Constantin’s bleeper went off. He nodded with finality, as though confirming that a bargain had been struck.
‘Right, that’s it.’
He went over to Benny’s chair and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I can depend on you, can’t I? A straightforward shot in the head. Brain-dead, but the heart must go on beating. Do it the way I showed you.’
Benny nodded, took the automatic from his pocket and flipped the safety catch as Constantin left the room, closing the door behind him.
69
‘The end justifies the means – aren’t you always saying so yourself? Isn’t that your motto in life?’
‘You’re crazy, Sandra. The end never justifies taking a human life.’
Marc’s memory of their argument before the crash drowned the roar of the blood being pumped ever faster through his body by his pounding heart.
So that was their plan.
They hadn’t been able to kill him any sooner because they didn’t need his liver until the child was born.
Haberland had been right about everything.
‘Well, I’m not sure how the Bleibtreu Clinic induces artificial amnesia in its patients. Up to now, losses of memory have always been an unintended by-product. However, it’s conceivable that they subject their guinea pigs to shock therapy. And isn’t that just what’s happening to you now? One traumatic incident hard on the heels of another?’
‘Turn round,’ Benny told him. He checked his magazine once more, then drew the curtains. The only source of daylight now was the door to the terrace.
‘You’re crazy.’ Marc had lost all sense of time. It was still snowing outside. Seen from up here, the city might have been wrapped in dirty cotton wool. Everything looked at once real and unreal.
‘Please turn round. They’re delivering the baby right now. We don’t have much time. It must be operated on immediately.’
‘But why? Was all this really necessary?’
Marc tried to catch his brother’s eye, but Benny avoided his gaze. His hand was trembling too, even though the gun gave him control of the situation.
‘You could have looked for a compromise.’
‘Sandra didn’t want to take that risk.’
‘I wish you hadn’t found out.’
‘There really isn’t any other solution.’
Marc clasped his head in despair. ‘Damn it, Benny, you know me. Don’t you think I’d have sacrificed myself willingly?’
‘Would you?’
Marc’s knees were threatening to buckle.
Would I have had the courage? Or would I have copped out?
‘You know me. We’re brothers!’
‘I know, but I’ve no choice.’ Benny sniffed. He was standing in the gloom beside the desk, and Marc couldn’t see the tears streaming down his brother’s cheeks. He, too, began to weep as he slowly, very slowly, turned to face the wall. He gazed at the light box displaying the ultrasound picture of his son. The first and last picture of his child he would ever see. Then he shut his eyes.
‘Why couldn’t they simply transplant part of my liver?’ he asked. ‘Why does anyone have to die at all?’
‘You see? You’d have looked for a compromise. You were too much of a threat to our plan.’
Marc’s chest rose and fell like that of a patient hyperventilating. Sweating all over, he tried to think of the son he would never hold in his arms. He would never stand silently beside his bed and watch him breathing in his sleep, never take him to school, never see him swimming in the sea, never slip him the cash for a night out with his first girlfriend. And the thought that his child would survive thanks to him did not detract from his fear of dying. He was no hero; he was simply a debilitated, exhausted man with a terrible fear of death.
‘But you can’t prevent it.’
‘Oh yes I will, believe me.’
‘Shit, I really wish I didn’t have to do this,’ Benny muttered. ‘I wish you’d never come to see me, and I wish I still hated you. I’m so sorry.’
Then the black specks stopped dancing before Marc’s eyes and a last, lovely memory of Sandra came back to him.
‘If one of us dies – no, please hear me out – the first of us to go must give the other one a sign.’
‘By turning the light on?’
‘So we know we aren’t alone. So we know we’re thinking of each other even if we can’t see each other.’
‘Benny,’ Marc said, opening his eyes again.
‘Yes?’
‘You don’t have to do it.’
‘I do.’
‘No, I’ll do it myself.’
‘That’s not on.’
Benny’s voice sounded muffled, as if he had a handkerchief over his mouth.
