Sorry (18 page)

At first there was just a shadow.

Sundance heard the waking birds. The gray of the sky over the garden dissolved only hesitantly and became a dull blue. Sundance leaned his back against an armchair, his bottom hurt, the carpet under him was as hard as concrete. Sundance felt as if his spine was completely twisted.

And then there was a shadow.

Sundance rubbed the sleep from his eyes and closed them tight a few times to see better. The shadow was on the lawn. Like a pile of earth or an animal that didn’t want to be discovered.

Sundance stepped outside through the veranda door. The grass was wet with dew. Butch looked like a clenched fist. His head was on his knees, his legs were pulled up, his arms wrapped around them. Sundance heard him breathing. Heavily and quickly. He put his hand on his back. Butch immediately started trembling.

“They’ve gone,” said Sundance.

Slowly, very slowly, Butch freed himself from his cramped posture. His face glistened with tears, his hair was damp with sweat. A bird shrilled down at the boys. A new day had broken. Sundance helped Butch to his feet. He supported him as they walked upstairs together. Butch didn’t want to go to his room, he wanted to go to the bathroom. Sundance led him to the bathroom, where Butch locked himself in. Sundance stood by the door and heard the shower being turned on. He didn’t know what to do. He waited for five minutes, the thunder of the shower didn’t stop. Sundance waited another five minutes. He thought of the bird that had shrieked down at them. He wished he’d thrown a stone at it. Sundance knocked quietly on the door. The shower went on running. When Butch’s parents started stirring in their bed, Sundance fetched his rucksack, went downstairs, and ran home.

You still ask yourself, how is it possible for two friends to lose each other so easily? Is nothing sacred in this world? Butch and Sundance were like brothers back then, they had stuck together since kindergarten, they were meant for each other. For a while the rape at the building site brought them even closer together. But the night they wanted to run away from home, the night they failed completely, drove a wedge between them.

You don’t know whether it had something to do with Butch feeling betrayed for a second time, or whether Sundance couldn’t deal with his feelings of helplessness. Whatever the reasons, it’s too late now to figure it out. At the time all that mattered was the result, and the result was fatal.

Over the next few weeks Butch stayed away from school. Sundance didn’t dare check in on him or call him up. Every evening he turned his walkie-talkie on. Butch didn’t call.

On the ninth day Sundance paid him a visit. He expected Butch’s parents to turn him away, he expected all kinds of things, but not that Butch would open the door to him.

“Everything all right with you?” Sundance asked, as if they’d only seen each other the day before.

“Everything’s all right,” said Butch.

His left eye twitched once, then he looked past Sundance as if he were waiting for someone.

“Are you ill?” Sundance asked.

“A bit,” Butch murmured.

Sundance leaned forward. He had to ask.

“What did they do to you?”

He expected Butch to say he didn’t know who Sundance was talking about. He expected Butch to start crying. Anything. But Butch just said, “They’re gone. Forever.”

Sundance nearly burst out laughing.

“No,” he said.

“Yes.”

“But—”

“I have to go inside,” said Butch. “And I want you to believe they’re gone. Because that’s what I believe. And if I believe it, then …”

He fell silent and looked at Sundance in surprise, as if someone had stolen the words out of his mouth. Sundance grew nervous.

“We’re still friends, aren’t we?” he said.

“Of course we’re still friends,” Butch replied and closed the door.

O
N THE AFTERNOON
of the same day that Frauke leaves the villa with a rucksack, two patrol cars drive up to the property. Three policemen jump out of the first car and stand next to it. In the second car nothing happens for a minute, then the side door opens and Gerald gets out.

“I hate that,” he says to no one in particular and walks toward the villa.

Tamara isn’t aware of any of it. She’s on the second floor making a phone call when Wolf calls her downstairs. On the ground floor she bumps into two policemen. The younger of the two asks her to sit down. He seems friendly, but his friendliness can’t hide the tension that he’s feeling. Tamara hasn’t a clue what’s going on, and anyway she finds it hard to take policemen seriously when they’re younger than she is.

“I’d rather stand,” she says, and asks Wolf if he knows what’s happening here.

