Night Driver

by Marcelle Perks

  ‘You can’t…’ said Kurt, too surprised to finish the sentence. ‘Didn’t Dr Kanton say…’

  She almost stood up in the car to make her point. ‘It’s just one more drive,’ she said, pushing her fringe out of her eyes. ‘After everything I’ve gone through…’

  ‘Calm down, it’s not good for the baby.’

  Frannie was tired of that one. Stress was bad, coffee was bad; anything remotely exciting was not allowed.

  ‘KURT!’ she shouted. ‘I’m trying to learn German, and how to drive. You should try learning something new in a totally foreign language. It’s not easy.’ Her face was flushed with rage. Her hand continued to strike the dashboard in little slaps. ‘Every day it’s like climbing a mountain; it just never ends.’

  Kurt looked as if he’d been stepped on. ‘I’ve made a lot of sacrifices as well, you know,’ he said. ‘I could have stayed freelance and hung out in the Caribbean living the dream. The reason why we’re back here is so that we have stability and a nice house to live in.’

  ‘No, it’s because you can’t stay away from your family!’ said Frannie. ‘And you couldn’t live abroad where they don’t have a football stadium.’ Kurt tutted. She bit her lip.

  ‘Well, if you want to drive when you’re pregnant and the doctor’s dead against it, then don’t expect me to help you,’ said Kurt. His voice was hard and tight as if he couldn’t breathe properly.

  Frannie squirmed in her seat. Kurt was surprised at how motivated she had become, learning to drive. Because she was pretty and feminine, men were always taken aback when she revealed her determination. For too long since she had been in his country, Kurt had played the role of helper. In truth, she suspected that he enjoyed the fact that as a foreigner here she could only operate at half-strength.

  The flat, monotonous countryside through the window depressed her further. Everything was pine trees and long straight roads. It was like waking up in the wrong house, every day. Often she had to quell an irresistible urge to run. Was it just her pregnancy hormones creating havoc? Or had she had enough?

  The police station was, like everything else in Germany, spacious and clean. It gave the impression that it didn’t matter if crimes were solved; the important thing was that the place was properly swept and mopped. An immaculately dressed policeman was waiting to hear their complaint. His eyes lit up when they walked in. He was young and dark, even taller than Kurt. He looked suspiciously at Frannie as soon as he realised she was an Ausländer.

  Heinrich began to explain everything, and the policeman was murmuring sympathetically. From time to time he looked at Frannie and took a peek at her Mutterpass, where Dr Kanton had noted the latest problems. He looked Frannie up and down and inspected her passport. Then Heinrich theatrically produced the truck driver’s numberplate. It was typed into a computer.

  ‘So, we have a Lars Stiglegger,’ he said, frowning, ‘Lorry driver… Ah.’ His face changed. He picked up a phone and shouted something to a colleague. Another policeman ran down some stairs; there were more shouts. Kurt shuffled his feet. So far he’d said nothing. Frannie couldn’t understand what all the commotion was about.

  The policeman now looked at them as if they were the criminals. ‘You can’t report someone just for bad driving,’ he said, his voice suddenly sharp.

  Heinrich looked as if he had been slapped. ‘You mean you don’t want to do anything?’ he said, letting his stare bore into the policeman’s eyes.

  The officer glared back and looked at Frannie with undisguised contempt. ‘He did not actually hit your car?’

  Frannie shook her head. Kurt stood sulkily but Heinrich almost jumped on the policeman. ‘But we had to perform an emergency stop because my student was made so nervous. And her pregnancy was affected. Never have I seen such driving.’

  The policeman ignored him and stared at Frannie accusingly. ‘Perhaps you don’t know our German traffic regulations? This man is a professional lorry driver.’ He cleared his throat and looked at Frannie’s wide eyes.

  Heinrich was about to burst. ‘Surely you need to at least caution him?’ he said in his most polite German.

  Another policeman came up and whispered something in his colleague’s ear. He nodded. ‘Yes. We will speak to Herr Stiglegger,’ he said, closing his report book with a neat little snap.

