by Marc Raabe
Silence.
‘Well, you know,’ Gabriel mumbles, ‘It’s OK. I’m not complaining.’
‘How . . . how are you?’ David asks.
Gabriel opens his mouth and wonders what to say next when there’s a pounding on the cell door. The walrus holds his wristwatch up to the window and impatiently taps against the tempered glass with a fingernail.
‘Listen, David,’ Gabriel says quickly. ‘That’s not relevant right now. I have to –’
‘Where the hell have you been?’ bursts out of David’s mouth. ‘I thought you were – I mean . . . it’s like you fell off the edge of the earth. The last time we saw each other was in Conradshöhe. How long ago was that? Twenty years? And now you come out of the woodwork as if nothing happened?’
‘David, it’s important, listen! I have a problem, I –’
‘You always have a problem,’ David says dismissively.
Gabriel’s lips narrow. ‘It’s not about me. It’s my girlfriend. She was attacked in Friedrichshain Park and now she’s missing.’
‘That’s usually a matter for the police.’
‘You know my opinion of them.’
‘That’s the reason you’re not there,’ David says. ‘The police. Otherwise you’d be there straightaway, right?’
Gabriel goes silent. His eyes wander to the window in the cell door, which is covered on the other side by the green of the uniform jacket.
‘What do you want from me, Gabriel? I mean, if your girlfriend’s disappeared, then why don’t you look for her? What does this have to do with me?’
‘You don’t have to go looking for her, for heaven’s sake. I just need someone to make a few calls to hospitals and other addresses. I’m worried.’
‘Someone,’ David repeats flatly. Gabriel could swear that he just shook his head. ‘You need to call someone else.’
Gabriel bites his lip. ‘No, of course not. I need you!’
‘And why don’t you ring them yourself?’ David asks.
‘Because I . . . I’m stuck.’
There is an uncomfortable pause. ‘You’re stuck?’
‘Not what you think, don’t worry. I just had a little disagreement with –’
‘Oh no,’ David groans. ‘You’re in jail, right?’
‘No, not in jail,’ Gabriel hastens to say. ‘Just a holding cell at the police station. A misunderstanding, nothing more. I’ll be out of here again soon.’
‘Of course, a misunderstanding,’ David sighs. ‘What did you do?’
‘That doesn’t –’
‘Matter?’ David interrupts, irritated. ‘Then what does matter to you? After spending twenty years getting used to the fact that you were dead or who knows what, you just call me up from jail and I’m supposed to go looking for your missing girlfriend? Goddamn it! Have you broken out of the nuthouse? Or are you stoned? Do you know how mad that is?’
Nuthouse. Gabriel purses his lips. ‘You don’t believe me,’ he says bitterly.
He only hears David’s breathing.
‘OK,’ David says. ‘I’m sorry about the nuthouse thing. But to be honest, I don’t know what to believe. Last time I saw you, they had to put you in a straitjacket. You weren’t sane any more.’
‘They pumped me full of drugs.’
‘You pumped yourself full of drugs for years.’
‘Oh, so that’s what happened! Thanks for explaining it to me!’ Gabriel’s stomach burns with rage. ‘And even if that were the case, could you blame me, considering what they did to me?’
‘I don’t think they had a choice . . .’
‘I had no choice. Me!’ Gabriel says. We’re going in circles, he thinks. As soon as we begin talking to each other again, we’re going in circles. ‘David, listen. Forget what happened. I’ve been clean for almost nineteen years. You have to believe me. Please.’
David says nothing.
The silence roars like waves on a beach.
‘Do you go to the grave sometimes?’ David asks.
Gabriel cringes. The question came suddenly, like an attack in a dark alley. ‘Sometimes,’ he says. He actually hadn’t been there a single time since the funeral. ‘And you?’
‘Every two or three months.’
For a fleeting moment, the old familiarity is back, their shared bedroom with its light-blue walls and the dormer and the rain pattering against it. They are both under their blankets. The poster of Luke hangs on the wall; the plastic lightsabres are on the shelf. Everything is so clear, so present, taking him back to a previous life. A life with posters, shelves and beds. And parents. He gets choked up and needs to clear his throat. ‘Help me, David. Please.’
