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Authors: Bernhard Aichner
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stinking truck driver.’
‘He wanted to help you?’
‘No, he said he just wanted a bit of fun. I remember that.’
‘Couldn’t he see that you needed help?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He must have noticed there was something the matter with you.’
‘Yes, that’s why he threw me out of his cab.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What kind of truck was it?’
‘No idea.’
‘Please, Dunya, give me something.’
‘There’s nothing to give. He was just a leery man making jokes. I was dazed, I wasn’t right in the head yet, I kept tipping over. All I remember is the road, and the way he laughed. I’d got away after five years. Five years, do you understand? And then there was a hand on me again, on my thigh. I screamed and I didn’t stop until he opened the door and threw me out, just like that.’
‘At the service station where my colleagues found you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, they brought you in from there.’
‘Yes, maybe.’
‘I really want to know where to look for that cellar, Dunya.’
‘It was such a lovely feeling.’
‘What was?’
‘Being alone at last, just lying there. On the tarmac in some shitty car park. I was free again and none of them were there. Not a single one of them. Only me, do you understand, there was only me.’
eleven
Uma doesn’t want to eat. Nela makes a mess of the kitchen floor, spills water over it, throws her pasta across the room. It’s midday. Blum watches them. Blum leaves them alone. She knows two things. First, she must look after the children, love them, give them all the things she never had herself. Second, she must find Dunya. The woman talking on the mobile phone, the woman whom Mark met so often right before his death. Blum wants to look into her eyes, she wants to see if Mark was right.
He must have picked her up, probably at the tearoom, she had got food there. They drove to the hotel and went on talking. Mark wasn’t letting go, but he had nothing to go on. No lead as to how the men managed to abduct them from their beds. Dunya had no idea. Anyone determined could have walked into the staff hostel; indeed, any tourist could have gained access to their bedrooms. The front door was never locked, they had no reason to live in fear. That was why it sounded so incredible, so unlikely that someone had drugged them and taken them out of the house. Three grown adults abducted from a hotel, just like that, unnoticed. In Sölden, a famous centre of winter tourism, with crowds milling on the pistes, in the boutiques and in the après-ski bars, with Tyrolean charm for sale, wood-panelled rooms where caviar and champagne are served. Blum knows what the place is like; she and Mark had been skiing there, they had drunk tequila and danced to meaningless songs. Sölden is like any other Tyrolean resort. Anyone would doubt the feasibility of abducting people from it. But Mark didn’t. And Blum doesn’t either.
Why is she getting involved in his work, why is she interested in it? She can’t help herself. She has to follow it up, she can’t just sit there pretending nothing has happened. There is a terrified woman out there. A woman who was abducted and locked up for five years, raped and abused. What Blum has heard doesn’t allow her to doubt for a minute that she must find out whether it is true. Whether Mark was on the trail of some major and dreadful crime. Why would I make up a story like that? Dunya asked. Blum wants to know. And she wants Uma to finally finish her pasta, she wants Nela to stop rubbing tomato sauce into her face.
Ilena, Youn, Dunya. And five men who kept coming back to have their fun. To hurt their captives. As she watches the girls, innocent and smiling, she wants to banish the thought from her mind. She doesn’t want to spend a second longer thinking about those recorded conversations, Mark’s questions, Dunya’s answers. Yet the story won’t go away and she can’t think of anything else.
‘He wanted to help you?’
‘No, he said he just wanted a bit of fun. I remember that.’
‘Couldn’t he see that you needed help?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He must have noticed there was something the matter with you.’
‘Yes, that’s why he threw me out of his cab.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What kind of truck was it?’
‘No idea.’
‘Please, Dunya, give me something.’
‘There’s nothing to give. He was just a leery man making jokes. I was dazed, I wasn’t right in the head yet, I kept tipping over. All I remember is the road, and the way he laughed. I’d got away after five years. Five years, do you understand? And then there was a hand on me again, on my thigh. I screamed and I didn’t stop until he opened the door and threw me out, just like that.’
‘At the service station where my colleagues found you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, they brought you in from there.’
‘Yes, maybe.’
‘I really want to know where to look for that cellar, Dunya.’
‘It was such a lovely feeling.’
‘What was?’
‘Being alone at last, just lying there. On the tarmac in some shitty car park. I was free again and none of them were there. Not a single one of them. Only me, do you understand, there was only me.’
eleven
Uma doesn’t want to eat. Nela makes a mess of the kitchen floor, spills water over it, throws her pasta across the room. It’s midday. Blum watches them. Blum leaves them alone. She knows two things. First, she must look after the children, love them, give them all the things she never had herself. Second, she must find Dunya. The woman talking on the mobile phone, the woman whom Mark met so often right before his death. Blum wants to look into her eyes, she wants to see if Mark was right.
He must have picked her up, probably at the tearoom, she had got food there. They drove to the hotel and went on talking. Mark wasn’t letting go, but he had nothing to go on. No lead as to how the men managed to abduct them from their beds. Dunya had no idea. Anyone determined could have walked into the staff hostel; indeed, any tourist could have gained access to their bedrooms. The front door was never locked, they had no reason to live in fear. That was why it sounded so incredible, so unlikely that someone had drugged them and taken them out of the house. Three grown adults abducted from a hotel, just like that, unnoticed. In Sölden, a famous centre of winter tourism, with crowds milling on the pistes, in the boutiques and in the après-ski bars, with Tyrolean charm for sale, wood-panelled rooms where caviar and champagne are served. Blum knows what the place is like; she and Mark had been skiing there, they had drunk tequila and danced to meaningless songs. Sölden is like any other Tyrolean resort. Anyone would doubt the feasibility of abducting people from it. But Mark didn’t. And Blum doesn’t either.
Why is she getting involved in his work, why is she interested in it? She can’t help herself. She has to follow it up, she can’t just sit there pretending nothing has happened. There is a terrified woman out there. A woman who was abducted and locked up for five years, raped and abused. What Blum has heard doesn’t allow her to doubt for a minute that she must find out whether it is true. Whether Mark was on the trail of some major and dreadful crime. Why would I make up a story like that? Dunya asked. Blum wants to know. And she wants Uma to finally finish her pasta, she wants Nela to stop rubbing tomato sauce into her face.
Ilena, Youn, Dunya. And five men who kept coming back to have their fun. To hurt their captives. As she watches the girls, innocent and smiling, she wants to banish the thought from her mind. She doesn’t want to spend a second longer thinking about those recorded conversations, Mark’s questions, Dunya’s answers. Yet the story won’t go away and she can’t think of anything else.
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