Therapy (20 page)

He looked around for signs of Anna.
I should have saved myself the trouble
, he thought grimly.

For a moment he was tempted to call her name in case she had broken into the Anchor and was playing another of her games.

Just then his mobile rang. This time it was the ringtone for family and friends.

‘Hello?’

‘Is this your idea of a joke?’

‘Kai? Has something happened?’ Viktor left the boarding house and headed down the track in an easterly direction. He was taken aback by the PI's tone.

‘You've got a sick sense of humour.’

‘I don't know what you mean.’

‘The fax, Viktor, the fax.’

‘Oh, I tried to call you. It was blank.’

‘Then fax yourself another one. I'm not as stupid as you think.’

‘I don't think you're stupid. Kai, what's going on?’

A sudden gust drove a flurry of raindrops into Viktor's face. He swivelled round and looked back at the Anchor. From this angle, the empty boarding house looked like a cardboard facade on a film set.

‘I traced the fax. I mean, who the hell would send me a picture of a cat?’

Josy's cat. Nepomuk
.

‘Well?’

‘It was you. The picture was sent from your number. You faxed it from your house.’

That's impossible
, thought Viktor.

‘Listen, Kai, I don't know what to—’ He heard a series of beeps and realized that the line was dead. An automated voice told him to hang up and try again later.

‘Damn.’ Viktor checked his mobile and cursed his bad luck. Without a signal, he could forget about calling the mainland. He whirled round and stood with his back to the Anchor, surveying the land ahead. He finished up by staring at the sky, as if the solution were written in the ominous black clouds.

Who would help him now? Was there anyone left to trust? A plump raindrop hit him straight in the eye. Blinking frantically, he was reminded of sitting in the bath and screwing up his eyes to get rid of the shampoo. He ran a hand over his face and was surprised to find that he could see more clearly. Everything looked much sharper, as if the optician had chosen the right lens and brought the bottom row of letters into focus. Or maybe it was merely coincidence that a moment later he knew exactly what to do.

46

Just as Viktor had expected, the lights were still on in the mayor's cottage. He ran up the steps to the porch and held down the doorbell.

He could hear a dog, probably the ferryman's schnauzer, barking in the distance, and something – either a gate or a shutter – was banging in the wind. But he couldn't say for certain whether the bell had actually rung. He gave it another minute in case Halberstaedt was already on the way to the door.

When the second ring produced no reaction, he dispensed with politeness and banged the hefty knocker impatiently against the cedar door. Halberstaedt's wife had left him two years earlier for a rich guy from Munich, and now he lived alone.

Still no response.

Bloody wind. I don't suppose he can hear me
, thought Viktor as he circled the house. It was situated in a prime location, right next to the Anchor and overlooking the marina, but it didn't have a jetty or beach access, and Halberstaedt had to cross the narrow coast road in order to get to the sea. Of course, it didn't much matter on a tiny island like Parkum, but Viktor was of the opinion
that seaside houses should be located directly on the beach. Otherwise he would rather save himself the trouble and stay on the mainland near a lake.

The wind was battering the island from the sea, and it came as a relief to Viktor when he rounded the corner and found himself sheltered by the house.

Until then he had been pummelled constantly by the gusts, shielded only by a handful of pathetic-looking pine trees, their slender trunks bent double from the stormy North Sea weather. Now that he was tucked behind the house, the rain decided to let up a little and he could afford to catch his breath. He allowed himself to rest a short while, then resumed his hunt for the mayor.

The large window at the back belonged to the study, but Halberstaedt had obviously gone upstairs. The desk was strewn with innumerable pages of handwritten notes, and a laptop had been abandoned, still open, on a stool. There was no sign of life and in the hearth the fire was burning low. In fact, Viktor had almost given up hope when he noticed that the desk lamp was still alight.
He can't have gone out
, he thought to himself.

He couldn't imagine why Halberstaedt needed a study, much less a computer.

