Hidden Depths

by Ally Rose

  At Schonefeld, Felix found and observed his prey, pompously patrolling the arrivals hall. He decided it would be far too dangerous to try and abduct someone here, with masses of security measures and cameras clearly visible. Harald also carried a gun during his working day. This Musketeer was going to be tricky, he thought. Felix didn’t fear him, because with all the boxing training he had bulked up his athletic frame and now felt he was Harald’s equal in terms of strength. In Das Kino, he boxed to the music of the ‘Toreador’ song and every time he hit the punch bag he would shout out, ‘The Torgau boy wins!’ Hopefully, he’d prove more than a match for Harald, using his brain as well as his newly-developed brawn to achieve a successful outcome. And as with the other Musketeers, Felix believed luck was on his side.

  He watched Harald’s children play outside their semi detached home in a cul de sac near open fields. For the first time Felix felt a surge of guilt, knowing it was his intention to deprive these children of their father; his plans for retribution impinged on their young lives and were in direct contradiction to his thoughts about protecting children. But then he thought, ‘What if Harald was to abuse his own children?’ and his guilty feelings were assuaged.

  After 10 days of surveillance, watching the house and following Harald’s movements, Felix felt ready. A different strategy was necessary as the cul de sac was far too exposed. He decided the optimum choice would be to make his move at the gym. Harald finished his working day at 4 p.m. when he picked his children up from school. He’d spend time at home with them before going to a local gym in the early evening and then sometimes visit a bar for a beer with colleagues. Felix checked the gym car park for security cameras. There were none.

  On a quiet October evening just after twilight, Felix waited behind a tree near to the Musketeer’s parked car. Harald emerged from the gym and walked over to his car, pressing a remote control keypad to open the vehicle and put his bag in the boot. For a brief moment, anything or anyone in front of him was invisible and it was at this optimum moment of surprise that Felix sprung into action. Harald closed the boot of his car and found a man in a balaclava standing beside him pointing a gun at his head.

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Hands up!’ Felix ordered.

  Harald dropped his car keys and obeyed, putting his hands in the air. Felix body searched him for signs of a gun.

  ‘I work with the police. You’re making a big mistake.’

  Felix snarled. ‘You need policing! Hands behind your back.’

  Harald obeyed and felt his body shoved so it spread-eagled on the car. He also felt something he hadn’t felt in years. Fear.

  Felix tied Harald’s hands tightly together with some rope and duct taped the Musketeer’s mouth, dragging him to the back seat of the car, pushing him inside, face down, and using more rope to bind his prey’s feet together. He then picked up the car keys from the ground, started the car and drove steadily out of the car park.

  Felix kept a close eye on Harald through the rear view mirror. The Musketeer was wriggling in the back but remained tightly bound. Before long, Felix reached the scene of his previous crimes, parking this time by the banks of the east jetty. The night was cold and dark and nobody was about.

  Keeping the car headlamps on, Felix shone the lights on a nearby tree as he went into the bushes. Earlier in the day he’d camouflaged his Schwalbe under a bush before stealing a bicycle in Kopenick, taking it on the train to Schonefeld and cycling onwards to his destination, Harald’s gym.

  His Schwalbe was still there. He rummaged in his top box for his wet suit and aqua shoes and quickly changed. Returning to the car, Felix opened the back door, leaning the full weight of his body on Harald while holding him firmly in place. He proceeded to take off his abuser’s shoes and socks, cutting away at his clothes with his knife from top to bottom and throwing the rags out of the car until Harald was left lying in his underpants. He then took Harald’s wallet and mobile phone and ripped off the duct tape.

  ‘What’s your wife’s name?’

  ‘You leave her alone!’ Harald yelled.

  Hacking at Harald’s hair, Felix got his DNA cuttings.

  Harald was incensed. ‘You bastard!’

  ‘Your wife’s name?’ Felix repeated, ignoring him. ‘I’ll text her, tell her you’ll be late home.’

  ‘Ina... my wife’s name is Ina,’ Harald blurted out.

