by Marc Raabe
She shrugs and chews on her salad. ‘Sure. It’s my sideline.’
David smiles. ‘Did it help Bug, too?’
Shona snorts. ‘Oh god, no. For him, only something like broad-spectrum therapy could help.’
‘What?’
‘Broad-spectrum therapy. Just like broad-spectrum antibiotics. It covers everything.’
David grins sleepily.
‘How do you know Liz, anyway?’ Shona asks.
‘She did a story on me a while ago. It was mainly about Treasure Castle. The way she asks questions, it got very personal. But we’ve hardly had anything to do with each other since.’
‘And you didn’t know that she was your brother’s girlfriend? Is that right?’
David nods and looks at his baguette. Boiled ham and wilted lettuce stick out between the bread. ‘To be more specific, I had no idea whether I still even had a brother at all until about three hours ago when he called.’
Shona raises her eyebrows. ‘The phone call at the station when you ran me over?’
David nods again but doesn’t look at her.
‘When did you see each other last?’
‘The winter of 1987.’
‘Twenty years ago?’
‘At the time, Gabriel was in a psychiatric hospital, in a closed ward. Drug problems, among other things. He couldn’t kick the stuff on his own, it had gone on for years. He had absolutely no control. Either he’d go crazy, shouting at someone, or he was stoned in some corner.’ He takes a deep breath and sighs. ‘My brother is a psychopath – he was unpredictable and it just got worse. Everyone was afraid of him and so was I. I don’t think he would’ve done anything to me. For him, I was always little brother David and he felt like he needed to protect me. But basically, if anyone needed protecting, it was him, from himself.’
‘And I always thought you came from one of those perfect families . . .’
‘Well, more or less. Until I was seven. Then . . . our parents were killed.’
‘Oh god,’ Shona exclaims. ‘What happened? An accident?’
‘It . . . well, they never found out exactly.’
Shona raises her eyebrows. She senses that David is avoiding the question, but doesn’t push for any more information.
‘Anyway, then we were put in a children’s home – Elisabethstift in Hermsdorf, Berlin. All of it sent Gabriel entirely off the rails. Not that it would have been surprising if things went the same way for me, but with him it was different somehow . . .’
‘You mean because of the drugs?’
‘No, the drugs came later. He was violent, he lashed out. There were a half-dozen incidents where he’d put other children from the home into the hospital. In the end, he locked himself away with the director of the home and broke his nose and two of his ribs. After that, they took him to Falkenhorst, a home for troubled youths in one of those old Nazi villas along the Havel. But even they couldn’t handle him – he fought against everything and everyone over the slightest thing.’
‘And then?’
‘The psychiatric clinic, the locked ward at Conradshöhe. The visits there were a nightmare. I felt like I was in a Stasi prison. Barred windows, doors without handles, the television behind security glass. In December of ’87, just before Christmas, I visited him there. He was in rehab again.’
‘Rehab? But I thought he was in the closed ward. They have psychiatric drugs, sure, but none of the illegal ones.’
David shrugs. ‘In theory, yes. But there’s probably always a source somewhere. In any case, the nurses found a suspicious package in his room. And on top of that, they had to give him Haldol or other psychotropic drugs to keep him calm. It was never quite clear to me how they separated the drugs from the medication.’
David pauses and looks down at his sandwich. ‘When I was in his room, he was strapped to the bed. The second the nurse left us alone, Gabriel suddenly pulled his arms out of the cuffs. No idea how he managed it. But that’s Gabriel, things like that were always happening with him. He felt persecuted; he was completely furious and wanted to get out of the hospital, to run away. He actually had this crazy plan that I would help him.’
‘And how did he want to do that?’ Shona asks.
‘He had a kitchen knife.’ David stares at the ham sandwich and the scratched tray with its countless grooves in all directions. ‘He held it to my throat and wanted to get out with me as a hostage.’
Shona looks at him, speechless.
