by Marc Raabe
Gabriel grits his teeth. Damn alarm. He’s been working at Python for twenty years and spent most of his time with alarm systems or personal security. Up until a few months ago, he even lived on the fenced-in grounds of the security company in two sparsely furnished rooms right by the gate to the street. His boss Yuri had taken him under his wing and given him some stability. Martial arts training in the mornings, night school from 6 p.m. and Python every other free minute of the day. The problem was the weekends. When there wasn’t much to do, his memories would tear him apart. That is, until he discovered the wrecked car in Yuri’s garage – an old Mercedes SL. Yuri gave him the run-down cabriolet, and Gabriel, who had never so much as changed his own oil, dove into the repairs as if he were restoring his soul.
When the Mercedes was finished, Yuri gave him a Jaguar E-Type and then followed it with other classics from the seventies, so the garage was never empty.
All Yuri asked in return was that Gabriel do his job. And Gabriel really didn’t need asking, since work was the closest thing he had to a home.
Motionless, Gabriel stares into the rear-view mirror. The rain beats down on the bonnet of the car in the light of the yard. His eyes shine colourlessly in the darkness, and the three short, vertical wrinkles between his brows form deep trenches.
Gabriel turns the key in the ignition. The drumming of the rain on the car roof drowns out the sound of the motor starting. He turns on the windscreen wipers and steps on the accelerator, and the dark grey VW Golf with its yellow Python Security logo tears across the yard, past the other cars in the car park, through the open gate and out on to the street, where it blends into the darkness of the rainy night.
Kadettenweg 107.
Up until a few minutes ago, they hadn’t even known that this address was in Python’s database. The alert had practically come out of nowhere. With his perpetually red eyes, Bert Cogan stared at the monitor in the office as if a haunted house had just materialised on the spot. Cogan had been working for Python for over nine years and the monitors were his own personal parallel universe; in the affluent residential district of Lichterfelde, he knew every pixel and every house that Python protected. ‘Hey, have a look at this,’ he muttered in consternation.
‘What is it?’ asked Gabriel.
‘This here, what else!’ Cogan snapped. His pale, chapped index finger pointed at a red, blinking dot on the screen. ‘Can you explain what this house is doing there?’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘Not a clue. If you don’t know, I sure don’t.’
‘I just thought. . .’ said Cogan, fiddling with the stubble that covered his receding chin.
‘What did you think?’
‘Well,’ he mumbled, ‘you have been working here forever . . .’
‘I may have been working for Yuri forever.’ Gabriel pointed at the monitors. ‘But that there is something else entirely. Did you look in the directory?’
Cogan grunted. ‘I don’t need to. I know the Lichterfelde directory. There’s nothing there. Absolutely nothing.’
Gabriel furrowed his brow and stared at the silently pulsing red dot with the number 107 next to the thin white line labelled Kadettenweg. A shiver crept down his spine.
What’s wrong, Luke? the voice in his head whispered. It’s just a red dot, like all the others. You’ve seen that a thousand times. Don’t make such a big deal out of it!
‘All, right. All right,’ he mumbled quietly, without realising it.
‘What did you say?’ Cogan asked.
‘Huh? Oh, nothing,’ Gabriel replied quickly. He then silently fished his mobile phone from the inside pocket of his black leather jacket and dialled Yuri Sarkov.
It rang for a while before Yuri picked up. ‘Hello, Gabriel,’ he rasped. His voice sounded wide-awake, even though it was already well past 1 a.m. in Moscow. ‘What’s up?’
‘Hello,’ Gabriel mumbled, wondering whether Yuri ever slept or turned off his phone. ‘We’ve got something strange here. A silent alarm in Lichterfelde West. It’s in the middle of the residential area, but the house doesn’t belong to one of our customers.’
‘Hm. What’s the address?’
‘Kadettenweg 107,’ said Gabriel, holding the mobile so that Cogan could listen in.
Silence. Nothing but quiet static on the line. ‘Yuri? Still there?’
‘107? Kadettenweg? Are you sure?’ Yuri asked.
