Kurt just stared.
‘My wife?’ he said. He looked confused. With his tall bulk he had all the physicality of an alpha male, but psychologically something deadened him. He stood there, clueless. He was still staring when they carried her out on a stretcher.
Chapter
Seventeen
Frannie was trapped in a thick fever dream, with a face as pale as her pillow. Her hands clenched restlessly. Although physically she was lying down, in her mind she was driving fast on an open road. Because her parents hadn’t owned a car, there would always be something magical about the freedom of being about to jump in a vehicle and shoot off like the clappers. In her dreams she was always driving. But this time she was stuck. The car she was driving was broken. Kaputt. And her arm felt funny when she tried to do something about it.
She opened her eyes, felt down her arm, to find some kind of strange device that was peculiarly fixed to it. The pressure of it was painful. She screamed and tried to get her bearings.
The first thing she noticed was the agonising white of the walls, with bright lights that bounced off the surfaces until you winced. The atmosphere was dominated by an antiseptic smell and the strange hum of the equipment. It was Neustadt Krankenhaus, the hospital where she was due to give birth. Another brash, impersonal medical institute she felt uncomfortable in.
When she looked down, her arm was attached to a drip and she wore a blood pressure cuff. She was still wearing her own clothes, but they’d put some kind of stockings on her legs.
One of the machines beeped and a nurse came running up. She spoke so rapidly that Frannie couldn’t make out one word.
‘Noch mal, bitte?’ said Frannie, hoping she’d understand the second time round. The nurse spoke rapidly, using words she couldn’t understand. Whatever was wrong, the specifics were beyond her conversational German. She lay back weakly and waited. At some point, Kurt would come and explain everything in English.
Kurt. She gave a little groan. The police must have told him by now. What the hell should she say to him? This was all so unfair. If the moody sod hadn’t banned her from driving, she wouldn’t have had to night-drive in secret. She pursed her lips. The baby was kicking fiercely.
A nurse came and measured her blood pressure. As usual, she hated the vicious squeeze of the cuff; it felt as if a python had wound itself round her arm.
‘A hundred and ninety over one hundred and forty. Meine Güte!’ said the nurse, shaking her head in disbelief at the numbers. ‘I will fetch a doctor, sofort!’ She hurried away, her starched uniform swishing.
It was her highest reading yet. Frannie rubbed her arm. Pressure from the cuff had imprinted lines on her skin. From experience she knew that, if she thought about her blood pressure, the worry would make it rise and it would be even higher when the doctor came to check it personally.
The door opened with a little whine. It was Kurt. For a second he hesitated, his handsome face a mess of emotions. He practically ran to her bedside. She winced, afraid he might be angry, but instead he flung his arms awkwardly around her.
‘Schatz!’ he said, stroking her blonde hair which was spread all over the pillow. ‘What’s going on? Are you OK?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking at him with big, pleading eyes. ‘The nurse said something, but I couldn’t understand.’
‘Just lie back, I will sort out everything,’ he said, his tall figure confident, protective. ‘As long as the baby’s OK,’ he said, placing a hand on her tummy.
‘What about me?’ The resentment rushed into her voice before she could stop it.
‘Well, the two things are the same, aren’t they? If you’re OK, the baby’s OK.’ He looked at her puzzled. His perfectly oval face had a well-defined forehead that made him look super-intelligent at first glance. But when he raised his blond piglet eyebrows they were so pale they disappeared, making him look odd.
She snorted with disbelief. He looked at her with edgy eyes. She could see all the confusion about last night turning nasty. His fingers started twitching. Another few minutes and he’d be off on one. She knew the signs and lately the smallest things enraged him. Nervously, she bit her lip.
At that moment a doctor came in. He was older, and did everything deliberately slowly, as if he was not going to let anything get in the way of obtaining a correct diagnosis.
