The scorpions head, p.22
The Scorpion's Head, page 22
He’d never expected Gaelle to make a run for it. He’d waited a while for her to return, but he couldn’t stay here any longer. Two suspicious-looking men had been hanging around for a while. Maybe a third was on the lookout somewhere. He’d seen the two of them inspecting parked cars, watching the boats and using hand signals to communicate with each other at a distance. As soon as it got dark, they might well come and check out the interiors of the boats too.
He’d hung the flag at half-mast and hoped that Gaelle wouldn’t make another foolish mistake by ignoring the signal.
He looked outside, slipped out onto the deck and sank into the water at the back of the boat.
*
Lukas thought the vanilla custard his mum made at home was way better than this stuff out of a pot. After one mouthful, he’d made up his mind, but there was no one in the room he could tell about his mum’s vanilla custard. Or about how much he missed her. He forced himself to eat it all, so the doctor wouldn’t have any reason to nag at him that he really needed to eat something, as he’d done before he left the room. If the doctor didn’t have to complain about his food or about Lukas drinking enough water, then he’d have more time to answer his questions. Because the doctor had said he was far too busy for that.
Lukas scraped the pot empty and put it down on his bedside table with the spoon, next to his glasses. Although he was both hungry and queasy, he felt better than before. The woman doctor had disconnected all his tubes and taken him to the toilet. The bathroom was through a side door. He didn’t even need to go out into the corridor. That was too bad, because then at least he could have seen more of this children’s ward, he thought. And no one had answered when he’d asked if he was in a hospital near Potsdam or if he’d been run over on his bike.
Like his room, the bathroom had no windows. When he was standing in front of the toilet bowl, he’d asked the woman to leave the room, because he couldn’t pee if anyone was watching. She’d done as he’d asked, but she’d left the door open a bit. He’d taken his time to pee and then wash his hands, hoping he might spot something that would tell him something about where he was. But he couldn’t find a single clue. The towels didn’t have a logo like the ones in the hotel in Altensteig where they’d stayed and there weren’t any funny posters like the ones in the school toilets that said that clever children always wash their hands.
When he left the bathroom, he’d staggered and had to hold on to the door handle so that he didn’t fall. The woman had hurried over and grabbed him rather roughly. He’d had no choice but to accept her help to get back to bed. All that time she said nothing.
He looked at the door into the corridor. Would he be strong enough to stand up by himself, to open the door and take a look out there? If he saw other sick children or their parents, he’d feel less alone. And then he could speak to a visitor and ask where his mum and dad were and what the hospital was called.
He picked up his glasses, put them on and pulled the sheets aside. He was still wearing the disgusting purple pyjamas. It was high time his mum came to visit.
As his feet touched the ground, it felt like he was on a boat. His legs were so wobbly that the whole room seemed to be swaying.
But it wasn’t far to the door, and he’d come second in a race at school not long ago. And he’d just had some vanilla custard. It had to work.
It seemed to take an eternity to reach the door. He took hold of the door handle. At first, he thought his arms were too weak to open the door. But after four attempts, he realised the door was locked.
For hours, Gaelle had been wandering around a neighbourhood a couple of kilometres from Kastanienallee, like a tramp looking for a safe place to shelter. She’d hidden in doorways and in an underground garage. She’d gone to a park, where she’d washed the blood off her hands in a pond and then sat on a bench for a while, hidden from view by the trees. She’d wondered if she should return to Bernd’s car and drive away.
But she hadn’t dared. Scorpio’s killers or the police might already have found the car and they could be waiting there for her. She kept seeing the image of Michael’s boat, with the flag at half-mast. He must have gone back and seen something that had made him use the agreed signal to warn her to keep away. No matter how desperate she was, how exhausted, hungry and disgusted by the dirty clothes she was walking around in – with a dried bloodstain at the bottom of one leg of her jeans – she also saw Michael’s attempt to warn her as a positive sign. It was a sign that he hadn’t abandoned her.
Her feet hurt. She looked around. It was just before eight in the evening and the streets were quiet. She walked past terraced houses and saw the light of TV screens through the windows. Sometimes she could look inside at the children and adults sitting together on sofas in front of their televisions.
There was no way to make this right.
That thought hurt more than any physical injury ever could.
She stopped on a street corner and stared at the gaudy neon sign of a kebab shop across the road.
Maybe she’d have been better off dead. She took a step back as a man passed by with a boy in football kit, who was a little older than Lukas.
Lukas still had his entire future ahead of him.
Although Lore had set something in motion, maybe it could still be stopped. Michael had said it would be very difficult to find Lukas, but that they should at least try.
She turned around and walked down the street, heading towards Kastanienallee. The twilight gave her a false sense of security. The closer she came to the jetty where Michael’s boat was moored, the faster she began to run.
She was out of breath when she reached the water.
Someone had once told her that a good athlete knew whether they’d lost the race even before they crossed the finish line.
