Splinter Read online

  ‘People always make the mistake of feeding wild animals,’ said the professor, staring at the water. They had left Emma on her own in the living room, which Marc found slightly surprising. Haberland didn’t seem the sort of man to trust strangers in a hurry. At the same time, there was a look in his eye that conveyed long experience of worse horrors than any to be expected from an injured woman and a former patient.

  ‘It disrupts the food chain,’ Haberland went on. ‘They become habituated to us, and that’s wrong.’

  ‘People do it because they’re animal lovers,’ said Marc, who had often tossed stale breadcrumbs to the swans on the Wannsee with Sandra.

  ‘Yes, but it’s a mistake all the same.’ Haberland pulled up the zip of his quilted jacket, which ended well short of the hem of his sports coat. ‘And it can never be right to do the wrong thing.’

  They walked further along the shore. Marc wondered if they were really still talking about wildlife. Until recently his life had been governed by the principle that the end always justifies the means. Haberland must surely know about the false statement that had ultimately consigned Benny to a secure unit.

  ‘You seem very unsure of yourself,’ said Haberland, coming to the point at last.

  The lakeside path, which now ran gently uphill, was separated from the water by a largish expanse of reeds.

  ‘I am.’ Marc inhaled the moist, aromatic scent of the forest flanking the path to their right. ‘I no longer trust my memories.’

  He gave the professor a brief account of what had happened to him up till then, ending with his most recent experiences in the cellar of his former home. ‘Well, what do you think? Have I gone mad?’

  Haberland paused to look back at his dog. Tarzan was making repeated attempts to forge a path through the reeds to the lake, only to give up when they pricked his muzzle.

  ‘You’re questioning your own existence. The mentally ill don’t do that as a rule. They try to justify their confused state of mind by advancing flimsy theories. Like Emma, for example.’

  Marc turned to face him. Their clouds of breath met and mingled.

  ‘You think she’s sick?’

  ‘Only a charlatan would reach a diagnosis so quickly. Nevertheless, unlike you, she fails to ask herself the crucial question.’

  ‘“Have I gone mad?”, you mean?’

  Haberland nodded. ‘I had a long talk with her earlier on, while you were asleep. She made a feverish, nervous, edgy impression. The fact is, she’s only interested in looking for evidence that will justify her conspiracy theory.’

  ‘So you think she’s paranoid?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  They passed a bench that had seen better days. The back was rotten and the seat seemed unlikely to be able to bear much weight. Haberland propped one foot on it and removed a wad of damp leaves adhering to the sole of his shoe.

  ‘Let’s assume you’re entirely healthy, Marc – discounting your superficial injuries and your discoloured eyes, which worry me greatly, by the way. At least you aren’t suffering from any psychosomatic disorder. The house, the lake, the forest – they’re all real, and we’re really having this conversation. How could you explain these occurrences?’

  Tarzan trotted over to them. Not that Marc had noticed it before, the old dog avoided putting weight on one of its hind legs.

  ‘Perhaps my memory was erased once before?’ he theorized. ‘Perhaps it didn’t work properly the first time and I’m suddenly remembering facts from my former life?’

  ‘Possibly.’ The corners of Haberland’s mouth turned up in a moue of scepticism. ‘Or perhaps the exact opposite is happening.’

  He picked up a stick and threw it in the direction they’d come from. Tarzan just stared after it with a weary eye.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t like talking about it, but for a short time I myself once suffered from almost total amnesia. Loss of memory occasioned by a trauma I wanted to suppress at all costs.’ The professor rubbed his wrists again. ‘Rediscovering my memory was a terrible process, but it did teach me one thing.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘That the truth is often the opposite of what we believe.’

  Haberland turned and followed his dog, which had set off for home. Marc hesitated for a moment, then hurried after him.

  ‘You’re afraid your memory has been tampered with. Erased. Possibly even for the second time,’ Haberland said without looking at Marc. ‘But what if it’s being erased at this very moment?’

