The Child (22 page)

‘You realize we won’t pay for damaged goods, don’t you?’ The face obscured by the sunglasses gave a throaty laugh and lit another cigarette. Stern could hear footsteps on the stairs, the creak of leather slippers drowning the faint squeak of Simon’s trainers. The sounds steadily faded.

‘Now, now, don’t move.’ She raised the gun. ‘My husband won’t be long. It’s only forty-five minutes to the first interval. Then it’ll be my turn.’

She puckered her dark-brown lips in the semblance of a kiss. Stern, feeling sick to his stomach, looked at the ceiling. The footsteps were directly overhead.

‘Any moment now.’ The lips twisted into a grimace that presumably stood proxy for a smile.

The next thing Stern heard was music – classical music. The paedophile was obviously an opera fan, because he recognized the strains of
La Traviata
. For the first time in his life, he wished Verdi had never written any arias for Violetta.

‘Right,’ said the woman, glancing at her watch. Let’s make the most of our time and have a little chat. Come on, out with it. What are you really after?’

‘Isn’t that obvious?’ Stern hoped she wouldn’t notice the tremor in his voice. The soprano overhead was getting into her stride. ‘You advertised for a boy. I delivered him.’

She was clever. She didn’t make the mistake of coming any closer. At this range she could empty a whole magazine into him before he’d covered half the distance between them. The only weapons he could use against her were his voice and his intelligence, and both were threatening to give up on him.

Where the hell has Borchert got to?

‘You can’t be an informer – you’re wanted by the police yourself. But you aren’t one of us and you don’t behave like a lawyer, so why did you respond to our advertisement?’

‘I can explain the whole thing,’ he lied. The truth was, he had no idea what to say or do to avert the danger. He could hear footsteps overhead again.

‘I’m listening.’

Feverishly, Stern racked his brains for a plausible story while time was running out for Simon upstairs. He strove to remain outwardly calm. Inwardly he was programmed for escape, but there was no way out. If he stood up he was a dead man.

‘Well? Cat got your tongue? It’s a very simple question: Why did you abduct that child from a hospital and bring him to us?’

It struck Stern that the footsteps had fallen into a rhythm. The madman was dancing. A sudden thought occurred to him as he listened. He couldn’t put his finger on it at first, but all at once it became clear. There
was
something he could do. Something profoundly repugnant and unnatural for which he would hate himself in retrospect. He nodded like someone who has had an idea and raised his hand. Slowly and cautiously, so as not to provoke a violent reaction on the woman’s part.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Answering your question. Showing you what I’m after.’

She raised her left eyebrow far enough for it to show above the rim of her sunglasses. Stern had placed his hand on his chest. He proceeded to undo one of his shirt buttons, then another.

‘What is this?’

‘May I take off my jacket?’

‘If you like …’

He not only slipped off his jacket, he undid the rest of his shirt buttons. Moments later he was sitting on the sofa stripped to the waist.

‘What are you doing?’

In lieu of a reply, Stern ran his tongue over his lips and swallowed twice in quick succession. He hoped he looked lascivious. In reality, he was suppressing steadily mounting nausea.

‘Oh, come on.’ The woman had momentarily lowered her gun. She raised it again. ‘You don’t think I’ll fall for
that
?’

‘Why not? That’s why I’m here.’ Stern kicked off each off his leather slip-ons in turn and unbuckled his belt.

‘You said it yourself: I’m not a cop. I’m not an informant either. I’m plain horny.’ He pulled the belt out of his trousers and tossed it over to her.

‘Come here and see for yourself.’

He couldn’t see her eyes, so he didn’t know if his theory held good, but experience had taught the lawyer in him that there was always some form of bait you could dangle in front of an opponent like a carrot in front of a donkey. With most people it was greed or lust that made them do things they regretted later.

The woman laughed. ‘You’re crazy,’ she said, stubbing out her cigarette.

‘Maybe, but I’ll prove it if you like.’

He pulled off his socks. All he was wearing now were the thin trousers of his second-hand suit.

