Night Driver

by Marcelle Perks

  He peered again over the edge of the sofa. Elli just lay still. He frowned. He wondered whether she was capable of feeling anything. He went to the side and crouched down. With a light hand he tapped her head. ‘Knock, knock. Anyone in there?’ he shouted. Nothing. He laughed, wiped his mouth. An odd look came over his face, as if he was about to do something bad. With curious fingers he pinched her arm hard, to see if she reacted. There was no cry, or attempt to move away.

  When nothing happened instantly, he looked at his watch. He’d do it for two minutes. He kept annoying the skin. Still her face was lifeless.

  He carefully chose a cigar from his humidor, sat back again on the sofa and prepared to smoke it. He wanted to chill out before Hugo came back. He’d better come soon. Elli was in the way. If he’d known Hugo was going to be so long he would have asked him to help get her to the VIP room. That was the place for bodies, dead or alive.

  Another one for the fire.

  Frannie sat and watched the sky darken outside. The brilliant glare of the pink sunset was beautiful over the lake. She wished she could relax. Her stomach growled. She’d barely eaten today. They’d ordered room service but she couldn’t swallow properly. Her body was fiercely telling her ‘Leave me alone!’ She was sick of being her own worst enemy.

  One hand rested perpetually on her stomach. The pain was not regular so it couldn’t be contractions, she’d learnt about all that on her prenatal course. Her waters hadn’t broken either, yet still she felt weird, as if her body had changed. Once this was over she would go straight to hospital and check herself in. Just one more night, she told herself.

  Dorcas was in the bathroom again. She was running in and out of there constantly. Perhaps the bitch had more drugs on her. Around each other they were twitchy. Even though the hotel boasted a spa, they were too anxious to try it out. They’d spent all afternoon cooped up in the room, staring at the walls, waiting for the bouncer’s call.

  Kurt had not rung her mobile although he must be back from work by now. She’d bitten her nails down to stubs wondering about him. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t been able to eat. She sighed. He was no bloody good for her. Let’s face it: if she hadn’t been stuck in a foreign country and pregnant she would have got out months ago. She climbed back on to the bed where Dorcas sat watching German television in some kind of yoga position.

  Dorcas checked her phone for the twentieth time.

  ‘Gar nichts!’ she said, her eyebrows shooting up into her fringe. ‘Let’s get some kip.’

  Frannie murmured. They decided to sleep in their clothes so that when the call came they could drive straight off. Awkwardly, they took it in turns to brush their teeth in the bathroom and lay down on top of the bed together under a cotton sheet. Frannie couldn’t get comfortable. The bed wasn’t that big, and she couldn’t seem to move without knocking into the stick-thin Dorcas; getting close to her was like touching a skeleton. Frannie kept excusing herself, trying to quash her resentment.

  But Dorcas’s scent: something between musk and an Indian bazaar, was overpowering. Even when their bodies weren’t touching, she could feel her presence, kept imagining what she’d done with her husband. She rubbed her forehead. She’d battled with horrible visions of Dorcas and Kurt through the torturous afternoon. Trying to understand, to conjure up how it’d been.

  What was this? The relentless desire to know was tearing at her, even though she knew it would do her no good. Finally, she could take it no more.

  ‘What happened?’ said Frannie breaking the silence, ‘With Kurt?’ They were two shadows lying in the dark.

  Dorcas clicked her lips then turned to Frannie. ‘Icebreaker,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Frannie thought she’d misunderstood the German.

  ‘When a man waits a long time with a strange woman, he gets nervous…doesn’t know where to put his hands. He eats, drinks, and tension builds up…’

  ‘Go on,’ Frannie couldn’t stop herself.

  ‘And so because the mind is uncertain, the body takes over, becomes primal. You start to feel a mutual attraction which is little more than tension. And then it’s easier to get to the turning point when someone tips over and becomes sexual.’

  Frannie tried to take this in.

  ‘Icebreaker?’

  ‘That’s an English word, isn’t it? To break the ice.’

  ‘And so you touched first, or what?’ Frannie’s voice got louder. She pushed herself awkwardly into a sitting position.

