Ursula Archer - Five

So quick. He must have prepared it all in advance – after all, it was easier to tie a noose with ten fingers than with seven.

The doctor checked the drip administering Beatrice with warm saline solution. She closed her eyes. A loser, with scars inside and out . Had he had a chance to win something after all, in the end?

A bet, perhaps. Or a departure on his own terms. The aeroplane circled around Beatrice’s bed, carrying out daring manoeuvres and making worrying noises.

‘I’m a Boeing 767, and I’m just about to land in Africa,’ crowed the plane.

‘Be quiet! Mama needs to rest.’ Mina was sitting next to Beatrice, holding her hand carefully, as if she was made of spun sugar. ‘He’s always so loud. Watch out, he’ll knock the drip over in a minute.’

Jakob really was dangerously close to the drip stand, sweeping the newspapers off the side table with his emergency turn.

‘Jakob! Pick those up at once!’ Mina’s usual commanding tone, but by her standards it was almost loving.

‘Whoooosh! I’m a deep-sea digger, and I’m pulling the sunken ship up-up-uuuup!’ The pile of papers landed back on the table with a loud clap.

In two days, Beatrice would be able to go home. She longed so much for her release that it almost hurt.

‘Shall we go for a special meal when I get out? What do you guys think? Or should I cook?’

‘No, you’re not so good at cooking,’ said Jakob, planting a wet kiss on her forehead. ‘I want to go to McDonald’s.’

‘And you?’ Beatrice stroked the back of Mina’s hand.

‘I don’t know. Maybe something at home. Or… we could eat at Mooserhof, and Papa could come too.’ She looked at Beatrice hesitantly. ‘Do you think that would be okay?’

Well, he doesn’t have to sit next to me, I guess . ‘Of course. Let’s do this – one evening we’ll eat at Oma’s, one at McDonald’s, and I’ll cook on the other.’

‘And then we’ll start back at the beginning and do it all again,’ cried Jakob, falling sideways across her.

There was a knock at the door, and Richard came in. Yellow roses in his left hand, and a newspaper in his right. Since discovering that the man who had nearly killed his sister had used him as the main source of information on her past, he hadn’t once turned up at the hospital empty-handed.

‘There’s something new about the case in the paper again,’ he said, lifting Jakob down from Beatrice. ‘An interview with your boss, Hoffmann.’

‘Oh, God. What’s he saying? That’s he’s proud of having solved the case despite the incompetence of his colleagues?’

‘No. He’s praising everyone actually. Including himself, of course.’

She would read it later. Or maybe never.

Richard asked an exasperated nurse for yet another vase and busied himself with putting the roses in water. Mina told new stories about Cinderella the cat and Jakob played at being a steam engine. Beatrice’s thoughts, however, wandered back to Bernd Sigart. The analyses were coming thick and fast in the papers; forensic psychiatrists had given interviews, including Kossar, who had depicted Sigart as one of his post-traumatic stress cases with aggressive behavioural patterns.

Platitudes. Not wrong, not by any means. But not complete either.

If I had finished my studies, would I have realised sooner who the Owner really was? The thought had been on Beatrice’s mind for days now. She had asked Richard to get her some information on courses she could do alongside her work, but her request had fallen on deaf ears. She was supposed to be resting.

Half an hour later, Richard decided she needed some peace and promised the children an ice cream, taking them off to Mooserhof.

My ex-husband drops them off, my brother picks them up, my mother cooks for them . Beatrice turned over and closed her eyes. Richard was right. Studying on top of her existing workload wasn’t a good idea.

When she woke up again, Florin was sitting by her bed. She knew he was there even before she opened her eyes; she smelt his aftershave and smiled instinctively. Then she sniffed. There was a second scent in the room.

‘The focaccia is still warm,’ she heard him say. ‘Goat’s cheese, prosciutto and spinach. And antipasti with sun-dried tomatoes and chard involtini .’

‘Delicious,’ she murmured, still with her eyes closed. ‘And the Prosecco?’

‘Unfortunately not. We’ll make up for that later. But I can offer you three kinds of freshly pressed juices. Orange and mango, pear and elderberry, or papaya and kiwi.’

He had pulled his chair close to her bed and was waiting patiently for her answer, his elbows propped on his knees, his chin in his hands. Beatrice pushed her hair out of her face and sat up. He didn’t want her to thank him for his daily visits with gourmet treats – he had already made that perfectly clear.

Each day, she resolved to ask him why he was making so much effort, but every time he was sitting next to her she couldn’t get the words out. She didn’t know what answer she wanted to hear.

‘Carolin Dalamasso dropped the complaint,’ said Florin, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Hoffmann was a little crestfallen, but he’s enjoying the limelight too much right now for it to have that big an impact.’

So she wouldn’t be suspended. Beatrice took a deep breath. She had suppressed the thought so much that only the relief she was feeling right now told her how much it had bothered her.

She reached out for the small fork Florin had laid on a dark blue serviette and speared one of the sun-dried tomatoes. ‘Are you eating too?’

He looked down at his hands briefly, then into her eyes. ‘No. Anneke’s here, we’re going for dinner in half an hour.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ Guiding the tomato into her mouth in such a way that the oil didn’t drip down onto the bedding was demanding all her concentration. That was good. The time it took to master the manoeuvre would allow her to regain her composure. ‘Then hurry up, don’t be late. You see each other so rarely, and you see me every day.’

He didn’t answer, instead handing her a piece of focaccia, warm and aromatic. She took it, gesturing at the door with her head at the same time. ‘Go on, don’t leave her waiting.’

Florin nodded. ‘Are you sure you’ve got everything you need?’

There was something in the tone of his voice that made Beatrice think he wasn’t just talking about the food.

‘Absolutely,’ she said.

‘Okay, then see you tomorrow.’

‘Listen, you don’t have to come, if Anneke—’

‘I know I don’t have to,’ he interrupted her. ‘See you tomorrow then.’

At the door, he turned around one more time. ‘I left a little something there for you. I hope you like it.’

She looked around and couldn’t see anything. But when she turned back to ask Florin, he was already gone. With a sigh, not knowing if it was one of contentment or longing, she leant back onto her pillow and ate until there was nothing left. Then she flicked through the TV channels, not finding anything that interested her, and reached over to the side table for the book that she had started the day before. The Terrors of Ice and Darkness had been lying around unread on her bookshelf for years, but after the night in the well she had asked her mother to bring it to the hospital for her. No one except Beatrice had been overly amused, but she liked the style of writing. She opened it, plunging with the helplessly lost Admiral Tegetthoff into the pack ice of the North Sea.

All of a sudden, she was interrupted by the warm tones of Frank Sinatra, singing the opening to ‘Moon River’, her favourite song. Looking around, she saw a mobile phone on the bedside table, but it wasn’t hers. Confused, she picked it up and tapped to open the message blinking on the screen: For Bea, it said. Florin’s present. She waited for the song to finish before reading the rest of the message: