Splinter Read online

  The hornet was back. It sounded even louder now. Louder and more infuriated.

  Marc’s heartbeat speeded up as he crept along in search of some object with which to defend himself. But then, just before the humming noise became continuous, he realized the absurdity of his behaviour. He looked up at the little grey box above and to the right of the door frame.

  ‘Shit, I’m afraid of my own doorbell,’ he whispered. He made another attempt to laugh at himself, but his efforts to master his fear misfired.

  Like a hornet. It sounds like a trapped, infuriated hornet.

  No one knew his new address except the men from the removals firm and Roswitha.

  So who can it be?

  His eye fell again on the door chain, which someone must have replaced from the inside after his father-in-law disappeared. He shivered.

  ‘Constantin?’

  Goose pimples broke out all over his body as he put his eye to the spyhole. He peered through it and groaned aloud. Although the continuous hum had changed to a rhythmical staccato, he couldn’t see anybody with their finger on the button.

  What’s going on here? Perhaps it’s all in my head. Perhaps there isn’t any bell at all. No door, no flat, no Sandra.

  He really did laugh now, albeit with a touch of hysteria.

  Perhaps there isn’t even any me?

  In a sudden access of fatalism he removed the chain and wrenched the door open.

  Nobody.

  Neither right outside the door nor in the passage. No Constantin, no neighbour, no stranger. He was alone, and that was how he felt – alone – as he slowly pushed the door shut and rested his head against it.

  The infuriated buzzing of the bell stopped for a moment, then adopted a different rhythm.

  Three short, three long, three short.

  SOS?

  He fingered the sweat-sodden plaster on his neck, the only part of his body unaffected by the icy stranglehold that was steadily tightening its grip on him.

  A ghostly doorbell signalling in Morse. Even my hallucinations show a sense of humour, you’ve got to grant me that.

  He backed into the living room without taking his eyes off the little buzzing box above the door. From it, a length of flex ran down the wall, dividing at the level of the door handle. One half ran down to the skirting board, the other ran parallel to the floor and disappeared behind his overcoat, which was hanging on a rail that had been there when he moved in.

  Three short. Three long.

  Of course!

  I’m so exhausted I can’t think straight.

  He pulled the coat aside, recalling the rapturous sales talk of the estate agent, who had implied that a simple intercom was NASA’s latest technical achievement and more than justified the exorbitant rent.

  The intercom emitted a beep as he picked up the receiver. Instantly, the hornet stopped humming.

  ‘Yes?’ he croaked. He was almost relieved to get an answer, even if the voice belonged to the person he’d recently run away from.

  ‘Can you talk?’

  Emma. Her diffident, submissive tone was unmistakable.

  He stared at the displayless intercom, incapable of replying.

  ‘Hello? Is he still with you?’

  There was a click. Marc finally regained the power of speech.

  ‘Who do you mean? How did you know where I live?’

  ‘I followed you,’ she said, and coughed.

  ‘You followed me?’ he repeated stupidly.

  ‘Yes, to the police station. Then here. I saw you go inside with him.’

  ‘Constantin?’

  ‘I don’t know his name. He’s one of them, that’s all I know.’

  One of them?

  ‘Come down here before it’s too late.’

  He shook his head, as if Emma could see him from down in the street below. ‘So you can trap me again?’

  ‘What do you mean, trap you? What are you talking about? I’m the one who’s being hunted.’

  Hunted?

  ‘Listen. . .’ His voice was shaking. ‘I don’t know who you’re working for, but—’

  ‘Working for? What on earth do you mean? I’m on the run like you. I’m all on my own.’

  ‘Oh yeah? So who were you talking to about me on the phone? Back at the hotel, I mean?’

  Emma sighed. ‘Oh, so that’s it. I’ll explain later.’

  ‘No, now. Who were you calling?’

  There was another click on the line and the static grew louder.

  ‘My mobile.’

  ‘What?’

