The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  He spun round to face the door. Seconds that may have been minutes passed before he drove himself to open it. By the time he did so, the doorway was empty.

  It was not until he was closing the door again that he saw a piece of paper lying at his feet. Crumpled and folded in half, the note was not even given the dignity of an envelope.

  ‘You have not chosen well. Be that as it may, stay in your room now until you receive word from me. The streets are not safe for you.’ It was signed ‘Your friend’, which he took to mean Lutz. What was he playing at? And how does he know I’m here? Frank asked himself.

  His head was still sore, and this new bafflement did nothing to help. As he flopped back into the chair with the note in his hand and a horde of questions pressed on his bruised mind, there came a second knock. Lighter this time. But it jolted him into action more quickly than the first. He opened up almost before the knocking had stopped. He expected to see Lutz. It was the elderly woman from the reception desk.

  “Your aspirin, sir,” she said. He found another piece of folded paper being pushed into his hand with grudging force, this one containing what felt to be half a dozen tablets.

  He was still too washed out to express his gratitude verbally, but managed what must have appeared a very thin and sickly smile. She waited. Was it the slowness of an ageing mind or the weight bearing down on her arthritic knees which kept her at his door? Probably neither. He dug his hands into his pockets and gave her a handful of coins. She looked at the coins, shrugged and shuffled uneasily away down the corridor, her progress muffled by her slippers on the carpet.

  Eight tablets she had given him. The first two brought almost instant relief, helping him to banish the reminder of his earlier torment and to focus on trying to fathom the motives of Lutz. What was he playing at? Why suddenly change direction and put himself at such risk? He knows what Breitner is capable of. And he gives the impression of being anything but a spunky lionheart. So why should he want to help? Frank asked himself. He doesn’t even know me. These questions occupied his mind for the rest of the evening, and kept him awake for most of the night.

  Whatever Lutz’s game, Frank resolved the following morning to ignore the advice at all costs. But perhaps it was not so much resolve as the ill-reason and woolly wisdom born of a restless night that drove him onto those unsafe streets. It was a sleepy, bleary-eyed city. Sleepier even than he was feeling. But unpredictable. This had always been plain to him. And on this particular morning, the air seemed thick with its perfidy.

  The mediaeval streets and the half-timbered houses – so spotlessly maintained – boasted a certain homely charm and suggested the place felt smugly comfortable with its history. It was an irritating comfort, caressed by the occasional aroma of roast chestnuts that still clung to the odd street corner from the night before. Yet no one smiled in the streets this morning. An odd disquiet hung in the air.

  After breakfast in one of the town’s sleazier restaurants, where he imagined his unshaven unslept appearance might be less conspicuous, he decided it was time for his confrontation with Achim. His recollection of how to get to Achim’s place was hazy, but he was able to recall Silverstone leading him along a tired street behind the station. And a search in this area quickly brought him to that strange shop, where the sour, suspicious shopkeeper had stood sentry for Achim. Only today it appeared to be closed. The door was locked, and the place was in darkness. Yet he caught a hint of movement in the shadows through the door. He knocked, and knocked again. But the place remained stubbornly quiet.

  He was not a curious person – Patricia had put that on record – so perhaps it was his determination to confront Achim that drove him. At all events, a certain curiosity had been aroused, and an alley to the side of the block obligingly led round to a back entrance, which he found to be open. A dead silence filled the house. The movement must have been the reflection of traffic in the window. But it was not simply the silence that told him there was no one here. A fetid stench filled the dark passageway, which smothered the lungs and threatened to suffocate him with its rancid miasma. Cautiously he made his way up through the half-light of the stairwell to Achim’s attic flat. He knocked on the door. But there was no response. And the door was firmly locked.

  He recalled that, when Silverstone had brought him here, Gertrude had been in the basement below, that this was where Achim had made his workshop. The basement steps brought him back into the noxious reek that had confronted him when he first entered. An acrid smell of ammonia mingled with decay. It clawed at the back of his throat. He covered his face with a handkerchief and eased open the basement door with a calmness and steadiness that surprised him in view of his fear as to what he might find there.

  He let the door go, and it swung slowly back, allowing the stench to blast a way into every pore of his face. He caught the sound of rats scurrying for cover, and ran his hand down the wall beside the doorframe groping for the light switch. The grim horror of the scene lit by a single naked lightbulb was too repulsive to be real. A solitary surviving rat – perhaps the dimwit of the community, or just plain hungry – remained unimpressed by the intrusion and continued to gnaw at the heap of meat that lay draped over the two smaller cadavers. The clothes of each body had been torn away and hung now in sporadic tatters from the congealed crevices of flesh, which in places had been chewed right down to the bone. The bodies had been devoured away beyond any hope of recognition, but he knew instinctively that he was looking at Gertrude and her two baby boys. He remembered the vivacious beauty that he had met in Berlin all those years back. Recalled the pale anxious creature he had seen with Achim just a short time ago. And the two little faces, so full of future, so precious to their mother. Three once fragile souls now nothing more than rat fodder.

