Author: Sebastian Fitzek
Category: Thriller
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/sebastian-fitzek/page,16,56546-therapy.html
Until then he had been pummelled constantly by the gusts, shielded only by a handful of pathetic-looking pine trees, their slender trunks bent double from the stormy North Sea weather. Now that he was tucked behind the house, the rain decided to let up a little and he could afford to catch his breath. He allowed himself to rest a short while, then resumed his hunt for the mayor.
The large window at the back belonged to the study, but Halberstaedt had obviously gone upstairs. The desk was strewn with innumerable pages of handwritten notes, and a laptop had been abandoned, still open, on a stool. There was no sign of life and in the hearth the fire was burning low. In fact, Viktor had almost given up hope when he noticed that the desk lamp was still alight. He can't have gone out, he thought to himself.
He couldn't imagine why Halberstaedt needed a study, much less a computer.
A quick glance at the rest of the house was enough to determine that the lights were out upstairs. Of course, that didn't mean anything: if Halberstaedt were up there, he was more than likely to be in bed, in which case the curtains would be pulled.
Viktor was running out of ideas. So far he had achieved precisely nothing apart from getting wet. But that was entirely predictable, given that he had no idea of Anna's location or what to do if he tracked her down.
Don't try looking for me. I'LL GET TO YOU!
Viktor decided to knock one last time. Then he noticed a shed at the bottom of the overgrown garden.
Under normal circumstances, the faint light leaking under the corrugated-iron door wouldn't have caught his attention, but the past hours had taken such a toll on his body that his mind was working overtime. He registered several things at once: the shed was lit up, the only window was boarded over on the inside, and smoke was rising from the narrow metal chimney atop the flat roof.
What would persuade Halberstaedt to go out to his shed in the pouring rain? And who in their right mind would block up a shed window while leaving the lights on and curtains open in their house?
Viktor had a vague feeling that something bad was about to happen, but he swallowed his doubts and hurried over the waterlogged lawn. He was going to find out what Halberstaedt was up to in the shed.
47
The door wasn't locked. He opened it slowly and was enveloped in thick, fusty air. The shed smelt of oil, old rags and mouldering wood, an odour that pervades every neglected basement or workshop. With the exception of a few beetles and woodlice that scuttled for cover when he appeared from the rain, the shed was deserted.
But Halberstaedt wasn't the only notable absence. To Viktor's surprise, there wasn't a single tool in the shed. No spades, rakes or trowels, no half-empty tins of paint on the chipboard shelves, no building materials abandoned on the floor.
In spite of its generous size, as large as a double garage, the shed didn't house so much as a wheelbarrow, let alone an old rowing boat or an ancient bike. But it wasn't merely the lack of everyday equipment that was making him shiver. Viktor felt cold all over. Throughout the long walk from his cottage into the wind he hadn't noticed the chill in the air, but as soon as he entered the hidden hut at the bottom of the mayor's garden he felt frozen to the bone. The cold started in the small of his back and crept up his spine, spreading across his scalp and through the rest of his body, giving him goosebumps.
Death is always cold.
Viktor gave himself a little shake, partly to make sure he wasn't dreaming, and partly to dispel the oppressive thoughts attacking his mind. He had just realized what was going on.
What he would have given to be at home, wherever that was. At home, sitting with his wife by the fire, or in a warm bath surrounded by candles. At home, shielded from the world by solid doors and shuttered windows. At home, or anywhere but here, as far away as possible from the hundreds of photos and newspaper articles taunting him from all sides.
Someone – Halberstaedt or Anna – had covered the walls with a monstrous collage of pictures, captions and articles collected over the course of many months. The subject matter wasn't conventionally abhorrent. There were no blood-spattered bodies, sexual perversions or graphic images from X-rated websites, but the clippings shared a common theme, a theme that filled him with dread. There were photos everywhere – tacked to the walls, pinned to the shelves, and pegged on washing lines suspended across the shed – and everywhere he looked he saw Josy.