“Look out the window.”

Tamara walks past the policemen and stands by the window. She sees the patrol cars in the yard and next to them Frauke, who’s talking to Gerald and pointing at the water.

“Could you please sit down?” the policeman asks her again.

Tamara stays standing. Outside two policemen are busy digging up the grave with spades. A third policeman has a German shepherd on a leash. The dog sits at his feet with its tongue hanging out. Tamara can clearly make out his breath in the icy air. Wolf comes and stands next to her.

“Frauke is serious about this,” he says.

Tamara has no idea what to say.
It’s like this morning
, she thinks,
we’re standing at the window, we’re looking out, and the world outside is changing while nothing is happening to us
. She knows she’s lying to herself. Since they found the dead woman on the wall, many more things have happened to them than they’re willing to admit. Everything’s collapsing, everything’s losing its value.

“Where’s Kris?” Tamara asks.

“He took your advice,” Wolf replies, “and went to the Immanuel Hospital a quarter of an hour ago with that horrible bump.”

They see Gerald taking cigarettes out of his jacket and handing one to
Frauke. Frauke lets him light it, then looks up and sees Wolf and Tamara standing at the window.

Tamara hasn’t the strength to raise her hand. Wolf turns away.

Half an hour later the policemen are standing in silence around the excavated grave. Frauke and Gerald have joined them. They look over at the villa, then back into the grave. Tamara can’t tear herself away from the window. She feels as if she’s dropped something valuable, and no one can put the shattered pieces back together.

And if I turn away, it’s all over. I’ll miss the moment, which will put Frauke and me back together. How can she betray us like this? How on earth?

Two policemen climb down into the grave. Tamara sees them lifting out the sleeping bag and turns away.

Enough’s enough
.

That is why Tamara doesn’t see Frauke storming toward the villa with Gerald at her side. In the kitchen one of the policemen blocks her path, she shoves him aside and heads for Wolf.

“What have you done with her?”

Wolf just looks at Frauke.

“What have you done with her, Wolf? Damn it all, where is she now?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“You know very well who I’m talking about. Damn it, where’s the corpse?”

Tamara is surprised that Frauke can’t remember the dead woman’s name.
Perhaps she doesn’t want to say her name out loud, because if she does—

At that moment Frauke’s words finally reach her.

“I have no idea what this is all about,” says Wolf. “But you can be sure that I don’t want to see your face for a while.”

Gerald clears his throat and sends the two policemen out. Tamara thinks his voice is friendly for someone who works for the criminal investigation agency, and has to do house visits on two successive days.

“There’s a sleeping bag in the hole,” he says. “Frauke suspected it was a body—”

“I didn’t
suspect,”
Frauke interrupts him. “She was there.”

Gerald is about to go on, but Frauke ignores him.

“Where have you hidden her?” she demands of Wolf. “Please, tell me, so that it’ll all be over.”

“I don’t know what’s up with you,” Wolf says calmly. “First of all your
performance last night, then all this. I mean, how could you tell Gerald I’d hit you?”

Frauke blushes. Tamara guesses what’s going to happen next. It’s like that distant roll of thunder this morning, and the nervous wait for the lightning after it.
I could run out
, thinks Tamara. But it’s too late for that. Frauke has already turned around, and fixed her eyes on her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” says Tamara. “I have no idea what’s up with you either.”

Frauke’s mouth hangs open. Tamara is so relieved at her quick reaction that she immediately wants to apologize to Frauke. Gerald says:

“We’d like to search the house, if you have no objection.”

“Be our guest,” says Wolf. “Frauke can guide you around, she knows her way around.”

An hour later the two patrol cars have disappeared from the property, and the police have spread dirt all around the house. They’ve discovered a stash of marijuana in Wolf’s room, but not wasted a word on the subject. Gerald is the only one who stays behind. He asks them to sign a form declaring their agreement with the search of the house and the plot of land.

“And what if we don’t sign?” Wolf asks.

“Then I could get into trouble,” Gerald says honestly.

They sign.