  She hesitated. ‘I call myself once every hour and tell my mobile where I am, who I’m with and what I’m going to do next. It’s just a precaution, in case something happens to me or they wipe my memory again.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to believe that?’

  ‘Why should I lie to you? I’m in need of help myself, even though you’re now in greater danger than I am. So hurry up and come down here.’

  ‘I’m sure I’m safer up here in my flat than I would be down there with you.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’ve been here for half an hour and I haven’t seen anyone leave the building. That means he must still be with you. And that, in turn, means that you’re. . .’

  ‘I’m alone,’ he broke in.

  ‘. . .in great danger, because the programme is still in operation.’

  ‘I’m not in any programme!’ Marc bellowed into the receiver.

  ‘You are, and I’ll prove it to you.’

  ‘How?’ he demanded. He felt a sudden breath of air on the back of his neck, as if someone were coming up behind him. He swung round, wide-eyed with fear.

  ‘She’s still alive,’ he heard Emma whisper. ‘Come down here and I’ll prove it to you.’ Her voice was almost inaudible.

  It can’t be true. It mustn’t be.

  He didn’t hear himself utter the words aloud, but he saw that he had by his breath. The all-embracing chill was no delusion; it was streaming into the flat like liquid oxygen. Through the wide-open window in the living room. The window he’d only just firmly secured.

  34

  Marc locked the front door from the outside although he knew he wouldn’t leave the unseen threat behind. Whatever was pursuing him seemed undeterred by physical barriers. Insanity resembled a mist that was seeping through the cracks of normality into his shattered life. If he wasn’t to lose his bearings still further in its murky depths, flight was his sole recourse.

  He emerged into the street convinced that he was alone again, so he was almost startled to see Emma waiting for him in her car. Her old VW Beetle was double-parked, and it took him a moment to realize that the car she was obstructing was his own. It was parked exactly where he’d looked for it only a few hours earlier.

  ‘Come on,’ she called, looking in her rear-view mirror. The car, which had been puttering away until now, emitted a sort of death rattle as she underlined her impatience by gunning the engine, but Marc was still nonplussed by the reappearance of his car. He made his way round Emma’s Beetle like a man in a trance, staring at the Mini as if he’d never seen one before.

  ‘What is it?’ The engine gave another death rattle.

  ‘Just a minute,’ he called without turning round. He patted his pockets in search of his car key, then remembered that he’d removed it from the bunch a long time ago.

  Cupping his face in his hands, blinker fashion, he peered through the rain-streaked window. Sure enough, it was his car that had materialized here in the last few minutes. The sports bag he hadn’t used since the accident was lying crumpled up in the footwell behind the driver’s seat, the back seat was littered with old newspapers, an empty McDonald’s carton and numerous returnable bottles, and the tangled charging cable for his mobile was plugged into the cigar lighter.

  ‘Come on, damn it!’ Emma called angrily, turning off the ignition. Marc heard the door creak open as she got out behind him. He looked around for something to smash the window with.

&n
bsp; ‘What are you doing? We have to go.’

  ‘Where to?’

  He bent down and tried to dislodge a cobblestone protruding from the pavement, but his fingers kept slipping off the wet edges.

  ‘Lost something?’

  Yes, my mind.

  He could see her boots under the car. She was standing beside a puddle in the road, shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

  ‘I’ve just got to get something from my car, then we can go.’

  ‘So why are you crawling around on the ground?’ she demanded. He heard a click and the car’s interior light came on.

  How on earth had she done that so quickly?

  He straightened up, blinking in bewilderment, then opened the driver’s door as easily as the one Emma had already opened. He stared at her suspiciously.

  ‘How did you know—’

  ‘Look!’ She shrugged and pointed to the ignition lock beside the steering wheel. ‘The key’s in there. You must have forgotten it.’

  No way. I haven’t had it on me for days.

  He propped one knee on the driver’s seat and reached for the glove compartment. The light hadn’t worked for ages, but he found what he was looking for as soon as he opened the flap and shoved a stack of CDs aside.

  Emma gripped his wrist just as he was removing the strip of blister pack.