‘He swore that nothing would happen to me. The crazy part is, somehow, I even believed him. He probably would have killed himself rather than let anything ever happen to me. Anyway . . . the whole situation was entirely out of control, it was pure madness. I was just afraid. Just the idea of what he would do when he got out . . .’ David sighs. His eyes are blank, he’s focusing on something inside himself. ‘At the first security gate, I broke free and screamed for help. He hadn’t expected it. They needed five men to put him in a straitjacket. He didn’t make a sound, just fought back ferociously . . . If he’d at least screamed . . . When they finally forced him into the thing, they injected him with something . . .’
‘Oh god,’ Shona mutters.
David runs his finger along one of the grooves in the tray and goes silent. Gabriel’s expression was burned into his memory. Blue eyes, like his father’s. A lake with no land in sight, where no one knew what was hiding in its depths. In any case, there was no reproach or anger in his expression, not even sadness. Only goodbye. The shot worked within seconds and the lake filled suddenly with algae, dull and flat.
‘Totally mad, your brother,’ Shona says. David nods and grimaces in an attempt to smile.
‘He’d always fancied himself a Luke.’
‘A who?’
‘Luke. Luke Skywalker.’
‘From Star Wars?’
David nods. ‘We loved the films, especially the first one. Our room was covered in posters.’
‘Is he schizophrenic? Was he being treated for that?’
‘The psychiatrist at Conradshöhe spoke of more or less severe schizoid phases and paranoia. If he was having an episode, they would treat him with Haldol, a strong antipsychotic drug. And then he seemed more like a robot. After that, things would be calm for a while.’ He shrugs. ‘Sometimes I got the impression that he would act like that just so they’d leave him alone.’
Shona’s brown eyes take in David’s sad expression. ‘Well, at least your brother is in good company. Millions of children wanted to be Luke.’
‘The problem with that is,’ David says softly, ‘he always acted more like Anakin Skywalker.’
Shona feels goosebumps form all over her body. She shudders and lowers her eyes. ‘And today? Does he still have those episodes?’
David breathes audibly. ‘If you ask me, I get the impression that he is currently having a particularly severe episode.’ He stares at the tray. Somewhere nearby he hears the muffled ringing of a mobile phone.
‘Is that yours?’ he asks and looks at Shona.
She shakes her head. Her eyes drift across the table. ‘I think,’ she says softly, ‘that it’s coming from the envelope.’ Puzzled, David looks down at the brown envelope with the scrawled red handwriting as it vibrates in time with the ringing.
Chapter 19
Nowhere – 2 September
First, Liz hears the sound as if it’s coming from far away, as if someone were turning a key in a sky of cotton bandages. Suddenly, it’s as if the walls, which she can’t see, are moving in closer and capture the sound in her small room, her hospital room. I’m dreaming, she thinks, no one locks a hospital room. It clicks and someone comes in. She wants to open her eyes, but it is almost as difficult as last time. Just a moment, Liz thinks. Just a moment more to rest.
She senses someone approaching her bed. Please, let it be Gabriel! Her covers are lifted and set aside. Cool, moist air covers her body. The doctor, she thinks, disappointed.
She has no interest in open
ing her eyes, but she knows she has to do it. If the doctor could just see that she was conscious, they might take the tube out of her throat. If the doctor just knew she was fine, she would be released. And she wants to be released as quickly as possible.
She opens her eyes. Everything is bright again. The nurse has walked over to the wall. She looks subdued. To the right of the bed is a tall, slender figure wearing medical scrubs.
Liz looks up at his face – and is frightened to her core.
For a moment, she thinks she’s in a nightmare and that her senses – or some kind of medication – are playing a trick on her. The doctor smiles at her. Although he must be around fifty years old, his face is almost flawless, the face of an angel, with very few wrinkles, and even they do not take away from his beauty and youthfulness. Before her is someone with the visage of a Greek demigod – were it not for the other half of his face.
This other half, the right side, looks as if someone had peeled off the skin and then crudely sewn it back on, unevenly, full of craters and scars. The eye droops a bit and has neither lashes nor a brow. It coldly and pitilessly stares down at her stomach.