  Felix took the hair, wrapped it in tissue and placed it in his rucksack. He was feeling confident and prematurely sent Harald’s wife the following mobile text.

  Darling Ina,

  I have to get away as news is about to break and the police will come after me for what I did as a warden at Torgau. I sexually abused the kids. Tell no one. I’ve got to lie low. I’m sorry. Kiss my children for me.

  Your loving husband, Harald

  The message beeped a successful delivery. Felix switched off Harald’s mobile phone and returned to the car with his knife in one hand and a gun tucked into the top of his wet suit. He dragged the Musketeer from the car into the cold night air and threw him onto the muddy banks, kicking at him, shoving him into the shallows of the cold water, rolling him like a log as he stood over his prey, watching him through the eye slits of his balaclava.

  Harald managed to pull himself upright, balanced on his knees. ‘‘Who do you hell do you think you are?’ he screamed.

  ‘Your worst nightmare, Plaumann.’

  ‘You know my name?’

  Felix spoke with venom. ‘Every kid knew your name at Torgau.’

  Harald was shivering knee deep in the water and mustered all his strength in an attempt to save his life. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Felix fetched his Walkman and turned on the cassette.

  ‘Toreador, en garde, Toreador, Toreador .’

  Felix smiled. ‘This is such a perfect song for all of you. Don’t treat me like an idiot! Now, dance for me, Musketeer, like I danced for you.’

  Harald tried to stand up but his feet were bound and it was all he could do to stop himself toppling face first into the water.

  ‘I can’t stand up… Cut me loose and I’ll dance for you.’

  ‘Cut you loose? Do you think I’m stupid? Dance on your knees,’ Felix bellowed and made a mock bull charge at his prey.

  ‘Et songe bien, oui, songe en combattant, qu’un oeil noir te regarde… ’

  Harald moved from side to side on his knees in rhythm to the music, trying to think of a way out of this nightmare. It was obvious his life depended on it. He asked himself, if this is a Torgau boy, why would dancing for him be important? Then he realised and stopped moving. There was only one boy at Torgau who had danced for him…

  ‘Et que l’amour t’attend, Toreador, Toreador, l’amour t’attend! ’

  ‘I said dance!’ Felix barked.

  Harald was adamant in his defiance. ‘No! Take off your mask, Felix Waltz.’

  Felix switched off the music. The game had taken a different direction to the one he had anticipated. He wasn’t afraid to show his face and gladly pulled off his balaclava. ‘My sister and I danced for you so it’s the least you can do for me.’

  ‘Well, well, Felix Waltz. You didn’t drown after all. We should have got together, you and your sister and the Musketeers, just like the old days.’

  Furious, Felix slashed the knife at Harald’s ears, cutting his lobes. Blood gushed into the water.

  ‘My sister’s dead because of what you did to her!’ Felix told him.

  Harald screamed at the pain but he would never cry or beg in front of the Torgau boy. ‘You’ll regret that, Waltz!’

  ‘You’re branded now. How does it feel?’

  Harald didn’t reply. He blocked out the pain in his ears and moved his body to stay warm. He felt something sharp dig into his back – a rock, hidden under the surface. Placing his tied hands over the rock he began to rub the rope against it, up and down, in an attempt to cut it loose. He disguised his actions as best h
e could, trying not to give himself away.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this scheisse ! Your revenge stops here,’ Harald snarled.

  ‘Revenge? I’ve only just started. This is payback time,’ Felix told him. ‘Of course,

  if you don’t like my kind of justice, I’ll hand you over to the police and you’ll be thrown into prison with all the other sodomites. You’ll think you’ve been fucked by a train when they get at you.’

  ‘You’ve no guarantees I’d be prosecuted. I’ll deny everything.’ Harald said, stony-faced.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Felix mused.

  ‘Horst hasn’t said, but I suppose you pulled the same stunt on him, bringing him here.’

  Felix smiled like a fox. ‘Yes, I brought that paedophile here, and Gunther.’

