The door ahead on the left? With a bit of luck and legs that weren’t so paralysed by fear she might make it to the kitchen, but what guarantee did she have that she’d find a knife block she could reach before Palandt grabbed her by the hair? It was now long enough for a man’s fist to grasp hold of it.
‘Would you hold this for a sec?’
Emma flinched.
In her hand she felt a piece of flexible plastic, a small bag. Palandt had given her the freezer bag and turned back to the chest of drawers. He opened the top drawer.
A few seconds later he turned around with a smile of satisfaction on his dry lips. And Emma’s mobile in his hand.
‘Here it is.’
He gave her a nod of encouragement. Clearly he misconstrued Emma’s expression, for he said, ‘Yes, I know. The gloves are probably unnecessary, but at least there won’t be any new fingerprints on it. May I?’
He pointed to her hand.
Emma looked at her fingers that were holding the freezer bag.
Palandt asked her to hold the bag so he could put the phone inside it.
‘That’s how you handle evidence, isn’t it?’ he said, then paused. ‘When will he be able to examine it?’
Emma blinked nervously and bit her lower lip, which had started to tremble uncontrollably.
Panic was like an invisible night-time monster. Even if you’d checked that it wasn’t hiding in the cupboard or under the bed, you would still lie there for a while in the darkness, your heart pounding, unable to trust the tranquillity.
‘Examine?’ asked Emma, who’d momentarily forgotten the lie she’d served up. Her face was bathed in sweat, but even with his thick glasses Palandt seemed not to notice, or he thought it was the rest of the snow melting on Emma’s forehead.
‘The special function,’ he reminded her. ‘That lets you find out who the phone belongs to…’
He fell silent and flinched, as if he’d received an electric shock. This involuntary reaction matched the electric buzzing and the flash in his right hand.
The mobile.
Illuminated all of a sudden, the device vibrated in Palandt’s latex fingers and it took him a while to realise what he was seeing on the display: an image of two people. A man. A woman. Sitting snug side by side. Secretly photographed in a restaurant as the two of them, in an affectionate pose, are forking a potato cake. The potato cake photo signalling a call from Philipp!
35
The full significance of what he was looking at trickled into Palandt’s consciousness between the fourth and fifth ring.
‘What the devil…?’ he said quietly. Emma put out both her hands, but this time it was Palandt who recoiled.
‘I can explain,’ she said, trying to get hold of the mobile, but he withdrew his hand.
‘You?’ Palandt exclaimed, pointing to the display.
The switch had been flipped again. From one moment to the next Palandt had lost his temper. Unlike back in Emma’s living room, however, his blind rage wasn’t directed at the blackmailers. But at her.
‘That’s you!’
Emma nodded. ‘Yes, but it’s not what you think!’
‘You were here?’
‘Yes…’
‘You broke into my house?’
‘No…’
‘So it was your voice I heard in the bedroom!’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Your shrill scream…’
‘Yes.’
‘You were trying to scare me to death!’
‘No.’
Emma’s vocabulary had shrunk to that of a small child.
Was she in danger?
The expression in Palandt’s eyes had drastically changed. Nothing about him now was reminiscent of a loveable, elderly uncle suffering from a serious illness. He looked as if he were in another world.
‘Why can’t you lot just leave me alone?’ he bellowed.
You lot?
Emma tried to salvage what was salvageable and adopted a calm, friendly tone, almost like when her patients used to flare up in their consultations.
‘Please give me a moment to explain.’
Palandt wasn’t listening. ‘Where were you?’ he shouted. ‘Were you outside too?’
‘Outside?’
‘In the garden. Did you find it?’
‘Find what?’
‘Don’t lie to me!’ he screamed, striking Emma the first blow. A slap, right in the face. For a second he seemed to be shocked by what had got into him and Emma hoped this meant he’d calmed down. But the opposite was the case; he became more aggressive, like a fighting dog losing all inhibitions about biting. He yelled at her even more loudly and his clenched fists hovered above her head.
‘Of course you did. That’s why you opened the package too, isn’t it? To get me sent down? But you won’t succeed. It won’t work!’
Emma wanted to retreat further, but she already had her back against the wall. Palandt grabbed her shoulders.
‘I’m not going to prison. Never!’
He shook her so violently that if Emma had been a baby she’d have likely suffered lifelong brain damage. Then, in a further sudden onset of fury, he pushed her away from the wall. She stumbled and grabbed onto the coatrack. Although it was screwed to the wall, it wasn’t secured tightly, and so she ripped out the fixings and toppled to the floor with it.
Palandt had now completely lost it. ‘You fucking bitch,’ he cried. He kicked Emma, bent down and grabbed her hair, but slipped because it was too wet (or was it too short after all?). Emma jabbed her elbow backwards, painfully hitting another bone, maybe his chin or the side of his head. She didn’t know because she wasn’t looking behind, only forwards. But ahead of her the hall was leading in the wrong direction – deeper into the house.
Into the house of the man who was holding onto her ankles (he must have tripped over the coatrack too) and yelling crazy sentences: ‘I had to do it. I had no other choice. I haven’t got any money! Why can’t anybody understand that? Why can’t you all just leave me in peace?’
