‘If only I did. Bryan has no idea I’m in Freiburg, unfortunately. No, there’s something I simply can’t put off any longer, damn it!’
‘What’s that?’
‘I have to change these shoes. My blisters are killing me!’
It was a rapturous and slightly tipsy Bridget who entertained Petra in Hotel Colombi’s lounge while Laureen was up in her room changing into some worn-out shoes. Petra kept glancing at her watch impatiently. She was at her wit’s end.
‘I really oughtn’t be relating such things when my sister-in-law’s listening,’ Bridget said distractedly, noticing Laureen as she strode out of the elevator and headed over to sit down with them again. Laureen pointed at her watch and Petra nodded. ‘I’m almost ashamed to say so,’ Bridget continued, unperturbed, ‘but God, aren’t the men in this town gorgeous?’
‘You’re completely right,’ said Laureen. ‘You shouldn’t say such things while I’m around. If you’re up to something I can’t pass on to my brother, I don’t want to know about it.’
Bridget blushed.
‘What do we do now, Petra?’ Laureen asked, ignoring her sister-in-law.
‘I don’t really know…’ Petra wasn’t looking at her. ‘I think we’ll have to phone one of those three awful men.’ Petra almost bit her lip. ‘If I’m not mistaken, we’ll find Peter Stich at home. He’s sure to know what’s going on.’
‘Who’re you going to phone?’ Bridget looked curious. ‘Peter Stich? Who is this guy?’ Her face lit up for a moment. ‘What exactly are you up to, Laureen?’
She hardly deigned to look at her sister-in-law. ‘Do you think that’s wise, Petra?’
‘What else can we do? Your husband’s not at his hotel. We have no idea where he is. The only thing we know is that a couple of hours ago he was on his way up to Schlossberg to meet these men. What else can we do?’
‘We could phone the police.’
‘But we’ve got nothing to report.’ Petra looked at Laureen. ‘We can’t even report him missing.’
‘Then phone those men, Petra. Do what you think is best.’
As Petra went to find the phone box in the lounge Bridget took her sister-in-law’s hand. Her voice was trembling as she explained. ‘I must speak to you, Laureen. You’ve got to help me. I have to get out of this marriage. Sorry, but that’s just how it is. Don’t you understand?’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Laureen replied, noncommittally. ‘It’s your life, Bridget. Right now I’ve got enough going on my own life. Sorry, but that’s just how it is!’
Bridget’s lips quivered a moment.
When Petra returned, she shook her head. Laureen had already guessed, judging by her expression.
‘I only managed to get hold of Peter Stich’s bitch of a wife. She was alone, so something’s got to be wrong.’
‘What about Kröner and Lankau?’
‘I couldn’t get hold of them either.’
‘What does all this mean?’ Laureen could feel the unease growing.
‘I don’t know.’
‘It sounds as if you’re playing hide-and-seek with someone.’ Only a little ring of mascara under one eye revealed Bridget’s own personal quandary. She smiled her best smile, which she always did when she didn’t understand anything.
‘Hide-and-seek?’ Laureen glanced at Petra. It was nearly a quarter to seven, almost five hours since Petra had spoken to Bryan in the wine bar. The three men apparently had the situation under control. They could be anywhere. ‘Is hide-and-seek what we’re playing now, Petra?’
‘Hide-and-seek?’ Petra looked at her. Laureen could feel her desperation growing. ‘Perhaps…’ Petra said. ‘Yes, you might as well call it a kind of hide-and-seek.’
Chapter 53
Had Laureen and Petra bothered to turn their heads a bit as they left Hotel Colombi they would have noticed that the street artists which had been working the shopping streets had moved to the little park across from the hotel. Colombi, as it too was called, was the most central green oasis in Freiburg and made an excellent base for visiting artistes. Behind the laughing crowds, the trees and bushes proudly displayed their late-summer green in the fading evening light and formed a garland around yet another hotel.
It was neat and sober-looking, though less exclusive than the Colombi, and bore the pompous name of Hotel Rheingold. Bryan had parked the BMW in front of it five minutes previously. It was here he would take care of the afternoon’s most urgent business.
