Splinter

37

The attack was over as quickly as it had begun. Ponytail’s eyes widened in disbelief, like those of a comic-book character registering boundless amazement. To Marc, though, the fact that his adversary had gone down so easily came as almost more of a surprise than it did to the man himself. He hadn’t laid a finger on him; Emma had. Before he could ask her how she had escaped from her captor’s armlock, she tossed him her car keys.

‘Quick, you’ll have to drive.’

Still rather dazed by Beardie’s blow across her face, she tottered round to the passenger side and flopped down inside the Beetle. ‘I can’t see too well without my glasses.’

Marc stared down in bewilderment at the limp forms of the two male nurses, but not for long this time. He shook off his inertia, and a few heartbeats later he was turning on to a deserted Bülowstrasse. Glancing feverishly in the rear-view mirror, he floored the old banger across the intersection into Nollendorfplatz.

For a while neither of them spoke. Then he couldn’t restrain himself any longer. ‘What did they want with you?’

Emma felt absent-mindedly for her safety belt. She didn’t reply until her trembling hands had clipped it together. ‘Bleibtreu…’ she said breathlessly, wiping a skein of saliva off her lower lip. ‘Those were Bleibtreu’s boys… They were meant to take me back… Back to the clinic… to delete the rest of my memories…’

The clinic? But it doesn’t exist any more. No. 211 Französische Strasse is just a hole in the ground.

Emma pinched the bridge of her nose, gasping for breath. Every sentence she uttered was punctuated by a pause during which she sucked air noisily into her lungs. ‘They were out to get you too – believe me now? We’re both in the same programme… Alone we don’t stand a chance, but together we may shake them off.’

Marc glanced at her. She was looking utterly exhausted but seemed quite lucid, even if she did sound like a deranged conspiracy theorist.

But why is all this happening?

If the programme really existed, what memories of his did they want to obliterate? Or had they already done so?

Even attempting to find answers to these absurd questions verged on insanity, so he changed the subject. ‘How did you do it?’

‘What?’

‘Those men. How did you do it?’

Emma’s snow-white teeth flashed in a smile – partly, no doubt, to relieve the tension. ‘I bit him,’ she said. ‘That made him drop his… What would you call this?’ She handed him the cigar-shaped cylinder Beardie had threatened her with. ‘Is it a vaccination gun?’

Marc glanced at it briefly, drove through an amber light on Kurfürstenstrasse, and nodded. Anaesthetic. She had neutralized their attackers with their own weapon.

‘I hope they’re still breathing,’ she said quietly. Judging by the sudden note of uncertainty in her voice, she wanted him to say she’d done the right thing. ‘After all, I was only defending myself.’

He nodded.

The end justifies the means. Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to get the right result.

Marc slowed as they entered the 30kph zone on the bend by the Esplanade Hotel. He hadn’t a clue where they were going or who his uninvited companion was. The impression she made on him was not only increasingly mysterious but ever more ominous.

‘Who exactly are you?’ he demanded.

She looked at him and hesitated for a moment, then lowered her eyes again. ‘I’ve already told you all I know about myself. They’ve already deprived me of the rest of my memories.’

‘Crap!’

Emma flinched as he thumped the Beetle’s plastic steering wheel. ‘We didn’t meet today by chance.’

She drew a deep breath. ‘No, not by chance. I was waiting for you at the building site, don’t you remember? I’ve never made any secret of it.’ She stared angrily out of the window. ‘I’m on your side – how much more proof do you need? Should I have let Bleibtreu’s people kill me?’

Once Marc had turned into Potsdamer Strasse, Emma unzipped her jacket and took a mobile phone from the inside pocket.

‘Who are you calling now?’ he demanded as he sent the Beetle speeding into the Tiergarten Tunnel. A red X warned him to change lanes.

‘No one.’

She kneaded her forehead with one hand and used the other to press the same key on the mobile repeatedly until she found what she was looking for.

‘Here.’

She switched on the dirty old interior light above their heads and held out the display for Marc to see. He was just overtaking a lone garbage truck, so he could only take a fleeting glance.

‘What is it?’

‘I promised you some proof. See for yourself: she’s alive.’

‘Sandra?’

He stamped on the brake and the Beetle went into a skid. It lurched twice and the suspension creaked alarmingly as he overran a kerb and slithered to a halt in the middle of the tunnel, just opposite an emergency exit.

