“No,” Dieter said. “There are regular increases, that must be interest coming in. The money’s been profitably invested somewhere.”
The landlady brought him his coffee and the cognac. After she’d gone again, he came to a decision. “I’ll take this thing, but I don’t think it’s going to help you.”
He assumed one set of letter combinations referred to banks, he went on. The series of numbers must be reference and account numbers. There were no sort codes, which made him think it would be impossible to work out where the money was. “But even if I do find that out,” he said, “you can’t get at it as Nadia Trenkler. I suspect everything’s under the name of Lasko and you won’t be able to get your old ID cards back. The police have them.”
“I can get replacements,” she said.
“Are you crazy?” Dieter hissed. Then, speaking in an undertone, he said he wondered how Nadia had managed to get replacement documents in the name of Lasko without the police finding out. Applying for them was no problem, but the council registration office would have sent notification.
“Getting them out of my letter box wouldn’t be a problem either,” she said. “I was at the confectioner’s all day.”
The landlady was at the bar now, making a show of wiping up. With a quick glance in her direction, Dieter pointed at the screen again. He spoke so softly even she had difficulty hearing. “For the moment you do nothing.” No question of going to the police now. His finger tapped a column of pairs of letters. AR, she read, PR, DL, RL, LL.
It was presumably these initials alone that had made him change his mind and dissuaded him from leaving her to deal with the situation by herself. Agnes Runge, Peter Runge, Dieter Lasko, Ramie Lasko, Letitia Lasko. He was very angry that his wife and daughter had been drawn into this. Not knowing Johannes Herzog and Herbert Schrag, he couldn’t make anything of the other sets of initials. And Nadia was the only one she’d told about her crush on Richard Gere.
Pulling at his lower lip, lost in thought, a gesture she remembered from earlier times, Dieter asked if she had the office key on her. Then, quite happy to let her pay, he followed her out to the car park. Next to the Alfa was a dark-green estate with a child seat in the back. Dieter put the envelope and laptop on the rear seat and asked her to go on ahead; he would follow as he didn’t know the way.
“And if there’s someone in the office?” she asked.
“I hope very much there is,” he said. “It would be useful to know if Hardenberg has access to the money. If he does, you’ve one worry the less. If he doesn’t, you’d better find a good plastic surgeon.”
It took them just under an hour to get to Gerler House. As ever, the dark-blue Mercedes was in its parking space; the other three spaces were empty. In the lift Dieter took the leather holder from her, also demanding the keys to her flat in Kettlerstrasse. If she was caught, he said, it would be better if they weren’t found on her.
He went on ahead, opened the door and strode swiftly across the lobby to the upholstered door. It was locked. Nothing could be heard. Instinctively she held her breath when he went in. He called out, “Don’t worry, the coast’s clear.”
By the time she’d entered Hardenberg’s office, he was already sitting at the desk, had started up the computer and set a search in motion. After only a few seconds he exclaimed triumphantly, “There it is!”
SLA. The next moment a spreadsheet poured over the screen. It only had Zurkeulen’s investment account, split up into several smaller amounts. “Where are the others?” Dieter asked, telling her to have a look to see if there were any CDs around. “I’ll make a copy of this.”
She couldn’t find any disks, neither in Helga’s office, nor in Hardenberg’s filing cabinets. All she came across there was a spring file which a firm of private investigators had sent to Hardenberg. Heller had been right, the opinion pollster was a snooper. And the funny object that, when she’d been running a temperature, she’d assumed was part of the table, was a bugging device. Both she and Heller had been under surveillance for several weeks. Dieter had also had a visit.
“What’s that you’re messing about with?” he asked irritatedly. He took the file from here and muttered, “The bastards.”
