*
Vera has been crying until just now. All Aaron could do in that cramped box-room was to rest her head against Vera’s, to feel her fighting for each breath, stiffly swallowing her tears. Now Vera is so drained that she’s choking on mucus.
‘Where’s the revolver?’ Aaron whispers.
No answer.
‘In the bedroom?’
Vera tries to weep again, but all that emerges is a lengthy wail.
‘I’d like to get an idea of the house. Will you help me?’
Silence.
‘Give me a guided tour. You can do that.’
‘Maybe.’ Vera’s breathing is short.
‘How many rooms are there on the ground floor?’
Vera thinks. ‘Kitchen – guest toilet – dining room – front room – this box-room – office – hunting room.’ The biblical Aaron could have cast the Golden Calf in the time it took her to deliver the list.
‘Now I’d like you to imagine the paces you would need to take. A completely normal, unhurried walk through the house, no hurry.’ Every pace takes half a metre. ‘We’ll start in the kitchen, because I know it. Where do I go next?’
‘The corridor.’
‘And then?’
‘The guest toilet – I think it’s nine paces. Yes, nine.’
‘Go on.’
‘From there you go into the dining room. It’s a long corridor. Wait – I can’t say exactly, it’s hard if you just imagine it. But if I had to give a figure I’d say twenty paces.’ Vera’s voice becomes firmer, picks up speed. The task that Aaron has given her helps her to think of something other than her parting from her husband this morning, not a good one, no kiss, just because of his moth-eaten favourite pair of trousers which she secretly threw away. ‘The corridor bends on the left. The box-room is there. Twelve. Another little way and you reach the front room on the right. Nine – no, more like eight. But you can also go through the dining room.’
‘You’re doing a great job. Let’s go into the dining room from the corridor. How many paces to the front room?’
‘Just a moment – ten, I’d say. On the left.’
‘Is there anything in the way?’
‘No. That is, there’s a bearskin with the head on.’ Vera’s account is becoming increasingly lively. ‘Klaus is very proud of that, he shot it in Canada. I tripped over it and, snap, there went its jaw. I fixed it with superglue, and Klaus never noticed. You’re best off sticking to the wall.’
‘A grizzly?’
‘No, a brown bear.’
‘Where’s the revolver?’
Aaron senses Vera stiffening, and goes on talking. ‘We’re in the front room now. How is it furnished?’
Silence next to her.
‘I’m sure you’ve got lovely furniture.’
Vera battles to give her an answer. ‘Biedermeier.’
‘Three-piece suite?’
‘A sofa and two chairs. A television. Dresser on the left. From the dining room you get straight for the French windows on to the terrace.’
‘How big is the room? In paces?’
Vera walks across it in her mind. ‘Quite big. Twelve to the French windows, fourteen in the other direction.’
‘Where’s the office?’
‘Behind the hunting room. Oh yes, the door also leads on to the corridor, I forgot, sorry.’ Vera’s voice wanders along an empty channel of tears. ‘And that one leads to the basement.’
‘How many paces from the kitchen to the office?’
‘Just a moment, I’ll have to start again from the beginning, I’m getting very confused.’
Aaron doesn’t press her.
‘Twelve. On the right. Straight ahead is the corridor with the front door. And the stairs. Seven, I would guess.’
Aaron knows the way into the house through the hall into the kitchen, just as she knows the way to the box-room and the basement. Vera only ever miscalculated by a single pace. But for Aaron a pace could mean the difference between life and death. ‘I want to go back into the front room. There’s a dresser, you say. And the other furniture?’
‘A sideboard and a chest of drawers.’
‘On which wall?’
‘On the right. So not where the chest of drawers is. The other one on the right.’
‘Carpets?’
‘Velvet.’
‘Where is the revolver?’
‘They’ll get their money. They’ll let us go. You heard.’
‘He’s lying.’
‘How do you know? If you go on asking about the revolver I’m not saying another word.’
‘Let’s go into the office. What’s in there?’
Vera reflects that her husband didn’t beep his horn when he drove away as he usually did. And he didn’t wave.
‘But there must be a desk?’
