Complications?
His wife was now addressing the camera direct. ‘Marc, if you’re watching this, I need you here with me. Please!’ she sobbed. ‘There’s something wrong with our baby. They’re going to have to deliver it prematurely.’
There the report ended. Back in the studio the two presenters resumed their appalling patter, grinning as if they’d just concluded a live broadcast of the Oktoberfest.
‘There, you can carry on voting now,’ the man said with a laugh. ‘Would you have yourself brainwashed into not remembering any nasty experiences?’
‘Or,’ the woman added, ‘will you say no, that’s not for me – I don’t want to wind up like Marc Lucas. His wife is giving birth this very afternoon, by the way. Her baby is due to be delivered any minute – by Caesarian section at the Senner Hospital – and it’s really tragic that the father won’t. . .’
Unable to bear it any longer, Marc stood up and put his fingers in his ears, yelling in an attempt to drown the presenters’ voices.
At that moment, down in the drive, a shot rang out.
63
Just as Marc got down there, his brother’s head slammed into a garden lamp post. He must somehow have managed to escape from the car and wrench the assailant’s gun from his grasp. It was lying half a metre away beside an ornamental shrub, and its owner was preparing to kick Benny in the kidneys as hard as he could.
Marc had no idea if it was the motorcyclist or another of Valka’s henchmen. He wasn’t wearing a balaclava and, from the back, he looked too bulky for a motocross enthusiast.
Benny had failed to get back on his feet and was trying to crawl out of the danger zone on all fours. To no avail. His assailant kicked him in the crotch from behind and he jack-knifed. Then the man bent over him.
Meanwhile, Marc had tiptoed around the car, which was now minus its windscreen. He was only two metres from the pump-action shotgun with which the thug must have shattered the perspex. He was about to make a dive for it when the beefy figure swung round.
‘Think I’m stupid?’ the man said with a laugh.
Marc raised his hands. Now that he had a full-face view of his brother’s would-be killer, he recognized him at once.
‘Hello, Valka.’
He was even fatter than he remembered.
‘Well, if it isn’t our worthy social worker! This is just like old times.’
With a supercilious grin, Valka checked the magazine of the pistol he was holding. Unlike the pump-action lying beside the bush, which needed reloading after the last shot, Benny’s automatic had plenty of rounds in it.
‘A shame you ran out on the band because of that slag of yours.’
‘Since when do you do your own dirty work?’ said Marc. Although his breath was steaming, he didn’t feel the cold wind blowing across from the lake. Fear was warming him from within.
‘Ever since your brother tried to fuck a fucker,’ Valka retorted, aiming a kick at Benny’s unprotected face every time he said the F-word. Strangely enough, Benny was shielding his stomach with his arms but not his head. Blood was oozing from his mouth and nose.
‘Ah, so you’re an Eddie Murphy fan,’ Marc said quickly, before another kick could land.
Valka stopped short. ‘What?’
‘That was a quote from a film: “Never try to fuck a fucker” – something like that. It comes from Trading Places, but never mind. You should be in the movies yourself, Eddy.’
Valka grinned. Then he looked down and addressed himself to the human bundle at his feet. ‘To think this smart aleck put you in the nuthouse!’
‘Get stuffed!’ croaked Benny, spitting out a front tooth.
From far away came the sound of a barge hooting as it made its way downstream to Glienicke Bridge. Marc looked round. The gardens in this area were so big the houses couldn’t be seen from the road. No one would come to their aid and the pump-gun in front of him was just a useless lump of wood and metal. Valka was three car-lengths away; he would empty an entire magazine into Marc’s chest before he’d covered half that distance.
Marc knew this as well as Valka, who didn’t even trouble to aim the pistol at him. He knelt down with the metal toe of one cowboy boot only millimetres from Benny’s right eye. Then he grabbed him by the hair and lifted his head off the gravel until his own mouth was close to Benny’s blood-stained lips.
