‘Miss Grauder, call BVG and the regional railway: what main stations had trains stopping at 9:10?’
Aaron says: ‘We don’t need to do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I know where the bus was.’
Aaron stands by the prison workshop waiting for Bukowski. A welding machine goes thump thump thump. ‘Stand back from the platform edge,’ come the words over the wall.
‘It was Holzhauser Strasse underground station. They were driving right past the prison. Two minutes later they were on the Stadtring and by now they’re somewhere in the city.’
Where a bus is as conspicuous as a needle in a haystack.
‘Still, Miss Grauder,’ Demirci says, regaining her composure.
The hubbub of voices begins again.
A suitcase is opened.
A snowball rolls down an aeroplane.
Aaron’s hand stings.
It’s not that.
Who else in the dream was still on the plane?
Demirci says: ‘Mr Pavlik, get two SETs ready for an attack. Inform our tactician and the logistics department. I want scenarios for the storming of the bus and a hostage rescue. Mr Mertsch, get the Federal Police to send two helicopters and every available drone into the air and see if they can find a coach making unusual manoeuvres.’
‘They’ll be delighted to get instructions from us.’
‘I don’t care. We have the right to intervene. Miss Aaron, I’d like you to question Sascha. Are you up for that?’
‘I was going to suggest precisely that.’
16
The coach drives along the Spree. Holm stands at the front with the driver. The children cower motionlessly in their seats. Some hold hands. A boy cries quietly, a girl shivers, another girl prays, another boy chews his nails to the quick. Holm watches disdainfully as Bosch counts the collected mobile phones again and puts them in a plastic bag. What is he supposed to think about a man who needs to count twice? But Bosch fulfils his purpose.
‘Stop,’ Holm says to the driver. He brusquely tells Bosch to get on with his job. Bosch gets out with the heavy holdall of explosives and the plastic bag. Holm checks his watch.
Twenty minutes until the next call.
His eye falls on the teacher whose eyes are darting down the street even though he had told them all not to look outside. The man is waiting for a chance to give someone a sign. The woman sits next to him, gripping his arm.
He’s a risk. Holm decides to put the brakes on him.
Back at the Holocaust Memorial he could tell they were lovers. He was looking among the dozen parked coaches for the right one, and saw the woman teacher using an unobserved moment in the labyrinth of concrete pillars to press herself against her colleague. If his brother had been there in his place, he would have chosen the bus for that very reason; Sascha would have had a lot of fun.
But not him. Holm chose the bus because of the mirrored windscreen. And of course because of the children. It was a sober calculation, they crank up the pressure.
‘Switch places,’ he says.
She immediately gets up to swap with the man so that he’s sitting by the aisle. Outside Bosch throws the bag into some bushes.
‘Does your wife know?’ Holm says to the teacher.
The man doesn’t answer.
‘I’m not going to ask twice.’
The teacher’s eye darts to the pistol in Holm’s waistband. ‘No,’ he whispers.
‘And your husband?’ he asks the woman.
She shakes her head without looking at him.
‘How long?’
Her voice breaks like a grass stem in a storm. ‘Eight weeks.’
‘Louder.’
‘Eight weeks.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Lena Gaarskjaer.’
‘And you?’
‘Magnus Sørensen.’ His knees knock together.
Holm brings his mouth close to his ear. ‘You feel guilty. But I can help you end it. I’ll kill the woman and leave you looking like a hero. That would solve all your problems. You might even become famous.’
Sørensen has to hold his knees still, they’re shaking so much.
‘Stand up.’
Panic sweeps across his features. He stands up and totters.
‘Say out loud: “I, Magnus Sørensen, have been sleeping for eight weeks with your teacher Lena Gaarskjaer.”’
He can’t get a word out. Holm presses the Remington to his head. ‘And I never issue orders twice.’
‘For eight weeks I, Magnus Sørensen, have been sleeping with your teacher Lena Gaarskjaer.’ He falls back down on the seat, buries his face in his hands.
