The Child (8 page)

‘Engler would love to pin something on me,’ said Stern.

Borchert kicked aside an empty beer can. ‘Sure I’ll help you, but I still don’t understand. Why get involved?’

Stern avoided the question. ‘I’ve taken the boy’s case, OK?’

He didn’t want to tell Borchert about the DVD yet, even though that would at once explain why he needed some back-up. Andi was the only person Stern knew who was imperturbable enough to wallow in the mire on his behalf without asking too many questions. However, he was afraid his ex-client would think him insane if he revealed the true reason why he was retracing the road Simon claimed to have trodden in a previous life.

Maybe I really have gone insane?
There was that two-minute video. On the other hand, there were all the laws of nature that weighed against the possibility his infant son could still be alive. Then again, they also weighed against the fact that Simon appeared to remember a murder committed well before he was born.

‘OK, your honour, no more questions.’ Borchert raised his hands like the victim of a stick-up. ‘But please don’t tell me we’re looking for another body.’

‘We are. I was with Simon at the hospital earlier on, and he gave me this address.’

The drizzle had eased a little, and Stern could at last look ahead without having to blink away droplets the whole time. They were no more than fifty metres from the metal door of Number 6, which was part of a block of shabby-looking lock-ups a stone’s throw from the Spree.

‘Simon says the man wouldn’t fit into the freezer, so he cut his legs off.’

Stern didn’t really know what he’d expected to see when they opened the door. A horde of rats dragging a severed leg across the concrete floor perhaps, or a buzzing black cloud of fruit flies and blowflies hovering over a half-open chest freezer. His mind’s eye had been prepared for the sight of any harbinger of death, which was why the reality made him feel so unutterably sad.

He ought really to have felt relieved when the garage turned out to be empty. No furniture. No electrical appliances. No books. The dusty light bulb cast a dim glow over two small crates filled with old crockery and a worn-out office chair, nothing more. Stern felt as if all hope were escaping from a valve in his side. He became painfully aware how fiercely and irrationally he had wanted to find something lifeless in the garage. The more inexplicable Simon’s memories were, the more reasonable it seemed to believe in a connection between Felix and a ten-year-old boy with a birthmark on his shoulder. He could scarcely grasp that he’d rooted this irrational equation in his subconscious.

‘So much for your feng shui shit,’ Borchert growled. Stern didn’t trouble to explain that the classical Chinese philosophy of building and garden design had nothing to do with reincarnation or the transmigration of souls. To the club owner, anything he couldn’t actually touch was psychobabble concocted by people with too much time on their hands. It was precisely this straightforward attitude that Stern had found so appealing only a short time ago.

‘What are you up to now?’ asked Borchert. Stern had abruptly knelt down and was shuffling along on all fours. He didn’t reply, just went on running his fingers over the dusty concrete floor in search of irregularities. He sensed the pointlessness of this long before he gave up.

‘No dice,’ he said eventually, getting to his feet and patting the dust off his camel hair coat. ‘No double floor. Nothing.’

‘That’s odd, considering the rest of your story sounded so plausible,’ Borchert said sarcastically. For some reason his forehead was once more beaded with sweat although he hadn’t budged from the spot for the last couple of minutes.

Stern paused on the way out and glanced thoughtfully over his shoulder. Then he turned off the light and left his companion to shut the heavy door.

‘I don’t know,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Something doesn’t add up.’

‘I’ve noticed that too, now you come to mention it.’ Borchert withdrew the key from the lock and grinned. ‘Maybe it’s the fact that we’re standing here in the drizzle after looking for a corpse in an empty garage.’

‘I don’t mean that. You’d understand if you’d been with me two days ago. I mean, that boy had been in hospital for the last few months, and before that in a children’s home. How could he have known about the body in the factory cellar? He even knew the man’s approximate date of death.’

‘Has that been confirmed?’

‘Yes,’ Stern said without mentioning the source. Till now he’d been dependent on the DVD voice.

‘Somebody must have told him, then.’

‘I guess so, but it doesn’t add up all the same.’