  Harald thought it was odd his fellow Musketeers hadn’t warned him. ‘I guess we’ll swap stories about how a Torgau boy outsmarted the lot of us. OK, you’ve made your point. What is it you want, money?’

  ‘Screw your blood money! That’s not what I’m taking.’

  Harald had not understood the deeper meaning of Felix’s words. He felt the rope around his hands loosening and stalled for time.

  ‘Felix. Please. My wife and children will be worried about me by now.’

  ‘And when you tuck your children in bed at night, are you tempted to, you know, touch them?’

  ‘Nein! Nein !’

  ‘Liar! Bet you’ve thought about it. Have you already abused them?’

  Felix could see he’d found Harald’s Achilles heel.

  ‘No!’ Harald cried, breaking down in tears.

  ‘People like you think children enjoy having sex. You’re a sick bastard. They’ll be better off without you.’

  ‘I love my children,’ Harald howled.

  ‘It’s deeply rooted in you to abuse, over and over again,’ said Felix, grimly.

  Harald was now in fear for his life. ‘What did you do with Horst and Gunther?’

  ‘I, Felix Waltz, was the judge and the jury. They’re at the bottom of this lake and that’s where you’re going. The Torgau boy wins!’ Felix yelled at the top of his voice and bashed Harald on the head with his gun.

  He dragged a slippery, wet and stunned Harald out of the water and into the back of the car. The blood trickled from his forehead and ears and his body was blue from the cold. Felix collected Harald’s clothes and put them in the boot of the car. There was no one around and no one in sight. He picked up his balaclava along with his gun and knife, placed them in his rucksack and switched on the headlights of his Schwalbe, ready to guide him back to the jetty.

  Returning to the car, Felix could see Harald lying motionless in the back. He quickly unwound the car windows at the front, leaving the back windows closed and locking the back doors. With his adrenaline pumping and losing sight of any sense of order, Felix forgot to repeat the success of Gunther’s demise and failed to re-tie Harald’s hands to the door handle and his feet to the opposite side. As he drove the car at high speed off the end of the jetty, with the car in mid flight, he felt a rope around his neck.

  ‘I’ll fucking kill you!’ Harald bellowed. He had freed his hands.

  The rope tightened around Felix’s neck, choking him. He took his hands off the steering wheel and grappled with the rope to try and loosen Harald’s lethal grip. His foot on the accelerator pressed down hard and generated more height and speed than expected, projecting the car close to a small island of trees. He could hardly breathe as the car landed on the water and quickly began filling up. Felix thought of Martha, Klaus and Ingrid; they would never know what happened to him. He saw a vision of Axel’s smiling face; Susi’s little boy would forget him and never remember he existed. The silver crucifix hanging on the driver’s mirror caught a prism of moonlight and with his strength ebbing away, Felix grabbed it and stabbed at Harald’s eyes.

  He’d struck home. Yelling in pain, Harald loosened his grip on the rope and Felix managed to wriggle out of the window but Harald grabbed his foot and held on, tugging him backwards. Suddenly the car went under the water and with the rocking of their movements, nose-dived quickly towards the bottom. Branches from the roots of a tree invaded the car on the front passenger side, just missing Felix’s head. Felix tried to swim upwards, kicking Harald full in the face. The Musketeer’s grip on Felix’s foot loosened and he was left holding only an aqua scuba diving shoe in his hands. As Felix escaped out of the only remaining open window the car rolled slightly and the branch speared through the entire width of the front window, blocking any exit. Harald’s feet were still tied and he gave up struggling to undo them, diverting his efforts to pulling at the branch to find an escape hatch by the window. It was futile. The tree closed off any hope of life and delivered him to his watery grave. Harald’s lungs filled with water and his dark, sordid life of depravity was over.

  Meanwhile, Felix struggled to reach the surface, the darkest and longest swim of his life. He could barely breathe and felt as if he were swimming through treacle as he headed for the lights on his Schwalbe. On reaching the jetty, he hauled himself out of the water and collapsed.

