The scorpions head, p.9
The Scorpion's Head, page 9
A big rat appeared on the ledge. Slowly and hungrily, it came closer, and he furiously batted at it.
But then the rat vanished.
Michael looked around. He shone his head torch over the water. He hadn’t heard a splash. And the rat hadn’t scuttled away from him along the ledge. The creature had simply disappeared.
That was impossible, unless the fumes were making him hallucinate. With the last of his strength, he pulled himself up to the place where the rat had disappeared, and he saw where it had gone. About ten centimetres above the ledge, some of the bricks were loose, and there was a hole that was big enough to stick his arm through. The walls were at least half a metre thick, and the light of the torch was too dim to see where the hole came out. Running the risk of losing a finger to a hungry rat, he slowly put his right arm through the opening, his fingers sliding over the bricks. As he cut the back of his hand on a sharp piece of broken brick, his fingertips brushed against something hairy, which darted away.
Now he could stretch his whole arm. His hand was no longer enclosed by bricks and he could move it around. That freedom of movement gave him hope. He pulled back his arm and held his face to the opening. The air flow was barely perceptible, but enough for him to deduce that there was a room behind the wall, perhaps some kind of passageway, which would take him back to the route he should be following.
His head was about to burst. If he spent any longer in this toxic atmosphere, the rats would have an unexpected feast today. He took off his backpack, supporting himself with his other arm on the ledge, and then rested the bag on the ledge while he took out his grenade. Without hesitating, he pulled out the pin and tossed the grenade into the hole. He moved along the ledge, away from the spot where he hoped the explosion would breach the thick wall.
But old walls were unpredictable.
If the roof above his head collapsed because of the explosion, it was all over.
Ludka, Jorge and Zoltan had followed his trail with the instinct of bloodhounds. His hasty attempts to mislead them by going down one tunnel and then retracing his footsteps had only helped them to close the distance faster. Their army boots marched along the corridors, the receptionist’s blood now dry on their steel toecaps. They were wearing night-vision goggles, were heavily armed, and as long as they could follow his trail, they weren’t afraid of getting lost in this underworld.
But not long ago they had heard a sound that suggested a cave-in and now they’d come to a place where his footsteps stopped before a collapsed tunnel full of rubble.
“He could be dead,” said the man who had introduced himself to Ludka as Zoltan. He was a thickset, hairy man, who reminded her of a bear. Not a good-natured cuddly bear, as the animal was often misrepresented to children, but a predator.
“Could be isn’t good enough for Dolores,” said Ludka.
Or for me, she thought.
“We don’t have a map. The only route that’ll get us out of here for sure is going back,” said the man who was known as Jorge. He was a tall, thin man who for some reason had irritated Ludka right from the beginning. Maybe it was his high-pitched, whining voice. “Just as well we left markers.”
“The man we’re looking for murdered my brother,” said Ludka. “We’re not leaving until we’ve seen his body.”
There was a bang. They recognised the sound of an explosion. It could only have been caused by one man.
“Try to locate it,” said Ludka. “Let’s move in.”
“It’s going to be hard to find our way around this labyrinth without a map,” said Jorge.
Silence.
“If you say that one more time, this place will be your grave,” growled Ludka.
They walked off, heading towards where they’d heard the explosion.
Fabienne had talked Claude into a quickie before they disappeared up the ladder and through the manhole, but then they heard the explosion.
“That’s it. I’ve had enough,” said Claude.
He pulled up his jeans and put his helmet on.
Fabienne scrambled to her feet, quickly putting her bra and T-shirt back on. But instead of following Claude up the ladder, she went the opposite way, into the illegal part of the Catacombs, which she knew like the back of her hand.
“Where are you going?” she heard Claude shout. “I want to go home!”
“That was no ordinary collapse,” said Fabienne.
She heard him swearing and yelling at her to come back. All she could think was that the excitement she felt now was so much more intense than what she’d experienced during their lovemaking.
Michael coughed and wiped away the blood that was running from the wound on his forehead and into his eyes. The explosion had blown away some sections of the walls, and one of the bricks had hit him on the head. He felt sick and dizzy, as if he were about to lose consciousness. The sewer gases had exhausted him to the point where that blow to the head could finish him.
Maybe the breach wasn’t even big enough to let him through.
When the dust had settled, he struggled to pull himself along the ledge towards the hole. Just before he reached the spot, he felt his grip on the ledge weaken. His hand let go, he slipped into the stinking water and went under.
He hardly had the strength to fight.
As he sank deeper, he thought maybe it was time to let the water rock him to sleep. Bellefleur was no longer alive. He hadn’t made it in time, just like with Janek. Maybe he didn’t deserve to live.
Images of his many victims over the years flashed through his mind, mainly men, but also some women. He had cut the thread of their lives on Dolores’s orders – and he hadn’t felt a thing.
