The Sinner (32 page)

Magdalena wished she could have a boyfriend herself later on,
when she was fifteen or sixteen. Or preferably right away, because
she didn't believe she would live that long.

She took nearly an hour to calm down after the chief had gone.
She didn't understand how she could have let herself be drawn
into spinning him such a yarn, not when she already had the tissues
in her hand. Having sex with two men at once! She supposed
she must have done that during the darkest chapter of her life.
Something of the sort had flashed through her mind.

And then she'd had a vision of her father with his trousers down
and a look of diabolical fury on his face. She'd almost blurted
that out too and only just stopped herself by making the doctor a
scapegoat.

It was unpardonable of her. That man had saved her life and
asked for nothing in return. A kindly, friendly person, he had never
touched her in the way she'd described to the chief He hadn't
been a dirty old man, just a man in a white coat who had made the
minor mistake of getting into his car while slightly over the limit.

He'd been in his early fifties at most, with a thin face and a dark,
neatly trimmed beard and moustache. He usually appeared at her bedside holding a syringe. His hands were slender and very well
manicured, and his voice was warm and gentle. "How are you
feeling? You'll be asleep in no time."

Her forearms were a mass of suppurating sores. There was a
cannula inserted in the back of her hand. When lie emptied the
hypo into it, darkness promptly descended and oblivion claimed
her. The pains in her head were unbearable. They hammered and
drilled and stabbed away as if the bandage around her head were
a vice.

Her skull had been fractured in several places, the doctor told
her later, when she'd recovered sufficiently to question him. As
for her other injuries, they could not have been caused by such a
minor impact. He hadn't been driving fast, had braked at once and
merely brushed her with the radiator grille when she staggered out
in front of his car. Three weeks ago, when she appeared out of the
darkness on the edge of a country road.

Unconscious for three whole weeks?

"Think yourself lucky," he said. "You've slept through the worst
of it. Withdrawal symptoms are a terrible thing. Your whole body
rebels, your nerves go haywire. But you were unaware of it."

He asked her name. She hadn't been carrying any papers, he
said. He also asked if she knew what had happened to her. She
didn't. It had all gone, and not only the three weeks he was talking
about. Over five months had been obliterated.

The last thing she remembered was a Saturday in the second
week of May. Magdalena's birthday! A bottle of champagne!
Bought - not stolen - in honour of the occasion. Hidden for three
days under the old sacks in the barn and brought out when Mother
and Father had left the house to spend another evening in the
company of those despairing souls who clung to heaven because
they couldn't stand on earth unsupported.

The fizz was warm when she brought it into the house. She put
the bottle in the fridge and left it there until just before eight. That
was when Magdalena wanted to toast her new year of life. "I'm
sure a sip won't do me any harm," she said. "Maybe it'll help me
to make it through the year."

No one believed that except Magdalena and her. She firmly
believed it too, of course, but not the doctors at Eppendorf - as
usual. Magdalena had been to the hospital again in April. She'd
had to spend considerably longer there than the scheduled two
days, but she wouldn't say why.

"I pay no attention to the crap they dish out. If they were
right, I'd have died long ago. They don't have a clue. As far as
I'm concerned, they can shove my heart and my abdominal aorta
up their backsides. And my kidneys too. All I need is willpower.
That's it, Cora! You have to want to go on living, then you will. I've
proved that for the last eighteen years. What's more, I'll show them
that an operation is possible. How much money do we have?"

Magdalena knew she'd been born at eight on the dot.

"Will you stay with me till then?"

"I'll stay with you all evening. Surely you don't think I'd go out
on your birthday?"

"But I'd like you to. One of us must celebrate at least. Next year
we'll both have a proper celebration. We'll throw a party that'll
make the neighbours' teeth rattle. Tonight you'll have to go out on
your own again. I'll be happy if you're back by eleven. We'll save
some fizz for then, and you can tell me how you got on. Will you
be seeing Horst?"

"No, I told him last week I couldn't come. He said it didn't
matter. His father had already asked him a couple of times to fix
the car. He could do it then, he said."

"What a shame. Still, he may be there all the same - it can't take
all night to fix a car. And if he doesn't make it, have a good time
with someone else. A bit of a change can't hurt. Promise me you'll
have fun with some gorgeous young man, and then come home.
And then ..."

That had been on 16 May, and suddenly it was October! The
doctor didn't know what had happened in the interim. He smiled
at her while she experimentally moved her fingers and toes, arms
and legs. "You're bound to remember in due course. Give your
head a little time to recover. And even if you don't remember, I
don't think you'll have missed much."

"I must go home," she said.

"It'll be a little while before we can think of that." He lifted her
left foot and pricked the heel with a pin. "Excellent," he said when
she winced. "Now get some sleep. You still need a lot of rest."

He never said much during his visits. Her only other visitor was
a nurse, a surly creature of her own age who never spoke or did
anything unless it was absolutely necessary. She brought Cora's
meals, plumped up her pillows, smoothed her sheets and washed
her. The doctor made her do exercises to prevent her limbs from
stiffening up after so long in bed. He also made her do sums and
recite poems from school to discover whether her brain had been
affected by her heroin intake and the physical punishment she'd
sustained. He inserted needles into the cannula in the back of her
hand, applied ointment to her inflamed forearms and changed the
bottle under her bed, which was connected to a catheter.

