Woman of the Dead Read Free Page A

he could. And after a while they shared their first kiss. They were sitting in the cool room drinking beer, tired and happy. They had been retiling the preparation room, it was late summer, they were sweating and laughing as they sat on beer crates.
    ‘Blum?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘This is the sexiest fridge I’ve ever sat in.’
    ‘Do you often sit in fridges?’
    ‘Well, I’m a cop.’
    ‘So cops sit in fridges?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘You’re crazy.’
    ‘No crazier than you. I mean, it was your idea to have our first beer in here.’
    ‘This is our fourth beer.’
    ‘Stop counting, Blum.’
    ‘It really doesn’t bother you that this place is normally filled with dead bodies?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I spent a lot of time in this room when I was a child.’
    ‘With the bodies or without them?’
    ‘With them.’
    ‘Doors open or closed?’
    ‘Closed.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘It was my hiding place. They didn’t come looking for me, so I often spent hours in here. I just sat and watched the dead.’
    ‘Pretty cold, wasn’t it, with the door closed?’
    ‘Not in skiing underwear, a ski suit, gloves and a hat.’
    ‘Sounds a bit crazy, but I believe you.’
    ‘You should.’
    ‘You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You’re honest with me.’
    ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
    ‘Can I trust you?’
    ‘Why do you ask that?’
    ‘Because I have to kiss you.’
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘I can’t help it, I’ve been wanting to for the last two months. I really wanted to when I saw you on the boat. I’m sorry, I really need to.’
    ‘So you have to trust me to kiss me?’
    ‘If I kiss you, I’ll want to marry you. And then it’s surely a good thing to trust each other, don’t you think?’
    ‘But you don’t know me.’
    ‘Yes, I do.’
    ‘When I was little I played with dead bodies.’
    ‘And I put cats in a sack and drowned them. I put fireworks in frogs and watched them explode.’
    ‘No, you didn’t.’
    ‘I did.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I was curious.’
    ‘Me too. That’s why I have to kiss you.’
    ‘Don’t I get any say in it?’
    ‘Certainly not.’
    How lovely it was. How close their faces came, their lips. How their mouths met, soft, excited, trembling. Familiar and strange and lovely. Blum and Mark in the cool room. To this day their mouths have gone on touching.
    It was a two-storey Jugendstil villa in the middle of Innsbruck, its garden filled with apples. When Hagen and Herta were underground Blum tore everything old out of the house: her parents’ bedroom, the old pine-panelled living room, the kitchen. Nothing was left except the old wooden floor; she kept that and sanded it down. The work took her hours. She scrubbed and painted, and Mark helped her. He offered to, and she thanked him.
If you don’t have anything better to do. How can anyone be so friendly and kind? Are you really sure you don’t have a girlfriend?
He said no, frowning, and Blum relished it all: the fact that he kept coming back, that he had decided to take care of her. That he thought she was beautiful, and took days off for her. That he even brought his colleagues to lend a hand. Half the province’s police officers helped them to tear down the walls and clear the rubble.
    The Blums’ house was gutted and refurbished, the walls were painted in new, bright colours, and the old ghosts were banished. Together with Mark, she wandered all through the house at night, smoking them out. She and Mark went from room to room, and smoke rose; the scent of juniper, cinnamon and orange peel lingered in the air. Whether Mark believed in it or not, he went with her, helping the witch with her exorcism, making an effort to feel the evil within the walls. They went from cellar to attic, flooding every corner with positive thoughts, and all that had been there before disappeared. Blum threw all thoughts of Hagen and Herta, of her old life with them, out with the rubbish. What was left was a dream house, an oasis of