‘On the right by the window,’ she answers mechanically. ‘A shelf of files. Lino. All the way through the hunting room. Eight. That’s where the antlers are. All in green, not to everyone’s taste. In the middle there’s a big table for the hunters. And a fine rug. There’s a beer pump and the weapons cabinet.’
‘Where’s the revolver?’
33
A small animal flies into the thicket, a wildcat or a raccoon. It leaves an excited zigzag in the snow that glimmers green in the display of the infrared goggles. Crystals spray from the trees. The wind is coming from the east with the moonlight, just under fifty kilometres an hour. The cry of an owl is followed by the sound of a jaybird’s imitation; it sounds as if it is returning the call, when in fact it is mocking it.
As he creeps through the undergrowth he listens to the duel, which the owl will lose. He is wearing a ghillie suit, and the hood of the shaggy camouflage fatigues is pulled down so far over his head that he can only see his surroundings through slits. His footsteps are slow but fluid. He sets down the outside of his feet first, and then rolls them inwards to avoid making a sound by breaking twigs. He has covered a kilometre like this over the last hour, he has left the solar panels behind and finally climbed the hill where the Fords are waiting under their snow-covered nets.
He creeps the last few metres, hugging the ground, pushing himself along with one leg. His head leans to one side, his cheek touches the snow. Before each movement his hands feel their way through the undergrowth and gently move aside anything that could make a sound, however faint. He advances inch by inch, taking four minutes to cover the short distance to the hilltop. He drags his rifle with him, holding the strap between thumb and index finger. There is a condom over the muzzle of the Barrett Light Fifty to keep out the snow.
Pavlik removes the infrared goggles. He takes the white roll mat out from under his ghillie suit and wriggles on to it. When he was here with Kemper a few hours ago he saw the boulder he would use as a rest for the Light Fifty. He mounts the silencer and covers it with the condom to keep condensation from collecting inside it. He wraps the barrel loosely with a bandage. He focuses through the night sights on the hill on the other side of the runway, the clearing there. It’s a popular picnic spot in the summer because of the panoramic view over the airfield. A sign exhorts visitors to keep their dogs on a lead. He can read the text very clearly, from what must be eleven hundred metres. The rangefinder shows one thousand and ninety-nine.
The questions were simple: what would he do if he had chartered a plane and didn’t want the Department to find out about it? Someone will have to scout out the airfield. Who? Certainly not Holm. Sascha would be unlikely. Bosch. He is the most dispensable, and he knows his way around airfields. When? Not before one o’clock in the morning. Where? From the point with the best view.
Pavlik had considered lying in wait on the other side. But an exchange of fire would have been too great a risk. He needs Bosch alive, it’s the only way he can force him to give away his hiding place. That’s why he comes up with another plan; for that he needs the Light Fifty with the silencer, the distance is too great for the Mauser.
H
is eyes had become accustomed to the infrared goggles, and now they have to get used to the darkness once again. He knows it will be thirty minutes before they have fully adapted. Pavlik deliberately looks at the target window using only his peripheral vision; in that way he stimulates the photo-receptors on the edge of the retina, the ones responsible for night vision.
‘Fear dusk, not night.’ The old sharpshooter proverb has entered his blood.
While he was climbing the hill, it stopped snowing. But blustery clouds are still drifting in the sky, and could break at any moment. The snow he is lying on, the snow that covers everything, is his friend, because it illuminates the night. Pavlik takes this fine snow into his mouth to cool his breath, so that it won’t give him away. But the other snow, the snow coming from the clouds, is his enemy, it obstructs his vision, it plays temperamentally with gunfire. He is also concerned about the wind. It can determine speed and direction for fifty metres at the most, and he doesn’t have precise knowledge about the conditions on the other side of the slope. The tree-tops that bend gently at the edge of the glade don’t tell him much; even a deviation of five kilometres an hour alters the ballistics of a bullet.
Without his noticing, under his ghillie suit his left hand plays with the cartridge case that Helmchen gave him. Eighteen years. Every hour of those years lies deep in his bones. He knows he somehow has to stay awake.
