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  ‘Listen, I can understand you better if you don’t shout like that,’ the man says, agonisingly calm.

  ‘A woman was attacked in Friedrichshain Park. She is badly hurt and urgently needs help.’

  ‘OK. Friedrichshain Park,’ the voice repeats. ‘And where exactly in the park?’

  ‘No idea,’ Gabriel replies. ‘Well, wait. Probably near Cothenius-strasse.’

  ‘Near Cotheniusstrasse, got it. Do you know who the woman is?’

  ‘Her name is Liz. Liz Anders.’

  ‘Liz Anders. Good. Can you describe to me exactly what happened?’

  ‘Goddamn it. She was attacked. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Of course. Attacked,’ the voice answers stoically. ‘Can you please tell me your name?’

  ‘Shit! Damn it! Why all the stupid questions? I want you to send someone there. Straight away. She needs help.’

  ‘Of course. Calm down. We are sending someone. Now please tell me . . .’

  Enraged, Gabriel hangs up and throws the mobile on the passenger seat. Then he turns onto Drakestrasse. He presses down harder on the accelerator and speeds north. The speedometer needle trembles just above ninety kilometres per hour.

  Slow down, damn it. Do you want to kill us?

  She needs help! Don’t you understand that?

  Do you think you will help her by killing us?

  Since when are you the white knight? I thought you didn’t give a shit about her.

  I don’t, so pull yourself together.

  ‘Fuck you!’ Gabriel whispers, staring straight ahead through the windscreen.

  Suddenly, his mobile rings. He looks at the display – it’s Python. Cogan. He ignores the call and looks back at the road in front of him. From the corner of his eye, he sees a strip of light, followed by a dark shadow on his right. He reflexively hits the brakes and then there is a deafening bang as the other car rams him from the side and pushes him out of the way. The Golf swerves to the left, skids and the front left wheel jumps onto the kerb like a bucking horse with a heavy blow. He is thrown forward in the seatbelt and bounces back against the seat. There is a shooting pain in his shoulder. Then the Golf stops moving.

  The sudden stillness is overwhelming. Gabriel gasps. His foot is still fully pressed on the brake pedal. The adrenalin makes him shake.

  He turns around to the other car. His shoulder is screaming in pain. About fifteen metres behind him, a midnight blue Jaguar at the crossing looks like there was a bite taken out of the mudguard. The doors open up and the driver, a stout man in his mid-fifties, laboriously gets out of the sports car. The female passenger also gets out and points to Gabriel. She has smooth blond hair and is wearing black, tight-fitting trousers and a jacket with a leopard print pattern. Her heels clatter on the asphalt as she approaches, but the man grabs her arm and holds her back.

  Furious, she stares at Gabriel’s face.

  Gabriel takes his foot off of the brake and steps on the accelerator. The Golf jolts into motion again. There is a crunch as the plastic part of the dented front end falls into the street and under the tyres. In the rear-view mirror, he sees the leopard woman, staring at him with her mouth agape.

  I’m coming, Liz, he thinks.

  You’re making an idiot of yourself, Luke. Whenever it’s about this woman, you lose control. And you know what happens when you lose control?

  Chapter 8

  Berlin – 2 September, 12.34 a.m.

  Gabriel drives down the three-lane Danziger Strasse, staying on the edge of the park. The soft clatter of the damaged front of the car sounds like an irregular heartbeat. He can already see the blue lights flickering near Cotheniusstrasse from afar and his stomach ties in knots. At the densely overgrown park entrance near the badminton hall, there is a rescue van, an ambulance and two police cars.

  Gabriel turns the steering wheel. As he drives over the kerb onto the pavement, the tyre is pressed into the crushed wing. It makes a pitiful crunching sound.

  He gets out and starts running. As if powered by remote control, he runs down the curving path into the park. He knows most of the trees here. He looks at them when he walks here with Liz. They calm him and make him feel like taking a walk has purpose.

