by Marc Raabe
‘What do you think?’ David asks angrily. ‘That I can just spit something out in three days?’
But Bug has already hung up.
Furious, David slams the handset down so hard that a piece of the plastic casing flies off into his face, directly under his right eye. He gets up slowly. It all feels strangely wrong; as if he should’ve jumped up instead, thrown open the window and screamed into the storm, the rain and wind blowing against his face. For a moment, he is so full of rage that he wants to smash everything in Bug’s office to pieces with a baseball bat.
But he doesn’t have a baseball bat and the window is shut. Instead, he is closed away in his office as if it were a glass storage box, looking at his own reflection in the thermal windowpanes. Annoyed, he sees the cut under his eye and touches it with his finger. Blood sticks to his fingertip.
He stares out into the darkness and it sucks him in. He’s lost all sense of time. The space around him blurs, just like everything else. The reflection of the computer screen behind him is a bright island in an inky raging sea – his island. He wishes he could turn back. Simply sit at his desk and write. Essentially, everything is so simple here. Much, much simpler than in real life.
When he looks at the clock again, it’s already almost half past nine.
With a jolt, he jumps up, throws on his Belstaff jacket and rushes out of the office. Two minutes later, he’s in the car park and knows that he will be late one way or another. He starts the engine of the dark-green Saab 900, which a colleague has lent him for a week while he’s away in England.
As the Saab shoots out of the car park, he’s caught in a torrential downpour and takes his foot off the accelerator.
Four minutes later, he turns onto Kurfürstendamm without indicating and calls his voicemail at the same time. Shit, damn it. At least the Jaguar has a hands-free set. He pushes the BlackBerry up to his ear, lets go of the steering wheel and switches from second to third gear. And an automatic transmission, he thinks, that’s another thing the Jaguar had.
Beep. ‘Hi, it’s me, Shona. Hmm. Voicemail. OK. Well, I can’t do next week, I have to work. Let me know. It’s your move.’
Crap. She’s still mad because he stood her up at the Santa Media. He knows that he has to call her to explain everything, and if not everything, then at least enough that it sounds like a viable excuse. His eyes drift to the windscreen wipers, which are groaning under the mass of water. The traffic light changes to red, brake lights shine in front of him. Brakes, clutch, idle.
The rain drums against the metal roof of the Saab and he presses the mobile up closer to his ear.
Beep. ‘Good morning Mr Naumann. This is Mr Säckler from Deutsche Bank. Please call me back. It’s urgent.’
Bloody hyena! Just a few weeks and then the salary payments from TV2 will also stop coming.
Beep. ‘You have no new messages.’
A loud honk behind him makes him jump. The traffic light is green and the cars in front of him are already on the other side of the junction. David engages the clutch, the gears crunch and then he steps on the accelerator and continues down Kurfürstendamm until he finally reaches the bus stop across from a deli. He moves into the right lane and reverses hard to the end of the bus stop. When he stops, he checks the time on the dashboard – it’s 9.43 p.m., he’s almost fifteen minutes late.
The rain beats against the windscreen, the wiper blades useless against it. Where the hell is all of this water coming from? Suddenly, he has to laugh, though he couldn’t feel more like doing the opposite. Endless rain and overburdened windscreen wipers – there couldn’t be a better image for the current state of his life.
He turns off the engine and leans back in the scuffed beige leather seat. With a violent jerk, the passenger door opens. David recoils, startled.
Bottom first, a man wearing a dark hat lands in the seat behind him, pulls his legs into the vehicle and shuts the door.
‘Good evening, David.’ Water runs off the brim of Yuri Sarkov’s hat. ‘You’re late.’
‘I’m sory,’ David mutters, ‘the weather.’
Sarkov calmly removes his glasses and wipes the water off the lenses. ‘How are you?’
‘Do you have the file?’ David asks bluntly.
‘So, apparently, not good,’ Sarkov responds.
