by Marc Raabe
Gabriel nervously glances at his mobile.
Are you still hoping she’ll ring you, Luke? the voice in his head mocks.
Gabriel doesn’t answer.
Forget it. She won’t do it. And you know why? Because you’re not important to her.
Shut up. She’s just angry. That’s all.
Angry? No! If she were angry, she’d ring and let you have it. But you’re not even important enough for that.
Shut up, damn it!
I’m only looking out for you, Luke. Nothing more and nothing less. It’s what you always wanted.
Gabriel bites his lip, sets his phone to vibrate and puts it away. As if Liz were going to call him now anyway. He turns on his Maglite and lets the beam of light dance across the house. The front door is made entirely of black wood in a herringbone pattern with a green tarnished angel head doorknocker. Beside the door is a tarnished nameplate with embossed italic letters: Jill Ashton.
Mr Ashton was apparently a she.
The cylinder lock in the door appears undamaged. Gabriel goes to feel the surface for scratches. When he touches the wet metal, the door swings open, creaking, and reveals a clear view into the entry hall.
Gabriel holds his breath and listens. Dead silence.
Behind him, a car drives past on Kadettenweg. The sound of the tyres on the wet street cuts through the silence.
Gabriel takes a deep breath and quietly steps inside. He is greeted by the scent of decaying beams. There is a massive wooden staircase in front of him that leads upstairs and gets lost in the darkness. To his left is the living room. Gabriel points his torch at the ground and his back tenses. In the thick layer of dust, he can see clear footprints – footprints that lead behind the stairs, where there is probably another staircase to the cellar, and footprints leading into the living room.
Gabriel’s heart beats faster. He carefully walks parallel to the trail, putting one foot in front of the other, and enters the living room. There, the prevailing scent is of old house – of money, old books and old values. The furniture is draped with sheets, the outline of each piece alluding to a past life.
At the other end of the living room, where the footprints lead, is a wide Victorian fireplace, with a chimney breast covered with fine black marble to the ceiling. On the mantelpiece is a full row of silver picture frames. Gabriel follows the footprints until he is standing directly in front of the photos. He has goosebumps all over his body when he sees the faces in the pictures. They are instantly recognisable: a woman, around forty, with dark shadows under her eyes, but still beautiful with long black hair nestled around her neck; and a very young man, not even eighteen, with flaxen hair and the flawless and arrogant look of an Adonis.
Gabriel is frozen in front of the mantel. The woman’s gaze pierces into his, as if there were a window to his soul that she’d just pushed open.
Suddenly, he thinks of Liz, even though the black-haired woman hasn’t the slightest resemblance to her. He closes his eyes for an instant. When they open again, the moment has passed.
Gabriel stares at the ledge and the shiny glass on the photo. Strange, he thinks. No dust? Shiny glass? The dust on the mantelpiece is also smudged, as if someone had pushed the photos to the side. Gabriel leans forward and looks into the hearth. A large black marble slab stands in the middle of the fire grate, leaning against the black wall of the fireplace. Strange.
He straightens up and looks at the chimney breast. At eye level, just above the photos on the mantelpiece, hangs a picture covered with a sheet like the furniture. Gently, he takes it off the hook with his fingertips. Behind it is a recess where a smooth grey door to a metal safe reflects the light from his torch. It measures about forty by thirty centimetres, and has a key slot in the middle.
Gabriel taps on the safe with his fingertips. He hears a faint thud and the door moves, maybe one or two millimetres, no more.
He pushes the photos on the ledge aside, pulls open the metal door with a fingernail and looks inside the safe. Completely empty. Either it was always empty or the burglar found what he was looking for.
Gabriel closes the safe again, hangs the picture back in its place, and resists the temptation to get his mobile out of his jacket, conscious it must be after midnight.
He turns around, goes back into the hall, careful to avoid smudging the burglar’s footprints, and goes around the massive old wooden staircase. He is now standing at the threshold of a long unadorned flight of wooden steps that lead into the cellar. Several red dots blink in the darkness of the cellar. For an instant, he is filled with the same fear that he always felt at the top of the cellar stairs in his parents’ house. The irrational feeling that something is waiting there for him. He shines the torch down into the darkness and sees the central controls of the alarm system with their red lights.
