The Child

by Sebastian Fitzek

  Photos, videos, addresses, phone numbers, children …

  He tried not to think of the horrific transactions that went on there week after week. He knuckled the rain out of his eyes and looked at his watch. Another five minutes.

  Then he concealed himself behind an empty boat trailer and waited for the man of whom all he knew to date was his disguised voice. There was no sign as yet.

  The Havelchaussee was still closed to normal traffic at this hour for environmental reasons, but Stern heard the deep, throbbing note of an eight-cylinder engine above the roar of the wind. It was slowly but steadily approaching from the direction of Zehlendorf.

  A dark-coloured four-wheel drive, the vehicle was travelling quite fast with only its sidelights on. Stern almost hoped its occupant had taken a short cut along the lakeside and would drive straight on, but the driver extinguished the lights altogether and turned down the approach road leading to the Brücke. The bulky vehicle pulled up some fifty metres short of the gangway. A man got out. It was still too dark for Stern to see more than his vague silhouette, but what he saw seemed familiar: a tall, erect, broad-shouldered figure with a vigorous, punchy way of walking. He knew it and had seen it before. Often, in fact.

  But where?

  The man turned up the collar of his trenchcoat and pulled down the peak of his baseball cap. Then, opening the tailgate, he removed a little basket with a pale-coloured blanket draped over it.

  The wind veered briefly in Stern’s direction. He wasn’t sure if his overtaxed senses were playing tricks on him, but he thought he heard the cry of a baby.

  He waited until the man had unlocked the wrought-iron gate that gave access to the gangway, then reached in his pocket. He had often heard how reassuring it felt to hold a gun in one’s hand, but he couldn’t endorse this, perhaps because he knew to whom the automatic had belonged: a long-time adversary, but one who had given his life for him.

  However, he didn’t plan to exchange fire with an experienced killer. If Simon had really contrived to see into the future for some reason, a third party would very soon appear: the buyer. He might be a paedophile, but he might equally be the ‘avenger’, the man responsible for murdering several criminals in the last fifteen years. Either way, the police would have to be quick if they wanted to prevent bloodshed.

  Stern checked his watch for the last time. It was just before six. If Carina had kept to their plan, the deserted road would be seething with squad cars in ten minutes at most. But in case something went wrong – if there really was a police insider who thwarted the guilty parties’ arrest – he wanted to make sure of unmasking the voice and discovering the identity of the man who could tell him what had happened in the neonatal ward.

  And whether my son is still alive.

  He came out from behind the trailer. The time had come.

  2

  Bending low, he stole quickly along the cobbled approach road leading to the Brücke. Even getting to the four-wheel drive left him out of breath. He leaned against the spare wheel mounted on the tailgate until he’d recovered a little, then turned on his torch just long enough to examine the licence plate.

  The short Berlin number was easy enough to memorize, but he took its falsity for granted. Peering around the back of the vehicle he saw a finger of light flit across the Brücke’s deck. Evidently, the voice was also finding his way around with a torch.

  All right, move.

  Stern’s next objective was the gangway. If he was to catch a glimpse of the man’s face, he would have to get as close as possible. His heart beat faster. Speed was of the essence now, he knew. The baby’s putative buyer had yet to appear, so the voice might not be suspicious if he noticed someone moving in the car park.

  Praying he would be able to withstand the pain, Stern prepared to make a dash for the gangway. He was just about to go when he saw the passenger door.

  He stopped short. Could it be? Sure enough, it wasn’t shut properly. He tried the handle. And froze in horror.

  Goddamn!

  The interior light had come on. Stern felt as if he’d fired a signal rocket into the sky. He got in quickly, shut the door and watched from the dark interior to see if the unknown man aboard the Brücke had noticed anything. The finger of light on deck had disappeared, but a small lamp in the deckhouse had come on. He could see a shadowy figure inside. So he hadn’t been spotted.

  Quick.

  Sitting in the passenger seat, he looked round. TRAP! A warning light started flashing in his mind’s eye when he saw that the key was in the ignition. He reached for his gun and suppressed all the instincts telling him to run. Then he clambered on to the back seat and looked over the head rests into the load space. Having satisfied himself that he was alone in the vehicle, he activated the central locking system.

  So it isn’t a trap after all?

  He checked the rear-view mirror to see if another vehicle was approaching, but there wasn’t the slightest sign of movement behind him apart from the trees, the branches of which were bending in the wind like fishing rods. He opened the glove compartment, which contained nothing but a plastic box of wet wipes. Then he folded down the sun visors and looked in the side pockets. Nothing. No clue to the driver’s identity.

  As his eyes got used to the dim light of dawn, Stern saw that the whole of the car’s interior was as clean and uncluttered as that of a showroom model. There were no CDs, petrol receipts, street maps, or any of the other ballast motorists tend to drive around with. Not even a parking disc. He felt under the seats for hidden compartments, but in vain. Propping his elbow on the console between the two front seats, he had almost decided to get out again when it struck him.

  The console!

