Read Online The Trap by Melanie Raabe, Imogen Taylor - Free Book Online Page A

but soon it starts to climb, vast and blazing.
    It is a miracle. I remind myself that I am on a tiny planet that is moving at an insane speed through a boundless universe, never tiring of its flight around the sun, and I think to myself: it’s crazy. That we exist at all, that the Earth exists and the sun and the stars, and that I can sit here and see and feel all this. It’s incredible; it’s a miracle. If this is possible, anything’s possible.
    The moment passes. A clear morning lies before me. I glance at the time. It will be another few hours before the man arrives to teach me about interrogation techniques.
    I get up, make myself tea, fetch my laptop and sit down at the kitchen table. I have another quick look at the article I’d studied the night before. When Bukowski comes lumbering up to me, I let him out and watch him go to meet the day.
    When the time comes, the sun has long since passed its zenith. I’m sitting in the kitchen with Charlotte, who’s brought around the week’s shopping.
    ‘Would you mind taking the dog out again before you knock off?’ I ask.
    ‘Sure, no problem.’
    Charlotte knows I like to be left alone with my experts; she knows that’s the only reason I’m sending her out again with Bukowski. I look out of the window and watch the gardener cutting the grass. He raises a hand in greeting when he sees me. I wave back and close the window in the room where I plan to receive Dr Christensen.
    Less than half an hour later, I’m sitting across from him. The blond German-American has icy blue eyes. His handshake is firm and I can only withstand his gaze because I’ve put in a substantial amount of practice over the past weeks. Charlotte has been gone a while; dusk is falling. I arranged this private consultation some weeks ago and had to cough up a great deal of money to get Christensen to come to my house. He is an expert in wringing confessions from criminals. His speciality is the notorious Reid technique, a questioning method not officially permitted in Germany, which employs a range of psychological tools and tricks to make the suspect break down.
    Maybe it’s naïve to hope that Lenzen will confess.
    But having got so far, I want to be as well prepared as possible. I must somehow get him to talk to me beyond the framework of the interview—ask him questions, get him to tie himself up in contradictions, provoke him if necessary, and somehow pin him down. If there’s anyone who can help me find out how to impose my will on a criminal and talk him into confessing, it’s Dr Arthur Christensen.
    And in case Lenzen is a tough nut to crack, I always have something else up my sleeve…
    When Christensen realised that I wasn’t interested in his theoretical explanations (which you can easily mug up on in the specialist literature on the subject) but in quite concrete information on how to break a culprit and force him to confess—that is to say, how it works in practice and what it feels like—he seemed peeved. But the large sum of money I was prepared to spend, combined with his realisation that I am not a criminal mastermind but merely a sick, weak woman novelist, persuaded him to demonstrate his skills to me.
    So now we’re sitting face-to-face. I’ve done my homework. Christensen has suggested demonstrating his method of interrogation on me: that seemed the most straightforward way of showing me what it feels like to be put through the Reid technique. He began the consultation by asking me to think of something I was particularly ashamed of—something that I never wanted to reveal. Of course, I came up with something, just as anybody would have done, and now Christensen is trying to wheedle the information out of me.
    He’s getting closer. Over an hour ago he understood that it’s something to do with my family. His questions are getting more penetrating and I am getting thinner-skinned. To begin with, I felt indifference towards Christensen, maybe even sympathy. I have come