  Marc shivered. ‘How?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure how the Bleibtreu Clinic induces artificial amnesia in its patients. Up to now, losses of memory have always been an unintended by-product. However, it’s conceivable that they subject their guinea pigs to shock therapy. And isn’t that just what’s happening to you now? One traumatic incident hard on the heels of another?’

  ‘But why should anyone do that?’

  They were almost back at the house now. Voices could be heard coming from beyond the veranda, probably those of Emma and Benny, who must have brought themselves to have a chat.

  ‘To make you forget. The only question is, what.’

  Marc shut his eyes, recalling a sequence from his recent dream.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t found out. Not so soon, at least.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully.

  ‘Then try to recall it.’ The professor came to a halt and looked at him intently. ‘Recall what you want to forget!’

  ‘But how? How am I supposed to. . .’

  Marc’s wristwatch buzzed. He felt in his jacket pocket, then smacked his forehead with annoyance.

  ‘What is it?’ Haberland asked. His dog, too, seemed to stare at Marc enquiringly.

  ‘I have to take my pills, but they’re still in the glove compartment of my car.’

  ‘What sort of pills?’

  Marc touched the plaster on his neck.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Haberland went round behind him. ‘I’m glad you raised the subject.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Earlier on, when I examined your head for superficial injuries, I took the liberty of changing the dressing. What’s it for?’

  ‘There’s a splinter in my neck.’

  The professor raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course. Hey, what are you doing?’

  Marc couldn’t react quickly enough to prevent the old man from ripping off the salmon-coloured plaster that held the gauze dressing in place.

  ‘I know you can’t see it, but go on, have a feel.’

  Why should I? Constantin told me the wound must remain sterile.

  ‘Well, go on.’ Haberland guided his hand. Marc winced, but not in pain. He couldn’t feel a thing. Nothing but bare, unbroken skin.

  Haberland confirmed it. ‘You don’t have a wound there at all.’

  No splinter.

  ‘And it looks as if there never was one.’

  55

  The snow came without warning. Although it was still too fine and feathery to settle, Haberland advised them to leave as soon as possible. The rental car in which Benny had driven them there was fitted with summer tyres and would fail to negotiate the narrow forest tracks if the snow became heavier. And that, if the professor was to be believed, was a possibility to be reckoned with. By the time he said goodbye he was rubbing his wrists even more nervously than when they first started talking.

  Marc couldn’t understand why Benny was driving so cautiously. He dipped the headlights after only a few hundred metres and set the windscreen wipers at maximum. Ten minutes later it was as if the car had taken off, leaving the leaf-strewn ground behind, and was flying above a dense layer of cloud.

  ‘What were you talking about with the professor all that time?’ Benny asked, his fingers drumming nervously on the steering wheel. He sounded uneasy and faintly suspicious.

  ‘Don’t worry, he didn’t tell me anything about you I didn’t know already.’
r />   Marc went on to describe the revelation that had occurred in the course of their walk.

  ‘No splinter?’ said Benny.

  ‘No splinter.’ Marc turned so that he could see his neck. ‘He also said that no one would have prescribed an immuno-suppressive for an injury like that. At most an antibiotic to combat inflammation.’

  Benny shook his head in surprise.

  They were bouncing along a track full of potholes. Marc still couldn’t tell where they were, and visibility didn’t improve until they turned out on to a deserted but metalled road. He now thought he knew what part of the suburbs they were in. He had been out here with Benny once before, years ago, when the future ill-feeling between them wasn’t even a cloud on the horizon. Not far from here must be the abandoned quarry in which they’d dumped their father’s car.

  ‘Twelve forty-five on the thirteeth of November. We’re heading away from the Müggelsee and towards Köpenick old town,’ Marc heard Emma dictate into her mobile behind him. ‘All advice to the contrary, Marc Lucas is planning to go to the home of his father-in-law, Constantin Senner, in Sakrow.’