  Around the next bend, the bend where Liz told him that she wanted to keep the baby, there is a long straight stretch of path where all he could do was stay silent. A baby. Him and a baby. All of it had completely thrown him off course. That night, he’d woken up several times, bathed in sweat from penetratingly intense dreams. In one, he was under a scorching sun in a desert with red sand, as his arms and legs grew and grew like vines. In front of him, there was a glass of water, a simple clean glass. And the water evaporated in the heat without him being able to reach it.

  He shakes off his memories of the dream and hurries onward, deeper into the park. The path under his shoes gives way, softened by the heavy rain. About a hundred metres ahead, several strong torches dance in the hazy light beneath a lamppost. Uniformed figures are running around. A little off to the side, on the edge of the path, two paramedics and an emergency physician are all huddled together. One of them is smoking. In the middle of the path there is a shapeless grey mound. A body covered with a sheet.

  Liz.

  From one second to the next, he grows cold, as if he has fallen through ice. The shock paralyses him and he freezes, even though he wants to run. Run away or run straight to her. But he can’t even tremble, he just stands there and stares at the sheet.

  He doesn’t even feel his feet start taking steps towards her. One after the other. Much too slowly. He sees nothing but the sheet and the body under it, not the police officers, who look at him suspiciously and call out to him, not the others. It was as if he were walking through a narrow tunnel, and this mound and the sheet were the only things at the end of it. Although he refuses to believe that it’s Liz, the idea has already long settled into his brain and now cannot be removed. When he finally reaches the end of the tunnel, he falls to his knees beside her. Sharp stones pierce his skin, but he doesn’t feel it. The wet ground instantly soaks his trousers all the way through.

  She looks so big under the sheet! That is the first thing he thinks.

  ‘Hey, you, get your hands away from there,’ someone shouts. Gabriel doesn’t even blink. His right hand reaches for the sheet. It feels damp. Dirty and sticky. Why didn’t she at least get a clean sheet? he thinks, as he lifts the fabric and stares into the face of the corpse.

  It is the face of a spotty young man with dead eyes and ashen skin. He is wearing a dirty denim jacket. His throat is slit with a deep cut. Sticky black blood shimmers on his neck and the collar of his jacket. Gabriel touches the young man’s hands, which are sticky with blood. His body is ice cold, but the limbs are still moveable. A disgusting stench of urine and excrement surround the dead man like an aura. Presumably, his insides emptied when it lost its last bit of control.

  Gabriel stares into this face. A narrow, off-putting and brutish face.

  A face that is not Liz’s face.

  And that is all that matters right now. Regardless, the moment seems endless until another thought comes to mind.

  If this isn’t Liz, then where is she?

  Somewhere nearby, a siren howls, high-pitched and piercing, approaching rapidly.

  Chapter 9

  Berlin – 2 September, 12.39 a.m.

  Liz’s closed eyelids bulge as her pupils move back and forth beneath. She feels that she is still alive, but her head and her body feel numb, much too numb to sense anything like joy or fear. It is exactly as if everything were embedded in a thick fog.

  A constant humming sounds in her ears. A motor, that must be a motor. Then a siren so loud that it hurts in her head like pinpricks. She can’t move her arms – it’s like she is strapped down to a couch or something similar. She immediately tries to feel her stomach and check whether the straps are too tight for her baby. Straps. Why straps? Suddenly, a vague fear wells up in her. Her spine. It�
�s her spine. Patients who have hurt their spines are always tied down in the ambulance.

  The distorted image of an ambulance runs through her head, orange and creamy white, as it rushes through Berlin at night and oscillates in its own flickering blue light like a projection. But where is the siren? Why doesn’t she hear the siren any more?

  Then she hears a voice, a man’s voice, muffled like it was coming through a wall. ‘Hey, listen, I’m looking for the entrance to Vivantes Hospital. Where do I have to go?’

  ‘It’s right there, around the corner,’ a second voice answers, quiet and younger than the first. ‘Turn in there on the left and keep going straight.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Now the motor noise is gone and a door slams. In her clouded thoughts, Liz already sees what’s about to happen, sees what has happened millions of times in the past. Like all those other times, the stretcher will be lifted out of the ambulance by paramedics and then they will unfold the frame, so that its wheels can shake and rattle across the threshold of accident and emergency. She waits for the inevitable shaking and rattling, but strangely enough, it never comes. Nothing comes.