  Dorcas sighed. ‘Nicht fragen,’ she said wearily, turning away.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ said Frannie in a hopeless voice. Her long hair hung limply over her face. She wanted the whole narrative like it was an erotic story, but Dorcas was reluctant. What was she hiding? Frannie needled her.

  ‘There was no intercourse, OK? That’s all you need to know.’ She turned away from Frannie.

  Frannie felt like getting up, going to the hotel reception and getting some fresh air. But then Dorcas’s mobile rang. Frannie froze. She wasn’t sure she could trust her. ‘Put it on speakerphone,’ she said, ‘let me hear.’

  It must be the call. Frannie felt her throat tightening, the pressure of the baby squeezing everything in. But when the man spoke she gasped. She’d recognise that voice anywhere.

  ‘Dorcas? It’s Kurt. Alright, are you? Look, I’d like to see you as soon as possible. Finish where we left off.’ He let out a rude laugh.

  Frannie groaned and rushed into the bathroom. She banged the door shut, and slapped cold water over her face.

  In seconds Dorcas was behind her. ‘I’m sorry, Frannie,’ she said simply.

  Frannie broke out in huge sobs hunched over the sink as Dorcas tried to comfort her.

  ‘I told him no,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘I don’t care. The relationship’s over. Kaputt,’ sobbed Frannie. It hurt to bend, but she was too distressed to move. ‘I should have seen it coming,’ she said.

  Dorcas hugged her. ‘You want to know something, girlfriend? I’m also pregnant,’ she said in a little girl voice. She squeezed Frannie again.

  ‘What?’ Frannie turned to Dorcas, her eyes wild and staring.

  ‘It’s early days yet, but yes,’ said Dorcas with a wistful smile on her face.

  Frannie gave her a horrified look. ‘You know, and yet you smoke and put that shit up your nose?’ She pushed Dorcas away. She wanted to slap the stupid cow. ‘Do you plan to keep the baby?’ asked Frannie, her eyes glaring at Dorcas.

  ‘I haven’t made up my mind,’ said Dorcas, her head hung low.

  Frannie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. This was incomprehensible to her. She stormed out of the bathroom, shaking her head. This new revelation turned everything upside down. Maybe Dorcas didn’t care because she planned to harvest the organs from her baby. It was probably Hans’s, which meant she couldn’t be neutral in all this. And why had she never once mentioned before that she was pregnant?

  Frannie slumped on the bed with her head in her hands. She felt as if she’d been wrenched into a million pieces. Maybe they wanted her baby as well, for some terrible plan. Perhaps this Tomek business had been nothing but a ruse to hook her in. She started to tremble, and a low, sour pain gripped her innards. She cried out. At that moment, she couldn’t stand being with Dorcas a second more. She had to get out, leave now before anything else happened. She stood up, put on the light and was just about to pack her things when an excited Dorcas charged out of the bathroom.

  ‘I got the call,’ she said, quickly putting on her shoes. ‘Hugo’s just turned up at the club.’

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  Hans was still enjoying the cigar when Hugo barged into his office without knocking. Hans raised his eyebrows. The dude looked rough. Hugo was sweating and looked like shit in his expensive clothes. He had the body of a fat gorilla; no designer gear could put that right.

  Hans smiled.

  Hugo marched over to where Elli
was hidden, behind the sofa. He had a bag full of syringes in his hand.

  ‘Stefan’s not happy,’ said Hugo as he swiftly put a tourniquet around Elli’s arm and started the tedious process of drawing blood. ‘If the blood samples show she’s hepatitis-free and HIV-negative, he’ll take her. But he wants to be sure first.’ He glared at Hans. ‘You do know she’s a meth-head, right?’

  Hans frowned, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who put him in charge?’ he asked in a smooth voice that betrayed nothing.

  ‘He’s on his own,’ said Hugo, who looked exhausted as he sat back on his knees collecting the blood. ‘That Polish guy’s got bedsores and he’s moving him every two hours. He’s good, is Stefan, but he’s a perfectionist.’

  Hans carried on smoking his cigar as if everything was just dandy. Hugo, out of breath and in severe need of a wash, seemed to take forever filling the vials. Finally he stood up and turned to go. ‘I’ll get these to the lab.’

  ‘What about Sleeping Beauty here?’ said Hans, with a smirk. He was tired of being inconvenienced.

