Alphabet House (38 page)

Had Laureen and Petra bothered to turn their heads a bit as they left Hotel Colombi they would have noticed that the street artists which had been working the shopping streets had moved to the little park across from the hotel. Colombi, as it too was called, was the most central green oasis in Freiburg and made an excellent base for visiting artistes. Behind the laughing crowds, the trees and bushes proudly displayed their late-summer green in the fading evening light and formed a garland around yet another hotel.

It was neat and sober-looking, though less exclusive than the Colombi, and bore the pompous name of Hotel Rheingold. Bryan had parked the BMW in front of it five minutes previously. It was here he would take care of the afternoon’s most urgent business.

The encounter with the old man in front of Kröner’s house had scared him.

Remembering his brazen lie about where he lived made Bryan feel uneasy once again. After the events of the day there could be no doubt about the message that lay behind this lie. Bryan was to be lured into another ambush. He would never have become aware of the deception had he not been driven by intuition – or perhaps more by perplexity – to shadow the old man to his home in Luisenstrasse the previous day.

And by tomorrow morning he would doubtlessly have disappeared from the face of the earth in the vicinity of a street called Längenhardstrasse.

Apart from the obvious deception, there was something else about the old man that had frightened Bryan. An indefinable feeling made up of faces, words, impressions and thoughts but which he struggled to form into a synthesis.

The whole picture refused to materialise, which affected Bryan’s concentrated effort to get to the bottom of the matter. His eagerness was dissipating imperceptibly, but persistently.
If he wanted, he could leave Freiburg that same evening and still be able to attend the final ceremony of the Olympic Games the following day – precisely as originally planned. From there he could drive on to Paris.

One day more or less wouldn’t make a difference when the hour of reckoning came.

If, on the other hand, he stayed in Freiburg and were to make the slightest mistake, Kröner, Lankau and the old man would be ready and waiting. If the risk was that great, then why stay? Now he knew where he had them, so why not come back some other time? The little matter of finding the country house and releasing Lankau could be left to Lankau’s confederates. A couple of days’ fasting would scarcely harm a man of his constitution and dimensions.

Bryan had thought the whole thing through several times before he happened to stop in front of Hotel Rheingold. The only thing that really mattered now was whether Laureen would agree to meet him in Paris, the romantic capital of the world.

Hotel Rheingold’s desk clerk was fat and helpful and overjoyed when he saw the handful of cash. Without hesitation he led Bryan to his cubbyhole behind the desk and left him in peace beside the telephone.

It was Mrs Armstrong who took the call, which meant Laureen wasn’t there. The moment the housekeeper showed her bony face in their home, Laureen usually fetched her bag in the hall and quietly vanished.

‘No, the lady of the house is not at home.’

‘Do you know when she’ll be coming back, Mrs Armstrong?’ Bryan was sure she didn’t.

‘No, unfortunately.’

‘Do you happen to know where she’s gone?’ Bryan was sure she wouldn’t know that, either.

‘No, I haven’t looked at the note yet.’

‘The note… Which note, Mrs Armstrong?’

‘The one she left before they went to the airport.’

‘They? Has she gone to the airport with Mrs Moore?’

‘Yes, indeed. And their plane left ages ago.’

‘I see.’ Bryan accepted this possibility. ‘And so they’re in Cardiff?’

‘No.’

‘Listen, Mrs Armstrong, I’d be very grateful if I didn’t have to drag everything out of you. Would you kindly tell me where my wife and Bridget Moore are?’

‘I don’t know. Mrs Scott said it would be in the note. But I
do
know they’re not in Cardiff. They’re somewhere or other in Germany.’

This bit of information dumbfounded Bryan.

‘Would you be so kind as to tell me what is written in the note, Mrs Armstrong?’ asked Bryan, trying to compose himself.

‘Just a moment…’ One sound after another in the background told him she was working on the matter. He waited impatiently. The telephone was ticking audibly and the desk clerk looked as if he would soon be expecting more cash. The latter gave a start when Bryan repeated the name of Laureen’s lodgings.

‘Hotel Colombi? In Freiburg?’ he almost shouted.

The clerk followed Bryan to the door, grumbling. He didn’t think it proper for a visitor to advertise so loudly for a competitor, especially not after having been entrusted with his private telephone.