Emma kicked out, ramming her foot into his face. This time she did turn around and saw the blood streaming from his nose as he stayed on his knees.
But Palandt didn’t leave her alone; he made Emma tumble again. As she fell she kicked out one of his incisors, which finally had the desired effect: he let her go and, howling, put his hands up to his bloodied face. Emma crawled on all fours to the door that she knew because she’d already stood outside it some hours before.
As she pulled herself up on the doorknob she heard herself scream, a mixture of fear and hatred. She briefly contemplated going to the kitchen to look for a weapon, no longer to defend herself with, but to bring it to a conclusion.
Then she thought she saw a shadow behind Palandt, by the front door. She felt a breath of wind on her tear-stained face and watched Palandt regain his balance and wipe the bloody saliva from his mouth. With the expression of a rabid fox he screamed at her, ‘You’re not going to destroy my life, you whore!’
Emma jerked the door open, shut it behind her straight away and ran past the sofa beneath the goggling horses’ eyes on the wall to the garden door. Emma wasn’t going to lose any time finding out whether it was still stuck and now she didn’t have to worry about making any noise. So she picked up the ugly umbrella stand by the door, ignoring the twinge in her lower back as she lifted it high, and slung the kitsch Labrador statue through the pane of glass.
The shatter sounded like a scream, but maybe that was her imagination, a faulty signal from her completely distorted senses. Turning her back to the garden and shielding her face with her arms, Emma pressed herself backwards, ripping her puffer jacket on the shards that remained in the doorframe.
She ran across the terrace, into the garden and sank into ankle-deep snow. She wanted to head right around the house, but heard a man’s voice coming from that direction. Not Palandt, but maybe an accomplice?
So Emma kept running straight, intending to climb over t
he fence at the end of the garden and turn into the service road that ran between the properties here. A useless path that most neighbours used as a loo for their dogs, but now it might be her chance of escape.
Although it didn’t look like that.
Turning around she saw Palandt only a few metres away.
Whereas her path was marked by footprints and feathers, Palandt left a trail of blood behind him.
For a moment she wondered how she was able to see him so well, see his bald head – he must have thrown off his wig.
Then she noticed the light source. Garden lamps that were probably motion sensitive, a relic of his mother who’d kept house and garden in such good nick before handing it over to her son (the Hairdresser?).
Emma could hear Palandt behind her, could feel his anger on her neck. She followed the lights in the snowy ground, which led to a grey tool shed. The door was ajar.
Should I?
There was only yes or no, right or wrong. But no time to weigh up the pros and cons. Perhaps it was the fear of slipping on the fence, losing her strength and being pulled down again by Palandt that made her opt for the shed. But maybe rather than make a conscious decision she just followed an innate survival instinct which, in case of any doubt, preferred a lockable door to open ground. That’s assuming the shed was lockable.
Emma’s nose was hit by a pungent cocktail of engine oil, wet cardboard and disinfectant. And there was something else. A mixture of air freshener and rancid liver sausage.
She slammed shut the thin aluminium door of the shed and hunted for a key. It wasn’t in the lock nor on the doorframe, although she could hardly see her own hand in the gloom because only a fraction of the light from the outdoor lamps made it in through the small, grimy window.
But even if there had been an 80,000-watt bulb to assist her, Emma wouldn’t have been able to search the shed. She didn’t have time to catch her breath.
The door that opened inwards was shaking from the thundering of Palandt’s fists. She could have locked it with a thin bolt, but this was only supposed to prevent the door from flying open and shut in gusts of winds. It wouldn’t survive a physical attack for long. ‘Get out of there!’ Palandt yelled. ‘Get out of there right now!’
It could only be a matter of seconds before he launched the weight of his entire body against the door and broke it open. Emma would never be able to defend it with her own body.
I’ve got to push something in front of it.
Her eyes darted around the shed, passing a rubbish-strewn workbench, metal shelving, a military-green box for garden cushions, and alighting on an organic waste bin. A 240-litre container with the city refuse and recycling collection logo. A toolbox sat on the lid.
Emma swept the toolbox to the floor and grabbed the bin, which to her relief was sufficiently full. Even with wheels it was incredibly difficult to pull, but it wasn’t very far, and maybe I’ll be lucky and the thing will be the right height so I can wedge it right under the… ‘Haaaaaaandle!’ Her thoughts turned straight into a scream when she realised that it was too late. That she hadn’t heaved the bin forwards quickly enough and had thus given Palandt a crucial few extra seconds.
He’d thrown himself against the door with all his might, hitting it so hard that the lock broke and he fell into the shed, knocking Emma to the side.
When she caught his elbow in her midriff, she couldn’t breathe and felt faint. To try and prevent her inevitable collapse, she grabbed onto a handle, unaware where it had come from. But as soon as she felt the cold plastic she realised she was clutching the organic waste bin, which tipped over with her.
As Emma fell her head hit the toolbox, but she wasn’t granted unconsciousness. Staring upwards she wanted to scream when she saw the sea of air fresheners dangling from the ceiling of the shed. Then Emma really did scream when Palandt was standing beside her holding something that looked like a utility knife.
