Night Driver

by Marcelle Perks

  With trembling hands he got on his stomach and crawled back out underneath the stall, gasping at the dirtiness of the floor. He reckoned the body might remain undiscovered for an hour or so. He didn’t know about DNA whatsit, but he had no opportunity to clean up anyway.

  Now it was over, his body was close to collapse. You got such an adrenaline thrill from it that it practically knocked you out. He could barely walk back to the truck. He exhaled, started up the engine and got the hell out of there. Within seconds he was back on the B6 heading towards Hannover.

  He started to relax, but felt black depression descend on him. Normally he felt elated after a kill, but that had been sordid. For the first time in his life he felt like a killer.

  It was hard for him to admit, but if this was what it was going to be like on his own perhaps he should get back in with Hans. He took out a beer and started drinking it to take the taste out of his mouth. The little fucker was rotten, but when Hans wanted to please him, he knew exactly what to do.

  Hans groaned. His hair was matted with sweat, his eyes dark with exhaustion. He lay prone in the bed, huge rings under his eyes. Still she would not stop. She touched the hard muscle of his stomach, teased him with her fingers, moved further down. He let out a little moan. After his forceful, unsatisfactory lovemaking, she’d decided to mellow him. And it was possible, but she needed to spend hours being intimate with him in order to draw him out. He was a difficult lover, but worth it once you got to the inner him.

  ‘Please, I am in hell, help me.’ He threw his head back, waited for her to start over. Dorcas giggled, ran her hand through her dark, lustrous bob. Despite everything, it was still there, the chemistry between them, when he chose to see it. Because he was a sex addict, the trick was to keep his desire revving through mutual masturbation that could last for hours until one of them fell into an exhausted sleep. Once she’d got him in the mood, they could not stop touching each other. And if she didn’t let him penetrate her, then she could spend hours riding his fingers, licking, teasing, allowing him to play with himself, but every time he came that way it just made him want her more.

  With a cool, professional eye, she appraised him. If he was going to talk she had to get him into a state of frenzy. Or beyond.

  ‘Schatz!’ he moaned in her ear, kissing her like a drowning man. He was desperate to possess her, but when they were in role-play he allowed her to dominate, got off on being sweetly submissive. The shadows made her thin body look almost voluptuous. Dorcas knew her face was all eyebrows and sharp angular bones in this light. She exuded sexual power, possible cruelty.

  Hans was insecure, that was why he felt compelled to stick his dick into everyone. You had to get past the first layer of his sexual consciousness, the usual macho bullshit, to reach him. He’d made her into a slut, and now she revelled in it, used it torment him. She could handle multiple partners so much better than him.

  She slapped him across the face, hard. ‘Where is Anna, you little bitch?’ she said as dominating as she could muster.

  He smirked. ‘I just view things as objects: people, animals, trees, cars; they’re all the same to me,’ he said. ‘That’s John Hughes.’

  Dorcas gave a little laugh. ‘Bitches are all animals to me,’ she said, picking up a candle and tipping a bit of the hot wax gleefully onto his chest.

  ‘Aaaargghh!’ he cried, but there was an ironic smile on his face. He was closing his eyes, grimacing, becoming undone.

  ‘Promise me she won’t work at the club again,’ commanded Dorcas.

  ‘She’ll never work anywhere again,’ said Hans with a laugh. He spoke slowly, as though he was out of breath. ‘She’s…gone.’

  There was something final about the way he said it. Dorcas felt as if someone was walking over her grave. She made herself carry on smiling. Then he made his voice high, shrill. ‘We all go a little mad sometimes!’

  ‘I’m sure you had to get rid of her,’ said Dorcas in the same shrill tone, as if she was role-playing too. Then she threw in her own quote in the same high, false voice. ‘I didn’t want to hurt them, I only want to kill them.’

  Hans opened his eyes and looked at her as if he was seeing her for the very first time.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Four

  As soon as they left the doctor’s office he started. Just from the way he quizzically raised his eyebrows, before he even opened his mouth, she knew he was going to be loud.

