Melanie Raabe - The Trap

“If only I’d got there sooner…”

“Stop it. You couldn’t have helped your sister. And you’re not helping yourself now by putting yourself in danger. I don’t like the way you wander around the neighborhood at night all by yourself. It’s almost as if you wanted to lure him to you.”

Sophie withdrew her hand.

“Do you want to get yourself killed? Is that it?” Jonas asked.

Sophie averted her gaze.

“I’d like you to go now.”

“Don’t do it, Sophie,” Jonas said. “Don’t put yourself in danger.”

She was silent, close to tears again, but didn’t want him to see.

“You’d better leave,” she said. Jonas nodded and turned to go.

“Please take care of yourself.”

Sophie struggled with herself. Should she tell him? That she had the feeling she was being followed?

“Wait,” she said.

He turned around and looked at her expectantly. Sophie’s brain was working overtime.

“Nothing,” she said eventually. “It’s nothing. Goodbye, Superintendent Weber.”

When Sophie was alone again, she confessed to herself that she was no longer sure.

When she had been running through the underground car park with her lungs on fire, she had heard the heavy footsteps behind her so clearly; she’d been convinced that her sister’s murderer had lain in wait for her on the backseat of the car. But when she had gone to fetch her car the next morning, the streets full of people, the whole thing had seemed like no more than a bad dream.

Out jogging in the park recently, she had thought she’d seen someone dart behind a tree. But when she stopped and stared at the damn tree, nothing had stirred.

Am I going mad? she wondered.

No, of course you’re not, a voice inside her replied. How can you tell if you’re mad? another voice asked. You just can.

But if you really are mad, the voice of doubt persisted, how are you supposed to know?

Sophie tried to shake the thought off. She’d been out of it lately — the breakup from Paul, because she couldn’t stand to be around him, her inability to talk to her parents, and then this ghastly, keen red feeling that had struck for the first time at her gallerist’s party and that she now knew to be a panic attack. Sophie no longer felt herself.

She returned to the kitchen, past Paul’s stupid removal boxes, made herself another cup of tea and looked out of the window, though there was nothing to see except a few murky figures and the odd passing car.

In the end she sat down at the kitchen table, took up her sketchbook and a pencil and, for the first time in a while, began to draw. It was lovely. The quiet of the night, the velvety darkness — and Sophie, alone at the kitchen table with pencil, paper, cigarettes and tea under her old-fashioned hanging lamp in a small island of yellowy light. She drew with ease.

The different-colored eyes that had been looking at her so gravely only a short while ago were rendered monochrome by the lead pencil, but she was satisfied with her quick sketch. Jonas.

On an impulse, Sophie took her mobile out of her trouser pocket and found his number. She had to tell him.

Then she remembered that it was late; the middle of the night. She put the phone away. She was cold, so she got up, filled the kettle, fished another teabag out of the packet — and jumped when she heard the creaking noise in the hall.

I stand like stone in the middle of the room and stare out of the window.

My gardener is looking in at me; the expression on his face is almost cheerful. The spell breaks and my anger is back, as if someone had flicked a switch — the anger and the piercing headache. Those Siamese twins.

“Why are you doing that?” I yell.

He frowns. He doesn’t seem to have heard me, but he can see my angry face. I fling open the window.

“What the hell is this?” I ask him.

“What’s what?” Ferdi asks, puzzled, looking at me with his big, brown boy’s eyes that are both out of place and touching in his wrinkly face.

“That song you were whistling…”

I don’t know how to finish the sentence; I’m afraid that Ferdi’s going to say, “What song?” or something like that, and then I’d have to scream — scream and scream and scream and never stop.

“Don’t you like the Beatles? It’s a great tune!”

I stare at him.

“What exactly were you whistling by”—my mouth is dry—“by the…by the Beatles?”

Ferdi looks at me as if I were completely off my head. Perhaps he’s right.

“It’s called ‘All You Need Is Love.’ Everyone knows it!” He shrugs.

“It’s funny,” he says. “Since I heard it coming from your house yesterday, I’ve had it stuck in my head.”

Now I’m wide awake.

“You were here yesterday?” I say. “But you’re never here on a Thursday.”

I can feel my knees trembling.

“Yes, but you said the other day that I could arrange my time to suit myself, so I thought it would be okay to come on a Thursday just this once.”

For a few seconds, I gape at him.

“Should I have let you know?” he asks.

“No, rubbish,” I stutter. “Of course not.”

I don’t know what to say. My face feels numb.

“Ferdi, I need to speak to you. Would you mind coming in for a moment?”

He looks confused. Maybe he’s worried I’m going to sack him.

“Well, I was actually about to pack up. I’ve got to be getting on to another client.”

“Just for a second. Please!” He nods uneasily.

On the way to the front door I try, without success, to put my thoughts in order. When I reach the door and fling it open, Ferdi is already on the doorstep.

“Did I frighten you or something? With my whistling?” he asks.

“No, you didn’t, but—” I stop short, not wanting to go into it standing in the doorway. “Come on in first, Ferdi.”

He wipes his feet, leaving big clods of dirt on the doormat, and steps into the house.

“Sorry,” he says, rolling his R in that inimitable way of his, and I wonder at the fact that I’ve never got around to asking him where his dialect is from. Ferdi’s been looking after my garden for many years now and it must be making him nervous that today, for the first time, I didn’t greet him with a smile. He’s not as young as he was — must be well past retirement age, despite his dark hair and dark-brown bushy eyebrows. I like him a lot, and apparently he either needs the work or enjoys it because he’s never shown any sign of wanting to give up. That’s for the best: it would break Bukowski’s heart if I lost Ferdi and had to look for a new gardener. Bukowski loves Ferdi more than he loves almost anyone else.

As if on command, I hear a noise upstairs. Bukowski has woken up and, at the sound of our voices, he comes shooting down the stairs and jumps up at us — first at me, then at Ferdi, then at me again, and I almost have to laugh at him — my dog, my mate, this bundle of fur and energy.

I pick him up, take him in my arms and hug him to me, but he has no truck with my sentimentality, and twists and turns until I let him down again, then begins to scamper up and down the hall, chasing invisible rabbits.

Ferdi shifts his weight from one leg to the other, like a schoolboy expecting trouble.

“It’s nothing serious, Ferdi,” I say. “Take a break and have a cup of coffee with me.”

My knees are like rubber. I go on ahead into the kitchen. If Ferdi really did hear the music, then maybe it means that…And then everything else might also…

Not so fast, Linda.

I offer my gardener the kitchen chair I sat on yesterday (was it really only yesterday?) to have my photo taken. He lowers himself with a groan, but only because sitting down with a groan is the done thing at his age; it’s all put on. In actual fact, Ferdi is fitter than I am.