The idea there might be a bug in his house drove him wild. He started rummaging through the filing cabinet himself and established that none of the documents he leafed through quickly hinted at dishonest transactions. Given their haste it was, of course, impossible to check every sheet, but Dieter still calmed down. He was no longer bothered about a CD. He took the private investigator’s file then had a quick look at Helga’s hard disk, dismissing the correspondence of Hardenberg’s partner as harmless letters. Apart from that, there was only a small kitchen and a washroom. Nadia hadn’t had an office at Alfo Investment, but then freelancers didn’t need one.
They got back to the lift and down to the underground car park unseen. Dieter intended to have a look at the computer in the study and - if necessary - free up some memory. Then he was going to go back to Hardenberg’s office and send all the material that seemed important by email, to give him time to examine it undisturbed. The way he put it, it sounded like child’s play.
But she didn’t think he’d find anything of significance. Hardenberg had spent too much time and effort on his computer after Zurkeulen’s visit. And the papers he’d burned suggested he’d destroyed anything that might give him away. Apart from that, she remembered that Michael was going to come home early. “Let’s do it tomorrow,” she suggested.
“I’m having lunch with my publisher tomorrow,” Dieter said.
“Then the day after tomorrow.”
“No,” Dieter insisted. He’d drawn the same conclusion about Hardenberg’s actions as she had. “We’ll get it done today. Hardenberg was panicking when he cleared up, he might have missed something. Once he has time to think, it might occur to him that a specialist can retrieve deleted files. If he wipes the hard disk or removes it, we won’t find anything. And if they get onto you in a couple of days, I want to have as much evidence as possible to hand. Are you clear about what you might be faced with? How do you think Trenkler’s going to react when he realizes who it was they found in the waste bin? You had nothing to lose when his wife met you. That she engaged you as a stand-in is about the most stupid argument you could use when there’s twenty million lying around. You worked in a bank, you know about finance, remember? Which of you was it who saw it as her big chance?”
She’d never thought about it like that, but she just couldn’t see Michael as a threat. And she was intensely irritated by the way Dieter was slipping back into his old way of treating her. And he was forgetting one thing. If Michael was already at home and Susanne Lasko’s ex-husband turned up, that would considerably increase the chances of her being unmasked.
It was dark outside as they emerged from the car park one after the other. She led the way again through the heavy evening traffic and Dieter followed. In the city there was no real chance of overtaking but on the autobahn things were different. The Alfa was much more manoeuvrable than the dark-green estate. There wasn’t a lot of room, but enough for a bit of motorway slalom. For a couple of seconds she could still see him flashing his headlights in the rear-view mirror. Then they were submerged in the sea of light.
Twenty minutes later she stopped in the drive. The Jaguar was already in the garage. She braced herself for an angry outburst or a breath test and went into the hall expecting her wrist to be grabbed. But Michael was nowhere to be seen. There were dirty pots and pans in the kitchen. It looked as if he’d made himself a meal but hardly eaten any of it. She went upstairs, hung the mink jacket back in the dressing room and checked all the rooms. No trace of Michael. When she went back downstairs, she heard him calling from the basement.
He was sitting on the side of the pool, naked and wet. His eyes were reddened, probably from the chlorine. His voice was completely toneless as he said, “I thought you’d gone.”
“I just had
to take a few things back to the office. Been home long?”
“Since half three. Who was Susanne Lasko and what did she have to do with you?”
“With me, nothing,” she declared. “Philip was involved with her, I’m sure of that. The man who threatened me must have confused me with her. That’s the only explanation I can think of.”
He nodded, sunk in thought. Without indicating whether he believed her or not, he looked up and smiled. “Do you feel like kissing me dry?”
“Not just now,” she said.
“Have you been drinking?”
She shook her head. He stretched out his hand and, thinking he wanted to do a breath test again, she took a couple of steps towards the edge of the pool. Before she knew what was happening, he’d pulled her down. For a second she could feel his thighs under her back, his hand behind her head and his mouth on her lips. Then, despite the fact the she was fully clothed, he gave her a push. She slipped off his legs and the water closed over her head.