Bryan didn’t hear him.

It took only a moment before the receptionist at Hotel Colombi knew who Bryan was looking for. ‘Mrs Scott is out in town at the moment, but you can find Mrs Moore right there,’ she said, pointing with a bright red fingernail towards a corner of the reception lounge.

‘But, Bryan!’ Bridget exclaimed, obviously astonished. ‘There, you see? Speak of the Devil!’

It wasn’t the first time Bryan had seen her a bit tipsy. ‘Where’s Laureen?’ he asked.

‘She’s just gone with that foreign female person. Leaving me to sit here, all alone.’ She stopped abruptly and began laughing so that the pageboy standing nearest had to look the other way. ‘Well, maybe not
that
alone. Ebert must be coming down soon.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bridget! Who’s Ebert, and who’s Laureen gone out with?’ He took hold of her shoulders gently and tried to make her concentrate. ‘Why are the two of you here? Is it because of me? Who is Laureen with?’

‘With? Someone called Petra, as far as I remember,’ she replied, trying to appear normal.

Bryan felt his blood run cold. ‘Petra?!’ He grasped the woman’s shoulders tighter and looked her square in the face. ‘Bridget, pull yourself together. Laureen may be in danger, do you understand?’

‘Yes, but aren’t you the one who’s in danger? I seem to remember that’s what they said.’ She looked at him as if she were just becoming aware of him.

‘Do you know where they’re going?’ She hesitated at his question and stopped concentrating, so he shook her, making the pageboy smile. ‘Did they say anything about that?’

‘They mentioned some people’s names. I can’t remember them, but I’m quite sure they didn’t like them. Petra called them “those three awful men”.’

Not since the birth of their daughter, when Laureen had bled so profusely that one of the nurses began to cry, had Bryan felt the same, stabbing anxiety. He breathed as calmly through his teeth as possible and looked at his sister-in-law, who’d begun blinking more and more slowly as she spoke.

‘Did they mention someone called Kröner?’

This woke her up a bit. ‘How did you know, Bryan?’

‘Or Lankau?’ Bryan was about to suffocate in his attempt not to hyperventilate.

Her eyes widened slowly. ‘If you can tell me the third man’s name as well, I’ll really be impressed.’

‘No, I can’t.’

She smiled. ‘Then it’s a good thing it’s the only name I can remember. It was such a funny name…’ Her lips almost formed it. ‘Like some sound out of a cartoon.’

‘Come on, Bridget, out with it!’

‘His name was Stich! Isn’t that a good name? And he was called Peter. That name we know. It was actually him they spoke about most.’

Bryan stood still a moment.

Perhaps it was the pageboy behind them who was most surprised when Bryan suddenly went into a fit of coughing so violent that he was frothing at the mouth.

No one attempted to come to his rescue.

Few people have the experience of everything suddenly fitting together to make a whole, where a series of doors are at least momentarily flung opened. Yet it was a revelation of this magnitude, brought on by Bridget’s mentioning the name, which overpowered Bryan and made him lose his grip.

It was Peter Stich who he’d had a glimpse of in the old man. And it was this subconscious knowledge that had been harassing him for the past few hours. Peter Stich, the old, white-bearded man in Luisenstrasse who owned Hermann Müller Invest. He was the Postman. The red-eyed man from the Alphabet House.

He was all of them in one.

Bryan felt dizzy. He saw images of a smiling man lying in a bed in a mental hospital, years ago. Glimpses of a man who stood madly with his eyes wide open in a stinging disinfectant shower. Eyes that smiled at him as he hid his pills inside the metal tubing of his bed frame. Recollections of the gentle, cautious man who had twice saved his life. He thought of the first time, where the red-eyed man pointed out the splintered, rough bomb shutters to the security officer, and the second time, when the malingerers wanted to throw him out of the window.
A series of events that suddenly fitted together like a chain reaction, practically causing him to faint.

Each element had played its essential role in one magnificent lie!

Finally Bridget thumped him on the back.

It was several minutes before he came to. After a few vague explanations he realised he couldn’t trust anyone any more, except for Laureen.