‘That’s what it says on the monitor,’ Gabriel growled. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’
‘Blyad,’ Yuri murmured so softly that Gabriel could hardly understand him. Yuri was half-Russian, and whenever there was something to curse about he automatically switched to Russian.
‘Is that one of our customers?’
‘Essentially, yes.’
Essentially? Gabriel raised his eyebrows. Either someone was a customer or they weren’t. ‘Who’s the owner? If you have the phone number, I can take care of it.’
‘The house isn’t occupied,’ replied Yuri.
Gabriel paused for a long moment. ‘So what now?’
Silence. Gabriel could practically see Yuri Sarkov somewhere in Moscow on an obligatory visit to relatives. He could see him thinking: the phone pressed to his ear; the narrow, expressionless lips that were always slightly blue; the thinning hair; the rimless accountant’s glasses in front of his grey eyes; the unnaturally smooth skin for a sixty-year-old.
Finally, Yuri sighed. ‘Send someone over. Who’s there now?’
‘Just Cogan and me. Should we report it to the police?’
‘No, no. It’s our issue. Doesn’t sound like anything big. Send Cogan, that’ll be fine.’
Cogan shook his head vehemently and pointed to his legs. Gabriel motioned him to keep quiet. ‘Why Cogan? He doesn’t usually do field work.’
‘I said: send Cogan,’ Yuri growled irritably. ‘Otherwise he’ll get stuck to his monitor. He doesn’t even know what it’s like out there any more.’
‘OK. Cogan will go,’ said Gabriel. ‘And who’s the owner? Don’t I have to call before one of us shows up?’
‘Let me take care of that,’ said Yuri. ‘You take over the office while Cogan is out.’
Cogan rolled his eyes, spread his arms in despair and pointed to his legs again.
‘And the keys?’ Gabriel asked.
‘Just put Cogan on, OK?’
Without a word, Gabriel handed the phone to his colleague. With a tortured expression, Cogan pressed it to his ear.
‘Boss?’
‘Listen,’ Sarkov’s voice rasped, ‘I want you to check it out, but don’t do anything on your own, OK? Just the usual routine, that’s all. First, I just want to know what’s actually going on there.’
‘Boss, couldn’t . . . I mean . . . I don’t actually do field work and –’
‘Just shut up and do as I say,’ Sarkov’s voice barked from the phone.
‘OK, boss,’ Cogan said hastily. Red blotches formed on his cheeks.
‘The keys are in the small key safe in my office. They’re labelled K107. The combination is 3722. Report back when you find out what’s going on there, OK?’
‘OK,’ Cogan responded apprehensively, but Sarkov had already hung up. Cogan lowered the phone and looked at Gabriel. ‘Shit, man,’ he groaned softly, rubbing his brow. ‘He suspects something.’
Gabriel frowned. Cogan was a diabetic and his sugar levels had been bad for years. At this point, he regularly had cramps in his calves and pain in his legs, and it was getting harder and harder for him to walk, but he still made a great effort to hide it from Sarkov. He knew that he had virtually no chance of staying on at Python with a disability. He stared down blankly at the blinking red dot on his monitor. ‘I can’t go. Not with this pain.’
Gabriel bit his lip. He knew Cogan wasn’t capable of driving to Lichterfelde. On the other hand, Liz was waiting for him, and if he took over the office, he could hand it over to Jegorow at twelve and get out of there on time.
‘Shit,’
Cogan groaned. ‘What do I do if there is actually someone there? I can’t even run away.’
‘You’re not supposed to run away. You’ve got a gun, after all.’
Cogan made a face. It was supposed to look angry, but it was really sheer desperation.
‘All right,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’ll go. I’m the one who does the field work, after all.’
Cogan breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You sure?’
Gabriel nodded half-heartedly. He thought about how he wouldn’t be back for at least two hours and wondered how to break it to Liz.
‘And Sarkov?’ asked Cogan. ‘What do we tell him?’
‘Yuri doesn’t have to find out. I’ll call you and tell you what’s going on. Then you can phone him.’
‘OK.’ There was a faint gleam in Cogan’s dull eyes. ‘Thanks for saving my arse, man.’
