The Lie (14 page)

Michael's parents lived in Munich, though they originally came from Cologne. Paul, Michael's brother, had gone to Bavaria ten years ago because of his work and their parents had joined him there. Paul was married to Sophie and they had one son, Ralph, who was now eighteen. Susanne would have nothing to do with them. There might be a telephone call, but the answerphone was always switched on to take incoming calls.

The last time Nadia had seen Michael's family had been shortly after their wedding. They hadn't invited their families to the marriage ceremony, but to please Michael they'd organized a celebration some time later, putting their relatives up in a hotel because at the time they didn't have a house with guest rooms. It had been an unmitigated disaster. Ralph had done nothing but get up to mischief and his grandmother had taken his side all the time. After that, Nadia had decided to keep the family ties as loose as possible and they didn't exchange visits. Michael had come to share her view that too much family was not good for their own peace and quiet.

“Does he never go to see his parents?” Susanne asked incredulously.

“Rarely,” said Nadia and went on to several other points. The sailing holiday that had been mentioned had been quite nice. Contrary to Susanne's assumption, Nadia didn't have a yacht of her own. Kemmerling, whom Michael had spoken of, had let them borrow his. Nothing special had happened: a lot of water, a lot of boredom, but on the whole it had been relaxing.

The ring with the striking blue stone had been a present from Michael for their fifth wedding anniversary. She must never take it off; it sealed, so to speak, the renewal of their marriage vows. From that Susanne deduced that the big crisis in Nadia's marriage must have been two years ago. Nadia didn't say much about it and what she did sounded bitter.

“When I first met him all he had in the world was three pairs of socks and a grotty room he shared with a physics student. He was supporting himself with part-time jobs and would probably have taken several more years just to get his first degree. Now he has two doctorates and you've seen his lifestyle. It doesn't make it easy to take it when he suddenly starts thinking he might have missed out on something.”

Nadia stared fixedly at the path through the trees in front of them, but after a few seconds her expression relaxed and she recounted a few more anecdotes which Michael was in the habit of recalling with a “Do you remember?” Apart from that there didn't seem to be a great deal of conversation
chez
Trenkler. They only rarely talked about Michael's research and almost never about Nadia's job, since, being one of the old-fashioned kind, he didn't like her going out to work at all.

Although Susanne would not have anything to do with her professional activities, Nadia explained that fortunately, after Michael's infidelity, her
despair and a certain amount of excessive drinking, she'd come across an old acquaintance who had set up as a financial consultant. Insurance, financing construction projects, short-term loans for small businesses, that kind of thing. A little investment advice too. At the moment he couldn't afford to take anyone on full-time, so Nadia helped him out, as a favour, but also to take her mind off her domestic problems. Since then she'd been able to delude herself two or three times a week into thinking she was an independent woman. Given Michael's income, she wasn't financially dependent on what she earned.

These details built up into a consistent overall picture and provided a satisfactory answer to Susanne's questions. When they got back to the car, Nadia picked up a bundle of papers off the rear seat. She had made a list of her own. Every security lever, every movement sensor, every heat sensor, every monitor, every locking device, every “if-then” was on it. “Do you think you can manage all that?”

“I think so,” she said, then told Nadia that she went to see her mother every two weeks and that she'd like Nadia to arrange her weekends away accordingly.

“No problem,” said Nadia.

Shortly after nine they were back in the city. Nadia stopped two streets away from Susanne's flat and gave her a new mobile phone with a battery charger so that she could contact her by phone if necessary. “If everything goes as we arranged, we'll meet in the multi-storey on Friday week at four. I'll let you know if there's any change, so you won't be hanging around waiting to see if I'm going to come.”

Hardly had she closed the door of her flat behind her than the mobile rang. Nadia had forgotten to give her the PIN she needed to enter after it had been switched off. She gave her the four digits and wished her a good night's sleep. It was a good night's sleep. With Nadia's explanations going round in her head, she dreamed her way through several episodes in her life.

