Ice Cold by Andrea Maria Schenkel

when she didn’t come home. On Saturday night.
    But when she didn’t go to the office on Monday, and neither her father nor her fiancé knew where she was, that’s when they went to the police.
    They reported her missing, and since then everyone’s been looking for Erna.
    They even want to search with dogs, because by now the police are assuming it’s a crime.
    Seems there was a gentleman asked her now and then if she’d like a ride in his car. She told her mother about it, that’s what her auntie Frau Huber told me. Frau Huber from Rehstrasse, maybe you know her.
    And I’ve heard it’s an act of revenge.
    There’s a rumour it was her doing that some people from around here got sent to Dachau. Communists. She’s said to have denounced them. But no one knows anything for sure.
    I don’t want to know all the details, you can easily get involved in something, and who knows, then you might end up in Dachau yourself. They’ll have had skeletons in their cupboards for sure, those folk.
    Theresa Pirzer heard it first from her mother, they say, when she came home from shopping. ‘Erna Schmidlechner has gone missing. She hasn’t been home since Saturday. They’re looking for her everywhere. The police are even searching with dogs.’ She couldn’t believe it, she’d seen Erna on Saturday night. She went to Erna’s mother.
    She wanted to know if the rumour was true, if Erna really hadn’t gone home. It was only then that she went to the police.
    Yes, that was right, she’d seen Erna on Saturday. She’d been in the same tram, it was Line 6, she’d been on her way home around ten past one that night. Theresa Pirzer had been in the Winzerer Bierhalle dancing that Saturday evening,and got into the same tram, that’s when she saw Erna.
    Except for her and her husband and Erna there was just one other passenger in the tram to Milbertshofen, a man. She’s certain of that, she says. But she didn’t know who he was.
    She sat down with Erna and had a word with her. Erna told them she’d been in town with her fiancé. They’d been out dancing, they had a really nice time.
    At the terminus they all got off the tram. The man went the other way, Theresa’s sure of that too.
    Right after they got out they said goodbye to Erna. Theresa and her husband fetched their bikes. They’d left them at the tram station so they wouldn’t have to walk home.
    When they reached the old Milbertshofen cemetery they met Erna again, they cycled past her. Just as they were passing Erna, when they drew level with her, they saw a gentleman’s bicycle leaning against a lamp-post. Two men were standing a little way off. Theresa thought that was odd, so she turned and saw one of the two men speak to Erna. Theresa saw Erna turn her head to the men, but she went on without thinking any more of them.
    The men would have been around thirty, so far as she could tell, but she can’t be sure of that.
    When she reached the South German Brakes works, right by the snack bar, she looked round for Erna Schmidlechner again.
    She saw Erna going off by herself towards her parents’ apartment. There was no sign of the two men any more.
    Soon afterwards she met another family from the neighbourhood, on the way home with their baby in a pram.
    Today, after she talked to Erna’s mother and before she went to the police station to make a statement, she looked in on that family specially. They too told her they’d seen a girl in a red dress. On her own, no one with her. It was a little way from the snack bar, they’re sure of that. She asked about the men, but they didn’t know anything about any men.
    If anything’s happened to Erna, it could only have happened around the rubbish tip and gravel pit just behind South German Brakes, she’s sure of that. Because the whole way is well lit with the street lamps, and she can’t imagine that anyone, not those two men, would dare to attack someone in bright street lighting.
    There he suddenly is standing in front