Bernhard Aichner - Woman of the Dead - A Thriller

‘What have you done to my son?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘He’s disappeared, I haven’t been able to reach him for days. I want to know what’s going on.’

‘If you touch me again I’ll scream.’

‘I want to know where my son is.’

‘I don’t know your son.’

‘If you don’t tell me what you know, you’ll be sorry.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m glad I’ve put the wind up you.’

‘This is absurd. What do I have to be afraid of? I’m here because I know something’s wrong. It’s not like Edwin not to be in touch. And you were asking about him. You were asking about the priest as well. That’s not a coincidence.’

‘You’re the one who brought the priest into it, not me.’

‘And now he’s dead.’

‘So you are afraid.’

‘Stop that this minute. You pester me while I’m having lunch, you hurl accusations at me, there’s something the matter with you.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I know who you are. You’re an undertaker.’

‘Well done. You’ve done your homework. Blum Funerary Institute, we’re a traditional firm. I can plan your funeral if you pay in advance. I’ll be happy to see to it personally.’

‘You’re going to tell me what you want from me, and what you know about the whereabouts of my son. Then you’re going to tell me why you’re muck-raking through ancient history.’

‘It’s not that ancient. And from where I’m standing, you’re still in the muck.’

‘You’d better pray nothing has happened to my son.’

‘Praying won’t help, believe me.’

‘If you have anything to do with his disappearance, you’ll have me to answer to.’

‘Oh, and will you lock me in a cage too?’

‘I’ll wipe that grin right off your face.’

‘I didn’t think it would be so easy.’

‘I won’t let you out of my sight.’

‘Father and son. The huntsman and the photographer. And the village priest. What a trio. All we need now is the cook and the clown.’

‘As I said, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, but I’m making it my business to find out.’

‘Be my guest.’

‘This isn’t the last you’ll hear from me.’

He turned and walked away. She swallowed the retort that had been on the tip of her tongue. Schönborn’s words went round and round in her head. He knew who she was, he had gone to the trouble of finding that out. Blum wanted to believe that Johannes Schönborn was the huntsman. It would be so simple, so obvious, father and son. While he was talking, she was picturing him on her preparation table; in her mind she was sawing off his arms and legs, taking him apart like the carcass of a deer. Briefly, she believed in his guilt. But now she realises that he had nothing to do with it. Johannes Schönborn was not one of the men in the cellar. His face had given that away. In the restaurant and now here, his astonishment had been genuine, and so had the confusion in his eyes. He really didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about. No idea about the cages, the anaesthetic darts, and the three names, which had meant nothing to him. Old Schönborn was just a worried man who wanted his son back. She decided he would live.

Blum is in the car on the way to the forensic laboratory. A body from the hospital is waiting for her; the autopsy was routine. She parks outside the gate, gets out and waits for the lab assistant to bring her the body. She has been to this place so often. The refrigerators and the bodies stacked in the corridors are all so familiar to her. None of it bothers her, they are only unknown corpses in body bags, prised apart then stitched back together again. She has no emotional connection with these strangers; she is simply providing transport, taking a body from one fridge to the next.

Blum paces up and down the corridor. She thinks of how well the day began, of Jaunig’s study, of the menu lying on his desk. She hopes that her assumption is correct. It is the gut feeling that has been driving her since she left the apartment with Massimo. While she waits, she considers what to do next. Suddenly she is there beside Blum. Blum’s eyes rest briefly on the familiar face, she almost didn’t recognise her under the plastic film. Blum freezes. The ribcage is open and the skin is white. She has drowned. At first Blum can’t get her thoughts in order or understand what she’s seeing. She is lying in the cellar of the forensic laboratory, just like that, on a stretcher because there’s no room for her in a fridge. Blum feels like screaming, but she can’t, because it is suddenly cold, and quiet. Just another corpse, a nameless body that no one has missed. No one knows who she is.

For a long time there is nothing in her mind but Dunya. Blum is unable to react, there’s only Dunya, all that happened, how they met. At first she was only a voice, then a face, then a smile. Blum stares at her. There was nothing she could say to help, nothing that could undo what had happened. Blum forces herself not to cry, to show no emotion. She doesn’t want anyone to realise that she knew the woman, that there was a connection. The mortuary assistant draws Blum away from Dunya, annoyed that she is transfixed by this body. Then he asks whether she is all right, can he help her, would she like a glass of water?

The mortuary assistant answered all her questions. He didn’t know why Blum wanted to know, but he told her all the same. It was probably suicide, or an accident. The autopsy confirms that she drowned. There is nothing to suggest foul play. People were quite often found, he said, in the grid of the Inn power station. A dredger lifts them out of the water along with rubbish and trees. The grid is cleaned of flotsam every few weeks; she was found quite by chance. One more drowned body, probably a homeless person, a woman without papers who doesn’t match the missing person records. Very likely she was drunk and fell in. Or she was tired of life and jumped. One way or another, dead is dead , the mortuary assistant said.

Blum is in the hearse with a woman in her mid-fifties, the victim of a coronary thrombosis resulting from a lung transplant; her family have already brought her clothes to the Funerary Institute. Blum is on her way home. She will carefully remove the woman from the body bag, wash her, clean her wounds, stitch her mouth closed and dress her again. She yearns to do the same for Dunya, to tend to her violated body, to show her affection and respect. But Dunya must stay where she is; they will put her in the long-term storage room, where the temperature is lower. Corpses often stay there for months: the people who can’t be identified, murder victims when investigations are ongoing. People like Jaunig. Dunya will probably share a refrigerator with his head. Perpetrator and victim stacked peacefully together. Fate is cruel, and Blum can’t do anything about that. She feels as though she has taken a running jump into a pool emptied of water. She plunges in head first, without stopping to breathe. Blum drives through the city in the hearse, her tears falling quietly.

How many tears we have. If only we could count them, catch them, fill a beaker with them, a bucket. A swimming pool of tears. Then it wouldn’t hurt to dive in head first. Blum hasn’t been able to breathe properly for three days. She does her work, she stays with the children, she tries to go on living. But the sadness is back and it’s crippling. It is hard for Blum to accept that she was unable to help Dunya. She should have watched her more closely, she should have protected her. Blum has failed. If she hadn’t let her go to the supermarket alone, she might still be alive. That idea hurts. From Moldavia to the cellar, from the cellar to the refrigerator.