A shadow falls, p.30
A Shadow Falls, page 30
part #2 of Jenny Aaron Series
‘What’s your real name?’
‘Jenny.’
‘I wasn’t scared when you took out your gun.’
‘One can be brave and still be scared.’
He thinks about this. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘My papa once said that the thing we are the most frightened of is fear. But I don’t understand that.’
‘You must miss him a lot.’
‘And you miss yours.’
He says that so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that she forgets to breathe. She flinches when Luca puts his hand in hers.
‘Do you think that he’s in heaven?’ he asks.
‘If there is a heaven, he was there,’ she whispers. ‘And then he was reborn. Perhaps as a person. Or an animal. Sometimes I think: a lion.’
‘Can you tell me a story?’
She doesn’t answer, she just feels his hand.
‘Don’t you know any?’
Aaron clears her throat. ‘There once was a small tear. It belonged to a boy who was the same age as—’
‘Not that kind of story,’ he says. ‘Tell me one that’s true. One about you and your papa.’
There are so many she could tell.
Tender ones, funny ones, dangerous ones, sad ones.
But none are like this one.
When she was in Barcelona, when she recognized his voice and screamed, it wasn’t an end and it wasn’t a beginning. In that second she knew what had happened. And in the very next she denied it again.
‘At first I didn’t want to believe that I’m blind,’ she says quietly. ‘When I was in the hospital I acted as though I could see. I ate with my fingers so that I wouldn’t make a fool of myself with the cutlery. I only got out of bed if I could hold on to my papa’s arm. I claimed that I couldn’t manage on my own because I was having dizzy spells. When the doctors wanted to talk to me, I made out that I didn’t understand what they were saying.’
‘What does “made out” mean?’ Luca mumbles sleepily.
‘It’s sort of like pretending. One of the doctors was very clever. He brought me a German newspaper and said he thought I’d be pleased to have it. I told him that I was too tired to read and that he should take it away again. One morning I even asked my papa to close the curtains in the room, I said the sun was hurting my eyes. He didn’t close the curtains, instead he got me dressed and climbed into a taxi with me.’
She thinks of the journey and how she kept her eyes closed throughout. The world had crackled like the distorted and infinitely distant signals of a short-wave radio station.
‘Where did he take you?’
Aaron fights back the tears. ‘Is there something that you’re so good at that you think nobody else could do it better?’
‘Climbing a tree,’ he mutters, already drifting off.
‘With me it was shooting. My papa took me to a shooting range. When we got there, he gave me a gun. I said that I didn’t feel well. I said that I needed to lie down. I begged him to take me back to the hospital. But he didn’t give in and said that he would take me there every day, until I would finally do it – I—’
Her voice fails.
There’s no sound. Just Luca’s tranquil breathing. Aaron takes his hand out of hers and kisses him on the forehead. She walks to the door as quietly as a mouse.
Then she hears him once more, softly, as if he was talking in his sleep. ‘I dreamt about you.’
Aaron feels as though she’s walked into a wall. ‘What happened in your dream?’
‘There was lots of fire and smoke and a big animal that wanted to eat us up. But you weren’t scared and I wasn’t either.’
Her heart stops beating, the world is banging against her ribcage.
At some point she closes the door. Aaron sits down on the hallway floor. She thinks back to that time in Barcelona, when her father placed the Browning in her hand. The grip felt as cold as if the gun had been lying in the snow all night long. Aaron held it like a thousand times before.
And yet like never before.
The cold crept up her arm and froze everything inside her. She didn’t feel it when her finger pulled the trigger. When the shot rang out, she started. She heard the echo and was shaking so much that she dropped the gun.
Her father led her to the target. Fifty metres, it felt like a dream. A dream in which she was walking through bursting mirrors. He took her hand and laid it onto the paper.
Aaron searched for the bullet hole.
There was none.
In that moment she realized for ever that reality can’t be invented. She sank to her knees and implored her father to let her die.
