Splinter

16

‘No, Lucas is my surname. Lucas with a “c”. Yes, both names with a “c”, Marc and Lucas. Have you checked?’

He cupped his hand over the mobile and leant forward to speak to the driver of the Mercedes taxi he’d just hailed.

‘Karl Marx Strasse, Höhe Hasenheide, please.’

The cabby’s sole response to this statement of their destination was to snort and turn up the volume on the radio. Sitar music blared from the loudspeaker.

‘Nothing? The licence number is B – YG 12. Okay, okay. So it wasn’t towed away? Thanks.’

He hung up on the police pound he’d been put through to by his mobile-phone provider’s helpline. The next moment he was flung back against the seat, which was covered in protective plastic sheeting, as the diesel cab accelerated away surprisingly fast. He groped for the seat-belt, but it had slipped down behind the folding rear seat.

‘Problem?’ asked the bald-headed cabby, glancing suspiciously in his rear-view mirror, which had a pair of felt poker dice dangling from it. He draped a steroid-enhanced arm over the headrest of the passenger seat. Stick a pipe in his mouth, and he’d have made an excellent Popeye impressionist.

You can say that again. I’ve just seen my wife and I’d like to put my seatbelt on so as not to have to share her fate. She’s dead, you see.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Marc replied. He would have preferred to sit on the other side, but Popeye looked as if he wouldn’t like a passenger breathing down his neck. So he stayed where he was and stared out of the window sans seatbelt.

He had never, even when his grief was at its most intense, felt as alone as he did right now.

It was only five minutes since he had first stared at his mobile’s blank display. Five minutes since he had become aware how utterly disconnected, in the truest sense of the word, he was from his life. In the past he had often debated with friends how far the world would come unstuck if all forms of power supply were cut off overnight. It had never occurred to him that the loss of his phone would constitute as drastic a turning point. In a society where the mobile phone was not only a means of communication but a computer with which people ran their entire social life, pinching someone’s SIM card was the surest way of isolating him from the outside world.

He had never dialled a number in recent years, just clicked on the name of the person he wanted to call in his digital address book. For Sandra, Constantin, his colleague Roswitha, his old university friend Thomas and his other intimates, all he’d needed to do was press a speed-dial key. The only phone number he still knew by heart was the one he now used the least: his own mobile number. He’d stored all the rest under their owners’ names and forgotten them.

Learn to forget.

Marc ran another check on all his sub-menus: contacts, selected phone numbers, calls received in his absence, SMS and MMS. Nothing. Someone at the clinic must have changed his phone back to its default settings. Whether deliberately or inadvertently, the result was the same: he was cut off from the outside world. There was always directory enquiries, of course, but that was no use either – they wouldn’t give him Constantin Senner’s ex-directory number. If anyone could help him now, it was his father-in-law. For one thing, he was in the same boat, being as grief-stricken as himself; for another, he was a doctor. If he was in a delusional state, Constantin would know what to do. It was asking too much of his friend Thomas, who would shrug his shoulders and give him useless pieces of advice he’d already thought of himself: Check the clinic you visited today, speak to the police, call a locksmith.

Which wasn’t so simple when you’d left your ID inside the flat and had yet to register your change of address officially. He had only moved in three weeks ago.

Besides, Thomas would keep looking at his watch and ask him to keep his voice down or he’d wake the baby and his wife would give him hell.

Marc wondered what it said about him that he hadn’t kept up with his friends in recent years. He’d had only one really close friend in his life, and she had donated her body to science six weeks ago.

Sandra.

He hadn’t been able to bring himself to pay her a last visit in Pathology, where her cadaver was now being dissected by medical students. That was why he still hadn’t fixed a date for an official funeral.

‘What’s on tonight?’ the cabby shouted over his shoulder. It didn’t occur to him to turn the radio down.

Marc looked bewildered. ‘What do you mean?’

‘At Huxleys. Who’s playing?’

Do I look like someone on his way to a rock concert?

‘No idea. I’ve got to look in at my office, that’s all.’

Popeye glanced in the rear-view mirror again and snorted, unmistakably conveying his opinion of a workplace in this district.