Before he set off, he called Sandra. So many times he was grateful to her during those calls for never showing him how worried she was, and for not wanting to give him further cause for anxiety. Rather than firing questions at him, she talked about their daughter, about how she had drunk her fill and was now fast asleep, how sweet she looked with her favourite toy in her hand. Her name was never mentioned. And why would it have been? Sandra knows he would give his life for Aaron. She doesn’t need to waste another word on the subject. If it happened, she would only scream at night. But then she would wrap Aaron in her arms and grieve with her.
There was another name that his wife did utter. She said something that made him think for several minutes, crouching on the concrete floor, eyes closed, smoking.
‘When he came back from Barcelona, you invited him to our house. You were in the cellar fetching beer, I was alone with him for a few moments. He couldn’t look at me for a second.’
Pavlik remembers that evening. Sandra went to bed early. She took a tablet so that she could get to sleep, as she had done for six months. He was sitting with Kvist on the porch swing in the snowy garden. They emptied a case of Beck’s and only opened their mouths to drink. Eventually Kvist got up to go to the toilet, or so Pavlik thought. But when he checked ten minutes later he had disappeared.
They had always said goodbye the same way.
See you, Don Pavlik.
See you, Don Kvist.
Not this time.
He wraps his fist around the cartridge. How many nights pass in eighteen years? One of those, the last one, will decide whether everything else was right or in vain. Whether he has to give his life or take the life of the man who was his best friend.
The black spot that is starting to dance in front of his right eye tells him to close it for several seconds because it is overtaxed. So quickly. Ringing Sandra again would be pointless. Pavlik’s attention would wane; he would become sad, because at such times he wonders whether he might be hearing her voice for the last time. Without planning to do so, he always ends those phone calls with a word that sounds like a farewell, a sentence in which Sandra might later be able to find consolation. It used to be: ‘Give Jenny a kiss from me and whisper to her that she makes her father very happy.’
She knows that. But they’ve never talked about it.
He ties on the mouthguard of the ghillie suit, puts in the earpiece of his phone and calls Demirci.
She picks up immediately. ‘Yes?’
‘Tell me something,’ he whispers. ‘Ask a question that will make me think. Or else let’s just chat.’ He is careful to bring his voice down an octave, keep the vowels short, lisp the sibilants.
Let’th jutht chat.
‘Just a moment.’
A door opens, and closes. He knows she’s in the corridor now, undisturbed. ‘What did you think when you heard you were getting a female boss?’
He laughs silently. ‘I said to Lissek: “He was good. Have you another one like that?”’
‘Not enough testosterone?’
‘What nonsense. Aaron was with us. And she has the biggest balls outside a bowling alley. Without wanting to tread on your toes.’
‘So what was it?’
‘Half of your job is politics. Our arses depend on it. Those guys in their pinstripes have more swagger than any of us. Well, maybe not more, but different. I wasn’t sure whether you would be taken seriously and whether you’d be able to watch our backs. But today I know the answer to that one.’
‘But you didn’t think that much of me.’
‘I know you think that, but you’re mistaken. Before you came, I did some digging. A mate of mine, Jan Pieper, a head honcho at the BKA, knew something about your time in Dortmund. Abdul Öymen.’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘Öymen collected protection money right across the Ruhr. You investigated him in relation to thirteen murder cases; the victims included women and children, but you couldn’t hang anything on him. One evening you strolled into his local, where he was sitting at a table with eight men, and told him in front of all the guests, probably in excellent Turkish, that he was a total coward and his cock would fit in a matchbox. Öymen followed you into the street. He wanted to hit you. The special unit that you brought with you temporarily held him for attempted bodily harm. They didn’t even question him. But that same night you had your informers spread the word that he had squealed on his own people. The next day his lawyer got him out of jail. Six hours later Öymen’s corpse was drifting in the Ruhr with a bullet to the back of the neck. Dortmund’s supposed to be a quiet little spot these days.’
‘You were fed complete lies.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes. I told him his cock would fit in a thimble, and there would still be enough room for his brain.’
‘I thought you were a lady.’
‘I thought you wouldn’t remind me.’
