Splinter

7

The Bleibtreu Clinic was situated in Französische Strasse, not far from the Gendarmenmarkt. An old building facelifted with glass and steel, it immediately conveyed that the only national-health patients privileged to enter its portals were the cleaning women who worked there.

After the luxury of his preliminary car ride, which deposited him right outside the private elevators on Level 2 of the underground car park, Marc had been prepared for anything: for a koi carp pool in the reception area, Irish linen hand towels in the designer toilets and a waiting room fit to compete with a Singapore Airlines’ first-class lounge. But his expectations were surpassed when he found that the luxurious eleventh-floor men’s room afforded a panoramic view of Friedrichstrasse. Those who got up this far might be suffering from some mental disorder, but they could still piss on the rank and file. His father would definitely have approved of this tasteful squandering of patients’ fees. ‘Money only feels at home in an expensive wallet’ had always been a maxim of his.

Marc, on the other hand, felt like a vegetarian in an abattoir when he was prevailed on to sign a pledge of confidentiality and fill in a patient’s questionnaire in the clinic’s modernistic waiting room. Half an hour earlier he’d had to surrender his mobile phone, all metallic objects and even his wallet to the security guard in reception.

‘Purely precautionary,’ Bleibtreu had explained. ‘You’d never believe the lengths our competitors would go to in order to steal the fruits of our research.’

He had then excused himself and handed Marc over to a swarthy-looking assistant who ushered him silently into a dimly lit consulting room and disappeared without a word.

The room reminded him at first sight him of a dentist’s surgery. Its central feature was a white, hydraulically adjustable couch connected to a computer console by numerous cables of different colours.

‘Electroencephalography,’ a woman’s voice said softly. Marc gave a start and swung round as the heavy door behind him shut with a faint click. ‘We’ll be measuring your brainwaves with that.’

Part of the square room was partitioned off by a row of waist-high mandarin trees in tubs. He had failed to notice either the leather three-piece suite behind them or the woman doctor who now rose from one of the arm chairs.

‘My apologies, Dr Lucas, I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Patrizia Menardi, the inhouse neurologist here.’

She came over to him with her hand extended, managing to look simultaneously affable and dominant, partly because she had a gentle voice but didn’t display even a hint of a smile. Marc detected a tiny groove in her upper lip, presumably the relic of an expertly performed cleft-palate operation. He felt pretty certain that her firm handshake and rather mannish demeanour formed part of a defensive barrier dating back to a time when she’d been teased at school because of her hare lip.

‘Actually, Dr Menardi, I only wanted to-’

‘No, no “doctor”. Just Menardi.’

‘Okay, then please forget my label too. I only use it when booking hotel rooms, but it’s never got me an upgrade yet.’

Her expression didn’t change.

Okay, so humour isn’t her forte.

‘When do I see Professor Bleibtreu again?’ he asked.

‘In a few minutes. In the meantime, I’ll prepare you for examination.’

‘Hold on, I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong. I don’t want to be examined. The professor was simply going to explain the nature of the experiment – purely hypothetically, because, from the look of things, I won’t want to take part in it at all.’

‘Really? I was told you’re our next candidate for MME.’

‘MME?’

‘The memory experiment. The professor will familiarize you with it as soon as he’s completed his rounds. Let’s make the most of the interval by taking down your particulars.’

Marc sighed and looked at his watch.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said, but he sat down facing the neurologist, who had returned to her armchair. She poured him a glass of water from a carafe and opened a slim folder lying on the coffee table between them.

‘Marc Lucas, thirty-two, honours degree in jurisprudence.’ She tapped the relevant section of the questionnaire in front of her. Marc had been meant to complete it at the same time as signing the pledge of confidentiality, but he’d lost interest halfway through and given up.

‘You passed both examinations with distinction and gained your doctorate in juvenile law. Congratulations – very few people manage that, to the best of my knowledge.’ She nodded admiringly.

‘And you now work with socially disadvantaged children and young people in Neukölln?’ she asked casually, her eyes straying to the watch on Marc’s wrist.

