The Lie (11 page)

The kitchen cupboards were meticulously neat and tidy. She couldn't find a remote control of the TV above the fridge but she didn't waste time looking for it. In the drawing room with the open fire she found more framed works of art and a second television. It was fitted into the natural stone wall above the mantelpiece and was hardly bigger than the
palm of her hand. The miniature format made her realize it must be part of the alarm system. Nadia had told her so much about sensors that registered movement or heat and surveillance units that she'd imagined something futuristic.

She went back into the living room and discovered a similar mini-screen there, which she'd missed on her first inspection. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she found the surveillance unit in the dining room straight away. Somehow it seemed ridiculous, grossly excessive. At the same time there was something unpleasant about it, she felt she was being observed wherever she went, even though all the monitor screens were dark. It was only the lavatory and the hall that seemed to lack the spying eyes.

She had another look at the box hidden behind the leather jacket in the hall closet. Nadia's handbag was still on the chest. The ring with the marked keys was beside it; she assumed the car key was still in the bag.

Then she turned her attention to the curved staircase, first of all going down to examine the basement area. There was a utility room and a larder with crates of drinks and shelves, which were mostly empty, just a few tins of chicken soup and ravioli on them. She'd expected more. But the two freezers were well filled, mainly with ready meals.

Then she suddenly found herself immersed in lime-green reflections. The swimming pool! It was roughly as big as the living room and presumably deep enough for a non-swimmer to drown in. Half of the outside wall consisted of sliding glass doors. Beyond them a lawn sloped up to the garden. A door in one wall led to a tiny chamber full of machinery, presumably belonging to the pool. She didn't examine it too closely, the place was too cramped and too dark. And Nadia wasn't paying her to find out about circulating pumps, water filters and the like. In an adjoining room she found fitness equipment, a sunbed and the sauna.

This was the life! It was an alien world, but familiar from her dreams. She'd read about it a thousand times, suffering with the maids or the daughters of destitute counts, hoping they'd be rescued from their poverty, yet not believing such things actually existed - at least not for an ordinary bank clerk.

After a few minutes she went back up the stairs and on to the first floor. Six closed doors gave the impression of forbidden entry. But behind the
very first she opened was a room where she immediately felt at home. It had everything she'd looked for and not found in the living room. There was an archetypal comfortable couch with three dozen cushions scattered about. It looked infinitely more used and nothing like as sterile as the suite downstairs. Beside the couch was a cupboard with two drawers and two doors which concealed a stack of towels and two bottles. “Massage oil”, she read. What that brought to mind was the tensed-up neck muscles, she'd been living alone too long for any other thoughts. On the wall opposite the couch was a proper television, a video recorder, a satellite box and a stereo system.

Behind the second door was a bathroom. On the edge of the bath was a jar full of pink balls. For a second she thought they were sweets - but only for a second. One sniff told her they must be bath salts. She used the lavatory and for a while couldn't see the how to flush it until she found the plate in the wall behind the loo, which looked almost the same as the tiles around it. She couldn't suppress a brief grin.

Behind the third door was the bedroom. At least she assumed it was the bedroom. She only realized it must be a guest room when she saw exactly the same furnishings behind the next door. Their bedroom was behind the fifth door. Top quality, expensive, tasteful, pure white relieved by glass here and there and a touch of brass. The royal suite, there was no other name for it. There was no wardrobe but a dressing room with large mirrors, drawers and rails full of clothes. And not only city clothes, there were several evening dresses on the hangers.

A further door led from the bedroom to a huge bathroom. In fact a double bathroom. The shower cubicle was a separate room and considerably bigger than the recess which figured in her lease as a bathroom-cum-shower. A few steps led up to the circular bathtub. There was a smell of Nadia's perfume and fragrant bath oil. Open-mouthed, she admired the two washstands with bathroom cabinets either side and a white set of basketwork shelves with a collection of men's toiletries. The inescapable surveillance monitor was beside the door and clearly visible from the bath. Having discovered the tiny screen, she decided she had sufficiently familiarized herself with everything. She would just have a quick look in the sixth room and then leave. But things turned out differently.

Behind the sixth door was Michael Trenkler's study. At least that was what she assumed. There was no security screen there. A monitor, keyboard, mouse, telephone, answerphone, a small photocopier and a flatbed scanner all fought for space on the desk. There were no papers lying around, but then there wasn't room for any. Beside the desk was a metal cabinet with an ultramodern laser printer on it. The computer was underneath the table. A green light glowed. Michael must have been working at it and forgotten to switch off.

All round the walls were shelves overflowing with books. It was mainly specialist literature: biology, chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacy, medicine; some in German, most in English. Among them she discovered handbooks for a variety of computer programs. One of them was about the word-processing package that had sealed her fate when she'd worked for the insurance company. She leafed through it until there was a clattering sound from somewhere.

She quickly replaced the book and listened intently. It had been a quiet, metallic noise followed by an equally quiet but perfectly comprehensible swear word. A man's voice. Michael must have come back, perhaps he'd remembered his computer was still on. She tiptoed to the door and listened for noises in the hall. Only when she heard a woman's voice behind her calling for Terry and a kind of whining did she turn round and see the change on the computer monitor.

There was a small image in the top right-hand corner. She recognized the front garden and a section of the road, even part of the properties on the other side. The garden on the right, as she was looking at it, had a high wall separating it from the road. A wrought-iron gate was open. On the ground at the edge of the road was a man's bicycle, one of those racing bikes on which young people terrorized the pedestrian precinct in the city centre. Next to the bike was a very large shaggy dog that was sniffing at a man in lurid shorts lying on the ground, only his back visible. A flustered-looking woman, who looked vaguely familiar though she couldn't quite identify her, came hurrying out to the road, shouted “Terry!” again and went over to the man on the ground. “Have you hurt yourself?”

