by C. A. Larmer
He shrugged, disappointed by the lost opportunity to make fun of his favourite client.
“Anyway, like Mum says, you shouldn’t have to do this alone, Rox. Nor should you have to pay for any of it. He is my brother after all and, unlike you, I am earning obscene amounts of money on my stocks at the moment. I can help.”
Roxy wasn’t convinced Caroline would be any help at all, but she appreciated the company and could do with the financial assistance. Caroline was right. Ghostwriting other people’s stories wasn’t exactly a road to riches. She made a decent income, managed to meet the mortgage repayments on her tiny inner-city pad, but with the Edward Stray bio now complete, her diary was terrifyingly empty. There wasn’t even a vacuous freelance article waiting in the wings.
“You do have some spare time at the moment,” Oliver mentioned, clearly reading her mind and looking as guilty as he could manage. As her agent, he should have lined up another book by now but he was finding it increasingly difficult to convince people to employ a professional to write their life story. These days everybody had a blog, website and their own Facebook page, and considered themselves a budding author just waiting to be discovered, a la Elizabeth Gilbert or David Sedaris. Roxy’s particular skill had become devalued and it would cost them both dearly, but that was a conversation for another day.
And so the two women had booked themselves on the first available flight to Berlin that Saturday morning, Roxy turning up in comfy black leggings and red and white striped top with a small suitcase and red leather handbag, Caroline in quite the opposite. She was dressed to kill in skinny, baby blue jeans, a spangly silver top and strappy creamy wedges that looked about as comfortable as a smack in the head. Her Burberry designer suitcase was large enough to clothe a family of four and God knows what she was hauling around in that enormous matching handbag, although Roxy did spot several glossy magazines, a large makeup case and a full-sized iPad.
Caroline was tapping away at it now as they slowly worked their way through a tasteless yellow blob the flight attendant had euphemistically referred to as “omelette”.
“I got an e-mail from Mum and she says to thank you big time for doing this, Rox. She still hasn’t heard anything from Max, or from the bloody flatmate for that matter. Says she’s left something like ten messages on his home phone. How hard is it to call back?”
Roxy thought of her own mother then and felt the familiar twinge of guilt. She had called her very early that morning, giving her as brief an appraisal of the situation as was possible before the hysteria had kicked in.
Why was she going? What on earth was she thinking? How could that Max Man ask this of her? How dare he, for that matter?!
Roxy shuddered and pushed her mother’s shrill voice from her mind and said, “What about your dad? Does he think we’re overreacting?”
“Maybe a little, but as he says, it’s one thing for Max to ignore his messages, or mine for that matter, but he’d never ignore Mum’s.” She delicately peeled the lid off her juice packet. “I can’t help thinking that maybe his phone has just run out of power, you know? He might have left his charger at home and doesn’t realise we’ve been trying to get in touch.”
“So how does that explain the weird text I got last night? Plus, hasn’t he got another gadget? Like an iPad or something? Surely he would have responded to your e-mails or Facebook messages by now.”
“Yeah, he’s got the iPad mini I gave him for his last birthday, but maybe he left that in Berlin.”
“Then how did he post those mountain pictures on Facebook last Monday? They’re obviously of Mt Pilatus.”
Caroline rolled her eyes at Roxy. “You sound like my inept parents. You can do that on any smartphone these days, Rox.”
She eye-rolled her back. “Hey, I’m no Luddite. I’ve got the latest iPhone, don’t you know!” She reached for the seat pocket in front of her and pulled it out, Max’s face dancing to life on the screen.
“Max is your screensaver?”
Roxy blushed. “Well, we need a picture of him, just in case.”
“Sure, that’s the reason he’s your screensaver.”
Roxy ignored this and stared at the image of Max for a few moments. It was a closely cropped photo, his brown fringe flopping down, almost covering one eye, his smile wide and wolfish and tugging at her heartstrings as it always did. She pushed her so-called breakfast away.
“Did you talk to your folks about the Consulate-General in Berlin? Getting them to check with the airports?”
