Free Tretjak by Max Landorff Page B

plastic penguin, which disappeared out to sea. The table tennis competition at the beach in Ravenna, which Lars won. He was nine years old then. Gosh, how time flies.
    At one point Lars said: ‘You are the best mama in the world.’ He got up when he said that and gave her a hug. ‘Mama, all will be alright. I promise.’ Then he went to his room.
    She had rented two apartments for herself and Lars in the holiday village in Kochel am See, 50 kilometres from Munich. It seemed exactly the right distance. It was easy and quick to get to Munich from Kochel, and it was quick and easy to get from Kochel to Munich. Wherever and whenever this Gabriel Tretjak wanted to have the first meeting with her son.
    â€˜I’m going to pick you up in two hours for dinner,’ she called after him.
    â€˜OK, Mama.’
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    When Charlotte Poland knocked on the door of her son’s apartment two hours later, nobody opened it. She knocked more forcefully. No reaction. She called his mobile phone. She only got the reply: ‘There is nobody here to take your call at the moment.’ She got a second key for his room from the receptionist. The big hold-all she had packed for him was there. The small shoulder bag was missing. She went down to reception again to ask if anybody had seen her son. Yes, she was told, her son had ordered a taxi an hour ago and had left with it. She asked whether one could enquire with the dispatcher where the taxi had taken her son. Of course, the receptionist would make that call.
    She went back to her room. When she opened her handbag she already had her suspicions. Her purse was gone, together with all the money inside it, the credit cards and her papers. Lars must have stolen them when she had left the terrace to go to the ladies cloakroom. Lars knew that she would not use the purse to pay as she was going to sign for it and charge it to the room. She called her bank’s service number and cancelled all her credit cards. Lars had had an hour. The previous times Lars had managed to withdraw about two thousand euros with her cards. The little fat therapist had advised her to report the next incident to the police. She was supposed to inform on her own son.
    Charlotte Poland sat down on the bed in her hotel room. She was looking at herself in the mirror mounted on the door of the wardrobe. She had got a little colour. It suited her, she thought. She also liked her white dress. She was one of those women who liked to look at themselves. Her publisher had once told her that she was too beautiful to be an author. Nobody would believe that a woman with the body of a model and such huge eyes also possessed a brain. The author photographs on her books were intentionally discreet. Her face was in profile, black and white.
    I am rich and beautiful, she thought. And? She undressed and lay down on the bed. It had become a habit, that was how she could best calm down, being naked and closing her eyes. She had even taken off the big Cartier panther ring from her finger. She had given it as a present to herself, the first time one of her books had hit the bestseller list.
    Her novels always had the same theme: a misleadingly idyllic life with hidden depth, a magic box with a false bottom concealing a second compartment beneath the visible one. She knew all too well why she loved these stories. She loved to write about hidden depths, because hidden depths were the story of her life. A friend had once told her that she loved deception, that she only felt real in deception. She couldn’t have put it better herself, this was the book jacket copy of her life.
    It was quiet in the hotel room. She thought she could hear the quiet buzzing of the mini bar. The lonesome chirping of a bird entered through the open balcony door. The metaphor of the secret compartment, of another floor underneath the visible one pleased her because it implied that there was a firm grounding somewhere underneath her feet,