Helen Grant - The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

No one knows exactly what happened out there in the snow, not even me, and I was the closest to him when the gasoline he had brought for Daniella’s funeral pyre ignited like a bomb and sent him screaming and staggering into my path, a human inferno. Did he lift the gas can to pour its contents onto the corpse on its pall of pure snow, and accidentally drench himself? Did he know he had soaked himself in gasoline, and if so, why did he light a match? No one knows the answers to these questions.

Daniella did not burn; her body was spared that indignity. The policeman who peered into the Teufelsloch, scanning it with his flashlight, found her on her back with her hands folded across her stomach, as though lying in state. A poisonous scent of gasoline hung over her. Still, she looked as though she were sleeping, but for the deathly pallor of her face: a perfect snow princess, with ice crystals sparkling on her white skin and her light hair. The policeman who found her thought that perhaps some spark of life might still lurk within the coldly beautiful form. It was not until he had pulled aside the collar of her jacket to try for a pulse that he saw it was no use.

I was drifting in and out of an uncomfortable sleep when my parents arrived at the hospital. My mother burst into the room, closely followed by my father and a harassed-looking doctor in a blue smock.

“Can I please ask you-” the doctor was saying plaintively, but my mother ignored her.

“Pia? Oh my God, Pia!” My mother was all over me like a maternal whirlwind, kissing my forehead and cheeks, touching my hair. “Are you all right, Schätzchen?”

“I’m fine,” I started to say, but it came out as a croak. Even smiling felt like too much of an effort; my mother’s anxiety was exhausting.

Abruptly she burst into tears. My father laid a tentative hand on her shoulder.

“Kate? She’s all right.”

“She’s not all right,” sobbed my mother. “Look at her. Just look what that-that-”

She let out a wail and the doctor’s hands came up in a gesture of protest; there were other patients to think of; if she would just-

I think she would have told my mother to leave, except that a bell was ringing somewhere else, and she had to leave the room herself.

Silently, my father enfolded my mother in his arms. I saw him hug her to him, rubbing her back, kissing her hair. She was letting him, I realized, and even in my exhausted state I felt the first spurt of hope.

“She’s all right, Kate, she’s all right,” my father was murmuring over and over again, and my mother was clinging to him. She cried for what seemed like a long time, until the last sob turned into a cough and she started trying to wipe her nose with her fingers. She raised her head at last, and her face was only inches from my father’s. For a moment they stared at each other.

Then my mother said, softly, “I’m sorry, Wolfgang,” and putting up her hands she very gently pushed him away.

I could hardly bear to look at my father’s face.

“Kate,” he said, and there was a question in his voice.

Slowly my mother shook her head. She stood there for a moment, not looking at him, her head turned to one side. Then she said rather too loudly, “One of us should stay here. Why don’t you get the bag from the car?” The last few words were tremulous.

My father came up to the bed and took my hand for a moment, pressing it with his strong fingers. Then he turned and went out of the room. He must have come back sometime later with my mother’s bag, but by then I was asleep.

I was in Mechernich Hospital for two days, and it would have been longer had my mother not broken me out of there. If you are admitted to a hospital in Germany you can expect to be there for a full seven days-or, at least, you could when I was a child and the health insurance was still paying for anything you cared to have. My mother, however, was having none of it. She packed up my things and buttoned me into a new fur-lined jacket. Then she dragged me downstairs to the car.

“Oma Warner’s arriving this afternoon,” she informed me as she reversed out of the parking space, so rapidly that I feared for the cars parked on the other side.

“Are we going to get her?” I asked.

“No.” My mother rammed the car into gear and gunned the engine. “She’s taking a taxi from the airport this time. I said we’d pay.”

“Oh.” I supposed this was for my benefit; the invalid had to be rushed home and kept there.

The mention of Oma Warner made me uncomfortable: there was still the matter of the telephone bill, though I hoped it might somehow have been forgotten among the recent dramas. I looked out of the window at Mechernich speeding past. It was as bad as Middlesex: gray streets and rain-slicked pavements. The weather was never so severe here as it was in Bad Münstereifel for some reason, and the snow that had fallen had quickly thawed. Brown mush clogged the gutters. I leaned my forehead on the cool glass and sighed.

I saw Herr Düster only once more in my life. I wouldn’t have seen him at all, but for my father’s insistence. My mother was adamant that I should not have anything more to do with him. Even when it was clear that he was completely innocent of any kidnapping or killing, now or ever, she was still furious with him for taking me to the Eschweiler Tal, where I might have died of hypothermia-or worse.

In fact, in her mind the entire town was guilty by association. It was typical, she said, that every person in the whole place could spend all their spare time discussing other people’s business and still miss what was really going on under their very noses. The sooner she, Sebastian, and I were out of the place forever, the better.

Oma Warner didn’t add anything to this, but she pursed her lips and went about the place silently, folding things and shelving things and packing things up for the move. She and my father behaved as though they were ambassadors from hostile countries, too polite to indulge in open warfare, yet unable to be warm to each other, even at Christmas. Unexpectedly, however, she came out on my father’s side when I raised the question of whether I might see Herr Düster.

My mother said I was visiting him over her dead body, but both my father and Oma Warner thought it would be a good idea. Nowadays people like to use that American word closure , but Oma Warner just said she thought it would help me to put the whole thing behind me for good.

I wasn’t allowed to go to Herr Düster’s house. Instead he was permitted to come to our house, where my mother (who opened the door) eyed him suspiciously. She let him stand on the doorstep for a few seconds too long before she stepped back to let him in. Herr Düster doffed his hat and stepped somewhat gingerly into the hallway.

“Guten Tag , Herr Düster,” said my mother; she was unable to keep the chill out of her voice.

“Guten Tag , Frau Kolvenbach,” said Herr Düster politely. He didn’t try to win her over with smiles and compliments; charm was never his strong point, and anyway, my mother was distinctly unreceptive. She hardly said another word to him before she ushered him into the living room, where I was waiting.

“Pia? If you want anything, just… yell,” she said with heavy emphasis as she closed the door. I didn’t reply. I imagine if Herr Düster had lived in the town for much longer he would have had to become inured to innuendo-since Herr Schiller was not there, he was the only possible target for gossip and speculation. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire is the town motto: they should have engraved it on a crest and stuck it on the front of the Rathaus . I doubt Herr Düster’s reputation as town reprobate would have improved even if it had become known that he had grappled with half a dozen murderers single-handed and brought the lot of them to justice.