  ‘She’s out of it, no one will be any the wiser.’

  Hans sighed. ‘The desire to inflict pain, that is all that is uppermost: Albert Fish,’ he said.

  Hugo gave an irritated laugh. ‘Well it’s not for Stefan,’ said Hugo tersely. ‘He can see the big picture as long as it’s sterile, know what I mean?’

  Hans grinned. Hugo had never looked so damned ugly. He wondered if he was doing all this so he could finally get a woman. Birds liked dosh.

  ‘Go straight there, yeah?’ said Hans annoyed that the matter of Elli was taking so long to resolve. ‘I want to get the results as soon as possible.’

  He wanted to get out of here. He had some vacancies in his staffing and needed to test-drive some potentials so he could rectify that as soon as possible. He stroked his chin. That was one part of his job that he genuinely enjoyed.

  And he always felt, as Lars did, that if you’d fucked someone it was one step closer to killing them.

  Lars hesitantly got out of his truck. He’d parked in his usual spot at Moonlights, but the familiarity of the place only reminded him of what he’d lost. Being here was like déjà vu; the recognition prickled at him, but he knew damn well why he felt odd about the place. He’d been able to kill there, let himself go, and now he could not.

  His Lustmord had got the better of him. It was only a matter of time before he was arrested. Hans was going to do his nut, but he had to let the young ’un know, give him a chance to destroy evidence. It made no odds to him if he went down for killing two or twenty, but he didn’t want Hans dragged into it. Much as he resented the cheeky beggar for what he had become, his loyalty to the young Hans, the boy first met, was still there. He remembered the adoring, brilliant eyes. He licked his lips.

  Hans had aroused his finer feelings and he didn’t want him touched. Or perhaps he wanted to protect the part of Hans that overlapped with him like a Venn diagram; their past. He, Fritz, had unfolded as a bird opens its wings, and his darkest desires had been accepted with relish. He smarted at the memory. He didn’t want to get too Onkel Sigmund about it, but he was doing his best to protect the little sod. With heavy steps he made his way to Hans’s office.

  When he knocked and walked in, the young ’un went white, as if he’d seen a ghost.

  ‘Hans…’ began Lars, not sure how to proceed. Hans just stared at him. His eyes like two bits of coal. The girls always said when he was moody they changed colour and now he saw it right in front of his eyes.

  ‘I’ve killed again,’ said Lars, almost slurring in his haste to get the words out. ‘The lad at the gas station on the B6 – you probably saw it on the news.’

  Hans seemed to shrink inside his clothes like a pricked balloon. ‘A disorganised kill?’ he said hesitantly, as if he couldn’t believe he was hearing this.

  ‘I screwed up,’ said Lars sadly, rubbing his hands together in a shaking movement. ‘And I had sex with him, came inside him. The cops are taking DNA samples of all known truck drivers.’

  ‘They’ve taken yours?’ whispered Hans, leaning forward. He looked close to collapse.

  ‘Last night. I visited Koch and he asked me; what could I say?’ Lars made a face like a four-year-old. Slowly he sat down in an armchair and exhaled sorrowfully. ‘You need to get rid of any evidence, CCTV footage, anything. And get that kill room steam-cleaned.’

  Hans looked into the distance. ‘You got the darkness coming down,’ said Hans. ‘That’s what Jeffrey Dahmer said – I think in some way I wanted it to end, even if it meant my own destruction.’ Hans’s expression was subdued. Lars felt as if he couldn’t bear to be separated from him. The wistfulness in his face made him want to hold on to him.

  ‘You’ll have about a week,’ said Hans hopelessly. ‘How will I manage, without you?

  He seemed in shock. Lars was shocked to see real tears forming behind his eyelids. It was the first time he’d seen Hans upset. He had cared after all.

  ‘I’m not going to say anything,’ said Lars. His hands were bunched awkwardly in front of him. He leaned forward. ‘I’m done with all this. I can hack it, but you need to be free.’

  Hans looked at him wonderingly. He tipped his head to one side. ‘Aren’t you afraid, Lars?’

  ‘I’m tired of fighting the compulsion. Inside it’ll have to stop.’

  Lars felt suddenly completely calm. He thought he’d lost him, but the young ’un was weeping. Good God, the tears were running down his face.