Valka jammed the muzzle of the automatic under Benny’s chin. ‘Okay, Benjamin, ready to die?’ he asked quietly, sounding like the psychopath he was.
To Marc’s horror, his brother just nodded – wearily, like someone resigned to his fate. Then he said something to Valka in a whisper so soft that it was carried away by wind whistling in the trees. Saliva flecked with blood trickled down Benny’s chin. For some strange reason, his eyes conveyed something akin to profound gratitude before he shut them.
‘All right, you maniac,’ said Valka, ‘go to hell!’
And then, just after Marc had decided to court certain death rather than stand there idly, Valka did something altogether illogical.
He gave Benny’s cheek an affectionate pat. Then he straightened up, flung the pistol away as far as he could and, without a backward glance, strode off down the drive to the gate.
64
‘Why did he do that?’ Marc had to shout to make himself heard above the headwind, which seemed to be scything into his face with the velocity of a tornado. Valka had blown out the windscreen but only perforated the driver’s seat when Benny hurled himself aside at the last moment.
‘Why did he just walk off like that?’ Marc looked back at Benny, who had made it back into the car and was lying sideways across the rear seat with his knees drawn up, mopping his mouth with the bottom of his T-shirt.
‘No idea. Must be my lucky day.’
Benny heaved, then turned on his side and threw up over the floor mats. It was a while before he could go on. ‘I reckon he didn’t want to get his own hands dirty. His people will find me soon enough.’ He groaned. ‘It’s all over anyway.’
Marc shook his head uncomprehendingly. ‘We’re almost there,’ he shouted above the wind.
Just to make matters worse, it was sleeting again. The wet snow was blinding him. Cars, pedestrians, road markings, the buildings on either side – all were dissolving into a blur before his eyes.
Benny tried to raise his head. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the Senner Clinic.’
A people carrier behind them flashed its lights, but Marc couldn’t drive any faster, much as he wanted to. He removed one cold, wet hand from the steering wheel and blew on it, then felt in his pocket for the pistol, which he’d retrieved from a puddle of melted snow. Even the magazine was still in place.
‘Where are we, for God’s sake?’ Benny tried to prop himself on his elbows, but his strength failed and he subsided again. They were driving through a suburb so neat and tidy that it could have passed for a picturesque Bavarian village. The pubs were called The Coachman’s Rest or The Village Inn and there were almost as many churches as livery stables. It was no wonder the locals attending the weekly street market turned to stare at their shot-up car as if it had materialized from outer space.
Marc let go of the wheel and wiped his streaming face. The sleet was turning to snow, causing him to slow down even more.
‘There’s something I must tell you,’ he heard Benny groan. He looked in the rear-view mirror.
‘When you dropped out of the band and I swallowed those pills. . .’
‘It was bad, Benny, I know. I should have taken more care of you.’
‘No, I don’t mean that.’ Benny coughed. ‘I didn’t do it because of you.’
‘So why did you?’
‘Because of Sandra.’
The words smote Marc in the face, cold as the sleet. Sandra?
‘You weren’t the only one who was in love with her.’
Marc turned round.
‘Don’t worry,’ Benny said defensively. ‘I never had an a
ffair with her, though she wavered at first.’
Marc stiffened. His fingers tightened their grip on the steering wheel as he tried to sort out his whirling thoughts.
So that explains it. . .
That was why Sandra had kept him dangling for so long at the start of their relationship. She’d been unable to decide between him and his brother.
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘So you don’t worry about me any more,’ Benny said haltingly. ‘The truth is, Sandra fell in love with you very soon. I was just an aberration – the pathetic younger brother who confused her for a short time. We met three times, then she realized you were the right one for her. I accepted that, but afterwards I simply couldn’t bear being anywhere near you both.’
Does that mean. . .
The jigsaw puzzle was forming a picture piece by piece.
. . . his first suicide attempt stemmed from a broken heart?
