The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (18 page)

“Oma?
Ich meine
… Granny?”

“Yes, dear?” Oma Warner was enthusiastically scrubbing out the oven but she stood up when I came into the kitchen.

“Can I telephone?”

“Well, your mother’s going to call you this evening, Pia. Can’t it wait?”

“Mmm.” I looked at Oma Warner, then away at the cluttered countertop. “I wanted to telephone …” I thought about it. “A friend.” I hoped she would assume it was a female friend. But Oma Warner was not that slow.

“Your boyfriend, eh?” Before I could say anything, she was shaking her head. “I’m sorry, dear. It’s much too expensive.” She gave me a conciliatory smile. “You’ll have to write back to him. That’s what your Grandpa Warner and I always did, you know.”

“Um.” I shrugged. Nowadays, of course, I might have e-mailed him. But in 1999 the technology in Oma Warner’s house did not even extend to a dishwasher. A public call box was no good either: a single international call would have taken more than the entire contents of my purse. That left only one option.

S
tefan?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s me, Pia.”

“Pia? Are you back?”

“No, I’m calling from my
Oma’s
house.”

“In
England
?”

“Yes …” I paused. “She doesn’t know. I can’t stay on the phone for very long in case she comes back.”

Stefan whistled. “What’s she going to—”

“Never mind that,” I snapped back in an urgent whisper; even though I had seen Oma Warner depart with my own eyes, I still felt as though I had to keep my voice down. “I got your letter. What’s been going on? What’s this stuff about Herr Düster?”

“Oh, that was
crazy
. There’ve been rumors going around about Herr Düster for ages, ever since he got picked up in that police car. It seems like someone has been stirring them up again—”

Frau Kessel
, I thought sourly.

“—and, anyway, a whole group of people went to his house and were shouting at him to come out and explain himself.”

“Did you see it?”

“
Nee
. Boris was there, though.”

“Boris thinks Herr Düster did it too?”

“No, Boris just thought it was cool to be there, and see what they did.” That made sense; terrorizing an old man who was outnumbered ten to one sounded just Boris’s style.

“Did he come out? Herr Düster, I mean.”

“No. I mean, would you? But he was definitely in there, Boris said; they saw him looking out the window.”

“Who was there?”

“Well, apart from Boris … Jörg Koch was there, and he said Herr Linden, you know, Katharina’s father, he was there as well. But I don’t know who else. He said Herr Linden was knocking on the door and shouting at Herr Düster to come out. Herr Linden said if he had nothing to do with it, he had nothing to be afraid of.” Stefan paused, thinking. “Then I think the police came.”

“Who called them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Herr Düster did. But he still didn’t come out, even when they arrived. It was Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf, and the other one, the younger one.”

“What did they do?” I had visions of Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf laying into Boris with a club, and Herr Linden shouting about his daughter, and trying to beat down the door …

“Just talked to them.”

“What did they say?” I couldn’t make this out at all.

“I don’t really know … Boris heard it, but he was mostly just annoyed that they didn’t make Herr Düster come out or anything.” That I could imagine; Boris would have loved the ensuing row. “I think they said it wasn’t him.” Stefan paused. “Then Jörg Koch shouted why did they arrest him before, if it wasn’t him?”

“And?”

“Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf said they didn’t arrest him, but it was confidential, you know, they can’t say anything.”

“They
did
arrest him, though, didn’t they?” I said. “Frau Koch
saw
it.”

“Yeah, I know it doesn’t make sense,” agreed Stefan. “I’m just telling you what Boris said. Anyway, then Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf said they had to go home and stop bothering Herr Düster because he was ill. He said they should leave it to the police.”

“Did they just go?” I asked. It was hard to imagine the bereaved father and the local bullyboys departing like lambs when they had heard about Herr Düster’s supposed ill health.

“Well, Boris said they gave Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf a hard time back, told him what could he expect if the police didn’t catch the person who was taking all these kids, and a load of stuff like that. But you know Boris.”

“Doch,”
I agreed. I thought for a moment. “Has anything else happened?”

“What, you mean, has anyone else disappeared? No. I wish Thilo Koch would, but no such luck.”

We both laughed. “They haven’t found Marion Voss?”

“No.”

“Have you seen Herr Schiller?” I asked, hoping a little jealously that he would say no.

“Yeah, I saw him a couple of days ago. He told me this really cool story about some treasure. He said when the town got attacked the nuns hid all the treasure, and so far nobody’s found it. It could still be somewhere in the town, millions of marks’ worth of it—well, thousands, anyway. Herr Schiller says—”

“Stefan, I have to go.” I dared not stay any longer on the phone; every minute racked up a further enormity on Oma Warner’s telephone bill, and a greater risk of discovery. “Can you call me if anything else happens?”

“I’ll try,” said Stefan, and I had to be content with that.

T
he summer vacation, seemingly interminable, finally came to an end. My much-loathed cousins Chloe and Charles came to Oma Warner’s house for the afternoon, ostensibly to bid me a fond farewell, though there was no affection wasted between us. Oma Warner sent us into the garden to play so that she could drink tea with Aunt Liz. As usual, we went down to the bottom of the garden to climb up the railings and watch the trains speeding by on their way to London.