  He got up and pulled Hans to his feet. With one swoop he roughly embraced him. They pressed cheeks. He felt as if the huge engine of his desire was roaring at full speed. When things were good with Hans it was like being constantly in the pure burn of the zone. The fierceness of his feelings astonished him. He looked into his eyes and they began to kiss, passionately. Lars felt euphoric and his mood lightened his constant headache. He didn’t even care about going to prison; he just wanted this moment to last forever. He closed his eyes and rocked his body along Hans’s. The dark red walls of the room were spinning and he was waltzing passionately without a care. He was so incredibly goddamn high he was about to fall off the earth.

  Then he heard it: a low, unmistakable groan. He stopped. He stared around the room in disbelief. It came again. The noise was low down. Someone was there alright, behind the sofa.

  Grimly he peered over the leather edge. He saw Elli shoved there like a broken doll, propped up against the wall. Her face had the sick, slack colour of runny vanilla ice. At first he thought he was seeing things. But when he bent down he saw the bandage, that she was not right.

  The sight of her shameful injuries activated the rage in him; he wanted to bellow like a bull. Elli was trying to move her head. Her lips were moving faintly, but she was too far gone to actually speak. All she could manage was an animal wail, like a cow that knows it’s to be slaughtered.

  ‘Hans?’ exclaimed Lars, still crouched down. His hands were clenched; he wanted to rip Hans’s fucking head off. He’d thought he could not get worse, but he was wrong. And somehow he, Lars, had activated this senseless sadism in him. He felt a tremor run through himself. This was his mess, and now he had to put things right.

  He turned around and faced the young ’un.

  Now he’d been caught, Hans’s face was blank, like an unplugged robot. Lars wanted to stick needles in him, he was desperate to get a reaction, but Hans seemed unable to register what he’d done. The realisation hit Lars that Hans was also a Täter, that this could not be the first time. His head burned trying to take it all in. Anna was dead, Elli was bashed in, so that left only Dorcas from the original three prostitutes Hans had hired when they had opened Moonlights. She could be next. The young ’un had lost it, he was totally out of control.

  Anna. It hurt to think about her murder. It was his one regret. Fritz didn’t do women. He only killed men that he fancied, the ones he really liked.

  But when he recalled her final struggles, it fe
lt wrong, as if the picture he was seeing wasn’t properly in focus. He hated thinking about it. He advanced on Hans, stuck his face aggressively near to his.

  ‘That wasn’t the first time, was it?’ Lars’s eyes blazed with anger.

  Hans shrugged. ‘It’s just like a big chunk of me has been ripped out and I’m not quite whole,’ he quipped.

  ‘Stop that shit!’ shouted Lars, his neck turning an angry red. He stood in Hans’s face. ‘Answer me.’

  Hans laughed, knowing he was winding him up, pushing him over the edge, but he became increasingly melodramatic.

  ‘I was completely swept along by my own compulsion. It didn’t satisfy me completely so maybe I was thinking another one will.’ He laughed again.

  Schweinehund! Lars’s breathing was getting laboured; he was bristling with frustration. The telephone rang. Hans turned towards it, off-guard for a second. Lars seized his chance. That smug bastard! He’d show him.

  Lars punched Hans in the kidneys solidly from behind; with that one blow he was down. Quickly, Lars sat on his back and pushed both Hans’s arms up past his body as far as they would go. He jerked at the extended arms, forcing them to rock in their sockets. Hans screamed. It was painful, easy and effective.

  ‘Who killed Anna?’ said Lars, still keeping his grip on the shoulders.

  ‘Me!’ screamed Hans. His head was twirling from side to side as he fought against the pain.

  Lars winced, but he felt instant relief. He wasn’t such a sick fuck after all then. ‘Why did you make me think I did it?’

  Hans was just screaming now. Spittle was coming out of his mouth and running on to the wooden floor. Lars relaxed his grip a fraction.

  ‘To confuse you. I needed you on board the organ-trafficking scheme. If you thought you were only a gay serial killer it was so fucking restrictive. You couldn’t be used as effectively.’ Hans’s words were bitter; he was full of hate. Now he was beyond desperate. Lars pushed his arms even deeper, and Hans’s screams got higher.