He said: ‘I can’t do that. Because I love you. If you take away love, our earth is a tomb.’
As precious as everything else is, this alone is the reason why she will kill the Broker.
29
The innkeeper pours the tea. Aaron can tell from the gurgling that he is lifting the pot as high as his head, lowering it and lifting it back up again several times; a ceremony that requires a lot of practice before it can be mastered.
The man warbles something in Arabic.
‘He’s asking when we want to have breakfast,’ Layla translates.
‘We’re heading off at five. Tell him that it’s enough to just put some tea and pastries on the table for us.’
Layla passes it on. He replies with a torrent of words and then leaves the two women alone in the dining room.
‘He doesn’t mind, he’ll wake us at half-past four. May I?’
‘Of course.’
Layla reaches for the cigarettes and lights one up.
They both smoke.
The rapport begins.
Pavlik whispers into Aaron’s earbud: ‘She’s twisting her wedding ring and looking you in the eyes. She probably still can’t quite believe that you’re blind.’
Aaron can hear the rain pelting down on his jacket. The courtyard is the only place from which he can observe them without Layla noticing. The next hour is going to be very uncomfortable for him, but as a marksman he’s used to that.
She wishes he had been a little more precise. To mirror someone you have to invert everything. On which hand is Layla wearing the ring? She grew up in Germany. Most continental Europeans wear theirs on the right.
Aaron brushes across the back of her right hand, that is enough.
Layla’s breathing is a little faster than normal, but within the tolerance range for nervousness. Aaron imitates it and pretends to return Layla’s gaze. ‘You have an extraordinary son. I’m sure you already know that.’
‘Yes.’ Hesitantly she adds: ‘He likes you.’
‘Perhaps because I’m blind. It makes children inquisitive.’
‘No, it’s not because of that. Or at least not only because of that.’ Layla’s voice is uniform. She keeps to one single note, as if she were striking the same piano key over and over.
‘Was he planned?’
‘She’s squeezing her shoulders together,’ Pavlik reports.
Aaron lets a few seconds pass before she stretches the back of her neck, as if she had some tension there.
‘Surely you already know that,’ says Layla. ‘From the letters.’
‘I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings. We just needed some information. It’s our work. That might sound trite. I really do mean it. The letters are in the car. They’re yours, I won’t tell my superiors about them. They mean a lot to you, I respect that.’
‘You cunning beast,’ mutters Pavlik. ‘And what will you do if she wants to see the letters? Drive to the villa and get them?’
Oh Amari, it’s so much easier to believe me than to torment yourself, wondering whether you can trust me.
Layla says nothing for a long time. To Aaron, her face is a blurred patch, as grey as shale.
‘We first met in Paris,’ she finally says.
Her voice stumbles into the memory. Aaron has difficulty imitating Layla’s shallow breath.
‘I was visiting a friend. When he took my suitcase off the conveyor belt in Orly I barked at him. Veit just laughed and said: “We’ll share the suitcase, agreed?” He was so outrageously charming. For a split second I imagined what my life would be like if I was with him. My heart was thumping with fear. I was married, after all.’
‘And unhappy.’
‘She’s putting her hands around the tea glass. She feels cold.’
Aaron takes a sip of her tea, runs her fingers over the edge of her glass.
‘Is your father still alive?’ Layla asks.
Yours must be dead, he isn’t mentioned at all in the letters. Luca said that he was at his grandma’s funeral. So you no longer have any parents, Amari.
‘He died years ago, shortly after my mother,’ Aaron replies.
‘My father was from Tunisia. Germany remained alien to him right until the end, much of it seemed godless to him. He didn’t even learn the language properly. I have two brothers, they’re exactly like him. I was just a girl. Still, I did my best to be a good daughter.’
