Sisters of Berlin Read online

  ‘You’re on your lunch break,’ Nina says. ‘Shall I come back later?’

  ‘No, no. Come in.’

  He offers her a chair and she sits down.

  ‘Do you mind if I finish my sandwich?’ he asks and points to the half-eaten sandwich on his desk, forlorn among the clutter of telephone, files, keyboard and piles of papers.

  A long-forgotten, sleepy mechanism is reactivated in Nina’s brain. She’s a little out of practice, but after several seconds she calculates that the sandwich is made up of a total of 382 calories.

  ‘I didn’t manage to get out for lunch earlier,’ Franzen continues.

  ‘No, please eat,’ she says.

  He takes a bite of his sandwich, chews, swallows, takes another bite and chews it quickly. Nina feels guilty to be depriving him of his enjoyment. He swallows, and says: ‘First of all, my condolences, Dr Bergmann.’ A pause, then: ‘Thank you for coming. I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time for you?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replies quietly. ‘And no, it’s not inconvenient. I close early on Wednesdays and I’d rather do this here.’

  ‘I understand,’ he says, wiping his hands on the napkin again. ‘Oh, and this is my colleague, Hauptkommissar Maslowski.’ He nods in the direction of the red-haired man.

  ‘Hello,’ Maslowski says. It isn’t a particularly friendly greeting.

  ‘Hello,’ Nina replies, uncomfortable at the thought of discussing Marie in front of a stranger.

  As if he can read her thoughts, Franzen says: ‘Just so you know – Kommissar Maslowski and I are both working on Marie’s case. So, we can talk openly.’

  She glances at Maslowski again, then turns to Franzen and nods. ‘All right,’ she says finally. ‘How can I help you?’

  Franzen puts the last piece of bread in his mouth and is still chewing as he opens a file.

  He swallows. ‘Actually, I wanted to keep you up-to-date on the status of our investigation. And ask you a couple of questions about Marie.’

  He sits there for a moment, silently, as though sorting his thoughts. ‘Your parents,’ he says, and his voice is slow and calm, ‘are very shaken about the death of Marie. Of course. But I must say – and forgive me for being frank – they don’t seem to know much about her. About how she lived.’

  ‘Be as frank as you like,’ Nina says. ‘In fact, I’d prefer it.’

  He smiles. ‘That’s good to know, Dr Bergmann.’

  He places both hands on the open file. His nails are pinkish-white, with a mother-of-pearl shine, and perfectly shaped.

  He continues. ‘There is no indication that anyone broke into your sister’s flat. By that I mean there were no obvious signs of forced entry. So either your sister knew her attacker, or she opened the door to a stranger. The door to the main building as well as to her flat.’

  He looks at her.

  ‘So?’ she asks quietly. He appears blissfully ignorant of the pain his remarks are causing her.

  ‘Well – I’d like to know whether your sister was in the habit of opening the door to strangers.’

  ‘Oh.’ She tries to think about it, but finds it difficult. She does nothing but think of Marie, but these thoughts make her bite her lip to keep the tears back. It’s not just the tears she’s stopping, it’s the thoughts she doesn’t allow herself to think, excruciating, dark thoughts about the attack. So she closes her eyes and imagines Marie in her messy, thrift-store flat, reading or listening to music, playing with a curl of hair, lost in thought, the doorbell rings, she jumps up, eagerly, impatiently, full of life and runs to the door –

  Then she remembers something.

  ‘Yes, I mean, no, Marie wouldn’t have opened the door just like that. There’s an intercom system in the building, it was broken for a while, and I remember she was annoyed because it took so long for the landlord to fix it. She was on the phone to him dozens of times before he did anything about it, we talked about that.’

  ‘I see.’ Franzen writes something down in his notebook. ‘And how long ago was this?’ he asks without looking up.

  ‘What, the broken intercom? Oh, a year ago, at least. There was a series of arson attacks in her street at the time, she had quite a few Turkish neighbours, so they assumed the attackers were likely to be neo-Nazis. So, anyway, everyone in her building was very careful about keeping the main door locked, checking first to see who they let in. Especially because a few people there have kids, and keep their buggies downstairs in the front hall. Apparently, buggies are good for starting fires.’