Marc spun round, but he was too late.
His brother was holding the automatic two-handed with the muzzle in his mouth. He pulled the trigger.
70
‘Nooooo!’
Marc’s senses had been so overstrung by his fear of death, he thought the detonation would burst his eardrums.
But there was no report, no blood and no slew of brain matter soiling the curtains over the window facing the terrace. Just a metallic click like that of a cheap ballpoint pen, but even that was almost unbearable. Perhaps the ammunition had been of inferior quality and the damp primer hadn’t been ignited when the firing pin struck it. Perhaps there had been no round at all in the chamber because grit or dirt had obstructed the recoil spring. Perhaps it wasn’t even down to the puddle of melted snow into which Valka had hurled the automatic and there was quite another reason why the bullet hadn’t ploughed through Benny’s brain and shattered his skull.
Not the first time, at least.
Feverishly, Benny worked the slide mechanism and replaced the muzzle in his mouth.
‘Nooooo!’
Marc felt he was having one of those nightmares in which you try to escape from some threat, only to find yourself running on the spot. Sluggishly, as if restrained by invisible rubber bands, he made for his brother. Time seemed to be flowing backwards, or at least to be standing still. He had never crossed a room so slowly.
In reality, it all took less than half a second. Marc reached the desk, snatched up the heavy brass lamp, and smashed the base against his brother’s shins.
Benny doubled up in front of the window, clasping his legs and howling with pain.
‘You idiot!’ he yelled. ‘You fucking idiot!’
Marc picked up the gun, which had slithered across the floor and ended up by his feet. ‘Why?’ he yelled almost as loudly. ‘Why do that?’
‘You mean you still don’t understand?’ Benny was rocking back and forth like someone with autism. He screwed up his streaming eyes and shouted the words into his clenched fist. The words that made sense of everything at last.
‘You’ve got it too!’
‘What?’
Benny said it again, spitting out the words one by one. Saliva trickled down his unshaven chin. A thread of spittle landed on his chest.
Of course.
I’ve got it too.
71
Marc studied his reflection in the glass door to the terrace with the snowflakes dancing behind it.
It was obvious once you knew: the yellow-tinged eyes, the fatigue, the ever-intensifying pains in his head and limbs, the itching. All symptoms of cirrhosis.
In front of him, Benny was trying to haul himself back on to his chair. ‘Your liver’s fucked,’ he gasped. ‘Not as badly as your son’s – he doesn’t have any bile ducts at all. You’ve got a bit more time, Marc, but not much more. Understand?’
No, he didn’t. His brain registered all the facts but his mind refused to recognize the connections between them.
‘You mean to sacrifice yourself?’ he asked, dumbfounded.
‘We don’t have any choice.’
Benny had struggled to his feet and was clinging exhaustedly to the back of the chair. ‘Your baby’s liver damage was discovered long before the accid
ent – by ultrasound, during a routine examination here,’ he explained hurriedly. ‘Constantin was shocked, but he didn’t tell either you or Sandra. You weren’t supposed to find out until he’d located a suitable donor.’
‘You!’
Benny nodded.
‘He began by checking the official donor data banks and put the baby on the waiting list, but how likely was it that an infant belonging to a compatible blood group would die in time?’
Zilch.
‘So he examined all the potential donors in the family.’
Although everything within him rebelled, Marc began to draw the right conclusions. So that was why his father-in-law had persuaded him to undergo that health check three weeks before the accident. Fatigue, nausea and aching limbs – Constantin had identified the cause of those symptoms but concealed it from him.
‘You inherited your liver damage from our father and passed it on to the baby, Marc. I’m the only close relation who was spared.’ Benny laughed. ‘Ironical, isn’t it, that I should be the broken link in the chain?’
While his brother was talking to him persuasively, almost imploringly, Marc recalled the cryptic words of Benny’s nurse, Leana Schmidt, which now made sense to him:
‘Benny’s behaviour changed the day after he had an MRI scan. . . We normally scan the brain for anomalies, but they only scanned the lower part of his body. . . I got hold of the pictures. . . He’s perfectly fit.’
