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  On the next night, Gabriel took the metro to Kottbusser Tor. It was risky; he knew that the area was a popular spot for drugs, full of junkies and dealers – and for that very reason, also a place where the police always turned up. But he had no other choice.

  The walls of the eight-storey building where Münchmaier’s flat had been were covered in graffiti and there was a hypodermic needle by the front door that had been trampled. The flat was on the seventh floor and there was a police seal stuck to the door. It was about the size of rabbit hutch – and, when he got inside, smelled as bad.

  The computer had an impressive range of violent video games, an Internet history with countless porn sites, and an inbox overflowing with spam from the associated providers. Amidst all the junk, Gabriel found an email address with the anonymous handle JHERO at Gmail. JHERO seemed to be the only person in regular contact with Pit. He took down the address and decided to look into it later.

  Next, he asked around the neighbourhood if anyone knew Pit. First, he limited himself to bakeries, bars, sex shops and news stands. He had been going around in circles until he got lucky last night at a small, brown-painted news stand on a side street about five hundred metres from Kottbusser Tor.

  ‘Pit? Yeah, sure. The poor devil.’ The kiosk owner pulled a bottle of cola from the refrigerator and pushed his chunky, black horn-rimmed glasses back up his nose. His curved moustache bent into a sour grin. ‘Was always hanging around with Jonas. Like Siamese twins, the two of them.’

  JHERO. J for Jonas. Gabriel took the bottle and pushed a hundred-euro note across the counter. The moustache twitched with annoyance, he dug through his cumbersome metal box and counted out the change on the laminated counter.

  ‘And what’s their story, the two of them?’ Gabriel asked and pushed the change back a few centimetres, towards the kiosk owner.

  Mr Moustache threw Gabriel a quick glance over the rim of his glasses, his eyes narrowed. Then he looked at the money and pocketed it with a swift movement. ‘Not great, I’d say. Pit’s been takin’ a beating from his stepmother for years. Even had to go to a hospital once. With Jonas, it was his father. Always showed up plastered.’ He shakes his head. ‘Drank himself to death. Been better since then, for Jonas, I mean.’

  ‘And what’s Jonas doing now?’

  ‘Nothing. Just had bad luck. That’s how it goes. Finished school, took forever until he got an apprenticeship and then the shop went bust. What can you do? If I were him, I’d be throwing one back now and then . . .’ He lifts an imaginary bottle to his lips.

  ‘Where do I find this Jonas?’

  Mr Moustache scratched his head as if he had to consider whether he was going to tell Gabriel any more details.

  Gabriel’s expression, rather impassive up until that point, hardened for a brief moment. ‘There isn’t any more money. And don’t breathe a word of it to Jonas.’ He leans over the counter and his eyes drill into the kiosk owner’s. ‘Otherwise I’ll burn your shitty stand to the ground, understood?’

  Mr Moustache blinks in surprise. ‘Understood,’ he mumbles. ‘His name is Schuster. Jonas Schuster. Lives with his mother.’ He looks past Gabriel. ‘Right above the Rex, it’s a cinema, just round the corner.’

  Just before ten, the doors to the metro hiss shut behind Gabriel. Ten a.m. is a good time to look for Jonas Schuster. Most of the neighbours will be working, and he’s probably just got up.

  Gabriel goes slowly up the stairs, step by step, even though he’d prefer to run. The blue sign that reads ‘Kottbusser Tor’ hangs heavy against the sky above the exit. The day sticks to the city like a film.

  Three blocks further and Gabriel is standing in front of a beige five-storey building with cracked plaster and dirty windows. The first two floors belong to the cinema. Its entrance has glass doors set in brass. Above the doors is a programme board, and above that, ‘Rex’ in neon red lettering from the seventies. A few metres to the left is the building entrance to the floors above. Gabriel rings the top floor for Verena Schuster and waits a while.

  Nothing moves.

  He quickly rings the lowest bell.

  ‘Yes, who’s there?’ a grumpy and nondescript voice snarls from the intercom.

  ‘Post,’ Gabriel says.

