The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

“He’s not coming back. Not for a while, anyway. You’re quite safe here.”

I shut my mouth but I felt uneasy. My objection to staying in the house was not that I was afraid of Herr Schiller coming back, but that it gave Herr Duster the opportunity to go off without us. All the same, I could see the logic of his plan when he opened Herr Schiller’s front door: the icy draft on my wet jeans was so glacially cold that the skin of my legs felt as though it were burning off. I hugged the down jacket around me. My teeth were chattering.

“This is crazy,” said Stefan, not unkindly. “You should stay here, Pia. You’re going to freeze to death.”

“No way,” I said, clamping my mouth shut to try to stop the chattering.

“I wonder how he knows where-you know, where he went?” said Stefan.

“Um.” I couldn’t think of any reply. That Herr Schiller should have had any involvement at all in the disappearances of my schoolmates was terrifying enough; to try to imagine where he might have gone to and for what reason was completely beyond me. I still had the feeling that I might wake up and discover the whole thing was some kind of outlandish dream.

For what seemed like ages Stefan and I stood in the hallway of our friend’s home and waited for Herr Duster to arrive with the car. There was a feeling of subdued expectancy about the situation, as though we were the survivors of some bloody accident, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. I could not think of anything to say and it seemed that neither could Stefan, so for a long time we stood there in silence.

I was starting to wonder whether Herr Duster had gone off without us, when I suddenly heard a slight sound behind me. It was a soft sound, the sound of a velvet curtain brushing the floor, but it struck me cold. I do not know whether it is true that at such times the hair on the back of one’s neck stands up, but I felt as though an icy hand had been placed there. Before I could turn around or say anything, the soft slithering was followed by a sound like someone clearing their throat.

“Ste-fan…” I thought I might faint or be sick.

“What?”

“There’s something…” I forced myself to turn around.

There in the cellar doorway sat Pluto, regarding us balefully with his great yellow eyes. As I watched, his mouth yawned open, revealing a pink tongue and needle-sharp teeth, and he spat again. Then he turned with sinuous swiftness and disappeared down the spiral stairs.

Stefan exhaled slowly at my shoulder. “Verdammter cat.”

I nodded, swallowing.

“Are you all right? Did he scare you?”

“Not really. I just thought…” But I was not sure what I had thought. Useless to try to describe the grotesque ideas that had flitted through my brain when I heard that soft whispering noise and the rasping sound. I had stepped into trolldom that night, and now nothing was too horrible to be true. The monsters are loose, I thought, and my mind skidded neatly around the memory of what I had seen in the well.

“That’s how he got into Herr Schiller’s house,” said Stefan suddenly. He touched my arm. “You remember, that time he made us jump?” He had conveniently forgotten that it was he who had jumped, he who had screamed the place down. Still, I couldn’t be bothered to correct him. I nodded. Stefan was still looking at the doorway where the cat had been. At last he gave a low whistle.

“No wonder Herr Schiller went mad when he saw him. He must have known Pluto came through the cellar. He probably didn’t shut the door properly.” He shook his head disbelievingly. “I bet he thought Pluto had given the whole game away.”

I wasn’t listening. I was thinking of the moment before I fell into the well, of the sounds I had heard and the thing that had brushed against my leg and made me panic so that I sprang forward into nothingness. Pluto. I was thinking that if I ever got hold of him I would like to put my hands around that furry throat and strangle him.

Chapter Fifty-one

Lights outside the front door and the low purr of an engine announced the arrival of Herr Duster and the car. I yanked on the zip of my down jacket, trying to ensure maximum protection from the cold, and then Stefan and I stepped outside. It was dark in the street and snowflakes were still falling, whirling down so thickly that it was difficult to make anything out, but still we were impressed when we saw the car.

“Wow,” said Stefan.

Herr Duster leaned over and pushed open the passenger side door a little. “Get in,” he shouted. Stefan slid into the front passenger seat; I had to make do with the backseat. Herr Duster did not wait for Stefan to finish doing up his seat belt; he had already started moving forward.

“We need to get the car warm,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at me.

“I’m all right,” I said, hugging myself.

“This is an amazing car.” Stefan was looking at the interior as though studying the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. “What is it?”

“A Mercedes 230 Heckflosse,” said Herr Duster without turning his head. He was peering at the street ahead through a screen of swirling snowflakes.

“Is it really yours?”

Now Herr Duster did give him a look. “Naturlich. I am not in the habit of stealing cars.”

“It’s just… I’ve never seen it before.”

“I don’t take it out very often,” said Herr Duster. He patted the steering wheel. “That is why it took me a little time to fetch it. I had to move a few things, and get the cover off.”

“If I had a car like this,” said Stefan, “I would drive it everywhere.”

“Then you would need a very large bank balance,” said Herr Duster drily.

I stared out of the window at the darkened street. We were turning right, toward the Klosterplatz, where the bonfire had been on St. Martin’s Eve, and where Frau Mahlberg had shaken me until my teeth chattered, screaming for her lost daughter. The muffled white shapes of a few snow-covered cars were visible, snowflakes tumbling down around them. I leaned too close to the glass and the window was suddenly opaque.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The Eschweiler Tal,” said Herr Duster. His voice was cool and precise.

I sat up. “Why the Eschweiler Tal? How do you know he’s going there?”

Herr Duster did not reply. We had crossed the Klosterplatz and were traveling down the street toward the Protestant church. In a few moments we would have passed underneath the arch in the town walls. Herr Duster was driving as fast as he dared, but the road surface was treacherous. I could feel the old Mercedes gliding on the snow and ice.

“Herr Duster?” I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being rude, but I couldn’t bear not to ask the question. “How do you know he’s going to the Eschweiler Tal?”

“I don’t,” said Herr Duster grimly.

“Then why-?”

“He is my brother,” said Herr Duster, “and I know him.”

I recognized the uncompromising tone in his voice and sat back, not daring to ask any more questions, though my brain was seething with them. How could he say he knew Herr Schiller when he never spoke to him? How could he be so sure where Herr Schiller was going?

Once out of the town walls, Herr Duster turned toward the railway station and the north end of the town. There was no one about. Small Eifel towns like Bad Munstereifel are always pretty dead by midnight, but tonight the cold and snow had driven even the taxi drivers and the bored street-corner youths back indoors.

I saw a police car parked outside the station: at first I thought there was no one in it but then the windshield wipers lurched into life and cleared an arc of snow away. Herr Duster hesitated and I felt the car slow, but then he suddenly accelerated and the car lurched forward. Before I could see who was inside the police car, we had passed it and were heading out of town. The interior of the car was warming up; soon my wet clothes would be