“Dad says no way; too early to call in the Big Guns. Max isn’t officially a missing person yet, is he? He’s due at work on Monday. He may show up, darling, making fools of us all.”
“Well, if he does, brilliant. But if he doesn’t then your dad has to call the Australian Embassy. We need to check with passport control in Berlin and Brazil, find out if he ever arrived there.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that. Oh, and did I tell you I tried Max’s flatmate again, before we left?”
“Anything?”
“Zip.”
Roxy considered this. “I wonder where he’s been all this time. What do we know about this guy, anyway?”
“Not a whole lot. Max found him through some online classifieds when he was looking for a flatmate. He has a great apartment, apparently, but it’s large and pricey and he needed someone to help out with the rent. So he took Jake in.”
“Musician, right?”
“Yes,” Caroline replied just as the flight attendant appeared with the coffee pot. They both held their cups out to be filled, Roxy grabbing a few extra sugar satchels at the same time. “In fact,” continued Caroline, “because he’s a muso, I think he’s been pretty slack with the rent. Last I heard Max was thinking of booting him out. I guess he hadn’t got round to it.”
“Or maybe he had,” Roxy said.
“Oh, right, you think that’s why Jake’s not answering? He’s moved out?”
Roxy’s thoughts were actually a lot darker than that and she couldn’t help wondering whether Max’s disappearance had something to do with unpaid rent. Caroline had clearly cottoned by now because a tiny worry line appeared above Caroline’s eyes.
“You don’t honestly think this flatmate has done something to Max?”
“No, of course not. I’m just chucking theories out into the universe. Ignore me.”
The worry line turned into a scowl. “For goodness sake, Roxy, people don’t go around killing people over unpaid rent, you know.”
“Hey, settle down. Nobody’s killing anybody, okay? Max is okay. No one is dead.”
Little did she know, as she sipped her sweet, murky coffee 30,000 feet above the earth, those words would soon come back to haunt her.
Chapter 4
Twenty-eight hours, two stops and endless cups of appalling coffee later, Roxy and Caroline arrived at Berlin’s Tegel airport, piled their luggage into the back of the first available taxi, and made their way straight to Max’s apartment in the grungy inner city suburb of Kreuzberg.
It was just after 11:00 a.m. and Roxy was weary to the core. She’d barely managed an hour’s sleep the whole flight. Caroline, on the other hand, had slept like a baby, her head propped against Roxy’s shoulder most of the way, a velvet mask over her eyes, little yellow ear plugs firmly in place. She’d swallowed a Valium halfway along and that, coupled with several gin and tonics, had helped knock her out for the rest of the flight. Roxy had refused all medication, she’d wanted a clear head, but she realised now she had done herself a disservice. Her head just felt fat and foggy and she tried to shake it into shape as she anticipated meeting Jake and getting some clear answers about where Max might be.
En route from the airport, Caroline checked her iPhone for messages and yelped when she found one from Jake. At last! Roxy was thrilled, too, and they both listened to it several times as the taxi zoomed across the freeway and towards the city centre. It was a voice message that had come through to Caroline’s mobile sometim
e while they were over the Indian Ocean, and he seemed both upbeat and blasé. He had a chilled out American accent and sounded younger than they expected, a little like Keanu Reeves in a bad surfie flick.
“Hey, Max’s sister! Call off the hounds, babe. There’s a stack of messages from you guys, you clogged up the message bank. Max is cool, man, he’s got it all under control, I’ve just seen him, he’s A-O-K.”
The message then stopped abruptly, not so much as a friendly good-bye, but that was typical of Americans, they decided, having seen their fair share of US TV dramas.
“Anyway, I’m relieved,” Roxy said, slumping into her seat. “But I do wonder what he means by ‘he’s got it all under control’? What’s he talking about?”
Caroline raised a shoulder. “Who knows. Jake can explain it all when we see him.” She smirked at Roxy, giving her a playful tap across the shoulder. “I told you everything was fine! Still, now we get to have a glorious holiday. I’m looking forward to checking out some of these famous Berlin nightclubs.”
