The Dark Frontier by A. Decker (best books to read non fiction .txt) 📕

By now the resignation and flatness of expression in Ellen’s eyes had vanished. She was slowly becoming hooked on Marthe’s words.

“So, it makes me wonder whether the wild stories Frank would tell his mother – and perhaps his nightmares also – were memories of a past life. And if so,” Marthe speculated further, “whether these memories were triggered again when he came to Switzerland. Like a frontalier of the consciousness, crossing a very private, unknown frontier.”

Ellen now stared at Marthe, open-mouthed. She was lost for words.

“Of course, Urs would dismiss the whole idea as absurd.”

“So you haven’t spoken to him about it.”

“Of course not,” Marthe scoffed. “He can only consider tidy explanations.”

“Maybe you underestimate him,” said Ellen. “His refusal to accept his colleagues’ assessment of Stefan suggests his mind is not the straitjacket you imagine it to be.”

“As I’ve said before, Urs is a very decent man. All he could see was a tormented, abused boy who was not receiving good care. But he doesn’t have the imagination to consider anything beyond the boundaries defined by his profession.”

“And do you really think it possible that Frank might have been reliving memories of a past life?” Ellen asked.

“Why not?”

This improbable idea lodged in Ellen’s mind and would not be budged for the rest of the day, as her memory of Frank’s odd quirks came flooding back. The books that he would buy. The Bartok LP. And the strange deformity in the bridge of his nose. These images and the notion that they could be the shadows of a past life – the markers of some dark frontier that Frank had crossed – followed Ellen every step of her way to the mortuary.

To see him laid out, as if for some ritual event, was the strangest experience in what had become a whole catalogue of bizarre experiences for Ellen. It was plainly Frank, the man she had shared so much with in their short time together. The man she had known so well. But had she?

His face looked worn. Embattled with troubles completely alien to her. She was struck by the way the strangely buckled bridge of his nose appeared more prominent than ever. She recalled Frank telling of his father’s cruel description of this odd deformity: as if shot between the eyes at birth. And that was exactly the way it looked to her now as he lay on the slab. It underlined her sense that Frank seemed to have assumed an entirely new persona in his absence from her. It was unmistakably Frank. But was it really Frank in a past life? Was that deformity the mark of an injury sustained by a different Frank from the one she had known? It seemed an absurd idea. She almost preferred Dr Zellweger’s diagnosis of a psychosis.

“Yes,” she said, turning back to Kommissar Staehelin, who stood at a discreet distance behind her. “It’s my husband.”

For all his discretion, however, the Kommissar was a persevering man. And after the identification, he left Ellen no peace. He called her into an interview room.

“Please take a seat, Mrs Goss,” he said, beckoning her to one of four seats next to a table. Aside from the table and chairs, the room was bare. The spartan air lent a particularly cold edge to the Kommissar’s rasping voice, which made every word sound as if it was being dragged over a cheese grater as he spoke.

He was joined by a colleague from the drugs squad, and together they visited one preposterous theory after another on Ellen. Each one more nonsensical even than the idea that Frank may have been reliving a past life. She was glad that Marthe had insisted on staying with her for moral support. Perhaps it was the way the Kommissar reminded Ellen of her brother-in-law, Malcolm, which caused her to dislike the man so much with his moustache, white socks and black slip-on shoes.

The colleague from the drugs squad was no exception in this respect. And while she was being bombarded with their questions and assumptions, Ellen wondered what they could be so afraid of that they felt the need to make such a pathetic show of their manhood. What are they trying to prove? Ellen wondered. She imagined that Marthe would put it down to women finally winning the right to vote.

In the case of Kommissar Staehelin it was clear. He was burdened with the obligations of protocol. And the proofs he had to bring were all as neatly defined for him as the topiary trimmed so tidily across his upper lip.

Convinced that Frank had been mixed up in some international drug syndicate, the Kommissar was bent on getting every scrap of information she could offer him on Frank’s movements. Who his friends and acquaintances were. What his job was. What he did in his spare time. And although the whole scenario he painted appeared ludicrously far-fetched to Ellen, she could not deny the glint of metal in Frank’s hand. Or the witnesses: not only had a person matching his description been seen in the house a year ago; that person had even gunned one of them down. Apparently, he had also made off with a briefcase, which they thought probably belonged to the victim.

It was at this point in his account of events that the Kommissar became especially persistent, because they had failed to locate the missing briefcase, and they suspected it might contain crucial evidence that could help break the whole syndicate. So he wanted to know exactly what Frank had been carrying when she saw him. Did he have anything which might have fitted that description and might have fallen into the hands of a bystander, he wanted to know. And had she noticed anyone suspicious lurking nearby at the time (‘As if I might have been taking notes in my panic,’ she remarked to herself).

She had often wondered whether men with moustaches are so busy trying to cope with