Another child cries.
Two, three.
Lena tries to touch Sørensen but he turns away.
Holm puts the Remington back in his belt. Bosch gets back on the bus. He has stuffed the bag of explosives in the luggage space and turned on the detonator. They drive on, past Charlottenburg Palace. Tourists, souvenir sellers, traffic wardens around a breakdown lorry, a woman shouting at a dog.
‘Sorry,’ Holm hears the driver say. ‘We’ll soon be out of petrol.’
Holm walks over to him, but checks that Bosch has his finger on the trigger of the short-barrelled Uzi submachine gun. ‘You’re lying.’
‘Look at the display.’
A red blinking light.
‘I took over from a colleague at the last minute, there wasn’t time.’
Bosch comes to the front and speaks to Holm under his breath. ‘We can’t fill up. The risk is far too great.’
He gives Bosch a glance as cold as all the graves he has left behind him. Sweat drips from Bosch’s chin and seeps into his roll-neck pullover. Holm turns to the driver. ‘Where’s the nearest petrol station?’
‘On the North Loop.’
‘Go there.’
Behind him Bosch bends down to a boy with a teary, exhausted face, and says quietly, ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’
Holm looks the child in the eyes. ‘Do you believe him?’ While the eleven-year-old wets himself, Holm remembers that his childhood ended on a dirty blanket in the basement. He was nine, and he never cried again. He feels a draught behind him and turns around. He sees the driver reaching for the microphone. The man immediately pulls back his hand. ‘Before we started our tour of the city, we discussed a few things. You remember?’
The driver manages a nod.
‘Repeat what I said to you.’
His shirt drenched, the driver lists them: ‘If I try to flash the lights or give a sign in any other way, you’ll kill one. If I ignore a traffic sign or jump a red light or cause an accident, you’ll kill one. If I reach for the microphone, you’ll kill one.’
‘That’s correct. I’ll give very careful thought to who it will be.’
The driver grips the wheel. Holm sees the white of his knuckles. He picks up a thriller from the dashboard and reads the title. The Highlander’s Runaway Bride. ‘You should read better things than this. Have you heard of Thomas Carlyle? No, thought not. “The courage we desire and praise is not the courage to die decently but the courage to live manfully.” And what about you? Do you want to live?’
The man can’t even nod.
The two-kilometre drive to the North Loop passes uneventfully. When the petrol station comes into view, Holm turns to the teacher and the children. ‘I will get out with the driver.’ He points his chin at Bosch. ‘At the slightest attempt to attract attention, he shoots. We’ll do it like they do in school. All those who have understood raise your hands.’
They all raise their hands.
The coach stops by a petrol pump. No one else is filling up. Lorries are parked in the big car park. The truckers are sitting in the service station fifty metres away or sleeping in their cabins.
‘Do you know the pump attendant?’ Holm asks as the driver introduces the nozzle.
‘Yes.’
‘Will he want to chat to you?’
‘Yes.�
�
‘All this time you may have been thinking about how you might give him a discreet sign. You mention that you had to take your dog to the vet, but you have no dog. He asks you about your wife and you give the wrong name. He asks if you had a good holiday, you rave about Italy, but he knows it was Turkey. There are a lot of possibilities. Each one means your death and the death of this man. You just need to blink.’
*
Through the windscreen of the bus Bosch watches Holm going into the building with the driver. When he faced him for the first time a month ago he knew straight away that Holm was unlike anyone he had ever met. Holm had sought him out. He knew Bosch’s innermost thoughts, and Bosch felt cold. Holm doesn’t baulk, doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t doubt. He promised Bosch he would help assert his claim. Bosch knew he was telling the truth. But Bosch won’t breathe out again until Holm has disappeared for ever.
*
‘Hello, Heinz,’ the pump attendant says.
‘Hello, Lutz. Number three.’
The driver sets down the company credit card.