It was like stumbling into a paper maze of memories and being trapped by his daughter's gaze. The shed was a shrine to a pathological obsession. Someone had spent their free time researching Josy's abduction. His daughter was the object of an irrational and monstrous cult.
The ancient light bulb dangling from the ceiling bathed the clippings in uncertain light. Viktor overcame his revulsion and examined the collage more closely.
At first he thought he was imagining things, then he realized the newspaper was stained with bloody fingerprints. Delicate fingerprints; too delicate for someone with Halberstaedt's bear-like hands.
But the captions were what persuaded Viktor that he was looking at the work of an unsound mind. Each headline had been cut to size, highlighted with a coloured marker and glued to a photo.
Wrapping his right hand in his scarf to protect it from the heat, he reached up and tilted the bulb towards the wall. The captions came into focus.
PSYCHIATRIST'S DAUGHTER GOES MISSING
SHRINK IN NIGHTMARE TRAUMA
TV DOCTOR ABANDONED BY WIFE
WHO POISONED LITTLE JOSY?
LARENZ VERDICT: PSYCHIATRIST BANNED!
What kind of sick person would make up nonsense like that? Some of the headlines were genuine, but for the most part they were fabrications – and increasingly preposterous ones at that.
It must have been her.
He couldn't imagine the time it must have taken to think up the headings, print them out in newspaper style and arrange them on the walls. And he was baffled by the photos. Some of them had been downloaded from the web, but others he had never seen before.
Anna must have been stalking his family long before Josy disappeared. Had she taken the photos without their knowledge? It was still too early to prove anything, but Viktor was certain that he was looking at Anna's work.
I need to read the captions, he decided, angling the bulb to the left. If I study them carefully, I might find the key to what she wants.
If he hadn't been so intent on inspecting the collage, events might have taken a different turn. Perhaps he would have heard the rustling in the garden instead of staring, deep in thought, at the cryptic messages on the wall. He might have left the shed and never noticed the sheet of paper that made him cry out in horror and stopped him from hearing the sound of cracking twigs. With a bit of luck, he might have turned round and spotted the danger. Who knows.
Instead he let go of the light bulb and tore down the offending piece of paper that was tacked to the wall by a rusty nail. He didn't stop to read its contents. The alarming thing about the paper was its provenance. He had seen a stack of sheets like this before. It had the same greyish tinge of recycled paper and the same closely written script. Without a shadow of doubt it belonged to the manuscript that was scattered over Patrick Halberstaedt's desk. The architect of the collage was at work in the house – in the house belonging to Parkum's mayor.
Equipped with this knowledge, and armed with the loaded gun, Viktor raced out of the shed.
48
Two minutes later, he was holding the key. Halberstaedt, like Viktor, kept a spare beneath the flowerpot on the porch.
As soon as the door was unlocked, he hurried into the hallway, calling Halberstaedt's name. His instincts told him that no one was there, but he checked the house anyway, running from room to room. No sign of the mayor. He was silently praying that nothing dreadful had happened to him. He refused to believe that Halberstaedt was in league with Anna. The evidence was stacked against him – his strange behaviour on the phone, and now the alarming contents of his shed – but Viktor had known
him for years. The problem was, if Halberstaedt was innocent, why had he disappeared? Alarmed, Viktor suddenly thought of Isabell. There was no telling the lengths that Anna would go to, and he hoped to goodness that she wouldn't start targeting his family and friends.
He went back to the study and marched to the desk. His shoes left a trail of muddy footprints on the beige carpet, but he didn't stop to take them off.
His gaze fell on the stack of paper next to the laptop. He wondered whether it was the work of Halberstaedt or Anna. At last he was certain that the mystery would soon be solved.
He took off his raincoat, placed the gun beside the manuscript and sat down to read the first page.
The text was handwritten and laid out like an interview. As he read the first few lines, he was overwhelmed by an extraordinary sense of déjà-vu.
Bunte: What was it like in the aftermath of your daughter's disappearance?