OK. Go downstairs, reset the alarm, lock up the house and go home, Gabriel thinks. He can give a statement to the police tomorrow. From how everything appears, the burglar is already long gone.
He goes to take a step and his foot suddenly slips on the first stair. He stumbles, reaches for the railing and drops the torch, which tumbles down the wooden stairs with a deafening crash and a confused flurry of light.
Breathing heavily, Gabriel freezes.
With a metallic clatter, the Maglite rolls across the cellar floor and remains there, rocking back and forth.
The red dots on the alarm system blink in competition. It only just occurs to Gabriel how much the cellar stairs are actually like the ones in his parents’ house. He is suddenly dizzy. The red dots glow like the peephole in his father’s lab would sometimes glow whenever he was inside.
Luke! Wake up. This is not your cellar. Your cellar doesn’t exist anymore.
And if he is down there? Gabriel thinks. If Dad is down there? He asks the question almost too earnestly, with the anxious voice of an eleven-year-old.
He is not. You know that, Luke. You know that!
Gabriel’s hand clings to the railing and he closes his eyes.
Damned déjà vu. Damned lab. Damned father. Not once had he been allowed to see the lab. In his imagination, it had grown into something monstrous – a magical space with the fascinating yet repulsive power of a chamber of horrors, much like this house here. All of that would have gone up in smoke if he had been allowed to go into the lab just once. But he had never entered it. Not once. And in the end, it was too late. The lab didn’t exist anymore.
Gabriel pulls his shoulders back, opens his eyes and pulls himself together.
Ridiculous.
After all, this is not the cellar at his parents’ house. And the thing with red lights down there is nothing more than an antique alarm system.
Let’s go.
With a few light steps, he goes down the stairs. He picks up the torch and his fingers are closing around the soothingly cool black steel when suddenly he feels something move. Something touches his head, falls over him like a heavy blanket. He flails about to break free. The beam of light twitches across the wall, a dark figure collapses beside him and something wooden rattles throughout the cellar.
Gabriel stumbles two steps to the side. Breathing heavily, he points the torch at where he had just been standing. On the bare cellar floor, there is a pile of fabric and a wooden hanger lying in a dark puddle. It’s only at second glance that he realises it’s not just any piece of fabric. It’s a dress. Black, extravagant, expensive. A dress that you normally only see on television at fashion shows.
But what the hell is a dress like that doing here? He lifts the dress from the puddle. Water drips from the soaked fabric. Gabriel looks up at the cellar ceiling where a copper pipe is leaking.
The beam of light from the torch moves across the spark-ling fabric.
The dress looks new, clean and not at all as if it could have spent decades in this cellar. And then there’s a piece of paper.
Gabriel furrows his brow and stares at the soggy sheet before him. Where there probably used to be
an image, the ink has mixed into an unrecognisable colour soup, as if a paint box had been leaking.
Whatever there was to see on the paper is now gone.
Chapter 6
Berlin – 1 September, 11.54 p.m.
‘Well? Not such a big mouth any more, eh, bitch?’
Liz writhes on the ground and protectively holds a hand in front of her belly. ‘I . . . I need help,’ she stammers.
The spotty one blinks in surprise, then grins at her. ‘Help. Well, all right . . .’
Confused, the one with the drippy nose looks at Liz’s hand, which is still resting protectively on her stomach. ‘Hey, Pit, is she . . .’
‘Shut it, man,’ the spotty one barks.
‘There’s a lunatic running around,’ Liz groans, ‘who wanted to kidnap me . . . almost killed me.’
‘Look at that, the mummy’s scared.’
‘Pit . . .’ the drippy-nosed one mumbles, unsure. ‘And if there’s really –’
‘Shut it, Jonas!’
Liz tries to sit up again. ‘What kind of cowards are you?’ She drags her head up and is now kneeling on all fours.
