At the railway station, in the industrial area, in an underground car park. She couldn’t make up her mind; she could be seen in any of those places. She could bring a stone down on his head in the forest where he’s supposed to be photographing her, striking him from behind as he bends to pick something up. In her imagination she hits him so hard that blood spurts from his head, runs down his forehead in torrents. She desperately tries to get him on to the stretcher from the hearse and heave him into the vehicle. He is bloodied and groaning, she can’t manage to lever him up, a jogger comes along the path. No, that wasn’t an option. Schönborn was too heavy, he must weigh a hundred kilos, she’d have to knock him out in the car. But she couldn’t attack him, because then he’d defend himself, pull her out of the car and beat her or worse. Knocking him out with a narcotic is the only possible way. She has Googled it. As other people do – rapists and murderers.

She looked for something that would work fast. Something he would swallow without noticing. Soporifics, something she could get in the next twenty hours, something legal. She has never taken drugs, and doesn’t know anyone who does. Many date-rape drugs could be ordered online, but there wasn’t time for that; delivery could take up to five days. Blum cursed. She didn’t want to postpone the confrontation, she didn’t want to give Schönborn time to think; she wanted him thinking only of her cunt. She didn’t want him asking questions, getting suspicious. It seemed like a wild goose chase, but she searched for a solution all evening like a woman possessed. Then she opened a webpage that told her the solution was in her garage.

An alloy cleaner. A strong solvent. Butyrolactone, a base for pharmaceuticals and drugs, among them GHB, a date-rape drug. And GBL, a cleaning substance anyone could buy. Sixty euros for a litre. Blum knows that it is in the garage, and has been for years. Hagen bought the solvent over ten years ago, when teenagers had been spraying graffiti on the garden wall. It is right at the back with the winter tyres. An industrial cleaner that kept Hagen from having a heart attack and was misused as a party drug, as liquid ecstasy. A high for fourteen cents, the cheapest on the market, and legal too. Blum finishes reading the article and runs down to the garage. The inconspicuous canister stands there with other cleaning products. The problem is solved.

Blum is in the car. A clear spirit in a transparent bottle is on her lap. She has disguised the horrible taste with sugar and Red Bull, she has adulterated it until you can hardly smell the solvent. She was generous with the GBL, however, doubling the dose recommended on the internet; she doesn’t want to run any risks. Just one gulp will do it. When he gets into the car she will put the bottle to her lips and pretend to drink. Then she’ll say he should have some too. To put them in the mood. She’ll hold out the bottle and ask him to drink. She can see Schönborn standing outside the theatre, with a black camera case on the ground beside him. In twenty seconds’ time the door will open. She will do all she can. For Dunya. In ten seconds’ time. For Mark.

How unpleasant a man can be. How predictable, when nothing guides him but his instinctive drives: greed, sex, perversion. Blum has taken Schönborn by surprise, but he obliges her by taking the bottle, no questions asked. He drinks from it and grins. Filthy bastard, thinks Blum, smiling sweetly. The spirits in his mouth, the bottle in his hand, and that grin. Before two minutes have passed he is continuing yesterday’s conversation, he can’t wait, he doesn’t want to talk about anything else. First he has to make sure that nothing has changed, she hasn’t thought better of it. Our plan stands? he asks. Blum nods, she smiles as if by remote control, she forces herself to ignore the fact that there is something suggestive in everything he says. He doesn’t even try to hide his lust. Will it bother you that it turns me on? You masturbating. I can’t promise you to keep myself in hand. He laughs out loud and drinks from the bottle again. That dirty laugh; Blum really would like to bring a stone down on his head. She wishes he would keep quiet, stop talking, she doesn’t want to spend another second thinking about him taking her photograph. She doesn’t want to think about undressing in front of him so she drives slowly, taking the long way out of the city. She begins talking about Helmut Newton, the only famous photographer whose name she knows. She wants a casual conversation about photography; she wants to slow him down, she must see this through for another ten minutes. By the time they’re in the forest he’ll have lost consciousness, the GBL will pull the ground from under his feet. Just ten minutes. Blum smiles; she has almost won when he suddenly asks that question. She hadn’t thought of it. Her heart beats fast; why hadn’t she thought of it? Blum hates herself. Don’t make another mistake, she thinks. As naturally as she can, she replies; lying, without emotion, without hesitation.