Rotting away in this Styx was no more than he deserved.
But he’d never killed a child.
No one could accuse him of that.
Lukas, that was the boy’s name.
Maybe Lukas was still alive.
Like his mother.
They would stay alive until Dolores decided it was time to finish the job. Maybe he needed to resurface one last time and save what could be saved. He made a powerful movement with his arms and, with a scream, he reached the surface of the water. The toxic gases and the dust scorched his lungs. He swam to the place where the grenade had blown a hole in the wall, just big enough to let him through.
He pulled himself up, vomited, felt the throbbing pain in his forehead and squeezed through the opening.
When he reached the other side, his first thought was that he’d found his way into a mass grave. All he could see were bones and skulls in the wall, arranged in the shape of a cross.
He fell to the floor. His head torch was flickering – it had probably been hit by falling debris.
He heard heavy footsteps approaching.
It sounded as if they were marching.
His light went out.
He sat up, looked for his gun and held it ready behind his back.
25
Gaelle tried to sit up in the hospital bed. She still had a splitting headache, and she felt sick. Luckily, one of the night nurses had removed the electrodes from her chest and detached her from the drip, so she no longer felt shackled to the bed.
Although…
The thin man sitting on a chair beside her – Franz Hanssen, trainee psychiatrist and on duty tonight – and carefully noting down everything she said, had told her she was not to leave the room. During a strange conversation, he’d tried to find out if she knew who she was, where she lived, what day it was and if she remembered what had happened.
“No, I don’t know what happened,” said Gaelle when he repeated the question. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
“That’s the procedure.”
“What procedure?”
Hanssen looked intently at his notebook.
“The rules we have to follow in this unit.”
“I’ve never heard of a hospital with such ridiculous rules. As soon as I get out of here, I’m going to make a complaint. Or I’ll get my husband to do it – he’s good at that kind of thing. Where is Bernd anyway?”
“Try not to become too agitated.”
“That’s not easy when no one will tell me where I am or what I’m doing here.”
He sighed.
“This isn’t an ordinary hospital. You’re in the secure unit of a psychiatric institution in Berlin, and specific rules apply here.”
“Like ‘You must drive people to despair by not telling them what’s happened to them’?”
“You’re becoming agitated again.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Try to keep calm. You have a concussion.”
The doctor looked at her.
“If patients are unable to remember certain facts, we’re not allowed to supply those memories for them,” he said. “It can harm the investigation.”
“Investigation? What are you talking about? A brain scan? Do I have a tumour, like my mother?”
Hanssen coughed as he pushed back his chair and stood up.
“I meant the police investigation.”
“What?”
“This is an exploratory conversation. The idea is to find out if you’re in a fit state to be questioned by the police. As far as I’m concerned, you’ll be up to it tomorrow morning, as long as you try to get some sleep first.”
Gaelle sat up in bed. She was dizzy, and the whole room was spinning. She could hardly hear what Hanssen was saying to her. She sat on the edge of her bed and saw her white legs sticking out from under the light-blue surgical gown.
“Where are my clothes?” asked Gaelle. “I want to go home.”
She slid off the bed and staggered over to Hanssen. She saw the panic in his eyes and the quick movement as he pressed the alarm button.
After taking two steps towards the door, she felt her legs go limp. She collapsed in the middle of the room and fell to the floor.
She heard the door open.
Running footsteps.
Hands lifting her up and laying her on the bed.
A jab in her arm.
And then nothing.
26
Michael was woken by the twittering of birds. They seemed so close that he thought he was in the house in the Tuscan hills. Or that somehow he’d gone directly from Hades to Heaven.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that neither assumption was correct.
He was lying in a room in a bed with white sheets, naked except for a pair of black boxer shorts. The decor was neat and tidy, but old-fashioned: roses on the wallpaper, a crystal chandelier, an antique bedside table with a nightlight on a crocheted mat and a large oak wardrobe. On the wall was a framed pencil sketch of the ruins of a medieval castle and, beneath it, the words château d’yèvre-le-châtel. He looked at it, but it didn’t ring any bells.
There was a glass of water on the bedside table, and he managed to sit up a little and take a sip. He felt lethargic. His face was burning and his heart was pounding. When he went to wipe the sweat from his forehead, his fingers encountered cotton. Someone had bandaged his forehead.
He blinked in the daylight that streamed through a crack in the wooden shutters. He could feel that the fresh air was doing him some good, and that reminded him of the toxic gases in the underground sewer where he’d nearly lost his life.
He heard voices approaching on the other side of the door. Where was his gun? He looked around and saw no sign of his backpack.
He closed his eyes.
The door opened.
“He’s still asleep,” said a woman’s voice. “I thought for a while he wasn’t going to make it.”