Aaron sinks a little lower on her chair in order to be at the same eye level with her opposite. She magics some of Layla’s sadness into her voice. ‘My father left my mother when I was little. Every now and then he would ring me up, most of the time he was drunk.’ She almost lets slip a BUT. ‘And even as a young woman I constantly asked myself whether he would approve of this or that. It’s like an ear worm that you can never get rid of.’
And what if Luca tells her about Barcelona? Then she will know that I lied. No, he won’t do that. It’s our secret.
‘Hello?’ Pavlik pipes up. ‘Did she just smile?’
‘My father owned a grocery store,’ says Layla. ‘We were doing OK. On my twentieth birthday he introduced me to a man who owned several Arab restaurants. He gave me an expensive gift, but his words were cold. I cried a lot, then I married him. My father was very proud.’
‘Surely you had other plans for your life, dreamt of doing something. Wouldn’t that have been possible?’
‘You mean: go against my father’s wishes?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s an Arab proverb: “If you speak, your speech must be better than your silence would have been.” I would have liked to study architecture. That wasn’t possible. As far as my father was concerned, post-sixteen education was unnecessary.’
What fits with that?
Design? No, too close.
‘I wanted to do something with horticulture,’ Aaron says. ‘It’s still my passion. Every park calls to me.’
‘Surely you were free to choose.’
‘I had to earn money, I couldn’t afford to go and study. A schoolfriend of mine joined the police. He said to me: why don’t you come too? It sounded quite good.’
Careful. She never had any money trouble.
‘When my training was finished, I inherited,’ she adds. ‘From an uncle I had barely known. After that I could have done all kinds of things. Only I’m not the type that constantly wants to change everything.’
Neither are you, Amari.
‘Yes, I can understand that.’
‘It must be difficult to share your life with a man you don’t love.’
‘I know it sounds like a violation, but I didn’t see it like that. He was away a lot and rarely slept with me. And if he did, it went by like a visit to the dentist.’
Time for some unpleasant truths.
‘He hit you. It’s mentioned in one of the letters.’
‘For years, he barely looked at me. But when I told him about Veit, he reached for the belt. I didn’t—’
Aaron realizes that Layla is biting her lip. ‘You didn’t tell Veit that detail,’ she finishes the other woman’s thought. ‘Because you were afraid of what he would do.’
Layla lights up another cigarette. The thought of smoking another one so soon repulses Aaron, but she follows suit.
‘I know what you’re getting at,’ Layla says stiffly.
‘There was no sign of your husband after he disappeared, not a single peep. His restaurants, the beautiful house on Mexikoplatz, do you really think that he gave it all up to start from scratch somewhere else? Especially after you confessed to him about Veit? Surely you didn’t believe that?’
‘She’s counting her fingers,’ Pavlik mutters.
Aaron gingerly starts to breathe in the tensed-up manner of her companion. She waits, she doesn’t press her.
‘Some of my husband’s regulars were men from a Lebanese clan,’ Layla claims. ‘In the back room, things were talked about that I didn’t want to know anything of. Those men were quite capable of doing that kind of thing.’
‘Oh come on. You told Veit outright about your suspicions. The two of you had an argument about it. He wrote: “There are questions one simply doesn’t ask.”’
Suddenly Layla shouts at her. ‘He was a good husband and a good father! He protected us, always! You just want to persuade me that he was a criminal!’
The rapport demands that Aaron shouts back in a high voice. ‘I don’t hold it against you that you defend him, just don’t take me for a fool!’
‘She’s shaking,’ Pavlik informs her. ‘She looks like she wants to jump up and run off. Do something.’
Aaron gradually works towards the rhythm that she has memorized as Layla’s relaxed breathing pattern. During a long silence, her companion’s tension gradually dissipates, her pulses falls in line with Aaron’s.
We can tell each other everything, Amari, even if it hurts.
She smiles. ‘Finally you’ve come out of your shell, Layla. You don’t mind if I call you Layla, do you?’
‘What kind of business is Veit supposed to have been involved in?’
