Her calves ached from the urgency of her movement. Perhaps she should just find a gap in the undergrowth and wait and hide.
No, from the deliberate movements she could tell now that it was a person, and one who was determined to find her. Perhaps they had a torch or some kind of light. Her only hope was that they wouldn’t realise she had a car parked there and she’d be able to drive off before they caught up with her.
She turned round and looked back. She couldn’t be sure, but her mind painted for her the figure of an evil man in pursuit. He was gaining on her. It was another two hundred and fifty metres to the car, at least. He’d be upon her in seconds.
Some inner survival instinct seemed to click in. Although she was exhausted, without even seeming to breathe, she hurried her legs into a sprint. Once upon a time she’d competed for her school, specialising in the four hundred metres. As quietly as she could, she ran on, clenching her key tightly in her hand like a talisman.
Behind her the undergrowth seemed to come alive with noise. Her pursuer also began to run, except that he could do it in big loping strides that gained on her every step. Still she ran, moving her legs as quickly as she could make them. The sound of his footsteps getting closer egged her on. If she ran much faster her startled lungs wouldn’t be able to function. Her body was being pushed to its limits.
The path was coming to an end. Her car was somewhere in the darkness. She cursed herself for every extra step she had to take to find it.
From behind she heard a scuffle, the sound of an angry man’s voice crying out ‘Scheisse!’ He’d fallen down. This was her chance.
She bolted into her car and slammed the door so hard she thought the glass would break. It took a few seconds for her shaking hand to slide the key into the ignition. All the time her body sobbed for breath.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a tall, dark figure approach the car park, limping. She knew that if he hadn’t fallen he would have had her. She skidded into reverse, needed two attempts to take the handbrake off. With a little squeal she sped out of the car park, leaving the desolate expanse behind her.
She didn’t look to see if she could see anyone. Every part of her was concentrated on exiting. When the car met the road, in her haste she almost drove into a red Jaguar. She had to fight to brake and control the car. Her relief at finally entering the middle lane of the Autobahn was overwhelming. All she could think about was putting her foot down as hard as she could and making it home at twice the normal speed.
Lars laughed out loud. His knee was bleeding where he’d fallen. And clambering around through all that undergrowth he’d scratched his arms to pieces. A bloody pregnant woman had outrun him! Just went to show how unfit he was.
It seemed a long time since he’d been in active service with the army. Of course, if he hadn’t fallen it would have been easy. He could have watched the look of fear in her eyes. Not that he would have hurt her. He didn’t kill women. There was only that time with Anna, and what a shitstorm that had unleashed.
He didn’t kill women.
He didn’t kill for killing’s sake.
He only got excited, and then he wasn’t responsible for what happened.
But still he needed to warn this woman off. In his pocket, his hand searched for his mobile. He phoned Inspector Koch so often he was like a friend. They did things for each other, whether out of duty or respect, he had no idea. What he was sure of was that Koch would help him out.
Frannie was no longer a slow driver. She was shooting up the fast lane, pushing the other traffic to the middle lane. The car was as swift as an arrow, and it hummed faintly as it raced along. The empty bottles that Kurt had forgotten to take for recycling rattled in the boot. Even though it was illogical, she wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and the man she’d left behind on foot.
Signs flashed past. Frannie found her way back fairly easily. Now that she had the protection of the car, everything felt easy. Within minutes she was exiting on to the B6. She forgot to come down in gear and the car nearly stalled.
After the exhilaration of being able to drive as fast as the car could go, it was a drag doing seventy. As there were few other cars she went faster, eating up the kilometres. She was looking forward to getting home and collapsing into bed.
She was just about to turn right at Burger King when the flashing blue light of a police car dazzled her. She froze, slowing down drastically, not sure what to do. The police car fixed itself firmly to her bumper. She decided to stop and pull over. She groaned. A wrangle with the police was the last thing she needed.