‘You propose to die for my sake?’ Marc asked. The very question sounded inconceivable.
Benny rose with an effort. ‘Yours and the baby’s. That’s the plan. Constantin told you when you met him at his house on the day of the accident.’
Which I wasn’t supposed to remember.
‘Is there really no other potential donor?’ Marc asked helplessly.
‘No.’ Benny looked at him sadly. ‘Neither legally nor on the black market. I’ve tried everything.’
So that’s why you needed the money. . . The words flashed through Marc’s mind. Ninety thousand euros. Benny had borrowed the money from Valka to purchase an organ illegally, to save his life and that of his child, but the deal had fallen through.
‘Marc, look at me.’ Benny thumped his chest with his fist. ‘I’ve got a healthy liver and a compatible blood group, unlike Sandra. You won’t find that combination in a hurry. Don’t you see what it means?’
Marc nodded. His brother was the ideal donor. That was why he had suddenly changed his lifestyle, working out and eating a healthy diet. All in readiness for the forthcoming operation. And that was why Valka had let him go. Benny must have let him into the secret at the last moment, probably after he’d been dragged out of the car and beaten up in the drive of Constantin’s villa. Valka had refrained from shooting Benny only because he knew he would soon be dead in any case. Why soil his hands when his victim was going to kill himself?
‘Sandra loves you,’ Benny said quietly. ‘So does Constantin. They arranged all this so as not to lose everything at a stroke – you and the child. So please,’ he entreated, ‘give me back the gun. Let me get this over.’
Marc retreated a step. Even though his memory of their last meeting at Constantin’s villa was still incomplete, he now knew exactly what they had been arguing about in the car on the way home.
‘Still, you do see we don’t have any choice, don’t you?’
At the end of her tether, Sandra had agreed to this murderous plan to save her child and her husband. He had vehemently opposed it, and had it not been for their accident on the return trip, he would undoubtedly have thwarted his brother’s suicide attempt a second time.
‘But why did you go to such lengths?’ he asked desperately.
‘Sandra told you: things got out of control. On the one hand, Constantin wanted to maintain your amnesia so you didn’t prevent my death. On the other, he had to prepare you for the operation. That was another reason why you had to go and have your dressing changed so often.’
‘Why didn’t he simply drug me or abduct me?’
‘What, Constantin?’ Benny shook his head. ‘Your father-in-law may be unscrupulous but he isn’t a criminal. On the contrary, he wanted to save your life. At first he thought a single lie would do the trick, so he shut you up in a mental prison far harder to break out of than any form of physical restraint – do you understand? He couldn’t just let you disappear either. First you had to retract your statement to the board of examiners, otherwise I would never have been discharged from that psychiatric hospital.’ Benny coughed. ‘It all went pear-shaped, of course, and when Emma suddenly appeared on the scene the chaos was complete. The script didn’t contain a part for an escaped lunatic. We hadn’t allowed for her, any more than we expected you to ask me, of all people, for help. Damn it, Marc, I’d meant to spend the last few hours before my death saying goodbye to everyone, but all at once I had you, Valka and that paranoid creature breathing down my neck.’ Benny’s voice shook. ‘Sandra wanted to back out at one stage. She begged Constantin to ditch the whole scheme and come clean with you, but by then he wasn’t behaving rationally any more. All that drove them both in the end was panic and fear.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Fear for you, fear for the baby. Have you got it at last?’
Yes, alas.
They had traumatized but not meant to kill him. The whole business had merely served to protect him. He was to forget in order to survive.
‘And now?’ said Marc. His physical and mental strength had finally run out. ‘Where do we go from here?’
72
Benny smiled sadly and glanced at his watch.
