The Lie by Petra Hammesfahr Page B

Perhaps he was the one pressing the button. It was still odd.
    Although she and Dieter had only lived together properly as husband and wife for a year, there were several dozen snapshots from that time and the lovely photos that had been taken on their wedding day, both outside the church and in the photographer’s studio. Where they were now, she had no idea. She hadn’t wanted to take them when she moved out. Ramie, her successor, had presumably thrown them away by now. But she could still see them clearly in her mind’s eye: the promising young reporter in dark suit, silver-grey tie and white shirt, and herself all in white, as was right and proper, with her sumptuous bridal bouquet.
    Among Nadia’s photos was one with “wedding” written on the back, though without that she certainly wouldn’t have recognized it as a wedding photo. It hadn’t been taken outside a church or in a photographer’s studio. Whether the building, the steps of which Nadia was hurrying
down, was a registry office, was impossible to say. No flowers, no white dress, not to mention a bridal veil and wreath. In her elegant suit, her handbag under her left arm, it looked as if Nadia were just coming out of a business meeting. There was another figure a few steps above her, rather blurred, but apparently wearing jeans and a leather jacket. Perhaps the bridegroom, perhaps just some passer-by.
    In the evening she spent two hours driving on the bumpy but completely empty waste ground where there was no danger of her colliding with trees or other road users. Johannes did not teach her how to drive according to the Highway Code. Instead he got her to try several tricks that were as useful for driving in normal traffic as a freezer in Greenland.
    At first he found her much too timorous. After he had repeatedly assured her his BMW was used to much rougher treatment, she became a little more daring. And he praised the speed with which she picked things up and her quick reactions.
    On Tuesday she went for a long walk to calm her nerves. When she got back, she found Heller lurking on the stairs like an evil omen. Hands in his pockets and a broad grin on his face, he told her, “That guy came to see me recently, your opinion pollster.”
    â€œHow nice for you,” she said, trying to get past.
    He took a step forwards and blocked the way. His grin became suggestive. “He was trying to tell me he only screws students. He said he was a student himself, doing the survey was going to pay for his next semester.”
    â€œI’m not interested,” she said.
    Heller’s grin broadened. “Well you should be. He was a snooper, you can take it from me. Look what I found after he’d gone.” He took one hand out of his trouser pocket and held it out. In the palm was a something like a small battery, those tiny round ones you put in your watch. “That’s a bug,” Heller insisted.
    â€œYou ought to watch a nature film or a variety show now and then, instead of all those horror videos,” she said, squeezing past him and hurrying up the stairs.
    On Wednesday she flogged Johannes’s BMW round the bumpy waste ground again. On Thursday he let her practise in heavy traffic. On Friday evening he got her to scare the pants off HGV drivers on the autobahn with her overtaking. On Saturday she practised Nadia’s
walk, Nadia’s smile, Nadia’s way of speaking, her mocking pout, her sparing but deft gestures and her defiant toss of the head until she was getting dizzy. She felt she had mastered them really well. The only thing that was still beyond her was the - to her ears - slightly deeper tone of Nadia’s voice.
    On Saturday night she dreamed of Michael Trenkler. It started off as a romantic dream of an excursion to the Eifel hills, but the outing ended in the empty disused factory, where he hit her again and again with the butt of a pistol and threatened, “If you move,