Aaron can tell by the sound that her opposite is looking at her again.
‘I’m interested in what he told you about it.’
‘Only that it was about import and export.’
‘Which sector?’
‘Construction machinery.’
‘Was there a headquarters? An office? Employees? Were there Christmas holidays, dismissals, calls from secretaries, tax returns? Did he ever bring anything home from work? No? Isn’t that odd?’
‘But that was exactly how it was,’ Layla burst out helplessly. ‘I don’t know anything about the people my husband was involved with.’
Aaron registers that Layla is using the precise same wording as she did in the Jardin Menara. A clear indication that she is lying.
‘Why should someone who has led a blameless life deposit false passports for his wife and his child? Why did he have a jamming transmitter installed at your home? Why did he have overseas accounts? Why are there—’
She breaks off.
She hears it.
Pavlik hisses: ‘A car has pulled up out front.’
‘Please stand up,’ Aaron says calmly.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Come over this way. Quietly. Switch the light out.’
Silently, she positions herself beside the door. She hears the light switch being pressed. Layla scurries next to her. Aaron draws the Glock and pushes the other woman against the wall with her right arm.
Steps. Two male voices. Arabic.
She knows that Pavlik is already in the house. He could be standing just a metre away from the men and they wouldn’t notice him. If he wants, they’d be dead before they got through this door.
But they will need to report to their commando leader at regular intervals, otherwise the next lot will soon be here. It’s the same as in the Palmeraie. They need one of them alive. The one who sends the messages, the leader. As a rule, that’s the man who walks in second. If necessary, he can use the first man as a shield, and increase his fire power with the other’s weapon. Pavlik will only concern himself with the leader, she will take care of the other one.
No matter how good the man is, in the dark she is a nightmare, an invisible slayer. She swiftly runs through the moves in her mind’s eye. First she will flatten the bridge of his nose and his cheekbone with her elbow, then perform a quick roll and aim at the biggest target area: stomach and chest. Three shots. The semi-jacket projectiles will expand inside the body, tear apart the tissue and eat their way into the soft parts like starved rats. Even if Aaron doesn’t hit any vital organs, he will die of the shock.
Just then she hears laughter. It’s the innkeeper. Words fly to and fro.
‘Invitation to a birthday party,’ Layla whispers.
Aaron puts a finger to her lips.
The chatting carries on a little while longer, then the visitors take their leave. It’s only when the car drives off that the copper taste disappears from Aaron’s mouth.
She puts away the gun. ‘You did well.’
Layla switches the light back on. When they’ve sat down, Aaron holds out the packet of cigarettes to her. Now she needs one too. She helps her companion calm down by using her breath, assuming an open, relaxed posture, giving her a smile.
It’s a good opportunity to insert an anchor. She reaches for Layla’s hand and squeezes it. At the same time she hums a little melody to herself, Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. If she repeats this later, Layla will associate it with a feeling of safety and the knowledge that Aaron will protect her and Luca.
Layla’s hand is shaking in hers. The body needs longer than the mind to come back to normal.
‘Are you OK now?’ Aaron asks.
‘She’s nodding,’ Pavlik mutters.
‘I’m blind. You have to talk to me.’
‘I’m sorry. Yes, thank you.’
Aaron takes her hand away. ‘Layla, do you think that all of this is happening because you led a quiet life and your husband traded with construction machinery? Just because his wallet was stolen in the souks?’
Silence.
‘Veit Jansen wasn’t his real name, by the way,’ she casually mentions. ‘His real name was Olaf Berg.’
‘She’s staring at you,’ Pavlik says. ‘She didn’t know.’
This will make it easier for you. From now on we’re no longer talking about the man who made you laugh, cared for you when you were ill, held your hand during Luca’s birth, wrote old-fashioned letters and called you Amari. Now we’re talking about a man to whom you owe absolutely nothing. You never knew this man.
