The Stranglers Honeymoon

12

Sunday 5 November 2000, was the day when a sneeze threatened to ruin Egon Traut’s marriage.

At least, that gloomy prospect hovered over him for several long hours in the evening, and there is after all a certain difference between a grim outlook and ruins.

Egon Traut was a self-employed businessman. He had a firm making and selling display stands for opticians and shops selling spectacles. The factory was located in Chadow, where he also lived in a spacious, hacienda-inspired villa with his wife and five children, of whom two had flown the nest (for most of the time, at least), two were twins in their teens (and quite a handful), and the fifth (an afterthought called Arnold) suffered from Hörndli’s syndrome and was autistic.

The firm was called GROTTENAU, an anagram of his own name, and at the end of the eighties and throughout the nineties it had slowly but surely increased its market share, at first in Chadow, then in the surrounding area, and eventually the whole country — to such an extent that by the beginning of the new millennium it claimed sixty per cent of the whole cake. In opticians’ circles F/B GROTTENAU was, if not a concept, then at least a name associated with expertise, quality and reliable delivery.

Since 1996 Egon Traut had employed a staff of four. Three of them worked on the production of the display stands in Chadow’s new industrial estate, and the fourth dealt with the paperwork. The last was Betty Klingerweijk, who was exactly ten years younger than he was, and owned a pair of breasts that sometimes kept him awake at night, unable to expunge their image from his head.

When he was lying in the matrimonial bed, that is. It sometimes happened that, instead, he was in the same bed as the aforementioned breasts, and on those (unfortunately all too sporadic) occasions, of course, he did not need to worry about expunging them from his head. On the contrary. Getting them into his head (via his mouth) was something he was only too happy to spend time and effort on. Betty Klingerweijk had been his lover for rather more than three years by this time, and she was the one who sneezed so unfortunately on this rainy November Sunday.

It happened on the motorway between Linzhuisen and Maardam: they were on the way home from a three-day sales trip in the southern provinces, and Traut had just rung his wife on his mobile to ask her for some information.

‘What was that?’ asked his wife.

‘What was what?’ said Traut.

‘That noise. It sounded like somebody sneezing.’

‘Eh?. . I didn’t hear anything.’

‘You don’t have somebody in the car with you, do you?’

‘No. Why should I have?’

‘That’s a good question. It sounded like a woman sneezing in any case.’

‘How odd. Perhaps there was somebody on the line.’

‘Somebody on the line? That’s the daftest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m absolutely certain that I heard a sneeze. You have another woman with you in the car, don’t you?’

‘I swear I don’t,’ said Traut.

‘Huh, tell that to the marines,’ said his wife. ‘But it’s what you don’t tell the marines that I’m interested in. What’s her name? Is it somebody I know, or have you just picked her up?’

Traut tried to hit on a counter-move, but his mind was pretty sluggish today and nothing plausible occurred to him.

‘It’s not that vulgar little hussy fröken Klingerweijk, is it?’ yelled his wife as loudly as she could, to make sure she could be heard clearly in the car. Traut glanced at his passenger, and could see she had heard what was said.

Bugger it, he thought. Death to the inventor of the mobile phone.

‘I can assure you,’ he assured her. ‘I’m as much alone in the car as. . as a herring in a church.’

‘A herring in a church? What are you raving on about? There aren’t any herrings in a church. Are you not even sober?’

‘Of course I’m sober. You know I’m always very careful about what I drink when I’m travelling on business. And if there were a herring in a church, it would be feeling pretty lonely, wouldn’t it? Can I get to the point now, or are you going to go on and on, accusing me of God knows what?’

That was quite a clever ploy, and the receiver was silent for a few seconds. But it was not a good silence, he could hear quite clearly that she didn’t believe him. And in the corner of his eye he could see that Betty Klingerweijk was glaring at him, and seemed to be preparing to sneeze again. Out of sheer cussedness.

‘What point?’ asked his wife.

‘Your barmy sister, of course. What’s her new address — you said they’d just moved. I’ll be in Maardam in five minutes.’