  Constantin.

  Marc managed to fade out her voice by shutting his eyes. He thought of the man he’d trusted more than himself. The man with whom he’d shared every possible emotion: joy, grief, anger, concern, euphoria, and dark, abysmal depression.

  He had admired Constantin for being a man of integrity with clear aims, a man whose conservative political stance he had no use for, but whom he respected for his principles and the love he bestowed on anyone who meant something to his only daughter. Constantin had been his friend, confidant and mentor. And now he seemed to be the author of a plan designed to drive him insane.

  ‘Why does Haberland live all on his own like that?’ he heard Emma ask. He opened his eyes.

  She had put her mobile away and was leaning forwards.

  ‘Ever heard of the “Soul-Breaker”?’ Benny countered. His tone was less hostile, and the fact that Emma had addressed him of her own accord denoted a slight rapprochement between them. Clearly, Haberland’s words had not been altogether wasted on them.

  ‘You mean you haven’t heard about the women who were abducted and later found buried alive in their own bodies, so to speak?’ Benny glanced in the rear-view mirror. ‘No? Just as well, probably.’

  Marc turned to him, aware for the first time of being unhampered by any plaster on his neck – a pleasant but unnerving sensation.

  ‘Where does Haberland come into it?’

  ‘It’s a complicated story – he told me it in outline during one of our therapy sessions. It took place on the other side of the city, more or less where you insist on going now.’

  They passed a sign for the A113. On the other side of the street a knot of people had taken refuge from the snow in a bus shelter, but the wind was blowing it almost horizontally across the pavement, so only the ones on the inside were spared. Although Marc’s seat was heated and a jet of warm air was blowing straight at his chest, he felt as unprotected as the pedestrians. The cold he was exposed to was of a different nature. It came from within.

  Constantin.

  Twice a week he’d gone to have his dressing changed. Twice a week he’d thought it exceptionally considerate of his father-in-law to attend to him personally instead of leaving the task to one of his nurses. He had lived with the threat of paraplegia and been advised to avoid violent exercise, forbidden to play any kind of sport, to touch the wound or even to get it wet, which had made showering awkward.

  All lies, and all for one purpose only.

  No splinter, no wound. No wound, no reason to take pills regularly.

  That was why the chemist didn’t have the medication in stock. Far from being immuno-suppressives, the pills he’d been made to take every day had presumably served to throw his mind out of gear, to paralyse or even alter it. They were powerful psychiatric drugs, just as Inspector Stoya had told him at the station.

  Marc took the plastic bag containing the unpaid-for medication from his jacket pocket and removed an aspirin. Although he was feeling better than he had a few hours ago, his basic symptoms – dizziness, nausea and leaden-limbed fatigue – had not subsided.

  ‘What did Haberland give me?’ he asked Benny, wondering how his stomach would react if he swallowed the aspirin without water.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Benny veered right on to the fast lane of the slip road leading to the urban expressway. The windscreen wipers were waging a furious battle with the snowflakes, which did not stick to the windscreen but hampered visibility nevertheless.

  ‘The good professor had nothing handy in that shack of his,’ Benny said, glancing at the plastic bag in Marc’s hand. ‘Your girlfriend back there got the last of the Paracetamol.’

  But what about that plaster? That jab in the arm? Marc was about to ask when he remembered giving a blood sample at the Bleibtreu Clinic. One of the preliminaries for an amnesia experiment in which he had never taken part yet seemed to be in the thick of.

  Am I feeling better because the effect of the pills is wearing off? Am I seeing things more clearly now I’ve stopped taking them? Did I just have temporary withdrawal symptoms, and am I now on the road to recovery?

  They drove north along the deserted expressway. Unlike rain, which regularly brought the traffic on Berlin’s arterial roads to a thrombotic standstill, the first snow of the year always had a cleansing effect. The roads emptied, and if you were brave enough or drove a winterproofed car you could make better progress than you ever could in rush hour. The lights of the vehicles ahead and behind them were so far away, even now, that they could hardly be seen.