It seemed to take ages before the policeman tapped at her window. He had steel-grey hair and a hard face. Even his brilliant blue eyes looked shocked, as if it was hard to live with his own temper.
She wound the window down. He said something unintelligible. She thought she heard him say Führerschein so she looked in her purse on the passenger seat and dug out her driving licence. It was a struggle to find everything, and all the time the policeman looked at her as if she was guilty of something terrible.
‘Registration papers?’ he barked at her. His eyes flashed. Her face dropped. They were in her husband’s wallet, although in theory they should be carried at all times.
‘My husband has them,’ she said in her best German. She pointed again to her driving licence. ‘I live just five minutes away.’
It was not sufficient. The policeman told her she didn’t have the correct paperwork. Shit! It wasn’t Deutschland but paper land. Bureaucracy was everywhere.
‘You need to come down to the station,’ said the policeman. She was forced to follow him, away from the twinkling lights of the road home. By now Frannie was just too tired to do anything than mechanically go through the motions. Kurt was going to find out everything. It occurred to her that ten minutes ago she would have done anything for proximity to a police officer. Now all she wanted was sleep.
The station was the Garbsen one, a stone’s throw from the minimall that was small beans compared to English ones. She hoped that her German would be good enough to get her through the interview.
They took her to a big room with a table that could have sat twenty. She was given a cup of water with an ice cube in it. The man who brought her the drink was nice and friendly. Good cop, bad cop, she thought. Should she tell them about Anna and Tomek, about the man who had chased her? But she’d never even caught a glimpse of the man’s face. And perhaps she’d been trespassing when she’d gone on the path? Whatever she did, she didn’t want to make things worse.
Her blood pressure must be up; it felt as though her heart was going to pump itself out of her chest.
A man came in. ‘Frau Snell?’ he said, indicating that she should sit again. He explained that she had been caught speeding on the B6. She licked her lips and tried to look scared. Although it occurred to her she should have been nervous, she was so freaked out by the night’s events that she was mentally shutting down.
‘Have you been drinking?’ he said in a stern voice.
She looked down pointedly at her pregnant bump. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Although you were at a discotheque?’ he replied.
Even through the tiredness, Frannie felt something in her mind click.
‘I didn’t say where I was,’ she said. Her face was puzzled.
‘Oh, I guessed you were at a club. Where else does one go at this time in the morning?’ said the policeman hastily. He turned to his paperwork.
Frannie stared at him. Another man came into the room and the two men whispered ridiculously loudly. What could they possibly be talking about? She was starting to feel increasingly agitated. Her tongue was a piece of dumb cloth in her mouth. No matter how she sat, her legs ached. Something was going to give if she had to stay there much longer.
The younger of them turned to her. ‘We need to see the vehicle’s registration papers. Is there anyone we can call to bring them?’
Frannie sighed. The second s
he phoned Kurt, he’d know all about her nocturnal adventures and that she’d scratched his car. Acid crept up sneakily from the pit of her stomach. She could feel the nausea rising like tendrils stretching out. There was no putting it off. She had to throw up. It had been one hell of a night and it wasn’t over yet.
Dorcas burst out of the taxi before the driver could properly stop. She thrust the fare into his hands and ran up the steps to her flat two at a time. When she was through the front door, she locked and bolted it from the inside and leaned against it.
Her heart thudded frantically. She allowed her body to slump down until she was on the floor in a heap, rasping out deep painful breaths. Her mind raced so hard that her eyes must have looked crossed. The only meaningful thing she could do was to take off her shoes, which had been rubbing her heels. When she wiped her face with her fingers they were covered with mascara. She had openly wept in the taxi whilst the driver had stared dead ahead.
Tonight the elegant ambience of the flat was egal. Her lovely face was creased with pain. She reached for a cigarette, needed to sit and think. Her shoulders quivered. The decision had to be made, and quick.