The encounter with the old man in front of Kröner’s house had scared him.
Remembering his brazen lie about where he lived made Bryan feel uneasy once again. After the events of the day there could be no doubt about the message that lay behind this lie. Bryan was to be lured into another ambush. He would never have become aware of the deception had he not been driven by intuition – or perhaps more by perplexity – to shadow the old man to his home in Luisenstrasse the previous day.
And by tomorrow morning he would doubtlessly have disappeared from the face of the earth in the vicinity of a street called Längenhardstrasse.
Apart from the obvious deception, there was something else about the old man that had frightened Bryan. An indefinable feeling made up of faces, words, impressions and thoughts but which he struggled to form into a synthesis.
The whole picture refused to materialise, which affected Bryan’s concentrated effort to get to the bottom of the matter. His eagerness was dissipating imperceptibly, but persistently. If he wanted, he could leave Freiburg that same evening and still be able to attend the final ceremony of the Olympic Games the following day – precisely as originally planned. From there he could drive on to Paris.
One day more or less wouldn’t make a difference when the hour of reckoning came.
If, on the other hand, he stayed in Freiburg and were to make the slightest mistake, Kröner, Lankau and the old man would be ready and waiting. If the risk was that great, then why stay? Now he knew where he had them, so why not come back some other time? The little matter of finding the country house and releasing Lankau could be left to Lankau’s confederates. A couple of days’ fasting would scarcely harm a man of his constitution and dimensions.
Bryan had thought the whole thing through several times before he happened to stop in front of Hotel Rheingold. The only thing that really mattered now was whether Laureen would agree to meet him in Paris, the romantic capital of the world.
Hotel Rheingold’s desk clerk was fat and helpful and overjoyed when he saw the handful of cash. Without hesitation he led Bryan to his cubbyhole behind the desk and left him in peace beside the telephone.
It was Mrs Armstrong who took the call, which meant Laureen wasn’t there. The moment the housekeeper showed her bony face in their home, Laureen usually fetched her bag in the hall and quietly vanished.
‘No, the lady of the house is not at home.’
‘Do you know when she’ll be coming back, Mrs Armstrong?’ Bryan was sure she didn’t.
‘No, unfortunately.’
‘Do you happen to know where she’s gone?’ Bryan was sure she wouldn’t know that, either.
‘No, I haven’t looked at the note yet.’
‘The note… Which note, Mrs Armstrong?’
‘The one she left before they went to the airport.’
‘They? Has she gone to the airport with Mrs Moore?’
‘Yes, indeed. And their plane left ages ago.’
‘I see.’ Bryan accepted this possibility. ‘And so they’re in Cardiff?’
‘No.’
‘Listen, Mrs Armstrong, I’d be very grateful if I didn’t have to drag everything out of you. Would you kindly tell me where my wife and Bridget Moore are?’
‘I don’t know. Mrs Scott said it would be in the note. But I do know they’re not in Cardiff. They’re somewhere or other in Germany.’
This bit of information dumbfounded Bryan.
‘Would you be so kind as to tell me what is written in the note, Mrs Armstrong?
’ asked Bryan, trying to compose himself.
‘Just a moment…’ One sound after another in the background told him she was working on the matter. He waited impatiently. The telephone was ticking audibly and the desk clerk looked as if he would soon be expecting more cash. The latter gave a start when Bryan repeated the name of Laureen’s lodgings.
‘Hotel Colombi? In Freiburg?’ he almost shouted.
The clerk followed Bryan to the door, grumbling. He didn’t think it proper for a visitor to advertise so loudly for a competitor, especially not after having been entrusted with his private telephone.
Bryan didn’t hear him.
It took only a moment before the receptionist at Hotel Colombi knew who Bryan was looking for. ‘Mrs Scott is out in town at the moment, but you can find Mrs Moore right there,’ she said, pointing with a bright red fingernail towards a corner of the reception lounge.
‘But, Bryan!’ Bridget exclaimed, obviously astonished. ‘There, you see? Speak of the Devil!’
