Splinter

by Sebastian Fitzek

  ‘Okay, come with me,’ he said, grabbing the man by the sleeve.

  ‘What? Where to?’ He tried to free himself, but Marc had his raincoat in a vicelike grip.

  ‘We’re going to the police. Together.’

  ‘Not on your life.’

  ‘Oh yes, we are. That’s precisely what we’re going to do. We’ll soon see which one of us needs medical attention.’

  ‘No, I said! Not again.’

  Marc was so taken aback he let go of the man’s sleeve.

  ‘Again?’ he repeated.

  ‘The cops were on at me all day long. It’s a relief to be rid of them at last.’

  ‘The police were here?’ Marc indicated the door of the ‘Beach’. ‘At the office?’

  ‘Of course. Take a closer look at my face.’ The man pushed his hood back. ‘Don’t you recognize me?’

  Yes, but I don’t know where from.

  ‘Haven’t you seen the news?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Lucky you. You missed the Julia business, then.’

  ‘Julia?’

  ‘The girl at the Neukölln baths.’

  The man pulled the hood back over his head. Stooping a little, as tall people tend to do, he went over to a car parked beside the kerb.

  Marc stayed where he was. Yet another part of his life seemed to be slipping from his grasp with the stranger’s receding figure.

  ‘What about her?’ he called. ‘What happened? Tell me!’

  The man’s hand was already on the door handle when he turned and looked at Marc for the last time. His weary eyes were expressive of a sadness almost unique in Marc’s experience.

  ‘I couldn’t stop her, damn it,’ he said, and aimed a furious kick at the nearest tyre. His voice was almost drowned by passing traffic.

  ‘She jumped, that’s all.’

  18

  A man’s greatest source of strength – his family – is also his most vulnerable point. It is customary in some branches of the Mafia, and for good reason, to kill all who are dear to a traitor rather than the traitor himself. His parents, his friends, his wife – and, of course, his children. Children, in particular, are a man’s Achilles’ heel. Especially, as in Ken Sukowsky’s case, when they’re daughters.

  Two of them, the five- and the seven-year-old, had spent the afternoon messing around with dead leaves in the front garden. They raked them together into a little heap and then showered each other with them, again and again. The youngest girl had had to watch her sisters playing from the window, muffled up in a thick dressing gown. She had a cold and so was staying in the warm. That, at least, was Benny’s guess. He had been keeping watch on the Sukowskys’ modest house since early that afternoon. It was dark now, but there were lights on upstairs and down.

  Can’t be much longer now. . .

  Benny took a last look at the crumpled piece of paper in his hand: the list he’d made during his last few days at the psychiatric hospital, written in wax crayon because patients were forbidden to have sharp objects there. It was already falling to pieces, he’d unfolded and refolded it so often since the hearing at which his discharge had been approved. Although he’d only been out a few days, two of the ten names on it were already crossed off.

  He replaced the thin slip of paper in the glove compartment. Then he flexed his head and shoulders until the vertebrae creaked. The stiffness could have been worse. The rented car Valka had provided him with was perfect for this stake-out. It was equipped with stationary heating and the seats folded back into a reclining position at the touch of a button. It also suited the Westend district, being neither so ritzy nor so cheap as to stand out among the wannabe limos and 4WDs.

  Benny yawned. As ever, his mind refused to come to rest despite the long wait, and he found himself wondering how he and Valka could have come to this.

  Their story was typical of Berlin, the city of adolescent dreams. Those who wanted to make a career for themselves in the German capital, the nation’s poorhouse, had little chance of a job in high finance, industrial management or one of the big law firms. Well-paid jobs were as rare as streets devoid of dog-shit. Just occasionally, in the sea of lights on Potsdamer Platz or out here in the Grunewald, you got an inkling of what the city might look like if one person in four wasn’t on the dole and 40 per cent of children didn’t fall below the poverty line – children who could only dream, if at all, of a career in which you got rich without a graduation certificate, drove fast cars and picked up lots of skirt. A career on the football pitch or, as in Benny’s case, in the music business.

