The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

“And once we’re inside?”

“We search,” said Stefan simply.

“What about Herr Duster?”

“Well, obviously we can’t search upstairs,” said Stefan impatiently. “But he’s not going to have hidden anything up there, anyway, is he?”

“Why not?”

“Serial killers never do,” said Stefan with authority. “He’s probably put the bodies in the cellar.”

“Yeuch,” I commented, shuddering. “And if we find something, what do we…?”

“We get proof.” Stefan said it firmly.

“Proof? You mean…?”

“We have to get something, and bring it out with us.”

“Stefan, if we find a dead body I am not touching it.”

“Who said you have to, silly? We can get a bit of the clothes or something.”

I gazed at him hopelessly. There really was no escape this time. We really were going to do it.

“All right,” I said.

I still thought I might put the expedition off. When Stefan brought the topic up again I prevaricated: there was no point attempting it with the weekend coming up-the Christmas market was open until late from Friday to Sunday, so the town center would be packed with people. There was a cold snap and snow was expected-we would freeze if we went out of doors at midnight, and we would leave tracks in the snow if we did. I had a couple of long days at school coming up and needed the sleep. I thought I had a cold coming on…

“Pech gehabt,” said Stefan with a supreme lack of sympathy.

“It’s not just tough luck-I’m really sick…” I sniffed theatrically.

“Look, Pia.” He sounded excited. “Herr Duster has gone away. We have to do it now.”

“Now?” I looked about me wildly.

“I mean tonight.”

“How do you know he’s gone away?”

“I heard that old Schrulle Frau Koch telling someone in the bakery at lunchtime. She said he left this morning and good riddance.” Stefan looked at me, his eyes shining with the fervor of a fanatic. “Don’t you see? This is our chance! We have to do it tonight.”

“OK,” I said. I felt sick.

The rest of the day passed in an agony of suspense. When school finished I deliberately walked home via the Marktstrasse, avoiding the Orchheimer Strasse, where Herr Duster’s house lurked like a trap. I wouldn’t let Stefan walk me home.

When I arrived at the house, both my parents were there, but were occupying spaces as far as possible from each other. My mother was energetically cleaning out one of the kitchen cupboards, perhaps deciding who was to have custody of her extensive Tupperware collection, and my father was enthroned in the wickerwork armchair in their bedroom with a file on his lap and the telephone within reach. Sebastian was sitting in front of the television with his thumb in his mouth and a heap of toy cars lying neglected around him, his round eyes glued to the screen, where the Teletubbies were cavorting among gigantic rabbits and futuristic windmills.

No one seemed to notice my arrival; we had all become like individual planets traveling on their lonely orbits around a pitiless sun, our paths concentric, never meeting. I fetched myself a glass of apple juice, then sat at the kitchen table and tried to do my homework, but it was impossible to concentrate.

In the end I closed the files and went outside to find my bicycle. It was icy cold outdoors, and already beginning to get dark; the street-lamps made little impression on the gloom. I would have to leave the bike out in the street and trust that neither of my parents noticed it and made me put it away again. I wheeled it into the space between my father’s car and the wall in the hope that it would not be seen. I lingered for a while in the street, hunched against the cold, and hacked aimlessly at the ice in the gutter with my heel, but after Frau Kessel had passed and said, “Hallo, Pia Kolvenbach,” in a disapproving tone, I realized that I had better go indoors; I was simply drawing attention to myself.

At suppertime I tried to break the silence by asking my mother, “Is it true that Herr Duster has gone away?” but she merely said, “Mmmm,” and continued to gaze out the window at the darkened street with a distracted expression on her face. Her fingers were forever working at her dark ponytail; the ends were becoming lank.

My father was reading, or pretending to read, the Kolner Stadtanzeiger. Every so often he would put the paper down in order to reach for something-the plate of cold Wurst or the butter-but he never asked anyone to pass him anything. He preferred to stand up and reach over the table, looming oppressively over the rest of us.

When the telephone rang it was a relief. I was sliding out of my place to go answer it when my father got to his feet, raising one large hand to indicate that I should sit down again, he would do it.

“Kolvenbach.”

I stared listlessly at my plate, wondering whether Sebastian could be fed the last piece of salami, like a dog waiting under the table.

“What?”

My father’s voice rose as though he were shocked. My mother turned her head for an instant but then resumed her vague surveillance of the window. Her lips were pursed slightly as though in irritation, and I guessed she thought my father was trying to get attention that she was determined not to give.

“When?”

This time my mother did not even move her head. My father listened for a long time. “Mein Gott,” he said at last, and then, “Do you want me to-?”

There was a further silence as he listened to someone speaking at the other end, then he said, “Bis gleich,” and put down the receiver. He came back into the kitchen.

“Kate.” It was almost a shock hearing him speak my mother’s name out loud. The silence from my mother was ominous. “I have to go out. I have to-”

He got no further. “Just go,” said my mother.

“Don’t you want-?”

“Just go,” she said again.

My father’s brows knit together but he said nothing. He went back into the hallway and removed his winter jacket from its hanger; a moment later the front door banged shut and he was gone. I looked at my mother.

“I wonder what-”

“Eat your supper, Pia.”

I did eat my supper, though without relish. Something was going on outside, I knew. I could hear voices at regular intervals as people passed our front windows. It was not one of the days for the Christmas market, so there was no particular reason for so many people to be out on the street.

I saw my mother glance at the window herself and guessed that she was regretting her refusal to hear what was going on. Still, she was determined not to advertise her interest. She finished her own supper in silence and then cleared up with a lot of clattering of plates and slamming of drawers.

“Pia, go and get ready for bed” was about the only remark she addressed to me in the entire evening; she had closed up like an oyster shell. I went upstairs and changed into my nightdress. When I was ready for bed I went down and kissed my mother, but it was like kissing a waxwork. She hardly seemed aware that I was there.

I went back upstairs and put my head around Sebastian’s door. He was fast asleep already, curled into a ball with the covers wrapped around him so that he looked like a spring roll. My father was still out. It seemed that no one had the slightest interest in me or in what I was doing.

I climbed into bed and lay there for a very long time, my eyes tracing the familiar outlines of my room as they adjusted to the dark. Sleep seemed unimaginable. I had set my alarm clock for half past midnight; after some thought I hopped out of bed again and went to close the door, in the hope of preventing the alarm from waking anyone else.

Eventually I heard the creaking of my mother coming up the stairs, and shortly afterward the groaning and clanking from the pipework that meant she was running a bath. A house as old as ours is as garrulous as an old