  Frannie couldn’t believe that no one was taking her seriously. She sat clutching her stomach, terrified that the baby had been affected. A migraine was starting behind her ears, all the tension of the day hitting its mark. From this morning, it had been one big balls-up, and, with all the tension riding on her performance tomorrow, it looked as if she was in for a rough night.

  From deep inside her womb, the baby kicked. Frannie had the familiar feeling that she was sliding into nothingness. And now she was so pregnant they wouldn’t even allow her on a plane back home.

  Chapter

  Five

  When she was still, Lars could overlook the fact that she was female. It didn’t matter. She was out of it. Her body turned into one expanse of flesh: pure, beautiful, smooth. A canvas. He leant over her skin and fondled it, making little gasps as if it was he himself who was being touched.

  There was nothing like young skin, especially when it was perfectly even and unmarked. He hated the current fashion for tattoos. Anna’s body was scarless and was free of piercing, but although the veins in her arm were clear it was obvious she’d injected smack in between her toes and the veins in her legs.

  He laughed. She was trying to get away with it, but her body was giving up its secrets to Onkel Fritz.

  He kissed her neck. He got excited just leaning over her body, imagining. He tried to visualise the network of veins and muscles under the skin. He’d already moved her into the huge metal drinks crate that had once been used to import outlandishly expensive champagne. They’d decided the crate served admirably as a very adult toy box. There was room in there to hover, Nosferatu-like, over a corpse.

  He’d got into the habit of putting them in there before he started his games. Then, after he opened them up, all the blood could seep out in the waterproof crate and it was egal. He’d hose it down once the body was removed.

  Anna’s nose was dripping bright red blood. Lars looked down and groaned as he stroked her neck. All his energy was focused on the flood of sensations as he got more and more aroused. He pushed her chin up so that the delicate neck was exposed and started kissing it aggressively, letting his teeth sink in to the place where the jugular vein lay. The real Fritz was said to have bitten through the Adam’s apple to suck the blood, but he had always found this impossible. Instead, he found the major artery in her neck with a trembling finger and made a neat slit with a carpet knife that he always carried in his pocket.

  The blood started to fall out and, caring for nothing but the release waiting to spring, he let himself suckle the wound, wallowing in its warmth. In this position, steeped literally in the lifeblood of another, he could achieve his most satisfying orgasms.

  When he came, it was like the entire contents of an ocean had leapt up in one motion and hit his body in one whooshing smack. It was an orgasm so high that when it waned it was like falling off a huge building. He was huge, unassailable, godlike.

  Lustmord – no one anywhere, could ever have had an orgasm like it.

  Life made sense again.

  There was a private bathroom within the room, where he kept fresh clothes so that he was prepared in the event of a kill. He’d barely finished cleaning himself up when one of the bar staff buzzed up to tell him the police were on their way. Browbeaten Inspector Koch came in, his thick, ungainly body panting in the heat. He was a rough-looking man on the wrong side of fifty but had the soul of an artist. He’d often told Lars he wanted to publish a little collection of poetry that he’d been writing over forty years.

  They’d formed an odd, but loyal alliance.

  Koch’s eyes were drawn to the metal packing crate that took up most of the space in the
room. It was silver-coloured and expensive-looking. His mind was probably thinking of potential freebies in it. Let him imagine.

  Anna’s corpse was now bleeding out in the crate. Lars imagined the blood thickening, forming a dark red angry crust and congealing. With a neck wound, the blood immediately rushed towards the head in a vain attempt to repair the damage, so extremities like the hands and feet would start to cool and stiffen first. When a body was partly drained of blood, what was left felt different, started to get a certain smell, although usually he didn’t keep them that long. The dead smelt bad very quickly. The first fly was attracted within half an hour.

  Fortunately, the packing crate was airtight.