‘Well,’ David mutters. ‘The bank wants to auction off my flat, I’ve been fired and other people are collecting the royalties on a show format that I came up with . . . and on top of that, you tell me that my brother killed my parents. And then pull me into your feud with Gabriel and demand that I give him up . . .’ David takes a deep breath. ‘Yes, “not good” is probably an adequate description.’
Sarkov smiles, unmoved. ‘Whether or not you get involved is your decision.’
David keeps his eyes on the steering wheel to avoid looking at Sarkov. ‘So do you have the file?’
Sarkov narrows his eyes and considers David for a moment, then reaches into his wet coat.
David stares at the white A4 envelope. The coat protected it from the rain and it’s mostly dry, other than a few stray drops. ‘Nothing will happen to Gabriel?’
‘I wouldn’t have the heart for that,’ Sarkov answers.
David takes the packet. It feels heavy. ‘And?’
David hesitates. His pupils flit restlessly back and forth across the water cascading down the windscreen. Finally, he sighs. ‘Caesar’s Berlin, Room 37.’
‘What street?’
‘I don’t know,’ David says. ‘Sorry.’
‘Stop apologising. I can’t stand people who are always apologising.
David goes quiet.
Sarkov starts getting out of the car. ‘And . . . the rest?’ David asks.
‘The rest? You mean the rights to Treasure Castle?’
David nods.
‘I didn’t offer it as a package. They were alternative options.’
‘I . . . I understood it differently.’
‘What then?’ Sarkov laughs mockingly. ‘Where is your idealism? I thought you wouldn’t rat on your brother for money.’
David just looks at him, unable to reply.
Sarkov shakes his head. ‘Babushka,’ he says disdainfully.
‘What’s that?’
‘Grandmother . . . you’re such an old woman . . .’ Sarkov opens the passenger-side door and steps out into the pouring rain.
David opens his mouth and then shuts it again.
‘A miserable coward.’ It sounds as if Sarkov were spitting the words out onto the street. He slams the door shut. The wet mark he leaves behind is like a ghost on the seat.
David watches Yuri’s silhouette as it disappears into the distance.
David’s eyes fall down to the envelope. He feels miserable. Everything inside him cries out for help. He wants to run after Sarkov and undo everything. The world is under water, he thinks, and I’m downing. His telephone is his lifeline, so he takes it out to call Shona. Although he doesn’t know what to say, he hopes for nothing more than for her to pick up.
Even if she just listens as he says nothing.
Chapter 36
Berlin – 24 September, 12.58 a.m.
Gabriel looks through the bars that fence in the property.
Drop it, Luke. You’ll only find trouble.
I’ve already got trouble.
They’ll wind up sticking you in a cell and strapping you down.
He peers into the darkness. It’s 1.00 a.m. The wind tugs at him and drives the heavy clouds across the sky. At least it stopped raining.
He knows that the hospital is there, hidden behind the tall black maple trees.
He musters up his courage and clutches the old, square metal rods of the railing.
His grip is good enough to pull himself up to the top of the three-metre high fence, which leans inward. He jumps down to the other side. The wet ground gives way and Gabriel sinks several centimetres upon landing. The right strap of his backpack pulls u
ncomfortably on his aching shoulder.
For a moment, Gabriel stays crouched down, waiting to see if he’s set off any alarms. Nothing stirs. They don’t expect people to break into the psychiatric hospital.
He cautiously approaches the first trees. The soil under the grass is saturated and it squishes under his feet. It smells of wet leaves and mildew. Out of the darkness, a four-storey, L-shaped pre-war building appears: the Psychiatric Clinic at Conradshöhe. Originally, the building had two wings, but the eastern wing was destroyed by an aerial bomb during World War II and was never rebuilt. Then and now, the west wing houses the administration.
Three days earlier, Gabriel had phoned, giving the name of another patient there at the same time as him.
‘What did you say your name was?’ the secretary asked.
‘Bügler. Johannes Bügler. I was in Conradshöhe from 1984 until 1987.’
‘Hmm. Hang on . . . Oh! There you are. You were here until 1988, not ’87.’
‘Right, of course. Have you still got the file?’