She stared at the empty spot on the jetty, where Michael’s boat was no longer moored.
59
There had been times in her life when she’d felt lonely, like the summer camp when she was nine and she’d lain in bed at night, counting down the days until she was allowed to go home, scared of spiders and of her mean fellow campers who teased children who were homesick. She’d felt even lonelier as a new mother when she couldn’t comfort her crying baby, and people like Ebba had only made it worse with their well-meaning advice: “It’s good for his lungs.” Or as a cousin of Bernd’s had said on her first and last visit: “At least he’s healthy.” It was only later that Gaelle had found out she had a child with a serious disability, who was in an institution and, according to the doctors, would never have a mental age of more than two. Bernd’s absence after the birth – Yes, these meetings really are necessary if I want to get promoted, Gaelle – had only made the loneliness worse.
As she walked the dark streets of Potsdam, she watched the shadows cast by lamplight flickering in the doorways. Every time a car drove past, the shadows seemed to leap out at her, whispering what she already knew: it was over. She’d lost.
Under the awning of a bakery, she stopped. The police station was a few streets away. Although it was already nine in the evening, there must still be someone there who would talk to her. She could beg them to use all their resources to rescue Lukas from the hands of the contract killers. Without any evidence – Lore’s death certainly wouldn’t work in her favour – and having been labelled as a dangerous psychiatric patient, it seemed like a kamikaze mission.
A light went on in a nearby house, making her visible to the entire street. She forced herself to keep walking. Having no home to go to was so exhausting. When her mother had died, she thought she’d reached the depths of loneliness. She’d just become an orphan and she had no brothers or sisters to share her grief. But now she knew that loneliness in its pure unadulterated version was a thousand times worse. Real loneliness descended upon you out of nowhere, dark and heavy, impossible to shake off as it dug its claws into your shoulders. It was present night and day, making you feel smaller with every step you took, weakening your body and sucking you dry until you were just a shell. When you’d given up everything and weren’t even capable of bearing the loneliness any longer, that was when it would finally disappear.
But by that time it was far too late.
She heard a dog barking.
Turning the corner, she saw the illuminated sign of the police station. And she knew that if she went inside, she would lose her freedom for a long time.
She stood across the street, directly opposite the entrance. In the distance, she heard a motorbike approaching. The loneliness hit her harder than ever, trying to push her towards the door of the police station, where she could see the glow of an intercom system.
She fought the urge to cross the road and ring the bell. First she’d let the motorbike go past, she decided, clinging to the pathetic magical thinking that reminded her of her childhood.
If the driver’s wearing a red helmet, everything will be okay.
As soon as the motorbike had gone past, she would cross the street, turn herself in at the police station and place her last bit of hope in their hands.
The motorbike drove along the street.
The light of the lamppost reflected off his black helmet. She should have known, she thought. Luck had been absent for a while, visiting other places.
She tried to cross the road in front of the motorcyclist anyway but had only reached halfway when he screeched to a stop, blocking her path. He raised his visor. He was wearing a leather suit, had brown eyes and a dark complexion.
“Jump on the back,” he said.
He took a second helmet from a pannier and shoved it into her hands. Automatically, she took the helmet and looked despondently at the entrance to the police station.
“Quick, before someone comes out,” he said.
There was nothing familiar about the way the motorcyclist spoke or about his posture or the glimpse she caught of his face. It was what he’d whispered to her that had made her put on the helmet and get on the bike behind him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and they raced away.
There was only one person who knew that after Lukas’s birth, she’d reached the bottom of her black thoughts and had briefly considered letting go of him when she was giving him a bath.
60
Dolores bartosz cracked her fingers, one by one, as she looked through the window of her safe house at the rosebush on her lawn. In spite of the late hour, the blood-red flowers were clearly visible in the spotlight that was aimed at them. She’d taken a big risk last year when she’d told Vasili to bring Paul de Groot here, a world-famous Dutch rose grower. De Groot had agreed to the conditions: the rosebush would be transported in a small truck, which the client would send, along with a driver. De Groot himself would have to remain in the back of the truck with the rosebush. He would not be permitted to leave the vehicle until they reached their destination, where he would explore the site and identify the most suitable spot for planting the rosebush, which would take place under the supervision of the driver and the client’s butler. Under no circumstances was he to ask questions about the location or the client’s identity. And he wasn’t allowed to question whether the blind butler would be capable of carrying out his pruning and maintenance tips to the letter. After the rosebush had been planted, he would be returned home under the same conditions – in the windowless back of the truck – and once he was home he had to keep quiet about the special delivery and remain available for any questions about how to care for the rosebush, such as spring and winter pruning and fertilisation. The generous payment – even the business of a grower who had won many international awards for his luxury varieties of roses felt the competition from the imported flowers from Africa – and Vasili’s hint that they knew where his twin sons went to school had ensured the man’s sworn secrecy. De Groot had assured her, via Cédric, that the Semper Dolor, the name his anonymous client had given to the rose, would remain the only one of its kind in the world.