  Of course. It was far too wide for an ordinary armrest. He tried the wrong side at first, but then it opened with a faint creak. The compartment beneath the leather cover was as empty as all the others. With one exception. Stern fished out the sleeveless silver disc with two fingers. There was just enough light for him to decipher the date someone had written on the DVD with a green felt-tip pen.

  It was the last day of his son’s life.

  3

  Visitors to a hospital the size of the Seehaus Clinic passed unnoticed unless they attracted attention in some way, for instance by asking directions at the reception desk, polluting the entrance hall with cigarette smoke, or getting an outsize bunch of flowers stuck in the revolving doors. The young woman in the grey tracksuit might almost have been invisible as she hurried to the lifts, even at this early hour.

  Carina knew that breakfast preparations were already in full swing and the night shift was about to knock off. The weary doctors’ and nurses’ attention threshold was consequently at its lowest when she opened the glass doors leading to the neurological department. For all that, she was so anxious not to be recognized that she concealed her face beneath the hood of the sweatshirt Stern’s father had lent her last night.

  Emerging from the lift, she glanced at the big clock at the end of the corridor. Two more minutes to go. Another hundred and twenty seconds before she roused the staff. That was the most important feature of the plan.

  ‘Just before six, go to your ward and sound the alarm,’ Stern had impressed on her. ‘I want as many of your colleagues as possible to hear when you report to the guard outside Simon’s room.’

  There was to be no doubt that she had turned herself in of her own free will, then the police couldn’t pin anything on her later. She’d also had to promise him something else.

  ‘As soon as you’ve turned yourself in, tell the police where I am. But not until six on the dot, not a second earlier.’ His words came back to her as she hurried down the corridor.

  ‘Why not?’ she’d asked him. ‘Help won’t arrive for at least five minutes.’

  ‘Exactly. I’ll need that much time to find out what happened to my son, and if someone really is selling a baby aboard the Brücke, a longer delay would present too much of a risk to the child.’

&
nbsp; ‘But if the police turn up too late, you’ll be dead.’

  He had shaken his head wearily. ‘I don’t think the voice means to kill me. He’s had plenty of opportunities to do so in the last few days.’

  ‘So what does he want?’

  Instead of replying, Stern had kissed her goodbye and driven off to find out.

  Carina stopped short.

  The frosted glass door of the nurses’ room was normally open, but it seemed that some of the female staff had retired there for an early coffee break. She heard a high-pitched laugh. The voice sounded unfamiliar, and she assumed that it belonged to someone from another ward who had temporarily taken over her shift.

  Click. The second hand of the clock ate another minute of her schedule. She raised her hand and was about to knock when she froze.

  But this is impossible … She hadn’t risked a glance in the direction of Room 217 when she emerged into the corridor, not wanting the policeman outside the door to notice her until she accosted him, but she’d glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye that shouldn’t by rights have been there.

  Nothing!

  She slowly turned and looked down the long, antiseptically swabbed corridor.

  It was true: there was no one there. No man. No woman. No policeman.

  He could have sneaked out for a smoke, of course.

  She walked slowly back along the corridor.

  OK, perhaps he’s gone to the bathroom. Or maybe he’s looking in on the boy. But shouldn’t there be a chair outside?

  Rooms 203, 205, 207. Her footsteps quickened the more doors she passed.

  Surely they haven’t dispensed with a personal protection officer? Not after Simon’s abduction, surely? Today of all days?

  She passed Room 209 at a run.

  ‘Hello? Carina?’ a woman’s agitated voice called out behind her. Her replacement’s, probably. It sounded familiar, unlike the laugh she’d heard before, but she didn’t turn round. This couldn’t wait.

  Reaching the door of Room 217, she flung it open – and stifled a cry because she saw what she’d feared. Nothing. No child. No Simon. Just a newly made-up bed awaiting a patient.

  ‘Carina Freitag?’ the voice asked again, right behind her this time.

  She turned round. Sure enough, it was a new nurse. A redhead – they’d once shared a table in the staff canteen. Magdalena, Martina – something like that, but who cared? Only one name mattered to Carina right then, and its owner had disappeared.

  ‘Simon – where is he?’

  ‘They’ve transferred him, but I—’

  ‘Transferred? Where to?’

  ‘The Kennedy Clinic.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘No idea, it’s down in the log. My shift has only just started. Look, please don’t be difficult, but my instructions were to call the medical director as soon as you showed up.’

  ‘Do that. And you’d better call the police as well.’

  ‘Why?’ The nurse, who had picked up the house phone, lowered it again.

  ‘Because Simon has been kidnapped. The JFK doesn’t have a neuroradiological department. It’s a private hospital for internal medicine.’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘Who approved the transfer? Who was on duty before you?’

  Completely thrown now, the red-haired nurse reeled off some names until asked to repeat one. Carina nearly tripped over her own feet as she dashed past the girl and out of the room.

  Picasso? Since when has he been back on night duty?

  4

  Stern turned the ignition key far enough to power up the four-wheel drive’s inboard entertainment system. The DVD player swallowed the disc with a greedy, slithering sound. No longer watching out for movement on board the Brücke to his front, he focused his whole attention on the screen. He felt like a student who couldn’t find his name on a list of successful examinees, except that this examination was concerned with his son’s life. Or, more probably, with his death.

