The sun was still warm in the sky when Katja stepped onto Marit’s terrace. The grill was cold, the beer bottles still sealed in a crate beside the table, yet the air was already heavy with a strange kind of expectation. Katja felt it at once. Something hung there. Something weightier than a summer evening and the smell of charcoal.
Sina was already at the table, her feet propped casually on one of the chairs as if the place belonged to her. Marit had given her a loose summer dress that seemed oddly foreign on her, too light, too colorful for a woman with such sharp, almost too quiet eyes.
Konrad Vohwinkel helped himself to a bottle of water and leaned against the railing, his gaze sliding left toward the fields of rapeseed that stretched behind Marit’s house, right toward the church and the small old cemetery. Marit stepped briefly beside him, and his eyes brushed her profile. Just a fleeting moment, but in it was something like recognition, something tender, something he chose to keep to himself.
Only Henning seemed not entirely present. Pale, cheeks hollowed, he sat like a man whose ground had been cut from beneath his feet. Katja glanced at Sven, just for a moment, and it was enough for silent agreement: they would need to tread carefully.
Katja was about to ask Henning if he wanted something to drink when he stood and slipped away with the words: “Be right back, just need to grab something from the garage.”
Marit frowned. “Garage? What garage? Does he mean my garage? Am I supposed to understand this?”
A moment later Henning returned, not empty-handed. He balanced two gray archive boxes against his chest, heavy and awkward. Katja rose, took one from him. On the lid was the symbol, the same one marked beneath Sina’s breast and on Faris’ thigh.
“What the…” Marit stared at him in disbelief. “How did those end up in my garage?”
Henning avoided her eyes. “This morning. I… I didn’t know where else to put them. I didn’t want to burden you, so I stashed them in your garage for the time being.”
“Without saying a word to me?” Marit asked, torn between surprise and annoyance. She took the second box from him. The same symbol was burned into it.
“Sorry,” Henning muttered. “I didn’t know who I could trust anymore.”
Katja opened the box, full of papers sealed in plastic sleeves. “Looks like… parchment and ink. Symbols that resemble ancient signs.”
She left the yellowed sheet inside the cover and handed it to Konrad. His goatee trembled with excitement as his bony fingers brushed reverently across the plastic. “And handwriting, nearly impossible to decipher.”
Sina reached out, careful, almost tender, as if a newborn lay in the box. Her fingers trembled as she touched the faded page. The moment she drew it out, she froze, breath catching. Katja thought she looked like someone on the verge of suffocation.
“So heff se min hert to mi schreven… jüst so. Dat is ehr eigen Hand, de Hand van min Kint.” Her voice was barely more than a breath, rough as old linen, fragile as the budding of a forgotten spring.
Sina lifted the sheet as if cradling a wounded animal. With both thumbs she stroked gently across the letters, searching for the warmth of her child in them. She pressed it to her chest, closed her eyes, kissed the paper. A sacred object, the last unbroken fragment of a shattered world.
When she opened her eyes again, tears gleamed there, but she smiled. A quiet, grateful smile that tightened every throat around the table. “Se hett mi nich verloten. Se is noch bi mi.” Her voice shook, but in her gaze there was a light that made her seem taller, stronger than on any of the days before.
Gently, as if passing on a fragile treasure, she offered the sheet to Katja. “From one mother to another.”
The air grew thick with the weight of the past. And with pain.
Katja took the page, and in that moment she felt it was more than parchment. It was the full, unbearable love of a mother who had lost her child. For a heartbeat she thought she could feel Sina’s grief in her own body, like a weight pressing her down, tearing her apart from within.
Marit stood a little apart, arms folded across her chest. She fought her tears, yet in her eyes shone a quiet pride. She saw not just a broken woman before her, but a mother who had held onto her daughter across centuries. Stronger than time. Stronger than the grave. And something else dawned on her.
Katja was still searching for words, her mind spinning. She heard the buzz of insects, the faint joy of a bird in the tree.
“She’s real, Katja,” Marit’s voice was husky, rasping like sandpaper. “She isn’t crazy. This is all real. I don’t know how, but it is.”
Katja nodded faintly. Yes, they would take her seriously. She handed the writing back to Sina and looked at the three men. “Sven? Konrad? Henning?”
Sven looked first at Katja, then at Sina. He cleared his throat but did not reach for the paper. Instead he leaned back a little, seeking distance, clarity.
“Damn,” Sven muttered, twisting the knob of his cane so fast it looked like he was trying to win a race. “I thought I’d seen plenty of people who’d lost it. But this…” He shook his head slightly, a crooked smile tugging at his lips. “One minute I was thinking, almost like a new version of Catweazle, live and unscripted… only this time with a woman. Reality TV, raw.”