‘Do you do parties?’
This time it’s Demirci who laughs quietly.
‘I like that,’ Pavlik murmurs.
‘What?’
‘When you laugh. Do it more often.’
‘I like it when you lisp.’
‘And I had elocution lethonth and everything.’
Her tone changes. ‘I’m sorry about what I said about your twin brother.’
‘That’s OK. I can’t stand the old whiner.’
‘The fact that Kvist has disappeared doesn’t prove anything.’
‘Now you’re being sentimental.’
He hears a voice in the background. Nowak.
‘Just a second,’ Demirci says. She holds her hand over the phone. The snow in Pavlik’s mouth melts. Then she’s back on the line. ‘Sascha has told us the handover terms. Regional Express Berlin–Angermünde. Leaves in fifty-seven minutes. He’ll let us know when and where the bag is to be thrown from the train.’
‘Does that line go past Finow?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll call you.’
*
By now they’ve walked through the house four times in their heads. All the paces on the ground floor and the first floor, thirteen steps, stone, a bend to the right after eight. They lead to the bedroom and the guest room, to Vera’s room, her refuge where she likes to sit and read actors’ biographies, then to an ironing room. There’s no loft extension. Aaron knows where each lamp stands or hangs, she knows the furniture, the floorings, the rugs, the colour of the curtains. If the door to the box-room was open, they could run off and probably reach every room, every item of furniture, without bumping into things more than once or twice.
&n
bsp; But Vera still hasn’t told her where the revolver is.
There’s a second room, too, Aaron’s inner room. In there, she was thinking. She would hide the gun somewhere where she could get hold of it straight away if she had to. A burglar, at night. So she decided on the bedroom a long time ago. The only issue was the side Vera’s husband was on. Just on the left of the door. But: under the bed or in the bedside table? There’s a huge difference; Aaron will have only a fraction of a second to decide where she’s going to reach.
A car drives out of the courtyard. A powerful engine, in a low gear. ‘How many cars have you got?’ she whispers.
‘Three. My runabout, a Mazda – I like nippy little cars – our van and Klaus’s jeep.’
The transporter we came in.
Or the van.
‘But Klaus is away in the jeep.’ Vera finds a few tears she had forgotten. ‘If you’d seen his old trousers, I’m sorry. All the things he’d done in those. Chopping up deer, clearing the stable, driving to the bait shop. And you could tell. He even wore them at the dinner table. And the stench of them. You’d have thrown them away just as I did, wouldn’t you?’
‘Did he wear them when he cleaned the revolver? The one he kept in his bedside table drawer.’
She can tell by Vera’s twitching, her vain attempt to shift away from Aaron in that cramped space, her suddenly quick breathing, that she’s hit the bull’s eye.
‘It’s fine. Don’t worry.’
‘Please don’t do that,’ Vera begs.
Aaron wants to calm her down, reassure her that she won’t make her go and get the weapon, but the door to the room opens quietly. Token-Eyes’ smell hits her nostrils. She senses a rapid movement. Vera sighs. The door is closed and locked again, just as quietly as before.
‘Vera?’
Not a sound.
Aaron’s voice fades away. ‘Vera? Vera, please say something.’
Trembling, her bound hands search the lifeless body beside her. Vera’s ribcage is soaking.
Aaron smells the blood. She screams and screams and screams.
*
He dreamed that Sascha was four, and wanted a toy bulldozer for Christmas, but got only shoes and colouring pencils and a sketch pad. He dreamed that the man who had once called himself father first pushed Sascha down the steps two days after Christmas. But when the man who had once called himself father opened the door, standing behind it was the one the man had called son, the one the man had taught how to use a chainsaw. He cut the man who had once called himself father in two down the middle. The two parts fell to the ground to the right and left, and there was a stream on the ground that washed them away. He hugged his brother and heard him say: ‘I wasn’t scared, because I knew you would protect me.’ He dreamed that they drove into town with their mother and she bought Sascha three scoops of ice-cream and him a new shirt. That they ate something with ketchup when they got home and a crow pecked at the window.
In the Dark Page 38