‘You never left me in the lurch, Luke. I was the one who severed contact. And then. . .’ His voice tailed off.
‘Then what?’ Marc insisted.
‘One day, quite by chance, I bumped into her again. It was when she was pregnant the first time.’
Marc could scarcely breathe.
Three years ago? Was Benny the reason for her odd behaviour? Was it him she’d been with at that café in Neukölln?
‘Believe it or not, I was in an even worse state then than I am now,’ Benny said. He spat out some more blood. ‘She saw at once that I was in a bad way and automatically blamed herself – as if her decision to fall in love with you was the reason for my hitting the skids.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘That was crap. The responsibility was mine alone.’
His voice was growing steadily fainter. It sounded almost dreamy, and Marc began to grasp the truth.
Damn it, he’s still in love with her. After all this time. . .
‘Her relationship with me was very much like yours, Marc. She wanted to help me – to make up for what she thought of as her mistake. I’m afraid she even had second thoughts about her relationship with you and wondered if she’d made the right decision. But hell, Marc, she was a pregnant bundle of hormones at the time. I’m sure you experienced her mood swings for yourself.’
‘I still don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.’
‘It’s quite simple. Sandra and I met on several occasions, and each time she ended up feeling worse. She couldn’t talk to you about it. Your marriage was at stake, after all, and she knew how rocky our own relationship was. In the end she turned to her father for help. She meant to ask him to help me. With his money and his connections, I mean.’
Marc glanced over his shoulder. He had seldom seen his brother look as sad as he did now.
‘Now do you understand?’ Benny demanded hoarsely. ‘If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have lost her first child. She’d have been with you on the day of the break-in, not out at Constantin’s place.’
Marc sensed that he’d been holding his breath for far too long. Greedily, he sucked in lungfuls of icy air. Then he coughed, and the cough relieved some of the tension that had built up in the last few minutes.
‘Forget it,’ he said. He brushed some bits of shattered windscreen off the passenger seat and deposited Benny’s pistol on it in case of another attack. ‘You weren’t to blame.’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘No. It was chance – a quirk of fate. If anyone failed, we both did.’
After a couple of minutes, during which Marc silently digested his brother’s confession, they pulled up at a red light. The wind had veered, and he took advantage of the delay to mop his eyebrows, mouth and nose with a handkerchief.
‘We both got it wrong, didn’t we?’ he said.
Benny grunted.
‘And now?’ Marc glanced at the rear-view mirror. ‘Will we manage to straighten things out?’
‘I don’t know. We could always consult the radio oracle,’ Benny quipped through gritted teeth.
Radio oracle. . .
The very words triggered a host of old memories as numerous as the snowflakes that were once more whirling into the car. If he remembered rightly, the last time they’d played it was the night they dumped their father’s car in the flooded gravel pit.
‘Shall I?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Benny called back. He coughed. It might also have been a laugh; Marc couldn’t tell. They were just turning into Heerstrasse.
‘Okay, the question is: “Dear radio oracle, how will everything turn out today?”’
Marc slowed to 50 kph and turned on the radio at random.
A commercial.
‘We don’t have time. Skip it!’
Marc pressed the search button. They landed on some instrumental jazz, then on a classical programme. After that came talking or news broadcasts. They didn’t succeed until the seventh attempt.
‘I know, I know what’s on your mind,’ sang a strikingly high-pitched male voice. ‘And I know it gets tough sometimes.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Benny.
Marc glanced over his shoulder. ‘Know who it is?’
Benny didn’t open his eyes. He shrugged apologetically, the cuts and bruises on his swollen face conveying some idea of the pain he was in.
‘Do you?’ he asked almost inaudibly.
They came to a bridge over the Havel. The tyres skidded on the icy surface, and Marc slowed down, although everything inside him was urging him to head as fast as possible for the hospital, where Benny could be attended to.
And where Sandra was just giving birth to their child?
