The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

encounter. What shocked her most was the ordinariness of the scene, the unremarkable picture of the man who now lay before her. A life completely expunged.

Two of her friends instantly ran to find the nearest village where they could phone for an ambulance. While the rest of the group waited at a safe distance from the corpse, Ellen casually wandered off into the woods and picked bluebells to help her through the long wait, as if the trivial pursuit of woodland flowers would blot out this confrontation with death.

And today, in the slightly disturbing comfort of the Zellwegers’ lounge, her bluebells were these two naked women in their erotic embrace.

Ellen did not cry. Did not even gently weep to herself when Marthe sat down beside her, poured the tea and explained what happened when she fainted. Ellen was imbued with an intensely uncomfortable feeling of guilt that she was unable to shed any tears. In her heart, she had long since come to terms with the idea that she would never see Frank again. She had sensed it the moment she decided to return to London. And yet, when she did set eyes on him, face to face, he came to her like a figure in a dream. Lunging in her direction from a crowd of strange faces and masks, before instantly vanishing again. It was hard for her even to comprehend the idea that this could actually have been Frank. After all these months.

“Can I see him?” Ellen asked.

“You will have to identify the body,” Marthe said. She placed a comforting hand on Ellen’s arm. “And they may want to perform an autopsy.”

“An autopsy?”

“Kommissar Staehelin will send someone to pick you up tomorrow morning,” Marthe explained.

“I still don’t understand,” Ellen said.

“Do you remember just before you returned home last year that a man was attacked on a shooting range and his gun was stolen? And the police suspected it might have been Frank?”

Ellen gave Marthe a look both incredulous and disapproving.

“Apparently a gun like that was used in the killing of a gangster around the time you returned to London,” Marthe continued. “Last night, a man was shot in the same house. That is the murder case which was occupying our Kommissar yesterday, because they think that Frank may have had something to do with it.”

“That’s ridiculous!” cried Ellen. “My Frank a killer?”

As she spoke these words, her memory of that fleeting sight of Frank resurfaced, the glint of metal in his hand.

“The Kommissar will speak with you later. You know, the police are watching the house where the dead man lived since many months already. He was in a drugs gang, and now they are thinking that Frank has had something to do with it.”

“No, it’s ludicrous,” Ellen insisted. Then asked: “What happened exactly? After I passed out?”

“Ellen, my love.” Ellen had never seen such tenderness in Marthe’s expression before. Even when they lay in each other’s arms, it was usually lined with a certain severity – hardened maybe by years of disappointment.

“You can tell me, Marthe. I saw him fall. I remember his face staring up at me, deathly white and empty.”

Marthe placed a hand on Ellen’s arm.

“They are not sure until they have made an autopsy, but it was probably a heart attack.”

Just like his mother, Ellen thought. Or was it? There were still so many unanswered questions. Yet all of a sudden none of them interested her any longer. She had spent so long searching and waiting for Frank, only to discover a huge unexplained hole. And she had no wish to spend any more time filling this hole with pointless questions and answers. She was too tired for that. Frank was gone. He was dead. That was all she needed to know.

“It’s all over, then.”

Marthe nodded.

Chapter 27

The next morning, when Ellen was called to identify Frank’s body, she was on edge. Her nerves frayed. She was wondering after all whether she could cope with seeing his lifeless corpse. What bluebells could there possibly be to help her through this ritual?

Marthe suggested they go and have a drink at a café in the market square beforehand to calm her nerves. They found a table on the first floor next to a window overlooking the market square.

“I have been thinking a lot in the months while you were away, Ellen,” said Marthe as she sipped on their coffee. Ellen was lost in her thoughts, gazing out over the stalls in the market. The winter vegetables. Cheeses. And cut flowers to add a splash of colour.

“What you said about Frank and how difficult his mother found him when he was a child,” Marthe continued. Ellen turned her gaze back at Marthe, who could not escape a hint of curiosity in her eyes. But there was also a resignation, a flatness to Ellen’s expression.

“What of it?” she asked.

“When I was in America with Urs, I was reading some fascinating articles by a psychiatrist there about the survival of human personality after death. I think his name was Stevens. Or maybe Stevenson. It was really thought-provoking. Of course, Urs found it complete nonsense. Like most of his colleagues. He just laughed at the whole idea, which really shocked me at the time, because I knew how much he admired C.G. Jung’s work. But ‘it was Jung’s contribution to psychotherapy that was so important,’ Urs said. ‘Not all that visionary, occultist nonsense.’”

“What does all this have to do with Frank?” Ellen asked.

“This Stevens man wrote about children with memories of a former life. They recalled places, people and also past events, things that happened long before they were even born and which they could not possibly have known. And when he checked their stories, he found those people and places had really existed. The events had really happened. They corresponded exactly with the memory of the child – although the child could not possibly have had knowledge of those places and events. It’s even been suggested that injuries in a