Melanie Raabe - The Trap

“Such as?” I ask instead.

Lenzen’s eyes change; he’s seen through my crude ploy. We both know that I’m asking him for his own motive.

He shrugs. Slippery as an eel.

“I’m really no writer,” he says ingeniously. “But tell me, why didn’t you kill your main character off at the end? It would have been realistic. And dramatic at the same time.”

Lenzen stares at me. I stare back.

He asks another question. I don’t hear it.

Love, love, love.

Oh no.

Love, love, love. Please, no. Love, love, love.

Please, no, I can’t take any more.

I whimper. Grip the edge of the table. Look about the room in panic, searching for the source of the music. Nothing. Just a large spider crawling over the parquet; I can hear the sound its legs make on the wood. Plick-plick-plick-plick.

Suddenly Lenzen’s face is very close to mine; I can see the little veins in the very white whites of his eyes. The monster from my dreams is right in front of me. I can feel his breath on my face.

“Are you afraid of death?” asks Victor Lenzen.

My fear is a deep well that I have fallen into. I’m suspended vertically in the water. I try to touch the bottom with my toes, but there’s nothing there, only blackness.

I shake myself, try to keep above water, stay conscious.

“What did you just say?” I ask. Lenzen frowns at me.

“I didn’t say anything. Are you all right?”

I gasp. God knows how, but I manage to get a grip on myself.

“You know,” Lenzen continues, unmoved, “it was the ending that surprised me the most. The fact is that I was convinced all the way through that the killer didn’t actually exist and that the devastated sister would turn out to be the murderer.”

The ground is disappearing from under my feet. There’s only darkness below me — the Mariana Trench — eleven thousand meters of blackness. Anna’s face laughing, mocking. My fingers round the knife. Cold fury. I plunge it in.

Do I plunge it in? Me? No, no. Not that, no. It lasts only a brief, awful moment. No, it wasn’t like that! It’s the music! The monster’s presence. It’s my tense nerves! Maybe he’s even given me something! I’m not with it. I wasn’t with it! For a brief, awful moment I wondered whether my massive sense of guilt stemmed not from the fact that I was unable to save Anna, but from the fact that I…That I…You know. Perhaps there was no fleeing man, after all. Just Anna and me. Perhaps the fleeing man was a story — a lovely story such as only an author’s brain could come up with.

Not a bad story. The fleeing man, no more real than the fawn in the clearing. Linda and her stories.

No. This is not like the fawn story. I’m not a liar and I’m not mad. I am not a murderer. I shake off the black thought and focus my attention on Lenzen again. I nearly let him manipulate me.

I look at him. He exudes…cheerfulness. I shudder. That cold, almost imperceptible smile in his pale eyes. I don’t know what’s going on in Lenzen’s head, but I no longer doubt that he has come here to kill me. I was wrong: he isn’t a wolf. He doesn’t kill swiftly and surely. He enjoys this part — he enjoys the game.

His voice echoes in my head: “Are you afraid of death?”

Victor Lenzen is going to kill me. His hand slips inside his jacket. The knife. My God.

I have no choice.

I take the gun that I’ve taped to the underside of the table, ripping it loose. I point it at Victor Lenzen and pull the trigger.

22

SOPHIE

Sophie’s thoughts often returned to that night. She was still tormenting herself with the question of what had seemed so odd about Britta’s flat. There had been something. She had seen it at the crime scene and she saw it in her nightmares, but it kept eluding her.

She was sure this detail held the key. Her brain was simply too full of other things for her to think straight. Yesterday alone so much had happened. First the police officer had come around and reprimanded her. Then her father had been taken to the hospital with a suspected heart attack, and her mother, of course, was a nervous wreck, even though it had turned out to be a false alarm.

Sophie, on the other hand, was still keyed up. No question of sleep. And the night was so silent. No Paul beside her anymore, filling the bedroom with his steady breathing. Sophie was glad he had gone, really; she was too exhausted to be in a relationship, thinking of marriage and children as Paul would have liked. She was too angry — at herself, at the world. It’s a sign of grieving, her therapist said. Perfectly normal. But Sophie didn’t feel normal. At the moment she felt ill-disposed toward everybody. Except, perhaps, for that young police officer who had the disconcerting knack of always saying the right thing.

Sophie felt agitated. She had once heard that many people who have suffered a great loss either break down or freeze up, only dimly aware of the outside world. Over the past weeks she had witnessed both: her father’s numbness, and her mother’s breakdown — although her mother was now so sedated she no longer felt much either. Sophie, however, felt everything.

Since she wasn’t going to get to sleep again tonight, she got up and went to her study. She sat down at her desk, which was strewn with printouts and newspaper clippings, and switched on the computer.

Over the past days and nights, she had drawn a precise map of her sister’s life. She had talked to Britta’s tearful friends and to her shocked ex-boyfriend, but her queries hadn’t got her anywhere. None of them could begin to imagine anyone wanting to harm Britta. Maybe Britta had surprised a burglar. Or maybe some sicko had stalked her — something like that. A stranger. Cruel chance. It was the only possibility: that was the unanimous opinion.

But Britta hadn’t complained about a stalker. She hadn’t been worried in any way. Britta’s friends were as clueless as Sophie. There was only one avenue left to explore.

Sophie went onto the website of the Internet start-up that Britta had worked for as a graphic designer. Britta’s job had been the only area in her life that didn’t overlap with Sophie’s. If Britta had known her murderer, it could really only be a colleague; Sophie knew all the other men in Britta’s life. She’d only caught a glimpse of the shadow at the terrace door before he disappeared across the terrace, but she would never forget his face. That’s why she found the young policewoman’s questions about their family and Britta’s private life so unnecessary. Sophie knew what she had seen: a stranger.

She glanced at the time. Almost 2 a.m. She remembered that Britta had often stayed on in the office until late, sometimes even spending the night to meet deadlines. She wondered whether her colleagues had similar hours.

Sophie took the telephone, dialed the agency’s number and let it ring. But no one picked up. Britta’s colleagues were the last people she could check out; after that she’d be at a loss as to what to do next.

She had an idea. Sometimes on company homepages there were photos and brief biographies of the employees — especially with new, small companies like Britta’s. She scanned the page again. Yes, there was a button labeled “Team.” Sophie clicked on it with trembling fingers.

The photo hit her like a blow to the stomach.

Britta was looking out at her with a broad smile on her face. Blonde hair, big blue eyes, freckled nose. Britta, who had always smelled so good; Britta, who had always caught the spiders that Sophie was so afraid of, trapping them in old jam jars, carrying them carefully outside and setting them free on the grass. Sweet-toothed Britta, who was always chewing gum.