  Chapter Fifteen: Ingrid’s Secret

  FELIX MANAGED TO DRAG his exhausted body onto his Schwalbe and drive slowly away from Muggelsee, arriving back in Motzen in the middle of the night. He left the motorbike in Gertrude’s garden and went into the darkened house, switched on all the lights and ran a bath. He looked at his neck in the bathroom mirror; it was sore and a deep rope burn was visible. Scheisse ! Can’t hide this, he thought, hoping it would have faded by the time he was due to go to England to visit Martha.

  He took a bottle of beer from the fridge and once the water was ready, scrubbed and soaked away his aching body in the bath. But in bed, sleep would not come. He put on the television and watched an episode of Tatort and drank another beer. How easily the detectives solved the crimes in this programme.

  He looked at the four small, white envelopes in front of him. The initials on the envelopes were HG, GS, HP and AF. Now that he had all three Musketeers’ DNA he could send them off to be analysed. The envelope with AF written upon it contained hair clippings from Axel, collected surreptitiously when Felix had taken his nephew to the hairdressers to get a trim. Soon the mystery of Axel’s parentage would be solved.

  Felix began typing out a list of all the male names from Horst’s diary to send to the police. Some he remembered from Torgau and some he didn’t. They were all potential suspected paedophiles as far as he was concerned and if they were innocent then they would have to prove it.

  There were not many female names in the diary but there was one woman who Felix was going after: Lotte Holler. As she wasn’t a Musketeer or a paedophile, it didn’t matter if he omitted her or any other females from the list but Lotte, the go-between, would get her come-uppance and that would more than satisfy him.

  Felix went to bed feeling his family were safer now he’d murdered three paedophiles: all of his Torgau Musketeers.

  In the morning, he overslept. Ingrid let herself in and finding a few empty bottles of beer near the sofa in the living room and Felix asleep in bed at 10 a.m. knew instinctively that something was wrong.

  ‘Felix, wake up. Are you ill?’

  Felix stirred and pulled the covers over his head. ‘No. Tante, please, leave me be.’

  ‘Axel’s at the kindergarten till lunchtime, Klaus is working and you and I, young man, are going to have a talk. Now get up!’ Ingrid snapped.

  Felix peered over the duvet. ‘I’m not a child!’

  ‘You’ve been behaving like one of late,’ Ingrid bellowed and left the room.

  A little while later, an aroma of coffee filled the house. Felix, downstairs now, sat opposite Ingrid with a scarf around his neck.

  ‘Are you cold?’ Ingrid asked.

  ‘No.’ Felix didn’t want to lie. If anything, he felt, Ingrid was the one person he could tell the truth to, but dare he?

  Ingrid thought she would te
st her nephews’ integrity. ‘Look at the time. Aren’t you supposed to be catching a train to Berlin for your English course?’

  Felix was perceptive enough to counter Ingrid’s ruse. ‘Tante, you know I haven’t been to going to Berlin or going to English lessons.’

  ‘Thank you for not lying to me. Axel and I came to meet you at the train station a few weeks ago other and the ticket cashier said you’d caught the train to Leipzig. What the hell were you doing in Leipzig?’

  ‘Not an English course, that’s for sure.’

  Ingrid was fuming. ‘Felix! It’s no time for flippancy.’

  Felix nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Felix, I’m really worried about you,’ Ingrid began. ‘You haven’t been yourself these past few weeks, you’ve been moody and lost in your own world. What’s going on?’

  ‘I’ve needed to sort out a few problems.’

  Ingrid was concerned. ‘Problems? Please, talk to me, or if not to me, talk to Klaus. Are you in trouble?’

  Felix took off his scarf and revealed the rope burn on his neck.

  Ingrid gasped. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I got into a fight.’

  ‘With Carsten?’

  Felix shook his head. ‘Carsten and me, we’re OK. No, I met someone from Torgau, one of men who buggered me.’

  Ingrid’s heart sank and she was afraid for him.

  ‘And this man, he did that to your neck?’

  Felix nodded. ‘I’m OK. I hurt him too.’

  ‘What did you do to the man?’ Ingrid asked, afraid of the answer.

  ‘It’s best kept a secret.’