‘OK,’ David says. ‘I’ll try.’
Gabriel is dizzy with relief.
‘Do you know,’ David’s words are drawn out, ‘that this is the first time you’ve ever actually asked me for something?’
‘What?’
‘Seriously, I think that was the most reasonable thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth in my whole life.’
Stunned, Gabriel goes quiet.
‘When was she attacked?’
‘Last night, around midnight in Friedrichshain.’
‘Hmm, Friedrichshain. Vivantes Hospital is right by the park there.’
Gabriel groans. ‘Damn it. I should have thought of that much sooner.’
‘Maybe she ended up there. It would certainly be the most obvious place. I will drop by. What’s her name?’
‘Liz Anders.’
‘Liz Anders?’ Deathly silence. ‘Surely not the Liz Anders?’
Gabriel considers just saying yes, but it somehow seems unsuitable. He can hear his brother thinking on the other end of the line. The individual thoughts fall like dominoes. Click. Click. Click.
‘Are you dating Liz Anders?’ David repeats. ‘The journalist? Does that mean you’ve been living here in Berlin for a while?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long?’
‘How long I’ve been living in Berlin? Or –’
‘My god, yes. It’s like pulling teeth.
‘I never left,’ Gabriel says.
Another domino. Click. David is now probably considering how Gabriel managed to avoid running into him for twenty years.
‘That’s . . . crazy,’ David mutters. ‘I –’
‘OK. Time’s up,’ the police officer interrupts the conversation from outside the cell. ‘Time’s up. That’s enough.’ His hand knocks on the narrow shelf in the window where plates and other things are usually placed.
‘I have to go,’ Gabriel says hastily. ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as –’
‘Hey. I said that’s it. Now.’ The walrus pounds on the door with the flat of his hand several times.
‘Yeah, yeah, OK,’ Gabriel says and hands him the handset through the small opening.
David’s voice is still audible through the speaker.
‘Hello?’ The walrus asks. ‘Who’s there?’
He listens for a moment and then snorts with contempt. ‘Suspected murder,’ he bleats into the handset and then hangs up.
Suspected murder. The sentence sends a chill down Gabriel’s spine, even though he knows how absurd and unfounded it all is.
‘And that there was supposed to be a lawyer?’ The walrus asks.
‘I don’t need a fucking lawyer,’ Gabriel says.
The officer shakes his head as if someone had just tried to explain that the sun goes around the earth. With a swift movement, he closes the window in the door.
Listen, listen, echoes in his head. Sure, the pig is a fool. But against you, the porker is a real lightweight.
Leave me alone.
That’s what it’s all about, Lucky Luke. Peace. I want it, too. Only, what you’re doing is unfortunately best suited to wasting away in here. ‘I don’t need a lawyer!’ What bullshit! Do you think that David is going to get us out of here? Now that the pig told him it’s about a murder?
The main thing i
s that David look after Liz.
Liz! If I have to hear that name again! You’re killing us, you know that?
Chapter 15
Berlin – 2 September, 10.58 a.m.
David stands in the middle of the corridor. He puts the mobile back in his jacket. Suspected murder.
He looks over to Shona, but she’s gone. Snippets of an interview repeat over and over again from one of the cutting rooms.
Gabriel.
How often had he imagined him dead, dead of an overdose or locked away forever in an institution or prison? Yes, he had written him off. That is, at least as often as he had imagined what it would be like if his brother were still alive, if he were in his right mind and if he could talk with him, like before that horrible night – the night that destroyed their whole lives.
And now this!
Gabriel has been living in Berlin this whole time. And not only that, but he’s with Liz Anders. He tries to imagine the two of them together, but he can’t – just the thought of it ties his brain in knots.