  She stops when she realises she’s blabbering. It must be nerves. She wonders why she’s nervous at all. She feels slightly dizzy, as well. She hasn’t eaten anything today and her concentration is dwindling. Where was she? Oh, right, she was blabbering about intercoms and arson attacks.

  ‘But that’s irrelevant,’ she says quietly.

  ‘No, no, carry on,’ Franzen says. ‘It’s all helpful.’

  Behind her, Maslowski clears his throat and sniffs. Nina wants this conversation to come to an end. She feels wrong-footed by Franzen, and she can’t quite figure out why.

  ‘There isn’t much more to say,’ she adds.

  ‘Well then,’ Franzen says and looks down at the file. ‘Yes, that’s pretty much in line with our assumptions.’

  ‘Assumptions?’

  ‘That Marie knew her attacker. As far as we can tell, nothing of value was taken from her flat – there was some cash on the kitchen counter and a laptop and a stereo in the living room. The only thing missing, really, was the TV.’

  ‘Marie didn’t own a TV,’ Nina tells him. ‘She said it took up too much valuable time.’

  What she doesn’t tell him is that Marie was terrified of the ordinary, the mundane, of being sucked into mediocrity and disappearing without a trace. She didn’t watch TV, she didn’t do small talk, she dropped in for dinner, uninvited. She completed a couple of semesters of a Cultural Sciences degree, but left without any qualifications. Her parents were horrified when they realised she’d quit university, and spelled out to her in a long, bitter, emotionally laden letter that if she chose to throw away such opportunities, they had no choice but to cut her off financially. Nina happily stepped in, tore up the letter and encouraged her sister to focus on something she felt a vocation for, something artistic, something creative. And leave her parents to stew in their disapproval.

  It shames her now to realise that perhaps she was perpetuating the drama by rescuing her sister again and again. That she could only stand up to her parents in an act of rebellion by proxy. But what was she to do? It was the only kind of rebellion open to her; it was never quite articulated, but the threat was always there, that if she went against her parents on anything, however trivial, she’d cause unimaginable harm to everyone.

  Marie, by contrast, took their parents’ disapproval in her stride. She thrived on acts of defiance, on challenge, hurtling headlong towards god-knows-what as long as she could feel herself moving, anything not to stop and stagnate. This is why she loved Berlin, a city that changes itself constantly, at vertiginous, anarchic speed; a place that’s always becoming, and never being. Maybe, Nina thinks now, maybe this city had been toxic for Marie. That what she needed was security, stability and a rootedness. Perhaps she needed to settle and to be.

  But this is impossible to explain to Franzen. ‘Marie didn’t watch much television,’ she says vaguely. ‘She always said she could spend her time doing other things. Such as writing. She liked to write, you know.’

  Franzen put up his hands in agreement. ‘You don’t need to explain that to me, Dr Bergmann. I don’t have a TV at home, either.’

  He smiles. Maslowski sniffs again and mumbles something Nina can’t quite make out.

  ‘My colleague here on the other hand,’ Franzen waves his hand in Maslowski’s direction, ‘would be stuck without his daily fix. Am I right, Mika?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Maslowski grumbles into his paperwork.

  Nina’s dizziness
increases, intensifying the stupor she’s feeling, and adding to the surreal quality this conversation has taken on. Her vision is accosted by numerous small black dots and she has to concentrate hard to follow what Franzen is saying. She will have to join Sebastian and the kids for supper tonight; yesterday, she claimed she wasn’t feeling well. Maybe she should make ratatouille, then it won’t be so obvious that she’s just eating vegetables.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she hears Franzen ask.

  ‘What? Yes, I’m fine.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘It’s just – I’m still feeling a little shaken.’

  ‘That’s completely understandable,’ he says softly. ‘Would you like to come back another time?’

  Nina shakes her head.