It wasn’t the first time Bryan had seen her a bit tipsy. ‘Where’s Laureen?’ he asked.
‘She’s just gone with that foreign female person. Leaving me to sit here, all alone.’ She stopped abruptly and began laughing so that the pageboy standing nearest had to look the other way. ‘Well, maybe not that alone. Ebert must be coming down soon.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bridget! Who’s Ebert, and who’s Laureen gone out with?’ He took hold of her shoulders gently and tried to make her concentrate. ‘Why are the two of you here? Is it because of me? Who is Laureen with?’
‘With? Someone called Petra, as far as I remember,’ she replied, trying to appear normal.
Bryan felt his blood run cold. ‘Petra?!’ He grasped the woman’s shoulders tighter and looked her square in the face. ‘Bridget, pull yourself together. Laureen may be in danger, do you understand?’
‘Yes, but aren’t you the one who’s in danger? I seem to remember that’s what they said.’ She looked at him as if she were just becoming aware of him.
‘Do you know where they’re going?’ She hesitated at his question and stopped concentrating, so he shook her, making the pageboy smile. ‘Did they say anything about that?’
‘They mentioned some people’s names. I can’t remember them, but I’m quite sure they didn’t like them. Petra called them “those three awful men”.’
Not since the birth of their daughter, when Laureen had bled so profusely that one of the nurses began to cry, had Bryan felt the same, stabbing anxiety. He breathed as calmly through his teeth as possible and looked at his sister-in-law, who’d begun blinking more and more slowly as she spoke.
‘Did they mention someone called Kröner?’
This woke her up a bit. ‘How did you know, Bryan?’
‘Or Lankau?’ Bryan was about to suffocate in his attempt not to hyperventilate.
Her eyes widened slowly. ‘If you can tell me the third man’s name as well, I’ll really be impressed.’
‘No, I can’t.’
She smiled. ‘Then it’s a good thing it’s the only name I can remember. It was such a funny name…’ Her lips almost formed it. ‘Like some sound out of a cartoon.’
‘Come on, Bridget, out with it!’
‘His name was Stich! Isn’t that a good name? And he was called Peter. That name we know. It was actually him they spoke about most.’
Bryan stood still a moment.
Perhaps it was the pageboy behind them who was most surprised when Bryan suddenly went into a fit of coughing so violent that he was frothing at the mouth.
No one attempted to come to his rescue.
Few people have the experience of everything suddenly fitting together to make a whole, where a series of doors are at least momentarily flung opened. Yet it was a revelation of this magnitude, brought on by Bridget’s mentioning the name, which overpowered Bryan and made him lose his grip.
It was Peter Stich who he’d had a glimpse of in the old man. And it was this subconscious knowledge that had been harassing him for the past few hours. Peter Stich, the old, white-bearded man in Luisenstrasse who owned Hermann Müller Invest. He was the Postman. The red-eyed man from the Alphabet House.
He was all of them in one.
Bryan felt dizzy. He saw images of a smiling man lying in a bed in a mental hospital, years ago. Glimpses of a man who stood madly with his eyes wide open in a stinging disinfectant shower. Eyes that smiled at him as he hid his pills inside the metal tubing of his bed frame. Recollections of the gentle, cautious man who had twice saved his life. He thought of the first time, where the red-eyed man pointed out the splintered, rough bomb shutters to the security officer, and the second time, when the malingerers wanted to throw him out of the window. A series of events that suddenly fitted together like a chain reaction, practically causing him to faint.
Each element had played its essential role in one magnificent lie!
Finally Bridget thumped him on the back.
It was several minutes before he came to. After a few vague explanations he realised he couldn’t trust anyone any more, except for Laureen.
And now she must be on her way over to Peter Stich, together with Petra. The same Petra who had sent him straight into the arms of one of the three awful men.