‘The liver is the only divisible organ in the human body,’ he said after a short pause. ‘Your son will get the left lobe and you the larger one. That’s how Constantin explained it to me. It’ll work as long as it’s done quickly, so please. . .’
He put out his hand for the gun. ‘Come on, I was going to do it anyway. At least my death will have some meaning.’
‘I can’t let you do it.’
‘Everything’s ready. Your son is waiting in the theatre. He hasn’t a chance of surviving unless I die. Nor do you.’
‘Maybe,’ said Marc. Then he quoted an elderly man he’d met only a few hours earlier – the one person who had always been honest with him. ‘But it can never be right to do the wrong thing.’
His brother stared at him in surprise. ‘One person dies, two survive. What can be wrong with that?’
‘Death isn’t a mathematical equation!’ Marc shouted.
Benny rolled his eyes. ‘You can’t understand, is that it? You want a reason. All right, listen and I’ll give you one.’ He brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. It was matted with blood and sweat. ‘You remember that day in May?’
The burglary, Sandra’s miscarriage.
The question pierced Marc to the quick. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘It was me.’
‘What?’
‘I shot my mouth off to Valka – told him that Sandra’s father was asking to be burgled.’
‘No.’
‘Yes. I swear I didn’t mean them to break in. All I did was bitch about the stupidity of a fat cat who left his house so insecure. During one of our meetings Sandra had mentioned the spare key in the boathouse, just in case I needed a bolthole and no one was at home.’
Benny’s eyes were misted with tears.
‘She tried to help me, damn it – that’s why she lost her baby. Your baby. I struggled with my conscience, really I did, but it became too much for me in the end. That’s why I slit my wrists.’
For a moment Marc felt the ground give way beneath his feet. He had just, for the second time, prevented the suicide of a man who was responsible for the death of his first child. A tidal wave of rage and sorrow broke over him.
Is Haberland mistaken? Can it be right to do the wrong thing?
Thinking of his work with young people – of Julia, whose life he had saved by means of a psychological trick and simultaneously sent back t
o hell – Marc realized that the principle he had always lived by was now being put to the most terrible test of all.
Does the end justify the means after all?
‘I confessed to Sandra immediately,’ Benny said, ‘but she wouldn’t give me away.’ He gulped. ‘For your sake. You were never meant to learn the true reason for her doubts. Besides, she knew there could be no greater punishment than my own self-hatred.’
Marc recalled what Constantin had said: ‘A tragedy can form a tremendous bond between people who love each other.’
That was why Sandra had found her way back to him after the miscarriage, and that was why she and Constantin had so readily accepted Benny’s self-sacrificial offer.
‘Please,’ Benny entreated. ‘Let me make up for what I did. To you, to the child. And to Sandra.’
Marc’s lower lip trembled as he thought of the consequences of the choice he now had to make. If he prevented Benny from committing suicide he would be risking his own life and, at the same time, sealing the fate of their child.
He raised the gun, checked the safety catch and worked the slide mechanism to insert another round into the chamber. He was prepared for what happened next. Gritting his teeth and ignoring the agonizing pain in his injured leg, Benny sprang at him and tried to wrench the gun from his grasp. Marc dodged aside and made for the door to the terrace. He almost failed to grab hold of the handle because Benny caught him by the sleeve.
Wrenching the door open, he hurled the automatic far out over the balustrade with Benny yanking at him from behind.
The two of them stumbled and fell, and for a moment they lay panting side by side, hurt and exhausted.
Marc wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. He was experiencing an unprecedented emotion, torn between a father’s desire for revenge and brotherly love. In the end he gazed into Benny’s tearful, dark-brown eyes, not knowing what to say. But he didn’t have a chance to ponder the matter, because this time he was unprepared for what came next. It all happened far too quickly.
Benny drove his elbow into Marc’s face, jumped up and hobbled out of the open glass door, dragging his injured leg and groaning with pain. The flagstones on the terrace were slippery, and Marc was too far away to have a chance of catching his brother as he prepared to leap over the balustrade.