Borchert shrugged. ‘Children talk to imaginary friends, so I’ve heard.’

‘When they’re three or four, maybe. Simon isn’t schizophrenic, if that’s what you mean. He doesn’t suffer from hallucinations. The guy with his skull split open actually existed, I found him myself. And what about this here?’ Stern indicated the door. The paint was peeling badly. ‘It had a 6 painted on it, just the way Simon said.’

‘Then he must have been here and seen it sometime.’

‘He was in a children’s home in Karlshorst, nearly an hour from here by car. It’s highly improbable, but even if you’re right it doesn’t make sense. Why should the boy believe himself to be a murderer just because someone else says so?’

‘What is this, a quiz show? How should I know?’ Borchert said irritably, but Stern wasn’t listening. His questions were more a way of sorting out his own thoughts than a request for answers.

‘OK, let’s assume Simon is being used by someone. Why should the murderer enlist the services of a little boy, of all people, to lead us to his victim or victims? Why bother? He could simply pick up a phone and call the police.’

‘Hey, you two!’ came a yell from the entrance to the main building. A bent-backed little man in blue overalls was waddling towards them across the rain-swept yard.

‘It’s old Giesbach – he owns the business,’ Borchert explained. ‘Not surprising he walks like that. He slipped a disc after hefting one packing case too many.’

‘What are you doing on my premises?’ the haulage boss demanded, waving his arms, and Stern mentally prepared himself for another confrontation. Then the old man stopped short and gave a hoarse laugh.

‘Oh, it’s you, Borchert. Now I know why that useless nephew of mine was shitting himself.’

‘You weren’t around and we were in a hurry, Giesbach.’

‘All right, all right. You might have called me, though.’

The old man took the key from Borchert and looked at Stern.

‘Number 6, eh?’

Stern would happily have taken a closer look at Giesbach’s weather-beaten face, but he had to avert his head. From the viscous skeins of spittle escaping his lips with every word, the haulage boss might have been chewing a slice of cheese-topped pizza.

‘What did you want in there?’

Borchert grinned. ‘My pal’s looking for a holiday home.’

‘Just asking. Number 6, eh? Fancy that.’

‘Meaning what?’ said Stern.

‘It was the only lock-up I ever rented out long-term.’

‘Who to?’

‘Man, you think I ask for ID when someone pays ten years in advance – in cash?’

‘Why should anyone rent an empty garage?’

‘Empty?’

The instant the old man cackled derisively, Stern realized what had escaped his attention inside the garage.
Scuff marks in the dust
.

‘It was chock-a-block. We cleared it out last week. The lease had expired.’

‘What!’ the other two exclaimed in unison. ‘Where did you dump the stuff?’ Stern demanded.

‘Where it belonged. In that skip.’

Stern felt his heart miss two beats as he followed the direction of the crippled haulier’s gaze. All at once it had returned: hope.

‘Should have cleared the place out two years ago. We failed to notice the lease had expired because we don’t rent out that range of garages any more. They’re due for demolition.’

Stern turned and made his way back, as if in slow motion, to the rusty skip they’d passed on their way to the garages. When he was close enough to peer over the edge, he saw the black cat was still in there, sitting on a stack of old newspapers in front of an overturned chest freezer discoloured with age. It seemed to relish the pale yellow liquid seeping from under the lid. At all events, it didn’t take fright when Stern climbed into the skip, it just went on licking the rubber seal of the freezer, which definitely hadn’t seen the inside of a showroom for a dozen years or more.

‘How do you expect me to manage it?’

Carina slammed the car door with her foot and made for the hospital entrance with the mobile phone to her ear. She’d had to park her car right outside because all the parking spaces were obstructed by vehicles that almost certainly had no right to be there. She herself had no business in a staff parking space either, strictly speaking, because officially she was suspended. Unofficially, she’d been told to look for another job.

‘The hospital isn’t a high-security jail,’ she heard Stern say. His voice sounded jerky and was sporadically drowned by the sound of traffic in the background. ‘There must be some way of getting Simon out of there.’

