‘What do you think it is?’
‘How should I know? The Kroll Opera House has gone bust, hasn’t it? Wouldn’t be the first time someone had started afresh with help from their insurance.’
‘Trust you to think of a crime…’
‘Professional hazard.’
‘It’s more likely someone’s testing out a new sign.’
‘It smells like burning to me.’ The glow was no neon sign! If she looked closely she could see naked flames reflected in the gold of the statue of Victoria.
Without exchanging another word, the two friends stepped off the bridge. Their destination was no longer Moabit, but the source of the flames. Kirie followed begrudgingly when she realised they weren’t going home. Charly had to pull on the lead. It was Monday evening, just after ten.
10
Strapped to the metal frame of the bed, she deliberately kept herself awake. She was used to the ghastly cries of her fellow inmates. It had nothing to do with them; nothing to do with the night-time lullaby. It was a only matter of time before Scholtens appeared; after midnight – soon – when the checks were reduced to two-hourly intervals.
The first time he assaulted her he hadn’t thought it necessary to keep her mouth shut or gag her, but taken her as she lay strapped to the bed. Knowing that no one would come, that her cries were only one part of Dalldorf’s nightly concert of horrors, he let her scream and her helplessness only aroused him further. Next time, when she refused to scream, he hit her until she started. He revelled in torturing her, but tonight she was ready, with the paperclip that had been attached to her father’s photograph in her mouth. By the time the warders overwhelmed her and Charge Sister Ingeborg had wrestled the photo from her hand, she had it. No one had seen a thing.
Spitting it out and bending it open, she used it to prise open the clasp that secured the bed straps. It didn’t take long, and when she was certain no one was watching she fetched a glass shard from under the radiator. She had hidden the long, pointed piece of glass weeks before when she had broken a vase in the corridor, kicking a stray fragment under the bed in her room. When they loosened her restraints a day later it was still under the bed. She had wrapped its butt end in fabric and hidden it under the radiator.
She didn’t know if it would keep Scholtens away in future, or provoke him and make things worse, but she did know this: tonight it would be him that screamed.
There was no sign of him. She had fantasised her revenge so often and so vividly that she felt disappointment. At last she heard footsteps as the cries of inmates fell away.
Her door had no handle on the inside, but she knew he was coming by the shadow in front of the little glass window. The door scraped open and a figure in white uniform squeezed in, but it wasn’t Scholtens. The man wedged a chair in the crack. No master key, so he couldn’t be one of the staff. She had an inkling of who… but then she knew. She knew before she heard his voice.
‘You’re awake. That’s good.’ She felt him looking at her, even if she couldn’t see his eyes. ‘Defenceless, too. Lucky me.’ Rummaging in his overalls he took out a long, sharp dagger. ‘See this? A single, well-directed thrust and the lights go out. That’s the cleanest way, but you don’t deserve a quick death.’
Hannah clasped the glass shard she’d wanted to drive into Scholten’s arse.
When the police officer had showed her the photo of the dead man, Hannah couldn’t make sense of it, realising only that Huckebein was back. Even so, she’d never have believed things could move so quickly.
Huckebein. Peg Leg. With a single jerking motion, he pulled her pillow away and her head struck the mattress. For a moment she was afraid that the surprise manoeuvre might have revealed her unrestrained arms and legs, but Huckebein was concentrating on her eyes. The bastard was grinning. He held the pillow in both hands and pressed it hard against her face. Her mouth and nose were blocked, as if taped shut. She tried to think clearly, rearing so that the straps didn’t slip down. Her hand closed around the shard, gripping the fabric at the end. The first blow had to hit home, had to incapacitate him at least temporarily. She couldn’t just stab blindly. His back would be the best place, right in the middle of his back. Now!
She thrust with the glass for all she was worth, heard him yelp, sensed the pressure on her face immediately recede. She pulled the shard out and drove it into his body again, only now rolling from the bed and running for the door.
Huckebein held his thigh and hobbled after her, but lost his balance and fell to the ground. ‘I’ll kill you, you bitch!’
She pulled the door shut, trapping him inside with no handle to turn, and ran down the corridor. Let him pound at the door, let him rant; raving lunacy was normal here. He wouldn’t get out until the night team made their next inspection. Or when Scholtens came…
She had to get out of this shitty madhouse first. She wasn’t crazy. A murderer, yes, but she wasn’t crazy. She had to go where they couldn’t touch her. Only, where? This was the secure wing and all she was wearing was an asylum nightgown, open at the sides. She pulled a pair of rubber boots from a cleaning cupboard over her bare feet and helped herself to three overalls from the hook.
Behind her, in the half-darkness, a door crashed open.
She pulled the door of the cleaning cupboard quietly shut, sure of only two things: Huckebein couldn’t find her here, and she had to get out of the building. If he had entered undetected, there must also be a way out. She listened. He was moving in her direction.
She curled into a ball, groping in the dark for the glass shard, but she must have dropped it in her mad flight.
11
Rath found himself lying on the floor looking at a huge pair of black ears. Closing his eyes again he tried a second time, lifting his eyelids slowly and carefully – to see the same thing: a pair of oversized mouse’s ears on the dusty floor. They were made of cardboard with leather straps that could be buckled on. Under the sofa were the remains of a carnival outfit. Gradually it dawned on him what it was, and to whom it belonged: Mickey Mouse. One of a pair. Two girls who had accompanied them to the bar on Eigelstein straight after the parade and then…
On the walls stood shelves and cases of wine and, in front of the windowsill, a desk. He couldn’t see much outside save for a bare brick wall and a few shorn trees, but the view was familiar. The furnishings even more so. How many times had he sat here in the past? He tried to sit up, but the steam hammer in his head pounded so hard he had to stop. Next to the sofa was an open case of wine with wood shavings sticking out. He stood up, letting the thin woollen blanket that had covered him fall to the floor. At least he was wearing underwear. Had he fallen from the sofa or lain deliberately on the carpet? He couldn’t remember, but someone was snoring under a bedcover on the sofa. Blonde hair glistened in the daylight that filtered through the window into the room. He pushed an empty wine bottle across the floor with his foot. The bundle on the sofa sighed and turned over. One by one the memories returned.
The Mickey Mouses had been standing in the shadow of the cathedral. After linking arms to sway to the music, they had wound up in a bar on Eigelstein that Rath didn’t know, but which Paul claimed was the best place to go after the parade. Mickey and Mickey needed no second invitation. One was blonde and the other brunette; the blonde had talked a lot and the brunette gave the occasional smile. But what a smile it was! Paul must have thought so too since at some point they made themselves scarce, leaving Gereon alone with the blonde.