‘Cowards, eh?’ Jonas stares at Liz and cocks his head. Liz glares at him; slowly, the life returns to her body.
‘Guys like you just . . .’ She doesn’t get any further. The spotty one puts his foot against her shoulder and pushes her to the side like a sack of potatoes.
‘Shit . . . cunt!’ Jonas stammers. Then he kicks her in the chest and she rolls onto her back. Pit bends over her and stares at her. His eyes are hazy but there is a fuse smouldering somewhere deep inside. She sees the blow coming and, as she wonders how someone so drunk can throw such a good punch, she feels her nose breaking. A hundred pointed nails are driven into her face at the same time. The pain spreads like an explosion. She throws up her hands, moaning and rolling to the side. Blood sprays out in front of her on the path.
She hardly feels the kicks any more, as they hit her body like muffled explosions. She loses any sense of time.
Out of breath, Jonas finally stops. The sparse stubble around his mouth glistens with moisture. ‘Ay, wait, man.’ He looks down at the woman on the ground. ‘Stop. She’s had enough.’
‘A bitch like this has never had enough,’ Pit gasps.
‘Man, it’s done. Leave it. The slut got her thrashing.’ Jonas grabs his friend’s arm and tries to pull him away.
‘Shit. Let go of me, fucking idiot.’ With all of his strength, the spotty one pulls free. Then he grabs Liz’s coat and rummages through her pockets. He takes her purse without comment, then reaches into the breast pocket on the inside, fishes out her mobile with two fingers and rejects it. ‘Man, what rubbish,’ he growls and drops the phone like a hot potato. With a soft clatter, it lands on the path right in front of Liz.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘And if she talks?’
Liz groans.
‘How? She doesn’t know anything.’
‘And if she does?’
Jonas contorts his face.
Liz groans again. The blood rushes into her skull. This has to stop. But no one stops the pain. The tiny bits of stone on the path sting like pins.
Pit looks down at Liz’s head. Her red hair shines in the dull light of the lamp. He smiles viciously and doles out a powerful kick.
‘Are you mad?’ Jonas’s voice cracks. He grabs Pit by the arm and tries to drag him away, their steps pounding against the ground in front of Liz’s nose. Small stones spray like shrapnel into her face. The sole of his shoe buries the mobile beneath it with a miserable crunch.
‘Shut up, man,’ Pit snarls and breaks free from Jonas. ‘Shut up already, you pussy.’
Liz’s head is spinning. Everything tastes metallic.
The pins feel strangely dull. Her eyelids weigh tons.
She blinks.
There’s something lying there. The mobile! Directly in front of her, like a mirage.
What did they do to the mobile?
The two guys run off. Pit and Jonas. Their footsteps thunder like hooves. The phone’s cracked case sticks out between the stones, the display is dimly lit. The time on the digital clock changes. Midnight.
It’s September 2nd, Liz’s thirty-fourth birthday.
Chapter 7
Berlin – 2 September, 12.01 a.m.
Gabriel points his torch at the grey switch box on the wall with its several red flashing lights. An old SKB 9600, a dinosaur of an alarm system, and way too large for a private home, even a mansion like this. On the bottom right, there’s a faded sticker from Python with an emergency phone number. A thick cable leads out of the top cover. Two of the lines are freshly cut with a wire cutter, the copper strands shimmering in the torchlight.
Gabriel stares at the cut cables. One of them has to be the connection to the siren. But what is the other one for?
A gentle breeze, still damp from the rain, comes down the cellar stairs. Gabriel shudders and turns around, as if someone had breathed on his neck. Suddenly, he is no longer sure that he is alone in the house.
At that moment, his jacket pocket vibrates. Gabriel flinches. Damn it! His hand hurries into the pocket and fishes out the mobile, while also glancing nervously over at the stairs. No one in sight. Why does he feel like someone is there? The mobile purrs in his hand. The name Liz Anders comes up on the display.
Please, not now! he thinks.