She watched, fascinated, as the man stood up, felt his left knee, bent down to pick up his bike and started to swear again. “Dammit, Eleanor, can't you tie the bloody beast up?”

It was all spoken quietly, but perfectly comprehensible. She'd discovered the surveillance unit in the study; strangely enough, she didn't find it disturbing there. She picked up the handbook again and calmly turned a few more pages.

Next she turned to the metal cabinet. It contained several thin files and three fat ones. One had “House” written on it, another “Insurance policies”.

The third, which only had an M on the cover to indicate what it contained, was the one that aroused her curiosity the most. The latest item to have been filed was a contract between Michael Trenkler and a pharmaceuticals company. The annual salary was astronomical and dissuaded her from examining the other documents. The only other detail she noticed was Michael's age. He was thirty-five. She would have made him younger.

In the file marked “House” the purchase of everything from the house to the last movement sensor could be followed. Everything was in Nadia's name and it didn't look as if there were any unpaid bills or a mortgage to pay off. In “Insurances” were documents recording everything an insurance agent could desire, among other things a life-insurance policy for Nadia.

And although she had only worked in insurance for three months, she saw at a glance that it was a term insurance, not one that built up capital. Only payable on death. With Nadia dead Michael Trenkler would be richer by a million euros!

Susanne Lasko read the sum in words and in figures. In both cases the effect was equally disturbing. The policy had been taken out seven years ago and revised after the changeover to euros. Perhaps Nadia had just wanted to provide security for her husband, since during the first years of their marriage he'd had no income of his own.

By that time it was past seven and she felt she'd sufficiently familiarized herself with everything. She went down to the kitchen and drank a mouthful of mineral water to wash out her mouth, which had gone dry at the sight of the figures. Then she closed the French windows, went out of the house, locking the front door behind her - the blue key was the one that fitted - and walked round to the drive. She looked around, to make sure the shaggy dog wasn't still there, and felt in the handbag for the car key, but before she could establish that it wasn't there, she saw that the drive outside the garage was empty.

Beside the low fence in the neighbouring garden the man who'd fallen off his bicycle earlier was vigorously polishing up his machine with a soft cloth. Wolfgang Blasting, the policeman with too much time to devote to his neighbours. He stood up and asked, “Doc off milking his mice again, then?” There was something common about his broad grin. It reminded her of Heller and didn't seem to fit in with this neighbourhood. Nor did his next question. “Did he bring that switch for me?”

She just shrugged her shoulders.

“He said he would,” said Wolfgang Blasting. “Go and have a look.” It sounded like an order and made her furious - with him and with Nadia, who would have had no problem looking for a switch and wouldn't have been desperately wondering how to get away. On the other hand, Blasting's request made it easy for her to go back into the house without arousing suspicion.

She closed the front door and leaned back against it for a moment, as Michael Trenkler had done. That explained why he'd asked her why she hadn't put the car away. She'd parked the Alfa right in front of the double garage and blocked the way out. And since he urgently needed to go to the lab, he'd taken Nadia's car - without bothering to ask.

At that point she remembered the alarm, went to the coat rack, pushed the leather jacket to one side and keyed in the code. A metallic click went round the whole house. She registered it but assumed it represented no danger as nothing else happened.

Quickly she went over to the door from the hall into the garage. It was locked. The black key opened it. At once several neon tubes flared up, bathing the large space in harsh light. She saw a cream Jaguar - unlocked, as she found when she tried the door. The key was in the ignition, the remote control for the garage door was on the passenger seat.

She was sure Nadia wouldn't mind if she came back in this car. She dumped the handbag on the seat, picked up the remote control and pointed it at the closed door, which didn't seem to have anything so ordinary as a handle or a latch. At least she couldn't see anything like that, only the inconspicuous black box on the wall and the cable running to a motor on the top edge of the door.

She quickly keyed in the combination but, although she was sure she'd followed Nadia's instructions exactly, the double door didn't move an inch. For some reason, which presumably only Joachim Kogler would understand, the technology refused to function. That seemed to explain why Michael Trenkler had still been there. He'd obviously been waiting for Nadia to return because he couldn't get his car out. So there was no question of asking the genius who'd invented it to help. That would have been the first thing Michael would have thought of. Perhaps that was why Joachim and Lilo Kogler had been watching her so intently - to see whether it worked from outside, or to explain to her if it didn't.

There was only one solution. A taxi. There was enough money in Nadia's purse. She went up to the study and looked for the telephone book, but couldn't find it, so she lifted the receiver to ring directory enquiries. But there was no sound from the receiver. Again and again she jiggled the rest, but with no result.

Panic set in and for a few seconds she was back in the disused factory. But this situation was nothing like as desperate. She was neither seriously injured nor disoriented. In the drive next door was a policeman waiting for a switch. Even if she hadn't particularly liked Wolfgang Blasting, with his vulgar grin and his ordering her about, there could hardly be a better person to guarantee her safety. Suddenly the risk of being recognized as a fraud if she spoke to him seemed so small as to be virtually non-existent.
And she had a ready-made excuse to use his telephone. “I can't find the switch anywhere, so I'll have to phone Michael. Unfortunately there's something wrong with our phone, could I use yours?”

What if he accompanied her to the telephone? As she went to the door, she couldn't think of a lie to get Wolfgang Blasting to leave her by herself for a moment. But that was not something that occupied her for long.

The front door wouldn't open.

The second panic attack was considerably more severe than the first. She was absolutely sure she hadn't locked the door when she'd escaped back into the house, so it never occurred to her to try the key. She ran back into the living room, pulling this way and that at the French windows. No joy. The glass doors by the swimming pool wouldn't open either, nor any of the windows.