The Sinner

Petra Hammesfahr, born in 1951, wrote her first novel at the
age of seventeen. She has written over twenty crime and suspense novels and also writes scripts for television and film.
Her book The Quiet Mr. Genardy was her first bestseller and
was made into a film. It was soon followed by the critical and
commercial success of The Sinner. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the Crime Prize of Wiesbaden and the
Rhineland Literary Prize, and lives near Cologne.

Petra Hammesfahr

Translated from the German

by John Brownjohn

It was a hot day at the beginning of July when Cora Bender
decided to die. Gereon had made love to her the night before. He
made love to her regularly every Friday and Saturday night. She
couldn't bring herself to refuse him, being only too well aware how
much he needed it. And she loved Gereon. It was more than love.
It was gratitude and utter submission - something absolute and
unconditional.

Gereon had enabled her to be a normal young woman like any
other. That was why she wanted him to be happy and contented. She
used to enjoy his lovemaking, but that had stopped six months ago.

It was Christmas Eve, of all times, when Gereon had taken it
into his head to install a radio in their bedroom. He had wanted it
to be a special night. They'd been husband and wife for exactly two
and a half years and the parents of a son for eighteen months.

Gereon Bender was twenty-seven, Cora twenty-four. A slim
five feet ten, Gereon looked fit and athletic, although lie played
no games, he never had time. His hair, ash blond at birth, had
darkened little since then. His face was neither handsome nor
ugly. It was an average sort of face, just as Gereon himself was an
average sort of man.

Cora Bender was just as unexceptional in outward appearance,
discounting the scar on her forehead and her scarred forearms.
The dent in her skull had been caused by an accident, the gnarled
skin on the inside of her elbows was the result of a nasty infection
transmitted by hypodermic needles while she was being treated in
the hospital - or so she'd told Gereon. She had also said she didn't remember any details. That much was true. The doctor had told
her that lapses of memory were common in the case of severe
head injuries.

There was a hole in her life. She knew it concealed some dark,
squalid episode, but her memory of it was missing. Until a few
years ago she'd fallen into that hole innumerable times, night after
night. The last occasion had been four years ago, before she met
Gereon, and she'd somehow managed to close it. She had never
expected to fall into it again since her marriage to him. And then,
on Christmas Eve of all nights, it had happened.

Everything was fine at first, what with the soft Christmas music
and Gereon's caresses, which gradually became more urgent and
passionate. Her mood didn't sour until lie slid slowly down the
bed, and when he buried his face between her thighs and she felt
his tongue, the music swelled. She heard a rapid roll on the drums,
the throb of a bass guitar and the shrill, high-pitched notes of an
organ. Only for a fraction of a second, then it was over, but that
brief moment was enough.