  He shut his eyes and thought back to the point in time that had determined his present situation. Marc hadn’t wanted him in the band at first. On principle more than anything else, because Benny’s inability to sing or play an instrument was no disqualification. It applied just as much to rest of the band, not that this deterred them from massacring hits by The Cure, Depeche Mode and the other groups they modelled themselves on. They styled themselves N.R., the New Romantics, wore make-up like Robert Smith and spent three nights a week rehearsing in the basement of a local undertaker’s. The business belonged to Karl Valka, Eddy’s father, who had placed a room beside his mortuary at their disposal. In return, they had to tolerate his overweight, irascible son as their drummer. Eddy would much rather have sung, but the place at the microphone had already been assigned to Marc, whose voice, though far from perfect, was more melodious than his. They played so badly the first year Eddy’s father jocularly declared that they would wake the dead and put him out of business. Then came their first gigs at school, private parties and company shindigs. They didn’t get any better, just better known, and that was when the trouble started. Berlin still didn’t have any American-style gangs in those days. No one carried firearms and street fights were waged with fists, not knives, but N.R.’s rivalry with the other school bands intensified with every gig they played. Competition with the Psychs, whose sound was more reminiscent of a construction site than rockabilly, was particularly fierce. As Marc’s popularity grew, so Benny became more and more of an outsider. He looked the perfect victim anyway, with his long lashes, curly hair and girlish features – someone who would have seemed more at home on a suburban tennis court than playing table football in an inner-city youth club. Marc did his best to protect him initially, accompanying him to school on the Underground even on days when their timetables didn’t coincide. But he couldn’t always be there for him, least of all when the band was rehearsing or away on a gig. So the inevitable happened. One night Benny was beaten up by two members of the Psychs. It was a week before he could walk and a fortnight before his dislocated jaw stopped hurting.

  Marc was furious. The bastards had picked on the weakest link in the chain. He and Eddy Valka worked out two fateful plans that were bound to end in tragedy. For one thing, they made Benny a member of the band. He couldn’t play an instrument – if he had any talent at all it was for drawing – but that was immaterial. It was Valka, of all people, who realized that Benny’s sensitivity and intelligence could be better employed in organizing their gigs, looking after their finances and settling up with concert promoters. So Marc’s sensitive young brother became the band’s manager. He also wrote wistful lyrics for their original compositions – not, of course, that anyone listened to them. Marc and Valka also employed the toughest youngsters from their school as bouncers to maintain security during their concerts, both out front and backstage. That was the start of Eddy Valka’s career in the bouncer business, where Benny would later become his bookkeeper.

  Benny opened his eyes and gave a start: he had spotted movement inside the house.

  Okay, this is it.

  A tubby little man had got up from behind his desk in the conservatory, which was used as a study.

  Benny took a newspaper from the passenger seat and turned it over.

  The headline on the back page proclaimed,

  ‘DEATH’S DOORMAN’

  He could scarcely make out a wor
d of the article, the car’s interior was so dimly illuminated by the old-fashioned street lights, but he didn’t have to. He knew it by heart and could well understand why Valka was so enraged. Although his name was never mentioned, it was quite clear who the investigative journalist had in his sights. Ken Sukowsky did his homework thoroughly. At this moment he was probably interrupting it only to give his nearest and dearest a quick goodnight kiss before settling down to write another exposé.

  Benny laid the newspaper aside and waited another half-hour. Then, when all the lights except the one in Sukowsky’s study had been extinguished, he got out.

  He hesitated when he saw Sukowsky re-enter the conservatory with a glass of Scotch in his hand and return to his desk. Then he remembered what Valka had said and pulled himself together.