Liz suddenly becomes aware that she is defenceless in front of him. She feels the urge to jump out of the bed and run away, but she hasn’t the strength.
Pull yourself together, you fool. The man is your doctor and there’s nothing he can do about the way he looks!
The doctor smiles again without taking his eyes off her stomach. With his right hand, he lifts Liz’s thin hospital gown and pushes it up above her breasts, so that she is now naked before him.
When he lets go of the gown, there’s a noise. Liz goes stiff. The hand isn’t flesh and blood – it’s a prosthesis. Horrified, she looks at the shiny plastic arm as it slides back into the sleeve of the white coat. And all of a sudden, the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place.
The steel arm!
This is the man from the park standing in front of her.
His grin turns the ugly half of his face into a terrifying mask. His left, fleshy hand wanders down between Liz’s legs. The nurse stands against the wall with her eyes closed, as the man’s index finger touches Liz, travels through her pubic hair and draws a straight line up over her stomach.
Liz begins to shake uncontrollably.
‘Congratulations, Liz,’ the man says coldly. His voice is neither high nor deep. ‘We will celebrate later, on a very special day. But first I’ll have to get in touch with our guest.’ The grin turns into a distant smile. ‘He just has to answer the phone. You really can’t imagine how long I’ve waited – and how excited I am to see what he says.’
The man’s chest rises and falls; he is visibly excited. His breath caresses her defenceless body. Liz wants to take a swing at him, but she has no control over her body. Guest? she thinks desperately. What guest?
‘I also already have the perfect dress for you,’ he whispers. ‘Everything will work out when the time comes. It will be perfect. And he will suffer when he sees you. It will feel as if his skin . . .’ He leans in further and breathes hot air across her breasts, ‘as if his skin is burning.’
All numbness, exhaustion and fatigue have left Liz’s body. Adrenalin drives her senses, everything is horribly clear. She wants to scream, but the tube in her throat is blocking her vocal chords. Suddenly, she wants nothing more than to lose consciousness. Her breath is completely out of rhythm, making her feel as if she is being choked. She wants to go somewhere else, where there is no fear and no despair.
Her wish is granted immediately.
The man in the white coat injects a clear fluid into her vein and then increases the rate of her intravenous drip.
‘Let’s hope,’ the man whispers, ‘that it doesn’t take him too long to find the phone. Otherwise, I will have to send him something else from you.’ His eyes drift across her arms and hands.
The trembling diminishes.
Gabriel! Where are you? I want to get out of here! she thinks before drifting off to the place where she no longer has to feel anything.
Chapter 20
Berlin – 3 September, 6.27 a.m.
Gabriel pulls on the handle with all his might, but the lightsabre is stuck. Come on, Luke, don’t be like that! She will die and it’s all your fault. But somehow his hands are too small. And the thing is glowing so damned red, as red as –
But why red?
His sabre is blue. Luke’s sabre has always been blue.
He looks down at himself. His toes are small kid’s toes and there is something nasty in between them that smells like vomit. He has a camera in his hands and looks through it at himself. In the viewfinder, everything looks strangely far away. Even the stench seems to disappear.
‘We have to go,’ David whispers in his ear. He looks up at him and wonders: why is David so big? He looks as if he were fully grown. He is wearing a blindingly white coat and wire-framed glasses. His hair is strangely blown out to the side. He smiles with dazzling white teeth and pulls out a syringe.
The camera starts beeping in the rhythm of a heart rate monitor. A small, blinking battery appears in the viewfinder. Battery empty. The viewfinder flickers, suddenly the picture is gone and everything is dark, and from all the blackness comes a voice like his father’s, booming and godlike. ‘Wake up, breakfast!’ It repeats. ‘Wake up, breakfast!’ until he can no longer bear it and reaches for his gun. He can hardly grip the trigger with his little fingers. The shot sounds like a hand beating against metal. But Father dies and does not die, instead, he keeps calling: ‘Wake up!’ The next shot rings out so loudly that he opens his eyes in fright.
The dream shatters like a poisonous bubble.