  ‘Perhaps you already know this,’ he says, ‘but the initial stages of an enquiry are crucial. Anything we miss out on now, well, there’s always the chance that it’ll get lost altogether. So, if you’re up to it, I’d be very grateful for anything you could tell me about your sister.’ He pauses, as though to check she’s okay to continue answering his questions, then asks: ‘Did Marie have any friends?’

  She tells him what she knows, the names of a few friends Marie knew from university.

  Franzen is scribbling away furiously. When Nina pauses, he looks up. ‘Good, go on, anyone else?’

  She opens her mouth and closes it again. Behind her, Maslowski slams a file drawer shut. She jumps. She’s finding it impossible to concentrate. Finally, she says, ‘She was part of a writing circle with five or six other writers. They met up regularly.’

  ‘Would you happen to have their names?’

  ‘No, sorry. Marie was . . . guarded about her writing. It was very personal for her, so she didn’t talk about it much. I just know that she and these other writers met up. But they had a name for the group. Wortspiel.’

  ‘Wortspiel,’ he repeats. ‘Wordplay.’ He writes it down.

  ‘Not very original, for a group of writers,’ Nina says. ‘Marie hates it. I mean, hated it.’ Her hands are trembling in her lap. She interlocks her fingers and squeezes them tight. She will never get used to referring to her sister in the past tense.

  Franzen puts down his pen. ‘We found several writing journals in your sister’s flat. Did she ever show them to you, Dr Bergmann?’

  ‘No. I mean, I’ve read some her stories, but –’

  ‘No matter. I read the journals. It appears she liked to familiarise herself with the topics she was writing about. Her research was really quite in-depth.’

  ‘Yes, that sounds right.’

  ‘There were a few stories, and copious notes, about political extremists. The far left as well as the far right.’ He pauses, then adds in a pensive tone: ‘She was a talented writer.’

  Nina almost thanks him, but stops herself in time.

  ‘Well, you’ve been very helpful, Dr Bergmann. I guess that’s all from me right now. Unless you have any questions you’d like to ask us?’

  ‘Did she fight back?’ Her voice is hardly more than a whisper.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Marie. Did she – her attacker . . .’

  ‘Oh. I see. Yes. There was most definitely a struggle.’ He clears his throat. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure how much detail I should go into. We’ve no DNA evidence. Apart from the baby.’

  The baby. The thought of the baby – the sudden image of a perfect shell-like curl of a foetus – shocks Nina so much she forgets how to breathe for a moment.

  ‘Dr Bergmann,’ Franzen says, concerned. ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’

  She shakes her head, although her mouth is dry and sticky. She gets to her feet slowly. Then another question occurs to her. ‘Have you spoken to Robert Kran yet?’

  ‘I’m driving to Leipzig tomorrow,’ Franzen says. ‘Our initial focus is on people who knew Marie. And –’ he gets to his feet, ‘we will be speaking with your husband, as well.’

  Nina stands up straight, the black dots fizzing and then settling behind her eyes. ‘My husband was with a client on the morning Marie was attacked,’ she says calmly, her cheeks burning. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult to confirm that. He’s a lawyer.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dr Bergmann,’ says Franzen. ‘We will. As you said, it won’t be difficult to confirm.’

  Her stomach growls audibly as she opens the door to leave.

  ‘You obviously didn’t get around to having lunch, either.’ He smiles.

  Nina swallows and bites her lip.

  ‘There’s a Bratwurst stand on the corner,’ he says. ‘They’ve got by far the best Currywurst in town. Home-made tomato sauce. Secret recipe, I’m told.’ He smiles. ‘You should try it.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ she says.

  Stepping outside into the grey Berlin air, she turns and looks up at the imposing police building, tips her head back at the fourth floor and tries to locate Franzen’s office. The building, with its grand sandstone columns and barred windows, seems to tilt towards her and for a split second, she has the terrifying sensation it might fall and crush her. She steps backwards, into the path of a man shoving a Currywurst into his mouth, and she apologises hastily, nearly heaving at the smell of the spicy ketchupy sauce.

