The Package Read online

  THE PACKAGE

  Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

  Sebastian Fitzek

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in German in 2016 by Droemer Knaur

  First published in the UK in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Sebastian Fitzek, 2016

  Translation © Jamie Bulloch, 2020

  The moral right of Sebastian Fitzek to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781838934477

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781838934484

  ISBN (E): 9781838934507

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  5–8 Hardwick

  Street London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  For my dream team: Manu, Roman, Sabrina,

  Christian, Karl, Barbara and Petra

  For the indispensable Carolin and Regine

  And of course for those who I miss even when

  I’m hugging them: Sandra, Charlotte, David and Felix

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Epigraph 2

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Ten Years of Sebastian Fitzek

  About the author

  About the translator

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  In grateful and loving memory of my father,

  Freimut Fitzek

  … all stories, if continued far enough, end in death,

  and he is no true-story teller

  who would keep that from you.

  —Ernest Hemingway

  It’s impossible to observe something

  without changing it.

  —Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle

  Prologue

  When Emma opened her parents’ bedroom door she didn’t know that it would be for the last time. Never again would she clamber into their bed, toy elephant in hand, to snuggle up to her mother at half past midnight, trying her best to avoid waking her father who’d be kicking about, mumbling random words or grinding his teeth in his dreams.

  Tonight he wasn’t kicking, mumbling or grinding his teeth. Tonight he was just whimpering.

  ‘Papa?’

  Emma toddled into the bedroom from the darkness of the corridor. The light of the full moon, which towered over Berlin like a midnight sun on this spring night, shimmered into the room like mercury through the drawn curtains.

  Screwing up her eyes, over which her fringe hung like a chestnut-brown curtain, Emma could make out her surroundings: the rattan chest at the foot of the bed, the glass tables that flanked the wide bed, the wardrobe with sliding doors where she used to hide.

  Until Arthur entered her life and spoiled the game of hide and seek.

  ‘Papa?’ Emma whispered, feeling for her father’s bare foot that was sticking out from under the duvet.

  Emma herself was only wearing one sock, and even that was barely attached to her foot. She’d lost the other while asleep, somewhere along the way from the sparkling unicorn palace to the valley of the silver-grey flying spider, who sometimes frightened Emma in her dreams.

  But not as much as Arthur frightens me.

  Even though he kept assuring her he wasn’t wicked. Could she trust him?

  Emma pressed the elephant more tightly to her chest. Her tongue felt like a dry lump of chewing gum stuck to the roof of her mouth. She’d barely heard her thin voice, so she tried again:

  ‘Papa, wake up.’ Emma tugged at his toe.

  As her father retracted his foot he turned to the side with a whine, briefly lifting the duvet and filling Emma’s nostrils with his sleepy odour. She was certain that if she were blindfolded she could pick her father out of a dozen men by his smell alone. The earthy mixture of tobacco and eau de cologne, which was so familiar. A smell she loved.

  Emma briefly wondered whether she’d be better off trying her mother. Mama was always there for her. Papa often grumbled. Mostly Emma had no idea what she’d done when doors were slammed with such force that the entire house shook. Later Mama would say that her father didn’t really know himself. She explained that he was ‘earasable’, or something like that, and that he felt sorry afterwards. Just sometimes, albeit rarely, he even apologised. He’d come to her room, caress her tear-stained cheek, stroke her hair and say that being a grown-up wasn’t so easy, because of the responsibility, because of the problems you had to deal with, and so on. For Emma these select moments were the happiest of her life, and just what she was in need of right now.

  Today, especially, it would mean so much to her.

  Seeing as how frightened I am.

  ‘Papa, please, I…’

  She was moving to the other end of the bed to touch his head when she tripped over a glass bottle.

  Oh no…

  In her excitement she’d forgotten that Mama and Papa always had a bottle of water by the bed in case one of them got thirsty in the night. When it toppled over and rolled across the parquet floor, to Emma’s ears it sounded as if a freight train were ploughing through the bedroom. The noise was deafening, as if the darkness amplified sound.

  The light went on.

  On her mother’s side.

  Emma let out a high-pitched cry when she suddenly found herself in brightness.

  ‘Sweetheart?’ said her mother, who looked like a saint in the beam of her reading light. Like a saint with dishevelled hair and pillow creases on her face.

  Startled, now Emma’s father opened his eyes too.

  ‘What the hell…?’ His voice was loud, his eyes were scanning the room, trying to get their bearings. He’d obviously woken from a bad dream, maybe it was still in his head. He sat up.