Konrad Vohwinkel’s brow was furrowed, as if he were weighing everything against everything else. He added, level and matter-of-fact: “The paper appears to be old…”
“Of course it’s old. Meike was an outstanding historian. She would never have kept it if it had been a replica,” Henning cut in, faintly indignant.
“… the ink as well.” Konrad’s fascination was plain, both with the scene and with the document. “And the handwriting matches. You cannot fake something like this on a whim. I won’t analyze it formally, but I believe we’re looking at something genuine. And that frightens me more than any forgery.”
Henning looked as though the ground had been stripped from under his feet. His voice was barely more than a breath. “Meike said to me, not long before her death, that there were things she couldn’t explain to me. I never really listened. I thought it was one of her wild notions. But if what we just witnessed here is real… then her work was perhaps greater than I ever imagined.”
Katja turned back to Sina. “What did you just say, Sina?”
Sina gave no answer. She shot to her feet and bolted into the house. No word, no apology. Just gone, through the terrace door and inside.
Katja opened her mouth, but Marit only lifted her hand. “Stand aside, everyone,” she murmured with a sigh, stepping back.
A few seconds later, the bathroom door creaked shut somewhere inside.
Konrad frowned. “Why? What’s happening?”
Marit looked at him, almost apologetic. “Wait for it.”
A soft click. The window flew open, and only a hand and a bowl appeared… splash.
A thin, crooked stream poured straight onto the warm tiles of the terrace.
Hand and bowl vanished just as quickly as they had appeared, the same quiet click as the window closed again.
For a moment, silence hung heavy.
“You cannot be serious,” Konrad said, his face sheer dismay.
Marit was already heading for the garden hose. “I told you, I just cannot get her used to the toilet. She is terrified of the hell-hole. But you work crime scenes, you must have seen worse.”
Konrad raised his brows. “Yes, well,” he muttered, “but never in a private setting. I just wonder what happens when she has to take a big…”
Sven could no longer hold back his laughter.
Marit waved him off. “We’ve got everything under control, dear Konrad,” she said, shutting off the garden hose. “Everything’s fine. Don’t worry.”
Sven was still chuckling. “Well, Sina knows exactly what she wants and what she doesn’t. And she’s reinvented the toilet.”
“And invented an alternative drain,” Konrad added, now laughing too.
Marit hung the hose back on its hook against the wall. “I don’t hold it against her. Technology isn’t her thing. A bowl she understands. The toilet hisses.”
Now Katja had to laugh as well.
Sina stepped back out onto the terrace, sniffing at her hands. “I do like the scent of soap,” she said.
The mood lightened a little, except for Henning. He seemed not to notice any of it. His eyes were fixed on the box in front of him, Meike’s box, as if inside lay the key to everything they didn’t understand.
Konrad pulled a small plastic bag from his pocket. “This was on the linen sack. A hair. Light blond, cut very short. But I cannot have it analyzed without raising questions.”
Sven frowned. “What are you saying?”
“That I won’t submit it. Not until I know who or what I’m dealing with.”
Katja nodded. And that, precisely, was the problem.
“What about the grill meat?” Sven asked suddenly, patting his stomach.
“Exactly, let’s get started. I’ll fetch it,” Marit said, rising and heading toward the house, while Katja took the plates from the serving cart and began setting the table.
“Yes, it seems we really can’t trust anyone anymore. Konrad’s lab, Meike’s office…”
Marit came back with an indignant look. “And now my refrigerator!”
“Excuse me?” Katja caught the confusion on her face.
“The meat. It’s gone.”
Sven eyed the potato salad. “How’s that possible?”
Marit frowned. “Good question. I prepared it yesterday at noon. In a bowl. It was right here in the fridge.”
Sina beamed and threw her arms around Marit. “Yes, and I saved it.”
She hurried over to a stone-bordered flower bed, reached into the road-salt container Marit had never put away in spring, and pulled out the plastic bowl. The lid sat crooked, the contents had turned gray. A musty smell spread through the air.
“I kept it safe from winter and from summer. It is warm. The sun is greedy.”
Marit stared at Sina, then at the meat, then back at Sina.
“I’ll get some more meat. “
She grabbed her bag, tossed the spoiled meat into the compost bin, swung onto her bicycle, and pedaled toward the village.
Katja watched Sina, who sat back down as if nothing at all had happened. There was no point explaining to her that road salt was not the right place for meat.
“Sina,” Katja said, “what was it you said earlier, when you gave me this…” She pointed again at the page inside the plastic sleeve. “…what is it?”