Gabriel smiled crookedly. ‘And you’re sure there’s nothing about the client in the directory?’
Cogan shrugged. ‘My legs might not work properly, but up here,’ he tapped his forehead, ‘everything’s still in top shape.’
Gabriel nodded and took a quick look at the clock. ‘Shit,’ he muttered. Just half an hour later and his shift would have been over. He stood up, dialled Liz’s number and hurried up the stairs to Yuri’s office to get the key.
When she picked up, he had to strain to filter her voice out of the pub noise in the background.
‘Liz? It’s me.’
‘Hey,’ she sounded cheerful. ‘I’m still at the Linus. I was just chatting with Vanessa but now she’s gone home. Are you coming? We’re finishing our drinks and taking a midnight stroll in the park.’
The Linus. Ugh, what else? Suddenly, he was happy to have an excuse. Wild horses couldn’t drag him to the Linus. ‘To be honest,’ Gabriel mumbled, walking into Sarkov’s office, ‘I have a problem here. I have to go back out.’
‘Oh no. Please don’t,’ Liz said. ‘Not today.’
Gabriel entered the combination on the key safe’s number pad and the door unlocked. Three dozen keys from Python’s VIP customers hung in front of him.
‘Is it because of the pub?’ Liz asked. ‘If you don’t want to see all the media people, you really don’t have to come in. Just pick me up.’
‘It’s not about that.’
‘Is it about David? Come on, you can’t run away from him forever. Besides, he’s not even here.’
‘Liz, it’s not about that. Like I said, I have to go back out.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘Is there no one else who can do it?’
‘Not a chance,’ Gabriel said. ‘Unfortunately.’ He preferred to stay quiet about the thing with Cogan. She would just take it the wrong way anyway.
‘You have a real shit job,’ Liz said.
‘So do you,’ Gabriel shot back. Gingerly, he took two rusty security keys that had a pale-red plastic key chain labelled K107 from the hook. ‘And you never had a problem with my job before.’
She sighed, but said nothing. She seemed to be waiting for something. The noisy pub sounded like it was echoing inside a metal bucket.
‘OK,’ she said, sighing again. ‘Then, the same as always, I guess.’
‘Liz, look, I –’
‘Spare me, OK? Anyway, I have to go to the loo.’ She hung up and the sounds of the pub abruptly went silent.
Gabriel swore softly, closed the safe and hurried down the stairs. Then, the same as always, I guess. At some point that night, he would climb into bed with her, Liz would toss and turn once or twice and then the same thing as always would happen again, which he could still never believe.
He would fall asleep.
No staring at the ceiling, no loose fragments of memory keeping him awake like camera flashes. Only his dreams hadn’t disappeared, even if they did stay in their dark cave more often, lying in wait, just to attack him again at some point – with dead eyes, with electric shocks, or with the sensation of being burned alive. But, unlike before, there was now something to calm him when he jolted awake with his heart racing from a chaotic dream that was so real that reality felt like a hallucination instead.
Barely two minutes later, Gabriel was driving the Golf through the courtyard, past his old flat and the garage with his two motorcycles, through the open gate, and onto the street, where he turned left and followed the GPS towards Kadettenweg.
He didn’t miss his old flat. On the contrary, he felt as if he had been freed of a burden, like an old dried-up part of his soul. When he had gone to Yuri a year ago, his guilt had weighed him down. Yuri had given him a new life. But still, Gabriel knew that he couldn’t live at Python any longer. He had done so for twenty years, and it was only thanks to Liz that he had recognised that something had to change if he didn’t want to become a part of the furniture at Python Security.
Yuri raised his thin brown eyebrows and took a long look at him. His grey eyes searched for the real reason. ‘What’s the problem? Is the flat not big enough for you any more?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘My new flat isn’t any bigger. That’s not it. But . . . I have to get out of here. The new flat is on the top floor and it’s got a small terrace.’
‘Terrace,’ Yuri snorted. ‘The entire courtyard is your terrace. And what are you going to do with your workshop?’
‘I’d like to keep on using the garage.’
Sarkov nodded slowly, but it was clear that he was not pleased.