Someone who hates television and a television journalist? The last documentary that David saw by Liz Anders was The Von Braunsfeld Story, three forty-five-minute episodes about the septuagenarian billionaire who had avoided any public appearances for years. The fact that she had been permitted to film in Victor von Braunsfeld’s mansion on the exclusive island of Schwanenwerder was a sensation – no, it was an enigma. Not to mention the interview. Von Braunsfeld had quite successfully avoided the press for a long time because, among other things, a large part of the media belonged to him. The surprisingly cosy relationship between Liz Anders and Victor von Braunsfeld had triggered a lot of speculation in the media. That being said, anyone who knew Liz knew that she not only had a knack for stepping on people’s toes, but also for ‘unlocking’ people. The fact that Liz Anders had a relationship with von Braunsfeld seems absurd enough, David thinks, but it’s even more absurd to imagine her with Gabriel.
‘Everything all right?’ Shona pokes her head out of her editing room and looks at him, concerned. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
Touché. David looks into her eyes and feels himself getting lost in them. Brown eyes with small, light flecks, like amber. ‘I . . . I have to go. To the hospital.’
Shona’s eyebrows move together ever so slightly. Then she nods and gets the bag with her MacBook from the editing room. ‘Are there sugar cubes to eat at the hospital too? Then I’ll take you there.’
‘What?’ David looks at her, confused. ‘I’m still not entirely sure which hospital, I have to call first.’
‘If the attack,’ Shona says slowly, ‘was in Friedrichshain, then she definitely was taken to Vivantes Hospital. It’s right around the corner. When there’s an emergency, they always take them to the closest hospital.’
David takes a long look at her.
Shona shrugs. ‘You were pretty loud.’
‘It’s OK,’ David mutters. ‘I’ll drive myself . . .’
‘Do you have your Jaguar again?’
David can feel himself blushing again and Shona immediately holds her tongue.
Chapter 16
Berlin – 2 September, 11.38 a.m.
Gabriel paces next to the bed. The rock-hard cell floor under his feet is worn away and shiny – decades’ worth of restlessness and doubt worn into its surface, like an image of his own thoughts, always pacing in front of the same wall.
Where is Liz? Pace back and forth and repeat: where is Liz? Back and forth, and so on. . .
When he punches the concrete wall in frustration, his shoulder responds with shooting pain. At least it’s a distraction.
Then he hears something rattle in the lock in the door. With a metallic grinding, the outer latch is unlocked and the cell door swings open. The walrus adopts a wide stance in the doorway. Beside him is a burly bow-legged man with a few thin blond hairs on his head, a thick neck and a protruding jaw that gnaws away on a piece of chewing gum.
‘Out,’ the walrus says and gestures towards the hallway with his head. There are breadcrumbs in his moustache. ‘The boss wants to see you.’
‘Finally,’ Gabriel groans. He steps out of the cell into the corridor where the bulky man grabs him by the upper arm. He winces from the searing pain in his shoulder.
The two officers lead him past several cells, through a security door and then a bare room with smoothly plastered blotchy grey walls and a brownish-yellow linoleum floor. In the middle of the room there is a table with a steel frame and a scratched wooden surface. On top, there is a microphone connected to a recording device with a long knotted cord. The hard plastic chairs look about as inviting as coarse sandpaper. There is a dented lamp hanging over the table that looks like it comes from before the Wall came down.
The burly man gestures with his chin at the first of the two chairs, shuts the door and sits down on a third chair beside it.
Gabriel sits at the table with the door behind him. The chair makes a crunching sound beneath him and is even more uncomfortable than it looks. Behind him, the officer noisily chews his gum. The sound puts Gabriel on edge.
Twenty minutes later, Grell waltzes into the room. A haze of nicotine, cheap aftershave and general irritation waft past Gabriel.
‘Mr Naumann,’ Grell says, letting all of his weight sink into the creaking chair and fixing his eyes on Gabriel. He is wearing the same corduroy suit as last night. The whites of his eyes are broken up by burst capillaries and beneath them are deep, dark red shadows. He turns on the recording device without taking his eyes off Gabriel and talks into the microphone without any transition. ‘Document number 1443 27-1000/5, police department 5, section 51, interrogation for the case of the Pit Münchmaier murder.’ Then he concluded with the date, time and his and Gabriel’s names.