Chapter 54
Apart from the flat on Luisenstrasse, Kröner’s house was the only one Gerhart knew in that part of the town. Outside it was cool, the street lighting massive and strange. Shouts and cries and jeering from a pub drove him over to the opposite pavement and slightly off course. He frowned and clutched his flimsy wind jacket close to his body, and drew himself up to his full height. Then, instinctively and purposefully like a homing pigeon, he headed directly for Kröner’s house where Kröner would be waiting for Stich.
But it wasn’t Stich who’d be coming.
He didn’t stop until he got to the palatial entrance. He took stock of the house’s entire facade. The only light to be seen was on the first floor. Apart from the window in Kröner’s study all the curtains were drawn. A cool breeze was gathering in strength and the entrance porch afforded only poor shelter. For a long time Gerhart stood looking at his finger, which was pointing undecidedly towards the doorbell.
* * *
Kröner stood with his back to the window, as was his habit when speaking on the phone. A bad habit, according to his wife. ‘Why don’t you just sit down?’ she would say. ‘It’s not the Kaiser on the line!’ But that was how he felt most comfortable. And today more than ever, with Arno von der Leyen on the loose and liable to turn up at any moment. He was restless. In that position he could at least lean back and look out the window without anyone seeing him from outside.
It was Frau Billinger, speaking more quietly than usual.
‘This can’t be true! Petra Wagner phoned you nearly two hours ago? I told you to let me know!’
‘No, you merely said I should call and tell you when she turned up.’
‘You could have assumed I’d be interested in hearing about her phone call, couldn’t you?’
‘Yes, that’s why I’m phoning now.’
‘Yes, now, and not two hours ago.’
‘You must forgive me, Herr Schmidt, but I was completely preoccupied by a TV series.’
‘One episode doesn’t last two hours, for heaven’s sake!’
‘No, but then I became engrossed in the next programme, too.’
‘And now I assume the programme’s over. Did she say anything else?’
‘No, nothing other than that she’d be coming soon. And she enquired about some Englishman.’
‘What Englishman?’
‘I don’t know. But I did mention that Frau Rehmann had had an English visitor earlier today.’
‘And…?’
‘That’s all.’
For a moment Kröner was furious. He slammed down the receiver, banged his fist on the table and swept all the papers onto the floor. Incompetence was unforgivable. In his
moment of anger he turned around to open the window and let in some fresh air. Then he stopped and slid behind the curtain, all in one movement. Suddenly Frau Billinger’s inefficiency that afternoon no longer mattered. The problem had solved itself, for at that moment Petra Wagner appeared outside the wrought-iron gate. Beside her stood a woman he didn’t know.
They were looking up at his house.
He moved away from the window. As he was taking stock of the situation, he heard the doorbell.
One of the unterscharführers in the SS Wehrmacht camps near Kirograd had taught Kröner a special trick that he later made his own. One freezing cold day this young unterscharführer, along with one of the other junior officers, had stabbed a delinquent to death from sheer boredom just as he was about to be hanged. For that they had received a minor reprimand, but everyone had found it amusing.
It was not so much the deed that Kröner had adopted, but the technique behind the stab itself.
The procedure was simple. All that was required was a little knife and a precise knowledge of how to avoid the ribs and strike the heart. After a little practice he’d become good at it.
The advantage was that it was unnecessary to touch the victim, let alone look the victim in the eye. One did it from behind. First and foremost he’d thought of applying this method to Arno von der Leyen. It was quick and easy and took people by surprise. There was simply no time to react, which was the whole point where Arno von der Leyen was concerned. But this latest surprising turns of events clearly indicated that he might have to apply the method to others as well. He would be busy.
But then at least he’d have Petra out of the way.
Kröner stuck his paper knife deep into his pocket so that only the deer’s foot handle stuck out. It was ready for use. The two women wouldn’t cause him any trouble.
Kröner’s son had a friend whose father owned a bigger house than theirs. Although the house in itself was impressive enough, it was the glass front door that really made an impact. ‘You can see who’s coming, Daddy! Can’t we have one like that?’ In Kröner’s experience, all such silly demands had a time limit. Others would soon crop up, so he hadn’t given the idea any more thought. This was something he might well have regretted now. For glass would have spared him the shock he received when he swung open the massive, carved oaken door.
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