Toby clamped his teeth together even harder.
Crap idea. It doesn’t work.
He coughed despite himself and the coin slipped out again.
Effing screw. Effing darkness. Effing Frau Quandt.
Still no spit. His tongue hurt more, but that was all. It was really sore and it felt like a strip of leather. And his head was buzzing the way it had when he stayed underwater too long, just to win that stupid album.
Which he hadn’t won, any more than he’d managed to open this padlock.
Four turns, he’d counted. Maybe even five. Then the coin with which he’d been unscrewing the screw in the lock had slipped through his fingers and he’d fallen asleep while looking for it. Now he didn’t know how long he’d slept for in this everlasting darkness. If his head wasn’t aching so much, he wouldn’t have known he’d woken up at all.
He replaced the coin in the groove and managed another half-turn.
Shit, why am I sweating so much the coin keeps slipping through my fingers, whereas my mouth is as dry as...
Yes, as dry as what? He felt empty all of a sudden. His head was buzzing and he was too tired to think of a suitable word.
As the bottom of a bird cage, he wanted to say, but it didn’t make sense.
Toby flinched when he heard a hysterical laugh. Then he realized that he was the one giggling.
He licked the sweat off his upper lip and knew it was a mistake. Like in the story of the shipwrecked sailor who drank sea water and only felt thirstier. He had wondered at the time why the man on the raft hadn’t drunk his own blood.
But that was probably as dumb an idea as fiddling with this padlock.
He would never get out of here. Never be able to open the thing he was inside.
Whatever that is.
He would suffocate and sweat to death at the same time.
Hee-hee!
Toby giggled. Sweat to death... Can you actually do that?
Click!
He froze.
Click!
A creaking sound, then a last, somewhat fainter click.
He propped himself on his elbows and braced his head against the yielding surface above him. He had once more lost the coin that had served him as a screwdriver, but that was immaterial now. He couldn’t stop laughing.
His laughter grew louder by the second and culminated in a loud cry of triumph.
Done it!
First he’d heard it; now he could feel it. The padlock had sprung open and was hanging by its shackle alone. Although his fingers were trembling, they didn’t slip off the padlock when he detached it. He felt for the eye through which the shackle had passed and found there were two of them. Two wafer-thin slabs of metal with holes in the ends.
Everything went very quickly after that.
Toby grasped that they were the pull tabs of a zip fastener that ran lengthwise above him. Because the zip had been hidden beneath a strip of material, he had mistaken the projection for an unimportant seam. In reality, it was...
...the way out?
He held his breath and mobilized the last reserves of energy in his scrawny body.
Then, with sweaty fingers, he tried to pull the tabs apart.
No problem.
This is great, he told himself, pulling the tabs ever further apart. The zip’s sliders glided along as smoothly as skates across an ice rink.
He was about to utter another cry of triumph when he felt the plastic film overhead. His spirits sank as quickly as they had revived.
Good news, bad news. Easy come, easy go.
He had opened the zip but not the rubbery sheath into which he had evidently been sealed. The thing that had almost exhausted his air supply.
He dug his forefinger into the film and felt it give way without tearing. It stretched but didn’t break, like chewing gum when you tried to scratch it off the sole of your shoe.
His eyes filled with tears. He sobbed and cried for his mother.
Not for Dad, the old fart. But Mum. I wish Mum was here.
With a strength born of despair he grabbed hold of the two flaps of material above him...
It’s a bag! I’m sealed up in a plastic bag.
...and yanked them in opposite directions.
Once, twice. The third time he uttered a yell that drowned the faint tearing sound.
Bloody hell, I’ve done it!
The film had parted. Quite suddenly. He couldn’t see or feel it, but he could smell it. The air smelt...
...different.
He thought he was yelling, but the throaty, whistling sounds he made were intakes of breath.
He propped himself on his elbows. His head was in the open now. He could sit up straight.
Avidly, he drew in great gulps of air. Although still thin, it was considerably richer in oxygen than the interior of his previous place of confinement.
Once his initial euphoria had subsided, however, he felt even more wretched than he had done minutes earlier.
Where am I now?
He crawled on all fours out of the container in which he’d been imprisoned.
He was out of his original prison.
And now?
He tried to stand up, but he was so weak he managed to stay on his feet for a second or two only. Then his knees buckled.
While falling, all he could tell about his new surroundings was that he still couldn’t see a thing.
Not a thing.
It was just as dark in there, wherever ‘there’ was, as it had been before.
Total darkness. There’s no difference.
Apart, perhaps, from the fact that his new prison had a bit more headroom, because he’d been able to stand erect.
And the walls aren’t soft any more, he thought. Then his head hit the floor.
44
(7 HOURS 24 TO THE DEADLINE)
ALEXANDER ZORBACH
He’s dead.
That was my first thought. My second was why the barkeep, who had accompanied us into the windowless back room, should be smiling so benevolently when a body was decomposing on his pool table.
The man we were looking for lay sprawled across the green baize with his head hanging limply over the rail nearest to us, between the end and centre. His eyes were wide open and a thread of reddish spittle was oozing from his mouth. The spreading pool of blood beneath his chest did not look too fresh.