And now she must be on her way over to Peter Stich, together with Petra. The same Petra who had sent him straight into the arms of one of the three awful men.

Apart from the flat on Luisenstrasse, Kröner’s house was the only one Gerhart knew in that part of the town. Outside it was cool, the street lighting massive and strange. Shouts and cries and jeering from a pub drove him over to the opposite pavement and slightly off course. He frowned and clutched his flimsy wind jacket close to his body, and drew himself up to his full height. Then, instinctively and purposefully like a homing pigeon, he headed directly for Kröner’s house where Kröner would be waiting for Stich.

But it wasn’t Stich who’d be coming.

He didn’t stop until he got to the palatial entrance. He took stock of the house’s entire facade. The only light to be seen was on the first floor. Apart from the window in Kröner’s study all the curtains were drawn. A cool breeze was gathering in strength and the entrance porch afforded only poor shelter. For a long time Gerhart stood looking at his finger, which was pointing undecidedly towards the doorbell.

Kröner stood with his back to the window, as was his habit when speaking on the phone. A bad habit, according to his wife. ‘Why don’t you just sit down?’ she would say. ‘It’s not the Kaiser on the line!’ But that was how he felt most comfortable. And today more than ever, with Arno von der Leyen on the loose and liable to turn up at any moment. He was restless. In that position he could at least lean back and look out the window without anyone seeing him from outside.

It was
Frau
Billinger, speaking more quietly than usual.

‘This can’t be true! Petra Wagner phoned you nearly two hours ago? I told you to let me know!’

‘No, you merely said I should call and tell you when she turned up.’

‘You could have assumed I’d be interested in hearing about her phone call, couldn’t you?’

‘Yes, that’s why I’m phoning now.’

‘Yes, now, and not two hours ago.’

‘You must forgive me,
Herr
Schmidt, but I was completely preoccupied by a TV series.’

‘One episode doesn’t last two hours, for heaven’s sake!’

‘No, but then I became engrossed in the next programme, too.’

‘And now I assume the programme’s over. Did she say anything else?’

‘No, nothing other than that she’d be coming soon. And she enquired about some Englishman.’

‘What Englishman?’

‘I don’t know. But I
did
mention that
Frau
Rehmann had had an English visitor earlier today.’

‘And…?’

‘That’s all.’

For a moment Kröner was furious. He slammed down the receiver, banged his fist on the table and swept all the papers onto the floor. Incompetence was unforgivable. In his moment of anger he turned around to open the window and let in some fresh air. Then he stopped and slid behind the curtain, all in one movement. Suddenly
Frau
Billinger’s inefficiency that afternoon no longer mattered. The problem had solved itself, for at that moment Petra Wagner appeared outside the wrought-iron gate. Beside her stood a woman he didn’t know.

They were looking up at his house.

He moved away from the window. As he was taking stock of the situation, he heard the doorbell.

One of the
unterscharführers
in the
SS Wehrmacht
camps near Kirograd had taught Kröner a special trick that he later made his own. One freezing cold day this young
unterscharführer
, along with one of the other junior officers, had stabbed a delinquent to death from sheer boredom just as he was about
to be hanged. For that they had received a minor reprimand, but everyone had found it amusing.

It was not so much the deed that Kröner had adopted, but the technique behind the stab itself.

The procedure was simple. All that was required was a little knife and a precise knowledge of how to avoid the ribs and strike the heart. After a little practice he’d become good at it.

The advantage was that it was unnecessary to touch the victim, let alone look the victim in the eye. One did it from behind. First and foremost he’d thought of applying this method to Arno von der Leyen. It was quick and easy and took people by surprise. There was simply no time to react, which was the whole point where Arno von der Leyen was concerned. But this latest surprising turns of events clearly indicated that he might have to apply the method to others as well. He would be busy.

But then at least he’d have Petra out of the way.

Kröner stuck his paper knife deep into his pocket so that only the deer’s foot handle stuck out. It was ready for use. The two women wouldn’t cause him any trouble.

Kröner’s son had a friend whose father owned a bigger house than theirs. Although the house in itself was impressive enough, it was the glass front door that really made an impact. ‘You can see who’s coming, Daddy! Can’t we have one like that?’ In Kröner’s experience, all such silly demands had a time limit. Others would soon crop up, so he hadn’t given the idea any more thought. This was something he might well have regretted now. For glass would have spared him the shock he received when he swung open the massive, carved oaken door.

