A shadow falls, p.8
A Shadow Falls, page 8
part #2 of Jenny Aaron Series
He drives into the courtyard and loads the bodies into the boot. It takes him half an hour to drive to Eltville in the car he stole today. He finds a suitable location outside the town. He gets out, pushes the vehicle over the riverside wall into the Rhine and watches as it sinks into the murky water.
For a long time, he stays standing in the stiff wind, the freezing rain. He points his face towards the sky. The rain tastes of soot and salt and the yearning for salvation. He has robbed Aaron of her sight, but there is still so much more he can take from her. Death isn’t always the worst punishment.
4
Today
Everything has its fixed place in the wardrobe. White jeans at the top, blue ones at the bottom, the same with the T-shirts and jumpers. Dresses and skirts are also hung up in order of their colour. But when she is deep in thought or something is bothering her, it can happen that she makes a mistake. So to be sure, she uses the scanner that reads out the colours when packing her suitcase. She doesn’t like brightly coloured clothes, so the device ought to be reliable, but it has its quirks.
‘Intensive blue,’ the digital voice declares.
Meaning the purple of her pashmina jumper.
‘Pale grey.’
Aaron smiles. ‘How many times do I need to tell you that these jeans are white?’ She puts them in the suitcase and reaches for a blouse.
‘Flamingo red.’
Nice description for salmon.
It’s quiet in the house. Conny is visiting an ill neighbour on a remote farm. Lissek is pottering around on the boat; he and Conny will take her to the ferry in two hours.
When he came back from buying bread this morning he said: ‘The business with the cat has been cleared up. It was the son of a fisherman. His father dragged him to Elin, where he confessed. It’ll be a while before the rascal can sit again.’
After breakfast, Aaron had googled Professor Reimer. Thirty-nine thousand hits. Many eye specialists oppose him, his methods deviate from mainstream medicine. But astounding successes are documented in scientific magazines such as Science and Nature.
This evening she will be at Sandra and Pavlik’s house in Berlin. She is looking forward to spending time with her friends, chilling out for a while. She will start the therapy in a week.
One week.
Then her new life will begin.
Afterwards, some people can read, even drive a car.
Just being allowed to dream of it almost tears her to pieces.
Often it doesn’t help at all.
No. She will nail it.
She’s the one-in-a-thousand.
*
Ten things that Aaron longs for:
magical places of childhood
cinema, first row, centre
counting wrinkles in the mirror
sunsets
the National Gallery
reading with her eyes
sunrises
buying a convertible
the shooting range
throwing away the cane
*
All of a sudden, she feels that she’s not alone.
Aaron spins round.
The little boy is standing in the door. He turns his back to her, looks into the hallway.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she says. ‘Soon, we won’t be seeing each other anymore. I’ll get new pictures, real ones.’
She reaches for her underwear.
‘Black.’
For a minute she continues with her packing, without paying any attention to the boy. Until he turns round to face her. His eyes bore into her. He turns away and disappears into the hallway.
She feels her way along the wardrobe to the door. The boy is standing on the top step, six metres away. He stares at Aaron one last time, walks down the stairs and is gone.
Then it hits her: he’s trying to tell her something.
She hears it.
A gentle scraping.
Downstairs.
The kitchen door into the garden.
She darts back into the room, opens the bedside drawer and takes out the revolver. She slips off her shoes. With two steps she is back in the hallway, listening.
Nothing.
She creeps to the stairs. Her pulse is racing. Aaron holds her breath and fine-tunes her hearing until she thinks she can even hear the drop of sweat that is trickling down her temple.
A floorboard bends.
Dining room, by the terrace door.
Nobody apart from her would notice this, even the person downstairs who just trod on the board. That board is a diva. With Aaron or Conny it doesn’t give. But it does with Lissek.
So it’s a man. At least ninety kilos.
Aaron counts the steps, knowing that she has to miss out the fourth one because it creaks.
Nine, ten, eleven.
She’s at the bottom.
The intruder hasn’t noticed her yet, otherwise she’d know about it. He’s still in the dining room.
No.
Steps.
Left. Conservatory.
She doesn’t run to the door, she ‘flows’ with a wave-like movement. In the two seconds that this takes her she shifts her centre of gravity five times, becomes light as a feather.
Aaron flattens herself against the wall.
It is so quiet that she can hear the man’s breathing.
He isn’t fit.
Good.
Half a metre away from her stands the chest with the large glass bowl in which Conny keeps stones she’s found on the beach. Aaron often touches them; she loves the smooth curves that lie so snug against her palm.
She must slow down her pulse; the adrenalin is robbing her of her agility. She breathes down into her belly and simultaneously tenses her muscles to steady her torso.
She thinks of the day that Lissek appointed her a member of the Department. He offered her time to consider. Not necessary, she accepted on the spot. Nevertheless, sleep evaded her that night. She kept thinking of her father’s words. ‘Lissek’s men would die for him,’ he’d once said. ‘He only seeks out those who he thinks are prepared to do so.’ Would she? After all, she didn’t know him. Marlowe sensed what she needed and kept poking her with his nose until she cuddled her tomcat close to her. That soothed her as always.