  ‘Are you happy now?’ shouted Kurt as they walked back to the car. It was a gorgeous day, Germany was enjoying warmer temperatures than the Med, but Frannie couldn’t enjoy it.

  Her check-up at Dr Kanton’s had been a nightmare. She’s missed the one she was supposed to go to yesterday because she was in hospital, but they had fitted her in as an emergency this morning. Everyone was blaming her. She was hobbling slowly, trying to concentrate on making it back to the car. The heat had swollen up her ankles so that it was difficult to put weight on them.

  ‘Did you understand all that?’ said Kurt, shaking his head. Dr Kanton had mostly spoken in rapid, excited German. ‘Your blood pressure’s sky-high and it’s affected your placenta. Presumably the baby’s getting less nutrients, but you discharged yourself! But of course, you know best!’ They walked in silence. He opened the driver’s door. ‘Here. Why don’t you drive back, have a practice right now, seeing as driving means so much to you.’ He stood there with his arms folded, waiting.

  Frannie shook her head. ‘I can’t in all this traffic. You know that. You drive, please.’ They were parallel-parked on a busy side street. She doubted she could even drive out.

  With a grunt he got in. He seemed satisfied that he’d proved his point. His long, bulky body seemed to fold to fit into the car. Wearily she fastened her seatbelt.

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if you went back to hospital and stayed there for the rest of the pregnancy,’ said Kurt, swerving to avoid roadworks. He swore under his breath. The city traffic was getting busy; the commuters were all going home. Carefully he manoeuvred the car into the afternoon rush-hour traffic.

  Frannie looked at the newly filled-in pages in her Mutterpass. Since her last visit, every reading had got worse. Even her iron levels were low.

  ‘That only makes my blood pressure go up,’ said Frannie timidly. ‘All this interference just stresses me out. I wish everybody would just leave me alone.’ She closed her Mutterpass and looked out of the window.

  ‘I expect our baby would like to be left alone too, to develop. You have to stop running around, this night-driving.’ They’d only been en route for a few minutes, but all the traffic on the B6 was at a standstill. Kurt’s tense face looked into hers. Outside people were honking horns; angry faces stared out of windows. ‘You’re about to be a mother. Racing around in cars is not part of the job description.’

  ‘I was only trying to get my confidence so I could be a proper mother,’ she said.

  He looked at her with eyes of stone. ‘Is it worth risking the baby’s health?’

  Frannie slumped miserably in her chair. Dr Kanton had taken pleasure in going through every negative number on her results: blood pressure, bacteria in urine, ECG. Even the baby’s heartbeat had been a bit erratic, although it was too soon to draw any conclusions.

  Frannie felt as if her body had been put through a wash cycle. If she could barely get out of bed in the morning, how could she look for Tomek? She couldn’t carry on fighting any more. She felt sick thinking about it.

  The baby kicked, a series of hard thuds. She put a guilty hand to her stomach. He had certainly been making his presence felt, the past few days. She sighed, closed her eyes. Perhaps Kurt was right, she should be concentrating on the baby.

  Her hand seemed to settle the baby’s frantic kicks. If she spent most of the day lying down, stopped worrying about what had happened to Tomek, or what Lars and Hans could do to her, everything would be alright again. It was such a bright, sunny day. If she just sat out in the garden, under the cherry
tree, perhaps the sun could make it all go away.

  She tried to push all thoughts of Tomek out of her mind: his lithe, boyish frame, the way he said his sister’s name. She concentrated on the view out of the window. Streets and shops sprawled in long, straight lines. The transport system seemed to have been planned before there were people to use it. From somewhere behind them she could hear the sound of sirens bouncing off the queue of waiting cars, getting closer.

  ‘Scheisse!’ Kurt abruptly turned his head, tried to move further to the right lane to make room for the police car to pass. All the cars were snarled up, engines revving. The police car crawled up, forcing confused motorists to scatter. They were temporarily deafened by its siren. Then it zoomed ahead and the cars closed ranks again.

  Kurt twiddled the knob on the car radio and finally found a local news channel on Radio 21. A female voice was speaking in well-enunciated German. Frannie zoned it out. Her window was wound down and she tapped her hand against the side of the car. The traffic was totally at a standstill. If she left her hand out much longer it was going to get sunburned. Kurt turned the radio up louder.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ said Kurt, for a moment forgetting his anger.