  ‘What’s wrong, sweetie?’ her mother said. Before Emma could reply, her father shouted again, this time even louder.

  ‘Fucking hell!’

  ‘Thomas,’ her mother chided him.

  Maintaining his strident tone, he waved his hand towards Emma.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, how often have I told you…’

  ‘Thomas!’

  ‘… to leave us alone at night!’

  ‘But my… my… my… cupboard…’ Emma stuttered, her eyes welling with tears.

  ‘Not again,’ her father scowled. Her mother’s attempts to calm him only seemed to make him angrier.

  ‘Arthur,’ Emma said nonetheless. ‘The ghost. He’s back. In the cupboard. You’ve got to come, please! He might hurt me otherwise.’

  Her father was breathing heavily, his face darkened, his lips quivered and for a split second he looked how she imagined Arthur to be: a small, sweating devil with a big tummy and bald head.

  ‘Like hell we have to. Get out, Emma, right now, or I might hurt you. No, I will hurt you!’

  ‘Thomas!’ she heard her mother cry again as she staggered backwards.

  Those words had struck Emma hard. Harder than the table-tennis bat she accidentally got in the face last month in games. Tears flooded her face. It was as if her father had slapped her. Emma’s cheeks were burning even though he hadn’t even raised a finger.

  ‘You can’t talk to your daughter like that,’ she heard her mother say. Anxiously, with a soft voice. Almost imploring him.

  ‘I’ll talk to her as I like. She’s finally got to learn that she can’t come bursting in here every night…’

  ‘She’s a six-year-old girl.’

  ‘And I’m a forty-four-year-old man, but it seems as if my needs count for nothing in this house.’

  Emma dropped her elephant without realising it. She turned to the door and left the room as if she were being pulled along like a puppet on a string.

  ‘Thomas…’

  ‘Will you shut up with your Thomas,’ her father said, imitating his wife. ‘I’ve only been asleep for half an hour. If I’m not on form in court tomorrow and lose this case then that’s my practice up the spout and you can wave goodbye to all this: the house, your car, the baby.’

  ‘I know…’

  ‘You know fuck all. Emma’s already eating us out of house and home, but you were adamant about having a second kid, who’ll stop me from sleeping altogether. For Christ’s sake. It might not have escaped you that I’m the only one earning money in this family. And I NEED MY SLEEP!’

  Although Emma was already halfway down the corridor, her father’s voice wasn’t any quieter. Only her mother’s. ‘Shhh, Thomas. Darling. Relax.’

  ‘HOW THE FUCK CAN I RELAX HERE?’

  ‘Come on, let me, please. I’ll look after you now, okay?’

  ‘LOOK AFTER? Ever since you got pregnant again, you’ve only looked after…’

  ‘I know, I know. That’s my fault. Come on, let me…’

  Emma closed her bedroom door, shutting out her parents’ voices.

  Or at least those from the bedroom. Not those in her head.

  Get out, Emma, right now, or…

  She wiped the tears from her eyes and waited for the roaring in her ears to disappear, but it wouldn’t. Just as the moonlight, which shone more brightly here than in her parents’ room, wouldn’t vanish back out the windows. Her blinds were made of thin linen, while the luminous stars stuck to the ceiling also glowed above her bed.

  My bed.

  Emma wanted to crawl into it and cry beneath the duvet, but she couldn’t do that until she was certain that the ghost wasn’t in his hiding place. Certain that he wouldn’t pounce on her while she was asleep, certain that he had gone, like he had every time when Mama went to take a look with her.

  The old farmer’s cupboard was a monstrosity with crude carvings in the oak doors, which mimicked the cackle of an old witch when they were opened.

  Like now.

  Please let him not be there.

  ‘Hello?’ Emma said into the black hole before her eyes. The cupboard was so big that her things only took up the left-hand side. On the other side there was space for her mother’s towels and tablecloths.

  And for Arthur.

  ‘Hello,’ the ghost with the deep voice answered. As always it sounded as if he were putting a hand in front of his mouth. Or a cloth.

  Emma let out a short scream. Oddly, however, she didn’t feel that profound, all-embracing fear she’d experienced earlier, when she’d heard a clattering inside the cupboard and she’d gone to take a look.

  Maybe fear is like a bag of gummy bears, she thought. I’ve finished it all in my parents’ bedroom.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Of course. Did you think I’d leave you alone?’

  I hoped you would.