‘Mr Naumann, where is your lawyer?’
‘I don’t need one,’ Gabriel says, despite the sinking feeling in his stomach.
Grell looks at him as if his sanity were in question. ‘Fine,’ he finally says, sighs and shrugs. ‘Makes things easier.’ A joyless smile forms across his lips. ‘Mr Naumann, last night a young man was murdered in Friedrichshain Park. Pit Münchmaier,’ he pauses a moment and looks down into a small, tattered notebook. ‘Twenty-four years old, unemployed, living in Berlin. Did you know the young man?’
‘No.’
‘Astonishingly, you were able to tell my colleague exactly when the murder happened. Where exactly were you between eleven-thirty and midnight?’
‘At the house on Kadettenweg in Lichterfeld, or on my way there, rather. Around a quarter past eleven, there was an alarm at Python from Kadettenweg 107. I got in the company car and left straight away.’
‘Are there witnesses?’
‘As I already told your colleague: Burt Cogan, a co-worker at Python, and Yuri Sarkov, my boss,’ Gabriel explains. It’s clear to him that Grell already knows the answers, but he needs them again as part of the official interrogation.
Grell nods and doesn’t break eye contact. ‘Describe the conditions at the house when you found it?’
‘The gate was open, the red warning light was on and the front door was open. The house is uninhabited. There were footprints inside and someone had presumably tampered with the safe over the fireplace.’
‘A safe?’
‘Yes. There was a picture hanging above the mantel and a safe behind it.’
‘And what do you mean by “tampered with”?’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘The safe was open and empty. I can’t tell you anything more than that.’
‘Hmm. Open and empty,’ Grell says. ‘And you mentioned an expensive, sparkly dress down in the cellar?’
‘Yes, directly beside the alarm system.’
‘Hmm. A strange location for a dress.’ Grell scratches his bald head and then strokes it with the flat of his hand, as if he were petting a dog. ‘You know what else is strange? We found no dress there. Can you explain that to me?’
Gab
riel furrows his brow. ‘No idea.’
‘Hmm,’ Grell repeats. ‘Then where were you when you made the emergency call regarding Ms Anders?’
‘Still at the house on Kadettenweg.’
‘And then?’
‘I dropped everything and want to the park. The police were already there. When I saw the body, I thought it was my girlfriend at first.’
‘But it was not Ms Anders. Were you surprised?’
‘Surprised? I was relieved. Listen, I’m worried as hell. Liz is somewhere out there and no one knows where. Something’s happened to her. She is not the type to call and create a panic without good reason.’
Grell nods slowly, thinking. ‘That might very well be, but –’
‘Why don’t you just drive past her place and check it out?’ Gabriel asks heatedly. ‘Or call her?’
‘If it helps you to know,’ Grell replies, ‘we were there. Cothenius-strasse, right? And we also called.’
Gabriel’s heart starts pounding. ‘And?’
‘Well, she wasn’t there.’
‘So you believe me now?’
Grell scratches his neck. ‘The problem is her voicemail. “This is Liz Anders. I am out on research and can’t call back at present. Please leave a message.” ’
Gabriel groans and runs his hands across his face. ‘She always has that message. Anyone who knows her knows that you just leave a message and she’ll call back.’
‘But you admit that Ms Anders likes to disappear for a few days or weeks at times?
Gabriel stares at Grell angrily. ‘So you only react when bodies are washed ashore, right?’
‘Like Mr Münchmaier, you mean?’
Gabriel holds his tongue. Under the table, he wraps his left hand around his right wrist, as if to hold himself down.
Grell smiles as if he has X-ray eyes and can see through the tabletop. ‘When you left the house on Kadettenweg,’ he says in a low voice, ‘did you actually turn off the alarm system?’
‘No.’
Grell looks him over without a word. Then he leans forward across the table and stares at Gabriel through narrowed eyes. The lamp above them burns brightly on his bald head, casting dark shadows across his face. The shadow from Grell’s nose splits his fleshy lips into two halves. ‘And how do you explain that the alarm system was turned off last night?’