Kristina was thirty-six but looked considerably older. She was a short, thinnish woman. At one time in her life, less than a dozen years before but a lifetime away, her features had been fine; delicate. Now it merely seemed as if her skin was pulled too tight over the angular framework of her skull. Her high, sharp cheekbones jutted aggressively from her face and the skin that stretched across them was slightly reddened and rough. Her nose was small, but again, just below the ridge, bone and cartilage seemed to protest against being confined and hinted at an ancient break.
Three minutes early. She let the smile fade. Being too early was almost as bad as being too late. Not that her customer would be any the wiser: Herr Hauser would already be at work. But Kristina’s punctuality meant that the order of her universe was maintained; that no randomness would enter into it and spread, like cancer, to become sanity-and life-threatening Chaos. The way it had been before.
She turned the key and opened the door, pushing against the spring with her back as she swung her vacuum cleaner into the hallway.
The way Kristina thought of it was that she had given birth to herself. She had no children – and no man to father children – but she had created herself anew: given herself a new life and put aside all that had gone before. ‘Don’t let your history define who you are or who you can become,’ someone had once said to her when she had been at her lowest. It had been a turning point. Everything had changed. Everything that had been part of that old life, that dark life, had been abandoned. Dumped. Forgotten.
But now, as Kristina Dreyer stood, halfway across the threshold of the apartment that she was due to clean that bright Friday morning, history reached out from her old life and seized her by the throat in an unyielding grip.
That smell. The rich, nauseous, coppery odour of stale blood hanging in the air. She recognised it instantly and started to shake.
Death was here.
9.00 a.m.: Eppendorf, Hamburg
The anxiety was hidden deep. To the casual observer, there was nothing in her composure that hinted at anything other than confidence and absolute self-certainty. But Dr Minks was no casual observer.
His first patient of the day was Maria Klee, an elegant young woman in her thirties. She was very attractive, with blonde hair combed back from the broad, pale brow; her face was a little long and seemed to have stretched the nose a fraction of a centimetre too low and made it slightly too narrow and therefore robbed her of true beauty.
Maria sat opposite Dr Minks, her slender, expensively trousered legs crossed with her manicured fingers resting on her knee. She sat upright: perfectly composed, alert but relaxed. Her grey-blue eyes held the psychologist in a steady, assured, yet not defiant gaze. A look that seemed to say that she was expecting a question to be posed, or a proposition to be expounded, but that she was perfectly content to wait, patiently and politely, for the doctor to speak.
For the moment, he didn’t. Dr Friedrich Minks took his time as he examined the patient’s notes. Minks was of indeterminate middle age: a short, dumpy man with dull skin and thinning black hair; his eyes were dark and soft behind the panes of his spectacles. In contrast to his poised patient, Minks looked as if he had been dropped into his chair and that the impact had crumpled him further into his already crumpled suit. He looked up from his notes and took in the carefully constructed edifice of confidence that Maria Klee presented with her body language. Nearly thirty years of experience as a psychologist allowed him to see through the sham instantly.
‘You are very hard on yourself.’ Minks’s long-gone Swabian childhood still tugged on his vowels as he spoke. ‘And I have to say that is part of your problem. You know that, don’t you?’
Maria Klee’s cool grey eyes didn’t flicker, but she gave a small shrug. ‘What do you mean, Herr Doktor?’
‘You know exactly what I mean. You refuse to allow yourself to be afraid. It’s all part of these defences you’ve built around yourself.’ He leaned forward. ‘Fear is natural. After what happened to you, to feel fear is more than natural… it’s an essential part of the healing process. Just as you felt pain as your body healed, you have to feel fear to allow your mind to heal.’
‘I just want to get on with my life, Dr Minks. Without all this nonsense getting in the way.’
‘It’s not nonsense. It’s a stage of post-trauma recovery that you have to go through. But because you see fear as a failure and you fight against your natural reactions, you are stretching out this stage of recovery… and I’m worried it’s going to be stretched out indefinitely. And that is exactly why you are having these panic attacks. You have sublimated and repressed your natural fear and horror at what happened to you until it has burst through the surface in this distorted form.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Maria said. ‘I have never tried to deny what happened to me. What he… what he did to me.’
‘That’s not what I said. It’s not the event that you’re denying. You’re denying your right to experience fear, horror, or even outrage at what this man did to you. Or that he has yet to be held to account for his actions.’
‘I don’t have time for self-pity.’
Minks shook his head. ‘This has nothing to do with self-pity. This has everything to do with post-trauma stress and with the natural process of healing. Of resolution. Until you resolve this conflict within, you will never be able to connect properly with the world around you. With people.’
‘I deal with people every day.’ The patient’s grey-blue eyes now glinted with defiance. ‘Are you saying I’m compromising my effectiveness?’
‘Perhaps not now… but if we do not start laying ghosts to rest, it will, ultimately, manifest itself in how you conduct yourself professionally.’ Minks paused. ‘From what you’ve told me, you are increasingly showing signs of aphenphosmphobia. Considering the type of work you’re involved with, I would have thought it would present significant difficulties. Have you discussed this with your superiors?’
‘As you know, they arranged physical and psychological therapy.’ Maria angled her head back slightly and there was a defensive edge to her voice. ‘But no. I haven’t discussed these current… problems with them.’
‘Well,’ said Dr Minks, ‘you know my feelings on this matter. I feel that your employers should be aware of the difficulties you’re having.’ He paused. ‘You mentioned this man with whom you began a relationship. How is that going?’
‘Okay…’ There was no longer a defiant tone in Maria’s voice and some of the tense energy seemed to have seeped from her shoulders. ‘I am very fond of him. And he of me. But we haven’t… we haven’t been able to be intimate yet.’
‘Do you mean you have no physical contact… no embracing or kissing? Or do you mean sex?’
‘I mean sex. Or anything approaching it. We do touch. We do kiss… but then I start to feel…’ She drew her shoulders up, as if her body were being squeezed into a small space. ‘Then I get the panic attacks.’
‘Does he understand why you withdraw from him?’
‘A little. It’s not easy for a man – for anyone – to feel that their touch, their close proximity, is repellent. I’ve explained some of it to him and he’s promised to keep it to himself. I knew he would anyway. But he understands. He knows I’m seeing you… well, not you specifically… He knows I’m seeing someone about my problem.’
‘Good…’ Minks smiled again. ‘What about the dreams? Have you had any more?’
Maria nodded. Her defences were beginning to crumble and her posture sagged a little more. Her hands still rested on her knee but the manicured fingernails now gathered up a small clutch of expensive tailoring.
‘The same thing?’ asked Minks.
‘Yes.’
Dr Minks leaned forward in his chair. ‘We need to go back there. I need to visit your dream with you. You understand that, don’t you?’