There was a knock on the door: Cédric’s quiet, polite signal, which was never obtrusive, not even in troubled times.
“Enter.”
He pushed in a trolley with a dish of homemade pastries and a porcelain pot of her favourite tea, made from fresh lime blossom. The scent of flowers as Cédric poured out the tea reminded her of the rose grower.
Maybe in hindsight she shouldn’t have left the man alive, but the grower had explained to Cédric that the genetically manipulated rosebush that had cost her a fortune was more vulnerable than common varieties. She thanked Cédric for the tea, and he nodded and left as discreetly as he’d come. With a steaming cup in her hand, she walked to the control panel, took one last look at the rosebush that had been cultivated especially for her and turned off the outside light. Then she looked at the screen beneath the panel, which showed images from the security cameras around the safe house, but she saw nothing suspicious. The motion sensors on the wall around the site showed nothing alarming either.
She had asked Cédric to be even more alert than usual today, to take every auditory signal picked up by the sensors seriously and not to dismiss it as a temporary glitch or some animal wandering too close to the exterior wall. She’d added that he should be ready to give any unwanted visitors an appropriate reception. Cédric had spent all day checking the security systems.
She knew that in Michael she’d found an opponent who was her equal. She’d gone through the Chameleon’s file again the previous day and realised that they had a lot in common, more than he would ever want to admit.
Dolores pressed the button for a full lockdown and heard the heavy panels sliding shut. In combination with the lime blossom tea, that should have had a calming effect on her. But she wasn’t enjoying the tea and the built-in blood-pressure monitor in her watch indicated an alarming rise. She slammed the mug down on her desk and picked up her phone.
It was time to put things in order.
The water lapped against the jetties at Kastanienallee, making waves in the spot where Michael’s boat had been. Three figures stood in the dim light of a closed bar and, although the blossoms and trees all around were heralding the sweet scent of summer, the tension in the air could have been cut with a knife.
“So it was all wasted effort,” Zoltan said to Ludka.
“He’s outsmarted us,” said Jorge, kicking a stone into the water. “I don’t know how he spotted us or how he managed to get away.”
“He asked someone from the boat-hire company to take his place at the wheel. Sadly that man can’t give us any more details, and his customer seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Yeah, so when the boat left, we were following the wrong guy,” said Zoltan.
“And it’s not just Michael we’ve lost,” said Ludka. “We’ve still found no trace of the woman.”
She stared into the dark water.
“We’ve already missed Dolores’s deadline by a few hours,” she said.
“We were so close,” said Jorge. “She knows we’ll get it right next time.”
Ludka’s telephone buzzed and she took it out of her pocket to read the message. In one smooth movement, she slipped the phone back into her pocket, pulled out her gun with a silencer and aimed it at Jorge.
“There won’t be a next time,” she said.
The bullet made a perfectly symmetrical hole in his forehead and penetrated his brain. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him fall, and she was just fast enough to shoot Zoltan before he could turn on her.
Two dull bangs, a steady hand and a little precision. That was all it took to get rid of people who didn’t keep their promises, as Dolores had instructed her to do in the message. She kicked the bodies, one at a time, along the dock, until they landed in the water.
Before she put her gun away, she scanned the area, looking for any inconvenient witnesses. But there were no boats moored near the pub, and the terrace chairs were stacked in such a way that they formed a wall for anyone who might happen to look their way. It had all happened in barely a couple of minutes.
Quickly, she walked down the jetty, her mind already on the next task Dolores had given her.
61
The motorcyc list stopped near a level crossing at a detached building that looked like a squat. The beam of the headlight revealed smashed windows, graffiti on the walls and a broken padlock and chain lying on the ground by the front door. Gaelle made no attempt to get off the bike until the driver, who had still not made his identity known, motioned to her to leave her seat. Standing beside the motorbike, she removed her helmet.
Before she could ask him anything, the motorcyclist climbed off the bike. With a haste that scared her, he pushed it towards a shed leaning against the building. She followed him. Once they were inside, he turned off the lights of the motorbike. It was so dark that she could no longer see even his outline. If he wasn’t who she thought he was, he could end her life here and now, and no one would ever know how her body had got there.
She heard the sound of a bag being unzipped. “Michael?”
No reaction.
She held her helmet in front of her, ready to defend herself with all her might if she had to. A small torch came on, lighting up the surroundings.
“Wait to talk until we’re inside, Gaelle,” he whispered. “It’s safer there.”
She lowered the helmet and followed Michael – it had to be him – who opened a door in the shed, which led into the adjoining room. It smelt of cat piss and mould. The light of his torch showed the way, past a disembowelled sofa and a dresser from which the drawers had disappeared. The floor was littered with old newspapers and shards of glass, which cracked under the soles of her shoes. They came into a hallway, where Michael turned and headed upstairs. The handrail was broken and there were only a few scraps to show where a carpet had once been.