There was just enough room on the one stretch of railings not obscured by bushes for us all to squeeze in if we squashed up together. Charles and Chloe, first to climb up, did not want to squash together with me. I tried to climb up anyway, just to annoy them; there was a short struggle and Chloe fell off, with an affected shriek.

“You did that on purpose,” said Charles, and gave me an almighty shove with his meaty hand, intending to push me into the dust, quantities of which his sister was now brushing off her pink sweater with disgust. I hung on for grim death, and then I kicked him in the shins.

“Fuck, fuck,” he squealed, then he flung himself upon me and began prizing my fingers off the railings.

I tried to kick him again, missed, let go of the railings, and slid
down to the ground. Undeterred, I gave him some of his own medicine.
“Fuck away!”
I hissed, taking a swipe at him with my open hand.

“Fuck
away?”
Charles laughed contemptuously. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She means fuck off,” supplied Chloe. They looked at each other and laughed theatrically.

“Can’t she speak English?”

“No, she can’t.”

“Ner-errr …” They both flopped up and down in displays of simulated imbecility. “Fuck away!”

“No, you fuck away!”

“Scheissköpfe,”
I told them; having reached the borders of my knowledge of English there was no option but to relapse into German.
“Ich hasse euch beide, ihr seid total blöd.”

“That’s German, is it?”

“Fuck away back to Germany, you … German.”

“You
Kraut,”
added Charles, dredging up a word he could only have learned from Uncle Mark. “Fuck off with the other Krauts.”

“Go back where you came from.”

“Gerne,”
I told them. “England is
Scheisse
, Middlesex is
Scheisse, und ihr beide seid auch Scheisse.”

“Kraut, she’s talking Kraut,” said Charles delightedly. “Hey, Chlo’, I can’t wait until she tries that at school.” He pulled a face. “Hey, Mrs. Vilson, I don’t vont to do zis homeverk.”

“God, she’s not going to be in
my
class,” said Chloe in disgust. “They’ll put her in Batty’s.” She glared at me. “With all the other dummies who can’t speak English.”

“Good, I am not going to your school,” I said disdainfully.

Chloe shrieked with malicious delight. “Oh, yes, you are.”

“No, I am not going.”

“Yes, you are.”

They looked at me expectantly. Then Charles elbowed his sister in the ribs. “She doesn’t know.”

“I don’t know what?” I demanded.

They both burst into laughter. “Look,” said Charles eventually, in the voice of someone speaking to the terminally stupid, “where do you think you are going to school?”

“Sankt Michael Gymnasium,” I answered suspiciously.

“And where’s that, then?”

“Bad Münstereifel.”

“You’re going to need a plane to get there,” Charles taunted me.

“I don’t understand,” I said resentfully.

“You want me to spell it out, dummy?” asked Chloe, hands on her almost nonexistent hips. “You’re coming to live in England.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“Yes, yes, yes,” chanted Charles.

“Quatsch,”
I told him.

“Quack? What’s that?”

“German for ‘duck,’” supplied Chloe. They guffawed at me. I stood there in silence and looked at them. “I am not living in England.”

“Oh, yes, you are. Hasn’t Aunt Kate told you yet?”

Impulsively, I turned on my heel. “I will ask Oma Warner.” I started up the garden path toward the house. Behind my back I heard Chloe and Charles hissing at each other. “Idiot—she doesn’t know.”

“Mum didn’t say not to tell. Anyway, you started it.”

“Stop her. Mum’ll go mad.”

“You stop her.”

By the time they had finished arguing and started after me, I had reached the back door. They piled into the house after me, and were so close on my heels that when I pushed open the living-room door the three of us almost fell into the room.

“Oma Warner,” I blurted out, “I don’t want to live in England.”

Aunt Liz and Oma Warner turned startled faces toward me. Aunt Liz put her cup down on its saucer with a rattle and looked furiously toward Chloe and Charles.

“Chloe? Charles?” There was a silence. “What have you been saying to Pia?”

“Nothing,” said Chloe quickly.

I glared at her mutinously. “She says I am going to school in England, not in the Sankt Michael Gymnasium.”

“Oh, Chloe.” Aunt Liz made a sound like a long sigh. She looked at Oma Warner and rolled her eyes. “Where do they pick these things up? I haven’t discussed it in front of them, not even with Mark.”

“Little pitchers have big ears,” said Oma Warner grimly.

“It’s not true,” I said. It was a question, not a statement. Oma Warner looked at Aunt Liz.

“Chloe and Charles shouldn’t have said anything to you, Pia,” said Aunt Liz eventually in the soulful listen-to-me-little-girl tone that I sometimes heard from my mother when she had something serious to impart. “Your mother and I were really just discussing what it would be like if you ever
did
come back to England to live. You know, the idea. Maybe your family won’t always want to stay in Germany. People move, you know.”

I pursed my lips and shook my head as emphatically as I could.

“Bad Münstereifel is very pretty, but it’s just a small town, you know, and besides …” Her voice trailed off.

“Yes, Aunt Liz?” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Oma Warner shaking her head. Aunt Liz saw it too and a frown flitted across her face.

“There are other nice places to live,” she finished.

“Not like Bad Münstereifel,” I said.