  Except silence.

  The vague feeling of anxiety has returned, which mixes with her indifference like a splash of blood in a bucket of white paint. And then suddenly Gabriel comes into her mind. She remembers that she called him, how she was lying there. She even has his voice in her ear: ‘Liz, I’m sending you help.’ If Gabriel gets help, everything will be fine, she had thought. But then why doesn’t it feel like everything is fine?

  For a moment, her thoughts float in the emptiness. Her unease is growing stronger. It is the same uneasiness that she had a few months ago.

  Ding. She is amazed at how her memory just works, like a lift that goes up and down with her.

  A few months ago. She had just found out that she was pregnant. Up until then, she had refrained from digging too deep into Gabriel’s life. Don’t ask, she thought. If he doesn’t tell you himself, then leave it. And she’d done so. Despite her inherent curiosity and passion for research, she ignored her own questions because she instinctively knew that she could destroy everything between them. And then she was pregnant, and suddenly couldn’t manage to ignore her questions any longer. Out of nowhere came the anxiety. The anxiety of having a child with a man who has no parents, no contact with his brother, no friends and a job to which he clings and hates with equal measure.

  Since then, she has been carrying around this feeling whenever she thinks of Gabriel. This feeling that Gabriel is one big black spot, a spot she loves, with whom she is having a child, but whom she doesn’t know. And that suddenly makes her afraid.

  Ding. Again, the lift. Are those steps? She blinks and, to her own amazement, manages to open her eyes. Around her, everything is dark. When she moves her eyes, everything seems like it’s swimming, even the darkness. Why is it dark in an ambulance? And why isn’t anyone bringing me into the hospital?

  There is a loud click and cool air blows into the vehicle. Finally. She squints, expecting that the lights will soon go on. Then the door crashes shut again and a figure is bent over her. A torch turns on and the light burns her eyes like fire. She wants to ask what is wrong with her spine, but nothing comes out. Suddenly, her body remembers all of the injuries and lashes out at her in pain. If she could smell, she would be taking in a strong scent, but her swollen nose makes that impossible. The only thing she can feel is a damp towel on her face.

  Indifference suddenly dulls her senses again. Perhaps, she thinks, the hospital was full.

  She doesn’t hear that the motor has started up again. Had she heard it, she probably would have thought: so, now we are going to the next hospital. Please let there be a free bed there.

  Chapter 10

  Berlin – 2 September, 12.41 a.m.

  Gabriel is still kneeling beside the body when he is grabbed by both arms and pulled to his feet. His shoulder protests with throbbing pain and he grimaces.

  ‘For god’s sake,’ someone starts up. ‘What’s this about? What are you looking for here?’

  Gabriel is dizzy and can feel nausea rising in him.

  ‘Hey, you! I’m talking to you.’

  ‘Where . . . where is she?’ Gabriel asks.

  ‘Where is who?’ The policeman on Gabriel’s right looks at him suspiciously. He is in his mid-thirties and has a goatee and giant hands.

  Gabriel returns the look. In terms of deep-seated mistrust, for him, police officers come right after firearms. ‘My girlfriend. Liz Anders. The injured woman. I called because of her.

  ‘All right, then,’ the policeman growls. ‘Then explain to us what this shit here is all about.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Well, this mess here,’ the police officer says and gestures to the body of the spotty young man.

  Gabriel looks at him blankly. He is still fighting back the nausea. The other policeman is still holding on to him and his hand is burning through Gabriel’s arm. He hates to be touched and tries to shake him off. In vain. ‘I have no idea what you mean. I am looking for my girlfriend. I called because of her. She was attacked here half an hour ago and I called.’

  The policeman raises his eyebrows and scratches the back of his head. ‘Listen, I . . .’

  ‘What’s going on here, Schuster?’ a male voice rings out behind Gabriel.

  The policeman with the goatee frowns and clumsily stands to attention.

  Gabriel turns around and stares into a pair of piercing brown eyes in a weary, hairless face. Even the eyebrows are so thin that they are little more than a shadow above his eyes.

