It’s only the beginning that she remembers. It’s only the beginning that has become a dream. The rest went like clockwork. Became habit. Became the norm. A norm which meant that she was the first to split away from the girls and to piss on the boy on the floor.
All because of him. The viper.
And it’s then, in the middle of the dream, that the voice appears. That voice. She got it into her head that suddenly there was speech in the dream, a dream which had always been so horribly silent, but the voice forced its way through the dream, from another place, a dark, dark place, and it was crazy, completely crazy, because when she opened her eyes and managed to orientate herself in the room, she heard that the voice was coming from the briefcase.
She thought she had cleaned all traces of blood from the briefcase.
The voice said: ‘This is a message for the person who stole my briefcase. You know that I will find you, and you know what will happen then. To know roughly what will happen requires no more than a minimum amount of imagination. But not even the most well-developed imagination is enough to know exactly. So give the briefcase back now. If you think about it, it’s in everyone’s interests.’
It was only when the message was repeated in English that she managed to stand up and stumble over to the table.
She knew exactly. But when she lifted the briefcase above her head to throw it towards the already-broken mirror, she started to think. Her only defence mechanism sprang to life.
He watched her from the bed. Eyes wide open, sheet instinctively drawn up to his chin. A futile defence. A little boy’s instinctive defence.
‘Was that him?’ he asked after a moment. ‘The viper?’
She stood, the briefcase raised above her head. Reflection was fighting against instinct. And won. Eventually, thought won over feeling.
‘Yeah,’ she said, putting the briefcase down on the table. ‘I think we need to hurry.’
He sat on the edge of the bed and started to get dressed.
‘Why didn’t you smash it?’ he asked. ‘Surely we only need the keys?’
‘We can’t throw away anything that could be a way out,’ she said. ‘We can use that to get in direct contact with him. If we need to.’
He nodded, trying to understand. She went back to the edge of the bed and began to get dressed. She picked up the list from the bedside table and tore it in half. She held one half of the paper out to him. He took it from her, and looked at it.
‘Do you remember how we’ll stay in touch?’ she asked.
He nodded.
‘No direct contact,’ he said, pulling her close to him. They were united one final time in the middle of the bed. A long, terrible kiss goodbye. A last moment of direct contact.
All that they meant to one another rushed through them.
All of it hurt.
‘Remember why we’re doing this,’ he whispered. ‘For the dolphins’ song.’
She smiled, hugging him closer.
‘And for the steam rising between the falling raindrops,’ she said, feeling the tears well up.
They stood in the hallway. It was time. They didn’t want to, it didn’t feel right. Still, they had no choice.
‘Four hundred and one,’ she said, self-controlled. ‘If there’s no box number 401, it’s the wrong bank. Then you don’t even need to try.’
‘Are you taking the briefcase?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Pandora’s box,’ she said, smiling wryly.
And so they went out, alone, into the world. As alone as they had sworn they would never be again.
There weren’t as many of them as there should have been. It happens, he thought, glancing around the dingy basement. It’s not the end of the world, he thought. You had to expect stuff like this. Losses, he thought, pulling off his gold-coloured hat and looking at it. Pawns, he thought. The biggest wins always involved victims. Apparent losses.
Though was Jocke really an apparent loss?
Esse was one thing – but Jocke?
He pulled on the hat and was crowned in gold once more.
He knew that the midsummer sun was already shining on the other side of the door. But in here, a cool, damp darkness prevailed. No windows, not even a little hole. Just a naked light bulb above a carpenter’s bench where the only activity was taking place. In an armchair in the corner, a large man with cropped hair was cleaning a sub-machine gun. Rogge’s always cleaning a gun, the golden one thought. If there were any more firefights, he knew he could count on Rogge. Always ready. And on the sofa next to him, Danne. Who he could normally also always rely on. Danne Blood Pudding. His prison name. Dark as a blood pudding. Purple face. How long would they be able to haul him around? The bullet must have gone right through him without hitting any bones or vital organs, but he was still bleeding. Left shoulder out of action. Maybe he would be able to use a weapon again. Not a safe bet.
And then Bullet by the carpenter’s bench. The technical genius. Small and compact. Experienced with weapons and cool under pressure. My man, he thought, going over to him and placing a hand on his shoulder.
Bullet was hunched over a two-way radio. It was switched on. An oscilloscope lay next to it. Waves of differing shapes danced across the screen. He soldered a circuit card onto the side, turned a knob and the waveform changed shape.
‘So we’re not completely fucked?’ he said to Bullet.
Bullet said nothing, just continued twisting the knob, eventually finding a waveform that he seemed to be happy with.
‘Like hell we are,’ he said eventually. ‘It’ll be fine. Assuming one thing.’
‘Explain it all now.’
‘OK. Shouldn’t Rogge listen too?’
‘He doesn’t get anything anyway.’
‘Listen carefully then,’ said Bullet, leaning back in his chair. ‘The set-up was probably like this: they each had a briefcase, each a radio. They didn’t trust each other enough to just hand the money over. It’s in a safe-deposit box somewhere; we saw the key in the briefcase, didn’t we?
‘So the idea was probably that they’d contact each other on the frequency written on that piece of paper we got hold of and then, when everything had calmed down, the other person’d tell them which bank the money was in. The radio we saw in the briefcase was a special kind of police radio, I’ve seen one before. Since we know the frequency, we can find the radio. It’s a frequency that’s not in general use because they don’t want to be overheard. This kind of radio always sends out a faint directional signal, so if we use this little monitoring device, we can track the signal down – and the briefcase, too. Though the signal’s so weak that we can only find it if it’s no further than ten, twenty kilometres away. I just have to calibrate it, then we can get going.’