On Friday she had another session on the sunbed. On Saturday it rained. She didn't buy a newspaper. Instead of the vacancies pages, she studied Nadia's notes and learned everything off by heart. With two thousand euros a month coming in, looking for work wasn't that urgent. But she didn't intend to give it up entirely. As soon as her weekends as Nadia's stand-in had become a matter of routine, she would put some
intensive effort into finding work. She abandoned the idea of asking Nadia to help her. If Nadia was only working for an acquaintance as a favour, she was hardly in a position to use her influence to get someone else a job.

She spent the Sunday afternoon with her mother. She asked about her old school books. What she was really interested in, she said, were her music books. However, contrary to what she had expected, Agnes Runge had not kept them. “There's not much room here, I had to throw a lot of things away. Why do you need your music, Susanne?”

“Herr Heller's selling his piano,” she said, “and I thought… But it's not important. It would be too cramped in my flat anyway if I had a piano as well.”

“Do you think you'll soon be able to afford a bigger one?” her mother asked. “And what's all this about you doing courier trips?” Johannes Herzog had told his grandmother about it and obviously expressed some doubt about this source of extra income, which Frau Herzog had promptly passed on to Agnes Runge. Her mother was slightly concerned, but easily reassured.

Late on Monday afternoon Nadia rang on the mobile again. She told her to come and meet her two streets away, where she handed over two bags with new clothes for cooler days and a handbag - the twin of hers and with identical contents. She didn't have time for a walk, just enough to bring Susanne up to date on what had happened since they last met.

Naturally Jo had repaired the garage door mechanism. It hadn't been easy to convince him that the alarm system had gone haywire and the lock had only opened with the key once all the wires in the box had been disconnected. Poor old Jo had checked the whole installation over twice and was starting to doubt his own ability. Ilona was still in a huff; only the previous day she'd absolutely refused to say whether they still needed the switch or not, adding, tartly, that Wolfgang now spent the evenings in romantic candlelight, doing his bit for the environment. Nadia was much amused by this and said it solved any problems Wolfgang might cause. If Susanne annoyed his wife, he wouldn't be allowed to talk to her. As an enforcer of the law he might be hard as nails, but at home it was his wife who wore the trousers.

Susanne wasn't worried about Wolfgang Blasting. It was Michael she felt she really needed to know more about, but Nadia finished her report
by simply telling her there'd been no problems with Michael. With that she was gone. It was only then that Susanne remembered she'd forgotten to tell her what Heller had said. But it was hardly likely that Heller might meet Michael Trenkler and tell him his wife existed in duplicate. And what other use could an alcoholic with a criminal record make of his knowledge?

 

On Wednesday her mobile rang for the third time. Nadia sounded slightly agitated. Something had cropped up. Her lover wasn't free that weekend, his mother-in-law had decided to come. “However, he's going away on business beforehand,” Nadia said. “I could go with him if you could manage it.”

Of course Susanne could manage it. Nadia was delighted. “Fantastic. We're going tomorrow and coming back on Friday. You can go home on Friday morning, if you prefer. I'll ring you there and you can come and pick me up. I'll make sure you have two quiet days.”

“You don't need to pick a quarrel,” said Susanne. “I'll take the tampons out of the cupboard. It's only for the one night.”

“As you wish,” said Nadia. “If he says or does anything you can't cope with, just give him the cold-shoulder treatment or remind him who financed his studies. That'll soon shut him up.”

Susanne thought that was mean but naturally didn't say so. Nadia went on, without even pausing for breath, saying they were to meet in the large car park at the airport then adding, “You'll need to pluck your eyebrows again. The rest as well. I'm relying on you. Wear the grey suit and be there on time.”