  Light from the solitary naked bulb was reflected in the twisting bodies of the maggots which breathed ironic life into a nightmare that would stay with him for as long as he lived.

  Frank sobbed into the handkerchief over his face. He could stay there no longer. He needed to breathe. But the fresh sweetness of the cold outdoor air was not enough to prevent him throwing up – it seemed to hurry the event – as he came out onto the steps of the back entrance. And as he watched the last mucous remnants of breakfast swim into the gutter, his thoughts began to spin. What was going on? Who could have let this happen? And where was Achim?

  His mind was a mess, teeming with unanswered questions. And nowhere to go for an answer. Frank thought of the note from Lutz – the unsafe streets – he must have known about the nightmare that lay here. But the truth of his warning did not make the man any more trustworthy for him – on the contrary. So, rather than return to the Kolping house, he decided to take refuge out of town. Somewhere he could think and consider his next move without trouble breathing down his neck. But he was not prepared for the new shock that was waiting for him round the corner.

  The cloth cap, the beard and the unkempt appearance were unmistakable. The last time Frank had seen him was in Cologne. Now here he was keeping vigil at the newsstand of another station entrance, ostensibly buying his morning newspaper. By a stroke of good fortune, a tram obscured the cloth cap’s view of Frank on the other side of the street, opened its doors for his escape and obligingly carried him away under cover of the passengers standing on the station side of the tram.

  ‘Did he see me?’ Frank asked himself. It was impossible to know. So he kept a cautious eye out for him when he alighted from the tram just a few minutes later and switched to the narrow-gauge railway that would take him out of town. The little station house at the city end of the line in what was once the hay market gave him all the cover he needed to keep an inconspicuous watch while he waited for his train.

  He saw no further sign of the familiar, cloth-capped stranger. But his distress gnawed at him too deeply for this knowledge to fill him with any sense of security. The hunter may be anywhere. So, when he alighted from the train at the last stop before the frontier, he took every pr
ecaution that a running fox might take.

  Only two other passengers got out at his stop – a man and a woman, both rheumy-eyed and plainly on the pilgrim’s path to the basilica that lay at the top of the hill. His cautiousness had evidently been unnecessary. He strode on ahead of these two timidly slow pensioners, up the hill past the restaurant where he had met Gertrude and her two baby boys with Achim. Three lives full of history, full of dreams, full of hope. Three futures that had just ceased to be. Smiles that were no more. The memory pierced his heart to the quick and filled it with a huge, painful sense of loss that was out of all proportion to his fleeting knowledge of them. He tried to banish the images from his mind as he continued up the hill to the castle ruins. To no avail. Perhaps this was the wrong place to be at such a time, but he needed the fresh air and the altitude. He needed that clear vista over the trees, over the city, across the border.

  If the demise of Gertrude and her two boys was not down to Breitner, then it was presumably the work of his friends. Maybe the cloth cap. At all events, he was convinced that Breitner had played some part in the butchery. But why? Why such innocence? And what had happened to Achim? He cursed his stupidity for ever having suggested to his friend that he join him in what had seemed such a peaceful haven. They might all be safe and well if he had kept his naive ideas to himself.

  As he approached the castle ruins, his thoughts were momentarily distracted by a sound in the undergrowth that startled him.

  The cloth cap had found him after all, he thought. Instinctively, he sought cover behind the nearest bush. But when he looked in the direction of the noise, he was made sheepishly aware of his foolishness. Just off a side path some twenty metres to the left of him stood a rather stocky man busily tending what looked like a grave, digging out the few remaining weeds of winter with a trowel and arranging a bouquet of snowdrops in their place.

  It struck him as an odd site for a grave and left him feeling uncomfortable, like an intruder at a stranger’s funeral. But the man was deeply enwrapped in his devotional work and did not seem to notice him. Frank was about to leave the man in the privacy of his ritual, to continue up the pathway to the castle, when something held him back. A loud cracking sound that tore through the valley. The sound of gunfire.

  The grave tender paid it no attention, as if gunfire was one of life’s everyday sounds which belonged as much to the backdrop of this valley as the birdsong in spring or the wind in the trees.

  Frank wondered whether it might be the local huntsman shooting game. Then it occurred to him that the people in this country had a penchant for firearms which was nourished by their fierce sense of independence. He recalled often seeing young men off on their bicycles to do some shooting practice, or military service, with rifles strapped to their backs. Everyone seemed to keep a weapon at home. ‘They’re going to need them if the Nazis ever march across the border,’ he muttered to himself.

  Recalling also that every community had at least one shooting range for their marksmen to practise on, he assumed the sound of gunfire that reverberated through the valley now, invading its rustic charm, was a sign that just such a practice session was in full swing. This could be the opportunity he was looking for. He turned and headed back the way he had come, passing the two pensioner pilgrims who were still making their way patiently up the hill.

  The continuing crack of gunfire as he reached the other side of the valley told him that the practice session was not yet over. The shooting range was discreetly concealed in the woods, unmarked and not signposted. It was for the initiated only. So every shot served as an acoustic beacon for him to home in on.