‘It’s a fake from Thailand,’ he lied, inserting a forefinger beneath the strap. He didn’t feel like explaining how he could afford a luxury watch that cost as much as a family saloon car on a social worker’s salary, even if it had been a birthday present from Sandra.

‘Your father was a lawyer too.’ She took a photo from her folder and held it so Marc couldn’t see.

‘You’re very like him,’ she said, and went on leafing through the file. Marc didn’t react, despite his urge to snatch the questionnaire from her hand. His resemblance to his father was striking indeed, although outsiders didn’t find it so noticeable because their similarities related mainly to character and outlook on life. Frank Lucas had also been a fighter. Like Marc, he had made up ground by going to evening classes and then devoted himself to representing the underprivileged. In the early days, when Frank still couldn’t afford an office of his own and had set up shop in his living room, half the neighbourhood used to sit on his sofa and enlist his advice. Deceived wives, drink drivers, petty criminals caught red-handed – they’d used Papa Lucas more as a pastor than a lawyer. He often gave his ‘friends’ time to pay or waived his fee altogether, even though Mama Lucas gave him stick because they themselves were behind with the rent.

In the course of time, however, some of the petty criminals whom he’d represented pro bono made a career for themselves – villains who could suddenly afford to pay cash and never asked for a receipt. As Frank’s clients descended the ladder of criminality, so his practice gradually picked up, though not for long.

‘Your father died young,’ Menardi went on. ‘Cirrhosis of the liver, undiagnosed. Your mother, a housewife, died not long afterwards.’

How does she know all this?

Unless his memory was playing tricks he hadn’t completed those sections of the questionnaire, nor the ones that followed.

‘You have a younger brother named Benjamin?’ Menardi asked.

Marc’s throat tightened. He reached for the glass of water. The neurologist had evidently wasted her time scouring the Internet.

‘Benny. At least, that’s what he called himself the last time we spoke.’

‘Which was when?’

‘Let me think.’ Marc took a sip and replaced the glass on the coffee table.

‘It was, er… Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…’

He counted off the days of the week on his fingers.

‘At a rough guess, on a Thursday around eighteen months ago.’

‘The day he was sectioned?’ Menardi shut the folder and tapped her front teeth with her pencil. ‘After another unsuccessful suicide attempt?’

The pressure on his throat increased again.

‘Look, I don’t know how you got hold of all this information, but I certainly didn’t come here to chat about my family history.’

Marc started to get up, but she restrained him with a soothing gesture.

‘Then please tell me about the traumatic experience that prompted you to contact us recently.’

He hesitated for a moment. Then, after another glance at his watch, he subsided on to the sofa once more.

‘I hear voices,’ he said.

‘What sort of voices?’

‘There they go again. Someone just said, “What sort of voices?”’

Menardi gave him a long look, then made a note in her folder.

‘What’s that you’re writing?’ he demanded.

‘I’m making a note that you take refuge in humour. It’s typical of creative and intelligent people, but it makes them harder to treat.’

‘I don’t want treatment of any kind.’

‘You ought to consider it, though. Would you care to describe the accident for me?’

‘Why ask me if you already know everything?’

‘Because I’d like to hear it from your own lips. My concern is less what you tell me than how you tell it. For instance, your attempts to make a joke of everything are far more informative than the fact that your wife might still be alive if you’d sent for help at once.’

Marc felt as if the woman had opened a valve in his body and he was collapsing like an inflatable mattress. He could almost hear the hiss as all the strength leaked out of him.

‘What do you mean? I couldn’t summon help, I was unconscious.’

‘Really?’ Menardi frowned and opened the folder again. ‘According to this accident report, you called the emergency services. But not until fourteen minutes after the crash.’

She handed him a printed form as thin and translucent as greaseproof paper. Looking up, he was doubly disconcerted to see the genuine concern on her face.

‘One moment,’ she said hesitantly. Her cheeks reddened and the sheet of paper in her hands developed a nervous tremor. ‘Are you telling me you can’t remember?’