  He thought at first, when the picture took shape, that he was only watching a copy of the DVD he’d already seen. Like that one, it opened with some greenish shots of the neonatal ward at night. Felix was lying in his cot once more. Once more he stretched out his little fist and spread his tiny fingers. Stern wanted to turn away and shut his eyes, but he knew how pointless this was because the ensuing image was permanently imprinted on his mind’s eye, as it had been ever since he saw it for the first time on the old television set at his house: the motionless infant with the far too blue lips and the expressionless eyes that still seemed, a decade after the event, to reproach his father for failing to prevent his death. Stern clasped his hands together, clenched his teeth, and prayed to be finally roused from this nightmare. He hadn’t come here to watch another video of his son’s death.

  But why? Are you really stupid enough to believe in another explanation?

  ‘Yes!’ he said, voicing his thoughts aloud for the first time. ‘Felix is alive. I don’t want his heart to stop beating. Please don’t let him die. Not again.’

  It was more of an entreaty than a prayer, and although he hadn’t named the recipient of his despairing plea, his words seemed to be having an effect.

  What is this?

  All at once, the sequence of shots began to differ greatly from that of the first DVD. A shadow fell across the cot. The camera zoomed in and the images became grainier. Then something incomprehensible happened. A man’s hands came into shot. First one, then the other. Bare, rough hands, they reached for Felix and cupped themselves around his frail little head. Stern blinked feebly, afraid that what followed would be even more horrible than what he’d been compelled to endure hitherto. He tried to command his fingers to turn off the DVD, but although his heart longed to blot out the scene by pressing a button, his brain resisted the impulse. In the end, so that his journey of exploration in that dark car park beside the lake could reach its final destination, he bowed to the inevitable, however terrible it might be. As the DVD continued its merciless rotation, he saw the man stretch out his hands to the baby. To Felix! One grasped his neck, the other his body. The muscular forearms tautened, and the unknown man …

  Dear God, help me …

  … took hold of Felix and …

  No, this is …

  … lifted him out of the cot.

  … impossible!

  Only seconds later the little mattress was occupied once more. By another infant. Same sleepsuit, same size, similar build. There was only one perceptible difference: it wasn’t Felix.

  Or was it?

  The new baby looked so incredibly like his son, but something about his appearance had changed.

  His nose? His ears?

  Stern simply couldn’t tell, the quality of the video was too poor. He rubbed his eyes and rested both hands on the dashboard with his face as close as possible to the screen. It was pointless, the baby’s image only became more blurred. All he could tell with any certainty was that this infant was also alive. Weirdly enough, its movements seemed even more familiar to him than those of the newborn baby that had just been lying in its place.

  But that would mean …

  Stern looked at the date line.

  And was utterly mystified.

  With almost autistic concentration, he focused all of his senses on trying to fathom the meaning of the pictures. He failed.

  Exchanged? It wasn’t possible. Felix had been the only male infant in the ward and he’d seen him die. Which of the two DVDs was authentic?

  Stern’s breathing came and went spasmodically as he watched the deception being completed. Another close-up of the baby’s face was followed by a shot of the man’s hirsute, disembodied hands slipping a numbered ID bracelet over its right wrist.

  It was all over. The video recording was at an end. The screen went dark and Stern looked down at his mobile, which had been vibrating in his hand for a considerable time.

  5

  ‘Good morning, Herr Stern.’

&nbs
p; Robert Stern thought he’d long ago plumbed the ultimate depths of despair. The sound of that disguised voice told him how wrong he was. The lights in the floating restaurant’s bar went off and on again. A shadowy figure came over to the big window facing the car park.

  ‘What did you do with my son?’ Stern managed to ask.

  Although the reply accorded with his dearest wishes, he could hardly believe it.

  ‘We exchanged him.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Why? You saw it for yourself just now.’

  ‘Yes, and three days ago you sent me a video in which he died!’ Stern shouted. ‘What do you want from me? Which of the DVDs was genuine?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘No. One baby died, the other survived. Felix is ten years old and living with an adoptive family.’

  ‘Where?’

  The voice remained quiet, like an orator reaching for a glass of water. Although the timbre was still metallic, the artificial distortion was less pronounced than it had been when he first made contact.

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stern heard himself say. Nothing could have been more important to him at that moment.

  ‘Then open the glove compartment.’

  Like a remote-controlled toy, he did so. ‘What now?’

  ‘Take out the box and open it.’

  With trembling fingers, Stern picked up the box of wet wipes. Air escaped with an angry hiss as he tore open the plastic lid.

  ‘I’ve done that.’

  ‘Good. Now pull out a wet wipe and put it over your mouth and nose.’

  ‘No,’ he replied instinctively. He needed no death’s-head sticker to tell him how potentially lethal was the substance the fumes of which were already filling the car.

  ‘I thought you wanted to see your son again.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want to die.’

  ‘Who says you’ll die? I’m merely asking you to put it over your face.’