Six years she was there.
She would have died for Lissek at any time.
Just like now.
Her pulse is now slow and controlled. Her strength is where her breath is, in the ‘Hara’, two finger widths below the navel, the body’s energy centre.
More steps.
Very quiet jangling.
The chandelier. He must have brushed it with his head, that sometimes happens to Lissek too.
One point nine two metres tall.
Aaron carefully lays the revolver onto the chest. She feels for the bowl and takes out the smallest stone, lying right at the top, her favourite, round as a marble.
She rolls it over the wood floor.
The man immediately starts to move. When he’s in the door, her hand shoots to where she imagines his neck to be. She catches him on the back of the head, but that will do. Aaron takes a horizontal leap, hangs onto the man and brings them both down. He groans. She rams her elbow into his solar plexus to cut off his air supply and completes the manoeuvre with a finger spear strike to his pancreas. He doesn’t make a single sound; his body goes limp.
When he regains consciousness thirty seconds later, Aaron is sitting on top of him and has clamped his head between her crossed thighs. Not many men are granted this. It’s unlikely that he’s enjoying it. She cocks the revolver and places the barrel against his forehead.
‘This is a Colt .357 Magnum,’ she says in English. ‘If I pull the trigger, all that’ll be left of your skull is bone dust. Understood?’
The man mashes some syllables.
‘Deutsch? Français? Russkiy? Español?’
The answer is a whimper.
‘Then talk to Lissek.’ She tenses her leg muscles and gives him fifteen seconds until he loses consciousness again. She hears the key being turned in the door. Aaron maintains the pressure, it might be Conny.
‘What are you doing?’ yells Lissek. ‘That’s Gunnar!’
Confused, she releases him.
He greedily gasps for air. Lissek kneels down next to him and talks to him in a soothing voice. Aaron knows what he is saying, although she doesn’t understand the language: Concentrate on your belly. Imagine it contains as much air as a large balloon. Let it flow out very slowly. You’ll feel better soon.
In the minutes that pass until Gunnar can sit up with Lissek’s help, she whispers over and over: ‘Tell him I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt him.’
‘OK, OK,’ Lissek mutters, ‘he’s got the message.’
Gunnar settles heavily onto the wooden chest. His voice is as thin as if Aaron was still strangling him.
‘He tried to call me,’ Lissek explains. ‘But I forgot to charge up my mobile.’
Gunnar again. The words grate against his raw larynx.
‘He should have announced his presence. It was stupid of him,’ Lissek translates.
Relieved, she feels Gunnar’s trembling hand squeezing hers. His next few sentences sound steadier.
But Lissek doesn’t translate.
‘What’s the matter?’ Aaron asks.
‘The man is back in the village. He’s sitting in the pub and says he wants to talk.’
‘Who to?’
‘You.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘Banker type.’
‘We’ll drive down,’ Aaron announces.
‘I’ll drive down. You wait here.’
‘No.’
Lissek is silent for a long time. ‘Give me the revolver.’
*
He stops the jeep across from the pub. She’s been there twice before, with Conny. It smelled of fried fish and real ale, and of a landlord who doesn’t give two hoots about the smoking ban. Aaron moves to get out with Lissek.
He puts his hand on her arm.
‘I’ll take a look at him first,’ he says.
Reluctantly she nods.
He leaves her alone. She lights a cigarette. ‘Banker type,’ Gunnar had said. That doesn’t mean anything. If he’d seen Holm in his tailored suit with tie and dress handkerchief, he wouldn’t have thought it possible that he had the artistry of a tightrope walker. But Aaron isn’t worried about Lissek. Even though he’s sixty-five, he’s at his fighting weight. And with a loaded SIG Sauer he can get up to things that aren’t found in any textbook.
Only now does she realize.
It’s pitch black again. She is back in that deep underground cavern that she’s been locked into for five years.
The car door is opened. ‘Come on out,’ says Lissek.
She does.
‘Mr Nyström – Jenny Aaron.’
The man is anxious; his vocal cords are tight, they barely vibrate. ‘I’m a solicitor in Gothenburg. At the end of December, a new client came to me. He told me that you would soon be visiting Mr Lissek on Fårö.’
‘Who is this client?’ Aaron asks.
She already knows the answer.
‘Ludger Holm. He instructed me to give you this on 6 February, so today. Personally.’
A padded envelope is placed into her hand.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. Mr Holm sealed the envelope.’
Aaron hands it to Lissek.
He tears open the envelope, takes something out.
He doesn’t say anything.
‘Tell me.’
‘A USB stick and a contact lens.’
5
The night ended shortly after four. Next to him, Sandra woke with a start to change and feed the screaming baby. Pavlik gently pushed her back onto the pillow, whispering: ‘I’ll take care of it.’ By the time he’d slipped the carbon prosthetic over his stump and was lifting Jenny out of the cradle, his wife was already asleep again.