  There is a buzz to unlock the door. It sounds broken.

  ‘Thanks!’ Gabriel calls. His voice echoes through the building hallway. He climbs the stairs to the top floor where there is only one door. A paper strip with ‘Schuster’ written in crooked letters is taped over a lacklustre nameplate. An unpleasant smell lingers in the air in front of the door.

  Gabriel rattles the knob and then pushes a thin plastic strip between the door and the frame, pushes the catch into the lock and cautiously opens the door just a crack.

  He holds his breath, listens, waits. Nothing.

  He silently enters the flat’s dark hallway. The textured wallpaper and ceiling are covered in a yellow layer of nicotine. On the right, there are three framed photos on the wall, two of a boy around seven years old who is straining to smile, the third of the same boy, only clearly older. At the top end of the hall, daylight is coming in through an open door that seems to lead to the kitchen. Gabriel can hear the angry buzzing of insects. The wooden planks creak under the matted carpet as he approaches the kitchen door. It smells like bad food and rotting meat, repulsive and cloying. Gabriel recognises the scent and knows how long it lingers. He’s had it in his nose more than once.

  He steps into the bright rectangle of light and then reluctantly through the doorway. The kitchen measures around three or four metres. Across from the door is a large window with an old-fashioned, formerly white curtain that blows in the breeze of the open window. The kitchen table stands in the middle of the room. On top of the table is a woman, maybe fifty years old, on her back. Her legs hang over the front edge of the table, her arms dangle to the right and left and her head is tilted back over the edge. Her neck is overstretched and her larynx is sticking out like a thorn that will soon pierce through the skin. It looks as if someone placed a very large animal on a very small dissecting table.

  Her dress, like the rest of her clothes, is cut open and the pieces of fabric are draped to the side like flaps of skin. She is lying there naked with her legs spread in front of Gabriel.

  He automatically puts his hand in front of his mouth and nose, feels the urge to run out of the room, but he can’t look away from the pale, waxy body.

  One cut – deep and sharp – starting from her vagina, drawn up through the skin, across the pubic bone. Through the abdomen. Through the abdominal wall. Up to the sternum.

  A flame shoots through Gabriel’s head, a blinding flash, so suddenly, as if a grenade were detonated inside his skull. There’s a vortex of images racing around, but none of them stays long enough for him to really see it. For a disturbing moment, he feels like he’s been here before, although not in a doorway, but a window. As if he has seen the body head first from outside the kitchen window. Then the moment is gone, as if someone had thrown a cloth over a glass sphere.

  Gabriel stares at the body. The slit genitals, the open abdominal cavity, the viscera bulging out, the lake of blood on the chipped kitchen tiles – it looks as if someone had laid out a slaughtered animal to let it bleed out.

  He wants to move his feet, go backwards, but it’s like his soles have grown into the floor. The kitchen floor is dark with dried blood, a black cloud of flies buzzes over the bloated body of Verena Schuster.

  It takes a while for Gabriel to get a hold of himself.

  OK. Out of here, Luke.

  He steps back automatically in retreat, through the dark hall, out into the corridor. On his way, he takes one of the three photos on the wall and puts it in his inside pocket.

  Close the door. Cover the tracks.

  Gabriel carefully shuts the door and then wipes down the doorknob with the lining of his jacket.

  His steps echo softly in the stairwell. No one crosses his path. Even the st
reet seems surreally empty and the cinema like a haunted house. It’s only after he gets two blocks away that he sees the occasional person or car. At Kottbusser Tor, Gabriel is back to reality. The metro station spits a torrent of people out onto the surface.

  A delivery van honks because a junkie and his dog have made themselves comfortable in a parking spot. A bus leaves the pungent smell of diesel in the air.

  Gabriel sits on a bench, leans back and closes his eyes for a moment. What remains is the sound – he is there, and somehow also far away.

  Calm down, Luke!

  I am calm, enough with the clever shit.

  Well then . . .

  What?

  Then can we get down to business?

  You mean the body.

  I would stay away from that.