His smile froze instantly. Instead of the little nurse and her unknown friend, there stood Gerhart Peuckert with drooping shoulders and an apologetic smile on his face.

He was the last person in the world Kröner had expected to see.

‘Gerhart!’ he exclaimed, pulling him into the hall so quickly that they both nearly fell over the coconut doormat. ‘What
ever are you doing here?’ Without expecting an answer he led the passive and obedient Gerhart upstairs and seated him in front of his desk so that neither of them could be seen from the street.

This extraordinary development made Kröner uneasy. Never before had Gerhart Peuckert been more than a few feet away from his guards. He was most inclined to believe that Petra Wagner had sent him up to the house as some kind of errand boy. But why wasn’t he with Peter Stich? Where was Stich?

Apart from his lips, which were dark blue, the creature in front of him was deathly pale. When Kröner took his hands they were cold and trembling.

‘What’s happened, my friend?’ he said gently, putting his face close to Gerhart’s. ‘How did you get here?’

‘He registers everything we say and do,’ Lankau had claimed, time and again. Kröner was still having his doubts. ‘Have you come here with Petra?’ he asked. At the sound of that name, Gerhart’s mouth tightened and his eyes turned slowly upward and began blinking. A moist film of tears glistened momentarily. Then Gerhart looked straight at him and his mouth relaxed. His dry lips trembled. ‘Petra!’ he said, his jaw hanging for a moment.

‘Good Lord!’ Kröner shot up from his squatting position and took a step backwards. ‘Petra, yes! You know her name. What does she want with you here? What’s happened? Where is Peter Stich?

Not for a moment did Kröner withdraw his gaze from Gerhart’s shaking head, which seemed about to explode. Grabbing the telephone, he noticed Peuckert’s knuckles were completely white. His body had started rocking almost imperceptibly.

‘Gerhart! You’re to sit quietly now until I say otherwise!’ Then he dialled Stich’s number. When it had rung for a while Kröner cursed quietly. ‘Come on Stich, you old arsehole, pick up!’ he whispered. He hung up and tried again. Still no one answered.

‘He’s not going to answer.’ The voice was subdued and indistinct.

Kröner whirled around to face Gerhart, managing to see his eyes before the blow hit him.

The eyes were quite calm.

Even before Kröner hit the floor, Gerhart Peuckert struck him again. Compared with Gerhart, Kröner was a big man, and he fell heavily.

Though he wasn’t dazed, he was shaken.

‘What the hell…!’ was the only thing he managed to stammer before instinct took over. As Kröner charged his opponent, Gerhart calmly spread out his arms as if he’d just asked his sweetheart for the next dance. In one mighty embrace Kröner grasped the madman’s body and began squeezing with his hands folded around his silent partner’s back like he was ready to crush him. Kröner had used the hold before. As a rule it took less then two minutes before his opponent went limp and lifeless.

When Kröner no longer felt Gerhart breathing, he released his grasp and stepped back, expecting the figure would fall over.

But it didn’t. Gerhart looked Kröner straight in the face with an empty expression. Then he dropped his arms and quietly drew a deep breath. He didn’t show the slightest sign of debilitation.

‘A zombie! That’s what you remind me of, a zombie!’ Kröner exclaimed, taking another step backwards as his right hand stole towards the knife in his pocket.

Gerhart uttered a quiet growl. Then, with the mechanical calmness of a zombie, he took hold of his belt buckle and drew the belt out of its straps, unaffected as a statue.

‘I’m warning you, Gerhart! You know I mean it!’ Kröner took another step backwards to size him up. He seemed vulnerable. ‘Let go of that belt!’ he commanded, cautiously extracting his knife. If anyone was familiar with the exact moments preceding a personal confrontation, it was Kröner. Calm movements were essential. One quick move and his opponent might react irrationally. So Kröner did nothing sudden or unpremeditated. Gerhart just stood there – still unaffected, almost apathetic – and
regarded the knife that was pointed straight at him. He didn’t move a muscle and seemed resigned to the inevitability of being stabbed. An assumption that a few seconds later would prove to be false.