  Eventually he found the long barrack-like hut at the foot of the limestone rocks that jut out of the landscape in this part of the world like badly kept teeth. And as he stole around the building in search of a door, he felt as small and as mean as the bacteria that bring caries to the impoverished and the ignorant.

  He was in luck. When he gently eased open the door, he saw that the marksman was alone and looked to be in the process of getting ready to leave. Pushing the crack of the door gently to again, he hastily took a log from a pile of firewood that was stacked against the building, pinned his body to the wall and waited. His heart pounded so fiercely he was sure that the pulse of his tensed frame must be audible on the wooden boards of the hut. Just as he was beginning to wonder whether the shooter might have slipped out through another exit of the building, the door creaked open. From his insecure vantage point, he could see that the man was carrying a large leather bag over his shoulder, which he let slip to the ground as he locked up behind him.

  This was Frank’s moment. Emerging from around the corner, he brought the log down on the crown of the man’s skull before he had a chance to turn. Frank was struck by the almost spongy softness of the bone beneath the wood and prayed that he had not done this poor unsuspecting stranger any serious damage. Frank found himself apologising to the spreadeagled body for this violence, but his need – he told himself – was more urgent and more real than the marksman’s.

  In the leather bag, he found two handguns. Not wanting to overstate his case, he took just one. Together with some rounds of ammunition. And tucked them into his overcoat pocket. He then dragged the man’s body back into the building, locked the door on him, and quickly considered his retreat. Since he needed to vanish into thin air without anyone seeing him, the village was plainly the wrong direction to turn. So he took a path that led up around the limestone rocks and over the hill that lay parallel with the railway line running back into town. By keeping to the grey-brown blanket of trees that covered this last dorsal outcrop of rock on the north-east tip of the Jura, he knew that he would eventually reach one of the sleepy villages further up the line, where he could take the little blue train back to Lutz’s unsafe streets.

  The light of day was already beginning to fade, hastened by the path that carried him away down the eastern flank of the hill, where it lost all trace of the setting sun. The spreading gloom in the forest around him, the silence of the undergrowth broken only by his own footsteps, and the lights coming on in the distance celebrated his isolation. He gazed down at the lights of the village as he ran his fingers over the weapon in his pocket. Taking it in his hand and fishing the ammunition out of the box he had pilfered, he decided to load it before continuing his trek. Best to be prepared, he told himself. If Breitner’s friends or the cloth cap ran across his path, he would be ready for them.

  Chapter 17

  “I’m so happy you could return so soon.”

  This was all Dr Zellweger said as he shook Ellen’s hand and – flustered, but correct as ever – politely took her luggage when he met her at the station. There was concern written all over his face. Ellen sensed that he wanted to say more. But she knew he was not inclined to discuss his patients outside the clinic, so he was certainly not going to attempt it in the hall of a railway station. It was not until they were in his car that he spoke again.

  “Your husband seems to have entered an extremely labile phase,” he said. “I’m very worried about him.”

  “You’ve found him then?”

  He started the engine and focused on the traffic around him as he drove out of the station car park. Ellen was left teetering on the edge of expectation until he eventually found the words.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  Again he fell silent and left Ellen waiting for him to elaborate further. While anxious to know more, she was also fearful of where her own curiosity might lead her. And asked no further questions. When eventually Dr Zellweger did speak, he also had no further answers for her. Only more questions. Guarded ones. The cautious, considered questions of a psychiatrist.

  “My wife tells me you have seen your husband in Cologne?’

  “Yes. I told her when we spoke on the phone yesterday that I’d seen him the very day I left here. When I changed trains in Cologne. He was getting on a tram just outside the station.”

  “Are you sur
e it was your husband?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “This is very interesting,” he said rather mysteriously. Ellen almost had the impression he was talking to himself more than to her. “You see, we have evidence that your husband was here two or three days after you left.” He paused, ostensibly for reflection. But Ellen had the feeling it was more for effect, especially the way he threw the next question at her. “Why do you think he has been there?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. But I know it was him.”

  Generally, the polite correctness of Dr Zellweger had a calming influence on Ellen. She appreciated it. But today his manner irritated her. And she had no wish to share her suspicions about why Frank might have been in Cologne.

  “What do you mean by ‘evidence’?” she asked. “You sound more like a policeman than a psychiatrist.”

  He smiled.

  “Like any science, psychiatry must also rely very often on evidence.”

  “I thought you focused on facial expression and body language.” Ellen’s irritation made her a little too bold perhaps, but she felt she had a point to make, and was certainly not going to be taken for the fool he seemed to think she was. “Is that why you’re talking round in circles?” she added. “Because you have to keep your eyes on the road and haven’t got time to watch me?”

  His smile now broke into a laugh, and although his amusement seemed genuine enough, she felt it was driven by embarrassment rather than a sense of humour. But at least it gave her the feeling that she had scored some kind of a point.