He stayed sitting on the side, watching her desperate struggle. If she’d let herself slide into the pool carefully, she could probably have kept her head above water. Being thrown in was quite a different matter. Her shoes came off. She couldn’t touch the bottom and there was nothing for her to grab on to either. Flailing her arms and thrashing her legs only took her further from the side. She didn’t dare breathe in, holding her breath until she thought her lungs and her head were going to burst.
Twice she saw him, refracted through the water, sitting motionless on the side. Since he did nothing, she was convinced he was trying to kill her - that is, Nadia. Then he finally pushed off and was beside her in a moment. He pulled her to him and lifted her head above water. Only to kiss her. She didn’t even have time to take a deep breath.
“Why can’t you understand what I really want,” he murmured, then dived down with her. He seemed to take the way she clung to him in panic as passion. Even under the surface he continued to kiss her, at the same time fiddling with the zip of her trousers. Then back up to the surface. Time for a quick gasp for breath before he clamped his mouth over hers again.
Her pulse was a deafening throb in her ears. The necklace tore as he pawed her. A few pearls drifted through the water, the rest of the string swirling as it sank to the bottom. It was green down there and blue, with the first dark patches as she began to lose consciousness. The last thing she felt was his hands round her waist, under her pullover, his lips on her breast and water up her nose. She didn’t even get round to cursing her driving skills. Nadia had been wrong about one thing - drowning while making love was definitely not a wonderful death. But Nadia’s had been even less wonderful, had been horrible.
She felt terribly cold when she came to. There was an immense weight on her chest. Then it eased and light returned. Michael was kneeling beside her, pressing rhythmically under her ribs with both hands. She coughed, wheezed, spat out water and heard him begging her breathlessly, “Yes, come on, come on, come on. That’s it. Keep breathing.”
He kept kissing her again and again, not letting her get enough air. Cradling her face in his hands, he asked, “What was wrong? Did you bash your head against the side? You have been drinking, haven’t you? Admit it, you’ve been drinking. Tell me again that you love me. I love you too. You, just you, not the money you can make.” He was stammering, as if he were going out of his mind. He squeezed the water out of her hair, brushed it off her cheeks, pulled her dripping-wet pullover off over her head and tugged her trousers down.
Her teeth were chattering. “I feel so cold.”
“You’ll warm up pretty soon.” He took her in his arms and carried her upstairs. In bed it was anything but the standard deal. It went on and on, he couldn’t get enough - of Nadia. The cold gradually faded, apart from one spot deep within, like an icy thorn that every “Nadia!” from his lips drove deeper into her flesh. Although extremely reluctantly, she realized that Dieter was right. When it came to the crunch, this man, who couldn’t stop kissing her, caressing her, loving her, could represent a much greater threat than Zurkeulen and his thug. She had to get out of his life as quickly as possible.
At some point the telephone in the study rang. The answerphone clicked in. Nadia’s voice with the message could be heard through the open door, then Dieter saying, “Are you mad? Where did you learn to drive like that? Ring me. I told you I haven’t time tomorrow.”
The question suddenly brought Michael back down to earth. He stopped his lovemaking and pushed himself up. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know. Must be a wrong number.”
She pulled his head back down to her. In the study Dieter was begging her for Heaven’s sake not to try anything herself or what little was left would go down the drain too. She put her hands over his ears and clamped her lips to his until all was quiet again. He pulled away from her and looked down. “Nadia, I want to know what’s going on. I have to know.”
So she told him - that behind her back Philip had been indulging in some nasty chicanery with a double, a woman who looked just like her. The words simply flowed, she was at least as good as Nadia at lying, after all, she’d had plenty of practice with her mother. “For weeks I didn’t realize what was going on,” she said. “A few times when I came into the office, Helga asked me if I’d forgotten something. It sounded as if I’d been in already that day. But who would imagine something like that? No one expects there to be another version of themselves.”