‘How?’

‘Come here and have a feel.’

‘No, no, no.’ She continued to stand there with the gun trained on his crotch. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’

‘Like what?’

Stern couldn’t help smiling. He wasn’t play-acting now. She’d taken the bait. Not completely as yet, but he could see her breathing faster and hear the note of excitement in her voice. He had struck some chord within her. But was it the right one?

‘Stand up.’ She backed towards the door, careful to maintain the distance between them.

He complied. It was good to move. In the right direction, too. Anything was preferable to sitting idly on the sofa and waiting for the soprano’s voice to mingle with Simon’s screams. At least, that was what he thought until the woman said, ‘Let’s see how
horny
it makes you to watch my husband in action.’

Carina was convulsed with panic.

What should she do? Drive straight on along Königstrasse? If so, how far? To Glienicker Bridge? Or turn off right towards the waterfront? She could also take one of the many access roads on her left.

The mobile on the passenger seat started ringing. It almost slid through her sweaty fingers when she tried to open it.

‘Borchert?’ she said, far louder than necessary.

‘Cold.’ Fear seemed to bite her in the throat when she heard the disguised voice.

‘Who is that? What do you want?’

‘Colder.’

Half demented with fear and concern for Simon, she strove to collect her thoughts. Endestrasse was coming up on her right. She nearly turned off. The name suited her situation.

‘What is this?’ she asked. ‘Is it a game?’

‘Warmer.’

She beat a wild tattoo on the plastic steering wheel with the fingers of her right hand. Could it be? Was this the voice Robert Stern had told her about, and if so, why call her?

‘Am I heading in the right direction?’ she asked, horrified, testing her suspicion.

‘Warmer.’

It’s true. The madman wants me to play blind man’s buff
.

‘OK. I’m going to Potsdam, right?’

‘Colder.’

So I turn off before?

‘Here? Down Kyllmannstrasse?’

‘Colder.’

‘Do I turn left, then?’

‘Warmer.’

She got into the outermost lane, almost overrunning the opposite carriageway.

‘Am I nearly there?’

‘Warmer.’

She looked round, but there were at least a dozen different cars and vans behind and ahead of her, not to mention two motorcycles. It was quite impossible to tell which of them was tailing her.

‘Grassoweg? Do I go down Grassoweg?’

The distorted voice gave her another affirmative. Heedless of the oncoming traffic, Carina swung the wheel over and almost collided head-on with a florist’s van. The driver slammed on his brakes and the van skidded, swaying precariously, into the other lane, which happened to be empty. The danger past, Carina sped along the narrow residential street, followed by a furious blare of horns.

‘Is it here? In this street?’

‘Colder.’

She took her foot off the gas. The street lighting was so dim, she found it hard to decipher the sign at the next fork.

‘Am Kleinen Wannsee?’ she said at length.

‘Warmer,’ the voice replied with an approving chuckle – the first time it had betrayed any emotion.

House number? What’s the house number?

Carina debated what form her next yes-or-no question should take.

‘Over a hundred?’

‘Warmer.’

‘A hundred and fifty?’

‘Colder.’

It took her another seven goes before she came to a halt outside an imposing, four-storeyed house bearing the number 121.

The most important rule for winning a hopeless case against a superior adversary was something Stern had learned not at law school but from his father.

‘Locate your opponent’s weakness in his strength. Use his greatest asset against him.’ That had been part of the old man’s standard pep talk to Junior B, the local football team of which he was honorary coach.

Stern was wondering whether those maxims could help him today, when what was at stake was his life, not shooting or passing or marking your man. He analysed the situation while being shepherded out of the living room, barefoot and stripped to the waist. The woman had several advantages. The principal one, a 9mm pistol, she was holding in her hand. Moreover, as far as he could tell, the house was hermetically sealed. The doors and windows of an empty sale property had naturally to be secured against intruders. Even if he took advantage of his distance from the woman and fled along the passage to the back entrance, it was highly unlikely that he would find a door or a window unlocked.