Carina thoroughly disliked the direction this phone call was taking. She had spent two days waiting in vain for a sign of life from Robert Stern, and now this. Instead of quietly discussing the mysterious course of events with her, he was clearly determined to get her into even more trouble.

‘What do you want with him?’

‘I’m doing what you asked me to do. I’m investigating his allegations.’

Great
.

This was all her fault. She had brought them together, after all. She had asked him to take an interest in the boy.

But not this way!

Not as his lawyer. The fact was, she had been totally naive. Simon had been her prime concern, of course. Thanks to her stupidity in arranging the regression, his fear of death had been overlaid by even worse fears. He believed himself to be a murderer, and she had to put a stop to that idea.

But she hadn’t wanted Stern to enter that cellar. Picasso would probably have been more of a help in that respect. No, her aim had been to introduce the lawyer to Simon in the hope that they would establish a rapport – that Stern would allay the boy’s fears and be rewarded with a chink in his own psychological armour. Because Simon possessed a truly inexplicable ability: despite his own grave illness, his mere presence was enough to bring a smile to disheartened patients’ lips and dispel some of their melancholy and depression.

What a fool I’ve been
, she thought.
One mistake after another
.

Glancing at her watch, she could hardly believe that only forty-two hours had gone by since the lunacy began. It was just before eleven in the morning, and she couldn’t remember ever turning up at the hospital at this hour.

‘What do you want him to tell you?’ Carina whispered hoarsely with the mobile to her ear. She greeted a nurse who was hurrying past by raising the hand with her empty sports bag in it. Her real, original reason for returning was to collect some personal belongings from her locker and say goodbye to her colleagues. Stern’s latest request had definitely not been on her agenda.

‘I went to see him early this morning and he provided me with a new lead. You’ll never believe it, but we’ve found another.’

‘Another
what
?’ Carina walked up the wheelchair ramp and into the reception area. A gust of wind sent her hair swirling around her face. She shivered. It felt as if someone had blown moist air at the nape of her neck through a straw.

‘A man’s dead body. It was in a chest freezer. Suffocated with a plastic bag, just the way Simon described it.’

The forced smile Carina had meant to give the hospital receptionist didn’t come off. She hurried to the lifts.

She felt dizzy. Although she’d always suspected that contact with Robert Stern would someday land her in serious trouble, she had spent three years turning a deaf ear to the inner voice warning her. His gloomy cast of mind was like radioactivity: invisible but fraught with dire consequences for all who were exposed to it. She feared an overdose of bad energy if she had too much to do with him, yet she constantly sought his company unprotected. This time it seemed she’d got too close to him. Their joint experiences were threatening more than her state of mind.

‘And we found something else.’

We?
she wondered, but she asked the far more important question: ‘What was it?’

Her fingertip had left an imprint on the call button when she pressed it.

‘A piece of paper. It was with the man’s remains. In his decomposed fingers, to be more precise.’

‘What was on it?’ She didn’t want to know.

‘You’ve seen it for yourself.’

‘What?’

‘In Simon’s room.’

‘You’re joking.’

The lift doors seemed to open painfully slowly. Carina drummed her fingertips nervously on the door surround. She couldn’t wait to disappear into the aluminium cocoon.

‘It was a child’s drawing,’ said Stern. ‘Of a little church in a field.’

It can’t be true
.

She pressed the button for Neurology and shut her eyes.

The picture on Simon’s window. He drew it three days ago, after the regression
.

‘Now do you understand why I’ve got to see him?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, although she really didn’t understand anything any more. She was feeling the way she had three years ago, when their relationship broke up – when Stern had applied the emergency brake because everything was happening too fast for him.

‘Please bring him to the zoo,’ said Stern. ‘Let’s meet at the Elephant Gate at half past twelve. A couple with a child won’t attract attention.’

‘Why so complicated? Why not pay him another visit at the hospital?’

‘This makes two dead bodies, and I’ve been first on the scene each time. Can you imagine where I’ll come on Engler’s list of suspects after this?’

‘I understand,’ she whispered. The lift doors opened, and she had to force herself not to return to the ground floor. All she wanted to do right now was make herself scarce.