‘Guten Tag, Frau Snell,’ he said, shaking her hand crisply. When he discovered she was English he instantly asked a series of questions in her language about her existing blood pressure condition. Kurt just stood there. The doctor, who seemed to have sensed the tension in the room when he came in, steadfastly ignored him. Kurt hated that. He was used to being her translator and general helper in his home country. It was as though he thought, if she could understand everything and didn’t need him, then she would love him less.
‘And you were at the police station last night?’ said the doctor, with a keen appraisal of her chart.
‘Yes, they did a routine check on my car and I didn’t have the registration papers.’ Frannie kept her voice even.
‘Was there some emergency you had to get to, to be out so late?’ said the doctor, genuinely trying to understand what had happened.
Frannie looked at Kurt who was standing there, his face glowering. ‘No, I just got my Führerschein and I wanted to practise when the streets were quiet.’ She stared defiantly at the doctor, who was looking slightly surprised. ‘I need to be able to drive to get nappies and stuff for my son when he’s born.’ She looked pointedly at Kurt. ‘We live in a village, so it’s hard to walk to the shops.’ Her face was flushed. Neither of the men could understand it, the terrible need to cope.
‘Aha,’ said the doctor. He nodded, measured her blood pressure again. This time it was two hundred over one hundred and fifty. ‘That is very high,’ he said in a slow voice. He rubbed his chin pensively. ‘The problem is that it is normal for all women to get higher blood pressure at the end of their pregnancy. And because you have an existing condition, yours will be higher, natürlich.’ He paused for a second, as if he were talking to an audience. ‘So we do not know if this is normal for you, or a possible problem. Eclampsia is a dangerous condition.’
‘So what can you do?’ said Kurt, stepping forward clumsily as if he was about to do a rugby tackle.
‘For now we will remain calm and try to keep the patient comfortable,’ said the doctor pointedly, fixing her chart back on to her bed. He looked only in her direction. ‘Frau Snell, we will keep you in for twenty-four hours and observe you.’ He left briskly without even looking at Kurt.
Frannie looked at her husband. She tried to smile, relax, but it was difficult when he looked so awkward, as if some conjuring trick were being played on him. His hands were stuffed into his pockets. He obviously wanted to know about last night, but he didn’t know whether to ask outright. When he was suspicious he got riled up, and some part of his brain closed down.
The longer they stared at each other, the more the tension built. Their relationship was routinely stormy, but now the air felt supercharged, as if a tornado was about to slam into the hospital and tear it to shreds.
‘You were just out driving?’ he asked, almost in a whisper.
She nodded, although her eyes burned and her cheeks, she was sure, were flushed a brilliant red. It was too awkward to try to explain, especially as she wasn’t sure herself what had happened to Tomek or who had chased her. There’s a sodding time and place, she thought. More than anybody, he knew how badly her pregnancy was affected by stress.
Kurt looked at her with half-closed eyes, as if he didn’t quite believe her. She waited with bated breath. His eyes, now they knew they’d got her attention, widened. He stared at her as if he’d never seen her before.
‘You did it,’ he said pointing a finger at her. His eyes burned into her, his mouth was one furious snarl.
‘What?’
Kurt’s fists clenched. ‘It was you who scratched the car.’ He was as rep
ulsed as if she’d committed murder.
She didn’t answer, didn’t need to. He could see it in her face. She could feel her cheeks burning up.
He stood up, put his face near hers and said in such a low voice it came out like a hiss, ‘I don’t do liars.’ His finger jabbed into her breastbone. She shied away from his touch. Then she pushed him away with her free hand and flung her head back.
‘If you weren’t such a bloody control freak, I wouldn’t have to sneak out at three a.m.’ She glared at him with eyes like daggers. ‘We’d go out in the evening like a normal couple, eat something, and you’d sit there all supportive while I drove us home.’ She turned her face pointedly to the wall.
‘Don’t you get tired thinking about yourself constantly?’ said Kurt, in that mocking voice she hated so much.
‘I’m already tired of you.’ It slipped out with such honesty, it was impossible to take back. The very core of their relationship was crumbling in front of them.