Lars had finally confessed to sleeping with Hans. Anna was missing. She hadn’t even been able to tell Hans she was pregnant. And after their fight, if she didn’t work for him how would she pay the rent, and for coke? Perhaps it was time to just pack a bag and go. But she still had to decide. One hand strayed to her stomach.
She checked her mobile. No messages or missed calls. Hans hadn’t even bothered to check that her bleeding hand was alright. Bastard. Her face tightened. She carried on nursing her cigarette. She’d turned a blind eye to his drug dealing, but if he was involved in people-trafficking, or worse… Whatever she did for a living, she knew right from wrong.
Nothing made sense any more.
Despite her misery, her heart-shaped face was resolute. In this chaos she was certain of one thing. If Hans had hurt Anna, she didn’t want to carry his child. It was a knee-jerk reaction.
Dorcas took out another cigarette. She didn’t know what to do, but she couldn’t stand living in this twilight world any more; had to find out the truth. She rose to her feet. She wasn’t going to be blind to Hans’s criminal life. Restlessly, she fingered her beloved plants as her mind worked overtime…
Dorcas was carefully pruning her bonsais when the buzzer went. It was gone one a.m. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Her concave cutter dropped and clattered on the floor. Now she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t home. The voice on the other end of the buzzer shouted a muted, ‘Dörchen.’ It was Lars, but he sounded odd.
‘I was just going to bed.’
Lars refused to be put off. In the strangest voice he said, ‘I’m bleeding…’ There was a long pause, and she could hear the sound of him breathing heavily. ‘Can I just clean up?’
Reluctantly, she opened the door. She didn’t want to face him right now, but needed to know what was going on. In the dim hallway, for a second he stood in bulky profile like the bogeyman. His hands were twisted into fists, and his broad, shiny full-moon face was covered in dark stuff. When he got closer she saw it was blood. An open cheek-wound was bleeding profusely, and it was going all down his shirt. Inwardly she shuddered.
She led him to the bathroom and attended to him with her first-aid kit. He sat down on the edge of the bath like an old man. Lars had also hurt his knee, and a graze, filthy with debris, was sticking out of a hole in his jeans. She was burning with questions, but Lars had to keep his face still while she cleaned him up. She began to worry about who could have caused the injuries.
‘What happened?’ she said, trying to get all the blood off his ear.
‘I had to chase a customer and managed to fall down on the bloody derelict path out back,’ Lars said with a sardonic grin. It sounded lame. He was probably lying through his teeth. From the smell of him he needed a date with a shower pretty bad.
‘Did you call the police?’ she said, her hands rubbing away at his skin removing dried blood and dirt.
Lars grinned. ‘Well, I called Koch, and they’ll make some trouble, don’t you worry.’ He noticed the plaster on her hand. ‘Someone else has been in the wars, I see!’
Dorcas snatched her hand away. ‘Hans broke a paperweight and a shard grazed my hand,’ she said.
‘How did he take it?’ Lars looked at her intensely.
‘What?’ Her eyebrows were raised.
‘When you said you were pregnant?’
‘I didn’t,’ she said, bending down to concentrate on his knee, her movements, as ever, efficient. ‘Wasn’t the right time.’
‘Oh, shit!’ said Lars, wiping his cleaned face with filthy hands. ‘After I saw you on the stairs, I gave him a piece of my mind.’
‘He knows?’ Dorcas turned on him. Her face was incredulous.
‘Well, I thought that was why you were running away – ’cos he’d given you the knock-back.’ Lars’s eyes were downcast.
Dorcas lost it. She dropped the cotton wool she was holding and swiftly slapped him round the face. She did it so hard that the plaster she’d just put on his face turned crimson as the cut started bleeding again and seeping through it.
‘Stay away from him!’ she shouted, her eyes blazing with anger.