Behind him, Holm is flicking through a car magazine. He sees the driver and the pump attendant in the security mirror in the corner.
‘So, city tour?’
‘School class.’
‘You’re covered in sweat.’
‘I’ve got a cold. I’ve been dragging it around with me all week. It’s a real pain.’
‘My tip: call in sick.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Have a schnapps tonight, that helps.’ The pump attendant gives the driver his card back and waves to him. ‘Or have your wife give you a rub.’
‘Good hot bath is what I fancy. Thanks, take care.’
The other man glances outside. ‘Hey, your windscreen’s completely filthy.’ He comes around the counter. ‘I’ll clean it for you. There’s nothing going on right now.’
Holm spreads his shoulder blades.
The driver says quickly: ‘No, leave it, we should get going.’
‘OK. Well, get better.’ The man addresses Holm. ‘Can I help you too?’
‘No, thanks. I just wanted to stretch my legs.’
When he is already in the doorway with the driver, the pump attendant comes running after them. ‘Hey, you still have that tool-bag that I lent you in the bus. My boss has been asking for it. I’ll come with you.’
The driver, horrified, tries to tell him not to. But Holm has already pressed the edge of his hand against the pump attendant’s throat just below his jaw and thumped it with his fist. It’s all so quick that the driver doesn’t understand what has happened, and watches in confusion as the man drops dead to the floor.
Holm points to the store room. ‘In there.’
The driver doesn’t move, and just slumps to the ground. Holm drags the corpse into the store room and shuts the door. He pulls the cable of the mini-recorder on which the video camera pictures are stored out of the socket behind the counter and puts the recorder under his jacket. He pulls the driver up and drives him back to the bus. Thirty seconds later they’ve gone. No one noticed them.
*
The tap drips. Five or seven times a minute, but never six times. Every now and again rain drums on the window, but not today. Every now and again a bird crashes against the bars, but not today. Every now and again a crow caws, and he knows that it is winter. The seasons have become meaningless. He knows that it is winter because a crow is cawing and snow lies around the entrance to the courtyard.
The thin Albanian in the cell next to him coughs.
Above him the Serb walks up and down.
Below him the Lebanese weeps.
Because of him.
At some point he beat him up and told him he was going to do that every day from now on. People like him, who were thrown in jail for a few hundred grams of grass, are blank sheets of paper. You can wipe your arse with them.
How pitiful an existence must be that consists solely of fear. He doesn’t even notice these shadowy creatures when he causes one of them pain in order to numb his own with a few kicks and punches.
In Barcelona the Moroccans initially thought they could fuck him over. He washed out their leader’s brain in the shower outlet. The Basques were next. After he had shown their two best men what their knives were good for, the others lived like dogs on the leftover scraps. Then came the Tunisians, the Algerians, the French. In the end they ran away every time he poked the wax out of his ears.
He knew it would be his brother who determined when his punishment was complete. Apart from his father, his brother is the only person in his world that he has ever feared, or will ever fear.
That was how it was, when he was eight years old and his brother dug the grave in the forest. That was how it was when their mother died shortly afterwards and his brother looked after him from then on.
That was how it was for all the beatings he took, every time he dared to glance at his brother.
The word love was never uttered between them, nor was their father’s name, and not a single word about what had happened before the grave.
He learned to pay attention to his brother.
He learned to rule from his brother.
But if he could he would kill his brother.
His brother alone would determine the day.
He knew: four years was the minimum.
He would wait that long until the announcement in the prison newspaper.
Now I understand my place. I want to find the person who knows what I’m like.
Weeks passed with the question of whether his brother could see that he was kneeling in front of him. Perhaps that time had not yet come. But a month later the woman wrote to him.
There is no such thing as fate, only destiny. I would like to know more about you.
He had to write ten letters and got ten back from her. It was torture, inventing a life that was like the life of the shades, and each self-pitying sentence repelled him and made him feel soiled.
