“Yes, me,” the doctor answered softly, and got honked at from behind for the crime of not stealing into the intersection while the light was still red.
Her confession of guilt made Brenner feel completely hopeless. Because one thing you can’t forget: nothing derails a manhunt more effectively than a self-afflicted guilty search party that constantly holds up the investigation with its self-blame.
Brenner would’ve preferred for her to tell him something about her husband. But the Frau Doctor didn’t have much of a clue about his construction business. That’s often how it is, that you don’t know exactly what kind of business your spouse actually does, main thing, the money’s there, main thing, the villa’s there, main thing, the park’s there, main thing, the yacht’s there, main thing, the staff’s there, main thing, the art’s there, main thing, the charity thing’s there, main thing, the therapist’s there, in other words, the most important things have got to be there, it’s got nothing to do with your own standards, my god, you could live a much more modest life by yourself, you could get by with a smaller villa, with a smaller park full of smaller trees, too, with a smaller yacht, with smaller paintings-and if you must, even with smaller charity things-but for the child it would be a pity indeed to grow up in cramped conditions, and that’s why it’s important for the family estate to be established a far cry from the poverty line. But now I’m talking as fanatically as Knoll, this kind of thinking’s contagious. You’ve got to be careful not to go sympathizing with Knoll all of a sudden just because he landed in the cesspit of a Construction Lion.
For a second there Brenner thought, the Frau Doctor knows what happened to Knoll, and she wants to tell me. He asked her very cautiously whether she believed there was a connection between her law violation and the kidnapping, and the Frau Doctor, completely calm and matter-of-fact, said, “I don’t know. In my situation, you believe everything could be connected with it.”
“We’ve all broken the law at some point,” Brenner said, purely out of discomfort.
But he was already thinking that she probably wasn’t talking about driving too fast, parking illegally, listening to loud music after midnight, vacuuming on a Sunday, or walking off with a pretty sweater from a boutique back when she was a med student.
“Terminating the pregnancy of a twelve-year-old girl.”
“Is that illegal?” Brenner asked, in an effort to cover up his relief that she wasn’t mixed up in Knoll’s murder.
“It depends.”
“You probably did it for the child.”
Already you can see how Brenner’s bad conscience had put him more on the side of the doctor than on the side of the law. Or not just a bad conscience, but sheer masculine sympathy for the doctor, too. And from a professional standpoint, it’s always better with confessions to give the confessor a good feeling. “Confession comes from comprehension”-they hammered that one right into him at the police academy, i.e., interrogation rule number one, if force doesn’t do anything.
The doctor gave him a look that made it clear she would refuse any and all excuses. Some people are so incredibly stubborn, they want the kind of guilt that they can hang on to and never let go.
“I meant to say, you must have done it for the twelve-year-old girl,” Brenner explained. Because suddenly it occurred to him that his remark-that she’d done it for the child-might have come out wrong, that maybe the Frau Doctor had thought he meant that she’d done it for the aborted child; that possibly, purely out of self-flagellation, she’d thought Brenner had referred to the aborted gnat as a “child.”
“The girl was poor,” the Frau Doctor said. “At first she didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant, and then it was too late. But I wasn’t supposed to do it. Not anymore by that point. And not before, either. Not without reporting it.”
They were coming back around now to where they’d first turned onto the Ring. And on this second lap around, the whole thing seemed like a hand over situation to Brenner, where the kidnapper demands, drive around the Ring until you receive the next instruction, i.e., a tactic to wear you down. And maybe that’s why you see so many cars here, day and night, driving in circles, because everybody’s waiting for their kidnapper’s next instruction.
“I don’t want to justify it to myself, either, that there are countries where it’s legal.” The doctor’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts.
“On the other hand,” Brenner said, because the Frau Doctor looked so crestfallen that all he wanted to do now was console her.
“On what other hand?”
“On the other hand”-it’s always bad to begin a sentence with “on the other hand” when you don’t know what you want to say after that-“it wouldn’t have done anybody any good if the abortion had waited any longer,” Brenner stammered. “How many months along was she when she came to you?”
“We calculate in weeks, not months.”
That was her entire answer.
“Got it. There used to be a saying: ten months but no cash on delivery.”
Brenner thought he could lighten up the mood a little, but the doctor hardened at his remark, and it wouldn’t have surprised him if she’d driven straight to the Hotel Imperial.
“I just meant,” Brenner said, “if they were that poor. Twelve years old and life already screwed up. You’ve got to help. You can’t just force morality about becoming a mother on a child like that. Women used to die because of illegal abortions!”
“I didn’t come to you for consolation,” she interrupted him. “My problem is that I can’t tell the police. I was even prepared to. But my husband’s convinced that this is exactly what Knoll set out to accomplish.”
“Knoll knew about it?”
Brenner was starting to feel like he was riding a merry-go-round as the palaces along the Ringstrasse went past him again, the Opera, the Hofburg Palace, the Parliament, the Burgtheater, and down to the Mint again, to the Ring Tower, around and around in circles. Or a few laps around the Lilliput Rail, but for some reason, instead of trees they passed buildings, and for some reason instead of Helena, it was her mother who sat beside him, and for some reason instead of being happy he was-how shall I put it-devastated would be an exaggeration; more like numb.
“My husband turned to Reinhard, and Reinhard advised Knoll not to use his evidence. Or else he’d call his loan due. We’d looked it up in the Land Registry-which bank Knoll was keeping the money in that he’d bought up the other units in the building with.”
Defense Ministry, Museum of Applied Arts, City Park, Schwarzenberg Square, Opera.
“I’ve wished ever since that he wouldn’t have let himself get cowed by Reinhard. Then that maniac wouldn’t have taken my child away from me.”
Brenner shot her a look like she was only telling him half the truth. But he couldn’t very well call her on it. He wasn’t telling her everything, either; quite the contrary, he even asked her now whether she’d heard anything from Knoll in the meantime, i.e. intentional misrepresentation.
“You know what I think?” she said, while they were stopped at a red light at the Schottentor for the fourth time. “Knoll is calmly waiting for me to go to the police myself with this story about having illegally terminated the pregnancy. Then I’ll be ruined professionally, and he’ll send Helena back to me.” Her voice faltered for a moment, but she kept impressive self-control-not even half a tear. “And he’s accomplished everything without making himself known. He’ll be rid of me without ever making contact with me.”
“It really wouldn’t have been badly orchestrated,” Brenner had to admit. “But most of the time criminals aren’t thinking about it from so many angles.” He couldn’t exactly tell her that Knoll was dead. Drowned in the cesspit behind her own house.