  7

  It’s ten o’clock. They ate at seven thirty, and Nina was able to take a brisk walk around the neighbourhood after the meal, with the excuse that they were out of milk for tomorrow’s breakfast. The children are upstairs – Kai asleep, Rebekka pretending to be, no doubt, while listening to music under the covers – and Nina and Sebastian are sitting on the sofa, watching the evening news.

  The living room is dark, apart from the blue light from the set that never quite seems to penetrate the corners of the room. The contrast between the flickering light of the TV and the room’s darkness always makes her eyes hurt after a while. This constitutes one of those never-resolved minor conflicts in their marriage – whether or not to watch TV in the dark. Sebastian likes the dark, for the ‘feel’; Nina is often left with a headache. This evening, he got there first while she was putting Kai to bed. To switch the light back on now would be an act of unspoken confrontation, however mild.

  Beside her, Sebastian yawns.

  ‘I went to see Kommissar Franzen today,’ she says. ‘He thinks that Marie is likely to have known her attacker.’

  Sebastian doesn’t take his eyes of the TV. ‘Any leads? Do they know who the father is yet?’

  ‘No,’ she replies. ‘But he’s driving down to Leipzig tomorrow to speak to Robert.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And he also mentioned that he wants to speak with you.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he says flatly. ‘There’s been a bit of a mix-up. That client I saw the day Marie was attacked, Grünblatt? He got his dates wrong.’ He shifts position on the couch. ‘I have to take the idiot out to lunch, sort it out. Anyway, Franzen had a chat with my secretary, and then left a message asking me to call the police station “at my convenience”. Not exactly discreet.’

  ‘What’s there to be discreet about?’ Nina hears herself demanding. ‘There’s nothing shameful about what happened to Marie. There’s nothing shameful about being the victim of violent crime.’

  ‘Don’t put words in my mouth, Nina. I just don’t feel comfortable with my family’s business laid out for all to see, that’s all.’

  ‘I see.’

  He turns to face her. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘All of a sudden, it’s your family. As if you were best friends with Marie when she . . .’

  Then, unexpectedly, Sebastian reaches across and pulls her towards him.

  ‘Oh, baby,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened.’ He strokes her cheek. ‘It’s going to take a while for us to get through this. We just need to take care of each other in the meantime, right?’

  She nods. Her throat is tight. She gets up and goes to the kitchen for a glass of water. When she comes back, Sebastian is refocused on the TV: a documentary on the
days leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of many such programmes dominating the media in anticipation of November’s thirtieth anniversary celebrations.

  She sits down and watches without taking anything in. The images are so engrained in every Berliner’s mind – the masses gathering on Alexanderplatz; hundreds of revellers standing on the Wall, shouting and singing; a huge slab of concrete toppling over to the cheers of onlookers – as to hardly feel meaningful anymore.

  Like most Berliners, Nina was asleep in bed when the Wall fell, and missed history happening on her doorstep. She was twelve at the time; old enough to remember the almost provincial cosiness of life in West Berlin – a small, vulnerable half-city living under the threat of Soviet attack, protected by its overbearing Western bodyguards – but young enough to navigate the upheaval of the Wende and move forward freely, unencumbered by the past. Perhaps this is the problem, she thinks for the second time today, perhaps the city is always changing too fast, adding layer upon layer, not one washed clean before another is placed on top, leaving the lower layers to rot and ferment, unmarked by memory.

  Sebastian changes the channel and she blinks. A quiz show flashes up on the screen, the contestant a young blonde woman perched uncomfortably on a stool.

  ‘I saw a patient this morning,’ Nina finds herself saying. ‘Young. Attractive, a bit shy. She had bite marks on her vulva.’ She glances over at Sebastian to gauge his reaction. ‘Some twisted fuck had bitten her.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he says, finally shifting his gaze from the TV.

  ‘She said she’d cut herself shaving. I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘What can you do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, aware that her voice has taken on a confrontational tone. ‘Call the police? Insist she press charges? Not just sit there and let her walk out, probably to go home and have him abuse her further?’

  She breathes in and out deeply to stop herself from crying.

  ‘You can’t make her get help,’ he says. ‘If she says she cut herself, then you have to take her word for it.’