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the only means at my disposal—literature. I am going to haul him over the coals with this book. And I want him to look me in the eye with the full knowledge that I have seen through him, even if no one else has. I am going to prove Victor Lenzen guilty and find out why Anna had to die. No matter what it takes.
    That is the momentous task I have set myself. I am working on a crime novel in which I describe a murder that resembles the murder of my sister down to the last detail.
    I have never had to write such a complex book: on the one hand, I want to stick as closely as possible to the truth; on the other, I must invent a story that leads to the murderer’s arrest—an ending that has so far been denied to me in real life.
    I’ve never tried to recreate reality in my books before. I would have considered it a waste. I have always had a prolific imagination, a head full of stories wanting to get out.
    If my parents are to be believed, I was fond of making up tales even as a child. It was a catchphrase in our family: Linda and her stories. I remember once telling a primary-school friend that I had been for a walk in the woods with my mother and that, as we’d been picking wild strawberries, we’d caught sight of a small, spotted fawn in a clearing, asleep on the grass. I’d wanted to go up and stroke it, but my mother had held me back and told me that the fawn would smell of human afterwards and its mummy might reject it, so it was better to leave it to sleep in peace. She told me how lucky I was to have found a little fawn like that—it was very rare.
    I remember how impressed my friend had been by the story. She went to the woods often and although she sometimes saw deer she’d never seen a fawn. I was so proud—I really had been tremendously lucky. I remember my mother taking me aside when my friend had gone home and asking why I told such stories. She said it wasn’t nice to fib, and I told her indignantly that I hadn’t been fibbing. Didn’t she remember the fawn? I could, clearly. My mother shook her head—Linda and her stories—and told me we’d seen a fawn like that in a film the other day. And then it all came back to me. Of course, a film!
    Imagination is a wonderful thing, so wonderful that I make a great deal of money out of it. Everything I’ve written so far has been as far removed as possible from myself and the reality I know. It is odd to let other people into my life now. I console myself with the thought that these aren’t really scenes from my life but a displaced reality in which I immerse myself. A lot of the details are different, partly because I make a conscious decision to change them and partly because, after all this time, I can’t be certain of every single detail. Only one chapter—the one everything revolves around—will be authentic: a night in high summer, Anna’s flat, deafening music, blood and vacant eyes…
    The book ought really to begin with that chapter, but I haven’t yet been able to face going back to that place. Yesterday I promised myself I’d write the chapter today, and today I’ve put it off until tomorrow.
    Writing is strenuous, but in a good way. It’s my daily training. It does me good to have a real goal.
    No one except me notices any difference. Everything’s the same: Linda sits in her big, lonely house and tells her agent and her publisher that she’s working on a new book. Linda does that once a year; it’s nothing special. Business as usual for my agent, Pia, who’s already been informed that a new manuscript is on its way and who is naturally delighted. (Although it does, of course, surprise her that I should suddenly want to change genre and write a thriller.) Business as usual for Charlotte, who at most notices how I’m spending less time reading and watching TV, and more time in my study. Business as usual for Ferdi, the man who tends my garden and may only notice that he’s come across me in my pyjamas less in the middle of the day.