Roxy smiled at her but couldn’t quite muster the same enthusiasm. She wouldn’t relax until she saw Jake and heard it all for herself. She wanted to know where Max was and why he hadn’t been responding to their messages, and she couldn’t get to his apartment fast enough. Yet when they arrived at the relevant street, the taxi was blocked from entering by a flashing police patrol car that was parked across both lanes. Roxy’s stomach clenched.
“Is everything okay?” she said to the cabbie.
He looked over his shoulder at her. “You out here. No can go.”
Roxy glanced worriedly at Caroline who was dabbing some gloss on her lips and checking her reflection in a small hand mirror. “You’ve got the right street, yeah?”
Caroline flung her makeup back into her handbag and glanced down at her iPhone where she must have tapped in the address.
“Yep, this is it. Come on, let’s do it!”
They had managed to change some cash at the airport and Caroline pulled out some euros and handed them over before gathering her things and hopping out. As the poor cabbie wrestled to free Caroline’s suitcase from the boot, Roxy continued scrutinizing Max’s street, wondering if his sister had noticed the strong police presence. Apart from patrol cars at either end, there was an oversized white van in the middle of the road and several other cars that looked suspiciously “official” with radio antennae sticking out and dark glass on every window. Both entrances to the street had been cordoned off with police tape, yet another universal sign that shit had officially happened and, with the taxi now backing away, Roxy headed straight for a tall, thick-set police officer who was manning the tape at their end, chatting to a man holding what looked like a TV news camera by his side.
“Um, hello, Sprechen Sie English?”
He raised his eyebrows but said nothing. She wasn’t sure what that meant but tried her luck anyway. “We need to get down this street.” She pointed. “Um, her brother lives here.” This time Roxy pointed back to Caroline who was standing behind her, leaning on her suitcase.
The officer glanced towards Caroline and back to Roxy, nudging his eyebrows mutely again.
“Can we?” Roxy waved a hand back down the street.
He sighed, stepped away from the cameraman, and said in very stiff, slow English, “Vot number?”
“Sorry?”
“Vot number you vant?”
“Oh ... um ...” Roxy turned back to Caroline, calling out, “What’s the building number, Caro?”
Caroline looked almost bored as she glanced down at her iPhone and yelled back, “Seventy-eight!”
That’s when the officer’s laissez-faire attitude changed and Roxy shrank back. She didn’t want his attitude to change, she wanted him to brush her off, tell her to come back later when the street reopened. But he didn’t do that. He now had an alarmingly invigorated sparkle in his eyes.
“Come! Follow!”
He called something out to a younger officer at the other end of the tape and the man’s jaw dropped and he nodded. The cameraman also looked excited, thrusting his camera up to his shoulder, and Roxy put her head down and kept walking.
They were led down the street, past several more flashing police cars, a group of curious onlookers and the big white van, and towards a crumbling grey building with ominous gargoyles on each corner and even more ominous police officers standing to attention at the entrance to the building. Its doors had been propped open and there was a small plaque with the number 78 etched into it. Through the doorway Roxy could see several more people milling about, some in civilian clothes, some in police uniform.
A wave of nausea hit her then and her legs felt wobbly but a quick glance back at Caroline’s blank features gave her strength. If Caroline wasn’t getting worried, why should she? She looked at her again. She seemed to be in a kind of daze, detached almost, and Roxy wondered whether she was thinking positively or was simply in denial, and if that was better or worse than the fear that was now coursing through her veins. In any case, she reached back and grabbed her friend’s hand.
“It’ll be fine,” she said, more to console herself than anything.
“’Course it will,” Caroline replied. Then, to the officer, she asked almost breezily, “So what’s going on?”
He held a hand up to stall her then called out to someone inside the foyer of building 78. A man in a dull brown suit turned to stare at them for a second before saying something to the others and making his way outside.
“American,” the first cop said, nudging his head at the women, and Roxy bristled.
“Australian. Actually.”
The plainclothes cop nodded. “You are Australian. Okay. Vot is your name?”