But that was part of his punishment.
Six months later she visited him in Barcelona. She was already shivering when he sat down next to her. Pretty. One of those women who usually turn their noses up at the world. But he had power over her because his brother had power over her. He saw that she was disgusted when he rested his hand on hers, and he was aroused.
He wanted to show her what you can do with a pretty nose like that.
She visited him a second time. He looked forward to seeing how agonizing it was for her to say the words she needed to say, to hear her voice breaking.
She passed him the message that contained everything he needed. He applied for a transfer to Berlin, sat down in front of the committee and crossed his legs. He marvelled at the stupidity of the guys in suits, and knew that from now on every thought and every step and every day and every night would pass in a breath.
It was a pleasure sitting opposite the prison director in Tegel and knowing that this man who thought he was always a commander and never a follower was merely a dice that his brother was shaking in a cup.
He ordered him to get hold of the film.
Gave it to Boenisch.
When he saw the one Boenisch wanted, it was hard for him to keep his patience under control. The days leading up to the moment when he closed the door to the cell and the woman belonged to him were the best he had had in many years. But if he was asked what Boenisch looked like, what he talked about, what shadow he cast, he couldn’t say. He means less than the shit on the sole his shoes.
Just a shame that he wasn’t allowed to have more fun with her.
He runs his finger over the scar on his neck, as he often does, and shuts his eyes, as he often does, and imagines Aaron’s world. The dripping of the tap. The coughing of the Albanian. The weeping of the Lebanese. That’s what she would get, that and nothing more. She was given the punishment that his brother thought appropriate. But it’s only the first hell of many. He can list them all, and he likes every one of them.
&nb
sp; The Serb walks back and forth above his head. Today he feels like breaking a couple of his toes for fun, just to hear him hobbling, but there won’t be time for that.
The cell door opens.
Sascha smiles.
17
At 9:40 a.m. the call is put through to operation headquarters. Holm’s voice fills the room. ‘Are we all here?’
‘Are the hostages unharmed?’ Demirci asks.
‘I’m only talking to Miss Aaron.’
Aaron waits for ten seconds before she speaks. She has to prolong the phone call so that the phone can be located. ‘Are the hostages alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Prove it.’
‘You know I’m not going to bring thirty people to the phone. Don’t let’s waste time on nonsense. Put my brother in a car. A BMW 7-series automatic. There’s a bag with five million Euros in used fifties and hundreds in the boot. If you do everything correctly, none of the hostages will be killed.’
‘To get your brother out of jail we would need to talk to the Senate Interior and Justice Departments. The decision isn’t in our hands, there’s no way I can give permission. The same applies to the ransom. It would take us hours to release such a sum. If we could do it at all.’
Has the phone been located? Aaron looks enquiringly at Pavlik.
‘Forget it,’ he whispers to her.
‘Do you think I don’t know my brother’s already on his way to Budapester Strasse?’
Deadly silence.
‘If he wasn’t, I would have underestimated Miss Demirci. Miss Aaron, your negotiating skills are a real insult. There’s fifty pounds of C4 explosives on the bus, right beside the petrol tank. That’s enough to turn Leipziger Platz into a crater. Or maybe Gendarmenmarkt? The detonator is primed. I’ll give you two hours to get hold of the money.’
He hangs up.
Aaron mimes that she wants some headphones. The recording is played back again.
Very quiet weeping. The sound of traffic. Indicators. The bus stops. Crying again. Whispering. The bus drives on. The whispering stops. Aaron takes the headphones off. ‘There are at least three children on the bus. That needn’t necessarily mean anything, but it could be a school class.’
Demirci says: ‘All the police in Berlin are to keep an eye out for buses full of children. If they’re suspicious, they can observe them inconspicuously from unmarked cars. All bus companies in Berlin and Brandenburg are also to be contacted. Ask which of them have a bus booked out to a school group.’
In the Dark Page 17