  You call that getting down to business? Giving me cowardly advice?

  Cowardly? I’m not a coward. Just intelligent.

  Goddamn it, who did this? Who does something like this?

  A psychopath. A killer. I’ve warned you. Stay away from it. Your stubbornness and your obsession will get us killed.

  Obsession?

  Yes, obsession. Liz here, Liz there, Liz everywhere. Without considering what you have to lose.

  And what exactly am I supposed to be considering? What have I lost?

  No answer.

  Why are you suddenly pulling your tail between your legs? You’re usually always on the prowl.

  But I just do what you want, Luke.

  Oh. I thought it was more the other way around.

  Can we drop this shit? I don’t want to talk about it any more.

  We can! But only if you answer a question for me. What do you think? Who did this? The same person who’s got Liz?

  You’re making me sick with your Liz.

  There must be some connection. Liz’s kidnapping, then Pit Münchmaier’s throat getting slit at the same time in the park, and then the mother of Pit’s best friend Jonas is sliced open . . .

  What would be the connection?

  Maybe Pit and Jonas saw something? Something that they shouldn’t have seen? Maybe that’s why the kidnapper killed Pit.

  But then why Verena Schuster?

  Because maybe he was looking for Jonas Schuster, like I am. Maybe she should’ve told him where her son was hiding . . .

  As far as I can tell, he pushed a knife into her cunt. She would have likely told him where her son was then. So, why did he still kill her?

  Maybe she had no idea where Jonas was. And then he was angry . . .

  That looks like more than anger. That looks like something else.

  Yes . . . maybe. But what?

  Gabriel squeezes his eyelids shut and thinks hard. The confusing flood of images from when he first saw Jonas’s mother’s body and the feeling of déjà vu rush back into his mind.

  Can we drop this now?

  Not if you won’t help me.

  But I am. You just don’t understand. It’s all for our own good.

  For our own good? Ha! You egomaniacal arsehole!

  Altruistic idiot! All I ever hear is ‘Liz, Liz, Liz’ and ‘Save, save, save’ . . .

  Shut up. I need to think. I need to find Jonas.

  Gabriel opens his eyes. He needs a moment for his eyes to grow accustomed to the light again. If Liz’s kidnapper and Verena Schuster’s murderer are actually the same person, and if the psychopath is now possibly after Jonas, then I will have to find Jonas before he does.

  He takes the photo out of his jacket. It’s framed lovingly and shows a young man who is most likely Jonas. He is in his early twenties and wearing jeans; behind him is the Eiffel Tower, cut and a bit crooked in the picture. Jonas has thin blond hair and his eyes are close together with a crooked nose in between. He is smiling into the camera insecurely.

  With a little luck, Gabriel thinks, Jonas is the perfect decoy. If Jonas really knows something, then the killer is trying to track him down.

  But then he has another thought. A thought that scares him, that eats at his brain like poison. If Verena Schuster’s murderer and Liz’s kidnapper are really the same man, then . . .

  He tries not to think about Verena Schuster, about her spread legs, the blood, her open stomach . . . but all he can think about is a woman staring at a shiny knife in horror and at the fist guiding the knife, since the knife must have been pushed inside of her up to the handle. Suddenly, he remembers that Liz is pregnant.

  Chapter 29

  Nowhere – 15 September

  Liz stares into the nothingness. About two hours ago, the lights went out and now she is surrounded by an impenetrable blackness, like the depths of hell. The devil put out the fire himself. Liz knows that he wants to show her that it’s night and that she should sleep.

  His face is lurking somewhere in the darkness, that face, like a mask of pure alluring beauty, a mask with one half torn off so that now the monster beneath is revealed.

  He’s not here. And he can’t see you, it’s dark, she tells herself.

  The thirteenth of September. It was two days ago. She had lost her sense of time and asked Yvette nonchalantly.

  ‘Is today the thirteenth?

  ‘No,’ Yvette answered automatically. ‘Tomorrow.’ And then she stopped short as if she’d said something she shouldn’t have.