‘Hey, get up, man.’ The walrus beats against the cell door with an open hand. ‘Breakfast.’
Gabriel gets up in a cold sweat, shaking like a sick old man. ‘All right, all right,’ he mumbles, goes to the door and takes the metal plate and a thin plastic cup through the opening.
The coffee is hot and he burns his fingers. The bread tastes like cardboard with cheese and salami on top.
Half an hour later, the latch on the cell door creaks and the door swings open.
‘Let’s go,’ the walrus says. ‘The shrink is here.’ Gabriel stands up much too quickly and is immediately dizzy. Last night, he barely slept a wink – but his nightmares lurk at the edge of sleep anyway.
The burly officer grabs him by the arm again and leads him to the interrogation room. Gabriel can smell peppermint. Even now, just before seven, he is chewing gum.
The interrogation room is as dull and dimly lit as the day before. Again, Gabriel sits on the same chair with the door at his back; the officer stands behind him and chews softly.
Five minutes later, the door flies open and the scent of an expensive cologne wafts into the room. Gabriel does not turn around; he has not forgotten how Dr Dressler smells and it still makes him queasy. Dressler’s thin figure brushes past him, not in his white uniform like in the past, but in a well-tailored dark blue suit with a dark blue shirt underneath it.
Dr Dressler throws his keys on the table – there are about a dozen, in addition to the black electronic key to his Porsche. They clatter on the wooden surface. A pink tie is looped around his neck, tied with marked carelessness.
‘Nice to see you again, Gabriel.’ Dressler’s watery blue eyes light up behind his black-framed glasses. His full head of hair is greying and carefully parted to the right as usual. ‘Even if I would’ve preferred it be under other circumstances. May I take a seat?’
Gabriel looks at him silently. The palms of his hands are as smooth as leather rags, and damp.
Dressler sits down, places his manicured hands on the scratched tabletop and looks at Gabriel. ‘How are you?’
Gabriel crosses his arms and remains silent.
‘Gabriel, I know you are worried. But there’s no need. I’m here to help you,’ Dressler says paternally.
‘I don’t need any help.’
Dress
ler smiles endearingly. ‘I would say you’re in a difficult position. Or have I misunderstood something?’
Gabriel bites his lip. He feels like he’s strapped down and unable to move his arms or legs. He hates that Dressler is still capable of triggering this feeling in him. ‘I don’t know how you would be able to help me. Or have you changed professions and are now working as a lawyer after failing as a psychiatrist?’
A shadow falls across Dressler’s smile. ‘Failed is not quite accurate. My treatments have had amazing success. It was simply not the right time for them back then at Conradshöhe. But this is twenty years later and that was just a fleeting moment. I’ve been a private lecturer and top specialist for sixteen years. And in this case, I was called in as an expert to determine your physical and, more to the point, your mental condition.’
‘My condition is just fine,’ Gabriel says.
‘And good old Luke? How is he?’ Dressler smiles. ‘Does the voice still ask for him from time to time?’
Don’t say anything wrong now, the voice whispers in Gabriel’s head. You know what he’s like!
‘Luke is gone,’ Gabriel says.
‘And the voice?’
‘What about the voice?’
‘What do you say when it asks for Luke? I mean, you have to respond with something.’
‘That he is gone,’ Gabriel replies.
Dressler looks at him through narrowed eyes like a snake trying to crawl inside of him. ‘Just the fact that you say that means that the voice is still floating around in your head, right? And wherever the voice is, Luke is not far behind.’
Just like before! The arsehole digs and digs!
Calm down!
What do you mean calm down? He twists your words and you want to calm down? Can’t you see what’s going on here? Beat the living daylights out of him!
In Gabriel’s head, everything is a confused vortex of voices and thoughts. He feels like he’s going to burst. ‘Go back to the filthy hole you crawled out of,’ he says, unable to conceal his anger.
Dressler’s eyes light up. ‘Pit Münchmaier – he came out of a hole too, didn’t he? I wonder what Luke would’ve done with him?’