He almost welcomed this opportunity to occupy his mind with this puerile game. It meant he didn’t have to reflect on the fact that he was on his way to see his late wife giving birth to their child.
‘I’ll think of it in a minute,’ he said as the refrain began.
‘’Cause it’s all right, I think we’re going to make it.’
He dried his face on his sleeve. His skin, his lips, even his tongue seemed to have gone on strike. Not long to go now, though. He could vaguely discern the high-rise building in the distance.
The Senner Clinic marked the boundary between Spandau and Charlottenburg. Most of the buildings in the complex were at most two or three storeys high and almost hidden from Heerstrasse by a dense belt of trees. But the new fourteen-storey hospital block, which also housed a hotel for convalescents and patients’ families, jutted into the sky like a phallus and served as a guide to drivers on their way to open-air concerts in the woods. Here, at the latest, was where they had to turn on their indicators.
‘I think it might just work out this time.’
‘Hear that? Everything’s fine. We’re going to make it.’
All right.
Marc knew it was a silly, irrational, childish superstition but he couldn’t help feeling heartened by the radio oracle’s prediction.
They left Heerstrasse and turned down a private approach road. Notice boards warned drivers to proceed at a walking pace. The outside lights were on already.
‘Okay, but what’s the singer’s name?’ Benny was coughing again, and this time it didn’t sound like laughter.
Had Valka shot him after all?
Fear for his brother dispelled his irrational euphoria.
‘I don’t know,’ Marc said quietly. The road narrowed and came out in a visitors’ car park.
‘Shit, you know what that means.’
Marc nodded mutely. Of course he knew the rules; he’d invented them himself over twenty years ago. The radio oracle didn’t count unless you knew the singer’s name. If you didn’t it brought bad luck.
‘Yes, it’s a bad omen, but I’ll think of it in a minute.’
Criss, Christoph, Chris Jones, Christopher. . .
It was on the tip of his tongue when a mobile phone beeped in the footwell. He looked down in surprise. ‘Hey, somebody wants you.’
The Nokia’s display was flashing. He bent down
and picked it up. A sealed envelope was indicating the receipt of a text message.
‘It fell out of my pocket earlier on,’ said Benny.
Marc gave a start. Then every muscle in his body tensed.
‘What is it?’ Benny asked, but Marc was staring at the phone, transfixed.
It can’t be true. Not this on top of everything else. . .
Benny had activated the preview function, so Marc had two seconds to read the sender’s name and message:
Where are you, Benny?
Hurry, it’s almost time.
We can’t start without Marc!
Constantin
Marc stared aghast at the rear-view mirror, which dealt him his next shock. All he saw at first was Benny’s hand reaching for the grab handle. Then his face came into view.
Benny made a sudden lunge for the passenger seat, but Marc was too quick for him. He braked hard and the pistol fell to the floor. The car spun round ninety degrees, slithered another half-metre, and came to rest just short of a stop sign.
Reaching down, Marc retrieved the automatic and put the muzzle to his brother’s blood-stained forehead.
65
‘Keep away from me!’ Marc yelled. He almost lost his footing on the icy ground as he got out of the car in his rubber-soled trainers. ‘Stay where you are, you two-timing bastard!’
There was a stench of petrol and the little car’s radiator fan was humming like that of a clogged vacuum cleaner. Marc gave up holding his brother at bay and stumbled up the driveway as fast as he could. It ended in front of a plain, flat-roofed building with two ambulances parked outside. Unlike Bleibtreu’s establishment, the Senner Clinic did not spend its private patients’ money on fancy architecture or interior decoration. Constantin invested it in ultra-modern equipment and well-trained staff, so the entrance differed little at first sight from that of a public hospital: an aluminium reception desk, a kiosk with the obligatory newspaper racks and bookstall, a big noticeboard beside the lifts and, in the background, the entrance to the visitors’ cafeteria.
Where to now? Where should I go?