The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

breath. Then we heard the sound of someone stumbling in the hole, turning around in a limited space with difficulty, moving heavily, perhaps burdened with something that made it hard to move easily. We heard ragged footsteps, the sound of someone moving as fast as possible over uneven ground in the dark.

There was a muffled exclamation from Herr Duster, and a click. As light bloomed I saw that he had Stefan’s flashlight in his hand. He nodded at Stefan. “Come.” He glanced at me. “Stay here, Pia.”

“No!” I couldn’t think of anything worse than being left there alone in the dark.

Staggering to my feet, I tottered stiffly as a scarecrow. Herr Duster had not waited to see whether I had obeyed his injunction: he was already at the mouth of the hole, Stefan close behind him. In savage determination I limped across the flagstones, although every movement seemed to jar painfully through my whole body, and stumbled after them into the hole.

Chapter Forty-nine

Entering the jagged hole in the wall, I could see little more than the black shapes of Stefan and Herr Duster, backlit by the flashlight. Still, I could make out a little of the tunnel we were in, from the weak yellow light and the feel of the walls under my hands. They felt surprisingly regular: I thought I could feel the shape of bricks, as neatly fitted together as a garden path.

Somehow I had imagined the hole as an organic thing, a tunnel burrowed crudely through the earth as though by a monstrous mole. It had no right to be there, after all. But this tunnel was meant. Someone had taken the trouble to build a secret pathway underneath the Orchheimer Strasse, though what their motive might be I could not begin to guess.

It was long: we must be out from under Herr Duster’s house by now. The movement was bringing some sort of life back into my frozen limbs, though my legs felt as cold as a butcher’s slab, my sodden trousers sticking uncomfortably to my skin. I felt as though I had returned to myself; fear and excitement had sobered me up as smartly as a slap to the face.

Abruptly, Stefan stopped and I suddenly found myself pressed up against his back.

“What?” I asked excitedly. I could see absolutely nothing apart from the halo of the flashlight around his head.

“It is a room.” Herr Duster’s voice sounded oddly flat. I shoved at Stefan’s back.

“Go on.”

Stefan stepped forward, moving warily: I guessed that he was thinking of my fall into the well. Now that he was out of the way I could see a little of the room we were in.

“It’s someone’s cellar.” I could not keep the disappointment out of my voice. I had been expecting something more dramatic: a vampire’s crypt, or a mad scientist’s laboratory. Not this smugly dull room with its contents so neatly stored away.

Shelves filled one side of the cellar, stacked with boxes and crates. On the other side old furniture stood in a prim line, backs to the wall like old maids at a tea dance. A selection of garden tools had been hung up on hooks, spaced at exactly equal intervals, like a display in a museum. The only thing that was at all out of place was right at my feet: a pile of bricks, still with ragged chunks of mortar attached.

Herr Duster was standing in the center of the room, moving the beam of the flashlight slowly over the stacked shelves. He did not seem disposed to continue his pursuit of whomever or whatever it was we had heard escaping through the tunnel.

“Herr Duster, we have to go,” said Stefan, urgently.

The old man raised his head and looked at him.

“He’s getting away!” Stefan sounded beside himself. “We have to move.”

Herr Duster moved his head. I think he meant to shake it, but the movement was so slight that it looked as though he had simply turned his neck, as if there were something he didn’t wish to hear. The beam of light wavered along the line of shelves.

“We have to-” began Stefan.

“I think,” said Herr Duster, and his voice sounded curiously sad, “I think that we must call the police.”

“No,” said Stefan instantly. He gave a great sigh of exasperation. “If-if we go back now and call them, he’ll get away.”

Herr Duster said something in such a low voice that neither of us could hear what it was. Then he said, more loudly, “It is for the police. Not for-children.”

“Verdammt!” snapped Stefan. He actually stamped his foot, like a small child. His hands clutched the air in frustration, as though trying to tear something down. “We’re not babies.” He glared at Herr Duster. “We’ll go. Give me my flashlight back.”

Herr Duster didn’t move. Stefan took a step toward him, and Herr Duster involuntarily stepped back. The beam swung in a wide arc. Perhaps they would actually have come to a hand-to-hand struggle for the flashlight. However, as the beam swept across the cellar floor, I saw something.

“Look.”

They both followed the direction of my outstretched finger. Something lay on the stone floor, close by the claw feet of an ugly escritoire. A single boot. A girl’s boot made of pale pink suede with a fussy-looking fake-fur trim. The side zip was undone and the boot yawned open, exposing its furry throat.

“What is that?” said Herr Duster in a voice rimed with dread.

“It’s a boot,” said Stefan in the tone of someone stating an obvious fact. The real import of Herr Duster’s question, What in God’s name is that doing here? had passed him by. He stooped and picked it up. As he turned back to us, Herr Duster flinched. He looked at the boot as though it were some repulsive thing, a great spider or a decomposing rat. In the sickly light his seamed face looked more wrinkled than ever. The myriad lines on his ancient features seemed to shiver and reform under the influence of a powerful emotion, but what it was I could not tell.

“It’s probably from one of the girls, the ones-” I began, and stopped. I had been about to say the ones who went missing. But those girls were no longer missing; we knew where they were.

“Maybe,” murmured Stefan, turning the boot over in his hands. He looked at me. “Or maybe it’s a new one.”

I stared at him, my mouth open. Suddenly an image flashed across my mind: my father standing in the kitchen with the telephone in his hand, saying, “Kolvenbach” and “Mein Gott.” If my mother had not told him to just go, he would have said, “Another girl is missing.”

“Lieber Gott,” said Herr Duster quietly.

“Herr Duster-?” started Stefan.

The old man regarded him, an unfathomable expression on his face. Then, slowly, he nodded. “We will go. But,” he added somberly, before Stefan could take off like a greyhound, “as soon as it is possible, we will call the police. Verstanden?”

“Yes,” agreed Stefan instantly. He held the boot out to Herr Duster, but the old man shuddered and declined to touch it, so he stuffed it inside his own jacket.

Cautiously, we picked our way to the other end of the cellar. In the far right corner was an opening the size of a doorway but with no door across it. Stone stairs spiraled up out of sight. Stefan found a light switch on the wall by the staircase and tried it, but nothing happened. Either the bulb had blown or the power had been switched off.

Stefan made as if to start up the stairs, but Herr Duster laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“I will go first,” he said firmly. There was a challenging note in his voice that made me think of Oma Kristel’s reaction whenever my father or Onkel Thomas had told her to take things easy and think of her age. He began to climb the stone stairs, Stefan and I following as closely as we could.

Inevitably the stairs, having curled back on themselves, reached an abrupt end at a narrow and very firmly locked door. Herr Duster applied his shoulder to it and it jumped a little but did not open. However, the very fact