‘What smells so bad in here?’ Alina asked in disgust, one hand over her mouth and nose.
‘I, I don’t know exactly, but I think...’
‘He’s really had it, hasn’t he?’ the barkeep said with a contented laugh. I retreated a step and trod on his foot. While wondering if we’d left any fingerprints in the bar and whether the police would be able to nail me for this murder as well, I activated my mobile.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ I told Alina as I keyed in the SIM code.
I was about to call the police when the phone nearly jumped out of my hand. The vibration alarm signalled several messages and a new call that was just coming in.
‘Hello? Alex?’
Damn it. Nicci!
This wasn’t, of course, an appropriate time for a conversation with my wife, but I’d inadvertently pressed the wrong key and now she was on the line.
‘At last. Thank goodness, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.’
She sounded anxious. Filled with foreboding, I suddenly felt lousier than the barroom décor.
‘It’s Julian. He’s not too well.’
Oh no...
For a moment everything and everyone were secondary. Alina, TomTom, the barkeep – not even a corpse counts for anything when your own flesh and blood is in trouble. The signal was very weak. I could only hear snatches of what Nicci was saying, so I left the back room without a word to the others.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ I asked when my mobile’s display showed four bars again.
‘He’s coughing. I’m afraid it’s getting worse.’
My stomach t
wisted itself into a knot.
‘Is he running a temperature?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
Meaning what? Since when does a thermometer register vague hunches instead of degrees Celsius?
I suppressed an acid remark. After all, I should have been there for our son’s birthday, not spending my time with a blind girl, a dead body and a crazy barman.
‘The last time I took his temperature it was 38.9 degrees,’ she said.
I felt relieved. ‘That’s only borderline,’ I said. A bit higher than it should be, but far from a high fever.
Nicci surprised me by asking a sensible question. ‘Should I call the doctor?’
I heard Alina say something in the room next door. The barkeep gave another laugh.
‘Yes, do that,’ I told her. I thought she was being overanxious, to be honest. Still, better safe than sorry. ‘But please don’t go private. They always send some quack who tries acupuncture first.’
I was relaxing a little. Julian didn’t sound too bad and his mother hadn’t – for once – called in a faith healer.
‘What have you got against acupuncture?’ Nicci demanded.
‘Nothing.’ I snapped. ‘It just isn’t my first choice when it comes to treating the sick.’
Nicci seemed deaf to the anger in my voice. The corpse we’d just discovered in the adjoining room surfaced in my mind once more.
‘Oh, Zorro,’ she said, using a pet name I hadn’t heard her use for ages, ‘what’s your problem?’ She sighed. ‘Why do you always sound so bitter when we talk together?’
What’s my problem? Furiously, I switched the phone from one ear to the other. You want to know what my problem is? Okay, I’ll tell you.
‘I’m feeling rather annoyed, darling. That’s because I’m hunting a sicko who seems to be trying to pin his serial murders on me, and the only person who can exonerate me is a blind girl who claims she can see into the past. That’s my problem.’
Quite apart from the rotting corpse in the poolroom next door.
I looked in that direction. The barman hadn’t moved, so he couldn’t have got at Alina in the meantime.
‘A blind girl?’
I shut my eyes. How could I have been stupid enough to broach such a subject? I might as well have handed Nicci an invitation to a séance. Now that her interest had been aroused, she would bombard me with questions ad infinitum.
‘She’s a medium, right?’
‘Forget what I said.’
I went to the bar room entrance and put the chain on the door to prevent any potential customers from bursting in on this madhouse.
‘Listen to me, Zorro. This is very important, you hear?’
‘Darling, I really can’t talk now!’
I heard a pool cue fall to the floor, then Alina murmuring something. Meanwhile, Nicci was saying, ‘I know you don’t believe in these things – things we can’t explain – and that’s your privilege, but—’
‘I’ve really got to...’
I glanced at the poolroom. The barkeep had disappeared from view.
‘You must stay away from her.’
‘What? Why?’
I couldn’t hear a word after that, neither from Alina nor from the barman. Instead, a protracted, heavy snoring sound came drifting out into the taproom.
‘I’ve told you a thousand times,’ Nicci was saying, but her voice had melted into the background like the ominous film music that accompanies the hero to his doom.
Except that I’m not an actor.
‘You attract evil like a magnet. You only wrote about it before, but now it’s all around you...’
True. It’s with me here and now...
‘... and it’ll destroy you, Alex. I don’t know this blind girl, but I can sense she’s involving you in something you’ll never be able to escape from, understand?’
‘Yes,’ I said. For one thing because she’d unwittingly put her finger on the truth. I really did feel like someone sinking ever deeper into quicksand the more he struggled. For another, because I had to cut this conversation short.
‘Keep away from all forms of negative energy, Alex. Don’t provoke evil or it’ll destroy you. Come home – come home for Julian’s birthday!’
So saying, Nicci hung up and left me alone with the madhouse otherwise known as my life.
With Alina, TomTom and the barkeep.
And the corpse, which gave me a wave as I went back into the poolroom.
43
‘Woshuwon’?’