Kurt’s face darkened. ‘If you ever do that again, then we’re finished,’ said Kurt in a slow voice, every muscle in his face clenched. He forced himself to hide his restless fists behind his back. ‘You should be thinking of our baby, not your sodding self.’
Frannie gasped. It was shocking to be confronted like that, especially in a hospital bed.
Something on the machine beeped, alarmingly, and the nurse ran back in. ‘Frau Snell, your blood pressure is getting higher,’ she said, looking at Kurt with disgust. ‘You need to relax, avoid stress.’
‘My husband likes to get me when I’m down,’ said Frannie viciously, her teeth fixed in a snarl. Kurt took a few steps back.
The nurse stepped towards him. ‘Visiting time is now over,’ she said firmly. With both hands she escorted him towards the door. When he was gone she turned to Frannie. ‘Whatever’s going on between you two, you need to think about your baby.’ She gave a smug look, turned and left.
Frannie lay back, exhausted, her mouth downturned. She never cried, but if she were the kind of person who squeezed out tears when she hit a sticky patch she’d do it now. She looked down at her bulging belly with distaste. She couldn’t imagine continuing like this. And while she was laid flat out, feeling sorry for herself, Tomek was out there, helpless.
She got her mobile, which one of the nurses had charged for her, and found Dorcas’s number. This time, the silly cow had to come over, and quick. She’d sort out Kurt once she’d found Tomek.
A man was driving an old pick-up truck that was so battered no one could tell what colour it had been. Maybe it had started off sky blue, but now the lacquer was mostly rubbed off to a faded turquoise worn down to the metal in places. Lena, as he called her, had been old when she’d belonged to his father. Since he’d got back from Afghanistan in March, one of his few pleasures was riding round in it. He’d first driven her illicitly at fourteen and wouldn’t have parted with her for the world. Chugging obscenely along on the Autobahn, next to much newer cars, he stuck out like a sore thumb.
He’d also inherited the farm, but what good was that, now the supermarkets were in control of farm production? Every week he was selling off perfectly good cows and pigs that he didn’t have the heart to keep locked up in little pens. If he’d had more field space he could have maybe hung on to them.
That was the irony of his farm: although it was surrounded by a vast expanse of forest and scrubland, it was a snare of a place with limited ground. It was off all main roads, and the dirt track that led to it was so overgrown you’d never dream there was a house down there. Not ideal for farming, but its hidden location was perfect for him. Even though he was hogging the slow lane, a stupid woman was driving up his arse. He grinned, slowed down even more.
If he was honest he hated humans as much as he hated modern farming. If he visited any of the neighbours to borrow anything he’d get into a row about animal welfare. Most farmers didn’t bother to muck out properly. They let an overhead shower hose away the worst of the dung but standing on metal floors was harsh on hooves. The cows got infections. They didn’t like standing in their own shit. Most farmers did less than the bare minimum. So many things that were done routinely to animals, like milking, were institutionalised torture.
Since he’d done his tour of active duty, the transient nature of life in a war zone had shocked him. Now he found himself doing everything sofort, just in case. He couldn’t make a cup of tea without instantly washing it up and putting it away as soon as it was drunk.
He’d been dismissed as a field medic when he’d administered too much morphine to a dying man. A mercy dose, there was only so much suffering he could stomach, but the attending doctor hadn’t seen it that way. But then, he’d come on the scene later, after the soldier had stopped screaming. Those cries were still reverberating in his ear, high-pitched like a pig squealing.
Stefan didn’t do appearances. He seemed to live in old jeans and boots that never looked washed. His young face was spoiled by scars and a perpetual gloom that hung his lower lip a fraction lower than it should have done. He looked thin and vicious, like a starving dog. After the army, he’d been seeking a purpose, some higher guidance. Now he’d found it. He turned on to the road that Hugo had drawn on the map and indicated right for the Moonlights Club.
