The Child (27 page)

‘But let’s talk about you, Carina. You’re wanted for abducting a child. Your fingerprints are on the door handle of that paedophile’s lair and your car is parked outside. And, until I can prove otherwise, you’re on the run with a man who has killed a policeman. We must work out how you can turn yourself in without—’

‘Ssh!’ she said, and he didn’t know whether she was soothing or silencing him. ‘Turn over.’

He gritted his teeth and rolled over on his back. He was already finding it a little easier to move. The analgesics were taking effect.

‘… without them pinning something on you too.’

‘Not now,’ she whispered as she brushed a blood-matted strand of hair off his forehead. He breathed deeply, enjoying the gentle touch of her practised hands. Working in concentric circles, her fingers transferred their soothing pressure from his neck to his shoulders and from there to his naked chest. They lingered over his rapidly beating heart, then slid further down.

‘We don’t have much time,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s use it sensibly—’

‘We will,’ she broke in, and turned out the light.

This is crazy
, he thought. He wondered what was anaesthetizing him more, the medication in his bloodstream or the feel of her breath on his skin. Pain flared into angry life once more when he tried to deter her by sitting up. Then, like a sulky child, it withdrew to a distant corner of his consciousness, where it waited to re-emerge in company with his manifold fears and concerns.

Almost despite himself, Stern relaxed. With parted lips he tasted Carina’s sweet breath and his own tears, which her tongue must have collected on its way to his. The whistle of the wind plucking at the camper van’s outer skin became transmuted into a pleasant melody. He strove to think of Felix, of the boy with the birthmark and some plan that would solve their unreal problems, but he couldn’t even bring himself to regret the mistake that had kept them apart for so long. For a few hours the van became a cocoon that shielded them both from a world in utter turmoil.

This deceptive state of security did not last long. When a clap of thunder yanked him back to reality just before 5 a.m., Carina was still struggling with some unseen adversary in her dreams. He extricated himself from her restless embrace, pulled his clothes on and, wincing with pain, got behind the wheel. By the time he pulled up in the Seehaus Clinic’s car park twenty minutes later, she had got dressed and joined him in the front.

‘What are we doing here?’ she demanded, staring out of the window. She sounded as wide awake as if he’d chucked a glass of cold water in her face.

‘This is where you get out.’

‘No way. I’m coming with you.’

‘No. There’s no point in both of us risking our necks.’

‘But what am I supposed to do
here
?’

After careful thought, Stern had come up with a plan so absurd it wasn’t worthy of the name. He outlined it to her. She protested as he knew she would, but she ended by seeing that they had no choice.
If
they even had that.

Stern sensed her reluctance to submit to his farewell embrace. He knew that what repelled her was the significance of his kiss, not the kiss itself. Only hours after they had rediscovered each other at last, it set the seal on a parting that might last even longer than the lost three years preceding it. Maybe for ever.

Robert Stern had seen a great deal in the last few hours: dead bodies in cellars, doctors’ surgeries and chest freezers. People had been beaten up, hanged and executed before his eyes. He’d had to endure the sight of a child desperately struggling to breathe through a plastic bag while a naked man danced around the room in front of him. His picture of the world had been ripped from its frame. The hard-boiled pedant had become transformed into a sceptic who no longer categorically denied the possibility of reincarnation now that Simon Sachs had led him from one inexplicable phenomenon to the next.

Murder, blackmail, child abuse, a police manhunt, excruciating pain – Stern had taken all these things upon himself to discover what had happened to his infant son. Yet some of the episodes in his weekend had not differed so widely from the activities of most other Berliners. He had gone to the zoo, danced at a club and had three rides on a funfair’s big wheel. Even his present destination was regularly plugged by several Berlin tourist guides, although he wasn’t taking any of the itineraries they recommended or visiting it during the opening times they advertised.

Stern’s route an hour before sunrise was taking him through the rainswept, storm-tossed darkness of the Grunewald forest. He had parked the camper van in Heerstrasse and was covering the remainder of the distance on foot. Sodden fir branches lashed him in the face, drawing blood. He made slow progress, careful not to slither into puddles, trip over roots or put too much weight on his bad ankle. That the pain was temporarily bearable he attributed to an adrenalin rush. He hadn’t taken any more painkillers, not wanting to impair his ability to respond if he witnessed a transaction involving a child.

Or a murder
.

Until then he had another potential danger to contend with: the wind, which was snapping off rotten branches left and right. At times it sounded as if whole treetops were being felled, and he was relieved when the feeble beam of his torch finally guided him on to an asphalt footpath.

Another few steps brought him to the lakeside road, the Havelchaussee. The
Brücke
– the ‘Bridge’ – was immediately ahead of him, rolling so heavily it made him feel seasick to watch. Sporadic gusts of wind tore at the two-masted vessel, strained at the creaking rigging, and tried to wrench the floating restaurant away from its landing stage. The boat was in total darkness, discounting its two riding lights and the illuminated sign over the entrance:

‘The Freshest Fish in the City,’ it proclaimed.

Stern had understood that slogan’s double meaning since yesterday. To the uninitiated the
Brücke
was a popular and well-patronized restaurant, especially during the summer months. It was only on Mondays, when it was officially closed, that ‘private parties’ congregated aboard.

Photos, videos, addresses, phone numbers, children …

He tried not to think of the horrific transactions that went on there week after week. He knuckled the rain out of his eyes and looked at his watch. Another five minutes.

Then he concealed himself behind an empty boat trailer and waited for the man of whom all he knew to date was his disguised voice. There was no sign as yet.