Larenz: Like death. Of course, I was still eating, drinking and breathing and I sometimes managed to sleep for a couple of hours at a stretch, but I wasn't living anymore. My life was over the day that Josy went missing.
He started again from the beginning and felt like pinching himself to make sure he was awake. This wasn't one of Anna's stories. It was his interview. His interview with Bunte.
At first he couldn't figure out how Anna could have known about it, but then he remembered that the hard drive of his laptop had been wiped. She must have seized her chance, maybe yesterday when he was asleep, and stolen his files without him knowing.
It was strange that she had copied it out by hand. She could have printed the interview instead of going to the trouble of transcribing every word. The masculine writing didn't fit with her delicate hands. Maybe it was Halberstaedt after all. He quickly dismissed the thought: Halberstaedt hadn't been into his house and couldn't have interfered with his computer.
Viktor leafed hurriedly through the manuscript and discovered that Anna had copied the interview in its entirety. Every question, every answer, every last sentence was there. It was a perfect copy of his work.
He turned to the laptop. It was the same make and model as his. The screensaver vanished as soon as he touched the trackpad. He wanted, no, needed, to see what Anna had been working on.
He clicked on a Word document. The file belonged to him. It contained the questions from Bunte; in fact, it was the very same email attachment that he had been sent.
His gaze came to rest on the manuscript. Theoretically, Anna could have stolen one of his files in Berlin and swiped the data from his laptop, but his computer hadn't been tampered with until yesterday evening, and Anna had been in a terrible state. How had she managed to copy the interview so quickly and with such a steady hand?
It doesn't seem possible.
He remembered their first encounter. Anna had come in from the beach without a trace of sand or dirt on her elegant shoes. And it had been pouring with rain.
The time factor bothered him. Was it humanly possible to fill so many pages in such a short space of time? The manuscript looked much longer than his original file.
He slid the final couple of pages from the bottom of the pile and gasped. No wonder. It wasn't his work. Anna was seriously deranged: not content with copying his answers, she had drafted her own.
He started reading:
I feel guilty about my daughter's death. And I feel guilty about the break-up with my wife. There are plenty of things I'd do differently if I could have my time again. I shouldn't have done what I did to my wife.
He stared incredulously at the passage. Anna was obviously taking Isabell's side. Was this proof of a conspiracy? But why? What could they possibly stand to gain? Viktor had been hoping for an end to the darkness, a calming of the storm, but the manuscript was making things worse.
He was too busy reading the next passage to hear the footsteps behind him.
I should have listened to my wife. She always knew best. Why did I accuse her of turning against me when I was the one who pushed her away? I see now that I was wrong to blame her for what happened to Josy. If only I had trusted her, Josy would be safe.
Viktor read the last sentence again and again. He couldn't make head or tail of it. Defeated, he wondered whether he should take the manuscript and leave.
But his time was up already.
49
‘Surely you must have worked it out by now?’
Viktor recognized the voice immediately and let go of the manuscript. Panic gripped his throat like a boa constrictor. His pistol was somewhere on Halberstaedt's desk, buried under the mound of paper. He turned round and threw himself on Anna's mercy, only to discover that she was armed. She was gripping the lethal-looking carving knife so tightly that her knuckles were white. There was no doubt that she meant to hurt him, but she looked beautiful all the same. In fact, she looked as fresh and attractive as when they first met. Not a hair was out of place, her black suit, now carefully pressed, showed off her shapely figure, and her patent-leather shoes were practically sparkling in the light. She was obviously feeling much better.
Don't try looking for me. I'LL GET TO YOU!
Viktor decided to take the initiative and pretend not to notice her threatening stance. ‘Hello there, Anna. I can help you, you know.’
She says she's schizophrenic, but she's not.
‘Ha! You can't even help yourself! Look what you did to your own life – your daughter, your wife, your career!’
‘What would you know about my wife?’
‘We moved in together. She's my best friend.’
Viktor searched her face for signs of madness, but there were none. She looked prettier than ever, which added to the horror of her words.
