Michelle had fully expected to find one or two beer corpses in the tents in the garden the morning after her wedding. However, she hadn’t expected to find the body on the bricked round barbecue. Now that she saw her cousin lying there with the barbecue spit in his chest, she regretted throwing him and his buddies out last night – or rather, this morning.
She hadn’t actually invited Bernd. When he turned up with a horde of other young men, already visibly buzzed, she had of course welcomed him anyway – after all, he was family, even if he was still at the age when men acted like idiots after three glasses of beer. After most of the others had left and one of Bernd’s buddies had thrown up on one of the beer tables, Michelle had decided that she’d had enough of the family for the day and had unceremoniously dragged the boys out of the garden and onto the street. The bus stop was only a few meters down the street; she had hoped that Bernd and the others would still make it there. Obviously she had been wrong.
Michelle took another step closer to the barbecue area, which always reminded her of a well with its pointed roof. She had no doubt that Bernd was dead – his eyes stared upwards in a hurt way she had never seen before. But she had seen him like that once, she remembered for a moment, before the image disappeared again. Most of the time he had been drunk and had just stared past her with a dull expression when she had met him at family celebrations. Apart from these sentimental considerations, the barbecue spit, which was actually meant for suckling pigs, spoke a clear language.
“Michelle?” she heard her husband’s voice. When she turned around, she saw Richard in his shirt and tousled hair leaning in the open bedroom window.
“Wait, I’ll help you tidy up,” he said, yawning cautiously. “Has someone put their shoes on the grill?”
He probably couldn’t actually see from up there, Michelle thought, and then she pondered a sensible answer. “There’s still someone in the shoes,” she finally said. “Will you please call the police?”
The two women from the forensics team kept shaking their heads with a sigh as they examined the well, its immediate surroundings and finally the wider area as well. Michelle didn’t envy them their job – the garden of their house was large and offered numerous hidden corners between two garden sheds, many fruit trees and bushes, and after sixty invited guests and half a dozen others, as well as a downpour, there certainly weren’t many usable traces left.
"Mrs. Miller? I’m sorry, but …"
“It’s all right,” she interrupted the plainclothes policeman. He had just introduced himself, but Michelle had already forgotten his name. Age, she thought briefly, or simply the long, exhausting day that lay behind her. “What would you like to know?”
“When exactly did you find the dead man?” the man began.
How unimaginative, it flashed through Michelle’s mind. “Right before my husband called you,” she replied nonetheless and felt the same smile slide across her lips that she had felt again and again the day before when she spoke of Richard. ‘My husband’ felt much better than ‘my friend’.
“When did you last see him?” the policeman continued.
“At just before three last night,” Michelle pondered. “He and some friends were the last guests. I took them to the garden gate and showed them the bus stop on the corner of our street …” She frowned. “I thought the boys would be waiting for the next bus, they leave here every half hour at night …”
“Obviously your cousin didn’t feel like waiting that long,” the man replied. “Can you imagine why he came back?”
Michelle shook her head. “He was quite drunk … maybe he thought he was staying here?” she replied.
The policeman raised his eyebrows as he scribbled something in his notebook. “And you went into the house with your husband?” he then inquired.
Michelle felt an arm around her waist. “We went in just after, just before the rain shower,” Richard replied in her place. Michelle leaned against her husband as she felt a little dizzy. The night had simply been too short. Richard had also fallen asleep as soon as they had fallen into bed. He probably hadn’t noticed that she had quickly taken the cushions off the garden chairs and stowed them in the front garden shed. Otherwise he would certainly have made an uncomprehending remark half asleep when she quickly threw her robe over her negligee at the first drops of rain and ran out to get the chair cushions dry. Men knew nothing about such things.
“You didn’t see your cousin before you went into the house?” the policeman asked.
Michelle and Richard shook their heads at the same time. “My wife has already told you that she took Bernd to the bus,” Richard added. “Listen, this … misfortune would be hard enough to bear on a normal morning, and we had a long and exhausting day yesterday. Please, can’t we have a chat upstairs? We both need a coffee and something to eat, as you can see, my wife has problems with her circulation.”
When the policeman nodded in understanding, Michelle took a step to the side. “I think a few minutes in the fresh air will do me good,” she said. “Honey, could you make some coffee already? I’ll sit here on the bench for a moment.”
Richard looked at her scrutinizingly, then nodded hesitantly. Only when Michelle had sat down in front of the garden shed did he relax again and went into the house with the policeman.
Michelle watched the two women from the forensics department as they examined the barbecue once more. Although she was sitting down, she felt dizzy again for a moment.
“You look pale,” said a voice next to her. The young man had just examined Bernd’s body, she thought she remembered. “Can I offer you a cigarette?”
Michelle watched as one of the women from the forensics team leaned on the brick barbecue and climbed up awkwardly. As she perched on the edge of the barbecue and shone a small flashlight under the wooden roof, obviously looking for clues, she reminded Michelle of Bernd. Bernd had also offered her a cigarette a long time ago.
“No, thank you, I don’t smoke,” she said to the young doctor, who didn’t look like Bernd at all and didn’t gaze at her with that look Bernd always got when he had too much to drink and felt he had to reveal to her everything he thought was love.
“Apparently he sought shelter there from the rain shower,” the doctor continued, lighting a cigarette himself. “It must have been pouring down pretty heavily. You were lucky that the party was already over at that time.”
“Yes, it wouldn’t have been that easy to accommodate all the guests in the house,” Michelle nodded. “And it was pretty chilly last night – if the guests had got wet, some of them would have caught a cold.” But that wasn’t the reason why she had perched on the edge of the barbecue opposite Bernd. She could just as easily have fled from the rain into the house or into the garden shed at the front, which she had only just locked. Bernd hadn’t had that choice; the barbecue had been the only dry place for him to stare up at Michelle’s bedroom and listen to his sore heart. And the last embers of the charcoal had still provided a little warmth, for him and for a moment for her too. That must have been the reason, she thought, nodding slowly, because why else would she have gone to him?
“Maybe it was an accident,” said the young doctor, nodding encouragingly to her. “If the barbecue spit was lying there a bit awkwardly, he may have fallen in and then just pulled himself out of the rain reflexively. Of course, I can’t say anything more specific yet, but the wound looks like he lived for a while.”
“Maybe,” Michelle repeated. It seemed to her as if he had been staring at her for minutes with those sore eyes, long after he had stopped moving. Perhaps he had even begged her forgiveness for the gentle touch on her stomach, which had not yet revealed its unforgivable contents; at least that’s how it had seemed to her after she had jumped down onto the wet grass in fright and grabbed the barbecue skewer for support. And perhaps she would have forgiven him for reminding her of her misstep if he hadn’t gone on about eternal love and other foolishness that such young men sometimes still believed in.
“Are you sure you don’t want a cigarette?” the doctor asked sympathetically.
“I’d rather not, thank you,” she replied and stood up slowly. “I should go upstairs and lie down for a while, I’m sure I’ll feel better afterwards.” And at that moment, she actually believed it.
Bio:
Andrea Tillmanns lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. Her poems and stories have been published in The World of Myth, Hawthorn & Ash (Iron Faerie Publishing), SciFanSat, and other journals and anthologies. She has also published more than twenty books in German. More information about the author and her texts can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de.