  ‘What?’ said Frannie, looking round for another emergency vehicle.

  ‘On the news they said someone has been murdered, just over there. Can you see the police presence?’ Kurt pointed to the right. ‘A young man had his throat cut and was dumped in that gas station.’ He sounded amazed. The BP petrol station was right on the road in front of them.

  Frannie stared out of the window. ‘My God!’ she said, her eyes wide. In the distance she could see a line of police cars, both the old green ones and the new, more masculine blue ones, parked outside on the forecourt. Their siren lights flashed like angry wasps about to sting. Police tape had been put up to stop customers driving in. There must be four, five police cars there. She felt as if she couldn’t swallow any more. A horrible feeling of déjà vu came over her. A murder. She couldn’t believe it. Could it be Tomek? The thought of him dead, casually dumped there made her want to howl. But it could be… It had been days since she’d last spoken to him.

  She tried to suppress the tear that started trickling down her face.

  Instinctively she wanted to call Dorcas, but that was impossible with Kurt sitting next to her, angrily banging his hand on the steering wheel. She rubbed her forehead, tried to pull herself together. They might not know where Frannie lived, but what if poor Dorcas was next? A cold fear gripped her. It might be an unrelated killing, but she could no longer contain her anxiety. For the first time in front of Kurt she allowed herself to openly cry.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kurt,’ she cried, taking the opportunity to just let it all out and sob for all she was worth. ‘I’ve let you and the baby down.’ She carried on sobbing, praying she would get a chance to talk to Dorcas soon. Let Kurt assume she was crying over her negative check-up results. ‘Did they…say who it was?’ she said. She let out a little sob.

  Kurt at looked her and she covered her face. ‘No,’ he said with a little laugh. ‘It wasn’t you, was it?’

  ‘I drove past that station a few times,’ she said, sniffing into her handkerchief.

  ‘Well, there’s another reason for you not to night-drive,’ said Kurt with a grim smile. ‘Apart from the fact that our baby might die, and that I’ll leave you if you do it again, now there’s a killer on the loose. That’s pretty compelling.’ He gave her an unpleasant grin and turned his attention to the road again.

  Frannie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach.

  In her mouth she could taste acid. It was hopeless to try to talk to him. Kurt didn’t understand, and, worse, he didn’t want to. I can’t go on, she thought to herself. With red eyes, she sighed, and continued staring dully out of the window.

  In first gear, the car continued its slow, miserable journey.

  If she was lucky, she had twenty minutes. She waved goodbye to Kurt nervously. He was only going to get a newspaper.

  She had to get hold of Dorcas, find out if she was OK. It was so hot her clothes were sticking to her, and it felt as if her breasts were forcing themselves out of her bra. She was even having problems putting on shoes. This call was the last thing she was going to do in the doomed quest to find Tomek.

  Quickly she took out her phone and dialled the number. There was no answer. Perhaps Dorcas was working. She sent a text. Nervously, she went to the kitchen. She sat there, jiggling her foot, trying not to feel so tense.

  Her mobile rang. It was Dorcas. ‘What?’ she whispered, as if she’d smoked a full packet of fags first. ‘I’m with someone right now.’ Frannie imagined the prone body of some man lying next to her.

  ‘It’s Frannie,’ she said quickly. ‘Did you hear about the murder? A body’s been found on the B6.’ She peered out of the window so that she’d know the second Kurt’s car pulled back into the driveway.

  ‘What?’ said Dorcas again, for once shocked. ‘Hang on…oh, it’s alright, he’s sleeping. I’ll go in the bathroom with my laptop.’ There was a long silence, Frannie could hear clicking sounds, but was left waiting. After a few minutes she began to get anxious. Who was there with her?

  ‘Dorcas?’ she said, anxiety making her voice louder than she’d planned. ‘DORCAS?’

  After what seemed ages, Dorcas was back, talking so quietly she was still practically whispering. ‘It’s OK, just had to get the MacBook working. There’s an article in the HAZ.’