She thought of Magdalena, who needed her. She had to go home
as soon as possible. Magdalena was eager to show the doctors at
Eppendorf what could be done. She wanted to have an operation
in the United States if there were enough money for the flight
and the hospital. There was far from enough. A vast sum was still
needed, and she would have to get it somehow That was her last
thought before the injection took effect.

There was no day or night in her little room. There were no
windows, just a dim wall light. It was on whenever she opened her
eyes, and whenever the doctor came she tried to find out more. But
he knew very little.

"I don't think it was an accident," he said on one occasion.
"The circumstances rule that out: a naked young woman without
any identification, pumped full of heroin." He spoke of serious
lesions in the vaginal area and elsewhere. Typical of certain sexual
practices, they allowed for only one conclusion.

He had formed a definite picture of Cora: she was a drugaddicted prostitute. Easy meat for a pervert, a sadist who enjoyed
inflicting pain and had dumped his unconscious victim beside the
road, possibly in the belief that he had killed her.

"I ought to have notified the police," he said, "but I was afraid of losing my licence. And then I thought that you yourself should
decide as soon as you were able. The police would be bound to
judge by outward appearances, and you might as well have worn
a placard round your neck. Look, no matter what happened and
what sort of life you were leading, you've escaped without any
lasting damage. You're still young - not even twenty. You can make
a fresh start. All you need is the willpower to keep off that poison.
Your body doesn't need it any more; now you must convince your
mind. Life is better without heroin, believe me. Above all, it's
cheaper. Even a respectable job will earn you enough to live on."

"Where am l?" she asked.

"In good hands," he said with a smile. "Forgive me if I think of
myself now"

Of course she forgave him. Nobody as nice and kind and understanding could be blamed for thinking of himself for once and not
wanting to risk being rewarded for his kindness with a driving ban.
He'd been little short of a saint. If she was now on the road back
to a normal existence, she owed it to him alone.

And she had cast him in the role of a brute. Whv? Because she
couldn't admit what she'd been: a lump of filth that had drifted
further and further down the gutter until she'd let anyone do
anything to her.

But the chief wouldn't give up. He kept probing away at the old
wounds until they broke open one by one. If he spoke to Father ...
That was the last thing he'd said before leaving: that he must pay
a visit to Buchholz next morning "I'm very sorry, Frau Bender. I
can't leave your father in peace, but I assure you I won't upset him
unnecessarily. I only want to ask him. . ."

Father knew about her perverted boyfriends. He also knew about
other perversions.

The ultimate sin! It had ceased to matter whether the Saviour
forgave her or sentenced her to burn in hell, as Mother had
graphically described so often. "Hundreds of little demons will rip
the flesh from your body with red-hot pincers." The little demons
had begun their work long ago, and the chief was guiding them,
showing them where best to apply their pincers.

After supper she waited another few hours until she felt satisfied
that the wardresses would be less alert. They didn't come to check
on her so often at night. Shortly after twelve she took out the packet
of tissues, tore off two pieces, rolled them into balls and plugged
her nostrils with them.

Breathing through her mouth, she crumpled the rest of the tissues
into a big ball and took up her position facing the wall at the end of
the bed. Then she emptied her lungs and rammed the tissues down
her throat as far as they would go. Even before she had lowered her
hand, she drew back her head and butted the wall.

Rudolf Grovian set off at six on the Wednesday morning. Mechthild
was still asleep when he left the house. He had estimated that the
drive would take him five hours - a miscalculation that failed to
allow for extensive roadworks on the Al. The first tailback cost
him half an hour, the second almost a full hour. He didn't reach his
destination until half-past twelve.

Buchholz. Clean as anew pin, lots of greenery, scarcely a building
in the centre of town more than ten or fifteen years old. These
surroundings, where Cora Bender had spent her childhood, were
grossly at odds with his mental picture of her battered features.

He drove around for a while, getting his bearings with the aid of
a street map, before pulling up outside her parental home. A nice
little house, probably built in the early sixties, as neat and trim as
the rest of the neighbourhood. Small but well-tended front garden,
gleaming windows with snow-white net curtains behind them.
Grovian suppressed an urge to shake his head.

He had learned the address from Gereon Bender on Tuesday
night. He'd intended to get it from Margret Rosch and ask her
a few more questions at the same time, but Cora's aunt had
unexpectedly disappeared, so he had to make do with the husband.
He was informed that Gereon Bender had never set eyes on his
parents-in-law

"They washed their hands of her years ago. I ought to have known better - they must have had their reasons, after all. She
lied to me from the outset. For months she led me to believe that
Margret was her mother, and that her father had died shortly
before she turned fourteen. The truth didn't come out until we
applied for a marriage licence. I'd have done better to send her
packing. Which reminds me: what's the form? She used the knife
on me too. I ought to be able to charge her with assault. Or doesn't
it count if you're married to someone?"