‘Yuri,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’m forty. Sometimes I want to go out the door and find a pub or a café nearby. Nothing wild, just some little place right outside where I know the waitress and she brings me a decent coffee without my having to say much, where I can pick up a few rolls at the bakery. This here,’ he drew a circle in the air with his finger, ‘is an industrial area.’
‘An industrial area with nice brothel around the corner,’ Sarkov added. ‘Or have you met someone?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘There’s one where I’m moving, too, and the girls are pretty.’ Gabriel looked Sarkov straight in the eyes and lied. Strictly speaking, Yuri was right. He had met someone. In fact, Liz had been the actual reason for his moving out, but Yuri wasn’t to know about that under any circumstances.
‘You can fuck as often as you want. Just not with the same girl,’ Yuri had always stressed. ‘It makes you weak and dependent.’
Gabriel had taken this advice, in that he hardly ever fucked anyone, and when he did, it was always in other cities where he was booked with a Python team as personal security. There were always women in celebrity entourages who operated just like him. Sex? Yes please. Intimacy, no thank you.
Until Liz called him about two months after their chance meeting at the Berlinale film festival.
Since then, everything was different.
Gabriel’s eyes drift over to the navigation device. The small arrow is pointing to the right on Kadettenweg.
Gabriel turns the steering wheel. The windscreen wipers scrape across the glass. The rain has stopped, as if it were simply cut off. He turns off the wipers and leans forward a bit to better make out the numbers on the passing houses. There are trees at irregular intervals on both sides of the narrow street, many even older than the villas behind them. Lichterfelde is full of stately and often quirky houses: small palazzi, Swiss chalets, art nouveau villas and castle-like brick constructions with towers. A wrought-iron 31 shines above a curved entryway.
When his mobile suddenly shrieks at him, he flinches and the car swerves.
The thought of Liz immediately pops into his head.
Goddamn it, are you even able to think about anything else, Luke?
He already knows that it won’t be her. Not after that phone call earlier. If not shut off entirely, then her mobile was at least set to silent and lost in one of her coat pockets.
He takes his foot off the accelerator and presses the green button. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s me, Cogan. I checked again.’
‘Checked? Checked what?’
‘The address, Kadettenweg 107.’
‘So it is in the directory?’
‘In a manner of speaking. Not in the current one. I went down into the archives.’
Gabriel has to grin. Cogan hates the archives as much as fieldwork, but he hates it even more when there’s something in his universe that he doesn’t know. ‘And?’
‘Well, the file on the house isn’t there anymore. It’s strange, really.’
‘So what now? Have you found something or not?’ Gabriel asks, squinting, trying to determine whether it’s a forty-five or forty-nine peeking out between two trees.
‘Ashton,’ Cogan says. ‘The owner’s name is Ashton. There’s an old file with the name in it.’
‘Ashton. Aha. Anything else?’
‘Well, there’s something. A little thing, but strange.’
‘Don’t make me drag it out of you, man. Just spit it out.’
‘The name Ashton was registered on September 17th, 1975. It was probably when the system was first activated. But right after it is a second, handwritten date. And a small cross. And the name is crossed out.’ Cogan takes a meaningful pause. ‘It looks as if the owner died exactly two days after moving in.’
‘Strange,’ Gabriel mutters. On his right, a house with several imposing columns glides past. House number sixty-seven.
‘We still haven’t got to the part that’s really strange,’ Cogan whispers. ‘Since then, the house seems to have stayed empty.’
‘What?’ Gabriel exclaims. ‘Since 1975? That’s almost thirty-five years ago!’
‘You said it.’
‘What kind of lunatic leaves a villa empty for thirty-three years in this neighbourhood? Is there no one to inherit it?’
‘No idea. There’s nothing written about it here.’
‘And the alarm system? What alarm system still works after so many years?’
‘No idea,’ Cogan says. ‘I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know what brand. Up until today, it was never active in my system.’
‘Once more, just so I understand correctly,’ Gabriel says, deliberately drawing things out. ‘The alarm system was dead for thirty-three years and then today it went active out of nowhere and spontaneously sent out an alarm?’