  ‘Hats…?’

  ‘Hannover’s daily paper. They don’t name the victim but they say he was dark-skinned, so it doesn’t sound like Tomek,’ said Dorcas in a brisk tone. ‘But it goes on about other things…’ Her voice trailed off as if she didn’t want to discuss it further. After a long pause she continued. ‘It’s probably a journalist looking for a good story, but apparently ten men have gone missing from Hannover in the last eighteen months. Some of them were openly gay.’

  Frannie frowned. ‘They think there’s a gay-killer out there?’ She tapped her fingers on the window sill. ‘But Anna was female, so that can’t be anything to do with it.’

  ‘It’s being compared to the notorious Fritz Haarmann case.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Hannover’s most famous serial killer from the 1920s. They’re comparing these disappearances to his case.’

  ‘So?’ said Frannie, trying hard to understand the German.

  ‘Well he had an accomplice apparently…someone called…Hans Grans.’ Dorcas’s voice was so low Frannie could barely hear her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said Hans Grans,’ said Dorcas. She sounded as if she was in shock.

  Frannie exhaled sharply. She felt suddenly like throwing up. ‘That can’t be a coincidence, can it?’ she said incredulously. ‘Is it a common name in Germany?’

  ‘No,’ said Dorcas tersely. And what she said next made shivers run down Frannie’s spine. ‘Actually, he’s here right now.’

  ‘Dorcas! You can’t be alone with him, it’s too dangerous,’ pleaded Frannie. She could feel her face going red. She’d meant to tell Dorcas she couldn’t carry on with the search for Tomek, but she couldn’t leave it like this.

  ‘Dangerous is kind of in my job description,’ said Dorcas with a bitter laugh. ‘Trust me, I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Dorcas…’

  ‘Drop it. I’ll phone at midnight tonight. Just go for a piss or something, and take your phone; that’s what you’re always doing, right?’

  Frannie nodded. Dorcas was coarse to the point of being rude, but she had the exasperating knack of being able to put her finger on everything in seconds.

  ‘I’m gonna do a little research,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘But wasn’t Anna one of your co-workers?’ said Frannie, trying to muster the courage to speak up, protect her new friend.

  ‘So I’m motivated to find out what happened to her just in case it happens to me, right?’ Dorcas sounded shaken-
up; perhaps she wasn’t as tough as she thought she was. Frannie closed her eyes. She couldn’t stand the thought of Dorcas alone with that animal.

  ‘Why did you even let him through the door?’ she said.

  ‘Someone like you could never understand.’ Dorcas practically spat the words out and then she hung up. Frannie put her face in her hands. Actually, she did get how you could be obsessed with someone’s physical presence, the idea of them. How it was possible to be excited by a forceful personality – or an imagined one – in a beautiful shell. Kurt looked like a caricature of a Nazi poster boy, with his tall blondness, that pink, creamy skin, but in reality there was nothing pretty about him on the inside, he was empty. And what did it say about her, that she had been so bowled over by his appearance and charm that she had forgotten to check if he had a personality underneath? But people lied and hid their true selves. She knew that from bitter experience.

  And now what should she do? It was an impossible position. She didn’t want to compromise her baby’s health, but what if Dorcas ended up killed? After all, she, Frannie, had dragged her into all this.

  She wiped her eyes. She wouldn’t have a moment’s peace until she knew Dorcas was safe. As long as Hans was with her in her apartment, she couldn’t rest.

  Dorcas went straight back to the bedroom. Hans’s Gucci suit jacket was hung up on the chair. Even though it was early afternoon, he was still sleeping. She smirked: he should be, she’d kept him up most of the night. But, even though she’d skillfully worked to make him vulnerable, what she’d learned was precisely nothing. Some of her clients thought her practically psychic because she could read their thoughts so well.

  Asleep, he had the look of a child, a sulky, spoiled one who you knew wouldn’t do as he was told, but who looked unbearably cute with his eyes closed. She looked at him closely. Could he really be involved with all these missing men? She touched her stomach. She needed to know what kind of man he was. If she was going to be a single mum, she didn’t want to bring up a monster.