Years ago, with the twins, she’d always taken care of this. Sandra had known that he needed his sleep, and he’d been thankful to her for it. But with Jenny it doesn’t bother Pavlik. Perhaps it’s because he’s grown old. In his business, being fifty means you’re ancient.
While he warmed the milk in the kitchen and changed his daughter’s nappy, he quietly sang: ‘What remains of you and me at the end of time, what remains of our dreams? What remains when we fall like shooting stars, lonely and forsaken?’
Pavlik wisely keeps his passion for schmaltzy pop songs to himself. If the lads in the Department knew, they would wind him up about it no end. He hadn’t even let on to Sandra. But a few months ago she’d had a clear-out and found the CDs that he’d hidden at the back of the cupboard, to be listened to when he was alone. He made her promise him faithfully that she would keep it to herself, and between fits of giggles, she solemnly vowed to do so. Weeks later, Pavlik found a signed photo of Olivia Newton-John on his pillow. Sandra’s face was all innocence. Tough guys suffer in silence.
‘Let me see you smile once more, far too soon I will be gone, let us pretend it’s not forever.’
Jenny listened happily and rewarded him with those enormous eyes that always render him defenceless. Sometimes Pavlik wonders what will happen when she’s fifteen or sixteen. He already knows that she will wrap him round her little finger with ease.
As he went to throw away the old nappy, he saw that the bin was full to the brim. After Jenny had glugged down her milk he laid her back in the cradle and went to take the bin bag outside.
In among the rubbish was yesterday’s newspaper.
Although almost a month has passed since several men hijacked a Berlin bus and took twenty-seven schoolchildren and two teachers hostage, police are still not issuing any information on the case. Rumours have now been leaked that the leader of the gang, who was killed during the incident, was a man named Ludger Holm. No further information regarding his identity is currently available. There is also speculation that the young woman who offered herself in exchange for the hostages was a policewoman working for the BKA.
He sucked in the dry, cold air. It was a starry night, no wind. White clouds of steam hovered over the towers of the Berlin-Lichterfelde power station. Pavlik fought against the urge to search the house for cigarettes. He had weaned himself off smoking in the clinic, and he’d sworn to stick with it this time.
He cautiously stretched his torso, felt the scar. A friendship can end in many ways. That one died a miserable death in the woods, leaving an emptiness that has screamed at him ever since. Now Pavlik knows what it’s like to think of someone you once loved and feel nothing but contempt.
The knife had caught him slightly below the navel, but missed the aorta. There was no damage to his organs – the worst of it had been the loss of blood. Nevertheless, the doctors wanted to keep him in for a month. Pavlik would have gone crazy, so he discharged himself after two weeks.
When Aaron phoned them last night, he and Sandra already knew how the meeting with Professor Reimer had gone. Conny had rung earlier and told them all about it.
‘What does that mean?’ Sandra had asked tremulously. ‘Will she be able to see again?’
‘Not like she used to. If at all.’
Aaron didn’t mention it with a single word and just said: ‘I’ll be landing in Tegel at half five. Will you pick me up?’
Twice she has saved his life. Years ago in a Paris bar and then four weeks ago, when he would have bled to death without her. He didn’t thank her on either occasion. That would have been too corny. And that’s how she had always approached it too; in that regard they were even. There are three siblings in their family. Aaron, Pavlik and death.
Now she’s coming home.
He is standing in the airport and sees her. Her wheeled suitcase in one hand, the cane in the other, she feels her way to the exit, too proud to ask anyone for help. It has been five years since Holm’s bullet cast her into a world that Pavlik cannot imagine. At the time he thought he’d never be able to look at her again, or even think of her, without remembering how he demolished his hotel room in Barcelona. He was wrong. If there’s a way out of this hell, she will find it.
*
Aaron senses people shifting away from her like metal filings from a magnet with reversed polarity. She hears the rattle of a display board; laughter; a child squeaking ‘Mama!’; the announcement ‘Mr Reeves, please contact the information desk.’ When she stops, a suitcase rams into her heels. She ignores the blurted out ‘sorry’ and feels a hand on her arm.
*
Ten things that make Aaron happy:
arriving in Berlin
listening to sparrows
Sandra’s laugh
standing on high mountains
sleeping without pills
apple cake
having memories
thinking of Marlowe
being needed
hugging Pavlik
*
They don’t talk on the way to the car park. Nobody does silence as well as Pavlik. His silences don’t emanate loneliness or distance, it’s just that he is completely within himself. Aaron pictures his face, the face she last saw five years ago. The ash-blond hair that is permanently tousled, the quiet gaze, the furrows you only see when Pavlik is tired; the dimples when he laughs.
Everything about this face is warm. But not always. Many have come to know that, not all of them have survived it.
They get into the car. The light comes on. Goes out again. In the aeroplane, she had agonized for an hour, until she’d finally switched on the reading light above her head.
The brightness had increased.
Brightness.
Now Aaron has to resist the temptation to open and close the door again, just to savour the light.
‘Thank you,’ she says.
‘What for?’