The dead man, who had until recently been sprawled across the baize in a welter of blood with his neck broken, was now sitting on the edge of the pool table, dribbling. He was also engaged in other activities which murder victims normally can’t manage. Breathing, for example. And speaking, albeit in a language I didn’t understand.
‘Karnaguy’avakip?’
My eyes strayed to Alina, who had pulled up a chair and was sitting not far from the pool table. TomTom, lying at her feet, yawned. Linus did likewise a few moments later.
‘I thought he was...’ I broke off and rubbed my eyes. My headache had suddenly returned with a vengeance. There was a rectangular, lace-curtained lampshade over the pool table, and although the bulbs inside didn’t generate much more light than a few candles, they had dazzled me when I made the mistake of looking straight at them.
‘I thought he was dead,’ I said, completing my sentence with an effort. Multicoloured UFOs danced before my eyes as I looked at the barkeep.
‘Dead? Nonsense, Linus always sleeps with his eyes open. It isn’t his only trick, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.’
I nodded, brushing the baize with my hand as I made my way round the table. It was dawning on me that I’d completely misinterpreted the scene in my agitation. The ‘bloodstain’ was an old one – either the result of an overturned beer glass or possibly bodily fluid of some kind. It definitely wasn’t the squalid street musician’s lifeblood, because he was unscathed, and his bloodstained spittle stemmed from a serious but far from fatal gum infection. As for the unremitting stench of a corpse, that appeared to be his natural body odour. A blend of excrement, urine, sweat and grime, it was testimony to life on the Berlin streets.
‘Phosiapatikil’,’ Linus proclaimed with a portentous air when I was standing directly in front of him.
Looking into his emaciated face and trying to establish eye contact with him, I was reminded of why so many people are mistakenly pronounced dead. Only two months earlier I’d written a piece about a woman who had leapt off the autopsy table in a leading Berlin hospital. Linus’s eyes were as lifeless as Alina’s.
‘What happened to him?’ I asked.
‘I already told your girlfriend,’ the barkeep replied, but he clearly relished an audience and seemed only too willing to repeat himself. ‘Linus used to be a star performer. He played with various bands in big venues – even at the old Wembley Stadium in England, so he says.’
Linus gave the sort of approving nod a person gives when talking about the good old days, when all was still well with the world.
‘They say his manager took him for a ride – paid him in drugs instead of cash. The poor devil wound up not only broke but completely bananas. He swallowed one pill too many or shot up once too often and just collapsed after a gig. He’s been talking a lingo of his own ever since.’
‘Woshuwon’, eh?’ said Linus, seemingly in confirmation.
‘Anyway, he did a spell in a loony bin somewhere in the Grunewald, but he came out goofier than he went in, believe me.’
I went up to Linus, who was still perched on the edge of the pool table but swaying precariously.
‘Can you hear me?’ I asked.
He shrugged.
Okay, here goes. The most he can do is spit in my face.
I risked it and showed him the photo on my mobile. It was the shot of his encounter with the unknown man.
‘Do you remember this guy?’ I asked. Linus’s shoulder-shrugging became more
violent. Sudden fury carved deep furrows in his brow and he started to pluck at his few remaining strands of hair.
‘Wankabumpami!’ he said. He repeated the meaningless word several times in succession.
‘Any idea what that means?’ Alina asked the barman.
‘None.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t speak Druggy.’
‘Wankakikmigit!’ said Linus, who was far less amused.
If my eyes hadn’t deceived me, he’d just pulled out a long hair and stuffed it into his mouth.
‘He’s talking about his guitar case, isn’t he?’ I said.
‘Could be. If anyone can translate his gibberish it’s the girl who goes around with him.’ The barkeep’s’s gaze strayed to Alina, then lingered on the dog. ‘But she’s got a screw loose too, if you know what I mean. Calls herself Yasmin Schiller and was in the same loony bin, but on the staff. She often sits at the bar and goes on about their plans to form a band together – things like that. Anyway, Yasmin told me Linus mixes up different words in the wrong order. His head’s like a cocktail shaker, she says.’
He gave another laugh.
Linus’s eyes glazed over. I wondered if he still grasped we were talking about him.
‘For instance, he often says “Eetmaishiwanka.” Must have something to do with wankers.’
‘Of whom there are plenty in his life, no doubt,’ Alina put in.
Linus turned to her. ‘Wankakikmigit!’ he said again. It sounded as if he were requesting confirmation of his statement, but only TomTom was paying much attention to him. The retriever gazed intently at the busker with his tongue lolling out.
‘What did you show him just now?’ The barkeep had removed his glasses, which were dangling from the corner of his mouth. He was so close I could smell his bad breath. ‘Can I see?’
I handed over the phone, remembering too late that the man in the picture bore a strong resemblance to me. However, the barkeep took a cursory glance at the miniature screen and didn’t seem to notice.
‘The guy with Linus is a professional conman,’ I said, quickly concocting an innocuous story. ‘That picture of him bumping into Linus was caught by a CCTV camera yesterday. We thought Linus might be able to give us some more pointers.’
‘And who would you be?’
Eye Collector, The Page 16