Melanie Raabe - The Trap

I’m on my own.

6

JONAS

He clutched the gun with both hands, steadied himself, took aim and shot.

Jonas Weber hated the idea of ever having to point his gun at a real person. Once, he’d needed to fire a warning shot, and he hoped it would stay that way. But he loved target practice at the range; he’d always liked shooting. As a child he’d shot at tin cans with his father’s air gun; as a teenager he’d taken idiotic pot shots at sparrows and pigeons with his mates. Now he shot at targets with his service gun. He liked the caution required when handling firearms — the care, the rituals involved. Usually it didn’t leave much room for other thoughts, but today his brain wouldn’t settle.

He remembered the scene of the crime that he’d been called to the previous night — all that blood. He remembered the corpse, and the witness who had found the dead woman and surprised the murderer. A peculiar story. So much to get straight, and so many questions.

The night had been long and strenuous. No chance of going home before dawn and crawling into bed with Mia. Then he’d made a stupid mistake. Even now, he didn’t know how he could have let it happen. He was usually so unfazed when dealing with victims’ relatives. No idea why the whole thing had got under his skin like that. The victim had looked pretty awful — seven stab wounds. But it wasn’t the first time he’d seen such a thing. True, he’d been exhausted. But he was used to that.

It must have been the woman, maybe a few years younger than himself — the witness who’d found her sister stabbed to death and seen the murderer escape. Jonas had caught himself watching her as he talked to his colleagues. A paramedic draped a blanket around her shoulders — an odd gesture given the heat that night. The woman was sitting there, deep in thought. She hadn’t trembled or cried. Perhaps the shock, Jonas thought, until she turned her head and looked straight at him with a strange intensity. Not tearful or confused or dazed or in shock in any way, but utterly lucid.

Since then, the scene had kept coming back to him; he couldn’t get it out of his head. The woman had shaken off the blanket, come toward him, and looked him in the eye. As if full sentences required too much energy, she spoke only a single word.

“Why?”

Jonas had to swallow.

“I don’t know.”

But he had the feeling that wasn’t enough — that he must give her something more — and before he had time to think, added, “I don’t know what happened here, but I promise you I’ll find out.”

He could have hit himself. How could he make promises to a relative? They might never find the culprit. He didn’t know anything about the crime. He had behaved with a complete lack of professionalism! Like an idiot policeman in some stupid film.

He recalled the reproachful look his new colleague Antonia Bug had given him: wasn’t he supposed to be more experienced and less easily fazed than her? He’d expected her to mention it as soon as they were alone together, and how grateful he’d been when she hadn’t.

Jonas reloaded his gun. He tried to concentrate, to shake off the scene. He had enough problems as it was; he couldn’t go wallowing in self-reproach for some small blunder. He hadn’t really promised the woman anything. He couldn’t make promises — everyone must know that. It was something you said sometimes: “promise.” Just a word. Anyway, the statement had been taken now; he’d probably never see the woman again. He raised his gun, tried not to think of anything, and shot.

I fight my impulse to flee. It is difficult for me. I feel my pulse racing and notice that my breathing is frantic. I try to apply what I have learned — to work with my physical reactions instead of ignoring them. I concentrate on my pulse and count my breaths — twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. I focus my attention on my revulsion instead of making a pointless effort to suppress it. My revulsion is in my chest, beneath my fear. It is thick and sticky like mucus. I examine it carefully; it swells and subsides, like a toothache. I want to dodge it; I want to get away. It’s a normal desire — that’s something else I have learned.

The instinct to flee is normal. But there’s no point in evasion, in trying to avoid pain and fear. I grope for the mantra I’ve formulated with the therapist and cling to it: The way out of fear leads through fear. The way out of fear leads through fear. The way out of fear leads through fear.

The man looks at me inquiringly. With a mute nod, I signal to him that I am ready, although the exact opposite is the case. But I have been looking at the bird-eating spider for ages now. It is sitting in its jar, quite still most of the time, only stirring now and then, making my hair stand on end. Everything about it looks wrong: its peculiar movements, its body, its black and tan leg joints.

The therapist is patient. We’ve come a long way today. At first I couldn’t even be in the same room as that creature.

It was Charlotte who opened the door to the man with the bird-eating spider and cajoled me into greeting him. Charlotte thinks I’m researching for a book; she thinks the goings-on today are research for a novel, just like all the other crazy things that I’ve got up to here in the house these past weeks. It’s a good thing she thinks that; it means that she doesn’t bat an eyelid when I shut myself away with a retired policeman to study interrogation techniques, or have ex-army trainers explain to me how elite soldiers are made mentally fit enough to withstand torture without disclosing information. These experts, who come to my house day after day, are received by Charlotte discreetly, and she passes no comment on the arrival of the therapist specializing in treating people with phobias using “confrontational therapy.” Charlotte has no idea that I’m trying to find out how much fear I am capable of withstanding before I collapse.

I am soft and I know it. The life I’ve led over the past years has been free of discomfort. I’ve been mollycoddled so much that it’s an incredible act of willpower for me to have a single cold shower instead of a warm one. I have to learn to be tough on myself if I want to take on my sister’s murderer.

Hence the bird-eating spider. Can’t get more discomforting than that. As long as I can remember, there’s been nothing I loathe more than spiders.

The therapist takes the lid off the jar where he’d temporarily stowed the spider while I got used to the sight of it.

“Wait,” I say. “Wait.”

He pauses. “Don’t think about it too much,” he says. “It doesn’t get any easier, no matter how long you wait.”

He looks at me, waiting for a sign. He won’t do a thing until I’ve given him the go-ahead. That’s the deal.

I recall our conversation at the beginning of the session.

“What are you frightened of, Frau Conrads?” he’d asked.

“The spider, of course,” I replied, annoyed at the question.

“I’m frightened of the spider.”

“The bird-eating spider that’s in a container in my bag?”

“Yes!”

“Are you frightened right now?”

“Of course I’m frightened.”

“What if there was no container in my bag with a bird-eating spider inside?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s assume, for a moment, that there’s no spider because I forgot to pack the container. What would you be frightened of then? You couldn’t be scared of the spider, if there wasn’t an actual spider.”

“But I thought there was.”

“Exactly. You thought. That’s where fear begins. In your head. In your thoughts. The spider has absolutely nothing to do with it.”