  Hans and he had it down pat. The corpses were still fresh when despatched to the body farm. No one questioned him when he needed help getting a wine crate in and out; it was a nightclub. They had all kinds of expensive stuff that customers forked out for. There was a special machine that you just hooked up to the crate and then it could be rolled along with one hand. It was dead easy. A typical Hans operation. He was as slippery as an eel and none of it could be traced back to him, he always made sure of that. The more money he earned, the greedier he got. He would not stop until he owned the club outright, and half of Hannover too.

  Koch was agitated. The man was practically waltzing on the spot.

  ‘Lars, we’ve had a complaint from a bloke who runs a driving school, a Heinrich Bostel. You caused him to do an emergency stop and his pregnant student could have lost her baby,’ said Koch firing the words out. ‘It was on the B6 today around noon, do you recall?’

  ‘I drove like shit,’ said Lars wearily. He had to put on the right expression. ‘There was a problem with the orders, the traffic was all blocked up and this silly fucking wannabe driver was as slow as a snail.’ He let out a sigh. He could see, said the sigh, that he’d put Koch in a difficult position. ‘I’m sorry, I was an arsehole. I just had a bad day. Perhaps we can forget all about this with a drink? His smile became cagey. ‘Anyway, I’ve still got to let you know the latest on that drug deal over at Rüdiger’s. They want to drop the hit on Friday. Frank told me.’

  Koch knew how it was. Lars was a touch stupid, pushed a bit of the soft stuff and was not averse to letting things fall off the back of his lorry. But he was fucking useful. Still, he had to show a bit of boot.

  ‘If we get any more complaints, I won’t be able to bury them,’ he said, trying to make it look as if he was doing Lars a favour. ‘They’ll have to investigate, and then there’ll be nothing I can do. Get a motorbike if you want to drive like an eighteen-year-old.’

  Lars laughed. He let his voice make the right noises. Koch had no idea. Once he’d done the deed he felt invincible, a superman come to earth. He reached for the most expensive whisky in the VIP room, enjoyed the thrill of pouring it out in glasses, using the crate as a makeshift table.

  The body would start to stiffen as its basal temperature dropped. He knew the score. Whatever Anna had once meant to Hans, she’d never be able to turn him on again. If he wanted to get back in with Hans, now was his chance.

  Frannie had gone to bed early but sleep eluded her. She had watched the clock tick by while downstairs Kurt watched something loud. She was going to bed these days much earlier than him but wished he could keep the sound down. Perhaps he had his phone in his hand and was using the time to openly text whoever he was getting messages from. It had been going on for some weeks now. She’d hear a muted beep and then he’d disappear to the toilet for half an hour with his phone. She never asked questions; she’d didn’t want to appear jealous. Only weak people were jealous. And any time she took a sneak peek it was always some bloke. When he rolled into bed late stinking of beer, she’d pretended to be asleep. It was easier. He made no move to hold her the way he used to. She would lie in the dark, sick with worry, her hand cradling her pregnant belly.

  Frannie had often been nauseous in her first trimester, but nothing could have prepared her for the sickness that struck her next morning, on the day of her driving test. Although she was hungry, nothing got past her lips. Heinrich was coming for her at nine sharp and in the half-hour before that she was constantly running to the bathroom. Even her shoes did not fit properly. She tried to calm herself; for the baby’s sake she had to pass.

  She went through the motions in the pre-test lesson. After yesterday, Heinrich was unusually gentle, but she could not parallel-park properly and held her breath at every red light.

  ‘Are you sure you are up to this?’ said Heinrich in an unusually quiet voice.

  ‘Yes! After everything I’ve done, I just want the chance, you know?’ said Frannie, although part of her wanted to crawl back to bed and stay there.

  The test instructor was an elderly man whose grey hair was streaked with black. He instantly understood that she was heavily pregnant, and not German. Heinrich struck up an animated conversation with the examiner that went right over her head. She was instructed to drive down a little road away from the main drag while the two men laughed and joked as if they were having a beer. Almost casually, the examiner said, ‘Can you parallel-park behind the green vehicle, please.’

