Melanie Raabe - The Trap

He realizes how wrong that sounds coming from him and breaks off.

“I didn’t notice,” he says at length. “Until the chapter where it happens, I didn’t notice.”

I despise him for avoiding the word “murder.” He says nothing for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

“When I read that chapter…It was funny. I didn’t understand at first. I expect my brain didn’t want to understand and put it off for as long as it could. The setting seemed familiar to me, in an unpleasant, disturbing way. Like something I might have seen in a film once — completely unreal. I was on the train at the time. When I realized — when it became clear to me what I’d read — it was…funny. It’s odd, when you suddenly remember something you’d repressed. At first I wanted to put the book down and think of something else — forget all about it. But the first domino had fallen and, one by one, the memories were coming back. Then I got bloody furious.”

He looks at me. His eyes scare me.

“I had tried so hard to forget that night. So hard! And I had almost succeeded. I…you know…you live. You work. You don’t sit around thinking about the past. At least, not all the time.”

He loses the thread, buries his head in his hands, plunges into thought, surfaces again and forces himself to carry on talking.

“I haven’t been walking around all day every day for twelve years thinking to myself that I’ve killed somebody. I…”

He’s said it. My hands are trembling so much I have to press them flat on my thighs to keep them still. He’s said it! He said that he killed somebody.

Lenzen breathes in and out.

“But I did. I did. And the book reminded me that I had. I had almost forgotten. Almost.”

In stunned shock, I watch Lenzen bury his head in his hands once more, chastened and self-pitying. Then he straightens up again. I don’t know why, but he seems to have made up his mind to answer all my questions. Maybe because he thinks no one would believe me anyway. Or because it does him good to talk. Or maybe because he made up his mind a long time ago that he wasn’t going to give me the opportunity to tell anyone.

No. He can’t do that! He wouldn’t get away with that and he knows it.

“Once I’d realized what the book was about, I did some research into you. It didn’t take me ten minutes to find out that you were Anna’s sister.”

He looks at me when he says Anna’s name, as if he were searching for her features in my face.

“I had to come,” Lenzen says simply.

“You wanted to know what evidence I had against you,” I say.

“I didn’t think you had any evidence against me. If you had, you’d have called the police. But I couldn’t be sure.”

He laughs his mirthless laugh.

“A nice little trap,” he says.

“You didn’t come unprepared.”

“Of course I didn’t. I have everything to lose — really, everything.”

I sense the threat contained in these words. I endure it. I wonder whether he’d reply if I asked him what happened that night.

“Where was the music coming from?” I ask instead. He knows at once what I mean.

“The first time, it came from a small mobile device in the photographer’s bag. The second time, from my other phone — the one not on the table.”

I should be getting worried that he’s so willing to answer all my questions, but I keep going.

“How did you get the photographer to play along?”

Lenzen raises the corner of his mouth, as if he’d like to smile but has forgotten how.

“He owed me a favor. A big favor. I sold him the whole thing as a harmless prank — the crazy author who never leaves the house freaks out a bit and we get a great story. Don’t think too badly of him. He wasn’t at all keen. But he had no choice in the end.”

I remember the frosty atmosphere between Lenzen and the photographer.

“Why did you do it in the first place?” I ask. “Why the whole show?”

Lenzen sighs and stares at the floor. He looks like a magician whose marked cards have just fallen out of his sleeve in full view of the audience.

“I had to play safe. So that you wouldn’t go to the police and send them after me.”

I see. Sowing doubt in my mind was a surefire way of getting me to keep silent — the nutty writer who never leaves the house — lonely, eccentric, unstable, almost completely cut off from society. I look at Lenzen, this grave, quiet man. No wonder I was taken in. Certain things I might have expected of him — lies, violence, denial at all costs, maybe even an attempt to kill me. But I’d never imagined him capable of this great show — walk-on parts and props and musical numbers and all. Masterly. Because who’d suss a thing like that? And who’d believe me if I told them?

“You tried to make me think I’d murdered my own sister,” I say, spitting out the words.

Lenzen ignores me.

“How did you know that I’d fall for it? How did you know that Anna and I didn’t always…”

I falter. The thought is incredibly painful.

“Anna told you about me,” I say.

Lenzen nods. It’s like a punch in the stomach.

“What did she say?”

“That you’d always quarreled, even as children — like fire and water, the two of you. That she thought you were selfish and was sick of your arty airs…That you had called her a smart aleck and — excuse me — a manipulative little slag.”

My mouth feels horribly dry.

“But even if Anna hadn’t told me all that,” Lenzen adds, “what sisters don’t hate each other, at least every now and then? And what survivor doesn’t feel pangs of guilt?”

He shrugs, as if to say it was almost too easy.

We’re silent for a moment. I try to put my thoughts in order and Lenzen wreathes himself in cigarette smoke.

Now I have to ask the question. I’ve been putting it off, because once he’s answered it, everything will have been said and I don’t know what will happen next.

“What happened that night?” I ask.

Lenzen smokes and says nothing. He’s silent for so long I’m afraid he’ll never answer. Then he stubs out his cigarette and looks at me.

“August 2002,” he says. “God, it’s a long time ago. Another life.”

I try not to nod. That summer twelve years ago. Anna still alive. Me engaged. Suddenly successful. Suddenly rich. My third book a bestseller. My parents’ silver wedding anniversary. The summer Ina and Björn got married — the party by the lake where we got drunk and went skinny-dipping with the newlyweds. Another life.

Lenzen takes a deep breath. My mobile, still in record mode, burns on my skin.

“Anna and I, we’d been…we’d known each other for about a year. I’d just become a father, and I’d just been made editor-in-chief. I had the feeling that I was somebody. There were envious people, sure — people who claimed I’d only got the job because I’d married into the family who owned the company. Voices who thought I was only after my wife’s money and clout. But I knew that wasn’t true. I was good at my job. And I loved my wife. I had found my niche in life. But then I go and fall head over heels with this young girl. It’s ridiculous, but these things happen. We kept our relationship secret, of course. She thought it was fun to begin with, and kind of exciting — forbidden love. I thought it was dangerous right from the start. A few times her boyfriend almost caught us. He knew something was up and he dumped her. She didn’t care. But it frightened me, because I was afraid we’d be found out. Only I couldn’t give her up. Not at first.”

He shakes his head.

“Idiotic, completely idiotic. And so banal. Such a cliché. Because, of course, the girl wants me to herself at some point — and, of course, I don’t want to leave my young family. We argue. Again and again. In the end, I tell her it’s over, that we’re not going to see each other anymore. But the girl’s used to getting her own way. She threatens me. She’s suddenly changed beyond all recognition, says things that should never be said to anyone.