‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said, but he sat down facing the neurologist, who had returned to her armchair. She poured him a glass of water from a carafe and opened a slim folder lying on the coffee table between them.
‘Marc Lucas, thirty-two, honours degree in jurisprudence.’ She tapped the relevant section of the questionnaire in front of her. Marc had been meant to complete it at the same time as signing the pledge of confidentiality, but he’d lost interest halfway through and given up.
‘You passed both examinations with distinction and gained your doctorate in juvenile law. Congratulations – very few people manage that, to the best of my knowledge.’ She nodded admiringly.
‘And you now work with socially disadvantaged children and young people in Neukölln?’ she asked casually, her eyes straying to the watch on Marc’s wrist.
‘It’s a fake from Thailand,’ he lied, inserting a forefinger beneath the strap. He didn’t feel like explaining how he could afford a luxury watch that cost as much as a family saloon car on a social worker’s salary, even if it had been a birthday present from Sandra.
‘Your father was a lawyer too.’ She took a photo from her folder and held it so Marc couldn’t see.
‘You’re very like him,’ she said, and went on leafing through the file. Marc didn’t react, despite his urge to snatch the questionnaire from her hand. His resemblance to his father was striking indeed, although outsiders didn’t find it so noticeable because their similarities related mainly to character and outlook on life. Frank Lucas had also been a fighter. Like Marc, he had made up ground by going to evening classes and then devoted himself to representing the underprivileged. In the early days, when Frank still couldn’t afford an office of his own and had set up shop in his living room, half the neighbourhood used to sit on his sofa and enlist his advice. Deceived wives, drink drivers, petty criminals caught red-handed – they’d used Papa Lucas more as a pastor than a lawyer. He often gave his ‘friends’ time to pay or waived his fee altogether, even though Mama Lucas gave him stick because they themselves were behind with the rent.
In the course of time, however, some of the petty criminals whom he’d represented pro bono made a career for themselves – villains who could suddenly afford to pay cash and never asked for a receipt. As Frank’s clients descended the ladder of criminality, so his practice gradually picked up, though not for long.
‘Your father died young,’ Menardi went on. ‘Cirrhosis of the liver, undiagnosed. Your mother, a housewife, died not long afterwards.’
How does she know all this?
Unless his memory was playing tricks he hadn’t completed those sections of the questionnaire, nor the ones that followed.
‘You have a younger brother named Benjamin?’ Menardi asked.
Marc’s throat tightened. He reached for the glass of water. The neurologist had evidently wasted her time scouring the Internet.
‘Benny. At least, that’s what he called himself the last time we spoke.’
‘Which was when?’
‘Let me think.’ Marc took a sip and replaced the glass on the coffee table.
‘It was, er… Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…’
He counted off the days of the week on his fingers.
‘At a rough guess, on a Thursday around eighteen months ago.’
‘The day he was sectioned?’ Menardi shut the folder and tapped her front teeth with her pencil. ‘After another unsuccessful suicide attempt?’
The pressure on his throat increased again.
‘Look, I don’t know how you got hold of all this information, but I certainly didn’t come here to chat about my family history.’
Marc started to get up, but she restrained him with a soothing gesture.
‘Then please tell me about the traumatic experience that prompted you to contact us recently.’
He hesitated for a moment. Then, after another glance at his watch, he subsided on to the sofa once more.
‘I hear voices,’ he said.
‘What sort of voices?’
‘There they go again. Someone just said, “What sort of voices?”’
Menardi gave him a long look, then made a note in her folder.
‘What’s that you’re writing?’ he demanded.
‘I’m making a note that you take refuge in humour. It’s typical of creative and intelligent people, but it makes them harder to treat.’
‘I don’t want treatment of any kind.’
‘You ought to consider it, though. Would you care to describe the accident for me?’
‘Why ask me if you already know everything?’
‘Because I’d like to hear it from your own lips. My concern is less what you tell me than how you tell it. For instance, your attempts to make a joke of everything are far more informative than the fact that your wife might still be alive if you’d sent for help at once.’
Marc felt as if the woman had opened a valve in his body and he was collapsing like an inflatable mattress. He could almost hear the hiss as all the strength leaked out of him.
‘What do you mean? I couldn’t summon help, I was unconscious.’
‘Really?’ Menardi frowned and opened the folder again. ‘According to this accident report, you called the emergency services. But not until fourteen minutes after the crash.’
She handed him a printed form as thin and translucent as greaseproof paper. Looking up, he was doubly disconcerted to see the genuine concern on her face.
‘One moment,’ she said hesitantly. Her cheeks reddened and the sheet of paper in her hands developed a nervous tremor. ‘Are you telling me you can’t remember?’
8
This is impossible, Marc told himself. Quite impossible.
He couldn’t have dialled 112. Not at that stage. True, it was his mobile number on the A & E report to which the clinic had gained access, God alone knew how. But it couldn’t have been him. He’d lost consciousness at once after hitting his head on the door frame and steering wheel in quick succession. At once, not a quarter of an hour after the crash.
There was a knock at the door. Marc turned, expecting to see the neurologist reappear. She had left the room a few minutes earlier, looking worried. Instead, Bleibtreu materialized in the doorway, his face wreathed in an engaging smile that doubtless adorned many of the clinic’s publicity brochures.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Marc said sharply. ‘I thought I came here to forget. As it is, I’ll be leaving your clinic with a lot of my wounds reopened.’
‘I must apologize for Frau Menardi’s conduct, Dr Lucas. There’s been a regrettable mistake.’
‘A mistake?’
‘She wasn’t authorized to broach the subject.’
‘Not authorized?’ Marc clasped his hands behind his head. ‘You mean I really did call the emergency services?’
‘No.’
Bleibtreu made a gesture of invitation, but Marc preferred to remain standing by the window rather than resume his place on the sofa.
‘It was a passer-by,’ the professor explained. ‘The man who was first at the crash scene had no mobile phone with him, so he reached through the shattered side window and took yours.’
Several motorists were performing a horn concerto in the street eleven floors below them. It was either a traffic jam or a wedding. Marc parted the beige lamellar blinds but couldn’t see much. Immediately outside the window was some scaffolding swathed in plastic sheets.
‘How do you know all this?’
Bleibtreu stared at him in surprise. ‘There’s a copy of the accident report in your file. Your email expressly granted us access to it.’
Marc dimly remembered clicking a box on the download form. He couldn’t have cared less about anything that night.
‘Have you never seen the report yourself?’
Marc shook his head. He’d never even asked about it. He could happily dispense with any more grisly details about the most terrible day in his life.