‘You think this is wise?’ said Emma, who had dropped the phone. She had to wipe some mud off the keyboard before handing it to him.

‘Where did you take this?’ he demanded.

‘I told you: I followed you after you ditched me at the hotel.’ She scratched her peeling hand. ‘I took this outside the police station.’

‘Sandra was at the police station?’

Marc held the phone at an angle because the plastic display was reflecting the light, but he still couldn’t see much. The yellow Volvo Constantin was standing beside might have been photographed any night anywhere. The digital time code was registering the hour at which Marc had been inside the police station, but altering a mobile’s electronic calendar was the easiest thing in the world.

‘That is her, isn’t it?’ said Emma, tapping the phone. Marc couldn’t take his eyes off the figure he saw there. The profile, the blonde hair, the slender finger pointing to something off-screen – they all looked so familiar. On the other hand, everything was so indistinct and ill lit, despite the street light beneath which the car was parked, that he couldn’t be absolutely certain.

‘I got there a bit too late, just as your father-in-law was saying goodbye to her.’

Sandra followed Constantin to the police station? None of it makes any sense.

What reason could there be for father and daughter to play such a cruel trick on him? In a cheap soap opera it would all prove to have been a plot designed to discredit him in the eyes of a court and place him and his assets under legal supervision.

Except that I’m the poverty-stricken wretch. It’s Sandra who’ll inherit a lot of money one day.

A chill ran down his spine and his jaw developed a tremor.

Revenge, he thought, feeling colder still. If they’re really trying to destroy me, their only possible motive is revenge.

But what was he supposed to have done to them? What inadvertent, unremembered act on his part would justify the unimaginable nightmares to which they were subjecting him?

Have I done something so heinous that Sandra wants to drive me insane? Something for which she may once have wanted to leave me just before she miscarried?

He was about to restart the engine when another equally alarming thought occurred to him. He leant over, grabbed Emma by the shoulder and looked at her searchingly. ‘That file on me you found at the clinic…’

‘Yes?’

‘Did it also contain a photo of my wife?’

‘No.’

‘Was she in the Bleibtreu programme too?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘Really? So how did you know it was her?’ He squeezed her shoulder harder.

‘You’re hurting me.’

He merely nodded. ‘What makes you so sure it’s Sandra in the photo?’

Emma squirmed in his grasp. ‘You told me about her, and the man kept calling her Sandra.’

‘Constantin?’

‘If that’s what he’s called.’

She put her hand, which felt pleasantly warm, on his. He relaxed his grip at once.

‘What did he say?’

‘They were arguing, the two of them, that’s the only reason I took the picture. I couldn’t catch what your wife was saying because she didn’t get out and she left the engine running.’

That doesn’t sound like her, Marc said to himself. Sandra was so eco-friendly, she even turned off her engine at the lights. He couldn’t help smiling ruefully. For one thing, because he’d often teased her when the drivers behind them tooted her for not pulling away fast enough; for another, because he realized he’d just been questioning the behaviour of a dead woman.

‘And my father-in-law?’

‘I already told you. He kept repeating the same thing.’

‘Which was?’

Emma stroked her cheek in agitation. The skin around her eyes was somewhat darker than the rest of her face, he noticed. ‘He said something like: “Calm down, Sandra, it’ll all be over in another few hours.”’

All what?

Two motorbikes roared past them in quick succession, using the deserted tunnel as a racetrack. Marc scanned Emma’s face. Even though her eyelids were flickering nervously, he couldn’t detect any sign of insincerity. She was simply on edge.

‘That’s what he said, Marc. Then she drove off in a rage and he climbed the steps – went inside the police station to get you.’

I don’t believe that, it doesn’t make sense – any of it.

Why would Sandra and Constantin gang up on me? Why were they arguing? And what will soon be over?

The more Emma said, the more his jigsaw puzzle of a life disintegrated and the harder he found it to tell who was suffering from severe psychotic delusions, himself or the people around him.

He took another look at the photo of Constantin and his wife. ‘Too bad the licence plate isn’t on it.’

‘Yes, I was in too much of a rush.’

‘Oh, naturally.’ He gave a sarcastic laugh and started the engine.

‘But…’ Emma delved into her inside pocket again. This time she brought out a small notepad with the remains of some torn-out pages protruding from the edges ‘… maybe this will help.’ She turned the pad over and tapped some numerals scrawled on the cardboard back.

B – Q 1371.

‘I made a note of it instead.’