The Havelchaussee was still closed to normal traffic at this hour for environmental reasons, but Stern heard the deep, throbbing note of an eight-cylinder engine above the roar of the wind. It was slowly but steadily approaching from the direction of Zehlendorf.

A dark-coloured four-wheel drive, the vehicle was travelling quite fast with only its sidelights on. Stern almost hoped its occupant had taken a short cut along the lakeside and would drive straight on, but the driver extinguished the lights altogether and turned down the approach road leading to the
Brücke
. The bulky vehicle pulled up some fifty metres short of the gangway. A man got out. It was still too dark for Stern to see more than his vague silhouette, but what he saw seemed familiar: a tall, erect, broad-shouldered figure with a vigorous, punchy way of walking. He knew it and had seen it before. Often, in fact.

But where?

The man turned up the collar of his trenchcoat and pulled down the peak of his baseball cap. Then, opening the tailgate, he removed a little basket with a pale-coloured blanket draped over it.

The wind veered briefly in Stern’s direction. He wasn’t sure if his overtaxed senses were playing tricks on him, but he thought he heard the cry of a baby.

He waited until the man had unlocked the wrought-iron gate that gave access to the gangway, then reached in his pocket. He had often heard how reassuring it felt to hold a gun in one’s hand, but he couldn’t endorse this, perhaps because he knew to whom the automatic had belonged: a long-time adversary, but one who had given his life for him.

However, he didn’t plan to exchange fire with an experienced killer. If Simon had really contrived to see into the future for some reason, a third party would very soon appear: the buyer. He might be a paedophile, but he might equally be the ‘avenger’, the man responsible for murdering several criminals in the last fifteen years. Either way, the police would have to be quick if they wanted to prevent bloodshed.

Stern checked his watch for the last time. It was just before six. If Carina had kept to their plan, the deserted road would be seething with squad cars in ten minutes at most. But in case something went wrong – if there really was a police insider who thwarted the guilty parties’ arrest – he wanted to make sure of unmasking the voice and discovering the identity of the man who could tell him what had happened in the neonatal ward.

And whether my son is still alive
.

He came out from behind the trailer. The time had come.

Bending low, he stole quickly along the cobbled approach road leading to the
Brücke
. Even getting to the four-wheel drive left him out of breath. He leaned against the spare wheel mounted on the tailgate until he’d recovered a little, then turned on his torch just long enough to examine the licence plate.

The short Berlin number was easy enough to memorize, but he took its falsity for granted. Peering around the back of the vehicle he saw a finger of light flit across the
Brücke
’s deck. Evidently, the voice was also finding his way around with a torch.

All right, move
.

Stern’s next objective was the gangway. If he was to catch a glimpse of the man’s face, he would have to get as close as possible. His heart beat faster. Speed was of the essence now, he knew. The baby’s putative buyer had yet to appear, so the voice might not be suspicious if he noticed someone moving in the car park.

Praying he would be able to withstand the pain, Stern prepared to make a dash for the gangway. He was just about to go when he saw the passenger door.

He stopped short.
Could it be?
Sure enough, it wasn’t shut properly. He tried the handle. And froze in horror.

Goddamn!

The interior light had come on. Stern felt as if he’d fired a signal rocket into the sky. He got in quickly, shut the door and watched from the dark interior to see if the unknown man aboard the
Brücke
had noticed anything. The finger of light on deck had disappeared, but a small lamp in the deckhouse had come on. He could see a shadowy figure inside. So he hadn’t been spotted.

Quick
.

Sitting in the passenger seat, he looked round. TRAP! A warning light started flashing in his mind’s eye when he saw that the key was in the ignition. He reached for his gun and suppressed all the instincts telling him to run. Then he clambered on to the back seat and looked over the head rests into the load space. Having satisfied himself that he was alone in the vehicle, he activated the central locking system.

So it isn’t a trap after all?

He checked the rear-view mirror to see if another vehicle was approaching, but there wasn’t the slightest sign of movement behind him apart from the trees, the branches of which were bending in the wind like fishing rods. He opened the glove compartment, which contained nothing but a plastic box of wet wipes. Then he folded down the sun visors and looked in the side pockets. Nothing. No clue to the driver’s identity.

As his eyes got used to the dim light of dawn, Stern saw that the whole of the car’s interior was as clean and uncluttered as that of a showroom model. There were no CDs, petrol receipts, street maps, or any of the other ballast motorists tend to drive around with. Not even a parking disc. He felt under the seats for hidden compartments, but in vain. Propping his elbow on the console between the two front seats, he had almost decided to get out again when it struck him.

The console!

Of course. It was far too wide for an ordinary armrest. He tried the wrong side at first, but then it opened with a faint creak. The compartment beneath the leather cover was as empty as all the others. With one exception. Stern fished out the sleeveless silver disc with two fingers. There was just enough light for him to decipher the date someone had written on the DVD with a green felt-tip pen.

It was the last day of his son’s life.

Visitors to a hospital the size of the Seehaus Clinic passed unnoticed unless they attracted attention in some way, for instance by asking directions at the reception desk, polluting the entrance hall with cigarette smoke, or getting an outsize bunch of flowers stuck in the revolving doors. The young woman in the grey tracksuit might almost have been invisible as she hurried to the lifts, even at this early hour.

Carina knew that breakfast preparations were already in full swing and the night shift was about to knock off. The weary doctors’ and nurses’ attention threshold was consequently at its lowest when she opened the glass doors leading to the neurological department. For all that, she was so anxious not to be recognized that she concealed her face beneath the hood of the sweatshirt Stern’s father had lent her last night.

Emerging from the lift, she glanced at the big clock at the end of the corridor. Two more minutes to go. Another hundred and twenty seconds before she roused the staff. That was the most important feature of the plan.