The Unknown Guest (eBook)

A Novel

Charlotte Link (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015 | 1. Auflage
496 Seiten
Blanvalet (Verlag)
978-3-641-17296-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Rebecca Brandt has decided to take her own life. Nothing can console her for the death of her husband. But an unexpected visitor keeps her from carrying out her plans, an old friend who shows up at her secluded house in the South of France and brings two strangers along with him: the students Inga and Marius, who wanted to hitchhike to the sea. Rebecca befriends the two of them and even lets them use her boat. But while they're out sailing, they get into a terrible fight, and at some point Marius goes overboard. He seems to have disappeared without a trace. Shortly thereafter his picture appears in the paper: the police in Germany are looking for him in connection with a gruesome murder.

Charlotte Link, geboren in Frankfurt/Main, ist die erfolgreichste deutsche Autorin der Gegenwart. Ihre Kriminalromane sind internationale Bestseller, auch »Ohne Schuld« und zuletzt »Einsame Nacht« eroberten wieder auf Anhieb die SPIEGEL-Bestsellerliste. Allein in Deutschland wurden bislang über 33,3 Millionen Bücher von Charlotte Link verkauft; ihre Romane sind in zahlreiche Sprachen übersetzt. Charlotte Link lebt mit ihrer Familie in der Nähe von München.

Textauszug

SUNDAY, JULY 18

She dreamed that a little boy had rung their doorbell. She turned him away, just as she always turned away anyone who stood before her uninvited and wanted something from her. This attack-style begging had always been a thorn in her side; she felt harassed and intruded upon whenever someone suddenly showed up on their doorstep with hand outstretched. Most of the time it was for a good cause, of course, but then again, who knew if these people were always honest? And even if they flashed some credential that showed them to be authorized to collect for charitable organizations, it was still simply impossible to tell that quickly if you weren’t looking at a more or less well made counterfeit. Especially when you were sixty-seven years old and were having more and more trouble with your eyes.

No sooner had she shut the door than the doorbell rang again.

She sat up in bed with a jolt, confused, because this time the ringing in the dream had actually torn her from her sleep. She still had the image of the boy in front of her: a gaunt, pale, almost translucent face with giant eyes. He wasn’t asking for money, he was asking for something to eat.

“I’m so hungry,” he had said, softly and yet almost with a note of accusation. She had slammed the door shut, terrified, horror-struck, confronted with an aspect of the world that she didn’t want to see. Had turned around and tried to get the image out of her head, and right at that moment the doorbell rang and she thought: Now here he is again!

Why had she woken up just now? Had the doorbell actually rung? One did like to incorporate noises like that into one’s dreams. But in that case it could only have been an alarm clock, and they didn’t even have one. They didn’t work anymore, after all, and in the morning they were both awake rather early anyway, purely of their own accord.

It was very dark, but through the cracks in the roll-down shutters a little light from the streetlamps made its way inside. She could see her husband asleep next to her. He lay there completely motionless, same as always, and his breathing was so soft and steady that you had to listen very closely to know if he was even breathing at all. She had read once about how older couples would fall asleep together at night, and then in the morning one of them would wake up and the other would be dead. She had thought then that if Fred were to die in this manner it would take a good long time before she noticed.

Her heart beat hard and fast. A look at the digital clock, its digits shining bright green, told her that it was almost two o’clock in the morning. Not a good time to wake up. You were so defenseless. She was at least. She had had the feeling many times that were anything bad ever to happen to her — were she to die, for example — then it would occur between one and four in the morning.

A depressing dream, she told herself, nothing more. You can just go back to sleep.

She lay back down on her pillow, and right at that moment the doorbell rang again, and she realized that it hadn’t been a dream.

Someone was ringing their front doorbell at two o’clock in the morning.

She sat up again and heard her own hectic breath in the oppressive silence that followed the shrill ringing.

It’s completely harmless, she thought. I don’t have to answer.

It couldn’t mean anything good. Not even salesmen came to call at this hour. Anyone who would scare people out of bed at this hour was either up to no good or was in serious need of help. And wasn’t the latter much more likely? A burglar or a murderer wouldn’t very well ring the doorbell, would he?

She switched on the light and bent over her husband, who was still sound asleep. He couldn’t hear a thing; he had put in earplugs. Fred was so sensitive to noises, even the whisper of the wind through the trees by their bedroom window disturbed him. Or the creak of a wooden floorboard, or the withered leaf of a houseplant detaching itself and floating down to the floor. It woke him up, and for him that was the absolute worst. To have to wake up when he had in fact decided to sleep. It plunged him into a nameless rage. His mood was ruined for days. It was because of this that he had eventually started using the earplugs. And his wife had been able to breathe again.