  ‘What sort of pills are those?’

  ‘Mind your own business,’ he said, rather more sharply than he had intended, but his tone of voice had the desired effect. She retreated several steps, pulled the white hood over her head and turned away.

  He was bending over the rear seat when he heard her get back into her Beetle and start the engine again. Just as he was reaching under the seat to fish out a bottle of Coke, intending to wash his first pill down with it, he heard the low hum of a diesel engine. His first thought was that Emma had driven off in a huff, and that alarmed him. After all, she’d promised to provide him with proof that his wife was still alive.

  But, when he raised his head and looked out at the street, which seemed to be lit by stroboscopic flashes, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Emma had been right: he ought to have got a move on. He was so startled, he dropped the Coke bottle. The pills, too, slipped through his fingers. From the look of it, they really were in the programme.

  35

  The roaring in Benny’s ears was growing louder at every step. Quite faint at first, it had started the moment he drove away from the police checkpoint. The policewoman had never got round to examining the contents of his boot. Before he could open it, her assistance had been requested by a colleague in need of back-up, who was having trouble persuading a recalcitrant Mercedes driver to undergo a breath test. Benny’s pulse rate hadn’t dropped since then, and he was sweating as he climbed the stairs to his flat.

  ‘Know why none of your attempts at suicide has ever succeeded, Benny?’

  Valka didn’t call him often. That he’d done so twice today was an ominous sign.

  ‘No,’ Benny replied truthfully, breathing hard. He didn’t trouble to ponder the point of the question. Valka loved staging set pieces. Whether out to impress a woman, kill an opponent or simply chew the fat, he devoted a lot of prior thought to making the greatest impact possible. His opening gambits were thus of a purely rhetorical nature.

  ‘Because you’re a wimp, that’s why. I still remember the first time, when that Yoko Ono slut destroyed our band. Laughable, it was.’

  Valka never referred to Sandra by her real name and regularly compared her to the woman who had split up the Beatles. It was true that Marc had had no time for rehearsals and gigs once he and she were a couple.

  ‘The bunch who’d protected you suddenly weren’t there any more. Your best friend, your brother, was busy screwing his new girlfriend while you, you sensitive soul, were all on your lonesome. Christ, I’ve never understood how anyone could be such a mummy’s boy. But you couldn’t even do the job properly. I mean, the few pills you swallowed wouldn’t have put a cat to sleep.’ His laugh was so hearty it sounded as if he was about to slap his thigh.

  Benny came to a halt. Although he was only wearing a thin T-shirt under his green bomber jacket and the janitor had turned off all the radiators because of rocketing oil prices, he felt as if he were in the tropics.

  ‘I know you’ve never really liked me, Benny, but I’ve always been there for you, you’ve got to admit. I looked out for you – I gave you a new life.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Benny muttered, already feeling in his pocket for the key to his flat. Only another two floors to go. The final flight of stairs to the converted roof space was carpeted in burgundy sisal that muffled his footsteps.

  ‘And today, if I let you leave town, I’ll be giving you another present.’

  ‘I thought we were quits, Eddy. The job’s done.’

  ‘I know, my boys just confirmed it. They say that lousy hack’s house looks like a football pitch there are so many green uniforms milling around inside.’

  Valka was evidently using a satellite phone. Either that or he assumed his conversations weren’t being monitored.

  Or he was simply suffering from delusions of grandeur.

  Probably both, thought Benny.

  ‘Okay, now pin your ears back. . .’ Valka had abandoned his spuriously jovial tone of voice. It was like a light going out. ‘That shit in your boot – get rid of it.’

  Benny nodded, distracted by the realization that the key in his hand was redundant. The door to his flat was ajar, though only just. Gingerly, he shoved it open with his foot. It was dark inside.

  ‘Where are you now?’ asked Valka, who must have heard the door creak.

  ‘My place.’

  An almost imperceptible, sweetish smell greeted Benny as he entered the little hallway.