She’s keeping her distance with a gun aimed at my back and I’m shut in with her. Where’s the weakness in her strength?

His neck muscles tensed as they always did when he was pondering an insoluble problem. When that happened at his desk it always and unmistakably heralded a migraine. A far more painful fate awaited him here, and he knew it.

The freshly stripped and polished oak floorboards creaked wearily as he started up the stairs. The music from above became more audible the higher he climbed, but the shuffling footsteps had ceased.

He’s stopped dancing
.

Stern forbade himself to speculate on what the man was doing instead. In that room. With Simon.

‘Keep going,’ the woman barked when he paused and started to turn his head. But he hadn’t seen anything and couldn’t tell from her voice whether she was following him up or had halted at the bottom. All he could see right then was a bright strip of light and some vague shapes, having been dazzled by one of the halogen spotlights that bathed the staircase in an unnaturally white glare, intensified by the bare, cream-coloured walls. He had to blink twice to efface the shadowy shapes dancing in front of his eyes …

And then, quite suddenly, he spotted the solution. Her weakness. Now about halfway up the curving staircase, he was nearing a very simple means of turning the tables on her. The only problem was, he couldn’t be sure it would work. He could only hope so.

But he had to risk it, had to try something that might turn out to be his greatest – and, consequently, his last – mistake.

Carina got out of the car and scanned the building in front of her for signs of life.

‘Is this it?’

She looked up. Painted wheat-yellow, the newly restored late-nineteenth-century house was surmounted by a hexagonal capped roof like a judge’s wig. She could see no lights on any floor. All the blinds and shutters were closed.

‘Hot,’ the voice replied. Stiff-legged, she walked unsteadily to the wrought-iron garden gate. To her surprise it was unlocked.

And now?

She unzipped the bumbag that formed part of her runner’s outfit. In addition to Simon’s medication, some cash and one or two things Stern had asked her to keep for him, it contained Borchert’s ‘present’: a Röhm RG 70.

‘For emergencies,’ he’d told her. ‘Cute little gun. Perfect for a woman’s dainty hand.’

A feeling of unreality crept over her as she walked up the gravel path. She had never held a gun in her hand before, still less been prepared to use it on someone.

‘Is it open?’ she asked when she reached the ornate front door.

For the first time she got no answer. Cautiously, she exerted pressure on the unyielding wood. It was shut and locked.

She turned round, but there was no one to be seen in the slumbrous light of the old street lamps. No passer-by. No pursuer. Nothing but the hum of traffic in nearby Königstrasse.

‘How do I get in?’ she asked the unknown man at the other end of the line. ‘Around the back?’

Still no answer. Hoarse breathing, but that was all.

Looking at the entrance to the underground garage in the right-hand wing of the house, she could see tyre tracks in the wet leaves. ‘The garage?’ she said with her back to the front door. ‘Is that it? Should I try to get in through the garage?’

The voice remained silent. The breathing had stopped too.

There’s no time to lose
, she told herself.
They may be hurting Simon inside there right now, and …

She tightened her grip on the pistol butt and touched the brass bell push with her left forefinger. She wasn’t a detective or a trained policewoman, and she was fighting a losing battle on this terrain anyway. She couldn’t win. The most she could do was create a diversion.

‘I’m going to ring the bell,’ she said into the phone, and pressed the button.

‘Colder,’ said a resonant voice in her ear.

She felt a dazzling explosion right between her eyes, then nothing more.

Every step was torment, because every step brought him nearer to the possibility of extinction. But he himself was not the issue here. His death would rate no more than a brief report in the tabloids’ local news section. The far more important tragedy was in progress in the room from which
La Traviata
continued to blare.

And it’s all my fault
, he thought.

Feigning a momentary loss of balance, he leaned against the wall on his left.

‘What, weak at the knees already?’

OK, so you’re just behind me. Only a few steps down. You probably don’t want me diving around the corner and out of your field of fire when I get to the top
.

He would have to be very quick, he realized, so he stayed on the left, away from the banisters. Only five steps to go.