‘Do you know how long it’s been? We’re only required to hold on to medical records for –’
‘Eleven years, yeah, I know. But could you maybe check if you still have the files?’
‘You’ve got a nerve. I’m not even sure whether we’re allowed to hand over your documents – I’ll have to check.’
‘So, the file is still there?’
‘That’s not what I said, but . . . if it were, then I am surely not permitted to give it to you.’
‘But it’s my file.’
‘I’m sure Professor Wagner sees it differently,’ she said pointedly.
Professor Wagner. The blurry image of a bald stocky man with a goatee appeared in his mind. Wagner was Dr Dressler’s successor and Gabriel had only encountered him three or four times back then.
‘Would you check for me?’ Gabriel asked.
‘Listen, I have more important things to do than to rummage through boxes full of dusty files in the darkest corner of the cellar, just to get told off by the boss in the end.’
‘I could come by and look for myself if you show me where.’
‘That would be even better,’ she replied. ‘Dr Wagner would certainly be thrilled to find out that I gave a former patient a key to the old archive.’
‘The old archive?’ Gabriel asked. That was in the historic part of the cellar behind the delivery entrance.
Suddenly, the line was completely silent. Eventually, the woman groaned with exasperation. ‘Listen, if you really want to do it, that is, rummage through the messed-up part of your life, then get a good lawyer. You’ll need one if you want to see your files here, Mr . . . what was your name again?’
Gabriel had hung up without another word.
Suddenly, a blood-curdling cry comes from the middle building. Gabriel jumps. A light comes on in a window on the third floor; the dark bars stand out against the bright rectangle. Male voices, clattering, the scream fades into a loud pitiful whimper. For a fraction of a second, he wants to run out of there as fast as his legs will carry him. The open window slams shut. The whimpering is silenced, as if someone had severed the patient’s vocal chords. The silence is only filled with the wind as it rustles through the leaves of the thirty-metre-tall trees.
Do you know what they’ll do with you if they catch you, Luke?
Leave me alone, I don’t want to know.
Can’t you remember it any more?
Leave – me – alone!
Washday, Luke. Think about washday.
The bright rectangle disappears again. It merges with the dark wall, as if there had never been a window, let alone a window with someone living behind it.
Washday. Dr Armin Dressler had perfected the procedure to the nth degree. It was always the same: lying down, strapped in, electrodes on the temples. The electrical current robbed him of consciousness every time. Washday was brainwash day and it usually took place on Fridays, before the weekend, when there were always too few staff to control the problem patients. After washday, the patients all walked around in a daze with their heads wiped clean – and left the staff in peace.
The wash cycle, on the other hand, was individual therapy. Right at the start of his time in the closed ward, whenever Gabriel lost it, fantasised or somehow misbehaved, he would get washed. Later, a syringe was the answer to losing it. Washing was no longer enough. Or it did nothing. Whatever the reason.
Gabriel’s eyes drift across the building to two windows that are lit up on the left side of the third floor. The nurses’ station. Directly below them, there used to be two visitors’ rooms. In the smaller of the two, a bare room with tables and chairs screwed into the floor, his second life had begun without any warning.
Two nurses on the day shift, Giuseppe and Martin, had come into his room. Gabriel’s eyes were closed, but he could smell them, just as he still always smells or feels everything. His senses are so delicate, it’s as if he has no skin and feels every single nuance of human vibration.
He smelled Giuseppe’s aftershave, which he’d been putting on for the past four days, since Martin had been working at the station. Martin, on the other hand, smelled of woman. Mentally, he was an idiot, but he had the body of an Adonis. The scent of Dr Vanja’s perfume always clung to him. She was the assistant doctor at the station and always leered at his demi-god arse.
Gabriel hated being aware of it all – the smells, the moods, all of it flooded in despite the medication and there was nothing he could do about it. He was trapped inside himself; all sensors were set to input, but he just couldn’t get anything out – all valves were shut.
‘Hey, Lucky Luke,’ Giuseppe said cheerfully, even though he knew that he wasn’t supposed to call him that. ‘You have a visitor today.’