  ‘What if my papa had come to look?’

  Arthur laughed softly. ‘I knew he wouldn’t come.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Has he ever looked after you?’

  Emma hesitated. ‘Yes.’

  No. I don’t know.

  ‘But Mama…’

  ‘Your mother is weak. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘You?’ Emma sniffled.

  ‘Tell me…’ Arthur paused briefly and his voice went deeper. ‘Have you been crying?’

  Emma nodded. She didn’t know if the ghost could see her, but his eyes probably didn’t need any light. Maybe he didn’t have any eyes at all. She couldn’t be sure as she’d never seen Arthur.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘Papa got angry.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said…’ Emma swallowed. Hearing the words in her head was one thing. Saying them out loud was a different thing altogether. It was painful. But Arthur insisted and, worried that he might become just as irate as her father, she repeated them.

  ‘Get out or I’ll hurt you.’

  ‘He said that?’

  Emma nodded again. And Arthur did seem to be able to see her in the dark, because he reacted to her nodding. He grunted his disapproval and then something quite extraordinary happened. Arthur left his hiding place. For the first time ever.

  The ghost, who was much bigger than she’d imagined, pushed a number of hangers aside and as he climbed out he stroked her hair with his gloved fingers.

  ‘Come on, Emma, go to bed now and settle down.’

  She looked up at him and froze. Instead of a face she saw a distorted image of herself. As if she were in a chamber of horrors, gazing at a mirror mounted on a long black column.

  It took a while before she realised that Arthur was wearing a motorbike helmet and she was staring at her grotesque likeness in his visor.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ he promised, making for the door.

  There was something about the way he moved that Emma found familiar, but she was far too distracted by the sharp object in Arthur’s right hand.

  It would be years before she realised that this was a syringe.

  With a long needle that glinted silver in the moonlight.

  A liar will not be believed

  even when he speaks the truth

  —Proverb

  1

  Twenty-eight years later

  ‘Don’t do it. I was lying. Please don’t…’

  The audience, consisting almost entirely of men, tried not to show any emotion as they watched the half-naked, black-haired woman being tortured.

  ‘For God’s sake, it’s a mistake. I just made it all up. A terrible mistake… Help!’

  Her cries echoed around the whitewashed, sterile room; her words were clearly intelligible. Nobody present would be able to claim later that they’d misunderstood her.

  The woman didn’t want this.

  Despite her protests, the slightly overweight, bearded man with wonky teeth stuck the syringe into the crook of her strapped arm.

  Despite her protests, they di
dn’t remove the electrodes attached to her forehead and temples, nor even the ring around her head, which reminded her of those unfortunate tortured monkeys in animal testing laboratories, their skulls opened and probes inserted into their brains.

  Which basically wasn’t so different from what was about to be done to her now.

  When the sedative and muscle relaxant began to take effect, they began manual ventilation. Then the men started administering the electrical impulses: 475 volts, 17 times in succession, until they triggered an epileptic fit.

  From the angle of the closed-circuit camera it was impossible to tell whether the black-haired woman was offering resistance or whether her limbs were twitching spastically. The backs of the figures sporting aprons and face masks blocked the audience’s view. But the screaming had stopped. Eventually the film stopped too and it became a little brighter in the hall.

  ‘What you have just witnessed is a horrific case…’ Dr Emma Stein began her observations, breaking off briefly to pull the microphone a bit closer so the conference guests could hear her more clearly. Now she was annoyed she’d spurned the footstool the technician had offered her during the soundcheck. Usually she would have asked for one herself, but the guy in overalls had given her such a condescending grin that she’d rejected the sensible option of making herself taller. As a result she was having to stand on tiptoe behind the lectern.

  ‘… a horrific case of coercive psychiatry which had long been thought consigned to history.’

  Like Emma, most of those present were psychiatrists. Which meant she didn’t have to explain to her colleagues that her criticism wasn’t levelled at electroconvulsive therapy. Conducting electricity through a human brain might sound terribly mediaeval, but it produced promising results in combating psychoses and depression. Performed under general anaesthetic, the treatment had virtually no side effects.

  ‘We managed to smuggle this footage captured by a surgery-monitoring camera from the Orphelio Clinic in Hamburg. The patient whose fate you’ve just witnessed was committed on 3 May last year, diagnosed with schizoid psychosis, based solely on what the forty-three-year-old herself said upon admission. But there was nothing wrong with her at all. The supposed patient faked her symptoms.’