  Automatically Frannie clenched up. It was hard to control her legs and hands under pressure. When she pulled forward she overshot it, and one of the car’s wheels actually climbed the kerb. Both men stopped talking. In her anxiety her foot hit the accelerator too hard. She shot in reverse and mounted the kerb a second time. The passengers were once more jerked around. The examiner exchanged a look with Heinrich.

  Frannie was crushed. Her shoulders slumped, but she was might as well go for broke now, show them what she was made of. She forgot about everything and focused on the test.

  It seemed to go on forever. She had to go not once but three times on the Autobahn. The examiner gave absolutely no indication of how she was doing.

  ‘Take the next left,’ he said, in between reminiscing with Heinrich.

  ‘Now reverse back and go right.’

  Again and again Frannie had to reverse, drive around a maze of streets and turn wherever the examiner instructed her to. She didn’t think, just went through the motions. Her hand and eye coordination had never been better. She worked the clutch like a pro. The examiner’s voice never changed in tone once. She didn’t even think about needing the toilet. Her mind was a grey blank. She just did what they told her.

  At the end she remembered to put on the handbrake, and just sat there waiting. At first she didn’t understand the German. It was only when he put the driving licence in her hand that she realised that she’d passed.

  ‘Do you want to know your mistakes?’ said Heinrich.

  ‘I know I mounted the pavement twice,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ said the instructor. ‘You also nearly went into a car on the Autobahn and did not give way on the Forster Strasse.’ He smiled broadly.

  ‘I didn’t realise…’ She had made more of a mess of it than she realised.

  Heinrich drove her home.

  ‘Why didn’t I fail?’ she asked him suddenly. Her mother had failed nine times in England. She was sure that she shouldn’t really have got away with so many faults.

  ‘I had a little word with Herr Löschner last week,’ said Heinrich. ‘I explained that you’d had so many lessons, had tried really hard, and that this was your only chance before the baby comes.’

  ‘Does that mean I didn’t really do it?’

  ‘Whatever I say to him, he still has to do his job,’ said Heinrich stiffly. ‘Anyway, it’s not just a question of getting your Führerschein.’ He let out a hollow laugh and looked at her as if she was completely naive. ‘It’s one thing to drive with me, but then you must be able to do it by yourself, and it’s even harder with a baby in the back.’ He smiled and shook her hand. ‘I wish you the best of luck,’ he said.

  Frannie felt her heart sink. She hadn’t thought about that. With Kurt not willing to help her, how would she gain the confidence to drive alone?r />
  Being in the truck made Lars feel powerful: he liked the chug chug of its energy and the squealing noises it made when he changed down a gear; the gasp of the brakes. It was even more exciting for him when he had a corpse to transport. Although no other drivers on the road knew what he had in his truck, still it was a solemn task. It took seconds to kill them and then there was all this stuff around it.

  Hans had told him that the real Fritz had cut up his victims in a small upstairs bedroom and carried them down four flights of stairs in a covered bucket to throw in the river. He talked about Fritz a lot. That must have been back-breaking – and the mess! You couldn’t do that these days. He’d seen it on TV in detective shows they had all kind of shit – DNA, fingerprinting, forensic whatsit. He was glad he didn’t have to wear latex gloves to handle the bodies. The feeling of dead flesh was pleasurable to him. It had the cool assuredness of beauty. The fact that its state was so temporary, that it would spoil in just days, made it all the more precious.

  After death, a body’s state constantly changed. It was no longer a person. It became human Play-Doh. Hans always wanted him to drive the bodies as quickly as possible to the lab, but sometimes he kept them a few days longer. Then it got to a point when even he was tired of them. Not that he wanted to cut them up or eat them or anything silly like that. Hans encouraged him to be like Fritz, who was meant to have sold his victims’ flesh as sausages on a meat-stall opposite the Hauptbahnhof. But he had his limits. He didn’t murder for profit, but he didn’t object to getting compensation from old Buttgereit. And he could indulge in all these things because Hans had set everything up for him. He was the only person in the world who understood him.