Now she was bathing in a stench that made her lose her mind, if not yet her consciousness. And in this case, ‘bathing’ was almost literally correct.
‘Nooooo!’ she heard Palandt cry. Clearly his mind was already in the no man’s land of the soul where Emma was heading too.
Help me, please God, let this be over!
She was lying in a viscous, foetid liquid, which had slopped out of the bin over the floor. A sweetish, rancid, organic and vomit-inducing infusion.
Emma wanted to throw up on the spot, but couldn’t. Not even when she saw the lower leg.
With foot but without knee, and very little skin over the calf and shin. It was, however, populated with endless maggots. The slimy worms had nested in the severed limbs that had tipped out of the organic bin along with the decomposed bodily waste and other body parts.
36
With every breath the taste of death made its way into Emma’s lungs, clawing itself into the most remote bronchial tubes as if it had talons. Not even the loudest scream or worst coughing could shake it off. Emma knew that even if she survived this encounter (which didn’t look likely), deep inside her something would survive forever, a germ of horror, fertile ground for the most appalling nightmares.
‘Leave her in peace!’ Palandt yelled in a scream-cum-sob. Staring death in the face had afforded Emma some moments of lucidity, and now Palandt’s words confirmed her suspicion that the bony foot and decomposing lower leg belonged to a woman. She was also in no doubt that Palandt, brandishing the utility knife above her, must be the Hairdresser.
Emma was lost. She was still sitting on the damp floor beside the toolbox. She was armed now too, having hectically fished from the tool box the first thing she could find that was long, fitted comfortably in her hand and even had sharp jagged edge. But what was she going to do with a jigsaw?
She slammed it against Palandt’s leg, but he hardly felt a thing through his thick trousers.
‘You’ll pay for that,’ he cried, punching her square in the face with the fist gripping the knife. As her head jerked back Emma finally lost consciousness, dropped the jigsaw and, paradoxically, was revived again by the pain when her head hit the edge of the tool box for a second time.
Emma could taste blood and felt as if the skin on her head had torn. Palandt’s hand was grabbing her hair. She heard a click. Opened her eyes. Saw the utility knife hovering right before her pupils. The edge of the blade was only a tear-width from her eye.
He’s going to scalp me, she thought, her mind instinctively turning to Le Zen… Get out. Before it’s too late… In the same breath she could have screamed because she didn’t want this dreadful image of the hotel mirror to be the final memory with which she exited this world.
There were so many nicer, life-affirming moments. Such as Philipp’s crumpled skin in the morning, when the pillow had left a wavy impression on his cheeks overnight.
The tiny pair of lamb’s fleece boots, size four, that had stood on her dressing table for a while in preparation for having children – light brown, because they didn’t know if it would be a boy or a girl. Even the dent in Philipp’s company car, which she’d deliberately made with her foot getting out, after a silly argument about I’m a Celebrity (which he found funny and she thought was inhuman). Yes, even this ridiculous attestation that she couldn’t control her temper sometimes would have been a better final image than the mirror in Le Zen.
Fuck, I don’t want to die. Not like this.
Palandt drew his hand back then lunged.
How strange it was, Emma thought, that now should be the moment – for the first time in weeks – when she felt free of anxiety and perfectly calm. It was probably, she concluded, because finally she had proof that she wasn’t as paranoid as she’d secretly feared. But maybe she had just given up. Her next thought was her surprise at how utterly painless death was.
‘So this is how it is,’ she thought as the blade sliced open her forehead and the blood created a waterfall before her eyes. A red veil, behind which Palandt vanished.
Emma closed he
r eyes, heard her own breath, but this sound strayed from her, mingling with a deep, guttural scream.
Palandt’s voice had changed since he’d readied for the second thrust. It was deeper, as if he’d gained weight.
‘Emma!’ he cried from what seemed like further away, while an unbearable weight fell onto her body.
Her head rolled feebly from the toolbox and for a surreal moment she feared it had been severed, but then, in a near-death experience, she saw Palandt floating away from her.
Her neighbour, who had just (for whatever reason) lain on her, thus expelling the air from her chest, was moving away from her.
Or me from him?
Emma’s eyes saw a light, not in the distance as people always claimed, but close and blazing, edged with red. It was shining straight into her eyes.
Then the light moved to the side. Presumably now came that part of the afterlife when you saw the people who’d been most important to you in life, although Emma wondered why this particular man should be the first to appear.
‘Salim?’ she said to the delivery man.
Who was kneeling beside her.
Who asked if she could hear him.
Who wasn’t her final vision.
But her first responder.
And who was shining the torch in her eyes, the torch he’d knocked Palandt out with from behind. Now her neighbour lay beside the waste bin with the female corpse and looked as dead as Emma had thought herself to be only moments before.
‘Everything’s going to be okay,’ she heard Salim say, and with this lie she passed out.
37
Emma felt the snow coming through the seat of her trousers and her underwear getting soaked, but the air out here was so clear and restorative that wild horses wouldn’t have got her to leave the plastic garden bench Salim had taken her to.
The Package Page 15