All she said was, “Yes.” She spent the next hour with the instruments of torture. She pulled and plucked, shaved, clipped, cropped and creamed until there was nothing growing that wouldn't stand up to close inspection. Her stomach was tensed and she didn't bother with dinner. She didn't sleep well, either. Her mind was already on the next night and she knew that, stretched out beside Michael Trenkler, she wouldn't sleep a wink for fear of giving herself away with a false movement, breath or something.

Some years previously Dieter had said that she talked in her sleep. Quite clearly too, apparently. At breakfast he'd repeated her negotiations with an insurance agent. According to him she'd asked about life
insurance for a journalist working in international trouble spots. She'd no idea whether it was true or not, but it seemed reasonable to suppose she'd thought Dieter could easily drive over a mine in his jeep, or be caught up in an ambush. She found it disturbing to think that in the night that was to come she might talk quite distinctly about things she had on her mind:

“Tell me all about your life, Nadia. And when I know all about it, when I can act like you in my sleep, you can swan off and make your lover happy for the rest of his life. We can swap. As Susanne Lasko you don't have to justify yourself or be faithful to anyone. And I'm looking for a permanent position anyway.”

On the morning of 12 September she awoke even before the early train from a nightmare in which Heller had played a leading role. She came back from standing in for Nadia to find her lying on the bed in her flat, covered in blood with her fingers cut and her head smashed in. Heller was in the kitchen, washing his hands and the knife. He grinned and said, “Get out! It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. No one'll think it's not you lying on your mattress.”

His voice was still going round in her head as she took a shower and it made the coffee leave a bitter taste in her mouth. She did without her usual slice of toast, dressed carefully according to Nadia's instructions, took great pains over her make-up and hair. She left shortly after seven and set off briskly in the direction of the station.

She took the bus to the airport. She was much too early and had plenty of time to find the large car park. Nadia wasn't there. After she'd waited for a quarter of an hour at the entrance, the coffee and her nervousness began to press on her bladder. There was nothing for it but to go to the terminal. To her surprise, the red Alfa was in the short-stay car park. Nadia was nowhere to be seen.

She hurried to find the toilets. When she went back out, she used a different exit. There she noticed a large, black limousine with tinted windows beside which a stocky man was standing, keeping a sharp eye on the surroundings. As she approached the car, the man opened one of the rear doors. Quickly she took cover. Nadia got out of the limousine, a black briefcase in one hand. On the other side of the car a tall, slim, fortyish man with dark hair appeared and spoke briefly to Nadia.

All the unease Susanne had felt because of the life-insurance policy immediately vanished into thin air. The lover, with chauffeur or bodyguard. The sort of man to whom a thousand euros for a night of love was nothing. It probably wasn't Nadia who was forking out, but the dark-haired man. He got back into the rear seat and the stocky man settled behind the wheel while Nadia went to the nearest entrance and vanished inside the terminal. The black limousine set off, coming towards her. She ducked down lower behind a car and waited until the limousine had gone before dashing back to the car park.

By this time Nadia was already waiting by the entrance and a few minutes later Susanne was on her way back to the terminal with the task of renting a car, with her first wages and a credit card made out in her name in her handbag. The clerk glanced at her driving licence, accepted the piece of plastic as security and offered her the choice of a range of luxury cars.

She chose a silver Mercedes, and it was only as she was driving back to the car park that she began to wonder why Nadia needed a hired car. As she got out and handed Nadia the key and the registration document, she asked, “Why don't you go in your friend's car?”

Nadia gave her a forbearing look. “And what do I do if his meeting goes on for a long time tomorrow? Ring up when you're in bed? Michael certainly wouldn't be happy if you said you had to go into the office at three in the morning.” It seemed to make sense.

Nadia took the credit card back, promised to call as soon as she'd arrived and gave her a note of her mobile number, just in case. If Michael should be around, she was to tell him she had to make a quick call to the office. On the phone she was to say, “It's me, Helga. Can you check what time my appointment with Herr Müller is tomorrow please? But do it quickly, I'm just…” And so on. That would allow her to explain the situation to Nadia who could then steer her through the problem.