The Girl Who Wasn't There by Ferdinand von Schirach Page A

alone with the police officer in the neon-lit canteen. He was one of the most experienced officers in the Berlin police force, fifteen years older than Landau. She had known him ever since she began working in the capital crimes department. She knew that he was thoughtful and reserved, he had never drawn his gun, his judgement was flawless. She asked him why he had done it. He had not said anything yet. He pulled the paper label off a bottle of water, stuck it to the table and smoothed it out. He stared at the label, but he still said nothing.
    At last he began to speak. He told her about another case of abduction, eighteen years ago.
    ‘I still remember every detail,’ said the police officer, without looking at Landau. ‘I remember the gold bracelet on the man’s wrist, the loose button on his shirt, his thin lips and the way he drummed his fingers on the table. After two days we got to the point where he said he would show us the place in the forest. I was sitting beside him as we drove there. He smelled unwashed, he had saliva in the corners of his mouth and he was coughing. And grinning, but all the same I had to be friendly to him. “Twelve days before Christmas.” Those words kept going round in my head all through the drive to the forest. It was about as cold as today. When we got there, a colleague of mine spotted the ventilation pipe and ran to it. He was tearing off his jacket as he ran. He scraped the leaves off the pipe, he was shouting that everything would be all right now. We all dropped to our knees beside that pipe and dug like crazy in the snow and the frozen ground. Another of my colleagues broke the crate open. I saw the scratches the little boy had left inside its lid. There was a red transfer on his forearm, some kind of animal, an elephant or a rhinoceros, maybe something else. The picture was ragged at the edges and washed-out; it looked so unreal on the child’s bluish-white skin.’
    The police officer raised his head and looked directly at Landau. ‘You see, it’s that damn transfer. I can’t get it out of my mind. Do you understand that? I just can’t get it out of my mind.’
     
    On the afternoon of that day, Public Prosecutor Landau wrote a memo in her office. It was not long, twelve lines. She read it again twice, signed it and pinned the sheet of paper to the files. Then she went to the registry and asked one of the secretarial staff there to fax her memo to the interrogating officers.
    ‘In what case?’ asked the secretary.
    ‘The new one. The file on it is in my office,’ said Landau. ‘The accused is called Sebastian von Eschburg.’

1
    Konrad Biegler was standing moodily on the terrace of the Zirmerhof hotel, listening to the mountain guide. The man looked exactly as Biegler would have imagined a mountain guide: tanned brown, tall, healthy. He’ll certainly smell of soap, thought Biegler. The mountain guide had a firm voice with a slight Italian accent; it sounded pleasant. The terrace of the hotel, he said, was ‘almost 1,600 metres above sea level’, the panoramic view was ‘unique, about a hundred peaks’ that ‘made the heart lift’. Up here, he added, there were ‘wonderful meadows’ and ‘idyllic mountain lakes’.
    The mountain guide made many more such remarks. He wore a red polyester jacket with a hood and a fox on the breast pocket. Functional clothing, thought Biegler. The mountain guide named the ranges here: ‘Brenta, Ortler, Ötztaler, Stubaier.’ Biegler was sure the guide had climbed them all.
    A woman with a very small rucksack said quietly that the Zirmerhof was as high up as the Schneekoppe, the highest peak in the Czech Republic. Her eyes shone as she looked at the mountain guide. ‘Except that this hotel doesn’t have snow on it,’ said Biegler, buttoning up his coat.
     
    Biegler had been a defence lawyer in Berlin for thirty-one years. He was allergic to grass, hay, dogs, cats and horses. He wondered whether to make a comment. For