The Trap by Melanie Raabe, Imogen Taylor Read Free Book Online

the spot. What she saw on the floor was so overwhelming that she couldn’t immediately take it in.
    There was…Britta. She was lying on her back, her eyes wide open, an incredulous expression on her face. At first, Sophie thought her sister had had a bad fall and needed to be helped to her feet. She took a step towards her. Then she saw the blood and stopped again, her body rigid. The living room was a black-and-white stage set. No air, no sound, no colour. Only this horrific still life: Britta’s fair hair, her dark dress, the pale carpet, shards of glass, an overturned tumbler, white flowers, a black high-heeled sandal slipped off a foot, and blood, also black, spreading out around Britta’s torso.
    Sophie gasped and at once the music was back. All you need is love, la-da-da-da-da. There was colour again, too, and all Sophie saw was deep, gleaming red.
    While Sophie was trying to process this picture, she became aware of something moving in the corner of the room. She turned her head in panic and saw that it was only the curtains at the terrace door fluttering in the breeze. But then she saw the shadow. He stood quite still by the door, like an animal lying in wait, almost invisible. He looked at Sophie. Then he vanished.

8
    I stare at Norbert, who still has his finger on the bell.
    ‘About time,’ he says and pushes past me without a word of greeting. A first breath of winter comes in at the door with him. I want to say something but don’t get that far.
    ‘Have you gone completely mad?’ Norbert snarls at me.
    Bukowski jumps up at him. He adores my publisher. That isn’t saying a lot because Bukowski likes everyone. Norbert is fuming, but he softens for a moment to ruffle the dog’s coat before turning to face me again, the furrow back between his eyebrows. If I’m honest, I’m bloody glad to see him, furious or not. Norbert may flare up easily, but he’s also the kindest person I know. He simply gets hot under the collar about everything: politics, which is getting more and more stupid; publishing, which is getting more and more corrupt; and his authors, who are getting greedier and greedier. Everyone knows Norbert’s outbursts and his heated tirades, which, when his blood is really boiling, he lards with juicy expressions from his beloved France: putain! or merde! or sometimes, if it’s really bad, both at once.
    ‘What’s going on?’ I ask, when I’ve begun to recover from the late-night intrusion. ‘I thought you were in the south of France.’
    He snorts.
    ‘What’s going on ? That’s what I’m here to ask you!’
    I really and truly have no idea why Norbert is so furious. We’ve been working together for years. We’re friends. What have I done? Or is there something I’ve forgotten to do? Has my work on the thriller made me overlook something important? My mind is blank.
    ‘Come on in first,’ I say. ‘I mean, properly in.’ I lead the way to the kitchen.
    I switch on the coffee machine, pour Norbert a glass of water and put it down in front of him. He has taken a seat at the kitchen table, but he gets up again when I turn to face him, too cross to keep still.
    ‘Well?’ I ask.
    ‘Well?’ Norbert echoes, in a tone that makes Bukowski back away in confusion. ‘My author, Linda Conrads, who’s had my support as a publisher for over a decade, has taken it upon herself to abandon the marvellous literary novels she’s been writing with pleasing regularity for years, and to piss off her readers and critics (not to mention me) by making her next book a blood-and-guts thriller. No consultation, no nothing. As if that weren’t enough, Her Ladyship has to rush off and tell the press, without once talking it over with her publisher. Because she is obviously of the opinion that I am not just the head of a pretty big, pretty lucrative business with a pretty large number of employees, who works his balls off day after day, not least for her and her books, but that I am, above all else, one