Arabic.
‘All right then,’ I say.
‘No, wait, one more question,’ says Lenzen. He hesitates—or pretends to.
Victor Lenzen is a murderer.
‘It’s just…’ he says, and leaves the rest of the sentence hanging menacingly in the air.
Victor Lenzen is a murderer.
‘Have we met before?’ he asks at last.
I look Victor Lenzen in the eye and see someone quite different opposite me. I realise what a big mistake I’ve made. Victor Lenzen is not stupid: he is mad.
He hurls himself across the table at me. I tip backwards off my chair, my head hits the floor hard and I have no time to work out what’s happening, or even make the slightest sound, because he’s on top of me and his hands are on my windpipe.
I thrash about, trying to break free, but he’s too heavy, and his hands have closed around my throat and he’s squeezing hard. I can’t breathe, and immediately the panic is there, rolling over me like a wave. I kick and struggle, nothing but the will to survive. I can feel the blood in my veins, heavy and hot and thick, and I hear a rushing in my ears as it swells and subsides. My head is bursting. I open my eyes wide.
He’s staring at me, his eyes watering from exertion and hatred. He hates me—why? His face is the last thing I see. Then it’s over.
I am not naïve. That’s how it could happen, or something like that. I know all about Victor Lenzen, and yet at the same time I know nothing. But I’m going ahead with it. That much I owe Anna.
I pick up my phone, feel its weight in my hand. I take a deep breath. I enter the number of the Munich paper that Victor Lenzen writes for and ask to be put through to the editorial department.
7
Through my study window I look straight out onto Lake Starnberg. I am glad I was wise enough to make sure of a nice view when I bought the house. God knows there aren’t many people as reliant on a view as I am. I only have the one—though that’s not quite true because it changes every day. Sometimes the lake seems cold and unfriendly, sometimes enticing, and at other times it looks positively enchanted, so that I have no trouble at all imagining the water nymphs of local legend swimming with one another below the surface.
Today the lake is a mirror for a few coquettish clouds in an otherwise pure blue sky. I miss the swifts that in summer grace the sky with their giddy acrobatics. They’re my favourite creatures. They live and mate and even sleep on the wing, never still in an unending sky—so wild, so free.
I’m sitting at my desk, thinking over the things that I have set in motion. In a few months, the journalist Victor Lenzen will interview mysterious bestselling author Linda Conrads. They’ll talk about the new book—her first ever crime novel.
An interview with Linda Conrads is in itself a sensation. For years, the press has been asking for interviews and offering ridiculous sums of money, but the novelist has always declined. No wonder the media are so keen to talk to her; almost nothing is known about the writer concealed behind the name. She hasn’t given readings for years, turns down interviews, lives cut off from society, doesn’t have a Facebook or Instagram or Twitter account. If it weren’t for the books that are published with such pleasing regularity, you might almost think Linda Conrads didn’t exist. Even the author’s photo and biography on her novels’ jackets reveal nothing, unchanged for a good ten years. The black-and-white photo shows a woman who is maybe pretty, maybe ugly, who could be tall but then again could be short, a woman with either blonde or brown hair, and eyes that are green or perhaps blue. It shows her from a distance, in profile, and the brief biographical note states only my birth year and that I live near Munich with my dog.
That the former foreign correspondent Victor Lenzen is to have an exclusive interview with Linda Conrads is going to cause quite a stir.
I plan to challenge my sister’s murderer with
‘All right then,’ I say.
‘No, wait, one more question,’ says Lenzen. He hesitates—or pretends to.
Victor Lenzen is a murderer.
‘It’s just…’ he says, and leaves the rest of the sentence hanging menacingly in the air.
Victor Lenzen is a murderer.
‘Have we met before?’ he asks at last.
I look Victor Lenzen in the eye and see someone quite different opposite me. I realise what a big mistake I’ve made. Victor Lenzen is not stupid: he is mad.
He hurls himself across the table at me. I tip backwards off my chair, my head hits the floor hard and I have no time to work out what’s happening, or even make the slightest sound, because he’s on top of me and his hands are on my windpipe.
I thrash about, trying to break free, but he’s too heavy, and his hands have closed around my throat and he’s squeezing hard. I can’t breathe, and immediately the panic is there, rolling over me like a wave. I kick and struggle, nothing but the will to survive. I can feel the blood in my veins, heavy and hot and thick, and I hear a rushing in my ears as it swells and subsides. My head is bursting. I open my eyes wide.
He’s staring at me, his eyes watering from exertion and hatred. He hates me—why? His face is the last thing I see. Then it’s over.
I am not naïve. That’s how it could happen, or something like that. I know all about Victor Lenzen, and yet at the same time I know nothing. But I’m going ahead with it. That much I owe Anna.
I pick up my phone, feel its weight in my hand. I take a deep breath. I enter the number of the Munich paper that Victor Lenzen writes for and ask to be put through to the editorial department.
7
Through my study window I look straight out onto Lake Starnberg. I am glad I was wise enough to make sure of a nice view when I bought the house. God knows there aren’t many people as reliant on a view as I am. I only have the one—though that’s not quite true because it changes every day. Sometimes the lake seems cold and unfriendly, sometimes enticing, and at other times it looks positively enchanted, so that I have no trouble at all imagining the water nymphs of local legend swimming with one another below the surface.
Today the lake is a mirror for a few coquettish clouds in an otherwise pure blue sky. I miss the swifts that in summer grace the sky with their giddy acrobatics. They’re my favourite creatures. They live and mate and even sleep on the wing, never still in an unending sky—so wild, so free.
I’m sitting at my desk, thinking over the things that I have set in motion. In a few months, the journalist Victor Lenzen will interview mysterious bestselling author Linda Conrads. They’ll talk about the new book—her first ever crime novel.
An interview with Linda Conrads is in itself a sensation. For years, the press has been asking for interviews and offering ridiculous sums of money, but the novelist has always declined. No wonder the media are so keen to talk to her; almost nothing is known about the writer concealed behind the name. She hasn’t given readings for years, turns down interviews, lives cut off from society, doesn’t have a Facebook or Instagram or Twitter account. If it weren’t for the books that are published with such pleasing regularity, you might almost think Linda Conrads didn’t exist. Even the author’s photo and biography on her novels’ jackets reveal nothing, unchanged for a good ten years. The black-and-white photo shows a woman who is maybe pretty, maybe ugly, who could be tall but then again could be short, a woman with either blonde or brown hair, and eyes that are green or perhaps blue. It shows her from a distance, in profile, and the brief biographical note states only my birth year and that I live near Munich with my dog.
That the former foreign correspondent Victor Lenzen is to have an exclusive interview with Linda Conrads is going to cause quite a stir.
I plan to challenge my sister’s murderer with
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