Splinter

60

The car appeared to belong to a young woman or a family with a young child. Numerous cloth elephants with sucker feet stuck to the rear windows and a Winnie the Pooh audiotape protruded from the slot in the cassette radio.

‘I borrowed it,’ Benny explained, not that Marc had asked him to. Neither of them had spoken for fifteen minutes, but his brother was growing steadily more talkative. ‘I’ll take this bus back to the multi-storey afterwards, honestly I will. I couldn’t hang around when the law turned up, so I beat it and pinched this thing for us.’

Marc nodded mutely, unable to concentrate, because Benny’s wasn’t the only voice to be heard. Someone was singing in English. It took him a while to register that the music was coming from the radio. He turned it off and reached for the door handle.

‘Pull up,’ he said quietly.

Benny tapped his forehead. ‘Like hell I will.’

‘I want no part of a murder.’

‘That’s your nutty girlfriend speaking. Don’t you start! I haven’t killed anyone.’ Benny drew a deep breath. The Polo stank of vomit and cheap scent. Presumably, someone had attempted to disguise the former with the latter.

‘So why drive around with a plastic bag covered in blood and a small arsenal?’

‘The guns aren’t mine.’

‘Whose, then?’

‘Valka’s.’

‘What have you been up to?’

‘Nothing. I borrowed some money, that’s all.’

‘What for?’

‘A sure thing, but it doesn’t matter now. I asked Valka to transfer the cash to my business partner’s account, but the deal fell through. I was taken for a ride.’

‘What about the cash in the sports bag?’

Benny glanced over his shoulder at the blood-stained canvas bag, which was lying on the rear seat.

‘I hung on to some of it. Valka smuggled it to me in the hospital, but I’m missing the rest, so I can’t pay him back in full.’

Benny was steering with one hand and massaging his right thigh with the other.

‘And now you’ve got his hitmen on your tail?’

‘More or less. Valka was going to scrub my debt if I did a job for him.’

They changed lanes and overtook a student looking for a parking place. The university and the next roundabout were still one traffic light away.

‘What sort of job?’

‘A journalist named Ken Sukowsky was researching Valka – researching him only too thoroughly. I was supposed to kill him and cut off his fingers, or maybe the other way round. Then I was to leave town pronto.’ Benny looked in the rear-view mirror. ‘I should have been in Amsterdam hours ago, damn it. Now I’ve had it.’

‘Why?’

Benny sighed. ‘Because I was only bluffing, of course. I went to see Sukowsky last night and warned him. Then I was going to do the rounds and say goodbye. You know, to all the people who’ve done me favours. Friends and acquaintances, or even strangers who helped me when I was in a bad way. Like the professor.’

He felt in the pocket of his bomber jacket and handed Marc a crumpled sheet of paper. Of the ten names on it, the first three had been crossed off, Haberland’s included. Marc noted that his own name didn’t appear.

‘That was the real reason I drove you out there. While you and Haberland were out walking I left some of Valka’s cash on the kitchen table. The prof was one of the few people who really took care of me. He deserves it.’

‘Like Leana?’ said Marc.

They drew up at some lights. Benny looked at him in surprise.

‘Did you also give your nurse some of Valka’s cash?’

Benny nodded after a long pause. ‘Yes, fifteen thousand. I thought I could leave town before Eddy wanted it back, but he gave me an ultimatum.’

‘What was in that plastic bag?’ Marc asked, still suspicious.

‘A pig’s head. My farewell present to him. He was meant to find it in the boot long after I was out of the country.’

The lights changed to green, and somehow they seemed to open the floodgates that had prevented Benny from talking until now. Everything came pouring out: how he’d been stopped at the checkpoint the previous night and narrowly missed being caught red-handed with the weapons he was supposed to use to kill the journalist. He even wound up by telling Marc about the murdered girl in his flat.

‘Then you appeared on the scene with that madwoman. I couldn’t get away in time, and now I’ve got Eddy’s people breathing down my neck.’

Benny bore right and exited the Ernst-Reuter-Platz roundabout at the last moment. They sped down Bismarckstrasse in the direction of the opera house.

‘Why didn’t you come to me with your money problems?’

Marc felt for the bag of pills in his jacket and discovered he must have lost them in the car crash. He only hoped his nausea didn’t get any worse.

Benny glanced at him and laughed. ‘Quite apart from the fact that we haven’t exactly been close in recent years, you don’t have any €90,000.’

Good God, as much as that?

‘What was it for, for heaven’s sake?’

‘It’s better you don’t know.’

Marc controlled himself with an effort. Quarrelling with his brother had never been productive. The more you probed him, the more he retreated into his shell.

‘But why Valka?’ he demanded. ‘Goddammit, Benny, I know people who won’t top you the moment a debt becomes overdue.’

‘Really? If that’s a reference to your father-in-law, you must be joking.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s broke.’

‘What?’

Another set of lights changed, from amber to red. The vehicles beside them braked to a halt – unlike Benny, who construed it as a signal to accelerate away.

‘What do you mean?’ Marc asked in dismay.

‘Broke, skint. Does the word have any other meaning?’ Benny glanced in the rear-view mirror as if afraid they’d picked up another tail. Marc turned to look but could see nothing suspicious. ‘It’s that clinic of his. He overreached himself financially – don’t you read the papers?’

No. I’ve taken little interest in the outside world these last few weeks.

‘Added to that, one of his surgeons botched a cardiac operation – defective valve implant, or something. Not Senner’s fault, but the damages will amount to millions. They say he no longer even owns the house we’re on our way to right now.’ Benny glanced sideways. ‘That is where you want to go, isn’t it?’