‘Put down that belt!’ Kröner managed to say once more. Then Gerhart’s face contorted with cramp-like spasms that jerked the corners of his mouth downwards and wrinkled the bridge of his nose like some predatory animal. The only thing Kröner had time to register was a stinging pain that stretched across his face from ear to ear. The explosion of light when the belt buckle smacked his eyeballs drew his scream of pain into a higher register. He would no longer be able to judge space or substance. So brief a battle, so efficient a blow, so inevitable a defeat.

Next, the figure above him kicked the knife away, dragged him savagely across the floor and tightened the belt around his wrists. There Kröner lay, stunned most of all by a sudden awareness of the situation.

After a few minutes he drew his legs up under him. Then, with great difficulty he got up into an awkward sideways position. He had let dozens of mishandled victims sit like this on the bare, cold ground, waiting until the merciful shot came.

Now he too waited in that position for his redemption.

‘Where’s Lankau?’ said the strange voice above him. Kröner just shrugged his shoulders and squinted his eyes harder to control the pain. The reaction came promptly. This time the backwards tug of the belt was so violent that it almost dislocated his shoulders. Despite the pain, he didn’t answer.

The experience of being dragged backwards down the stairs and through his entire house – blinded and defenceless and crashing into obstacles – was nothing compared to the overwhelming chagrin that engulfed him.

Lankau had warned him and Stich about Gerhart Peuckert for decades. ‘Why not just kill him? What’s there to be afraid of? We can do it easily without being discovered. Crazy people disappear every day in this world. Suddenly their bed is empty.
And where are they? You never see them again! And so what? Who’s going to miss them? Petra Wagner? We’ll get rid of her, too, if there’s no alternative. Let’s take the chance!’ Lankau had been right. Petra Wagner’s little note had been unable to do them any harm. They should have got rid of both of them long ago.

Kröner felt the doorstep and then the cold and didn’t know whether he was being dragged out the kitchen door or into the bathroom. When the bathtub taps began to run he realised that this could be the last room he’d occupy alive.

‘Let me go, Gerhart,’ he said slowly, without begging. ‘I’ve always been your friend, you know that. Without me, you wouldn’t be alive today.’

Then everything around Kröner became quiet. The figure directly in front of him was breathing lightly. Kröner’s subconscious told him to let Peuckert do what he liked and calmly accept his fate. But both his rage and the will to live were reactivated when Gerhart began screaming his crazy laugh right in his face.

Despite his violent struggle and wild, groping attempts, his kicks never found their mark.

It wasn’t difficult to drag the truth out of Wilfried Kröner. After twenty dunks under the water, the desired information escaped Kröner’s gasping, snivelling, blinded and pock-marked face. ‘Lankau’s at his wine farm,’ he stuttered.

And then Gerhart gave him peace.

As soon as Kröner’s feet stopped jerking and floated quietly under the water, Gerhart studied the pockmarked features one last time, turned the drowned man on to his stomach and removed the belt from his wrists. Then he balanced himself over the enamelled bathtub with a foot on each side and bent down towards the flabby form in the water beneath him. He raised the corpse high enough for the water from the soaked clothing
to pour out like a small tidal wave, then let the body fall down heavily on the tiled ledge at the head of the tub. The sound was ghastly and the fall so effective that the middle part of the face was partially crushed. Then the dead man slid backwards, dragging a plastic animal with him off the edge, and disappeared under the water again. An air bubble lifted his jacket slightly and rose to the surface with a soft plop. A small piece of paper was left spinning around in the centre of the ensuing eddy. At every rotation the ink dissolved a bit and spread over the paper like mist. For a moment Gerhart could make out a name. Then it too dissolved.

Gerhart stood for a long time, studying Kröner and the little, yellow plastic duck that danced over the dark water beside the neck of the corpse. He wasn’t moved by his deed. He’d so often heard the malingerers discuss what they’d do if he, himself, were to be got rid of.

Gerhart looked at the subsiding ripples in the tub, closed his eyes and let part of his past disappear. Two virulent thorns in his martyred mind had been extracted. Kröner and Stich. Then he turned around. Before him was the medicine cupboard.