Splinter

19

Another taxi and another driver – a woman this time. Still the same nightmare, though. Marc lowered the window a little to let some fresh air in but promptly closed it again because he couldn’t hear the woman on the other end of the line, whose number he’d got from directory enquiries.

‘I’m sorry, I’m not authorized to do that.’

‘But I’m his son-in-law.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t ascertain that on the phone.’

Marc groaned in annoyance, staring absently at the car that had pulled up beside them at the lights. The two children in the back stuck out their tongues and laughed when he turned away.

‘Then please page him,’ he said.

‘No point, I’m afraid. Professor Senner is operating at present – and I’ve already told you more than I’m supposed to.’

This can’t be happening.

He knew the hospital receptionist – he’d made her acquaintance when going to have his dressing changed. He knew she had a dog, painted each of the fingernails on her right hand a different colour, and doodled on her memo pad while she was on the phone. She had to know who he was, but she was treating him like a stranger, politely but distantly. And the more insistent he became, the more her voice lost its cheerful veneer.

‘Okay. Can you at least tell him to call me as soon as he gets out of theatre? It’s an emergency.’

He was about to hang up when he suddenly remembered something. ‘Just a moment. Can you see my phone number on your display?’

‘No. It’s withheld.’

Shit, he won’t be able to reach me at my old number.

‘But if the professor really is your father-in-law he’s bound to know your mobile number.’ The scepticism in her voice was unmistakable now.

‘Yes, of course.’

Marc hung up. He rested his forehead against the head restraint of the front seat and massaged his temples. Nothing relieved his headache, neither the cool imitation leather nor the gentle pressure of his thumbs. Why had he bought aspirin and codeine instead of some other painkiller that didn’t need washing down with water?

‘Everything okay back there?’

Marc laughed silently.

Everything okay?

Sure. Discounting the fact that a girl whose life he’d saved that morning was dead and his wife, who had until recently been lying in a mortuary, was still alive but failed to recognize him, everything was fine.

‘Know those days when the earth seems to be turning in the opposite direction?’ he said, taking note of the cabby for the first time. In a lonely hearts ad she would probably have described her figure as ‘womanly, with curves in all the right places’. The truth was, she filled the seat from door to gear stick.

‘Like in: “Stop the world, I want to get off?”’ she said.

Her sympathetic chuckle went with the colourful material in which her ample form was swathed. Marc guessed that her wraparound dress was of African origin. That figured, to judge by the three Rasta plaits dangling from her neck.

‘Sure, man, I know what you mean.’

I wonder if you do.

The taxi braked sharply to avoid a couple so intent on catching a bus across the street that they’d darted out in front of it.

‘I picked up a granddad yesterday. Nice old guy. Late seventies, I guess. Halfway there he suddenly forgot where he wanted to go.’

Okay, maybe you do have a rough idea.

‘Worst thing was, he forgot he was in a cab – thought I was kidnapping him or something.’

‘What did you do?’ Marc asked, looking out of the window again. The neon sign of a car rental firm flashed past.

‘If I’ve learnt one lesson in life, friend, it’s this: when people go mad, stay sane.’

A fellow cabby was turning into Friedrichstrasse ahead of her. She tooted him twice in salutation.

‘I just ignored granddad’s hullabaloo and took him where he’d asked to go in the first place. His daughter was expecting him, luckily.’

She double-parked and looked in her rear-view mirror. ‘Alzheimer’s. You meet new people every day, huh?’

From the way she roared with laughter at her old chestnut of a joke, she might just have invented it. Then she peered out of the window dubiously. ‘You did say No. 211 Französische Strasse?’

The taxi gave a lurch as she swung round in her seat.

‘Yes, why?’

‘I hope you’ve got a hard hat with you.’

Chuckling, she reached for her receipt pad, but Marc waved it away and gave her the last few notes in his wallet. Then he got out to make sure he wasn’t suffering from an optical illusion. The view from the cab was so unbelievable, he had to take a closer look.

A hole.

The nearer he got to the fence, the slower and more hesitant his steps became. It was as if he were approaching a clifftop. Which, in a sense, he was.

Wind was blowing into his face and rain was blurring his vision, but not enough to prevent him from identifying the numbers of the commercial buildings to his right and left. He shivered.

This is impossible.

Left 209, right 213.

He advanced another step. The tip of his nose was now almost touching the sign that prohibited members of the public from entering the construction site.

He looked again at No. 209, the office building on his left, and then at the investment bank on his right. Finally, he looked down.

Seven metres down into the pit which had earlier that day been the site of No. 211, the Bleibtreu Clinic. It had vanished like the last remaining vestiges of normality in his shattered existence.