  ‘Good. Then pack up your things, get into your lousy car and take that garbage to Holland tonight.’ He gave Benny an address in Amsterdam and a contact. ‘If Vincent doesn’t call me back by midnight and confirm that the goods have arrived, I’ll come looking for you.’

  Benny came to a halt and switched the phone from one ear to the other. ‘Midnight? No dice, I need more time.’ He turned on the overhead light. The smell was becoming stronger.

  ‘Tell me something, Benny. Do I sound like a hooker?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a relief, I thought you wanted to fuck me. I’m doing you a favour, letting you pay off your debts instead of perforating your balls with a nail gun, and you say you need more time? Who do you think you are?’

  ‘Look, Eddy, please give me a day to say goodbye to everyone.’

  ‘Like who, you moron? Your parents are dead, your brother hates you and your pals are in the nuthouse.’ Valka chuckled. ‘Still, I thought you’d say something like that, so I’ve laid on a little surprise for you. One that’ll underline the gravity of the situation.’

  Benny shut his eyes. He had grasped the grisly significance of the smell.

  36

  Survivors of a plane crash, terrorist bomb, road accident or some other life-threatening occurrence are often unanimous in stating that they perceived the instant of the disaster in slow motion. It’s as if the explosion, fireball or collision has torn a hole in time or even brought it to a stop. Marc instantly grasped the reason for this perceptual phenomenon: the moment a lethal threat presents itself, the human brain is incapable of absorbing multiple impressions simultaneously, still less of sorting out the sequence of events.

  Marc saw the brightly lit ambulance, its dirty headlights, the silently flashing lights on its roof, and the rear doors, open to reveal the loading space within. He registered the bearded male nurse in the white smock, who was holding something in one hand as he strove to drag Emma out of her Beetle with the other. He even noted insignificant details such as the blood-red fluorescent stripes on the vehicle’s sides and the rosary-like chain suspended from its rear-view mirror which seemed to dangle in time to the flashing lights. He also heard the bub
bling of its diesel engine, which mingled with that of the Beetle, and wondered why Emma didn’t utter a sound until she started to scream for help. It was highly probable that he took in all these things at once, or separated only by fractions of a second, after the bearded nurse had slapped Emma’s face and sent her glasses spinning across the asphalt.

  At this point another figure appeared on the scene. A woman, or so Marc thought at first, because she was rather lightly built and had a ponytail. Then he recognized her as a young man.

  ‘Hey!’ Marc yelled, squeezing out of his car backwards. ‘Let go of her!’

  The rubber soles of his trainers slipped on a little mound of wet leaves as he tried to go to Emma’s aid. In the meantime, the bearded nurse had managed to haul Emma’s bulky body out of the driver’s seat with such force that she reeled around beside the car, still half dazed by his original blow. In a trice, Beardie grabbed her by the arm and pinned her, bosom first, against the ambulance.

  ‘Over here!’ he shouted to the man with the ponytail, who seemed undecided as to whom to tackle first. Emma’s captor bellowed his order twice as loud and jerked his head at the ground. Whatever he had dropped during the struggle, he evidently needed it in order to subdue Emma, who had recovered her wits and was struggling fiercely. It was all he could do to restrain her, despite his muscular build.

  ‘What do you want with her?’ Marc yelled. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that a light on the third floor of his block of flats had just come on. The flashing lights and the sound of engines and shouting would sooner or later prompt one of the residents to call the police. Later rather than sooner, though, because nocturnal brawls weren’t uncommon in Schöneberg, and most of its inhabitants relied on their neighbours’ ability to settle their differences without the help of the authorities. Besides, the ambulance would make onlookers feel that everything was under control.

  ‘No, please don’t!’ gasped Emma. Ponytail had just picked up a longish, cigar-shaped object and handed it to his confederate.

  ‘Now for you,’ he said. Having satisfied himself that Beardie had regained control of the situation by twisting Emma’s wrist behind her back until it was on a level with her shoulderblades – her cries of pain merged into a long-drawn-out howl – he took a step towards Marc.