  Liz could feel the fear deep in her core for the entire day. Then the door opened and he entered the room. If she were only a bit stronger, a bit more conscious, then she would have tried to do something, no matter how senseless it might have seemed. But it was as if she were nailed to her bed.

  His eyes stared down at her, his nostrils flared; he could smell her fear and it excited him. ‘Pull off the blanket, I want to see you.’

  With trembling hands, she pushed the blanket aside.

  ‘The gown.’

  She hesitated, knowing it was useless. It was just a stupid instinct.

  Before she could see it happening, he came over to her, rammed a needle into her calf and let go.

  Liz cried out, more in shock than in pain. She stared at the needle stuck into her leg. She can see the syringe shaking with the rest of her body.

  ‘You see the liquid in the syringe?’ he whispered.

  Liz couldn’t even nod, but that probably didn’t matter to him.

  ‘If I inject this wonderful crystal-clear solution into your muscle, you will have excruciating pain in your leg. Pain like never before. You’ll wish,’ he whispered and brought his face close up to hers, ‘that you could cut your leg off just to stop the pain. Do you want that?’

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head. The syringe in her leg shook like a gauge for her fear.

  ‘The gown,’ he repeated. This time, she didn’t hesitate.

  His eyes fell onto her breasts and then lingered on her skull tattoo. ‘I know that you’re strong,’ he whispered, ‘and that at some point you swore not to put up with anything. But believe me, everything is different here. Here, you have to forget all of that.’

  His eyes wandered down her body, over her slightly swollen abdomen down to the bladder catheter. ‘It’s about more than your life here.’ Then he groped her body with his healthy left hand – the ribs, the bruises, the scrapes, all with the practised dexterity of a physician.

  ‘What have those beasts done to you?’ he whispered distantly. ‘How much effort it takes for everything to heal again.’

  With the thought that he could be a doctor and that he might have administered her catheter, she grew queasy.

  ‘I should’ve helped you much sooner, really.’ His index finger runs across the top of her stomach. ‘It’s his, isn’t it?’

  His? Liz looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  ‘Is it his?’ he hissed.

  Gabriel. He knows Gabriel. Liz nodded. Speaking doesn’t work.

  ‘I knew it,’ he chuckled mechanically.

  Liz felt more vulnerable than ever. What does he know? How long h
as he been following me?

  His eyes bored into her. Cold brown eyes with a yellow ring of fire in the iris.

  ‘More than you suspect,’ he whispers.

  Liz shudders and looks quickly to the side, as if her eyes were giving away her innermost thoughts.

  Suddenly, he straightens up, pulls the needle out of her lower leg and squirts the liquid into the air. ‘Sodium chloride – better known as saline solution.’ He smiled coldly, but at the same time, his expression was intense. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. You are prettiest unharmed. You have this fair and sensitive skin, so smooth and . . .’ His two-sided face suddenly shines with excitement. He takes a step back, as if to cool down. ‘One more month. Then we have our celebration. Now sleep! It’s good for your complexion.’

  Not a minute later, she was alone again. She pulled the cover over herself and trembled like a leaf. Then the light went out. One more month. And then what?

  Ever since that moment, she’s been counting. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Now she knows what day it is and, even more so, what night: it’s the night of the fifteenth going into the sixteenth of September.

  When the fluorescent light had gone out about two hours earlier, she felt her way up the vein catheter to the roll closure of the IV, disconnected the medication intake and waited, just as she had done for the last five nights.

  Now, around three hours later, the time has come. The effects of the medication have worn off.

  She sits up and manages it on the first try. Very good. She carefully climbs out of the bed, sits down on the cold floor and feels around for the infusion. She sticks the syringe that she’d got from Yvette carefully into the rubber stopper of the infusion bag hanging above her head, sticks the needle through and sucks the liquid out into the empty syringe. Seconds later, her fingers find the drain in the concrete floor. Out with the poison. It’s not a splash so much as a whisper as the liquid flows into the drain in a fine stream. Yvette won’t notice that the infusion has ended up in the sewer instead of Liz’s bloodstream.