The possibility only occurred to her, she claimed, the first time someone addressed her by the name of Lasko. No, not the angry man in the bank, Behringer’s friendly office manager had greeted her in the lift and asked how she was getting on with her job at Alfo Investment. It was from nice Herr Reincke that she had learned that Susanne Lasko had applied for a job as secretary at Behringer’s and that Philip Hardenberg had torpedoed her appointment. Naturally she’d wondered why Philip had taken on her double - and that without Helga’s knowledge. That was why she’d been travelling round so much recently, had had to stay away overnight and think up stupid excuses.
“I got the idea that Philip must be meeting this woman somewhere else, perhaps because Helga had become suspicious. I followed him when he went on business trips, but I never saw the woman. And I didn’t like to ask Herr Reincke for her address. After that angry client went on at me last week, I tried to see what I could find in the office. I thought there must be some documents somewhere. But the only things I could find were that envelope with papers and the old key-holder, the things that were in the boot of the Alfa. On Friday I went to the address, in Kettlerstrasse. The keys fitted, but the woman wasn’t there. I waited for hours, I wanted to have it out with her. That’s why I was so late coming home. And I went there again on Saturday morning, again with no success. I wanted to have one more try on Sunday, but you stopped me. Now the woman’s dead and Philip has clearly gone into hiding. Hold me tight.”
He did that, for most of the night, on the damp sheets. He only got out of bed once, to put his alarm in the bathroom. Then he clung tight to her again, murmuring his fears and feelings against the back of her neck. That he didn’t know whether to believe her or not. That he was afraid he’d never be able to lead a normal life if he stayed with her, because she didn’t understand what really counted in life. But he knew what he owed to her. And he was the one person she could count on, if she made a mess of things again. It flowed almost seamlessly into a whispered “You sleep on.” She felt his lips across her temple, then he was gone. An unpredictable factor. An incalculable risk. Nadia’s husband.
She spent most of the morning brooding over the pain his inability to give up Nadia was causing her. It was just before midday that the telephone took her mind off it. Dieter was on the line. Andrea was cleaning the big windows by the pool. It hadn’t been emptied. Andrea didn’t know how to let the water out, nor did she.
Dieter had switched his meeting with his publisher from lunch to dinner. He could understand why she had
n’t rung him. He was ringing from Hardenberg’s office. He thought it highly unlikely he would be interrupted in the next few hours. “The Mercedes has gone and I’m convinced that means Hardenberg has too,” he said. “From what I’ve seen so far, there’s no mention of the other eight men on the list, but I’m a long way from having checked everything yet.”
He wanted to know how much free memory there was on the hard disk in the study. Following his instructions, it took her only a few seconds to find the information. As Dieter had assumed, there was nowhere near enough storage space.
She sent Andrea home. Just thirty minutes later Dieter was there. She guided him into the garage. He had no objection to being shown round, but made no comment, neither admitting he was impressed nor suggesting mockingly that she fitted into the house like a pig in the parlour. When she mentioned the pool, all he said was, “I had a small pool installed in the garden last spring too.” The sight of the shimmering green did, however, elicit an awestruck, “My God, it’s a proper indoor pool!”
“Do you know how to let the water out?” she asked hopefully.
“Why? There’s nothing wrong with it. Have you any idea what it costs to fill a pool like that?”
“I don’t want to fill it,” she explained. “I fell in yesterday.”
“Then just keep away,” he advised.
In the hall he quickly demonstrated how to open the letter box. It didn’t need a key, she just had to stick her finger in the opening she’d assumed was a keyhole, press a tiny bolt to one side and pull out the flap. There were two envelopes in it. One was the telephone bill, the other came from a music agent’s and had two more tickets for the Niedenhoff concert in the Beethovenhalle.
As they went into the study, the telephone rang. The answerphone switched in. It was Phil telling them, in incredibly fast English, that there was a small guest room available, but that Pamela could book them into a hotel, if they preferred. Dieter translated it for her, adding, with ironic emphasis, “You’d better get a sore throat.” Then, recalling her request, “I must have some language courses somewhere. English definitely. I did have a French course, too, but it’s possible that Ramie…”
The Lie Page 30