‘Would you like to tell me your real name?’ he suggested, hoping to prompt a reaction.
‘You know my name,’ she said, still perfectly composed. ‘I'm Anna. Anna Glass.’
‘Fine, I'll call you Anna if you want me to, but I know the truth. The Park Clinic told me what happened.’
She smiled at him cynically. ‘You checked with the clinic? I didn't realize you cared.’
‘Anna Glass wasn't a patient. She was an intern – and she's dead.’
‘How ghastly. How did she die?’
She turned the carving knife in her hand. The blade glinted in the light of the desk lamp, dazzling Viktor. He blinked.
‘They wouldn't tell me,’ he said, deciding it was safer to lie. ‘Please don't do anything rash.’
His mind was racing. Years ago he had been threatened by a patient, after which a panic button had been installed beneath his desk. But the situation with Anna was far more dangerous and he had no means of calling for help. I should have stuck to my policy of never seeing patients at home. He decided to try a different tack.
‘Didn't you say that your fictional characters tend to come alive?’
‘Full marks, Dr Larenz.’
I need to keep her talking until Halberstaedt gets home. Or until something happens – it doesn't matter what.
It seemed expedient to play along with her so-called schizophrenia. ‘When you called me earlier, you said that “she” was back. You meant one of your characters, didn't you?’
She inclined her head briefly, a gesture which Viktor interpreted as a nod.
‘There's a perfectly natural explanation. You only thought your characters were coming to life because you transcribed my interview.’
‘No,’ she said firmly, shaking her head.
‘You copied what I'd written, and you thought you'd made it up, but the fact is, I'm real. My daughter and I exist in real life.’
‘You don't understand.’
‘Anna, please! It's all quite straightforward. I'm not a figment of your imagination; I'm a normal human being. You didn't create me. The book you were working on was my story. I wrote it first.’
‘You don't know what you're talking about!’ retorted Anna, suddenly angry. She slashed the air with the carving knife. Viktor took a f
ew steps backwards and came up against the desk.
There was an angry glint in her eyes. ‘Don't you see what's happening? Surely you can't have missed the signs!’
‘What signs?’
‘You think you're so clever, don't you, Mr Psychiatrist! You think I broke into your house, you think I stole your files, you think I'm in league with your wife! You even think I abducted your daughter! You don't get it, do you? You really don't get it.’
No sooner had she finished speaking than she was back to her former self – a pretty young woman dressed in quaintly conservative clothes. The cruelty and fury were gone from her face, and she smiled at him calmly. ‘Never mind,’ she continued, ‘we're not finished yet. I'll have to take this further.’
Further? How far is she prepared to go?
‘What do you want from me?’ he asked, feeling his throat constrict with fear. He could scarcely breathe.
‘Come here,’ she said, jabbing the knife towards the front of the house where the windows overlooked the sea. ‘I want you to take a look outside.’
Viktor followed her instructions.
‘Well?’ she asked.
‘There's a car in the drive. A Volvo.’ He spoke slowly, hesitantly, distrusting what he saw. Private vehicles were banned on Parkum and the car looked remarkably like the Volvo that was waiting for him on Sylt.
‘Aren't you coming?’ said Anna, who was already at the door.
‘Where to?’
‘I'm taking you on a little drive. We should hurry; the engine's running.’
Viktor put his face to the window and saw that someone was sitting at the wheel.
‘What if I refuse to go?’ he asked, looking her straight in the eye.
Without a word, Anna reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the pistol that he had been looking for on Halberstaedt's desk.
Viktor gave in to the inevitable and walked slowly to the door.
50
The interior of the Volvo smelt of beeswax and freshly polished leather. It was so like his own car that for a moment he was more bewildered than afraid. Three weeks ago he had left a vehicle of the same make and model in a car park on Sylt. Everything about the car was uncannily familiar, right down to the trimmings. He toyed with the idea that someone had flown his Volvo over from Sylt, but it simply wasn't possible, especially in weather like this.