She smiled—but only for a second.
“It wouldn’t be a lie to say that Rose never heard one positive or kind word from her dad. He was as cold as ice when it came to her, and what was worse, he made sure that Rose’s mom didn’t dare say anything kind to her either.”
“But he wasn’t like that with her sisters?”
She shook her head. “I know that Rose tried to placate him in different ways when she was a bit older. But if she cooked for the family, she could rest assured that he would empty the water jug over his plate in disgust after the first bite. If she vacuumed, he would empty his ashtray on the floor if she had missed just one speck of dust.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“No, but that’s nothing. He wrote notes to her school principal saying that Rose made fun of the teachers and spoke badly about them at home, asking them to instill some respect in her.”
“And it wasn’t true?”
“Of course it wasn’t. When her mom bought her clothes, he burst out laughing, pointed his finger at her and called her an ugly piece of shit, and said the mirror would crack if she looked in it. He threw her things off the shelves if a book was slightly out of place so she would learn to keep her room tidy. He ordered her to eat her dinner in the utility room if she withdrew into herself when he was bullying her. He called her a stinking tart if she dared to borrow a little splash of Yrsa or Vicky’s perfume.”
Assad said something in Arabic under his breath. That rarely indicated anything favorable about the person in question.
Carl nodded. “So what you’re saying is that he was an asshole.”
Karoline hung her head. “An asshole? I don’t have the words to describe him. When Rose was being confirmed, he made her wear an old dress because he didn’t want to spend money on her. They didn’t have a party for her because why spend money on presents when she didn’t look after her things anyway? Do you think ‘asshole’ is strong enough for a man who treats his daughter like that?”
Carl shook his head. There are many ways to knock a child’s confidence, and none of them justifiable.
“I hear what you’re saying, but does that explain what I told you earlier? That she expressed her hatred for her dad every day in her notebooks?”
Kinua von Kunstwerk was in no doubt. “You have to understand that as soon as he came home from work, there wasn’t a moment when he wasn’t bullying her. For example, he loved to ask her impossible questions, which of course she couldn’t answer, and then mock her for being stupid. And if he could get away with doing it when there were other children around, all the better. She told me that when she was learning to ride a bike, which she had to because she had been moved to a new school, her dad pretended to help her keep her balance, but of course he let go of the bike as soon as she swerved, causing her to fall off and hurt herself badly.”
She looked at Carl, trying to compose herself. “It’s difficult to remember, but now that I’ve started, it’s all coming back to me. I remember clearly that her dad forced her to stay at home when the family went on trips because he didn’t want to look at her grumpy face when they were supposed to be having fun. And he favored her sisters to the point of her disappearing entirely.
“When she had a rare opportunity to forget about her trauma, he would corner her, like the time before her final high school exams when he made a racket all night to stop her from getting any sleep. She also said to me that he told her she would die if she had the slightest cold or was feeling a bit unwell. And when he was most cunning, he would pretend to be kind. For example, he would point at the strawberry bed in the vegetable garden and tell her which row she could pick from, only to shout like a maniac afterward that she’d picked them from the row that had been sprayed with insecticide and that she’d die in immense agony.”
Carl stared blankly in front of him. Poor Rose.
“Don’t you remember anything redeeming?” he asked.
Karoline shook her head. “He never apologized, but forced Rose to do it over and over whenever she made the slightest mistake.”
“But why, Karoline? Do you know?”
“Maybe because Rose’s mom was already expecting her when they met each other. At least that’s my theory. Apart from that, he was a complete psycho and hated her because she never, ever cried when he provoked her.”
Carl nodded. It definitely made sense. He wondered if her sisters knew all this.
“And then you came into her life?” said Assad.
She smiled. “Yes, I did. And I made her laugh at her so-called dad when he bullied her. That made him furious, but it also dampened his attacks a little bit. He wasn’t the type to put up with being the laughingstock. I also told her that she could just kill him if he started again. We laughed a lot about that idea one summer.”
Then she went quiet, as if in hindsight she could see it all with more perspective.
“What are you thinking about, Karoline?” asked Carl.
“I’m thinking that he did get her in the end after all.”
Carl and Assad looked at her quizzically.
“She wanted to continue studying, but he got her into the steel plant instead. Of course it was where he worked himself. Where else? He wasn’t about to give up his control over her, was he?”
“Why didn’t she just move to another city, away from her tormentor?”
Kinua von Kunstwerk pulled her kimono tighter around her. Now she was back in the present, where this was no longer her problem, and where the doorbell in the exhibition room had suddenly become very active.
“Why?” She shrugged. “When it came to it, he had just worn her down.”
—
“He’s broken her for life, don’t you think?”
Carl frowned. How he wished that he had known years ago what they had learned today.
“Do you think Rose killed her dad?” continued Assad.
“If she did, it hasn’t been proven.”
“And what if we could prove it?”
Carl glanced out of the side window at a sea of yellow. Wasn’t it a bit early for the rapeseed fields to be in full bloom? He could never remember.
“What do you think, Carl? What’s the plan?”
“You heard Kinua. Maybe the best thing to do for Rose is to keep this to ourselves.”
“Agreed, Carl. I feel the same way.” He seemed relieved.
They sat in silence for a long time before their thoughts were interrupted by the telephone ringing. Assad pressed the green telephone icon on the screen.
It was Gordon.
“How did it go on your round?” asked Carl. “Did you manage to lose the TV crew?”
It sounded like Gordon laughed, but you never knew with him.
“Yes,” he answered. “They left after twenty minutes because nothing was happening. They said they couldn’t be bothered to plod around on a route I’d already done before. Apart from that they kept asking me about the nightclub and hit-and-run cases. I don’t think they’re really interested in the Zimmermann case.”