He quickly presses the button to ignore Liz’s call. The mobile is quiet again.
Tense, he listens in the dark. Nothing. Only the whisper of the wind on the stairs. He reminds himself that he never closed the front door. The loose cables lie there like bare nerves.
What the hell is going on here?
What burglar is interested in a house that’s been empty forever? And how does he know the alarm system so well that he can deliberately disable the siren? Sure, there are plenty of burglars in the area who are able to manipulate alarm systems, but a model that’s a good thirty-five years old? And if he really knows it so well, then why did he miss the silent alarm?
Suddenly, his hand is vibrating again. Liz! Again.
Now turn that thing off, Luke, the voice whispers.
And if it’s urgent?
Urgent? Shit! What do you think we’re doing now? What if the burglar is still here? And on top of that: what do you think it’ll be about? It’s her birthday, you aren’t there, she’s going to bitch and moan . . .
Gabriel doesn’t answer, just stares at the shining telephone display and the little black letters.
Liz Anders.
Damn it! Put that thing away!
Gabriel presses the green button and puts the phone to his ear. ‘Liz? I can’t talk right now,’ he whispers. ‘I’ll get back to you soon!’
‘Help me . . . please. Help . . .’ a weak voice stammers.
Gabriel’s body stiffens. ‘Liz?’
‘Pl . . . ease . . . help me . . .’ Liz stammers. Her voice is as thin as paper.
‘Oh god. What happened?’
‘I was attacked. I’m bleeding . . . there’s blood everywhere . . . my head . . .’
Gabriel’s heart stops. His chest tighters. The alarm system’s red lights blink. ‘Where are you?’ he asks and presses the phone to his ear to hear her better.
‘In the park. Friedrichshain. Near my flat, around the corner . . . please, I’m scared . . .’ she sobs.
Gabriel opens his mouth, but no sound comes out.
‘Gabriel . . . ?’
‘I . . . I’m here. Liz? Listen. I’m sending you help. You hear?’
‘Where . . . where are you?’ Liz asks, distraught.
‘I’m coming now. I’m coming, Liz. You hear?’
‘I’m cold,’ she whispers. ‘So awfully . . . cold.’
‘Liz?’
No answer. Red dots in front of his eyes.
‘Liz!’ he screams into the phone. His
voice echoes through the cellar. His heart is racing. He hears a quiet noise from the telephone. A cold sweat forms on his forehead. ‘Liz! Are you still there? Do you hear me?’ Gabriel desperately presses the mobile to his ear. ‘I’m getting help,’ he says. ‘Hang on. Please – hang on!’
Nothing. Just a soft crackle on the line.
Gabriel breathes in until he feels like his lungs are going to burst and then he ends the call. When the connection breaks, it is as if a rope has been cut and Liz is swept into the deep.
For a fraction of a second – or is it minutes? – he stands there motionless.
Then, with trembling fingers, he dials emergency services. Pick up, damn it! Pick up! With the mobile pressed against his ear, he sprints up the stairs and through the front door. The light on the alarm system bathes the garden in a red glow.
‘Emergency call centre, Berlin,’ a well-rehearsed voice squawks from the earpiece. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Hello!’ Gabriel says, throws open the driver’s side door and jumps into the Golf. ‘This an emergency, in the park . . .’
‘Hello? Is anybody there?’ says the voice from the headset.
Please, no! Gabriel thinks. Please don’t be a dead zone! ‘Hello?’ he screams. ‘Can you hear me?’ He switches the mobile to his left hand and starts the car with his right, throws it into reverse and speeds out over the gravel road and into the street. ‘Hello? Helloo!’
‘Oh, yes, now I can hear you. What’s the problem?’
The Golf shoots backwards out into the street. Gabriel frantically turns the steering wheel and hits the brakes. ‘An emergency,’ he shouts into the phone, ‘at Friedrichshain Park.’ He throws the lever of the automatic from ‘R’ to ‘D’ and slams on the accelerator.
‘Listen, I can understand you better if you don’t shout like that,’ the man says, agonisingly calm.