  ‘Ninety thousand euros, Benny. You called me a month ago and I did you a favour – smuggled half of it to you in that loony bin and transferred the rest to that lousy doctor’s Czech bank account. Just the way you wanted.’

  He opened the garden gate and made his way past the little mound of dead leaves.

  ‘I warned you it wasn’t kosher but you wouldn’t listen. Now you’ve lost the lot.’

  He paused outside the front door.

  ‘You were taken for a ride at my expense. But I like you, Benny. You looked after my books for a long time, and you never ripped me off. That’s why I’m giving you a chance to work off your debt.’

  He knocked gently. Once. Then, after a brief interval, a second time.

  ‘Make sure Sukowsky can’t write any more shit about me.’

  He heard the chair in the conservatory being pushed back and took the secateurs from his breast pocket.

  ‘Do a job on him.’

  He counted slowly backwards from ten. The door opened at four.

  ‘Ken Sukowsky?’

  The man stared at him in surprise but didn’t look unfriendly. ‘Yes?’

  ‘And prove it by bringing me all the shitty fingers he uses to write his shitty articles about me.’

  ‘Have you broken down or something? Can I help you?’

  ‘No.’

  Benny shook his head and clicked the secateurs shut. Still adhering to one of the blades was the blood of Valka’s most recent victim – the one in the back room of his florist’s shop.

  ‘Look on it as a form of HSP therapy, my friend. Just let rip and it’ll be all right.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Benny. ‘I’m beyond help.’

  And he shouldered his way inside.

  19

  Another taxi and another driver – a woman this time. Still the same nightmare, though. Marc lowered the window a little to let some fresh air in but promptly closed it again because he couldn’t hear the woman on the other end of the line, whose number he’d got from directory enquiries.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not authorized to do that.’

  ‘But I’m his son-in-law.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t ascertain that on the phone.’

  Marc groaned in annoyance, staring absently at the car that had pulled up beside them at the lights. The two children in the back stuck out their tongues and laughed when he turned away.

  ‘Then please page him,’ he said.

  ‘No point, I’m afraid. Professor Senner is operating at present – and I’ve already told you more than I’m supposed to.’

  This can’t be happening.

  He knew the hospital receptionist – he’d made her acquaintance when going to have his dressing changed. He knew she had a dog, painted each of the fingernails on her right hand a different colour, and doodled on her memo pad while she was on the phone. She had to know who he was, but she was treating him like a stranger, politely but distantly. And the more insistent he became, the more her voice lost its cheerful veneer.

  ‘Okay. Can you at least tell him to call me as soon as he gets out of theatre? It’s an emergency.’

  He was about to hang up when he suddenly remembered something. ‘Just a moment. Can you see my phone number on your display?’

  ‘No. It’s withheld.’

  Shit, he won’t be able to reach me at my old number.

  ‘But if the professor really is your father-in-law he’s bound to know your mobile number.’ The scepticism in her voice was unmistakable now.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Marc hung up. He rested his forehead against the head restraint of the front seat and massaged his temples. Nothing relieved his headache, neither the cool imitation leather nor the gentle pressure of his thumbs. Why had he bought aspirin and codeine instead of some other painkiller that didn’t need washing down with water?

  ‘Everything okay back there?’

  Marc laughed silently.

  Everything okay?

  Sure. Discounting the fact that a girl whose life he’d saved that morning was dead and his wife, who had until recently been lying in a mortuary, was still alive but failed to recognize him, everything was fine.

  ‘Know those days when the earth seems to be turning in the opposite direction?’ he said, taking note of the cabby for the first time. In a lonely hearts ad she would probably have described her figure as ‘womanly, with curves in all the right places’. The truth was, she filled the seat from door to gear stick.

  ‘Like in: “Stop the world, I want to get off?”’ she said.

  Her sympathetic chuckle went with the colourful material in which her ample form was swathed. Marc guessed that her wraparound dress was of African origin. That figured, to judge by the three Rasta plaits dangling from her neck.

