The Carnival Master

1.

Maria switched off her cellphone before slipping it back into her jacket pocket. She hadn’t actually told Fabel a lie, but what she had done was effectively lying by omission.

The furnishings were typical budget hotel. She took her clothes from her suitcase and folded them into the cheap laminated chest of drawers, moving, as always, with economical precision. After Maria had unpacked, and with the same economy of movement, she hung up her jacket on a hanger, walked through to the small dimly lit en-suite bathroom, knelt down by the toilet bowl and inserted her long, manicured index finger into her mouth. Her vomiting was almost instantaneous. The first few times she had done this it had taken a long time: eye-watering, unproductive retching before she finally threw up. But now she had refined the action to a hair-trigger mechanism, allowing her to void her stomach with speed and ease. She stood up, rinsed her mouth at the washbasin and returned to the bedroom.

She went across to the window and swung it open. There was a lot of activity in the street below. Voices that were not German reached up to her: Turkish, Parsi, Russian. Ukrainian. This part of the city merged and mingled cultures rather than stitched them together in a patchwork. The hotel had six storeys and Maria’s room was on the top floor; she looked out over rooftops huddled under the dark and heavy winter sky. Directly across was an apartment with a rooftop terrace. All the lights were on and Maria could see a woman cleaning the apartment. She was youngish with a mass of dark hair and a voluptuous figure. Maria speculated that the woman was Turkish. It looked to Maria as if she was singing as she vacuumed. Maria had no idea if the woman lived in the apartment or was merely a cleaner, but whatever her status or situation she looked to Maria as if she was someone totally comfortable with who, where and what she was. Maria felt a pang of jealousy and looked away.

It was sunny in faraway Hamburg, she thought as she gazed at the massive dark spires of Cologne Cathedral piercing the sullen sky.