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Everything is the same. Only the observant Bukowski knows that I’m plotting something and gives me conspiratorial glances. Yesterday I caught him looking at me with concern in his big, knowing eyes, and I felt touched.
    It’ll all be fine, mate.
    For a long time, I wondered whether to take anyone into my confidence. It would be wise. But I decided against it. What I’m planning to do is crazy. Any normal person would simply call the police. If I were to confide in Norbert, he’d tell me to do just that: Call the police, Linda!
    But I can’t. If the police believed me at all, they would probably question Victor Lenzen, and then he’d be forewarned and I’d never get a look-in. I might never find out what happened all those years ago. I can’t bear that thought. No, I have to do it myself. For Anna.
    There’s no other way: I must look him in the eye and ask him questions. Not polite questions, such as a policeman might put to an influential journalist who seems unimpeachable. None of your ‘Terribly sorry to bother you, but we have a witness here who thinks…’
    None of your ‘Where were you on the…?’
    Proper questions, such as only I can ask and only if I’m alone. Besides, if I were to rope anyone else into this business, I am well aware that it would only be out of fear and selfishness. Victor Lenzen is dangerous. I don’t want him coming into contact with people I love and cherish.
    So I’m left to my own devices. In the end, there isn’t anyone (not counting Norbert and Bukowski) whom I one hundred per cent trust, anyway. I don’t even know if I can trust myself one hundred per cent.
    So I haven’t told anyone more than the bare essentials. I’ve spoken to my agent, to the head of publicity at the publishing house, and to my editor. They were all perplexed that I want to write a crime novel, and even more perplexed that I want to give an interview, but they swallowed it. I still have to talk with my publisher, but the most important things are already underway. I have a deadline for the manuscript and a publication date.
    All of that is good. Having a deadline to work towards has given meaning to my existence over the years and has more than once saved my life. It’s hard living all alone in this big house, and I have often thought about simply absconding—a handful of sleeping pills, or a razor blade in the bath…
    In the end, it was always something as banal as a deadline that held me back. All that stuff was so real; I could always imagine what immense trouble I’d be causing my publishing house by failing to deliver. There were contracts and plans in place. So I carried on living and kept writing.
    I try not to give too much thought to the fact that this book might be my last.
    I have set a dangerous chain of events in motion by ringing up the newspaper’s editorial department. It was a clever move on my part because now there’s no turning back. It transpires that Lenzen works for a newspaper as well as in television, which is good because it would be counterproductive for him to turn up with a television crew. So I’ve arranged an interview with the newspaper—just the two of us. I return to Jonas Weber, the young police officer with dark hair and grave eyes, one brown, one green. And to Sophie, for that’s what I’ve decided to call my literary alter ego. Sophie reminds me of the way I used to be: playful, impulsive, incapable of sitting still for long. Early-morning walks in the woods, camping trips, sex in changing rooms, mountain-climbing, football matches.
    I study the portrait of Sophie on the pages I’ve written. She looks like somebody who’d like to be challenged, who isn’t yet broken. That’s not me anymore. The eyes that discovered Anna’s dead body twelve years ago are no longer mine. Bit by bit, they’ve been replaced. My lips are no longer the lips I pressed together when I watched my sister’s coffin being lowered into her grave. My hands are no longer the