It was the same voice he’d heard in the Catacombs as the footsteps were coming closer. That was just before he’d lost consciousness. He’d had enough time to see that the voice belonged to a Frenchwoman with sturdy calves and bright-pink socks. She was wearing a safety helmet and carrying a torch, which she’d shone right in his eyes. He remembered what he’d asked her as he’d held his gun behind his back and the promise he’d made her.
“Who are you?” she’d asked. “Êtes-vous aussi cataphile?”
“That doesn’t matter,” he’d answered in French. “There’s ten thousand euros in my backpack. You can have it if you get me out of here without being seen.”
Then he’d promised her and the man who’d appeared another ten thousand euros if they’d take him to a safe place outside Paris, where he could recover. Under no circumstances were they to inform the police.
“Bien sûr, nous n’aimons pas non plus les cataflics,” she’d said.
He’d quickly hidden his gun in his backpack and he had no idea what had happened next.
He peered through his eyelashes at the couple standing by his bedside. Putting his life in the hands of someone who wore bright-pink socks was one of the biggest risks he’d ever dared to take. Somehow he felt he could trust the woman.
He was less certain about the man.
Fabienne followed on Claude’s heels as they entered the room where the wounded man lay.
“Your grandfather would be spinning in his grave if he knew his house was being used to hide an injured bank robber,” said Claude.
“Leave my dear departed grandfather out of this. Anyway, you don’t know for certain that the guy’s been up to no good.”
“Someone who’s carrying around two guns and thousands of euros in cash isn’t just some random day-tripper, Fabienne.”
She didn’t reply.
“We don’t even know his name,” he continued. “There was nothing in his wallet that gave away anything about his identity. Which is suspicious in itself, don’t you think?”
“Well, I don’t regret calling in sick, Claude. Or do you miss standing there like a tree at that Louis Vuitton store for hours on end and being happy because no passing dogs have cocked their legs?”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
She sighed.
“I thought you understood me, Claude. This makes me feel… alive. And that I’m not going to be drifting around some stupid village until I die, like my grandfather. This place doesn’t even have a baker’s shop.”
“I get that, but hiding a wounded criminal from the police is a different thing entirely. Now we’re accomplices after the fact, or whatever it’s called.”
“But we’re getting twenty thousand euros for it. We can finally go on a trip around the world. We can go to India or even Africa.”
“With dodgy money.”
“Now you really do remind me of my mum and dad and all those teachers who kept constantly nagging away at me.”
Fabienne walked away from Michael and stood, arms crossed, on the other side of the bed.
The man looked pale.
“You took good care of his wound,” she said.
“I did my best.”
Claude leant forward and touched the man’s cheek.
“We’ve almost run out of pills to bring his fever down,” he said.
“Then someone will have to go and buy some, won’t they?”
“It’s more than an hour to the nearest chemist’s, there and back.”
“So?”
“When we get back, he might have gone. That shutter won’t even close properly. And then we can whistle for the rest of our money.”
“This guy really doesn’t look as if he’s about to make a run for it. Hey, what did you do with the stuff in his backpack after you counted the money?”
“Hid it somewhere nice and safe, along with his two guns.”
“Where?”
“I’ll show you, Fabienne. I’d like to find out more about him, but his telephone and his laptop are locked.”
“If you don’t trust the situation here, I can drive to the chemist’s while you stay behind,” said Fabienne. “If you’re feeling brave enough.”
“Yeah, with two guns in the house, I feel pretty safe,” Claude bit back at her.
Then they left the room.
Michael had been able to follow their entire conversation, but he’d been getting sleepier. The two of them seemed helpful, but also naive. They would never imagine that his wallet had a secret compartment that contained one of his fake passports. He could do without naivety right now. Yawning, he tried to collect his thoughts. There was something he urgently needed to tell them. What was it again?
His eyelids were getting heavy. His body was pleading with his mind to be allowed to sleep. He tried to resist. There was something he needed to warn them about. It had something to do with what the woman, Fabienne, had just said. About driving to the chemist’s.
He remembered. He had to stop them from leaving the house, and if they did, they had to borrow one of the neighbours’ cars so that their own registration number wouldn’t be recorded by one of the security cameras at the shopping centre or along the motorway.
He knew what Dolores’s bloodhounds were doing right now. They’d long since hacked all the security cameras in the area around the Catacombs and were analysing the most recent video images, tracing the number plates of the cars that were there, checking for any connections to people who were familiar with the tunnels, and searching police and press databases for the names of all the people who had ever been arrested for illegal activity in the underground labyrinth.
One stroke of luck could be enough to lead the bloodhounds here.
And if they found them, not one of the three would live to tell the tale.
That was his last thought before his exhausted body dragged him into a dreamless sleep.