Lars, shocked to his core, just sat there. Blood was now seeping down on to his shirt. Dorcas knelt on the floor, sobbing. Lars placed an arm around her shoulder, but she pushed it off. Then she looked up at him, her eyes full of pleading. She couldn’t stand a minute more of this.
‘Please Lars, I need to know,’ she said, wiping her eyes with her fingers.
‘Know what?’ He just looked shocked.
‘What did Hans do to Anna?’ she was still on her knees, big tears falling down her cheeks. The floor was getting into a fine mess.
Lars wiped the blood off his cheek.
‘If you really knew Hans,’ he said in an even voice, ‘you wouldn’t want him.’ His eyes seemed to stare through her.
‘Spit it out, you swine,’ shouted Dorcas, rising to her feet. Her voice had become hard and bitter. Lars was sitting hunched on the bath. She was never going to let him in again. Never.
‘There are some things you shouldn’t even tell God,’ said Lars. She couldn’t tell if he’d gone potty or was being a sarcastic arsehole. Dorcas lashed out again, beating him with one of her good towels. The cloth whipped him pretty damn good. Lars wrenched it away. He stood then, facing her, eyes blazing. His face looked theatrically scary with his staring eyes and the bleeding cut. He took a threatening step towards her. In his hands the towel became an offensive weapon.
‘Lars!’ she said, begging, trying to reach that part of him that knew her. He loomed over her, a bogeyman poised to strike. She screamed as loudly as she could.
One minute the towel was stretched taut between two hands, as if he was going to tighten it around her neck. The next, the blaze in his eyes had diminished and without another word he took off. He casually dropped the towel, which was now stained with blood. He’d done nothing, but she’d seen the malevolent glint in his eyes.
The door slammed. She exhaled slowly. She’d didn’t want to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t gone of his own accord.
Dorcas began to spill out anguished tears, until her eyes were puffy-ugly. Her Lars, whom she’d known for two years, looked as if he could be capable of just about anything. She’d seen him lose control more than once, but in defence of her, not against her. But she couldn’t do a thing. With no proof, she had to be careful. He was a police informer, and the police looked after their own.
She tried to concentrate on slowing her breathing. She felt terrible. And she had an inclination, deep in her belly, that everything was even worse than she could imagine. She couldn’t leave until she’d found out what the little shits had actually done. And, to top it all, Hans knew more than he was letting on about Anna. She reached for another cigarette. Her hands were shaking so much she nearly burnt
herself trying to light up.
When Frannie finally got up and asked to use the bathroom, it was too late. All the evening’s stress reared up in one nauseating wave. She opened her mouth and a viscous gruel splattered all over the floor in front of her. There was no stopping it. Her stomach emptied itself four, five times with frightening efficiency. Before she’d finished she was already gagging at the smell.
The young policeman looked at her aghast. Her head felt as if it was about to burst. She tottered where she stood. The room felt too hot and the lights sharpened to pinpoints as the world went black.
The policeman rushed back towards her, but Frannie was already falling backwards into a dead faint.
The young policeman tinkered with his radio; his voice loud, crisp.
‘An ambulance please: a pregnant woman has collapsed, and she’s about ready to pop, I’d say.’ Frannie’s condition brought running footsteps into the room. Minutes passed as they waited for the ambulance to arrive.
They were covering her with a blanket just as Inspector Koch came in with a well-muscled, tall guy with lanky blond hair. It was Kurt. He didn’t look as if he appreciated being woken in the middle of the night and having to take a taxi because his wife was out with his car. But, when he saw the men bending over Frannie, his sulkiness turned to panic. He rushed over and knelt by his wife’s side. His hands were outstretched, as if he could make everything better by laying them on her.
‘That’s my wife,’ he said, in a furious voice. His muscled body looked awkward, as if he only knew how to push weights. ‘What have you done to her?’ In his haste, he’d stepped in the sick.
The young policeman gave him a look of dislike. ‘She was sick and then she fainted. Why was she out at a discotheque in her condition?’
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