‘I’m an Asian freak,’ he volunteered. He seemed to expect to be congratulated on the fact that even a bodybuilder could have unusual taste in music. Marc tried to ignore him. He needed all his energy in order to solve the questions to which his brain had found no answers in the last few minutes. Why can’t I get into my flat? If Sandra is dead, how could she open the door? If she’s still alive, why didn’t she recognize me?

‘What kind of job do you do?’ asked the cabby. He was now having to compete, not only with the strains of the sitar, but also with the unintelligible hiss and crackle of his call centre.

No wonder I can’t think straight.

Marc’s first thought had been to go straight to Constantin. Then it had occurred to him that his computer at the ‘Beach’ held a complete back-up of his phone database. Besides, the few euro notes in his wallet wouldn’t cover the fare either to Constantin’s house at Sakrow or to his private clinic in Heerstrasse.

01621…? Marc cudgelled his brains. Sandra’s and Constantin’s mobile numbers shared the same prefix. He also knew they both ended in 66.

‘The devil’s digits,’ Sandra had quipped on one occasion. Unfortunately, she hadn’t supplied him with a mnemonic for the missing four digits in the middle. He felt himself transported back to the days when he and Benny had tried to open cycle padlocks in the school playground. It would have been impossible to hit on the correct phone numbers by chance.

Okay, one thing at a time. First go to the office, load your mobile and pick up some cash. Then get back into your life. Your identity.

The meter clicked: €12,30. Marc had a sudden idea. Although he tried to suppress it, he instantly realized he had to pursue it if he wanted to find out what was going on. If someone had tampered with his mobile, the only way to find out was to use an outsider’s phone.

‘Excuse me?’

He held his mobile so the cabby couldn’t see it and leant forwards.

‘Mind doing me a favour?’

Popeye promptly took his foot off the gas and pulled into the kerb, although he was still 200 metres from their destination.

‘You can’t pay?’ he asked suspiciously, turning round. Marc slipped the mobile under his thigh.

‘No, no. I think I’ve lost my phone. Would you mind calling a number for me?’

He indicated the cabby’s mobile, which sat in a plastic holder beside the meter. It also functioned as a satnav.

‘Lost it? You were using it when you got in!’

Shit. Marc hadn’t even thought of that, he was so befuddled.

‘That’s just my spare mobile,’ he lied hastily. ‘It’s my BlackBerry that’s gone.’

The cabby’s scepticism was unmistakable. ‘You gay?’ he asked.

‘What gives you that idea?’

‘It’s an old trick. I call you, you get my phone number. But I’m not one of those. I may like wearing leather, but that doesn’t mean-’

‘No, don’t worry. I only want to know if I’ve lost my work mobile somewhere or left it at my girlfriend’s place. I’d call her myself, but this thing has run out of juice.’ He extracted the mobile from under his thigh.

The cabby still looked hesitant. ‘My number’s withheld in any case.’

‘You see? There’s no problem, then.’

Popeye flexed his biceps and snorted contemptuously, but then almost wrenched his mobile from its holder and keyed in the number Marc gave him.

‘It’s ringing,’ he said after a while, taking the phone from his ear.

Marc heard it, faintly, although his own display registered no incoming call.

So I was right, they simply swapped the SIM card. But why?

The cabby broke in on his train of thought. ‘Didn’t you say you left it at a girlfriend’s place?’ he asked.

‘Er, yes.’

‘But there’s a man on the line.’

‘What?’

Popeye handed him the phone.

Marc held it to his ear. ‘Hello?’ he heard. The word was repeated several times in a deep male voice.

‘Sorry, I must have misdialled.’

‘No problem. Who did you want to speak to?’

Marc stated his full name and was about to hang up when the man gave a friendly chuckle. ‘No, pal, you’ve got the right number. What can I do for you?’

‘Huh?’

The mobile almost slipped through Marc’s sweaty fingers and his pulse rate seemed to double.

‘I’m Marc Lucas,’ said the stranger at the other end. ‘With two “c”s.’ He gave another chuckle. ‘Hang on, I’ll be right back.’

There was a rustling sound. ‘What is it, darling?’ the man asked in a muffled voice.

Marc dropped the cabby’s mobile – just after he heard the woman in the background laugh.

Sandra…