Wolf wants to talk to Frauke alone. Gerald says that’s not such a great idea. Wolf curses and tries to get hold of Kris on his cell phone, while Tamara walks Gerald to the door. Frauke stands smoking outside the front door, looking pitiful. Gerald walks across the gravel to her.
It’s like the end of a sad film
, Tamara thinks, and waits unconsciously for Frauke to glance at her. Gerald and Frauke step into the street and are gone.

Tamara wearily shuts her eyes and wishes she could wake up in her bed and give the day a second chance. When she opens her eyes again, snowflakes are floating past her face. The first flakes are light and delicate, the ones that follow thick and heavy. It’s late February, and snow is falling for the first time that winter. Tamara looks into the sky for a while, there’s a smile, a few tears too, then she shuts the door and walks into the kitchen, where Wolf is waiting for her.

“Is it snowing?” he says and runs his hand over her hair.

“It’s just starting.”

Wolf hands her a mug. They stand side by side at the window as if
there were no other room in the kitchen. They look at the falling snow and the ravaged garden. Their arms touch. Tamara sips at her tea and hands the mug back to Wolf. The two of them can’t be furious yet, because they don’t yet really understand what Frauke has done to them.

“It wasn’t you,” says Tamara.

“It wasn’t us,” Wolf assures her.

Tamara rests her head on his shoulder. She thinks of the Belzens, and how early they wake up every morning.
Maybe they saw something. Maybe they saw who dug up the corpse from the other side
. She keeps her thoughts to herself, because if she’s being perfectly honest, she doesn’t want to know who did it.

“Kris will go mad,” says Wolf.

One of the phones rings upstairs. They don’t move, and they don’t want to part either. The snow covers the churned-up soil that was still a grave not long ago. They stand at the window until all traces have disappeared under the white.

“What sort of sick fuck fetches himself a corpse and leaves lilies behind?” says Wolf.

Tamara doesn’t react. Her thoughts are somewhere else entirely, and she’s wondering how she’ll behave next time she sees Frauke.
Will she simply apologize, and everything will be like before?
Even if it’s what Tamara wishes, it’s not what she believes.

H
E DOESN’T UNDERSTAND
what’s happening. It feels as if time is advancing at the wrong tempo. The rhythm is unpredictable, and the pauses feel as if they’re in the wrong place. He keeps losing the beat and stumbling along behind, clumsy and uncertain. He suspected it would be like this one day. Anyone who doesn’t have his life under control lets everything slip and gets left behind, empty-handed.

He doesn’t know who they are. He doesn’t know where to start. And that used to be his special talent. He was able to find anyone’s weak points and exploit them. He doesn’t know how much of that he’s been left with. It’s so long ago. He just knows that he’d like to wake from
this rigidity as soon as possible. Like someone sitting up in bed in the middle of the night, glad that the dream was just a dream and he’s part of reality again.

He waits more than two hours for them to leave the apartment building. He drives after them. Out of Berlin and onto the highway. When they turn in to a forest path, he switches off his headlights and follows their taillights. He sees the two men digging a grave, while the woman lights their work with a flashlight. Then an argument breaks out, and the woman knocks one of the men down. He can’t work it out any more. Five minutes later the three drive off, without putting the corpse in the grave.

And there he is now, watching the locked gate to the property. Shortly after midnight a man and a woman leave the villa. He’s never seen these two before. The man says goodbye and drives off, the woman goes back into the villa.

How many more are there?
he wonders and goes on waiting. When he starts feeling cold he explores the area and walks down the side streets. It’s important to be familiar with the surroundings. He has studied the roads on the map. He’s bothered that he can’t acquaint himself better with the plot of land. As he looks around the area, slowly, very slowly, he gets closer to his element. Hunting instinct. It’s been so long. It torments him to feel like an amateur.

He quickly realizes that he isn’t going to get anything done on foot. He gets into his car and drives back down Bismarckstrasse to Königstrasse. He parks on the other side of the Kleine Wannsee and gets to work.

His first choice is wrong. He knows as soon as he’s rung the bell. It’s almost impossible to get a view of the properties from outside. In the past he would only have rung if he’d felt a hundred percent certain.