‘Not interested,’ Gabriel mumbled. The medication turned his tongue into a lame, fat hippo.
They had silently loosened the straps on his arms, unbuckled him from his bed, placed him in a wheelchair, bound his hands to the armrests and pushed him into the visitors’ room.
And there he was. Plain and thin, like an accountant, with a light-grey trench coat and a dark trilby, which he’d placed on the table in front of him, leaving his already thinning hair visible.
Giuseppe and Martin had parked him in front of the table like an old man – although he was just eighteen at the time – and left him alone with the accountant.
The man considered him with disconcerting hard grey eyes. He’d smelled of tobacco, cunning and cruelty. Not an accountant. Maybe a doctor, maybe even something worse.
‘Hello, Gabriel. How are you?’ he asked. His voice rolled, his understated Russian accent resonating with a warning tremble.
‘I don’t know you,’ Gabriel noted with indifference. His voice rumbled like a rusty bicycle chain. The sedative in his blood made him dull.
‘Sarkov. My name is Yuri Sarkov, and –’
‘I don’t know you,’ Gabriel repeated lethargically. ‘Fuck off.’
Yuri Sarkov didn’t so much as flinch. ‘– I know, knew your father, he –’
‘My father was an arsehole. If you had something to do with him, then you’re probably one, too.’
Yuri smiled. Not a forced smile or a putting-on-a-good-face smile.
Careful, Luke. He’s a gambler! And he’s confident that he’ll win.
Yuri got up, took his hat from the table and looked down at Gabriel in his wheelchair. ‘Ultimately, it’s not about your father. That’s over. Right now, it’s really about whether you want to get out of here.’
And how! But I won’t tell you that.
‘Leave me alone.’ Gabriel’s head slumped forward, as he’d barely had the strength to hold it up. ‘You think I don’t know that this is a test? I’m not taking any more tests.’ He pauses, takes a breath and then: ‘Tell Dressler, no more tests.’
‘I’m not a doctor. I know, Gabriel, doctors are the plague. They tell you what you are allowed to think and what yo
u’re not. They tell you what is right and what is not. But I think you don’t belong here. I think you can take care of yourself just fine.’
Careful, Luke. He’s in your head. No idea how he got in there, but he’s there.
‘I can get you out of here, Gabriel.’
He’s lying. This is the closed ward. You can’t just get out of here.
‘You don’t believe me?’ Yuri asked.
You see? I’m telling you, he’s in your head. He knows what you’re thinking.
No, no, Gabriel thought. You’re too loud, he can hear us.
He can’t hear us! But he’s very clever!
‘Gabriel?’
Gabriel’s chin drooped down to his chest, drool dripping out the corner of his mouth.
‘I’ll come back next week, on Friday,’ Yuri said.
‘Friday is washday,’ Gabriel muttered.
‘Then, Friday morning. Think about it.’
Gabriel hadn’t had to think about it. Of course he wanted to get out, at any price. Early one morning in February of 1988, there was a fresh layer of snow on the ground when Yuri pulled him out of the clinic as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Even now, Gabriel still sometimes wonders exactly how Yuri managed it. And above all, why? To begin with, Yuri was his official guardian and had vouched for him. The rest is history. After all, Gabriel knew that Yuri always had his reasons for whatever he did, but he always played his cards close to his chest. In the end, all that mattered was that he could leave Conradshöhe.
They had gone through the locked door of the closed ward, then outside through the main entrance of the middle building and over the semi-circular staircase in the park. Gabriel’s heart beat into his throat, his medication had been greatly reduced and he feared that someone would rope him back in with a lasso at any second.
The thin layer of snow melted instantly beneath their feet. Gabriel hadn’t turned around. He never looked back. Their footprints left a long black trail in the snow that led out through the barred gate and up to the kerb, where the trail broke off.
A cold gust of wind blows against Gabriel’s neck. He hunches his shoulders and hurries to the left, to the part of the building where the administration is still located. The west wing isn’t barred up and it has such turn-of-the-century charm that no one would suspect that they were in charge of burying people alive in there.