  ‘Commissioner Grell, Criminal Investigation Department, Berlin,’ the man says, already agitated. He has a short neck and is wearing an ill-fitting corduroy suit over his plump body. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Gabriel Naumann. I –’

  ‘Jansen,’ the commissioner rumbles without taking his eyes off Gabriel. ‘Have you already done a background check?’

  ‘N-no . . .’ the other police officer stammers, still holding on to Gabriel’s left arm.

  ‘Then what are you waiting for?’

  Jansen nods, steps aside and presses his mobile up to his ear.

  ‘Headquarters? Hello. A background check. Naumann, Gabriel . . .’

  Gabriel rubs his freed arm, as if to rub off the man’s grip. Slowly, he is able to think clearly again and fear immediately takes hold of him. Where is Liz?

  Commissioner Grell and Schuster, the officer with the goatee, are huddled together. Grell nods with his bald head and takes a lumbering step towards Gabriel. ‘First: this is a crime scene. What makes you think you can just walk around here and mess around with my corpse?’

  ‘I thought that my girlfriend was under the sheet.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit what you thought.’ He gives Gabriel’s compact stature a disapproving once-over. ‘The main thing is that you stay out of my crime scene.’

  ‘Like I said, I thought –’

  ‘Spare yourself the thinking. It doesn’t seem to be your strong suit.’

  Schuster grins silently in the background.

  ‘Where is your girlfriend now?’ Grell asks.

  ‘No idea,’ Gabriel says, trying to remain calm. ‘When she called me, she could hardly speak, she was badly hurt. That’s why I called in the emergency.’

  ‘Well, if she’s not here any more, then it can’t have been so bad. Is your girlfriend prone to exaggeration?’

  Gabriel stares angrily at the bald man, but refrains from giving an answer.

  Jansen, the other officer, walks up to the commissioner. ‘Boss?’ he whispers. ‘I’ve got something.’

  Grell nods and leads Jansen a few metres over to the side, beneath a large elm. The two huddle together and Jansen whispers something into his ear with a serious expression. The commissioner nods several times, raises his hairless eyebrows, and fixates on Gabriel. Then he pats Jansen on the shoulder a
nd turns towards Gabriel with an ominous expression. The soft ground makes a smacking sound under his heavy shoes. ‘I am going to ask you again,’ he says slowly, ‘and think carefully about how you want to reply: why are you here?’

  Gabriel rolls his eyes. ‘Damn it, how many times do I have to explain. My girlfriend was attacked. She called me because she was badly injured and needed help. So I drove here. I had no idea at all that a body was lying here. I don’t care! I just want to know where my girlfriend is and if she’s all right.’

  ‘Well, Mr Naumann,’ Grell smiles icily, ‘I am very interested in the body. And I am especially interested in what you have to do with it.’

  Gabriel stares incredulously at the commissioner. ‘What is that supposed to mean? You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Well, I look at this quite simply. First: you show up here as if it’s totally normal to waltz in right after a murder. Second: you claim that you were called for help by someone who is not even here. Third: you are clearly, as Officer Jansen has just explained, a security guard and work for a company called Python. Interestingly, you are permitted to carry a weapon but, according to your police certificate, you do not. And fourth: you have blood on your hands and trousers.’

  Gabriel’s mouth hangs open. He looks down at his hands, which visibly have blood on them. ‘You seriously want to insinuate that it was me? Why?’

  Grell shrugs.

  ‘Goddamn it,’ Gabriel snarls. ‘Go ask the other officers. They saw me kneel beside the body and touch the sheet. That’s where the blood came from.’

  ‘Maybe you had a good reason to come back and smear the blood on your hands.’

  ‘What the hell kind of reason could that possibly be? That’s sick.’

  ‘That’s exactly my point, Mr Naumann,’ Grell says with a quiet, sharp voice. ‘Or do you deny having been in the locked ward of the psychiatric clinic at Conradshöhe from 1983 to 1988?’

  Gabriel was as white as a sheet. ‘That . . . that was twenty years ago,’ he stammers hoarsely. ‘That was removed from my record long ago, where . . .’