She was therefore hesitant to wake him. He could be so upset with her for it that for a week he would barely speak to her. At least if he later concluded that it hadn’t been necessary to tear him from sleep. If it turned out that he really ought to have been woken up, and she hadn’t done so, the result for her could be the same. She had been married to this man for forty-three years now, and her life with him had consisted overwhelmingly of moments like this: Torn between two options, nervously weighing which path might be the right one, the top priority in this always being not to stoke his rage. God knew it wasn’t an easy life with him.

The doorbell rang a third time, ringing longer this time, more demanding, more insistent. She decided that given such an unusual occurrence, Fred’s night’s sleep could be sacrificed. She shook him by the shoulder.

“Fred,” she whispered, even though he couldn’t hear her, “wake up! Please, wake up! There’s someone at the front door!”

Fred rolled reluctantly on his side, grumbling. Then, in an instant, he was suddenly wide awake and sitting up in bed as well. He stared at his wife.

“What the hell …,” he began.

“There’s someone at the door!”

He could only see her lips moving and he grudgingly took the plugs out of his ears. “What’s wrong? What are you doing waking me up?”

“The doorbell’s ringing. Three times already.”

He kept on staring at her, as if she weren’t quite sane. “What? The doorbell’s ringing? At this hour?”

“Yes, I think it’s very unsettling, too.” She hoped the doorbell would ring again, since she could tell that Fred didn’t believe her, but for the moment everything remained calm.

“You were dreaming. And on account of a stupid dream you think you’ve got to wake me up?” His eyes flashed angrily at her. His white hair stood up in all directions.

A moody, surly old man, she thought, and at this point not even attractive anymore, either. I might live twenty more years. If he doesn’t die before me, then I’ll end up having lived with him for sixty-three years. Sixty-three years!

All at once the thought made her feel so sad that she could have cried.

“Greta, if you do this again …,” Fred began, full of scorn, but just at that moment the doorbell rang again, somewhat longer still and more persistent than before.

“You see!” It sounded almost triumphant. “There is someone at the door.”

“It’s true,” Fred said, bewildered. “But it’s … it’s two o’clock in the morning!”

“I know. But an intruder …”

“. . . would hardly ring the doorbell. Although theoretically it would be the only chance he’d have to make it inside the house!”

That was true. Back when they had bought the house and moved in four years ago, Fred had put a lot of time and effort into turning it into a fortress. A retreat for their later years, as he called it. Quiet suburb on the outskirts of Munich, a rather well-to-do neighborhood. They had also lived in Munich before then, in a completely different part of town, but then it too had been a so-called better area. They had been younger, however. With old age Fred had developed a pronounced paranoia when it came to intruders, and so by this point all the windows on the first floor had bars on them, all the shutters in the house were outfitted with padlocks, and there was of course an alarm system on the roof.

“Maybe we should just ignore the sound.”

“Ignore someone who deliberately pulls us out of bed?” Fred swung both legs over the edge of the bed. His movements were still rather agile for his age. But he had gotten very thin recently. His blue-and-black-striped silk pajamas hung on him like an empty sack. “I’m going to call the police!”

“But you can’t do that! Maybe it’s a neighbor who needs help! Or it’s …” She said nothing further.

Fred knew whom she meant. “Why should he come to us if there’s something wrong? He hasn’t shown himself in ages.”

“Still. It could be him. We should …” The truth was she was completely at a loss and out of her depth. “We have to do something!”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying! We’ll call the police!”

“And what if it really is just … him, though?” Why, she thought, do I always have this fear of even just saying his name in front of Fred?

By now Fred was tired of this back and forth.

“I’m just going to go see right now,” he said with resolve and left the room.

She heard his steps on the stairs. Then she heard his voice down in the foyer. “Hello? Who’s there?”

Later — when she no longer had any opportunity to discuss it with Fred, and when she understood that she wouldn’t be living twenty more years, but rather just hours or at best days — she asked herself what answer her husband had received from the other side of the door to make him open it so quickly and readily. She heard that the various locks and bolts were undone. Then she heard a dull blow; she couldn’t tell what it was, but it set her entire body on alert. The little hairs on her forearms stood up. Her heart wouldn’t stop...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.9.2015
• Übersetzer: Marshall Yarbrough
• Verlagsort: München
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• Schlagworte: bestselling author • Crime • eBooks • Frankreich • Frauen • Freunde • Krimi • Kriminalromane • Krimis • Psychothriller • Rätsel • Roman • South France • Spannung • Spiegel-Online-Bestseller • Südfrankreich • Thriller • Verbrechen
• ISBN-10: 3-641-17296-9 / 3641172969
• ISBN-13: 978-3-641-17296-1 / 9783641172961