Splinter

69

‘The end justifies the means – aren’t you always saying so yourself? Isn’t that your motto in life?’

‘You’re crazy, Sandra. The end never justifies taking a human life.’

Marc’s memory of their argument before the crash drowned the roar of the blood being pumped ever faster through his body by his pounding heart.

So that was their plan.

They hadn’t been able to kill him any sooner because they didn’t need his liver until the child was born.

Haberland had been right about everything.

‘Well, I’m not sure how the Bleibtreu Clinic induces artificial amnesia in its patients. Up to now, losses of memory have always been an unintended by-product. However, it’s conceivable that they subject their guinea pigs to shock therapy. And isn’t that just what’s happening to you now? One traumatic incident hard on the heels of another?’

‘Turn round,’ Benny told him. He checked his magazine once more, then drew the curtains. The only source of daylight now was the door to the terrace.

‘You’re crazy.’ Marc had lost all sense of time. It was still snowing outside. Seen from up here, the city might have been wrapped in dirty cotton wool. Everything looked at once real and unreal.

‘Please turn round. They’re delivering the baby right now. We don’t have much time. It must be operated on immediately.’

‘But why? Was all this really necessary?’

Marc tried to catch his brother’s eye, but Benny avoided his gaze. His hand was trembling too, even though the gun gave him control of the situation.

‘You could have looked for a compromise.’

‘Sandra didn’t want to take that risk.’

‘I wish you hadn’t found out.’

‘There really isn’t any other solution.’

Marc clasped his head in despair. ‘Damn it, Benny, you know me. Don’t you think I’d have sacrificed myself willingly?’

‘Would you?’

Marc’s knees were threatening to buckle.

Would I have had the courage? Or would I have copped out?

‘You know me. We’re brothers!’

‘I know, but I’ve no choice.’ Benny sniffed. He was standing in the gloom beside the desk, and Marc couldn’t see the tears streaming down his brother’s cheeks. He, too, began to weep as he slowly, very slowly, turned to face the wall. He gazed at the light box displaying the ultrasound picture of his son. The first and last picture of his child he would ever see. Then he shut his eyes.

‘Why couldn’t they simply transplant part of my liver?’ he asked. ‘Why does anyone have to die at all?’

‘You see? You’d have looked for a compromise. You were too much of a threat to our plan.’

Marc’s chest rose and fell like that of a patient hyperventilating. Sweating all over, he tried to think of the son he would never hold in his arms. He would never stand silently beside his bed and watch him breathing in his sleep, never take him to school, never see him swimming in the sea, never slip him the cash for a night out with his first girlfriend. And the thought that his child would survive thanks to him did not detract from his fear of dying. He was no hero; he was simply a debilitated, exhausted man with a terrible fear of death.

‘But you can’t prevent it.’

‘Oh yes I will, believe me.’

‘Shit, I really wish I didn’t have to do this,’ Benny muttered. ‘I wish you’d never come to see me, and I wish I still hated you. I’m so sorry.’

Then the black specks stopped dancing before Marc’s eyes and a last, lovely memory of Sandra came back to him.

‘If one of us dies – no, please hear me out – the first of us to go must give the other one a sign.’

‘By turning the light on?’

‘So we know we aren’t alone. So we know we’re thinking of each other even if we can’t see each other.’

‘Benny,’ Marc said, opening his eyes again.

‘Yes?’

‘You don’t have to do it.’

‘I do.’

‘No, I’ll do it myself.’

‘That’s not on.’

Benny’s voice sounded muffled, as if he had a handkerchief over his mouth.

Marc spun round, but he was too late.

His brother was holding the automatic two-handed with the muzzle in his mouth. He pulled the trigger.