  External visibility was as blurred as Marc’s inner vision. He still hadn’t the faintest idea what part Sandra was playing in this crazy scenario, for which she even seemed to have supplied the script – one that anticipated all the traumas he was undergoing. How was that possible? Why had there been a baby’s cradle in their bedroom? And why had she wanted to alter her will, as the mysterious attorney had claimed? On the other hand, was there a will at all? Might it exist as little as the clinic that had vanished before his eyes?

  And even this invisible pointer is leading me back to Constantin, Marc concluded in his mind. After all, he had spotted the Bleibtreu Clinic’s advertisement in a magazine in his father-in-law’s waiting room.

  LEARN TO FORGET

  But what?

  What is going to happen today, 13th November?

  Professor Haberland’s voice still resonated in his memory: ‘Recall what you want to forget!’

  How was he supposed to do that?

  Benny’s mobile beeped, jolting him out of his reverie.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked when he saw his brother’s face darken after he’d read the text message and replaced the phone in the tray between the seats.

  ‘Nothing, just a change of plans.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘I can’t keep you company any longer, Mark, I’ve wasted far too much time already.’

  ‘Time on what?’

  Benny smiled sadly. ‘You don’t need to know. I borrowed some money from the wrong people, and—’

  Emma uttered a sudden cry. Simultaneously, Marc was thrown forwards against his seatbelt and flung up his arms.

  ‘Bloody fool!’ yelled Benny. He blew his horn furiously, but far too late to elicit more than a weary smile from the driver who had just cut in on them.

  Marc froze.

  The car that had changed lanes ahead of them and was now heading at breakneck speed for the Tempelhofer Damm slip road was a boxy, mass-produced saloon like thousands of others. The licence plate was illuminated but indecipherable, obscured by mud and slush. Despite this, Marc was in no doubt as to what had just overtaken them: the yellow Volvo photographed by Emma outside the police station. He was equally certain that the person who turned to look at them from the passenger seat was a fair-haired woman.

  56

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��After them!’ Marc shouted, and before Benny could protest he had grabbed the wheel. The car swerved to the right. They were flung forwards with a force resembling that of a rear-end collision, but Benny had merely stamped on the brake so as to regain control of the car.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he yelled, almost in unison with Emma, who had luckily fastened her seatbelt in the back.

  ‘Sandra,’ was all Marc said, pointing ahead.

  It was warmer in the city centre than beside the Müggelsee. The snow melted as soon as it landed on the asphalt and visibility was considerably better.

  ‘Where?’ Benny was now, willy-nilly, taking the exit road to Tempelhofer Damm.

  ‘There, in that Volvo.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Please!’ Marc heard the desperation in his own voice. ‘Do me this favour.’

  Benny shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was letting himself in for, but he put on speed.

  They raced past the abandoned airport and along Tempelhofer Damm, heading in the direction of Airlift Square.

  ‘You could be right!’ Emma chimed in, hanging on to one of the grab handles in the back. The Volvo squeezed past a bus that was occupying two of the three lanes ahead of them. The road was further obstructed about a hundred metres ahead by a stranded lorry.

  The Volvo was now out of sight and there was no possibility of overtaking it, but Benny sped towards the tailback without reducing speed.

  ‘Stop!’ Marc shouted, bracing himself for the worst. But instead of slowing down, his brother wrenched the wheel over and swerved on to the pavement. Emma started screaming, and all that prevented Marc from following suit was sheer bewilderment. A few seconds ago he’d had to urge Benny on, and now his brother was trying to kill them all. He didn’t regain the power of speech until they were level with the slip road to the airport.

  ‘Slow down, it isn’t worth it.’

  Benny’s eyes flickered between the rear-view mirror and the road ahead. ‘Just so you know. We aren’t chasing anyone.’