A quick glance at the rest of the house was enough to determine that the lights were out upstairs. Of course, that didn't mean anything: if Halberstaedt were up there, he was more than likely to be in bed, in which case the curtains would be pulled.

Viktor was running out of ideas. So far he had achieved precisely nothing apart from getting wet. But that was entirely predictable, given that he had no idea of Anna's location or what to do if he tracked her down.

Don't try looking for me. I'LL GET TO YOU!

Viktor decided to knock one last time. Then he noticed a shed at the bottom of the overgrown garden.

Under normal circumstances, the faint light leaking under the corrugated-iron door wouldn't have caught his attention, but the past hours had taken such a toll on his body that his mind was working overtime. He registered several things at once: the shed was lit up, the only window was boarded over on the inside, and smoke was rising from the narrow metal chimney atop the flat roof.

What would persuade Halberstaedt to go out to his shed in the pouring rain? And who in their right mind would block up a shed window while leaving the lights on and curtains open in their house?

Viktor had a vague feeling that something bad was about to happen, but he swallowed his doubts and hurried over the waterlogged lawn. He was going to find out what Halberstaedt was up to in the shed.

47

The door wasn't locked. He opened it slowly and was enveloped in thick, fusty air. The shed smelt of oil, old rags and mouldering wood, an odour that pervades every neglected basement or workshop. With the exception of a few beetles and woodlice that scuttled for cover when he appeared from the rain, the shed was deserted.

But Halberstaedt wasn't the only notable absence. To Viktor's surprise, there wasn't a single tool in the shed. No spades, rakes or trowels, no half-empty tins of paint on the chipboard shelves, no building materials abandoned on the floor.

In spite of its generous size, as large as a double garage, the shed didn't house so much as a wheelbarrow, let alone an old rowing boat or an ancient bike. But it wasn't merely the lack of everyday equipment that was making him shiver. Viktor felt cold all over. Throughout the long walk from his cottage into the wind he hadn't noticed the chill in the air, but as soon as he entered the hidden hut at the bottom of the mayor's garden
he felt frozen to the bone. The cold started in the small of his back and crept up his spine, spreading across his scalp and through the rest of his body, giving him goosebumps.

Death is always cold
.

Viktor gave himself a little shake, partly to make sure he wasn't dreaming, and partly to dispel the oppressive thoughts attacking his mind. He had just realized what was going on.

What he would have given to be at home, wherever that was. At home, sitting with his wife by the fire, or in a warm bath surrounded by candles. At home, shielded from the world by solid doors and shuttered windows. At home, or anywhere but here, as far away as possible from the hundreds of photos and newspaper articles taunting him from all sides.

Someone – Halberstaedt or Anna – had covered the walls with a monstrous collage of pictures, captions and articles collected over the course of many months. The subject matter wasn't conventionally abhorrent. There were no blood-spattered bodies, sexual perversions or graphic images from X-rated websites, but the clippings shared a common theme, a theme that filled him with dread. There were photos everywhere – tacked to the walls, pinned to the shelves, and pegged on washing lines suspended across the shed – and everywhere he looked he saw Josy.

It was like stumbling into a paper maze of memories and being trapped by his daughter's gaze. The shed was
a shrine to a pathological obsession. Someone had spent their free time researching Josy's abduction. His daughter was the object of an irrational and monstrous cult.

The ancient light bulb dangling from the ceiling bathed the clippings in uncertain light. Viktor overcame his revulsion and examined the collage more closely.

At first he thought he was imagining things, then he realized the newspaper was stained with bloody fingerprints. Delicate fingerprints; too delicate for someone with Halberstaedt's bear-like hands.

But the captions were what persuaded Viktor that he was looking at the work of an unsound mind. Each headline had been cut to size, highlighted with a coloured marker and glued to a photo.

Wrapping his right hand in his scarf to protect it from the heat, he reached up and tilted the bulb towards the wall. The captions came into focus.

PSYCHIATRIST'S DAUGHTER GOES MISSING

SHRINK IN NIGHTMARE TRAUMA

TV DOCTOR ABANDONED BY WIFE

WHO POISONED LITTLE JOSY
?