That was enough to shift the focus of the conversation — for the time being, at least. His sister-in-law was in fact the reason he had made the call, and doing so was bound to portray him in a more favourable light. His wife had gone on and on about how he really must call in and check on how she was, seeing as he was passing though Maardam in any case. Her sister hadn’t answered the phone for over a month, and something must have happened to her. That was as clear as day, and blood is thicker than daylight.

They had discussed the matter at considerable length on the Thursday morning before he had set off, but he hadn’t actually promised to call on her sister. Not as far as he could recall, at least. So the fact that he was ringing her now and offering to do so must surely be seen as a reasonable and humane thing to do. He was prepared to put himself out and call on her lunatic sister in her flat in order to make sure she was okay — wasn’t that proof of how highly he valued his wife and their married life together?

He didn’t say any of this outright, but he felt he could interpret his wife’s soft humming — presumably while she was looking through the address book — along those lines. At least she was no longer harping on about that damned sneeze.

‘Moerckstraat,’ she said in the end. ‘Moerckstraat 16. God only knows where that is, but no doubt you can ask somebody. And make sure you take whatever steps are necessary if she doesn’t answer the door.’

Necessary steps? thought Traut. What the hell might they be?

It took over half an hour to find Moerckstraat, which was in an unusually grim 1970s district on the northern side of the Maar, and Betty Klingerweijk was already moaning about the delay.

‘You promised we’d be home before ten,’ she said. ‘We’ll never make that now.’

‘Promised and promised,’ said Egon Traut. ‘But it’s great if we can be together a bit longer.’

‘Huh,’ said Klingerweijk, and he was not at all sure how he should interpret that.

He switched off the engine and stepped out into the rain. Turned up the collar of his jacket and ran ten metres up a little asphalt ramp. That was about as far as Traut was able to run — especially if it was uphill — and he stopped to get his breath back under a roof overhang that ran all the way along the row of houses. He found the name Kammerle on a glass-covered nameplate, barely legible under all the graffiti, and worked out that the flat must be on the first floor.

He couldn’t find a lift, so he walked up the stairs.

The Kammerle hovel — it really was a hovel — overlooked the courtyard. Traut found it difficult to imagine how people could live like this. It was somehow inhuman. He could see right into the flat through a narrow window, presumably a kitchen ditto — or rather, would have been able to if there had been a light on. But there wasn’t. All he could see in fact was his own reflection, which more or less filled the whole window, at least in width.

He rang the bell. There was no humming nor ringing sound, so he assumed the bell was broken. He belted hard on the door several times with his fist, and waited. No response. He tried knocking on the window several times as well, but there was no sign of life inside.

Bugger, he thought. There’s nobody in, that’s obvious. What shall I do now?

Necessary steps, Barbara had gone on about.

He looked around and thought. Most of the tenants seemed to be at home on this miserable November evening. There was a light in almost every window. Perhaps he could ask a neighbour? Or try to contact some kind of caretaker — there must surely be a caretaker in a place like this?

And Betty was sitting in the car, growing more annoyed for every minute that passed.

And Barbara had heard her sneezing in his mobile. Damn and blast, he thought. I’d rather be sitting with a beer somewhere in the sun, a long way away from here.

He looked up at the blue-grey sky and decided that just now, this very moment, these very hours of his life were something he could happily have done without.

And he was a little surprised to realize that this was by no means a new thought.

When he lowered his gaze again, he saw that a door a few metres further along the corridor formed by the roof overhang had opened, and a woman’s head was poking out, looking at him. A short, dark-skinned immigrant woman. Kurdish or Iranian, perhaps: but he was not all that well up on foreign cultures and so she might well have been from some other country.

‘You looking for Kammerle?’ the woman asked, with barely a trace of a foreign accent. She must have been living here for several years, Traut thought.

‘Yes. They don’t seem to be in.’

‘There is something that is not good with them in there.’

‘Not good? What do you mean?’

She opened the door, wrapped the patterned shawl more tightly around her head and shoulders, and came out to him. She was small and dumpy, and moved awkwardly; but her eyes were large and expressive. It was not difficult to see that she was genuinely worried.

‘I worry for them,’ she said. ‘Something is not right, I haven’t seen the mum, not the girl, none of them for a whole month.’

‘Perhaps they are away on holiday? Or have moved?’

