The Carnival Master

12.

Maria had planned to sleep until mid-morning. She had put the ‘do not disturb’ notice on the doorknob of her room and had thrown herself onto the bed and fallen asleep almost immediately. When she awoke she was annoyed to find herself still fully dressed – her unbrushed teeth and mouth felt coated. She lay for a moment not knowing, not remembering what it was that was causing the nauseating ache in her chest. Then it came back to her: the crushing remembrance of firing into the car. She had probably killed someone. Maria had committed the crime that she was supposed to prevent, to solve. She could probably quite legitimately claim in a court that she’d been acting in self-defence. But the gun was illegal. And so was the intent: Maria had fired into the cabin of the car and had wanted to kill the Ukrainian. She no longer had the right to call herself a police officer. She was a vigilante, nothing more.

She went to the window and pulled back its curtains. There was no light from the apartment opposite and the curtains there were drawn across the glazed doors that opened out onto the roof terrace. The sky was a dull glimmer above Cologne’s rooftops. It was barely dawn but Maria knew she wouldn’t sleep again. She looked blankly at the growing light in the sky and it looked blankly back at her. Time to move on.

She stripped and showered and packed her bags. She went down to reception and checked out. The hotel was good enough for her purposes, but she had used her own name and credit card, added to which the hotel staff had looked somewhat surprised at her sudden change of appearance. Maria’s plan was to check into another hotel in the same area. She would pay cash and stay a couple of nights. After that, she could move into the flat of her friend who was working in Japan.

She carried her bags out of the hotel and into a bright winter morning, without the slightest idea of how she was going to get back onto Vitrenko’s tail.