  ‘Sure, man, I know what you mean.’

  I wonder if you do.

  The taxi braked sharply to avoid a couple so intent on catching a bus across the street that they’d darted out in front of it.

  ‘I picked up a granddad yesterday. Nice old guy. Late seventies, I guess. Halfway there he suddenly forgot where he wanted to go.’

  Okay, maybe you do have a rough idea.

  ‘Worst thing was, he forgot he was in a cab – thought I was kidnapping him or something.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Marc asked, looking out of the window again. The neon sign of a car rental firm flashed past.

  ‘If I’ve learnt one lesson in life, friend, it’s this: when people go mad, stay sane.’

  A fellow cabby was turning into Friedrichstrasse ahead of her. She tooted him twice in salutation.

  ‘I just ignored granddad’s hullabaloo and took him where he’d asked to go in the first place. His daughter was expecting him, luckily.’

  She double-parked and looked in her rear-view mirror. ‘Alzheimer’s. You meet new people every day, huh?’

  From the way she roared with laughter at her old chestnut of a joke, she might just have invented it. Then she peered out of the window dubiously. ‘You did say No. 211 Französische Strasse?’

  The taxi gave a lurch as she swung round in her seat.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘I hope you’ve got a hard hat with you.’

  Chuckling, she reached for her receipt pad, but Marc waved it away and gave her the last few notes in his wallet. Then he got out to make sure he wasn’t suffering from an optical illusion. The view from the cab was so unbelievable, he had to take a closer look.

  A hole.

  The nearer he got to the fence, the slower and more hesitant his steps became. It was as if he were approaching a clifftop. Which, in a sense, he was.

  Wind was blowing into his face and rain was blurring his vision, but not enough to prevent him from identifying the numbers of the commercial buildings to his right and left. He shivered.

  This is impossible.

  Left 209, right 213.

  He advanced another step. The tip of his nose was now almost touching the sign that prohibited members of the public from entering the construction site.

  He looked again at No. 209, the office building on his left, and then at the investment bank on his right. Finally, he looked down.

 
; Seven metres down into the pit which had earlier that day been the site of No. 211, the Bleibtreu Clinic. It had vanished like the last remaining vestiges of normality in his shattered existence.

  20

  Before Marc’s father died of liver failure at the age of fifty-seven he had been a business consultant, an artistes’ manager, the owner of several hotel and casino complexes in South Africa, the father of two illegitimate children, an alcoholic, a composer, a cartoonist, a bodybuilder – even an international-bestseller writer under various pseudonyms. All this in addition to his activities as an incompetent lawyer. And all in his imagination alone.

  Frank Lucas had naturally told no one in the family of his experiences in this illusory world, any more than he had informed Marc, Benny or his wife that the small law office for which he daily set off with an empty briefcase had long been in the red because of his repeated legal blunders. In spite of his schizoid disorders, however, he had succeeded in keeping his head above water for another two and a half years, thanks to a few gullible clients. Even Anita, his secretary, had continued to work half-days for almost no pay until, shortly before his death, she realized that she would never benefit financially from his forthcoming construction project in Brazil because that, too, existed only in her debt-ridden employer’s imagination.

  None of these things – Frank’s schizoid disorders and the family’s disastrous financial position – had come to light until the day the police rang the doorbell and asked to interview Marc’s sister about the rape she’d undergone. The family’s reaction took them aback, for there was no sister and no rape. For the first time in his life, Frank had lied to the wrong people.

  They’d all had their suspicions, of course. Neither his wife nor his children had failed to notice his mood swings, insomnia, recurrent bouts of sweating and penchant for self-dramatization. On the other hand, didn’t they love him partly because he didn’t take the truth too seriously? Because of the fanciful, incredible, picaresque stories with which he’d won his wife’s heart and held Marc and Benny spellbound in their bunk beds? Besides, didn’t a good lawyer have to lie occasionally in order to get his clients off the hook?