‘Not moved, that can’t be so. You notice when somebody moves, and I’m at home for all of every day. They had washing in the machines as well.’

‘Washing?’ wondered Traut, who had little idea about communal laundry facilities in blocks of flats.

‘Yes, a month ago. Fru Kammerle left two machines full with washed clothes without taking care of them. I have hung and dried, we have them in carrier bags in our flat, but something must have happened. Why would anybody leave fine clothes in that way?’

Traut had no answer to that, and began rummaging in his pockets for a cigarette.

‘Who are you, by the way?’

‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I forgot to introduce myself. Egon Traut.’ He held out his hand, and the woman shook it with a firm, warm grip. ‘I’m married to a sister of Martina Kammerle. We have also begun to wonder, as she hasn’t answered the telephone for. . yes, as you say, for a whole month.’

She let go of his hand and shook her head anxiously.

‘My name’s Violeta Paraskevi,’ she said. ‘I don’t know your relative at all, we just say hello, as you do in the country. But we never meet, nor do my girl and her girl. It’s sad and I’m so worried that something must happen to them.’

Traut thought for a moment.

‘Do you know if somebody has a key to their flat?’ he asked. ‘A caretaker, or somebody like that?’

Violeta Paraskevi nodded energetically.

‘Herr Klimkowski,’ she said. ‘He’s the landlord, I have his telephone number. I have told him an earlier time, but he just says we shouldn’t interfere and wait some more time. I say to him that he’s wrong, but he doesn’t want to listen to a fat little woman from another country with a hijab and lots of oddities. He is one of those who. . you know, who don’t like us. Who thinks we should go home and be followed and killed instead of living here and having it good. .’

‘I see,’ said Traut. ‘Anyway, if you give me the number, I’ll give him a ring.’

‘Good. Come in and ring from me.’

Traut tapped his jacket pocket, but realized that he’d left his mobile in the car with Betty. He followed the woman into her flat.

It was another half an hour before herr Klimkowski appeared in Moerckstraat. He was a small, sturdy man of about sixty with a limp in his right leg, and he made no secret of what he thought about being dragged out on a pointless exercise on a rainy Sunday evening in November.

Betty Klingersweijk wasn’t in a much better mood, despite the fact that Traut had been to the pizzeria on the corner and bought her a beer and pizza with chips.

Women, he thought, after sitting in the car for over a quarter of an hour, trying to entertain her with a little small talk. I simply don’t understand you. I’ll be damned if I do.

‘Well, here I bloody well am,’ said Klimkowski. ‘People think I’m a fucking priest, on call 24/7.’

‘I do apologize,’ said Traut. ‘I don’t think that at all, believe me. It’s just that we happen to be passing through Maardam and we’re a bit worried about my sister-in-law. Obviously I shall pay you for your trouble.’

‘Huh,’ said Klimkowski, rattling his bunch of keys. ‘Keep your money. Now, let’s see. . 16D, Kammerle, is that right?’

Traut nodded and they climbed the stairs once again. Violeta Paraskevi met them on the landing and pointed to the door in question with an exaggerated gesture typical of somebody from the south.

‘I know, I know,’ muttered Klimkowski. ‘Get out of the way.’

He fitted the key in the lock and opened the door.

‘You’ll have to sign a form as well,’ he said, turning to Traut. ‘It has to be a relative or the police for me to be authorized to open the door. I don’t want to find myself in the shit if I can avoid it.’

‘Of course,’ said Traut. ‘So, let’s go in and see what there is to see.’

It took them less than half a minute to find the body, and it was above all the smell that guided them. Martina Kammerle’s rotting corpse was packed into two black rubbish bags under her own bed. One bag was pulled down from the top, the other pulled up from the bottom. When Klimkowski pulled out the corpse and exposed the upper part, Egon Traut realized that the last thing one ought to do before discovering a dead body is to drink beer and eat a pizza.

When he had finished throwing up, he also realized — with a vague trace of gratitude amidst all the gloom — that the sneeze picked up by his mobile phone was not going to have as much significance for the future of his marriage as he had been fearing it would for the last few hours.

Every cloud has a silver lining, he thought, with a slight trace of guilt.