LARENZ VERDICT
:
PSYCHIATRIST BANNED
!

What kind of sick person would make up nonsense like that?
Some of the headlines were genuine, but for the most part they were fabrications – and increasingly preposterous ones at that.

It must have been her
.

He couldn't imagine the time it must have taken to think up the headings, print them out in newspaper style and arrange them on the walls. And he was baffled by the photos. Some of them had been downloaded from the web, but others he had never seen before.

Anna must have been stalking his family long before Josy disappeared. Had she taken the photos without their knowledge? It was still too early to prove anything, but Viktor was certain that he was looking at Anna's work.

I need to read the captions
, he decided, angling the bulb to the left.
If I study them carefully, I might find the key to what she wants
.

If he hadn't been so intent on inspecting the collage, events might have taken a different turn. Perhaps he would have heard the rustling in the garden instead of staring, deep in thought, at the cryptic messages on the wall. He might have left the shed and never noticed the sheet of paper that made him cry out in horror and stopped him from hearing the sound of cracking twigs. With a bit of luck, he might have turned round and spotted the danger. Who knows.

Instead he let go of the light bulb and tore down the offending piece of paper that was tacked to the wall by a rusty nail. He didn't stop to read its contents. The alarming thing about the paper was its provenance. He had seen a stack of sheets like this before. It had the same greyish tinge of recycled paper and the same closely written script. Without a shadow of doubt it
belonged to the manuscript that was scattered over Patrick Halberstaedt's desk. The architect of the collage was at work in the house – in the house belonging to Parkum's mayor.

Equipped with this knowledge, and armed with the loaded gun, Viktor raced out of the shed.

48

Two minutes later, he was holding the key. Halberstaedt, like Viktor, kept a spare beneath the flowerpot on the porch.

As soon as the door was unlocked, he hurried into the hallway, calling Halberstaedt's name. His instincts told him that no one was there, but he checked the house anyway, running from room to room. No sign of the mayor. He was silently praying that nothing dreadful had happened to him. He refused to believe that Halberstaedt was in league with Anna. The evidence was stacked against him – his strange behaviour on the phone, and now the alarming contents of his shed – but Viktor had known him for years. The problem was, if Halberstaedt was innocent, why had he disappeared? Alarmed, Viktor suddenly thought of Isabell. There was no telling the lengths that Anna would go to, and he hoped to goodness that she wouldn't start targeting his family and friends.

He went back to the study and marched to the desk. His shoes left a trail of muddy footprints on the beige carpet, but he didn't stop to take them off.

His gaze fell on the stack of paper next to the laptop. He wondered whether it was the work of Halberstaedt
or Anna. At last he was certain that the mystery would soon be solved.

He took off his raincoat, placed the gun beside the manuscript and sat down to read the first page.

The text was handwritten and laid out like an interview. As he read the first few lines, he was overwhelmed by an extraordinary sense of déjà-vu.

Bunte: What was it like in the aftermath of your daughter's disappearance?

Larenz: Like death. Of course, I was still eating, drinking and breathing and I sometimes managed to sleep for a couple of hours at a stretch, but I wasn't living anymore. My life was over the day that Josy went missing.

He started again from the beginning and felt like pinching himself to make sure he was awake. This wasn't one of Anna's stories. It was his interview. His interview with
Bunte
.

At first he couldn't figure out how Anna could have known about it, but then he remembered that the hard drive of his laptop had been wiped. She must have seized her chance, maybe yesterday when he was asleep, and stolen his files without him knowing.

It was strange that she had copied it out by hand. She could have printed the interview instead of going to the trouble of transcribing every word. The masculine writing didn't fit with her delicate hands.
Maybe it was Halberstaedt after all
. He quickly dismissed the thought:
Halberstaedt hadn't been into his house and couldn't have interfered with his computer.

Viktor leafed hurriedly through the manuscript and discovered that Anna had copied the interview in its entirety. Every question, every answer, every last sentence was there. It was a perfect copy of his work.