Click! Click! Two more beads, two more truths. Only one question remained.
‘Would I survive the operation?’
‘No, I’m sorry. That’s why we had no choice – that’s why we couldn’t let you remember.’
Constantin’s bleeper went off. He nodded with finality, as though confirming that a bargain had been struck.
‘Right, that’s it.’
He went over to Benny’s chair and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I can depend on you, can’t I? A straightforward shot in the head. Brain-dead, but the heart must go on beating. Do it the way I showed you.’
Benny nodded, took the automatic from his pocket and flipped the safety catch as Constantin left the room, closing the door behind him.
69
‘The end justifies the means – aren’t you always saying so yourself? Isn’t that your motto in life?’
‘You’re crazy, Sandra. The end never justifies taking a human life.’
Marc’s memory of their argument before the crash drowned the roar of the blood being pumped ever faster through his body by his pounding heart.
So that was their plan.
They hadn’t been able to kill him any sooner because they didn’t need his liver until the child was born.
Haberland had been right about everything.
‘Well, I’m not sure how the Bleibtreu Clinic induces artificial amnesia in its patients. Up to now, losses of memory have always been an unintended by-product. However, it’s conceivable that they subject their guinea pigs to shock therapy. And isn’t that just what’s happening to you now? One traumatic incident hard on the heels of another?’
‘Turn round,’ Benny told him. He checked his magazine once more, then drew the curtains. The only source of daylight now was the door to the terrace.
‘You’re crazy.’ Marc had lost all sense of time. It was still snowing outside. Seen from up here, the city might have been wrapped in dirty cotton wool. Everything looked at once real and unreal.
‘Please turn round. They’re delivering the baby right now. We don’t have much time. It must be operated on immediately.’
‘But why? Was all this really necessary?’
Marc tried to catch his brother’s eye, but Benny avoided his gaze. His hand was trembling too, even though the gun gave him control of the situation.
‘You could have looked for a compromise.’
‘Sandra didn’t want to take that risk.’
‘I wish you hadn’t found out.’
‘There really isn’t any other solution.’
Marc clasped his head in despair. ‘Damn it, Benny, you know me. Don’t you think I’d have sacrificed myself willingly?’
‘Would you?’
Marc’s knees were threatening to buckle.
Would I have had the courage? Or would I have copped out?
‘You know me. We’re brothers!’
‘I know, but I’ve no choice.’ Benny sniffed. He was standing in the gloom beside the desk, and Marc couldn’t see the tears streaming down his brother’s cheeks. He, too, began to weep as he slowly, very slowly, turned to face the wall. He gazed at the light box displaying the ultrasound picture of his son. The first and last picture of his child he would ever see. Then he shut his eyes.
‘Why couldn’t they simply transplant part of my liver?’ he asked. ‘Why does anyone have to die at all?’
‘You see? You’d have looked for a compromise. You were too much of a threat to our plan.’
Marc’s chest rose and fell like that of a patient hyperventilating. Sweating all over, he tried to think of the son he would never hold in his arms. He would never stand silently beside his bed and watch him breathing in his sleep, never take him to school, never see him swimming in the sea, never slip him the cash for a night out with his first girlfriend. And the thought that his child would survive thanks to him did not detract from his fear of dying. He was no hero; he was simply a debilitated, exhausted man with a terrible fear of death.
‘But you can’t prevent it.’
‘Oh yes I will, believe me.’
‘Shit, I really wish I didn’t have to do this,’ Benny muttered. ‘I wish you’d never come to see me, and I wish I still hated you. I’m so sorry.’
Then the black specks stopped dancing before Marc’s eyes and a last, lovely memory of Sandra came back to him.
‘If one of us dies – no, please hear me out – the first of us to go must give the other one a sign.’
‘By turning the light on?’
‘So we know we aren’t alone. So we know we’re thinking of each other even if we can’t see each other.’
‘Benny,’ Marc said, opening his eyes again.
‘Yes?’
‘You don’t have to do it.’
‘I do.’
‘No, I’ll do it myself.’
‘That’s not on.’
Benny’s voice sounded muffled, as if he had a handkerchief over his mouth.
Marc spun round, but he was too late.
His brother was holding the automatic two-handed with the muzzle in his mouth. He pulled the trigger.
70
‘Nooooo!’
Marc’s senses had been so overstrung by his fear of death, he thought the detonation would burst his eardrums.
But there was no report, no blood and no slew of brain matter soiling the curtains over the window facing the terrace. Just a metallic click like that of a cheap ballpoint pen, but even that was almost unbearable. Perhaps the ammunition had been of inferior quality and the damp primer hadn’t been ignited when the firing pin struck it. Perhaps there had been no round at all in the chamber because grit or dirt had obstructed the recoil spring. Perhaps it wasn’t even down to the puddle of melted snow into which Valka had hurled the automatic and there was quite another reason why the bullet hadn’t ploughed through Benny’s brain and shattered his skull.
Not the first time, at least.
Feverishly, Benny worked the slide mechanism and replaced the muzzle in his mouth.
‘Nooooo!’
Marc felt he was having one of those nightmares in which you try to escape from some threat, only to find yourself running on the spot. Sluggishly, as if restrained by invisible rubber bands, he made for his brother. Time seemed to be flowing backwards, or at least to be standing still. He had never crossed a room so slowly.
In reality, it all took less than half a second. Marc reached the desk, snatched up the heavy brass lamp, and smashed the base against his brother’s shins.
Benny doubled up in front of the window, clasping his legs and howling with pain.
‘You idiot!’ he yelled. ‘You fucking idiot!’
Marc picked up the gun, which had slithered across the floor and ended up by his feet. ‘Why?’ he yelled almost as loudly. ‘Why do that?’
‘You mean you still don’t understand?’ Benny was rocking back and forth like someone with autism. He screwed up his streaming eyes and shouted the words into his clenched fist. The words that made sense of everything at last.
‘You’ve got it too!’
‘What?’
Benny said it again, spitting out the words one by one. Saliva trickled down his unshaven chin. A thread of spittle landed on his chest.
Of course.
I’ve got it too.
71
Marc studied his reflection in the glass door to the terrace with the snowflakes dancing behind it.
It was obvious once you knew: the yellow-tinged eyes, the fatigue, the ever-intensifying pains in his head and limbs, the itching. All symptoms of cirrhosis.
In front of him, Benny was trying to haul himself back on to his chair. ‘Your liver’s fucked,’ he gasped. ‘Not as badly as your son’s – he doesn’t have any bile ducts at all. You’ve got a bit more time, Marc, but not much more. Understand?’
No, he didn’t. His brain registered all the facts but his mind refused to recognize the connections between them.
‘You mean to sacrifice yourself?’ he asked, dumbfounded.
‘We don’t have any choice.’