Splinter

59

Nobody stopped him. No burly figure barred his path, no one grabbed him by the sleeve or applied an armlock and pinned him face down on the floor. Yet he was so weak, so incapable of resistance, he would have been easy meat.

His head was in a whirl. If this really was the director of the clinic, who had he been with yesterday afternoon? Who had picked him up outside Neukölln public baths and subjected him to an hours-long inquisition?

The revolving door spat him back into the outside world, but he felt as if his inner self was still beside the white-haired man in the atrium of the Bleibtreu Clinic, waiting for him to return.

He turned and looked up. This was where he had been yesterday, but he wasn’t in Französische Strasse; he was in a parallel street one block away.

They want to destroy me. Someone wants me to lose my memory and is using dirty tricks to achieve his aim.

The Maybach had driven down Französische Strasse and turned off into an underground car park connected to the office building on this side of the street.

Marc laughed hysterically. He’d never seen the Bleibtreu Clinic from the outside, and the draped scaffolding outside the windows had concealed the charade. Only the windows of the men’s room were unobstructed, but their partial view of the intersection hadn’t aroused his suspicions.

And now? What am I to do now?

He blundered aimlessly along the pavement. He was fighting an invisible opponent, unable to distinguish between good and evil, and he didn’t even know the reason for all that was happening.

Perhaps Sandra was behind it all. Perhaps some PR consultant had advised her to engage in this conspiracy so as to boost her film’s success when it emerged that the plot was based on fact.

Except that the script had come first and the reality second!

Of all the noises surging around him in Französische Strasse, it was – once again – a driver sounding his horn that broke in on his thoughts. He’d heard it in the lobby of the clinic, but this time it was much closer.

Glancing sideways, he saw his brother at the wheel of a dirty little Polo.

‘Get in!’ Benny called through the open window. ‘Come on, we’ve no time to lose!’