…He eventually faces up to the ghosts of the past and obeys a mysterious summons passed to him by a homeless tramp: apparently, his late wife wants to meet him. He goes to their old home, where, down in the cellar, he finds a film script written by her. To his horror, he discovers that the synopsis on the first few pages are an exact reconstruction of his recent experiences. He turns to the end to find out what happens to him, only to find that the concluding pages are blank.
So he turns back until he come across two somewhat thicker sheets with perforated, bloodstained edges. At the foot of one is a handwritten telephone number…
020 7438 1206
Marc’s gaze travelled downwards. Sure enough, the number looked as if Sandra had jotted it down on a menu card, though without the LOL.
His eyes stumbled back up the page until he found the line where he’d just broken off.
If Marc doesn’t think his fear could become still more intense, he’s mistaken. Obeying a sudden impulse, he opens the top-right-hand drawer of the desk…
He shut his eyes, then opened them and reread the last sentence.
Should I really…? What are you doing to me, Sandra?
He hesitated for a moment, then stuck his finger in the hole in the drawer and pulled. It was unlocked.
…and finds a mobile phone.
There it was: an old model with big keys. The display flashed, indicating that the battery and signal strength were at full power. Like a man in a trance, Marc complied with the script’s insane directions.
He takes it out and keys in the phone number!
50
‘At last! Thank God!’
A professional boxer’s well-aimed punch couldn’t have hit him harder. It was Sandra’s voice that answered after the second ring, no doubt about it. A trifle sad, a trifle hesitant, but as unmistakable as a genetic fingerprint.
‘You’ve called me at last.’
He had missed that slightly husky quality, which always sounded a little lethargic and was at its sexiest just after she’d woken up, as sorely as he had her touch, the lip-smacking noises she made when she was dreaming, and her laugh, which had never failed to infect him however low he was feeling.
‘Sandra,’ he said, torn between tears and laughter, ‘where are you?’
For one moment, brief but long enough to bring more tears to his eyes, the whole crazy business was forgotten.
The accident. Her reappearance. The tramp. The attorney still begging for water behind him.
His joy at hearing her voice again was simply overwhelming. All that surpassed it was his disappointment when he realized it was a recording.
‘I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’
‘What? What are you talking about?’ Marc bellowed the words as if he could browbeat the answerphone into an explanation if only he yelled loud enough.
‘I’ll explain everything later. Soon, very soon. Just be patient for another few hours.’
Another few hours? What happens then?
He thought involuntarily of the hand-stitched pillow on the baby’s cot. Of the date on the pillow case: November 13th.
Today, ten days before the gynaecologist’s earliest estimate of their child’s date of birth.
‘Don’t worry, darling, all will be made clear.’
Don’t worry? I’m losing my mind!
‘One more thing: if you’re still down in the cellar, leave now. Get out of there at once.’
He felt a cold draught on the back of his neck. The candle almost went out, it was so strong, but the wick flared up again just in time.
‘You forgot something, you see.’
‘What?’ he asked the machine.
‘Robert von Anselm.’
A dark figure loomed up behind him.
‘You didn’t check his handcuffs.’
Marc swung round, dropping the phone and shielding his head with his hands, but it was too late. A fierce stab of pain, and he went plummeting down into a dark void. The candle went out before it even hit the floor.
51
The first time they drove there he couldn’t believe it was a proper road at all. The route that ran through the forest between Potsdam and Berlin, via Sakrow, was little wider than the average pavement. If you wanted to avoid oncoming traffic, you risked scratching your car’s paintwork on the fir trees alongside.
At the moment, however, they had the road to Spandau to themselves and Marc could put his foot down.
‘I wish you hadn’t found out.’ Sandra was gazing out of the window. ‘Not so soon, at least.’
They often argued in the car. As usual, she avoided looking him in the eye.
‘You shouldn’t have taken me with you, then.’
She nodded. A moment later, still watching the trees flit past, she reached for his hand. ‘Still, you do see we don’t have any choice, don’t you?’
His laugh was rather forced. Then, when she squeezed his hand so hard that it hurt, he said: ‘You can’t be serious, surely?’
He briefly contemplated pulling up, getting out and shaking some sense into her. His wife had clearly lost her mind.
‘The end justifies the means,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that what you always say?’
He speeded up. A yellow star lit up on the dashboard, indicating that the outside temperature had dropped below four degrees.
‘Well, isn’t that your motto in life?’
‘You’re crazy, Sandra. Killing is never justified.’
‘But you can’t prevent it.’
She let out a sob. As a rule, Marc always gave in when she started crying, but today it only made him angrier.
‘Oh yes I will, believe me.’
The speedo needle crept past 70 kph and the fir trees beside the road dissolved into a grey-green blur.
He glanced sideways. The glow from the dashboard made the tears on her cheek look like blood trickling from a wound.
‘You mustn’t,’ she protested. ‘I won’t let you.’
‘Really? I already did it once. How do you propose to stop me this time?’
Now it was his turn to stare obdurately ahead. For a while they didn’t speak, then they rounded a bend and the road became more undulating. Constantin’s house had long since disappeared from the rear-view mirror.
She was sobbing louder now. He longed to put out a soothing hand and stroke the medicine ball of a pregnant tummy that bulged below her seatbelt. But then she did something unexpected. She unbuckled the seatbelt and turned round. He had the sudden feeling that someone was sitting in the back, a stranger who had been listening to their altercation the whole time. But Sandra turned back, with a photograph in her hand. Coarse-grained and greyish-black, like an ultrasound print.
‘Look at it!’ she shouted.
But before he could look back at the road there was an ear-splitting crash. The steering wheel bucked in his grasp, and although he strove with all his might to correct it he failed. His last sight was of Sandra’s hands dropping the print and fumbling desperately for her seatbelt. Then lightning struck and everything went glaringly white. The next thing he saw was the worried face of an elderly man bending over him and patting his cheek.
‘He’s coming round,’ said the face.
And that was when Marc really did open his eyes.
52
For a moment he thought he was still dreaming, except that he wasn’t in Sandra’s car any more. He was in an antique shop, and the grey-haired owner had bedded him down on a sofa redolent of tobacco and wood smoke, its cushions so plump and yielding they threatened to smother him. He tried to raise his head, which was supported by a neck roll, but this quickly proved to be an impossible undertaking – unless he wanted to throw up over one of the numerous carpets covering the floor.
‘Where am I?’ he asked, remembering the attorney whose request for water he’d refused.