Roxy waited for Caroline to answer but when she didn’t, she said, “I’m Roxy Parker, this is Caroline Farrell. Her brother Max lives here.”
Oh, God, she thought, please let him still live here.
“Apartment number?”
Roxy nudged Caroline who slowly consulted her phone. “Ahh ... 3B?”
Without missing a beat, the man said, “Come.”
He waved them up the stone stairs and into the building, which was swirling with activity. Roxy spotted another police officer at the lifts, and what looked like two forensic pathologists dressed in plastic green smocks and plastic covered shoes, standing, wide briefcases in hand, waiting for the lift to arrive. One was laughing, another holding a takeaway sandwich.
There was a wall of letterboxes on one side and a young man with a bald head appeared to be brushing them for fingerprints, and on the other wall were two shabby black leather sofas. The plainclothes officer led them across and asked them to take a seat, then returned to the group near the entrance who were still deep in conversation.
Very soon a short, stocky woman in a tight black suit stepped out from the group and strode towards them. She smiled warmly as she took a seat beside Roxy and for a few seconds didn’t speak.
Roxy rushed to fill the silence. “What’s going on? Is Max okay?”
The woman held a short finger in the air. “First things first, madam. I am Inspector Gruen. Your names please.”
Caroline sighed irritably and Roxy quickly told her the information, adding, “Caroline is Max Farrell’s sister. He lives ...”—please let him live, please let him live—“in unit 3B.”
Gruen nodded and her smile dropped slightly. “And where have you come from?”
Roxy could feel her own patience waning. “Straight from the airport. We’ve just flown in from Sydney, Australia. We’re trying to hunt down Max Farrell. Is he ... is he okay?”
The woman was no longer smiling. She had turned to look at Caroline who was now scrolling through her mobile phone as though she didn’t have a care in the world.
“I have some bad news,” she said. “We have found a body. In Unit 3B.”
“A body?” Roxy managed, the colour draining from her face. “What are you trying to say?”
The polic
ewoman cleared her throat. “I am trying to tell you that someone has been murdered.”
Chapter 5
Roxy had heard of the expression “time slowing down” but had never really experienced it before, at least, not to this extent. She suddenly felt numb, dislocated, outside of her body. There was a whooshing sound in her ears and the walls seemed to be circling around her head yet everything was on slow-motion.
She saw a petite, black-haired woman talking to an officer by the stairwell. She was covered in body piercings and clutching a packet of cigarettes, waving them about as she spoke. She looked shaken but not alarmed. By the front doors an elderly man in a bike helmet and dazzling yellow Lycra was also talking to a police officer, who was clearly giving him the brush off. And the green-clad forensics officers had now vanished, the elevator making its way skyward.
Level 1 ...
Level 2 ...
Level 3 ...
Ping!
Roxy must have snapped out of it then because time sped up again and the whooshing sound stopped. She shook her head and heard herself speaking calmly, sounding almost aloof: “Does the body belong to Max?”
The detective answered briskly, “We do not know, yet. There has been one identification but it is not official.” She hesitated, glancing at Caroline who was still staring at her iPhone as if her eyes were literally glued to it, and back to Roxy. “We need a positive identification. Can you do this, please? It would help.”
Roxy turned to Caroline. “Do you ...?”
“Oh, you do it, darling,” Caroline said, her eyes still not leaving the screen. “I’m just checking Facebook. See if he’s been in touch. Mum’s also sent a few messages so I’d better get back to her, too.”
Detective Gruen caught Roxy’s eyes and the two women exchanged worried frowns before the detective said, “Looks like it’s you. Are you ready?”
No, Roxy thought, no I am not! But she realised Caroline was in no condition to do it. She was obviously in a serious state of denial, either that or she was more self-centred than Roxy realised, so she took a deep breath and somehow managed to drag herself back to her feet and follow the detective through the foyer and towards the elevator. It seemed like a lifetime before it arrived, another lifetime before it reached floor three, but the whole time she kept telling herself, “It’s not Max. It’s not Max. It’s not Max.”
