Splinter

72

Benny smiled sadly and glanced at his watch.

‘The liver is the only divisible organ in the human body,’ he said after a short pause. ‘Your son will get the left lobe and you the larger one. That’s how Constantin explained it to me. It’ll work as long as it’s done quickly, so please…’

He put out his hand for the gun. ‘Come on, I was going to do it anyway. At least my death will have some meaning.’

‘I can’t let you do it.’

‘Everything’s ready. Your son is waiting in the theatre. He hasn’t a chance of surviving unless I die. Nor do you.’

‘Maybe,’ said Marc. Then he quoted an elderly man he’d met only a few hours earlier – the one person who had always been honest with him. ‘But it can never be right to do the wrong thing.’

His brother stared at him in surprise. ‘One person dies, two survive. What can be wrong with that?’

‘Death isn’t a mathematical equation!’ Marc shouted.

Benny rolled his eyes. ‘You can’t understand, is that it? You want a reason. All right, listen and I’ll give you one.’ He brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. It was matted with blood and sweat. ‘You remember that day in May?’

The burglary, Sandra’s miscarriage.

The question pierced Marc to the quick. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘It was me.’

‘What?’

‘I shot my mouth off to Valka – told him that Sandra’s father was asking to be burgled.’

‘No.’

‘Yes. I swear I didn’t mean them to break in. All I did was bitch about the stupidity of a fat cat who left his house so insecure. During one of our meetings Sandra had mentioned the spare key in the boathouse, just in case I needed a bolthole and no one was at home.’

Benny’s eyes were misted with tears.

‘She tried to help me, damn it – that’s why she lost her baby. Your baby. I struggled with my conscience, really I did, but it became too much for me in the end. That’s why I slit my wrists.’

For a moment Marc felt the ground give way beneath his feet. He had just, for the second time, prevented the suicide of a man who was responsible for the death of his first child. A tidal wave of rage and sorrow broke over him.

Is Haberland mistaken? Can it be right to do the wrong thing?

Thinking of his work with young people – of Julia, whose life he had saved by means of a psychological trick and simultaneously sent back to hell – Marc realized that the principle he had always lived by was now being put to the most terrible test of all.

Does the end justify the means after all?

‘I confessed to Sandra immediately,’ Benny said, ‘but she wouldn’t give me away.’ He gulped. ‘For your sake. You were never meant to learn the true reason for her doubts. Besides, she knew there could be no greater punishment than my own self-hatred.’

Marc recalled what Constantin had said: ‘A tragedy can form a tremendous bond between people who love each other.’

That was why Sandra had found her way back to him after the miscarriage, and that was why she and Constantin had so readily accepted Benny’s self-sacrificial offer.

‘Please,’ Benny entreated. ‘Let me make up for what I did. To you, to the child. And to Sandra.’

Marc’s lower lip trembled as he thought of the consequences of the choice he now had to make. If he prevented Benny from committing suicide he would be risking his own life and, at the same time, sealing the fate of their child.

He raised the gun, checked the safety catch and worked the slide mechanism to insert another round into the chamber. He was prepared for what happened next. Gritting his teeth and ignoring the agonizing pain in his injured leg, Benny sprang at him and tried to wrench the gun from his grasp. Marc dodged aside and made for the door to the terrace. He almost failed to grab hold of the handle because Benny caught him by the sleeve.

Wrenching the door open, he hurled the automatic far out over the balustrade with Benny yanking at him from behind.

The two of them stumbled and fell, and for a moment they lay panting side by side, hurt and exhausted.

Marc wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. He was experiencing an unprecedented emotion, torn between a father’s desire for revenge and brotherly love. In the end he gazed into Benny’s tearful, dark-brown eyes, not knowing what to say. But he didn’t have a chance to ponder the matter, because this time he was unprepared for what came next. It all happened far too quickly.

Benny drove his elbow into Marc’s face, jumped up and hobbled out of the open glass door, dragging his injured leg and groaning with pain. The flagstones on the terrace were slippery, and Marc was too far away to have a chance of catching his brother as he prepared to leap over the balustrade.