The Animal Liberation Front didn’t do leaders and strategy or force you to stand in a line. What they did was action: covert, undercover. Anything, as long as it got a result. He was going to make sure that Wrexin Pharmaceuticals could no longer use animals for profit. Once he had the money together, the group could infiltrate and gather evidence.
The irony was that, to make the money to save hundreds of animal lives, he had to take one lousy human life. Although even then that slippery Hans had estimated that about ten to twenty stupid human lives could be saved with all the transplants. He just had to look after the body until they found a surgeon to carve out the organs in a secure, sterile environment. If you did the maths, it was a win-win situation.
His eyes blazed over the steering wheel. He was sure he was doing the right thing, but he could only maintain control of himself by not letting himself think about it, even for a second. It was like being on patrol all over again: the perpetual readiness; the mind waiting in turmoil, body just physically going through the motions.
Although he was going to do it, he was dreading this job. He sighed and put his foot down. All he had to do was pick up the victim.
He figured he could just about cope with someone who was virtually unconscious.
Chapter
Eighteen
After he’d nearly lost it at Dorcas’s, Lars stood on the landing outside her door unable to think straight with his hands rolled up into fists. The pain in his head had got so bad he thought he was going insane. He could not walk straight, never mind drive; the migraine attack was forcing him to temporarily shut down for a few hours until the pain receded. It hadn’t been this bad since he was in military service, but they’d said the headaches and the epileptic fits would increase as he got older. He didn’t want to suffer a fully-fledged attack, but he would rather cut his own leg off than order a taxi.
He moved downstairs with difficulty, holding the rail all the way, and forced himself to negotiate the garden. He climbed into the fancy hammock that hung outside all summer long and closed his eyes. It wasn’t sleep as such, but his head felt calmer, soothed by the night air.
He became aware of a spider making its curious way over his hand, but let it be. The possibilities of the open space whispered in his ear. He thought about going on the hunt, finding some faceless guy to take his frustration out on, but he had to ease his migraine first. He sighed and screwed his eyes up a lot. The garden was small, but he was hidden under a shady apple tree. Dorcas wouldn’t see him unless she was looking for him.
Even though he’d blown it, he wanted to be close to her. Dorcas wasn’t just his best friend, she was what he could have had if he did women rather than men. Sometimes he hated his fucki
ng Pimmel. Automatically his hand went to his crotch. It stiffened, absurdly, at the slightest touch. His whole life was dominated by pleasing it, feeding its unspeakable desires.
Things ran through his head, images he’d rather not think about. He wished he could just lay his head down on the same pillow as Dorcas and be at ease. Instead he was always thinking about forcing himself on some youth, tasting the blood. It wasn’t that thinking of these things turned him on, actually they sent acid tendrils into his mouth, but in spite of that he couldn’t stop.
He’d never been able to say why he did what he did. All he concentrated on was covering it up and craving more. Whenever he’d stayed over, cradling Dorcas in his arms, he’d been unable to get rid of the searing images of lovers that plagued his mind. That was the funny thing. It took just minutes to kill them and then they stayed with him forever, tormenting him. There would be no release until death. He shivered and tried to squeeze his eyes shut, but it was all there in his head like a video he couldn’t turn off.
It was no good trying to persuade Dorcas he was sorry on the phone. He’d have to go after her when she came out. If he had to, he’d get down on his knees and beg her not to turn her back on him. Without Hans he was a lost soul, but without Dorcas he was finished. Because there was no actual sex between them, even though she was a prostitute, she was the only decent thing in his life.
At the first throbbing tweet of her mobile ring tone, Dorcas practically fell off the bed with fear. After Lars’s outburst, she’d spent hours lying fully clothed with all the lights on without managing to shut her eyes properly. Her body was coiled as if under attack from a giant snake that might strike in any direction.
She was surprised to find it was the soft-spoken English woman, Frannie, and that she was calling at six a.m. The weariness in her voice immediately put her on edge.
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