The Child (30 page)

With the little automatic in her hand she made her way once more to the locked gate leading to the gangway and wondered whether to try to climb over it. The wrought-iron grille was topped with spikes and enough barbed wire to rip an intruder’s stomach open.

She couldn’t help thinking of movies in which the hero would grab a rope and haul himself aboard, but her feeble arms transmitted a very explicit message: ‘Not a chance.’

Behind her, the sound of a car speeding by mingled with the angry roar of the autumn gale. She felt blindly for the redial key on her mobile, meaning to call emergency again, then propped her back against the gate. And that was when she felt it – just as she shut her eyes.

She was so startled, she dropped her mobile. It hit the ground, shedding its battery, and fell over the landing stage into the dark, choppy water. Carina slowly turned round, too distracted to mourn the loss of her only means of communication.

Sure enough, it had been there all the time: the big laminated cardboard sign that had dug into her back as she leaned against the locked gate. She had overlooked it because it was so obvious. Until now she had taken it to be a list of opening times or a health and safety warning to those who went aboard that they did so at their own risk.

On closer inspection, however, it looked far too unprofessional for an official notice. It appeared to be a home-made computer printout haphazardly attached to the bars of the gate with four lengths of wire. Carina was also puzzled by the big, beaming smiley at the foot of the sheet – the only thing she could decipher in the faint light of the moon.

She produced a lighter from her bumbag. As its yellow flame illuminated the wording, her last remaining hope died.

Nothing made sense any more, yet he suddenly felt he could see things quite clearly. Here and now, in the slowly paling light of dawn.

The DVDs, the fake assassination by the biker, his own Mercedes, beside which he was standing in a state of collapse – all these could mean only one thing: Engler’s sadistic plan certainly didn’t include telling him the truth about Felix. On the contrary, the policeman would derive the greatest pleasure from sending him to his death in ignorance. Stern nodded in bewilderment like someone who has finally acknowledged a grave mistake. Little by little, the pieces of the jigsaw were fitting together to form a picture that would ultimately feature his corpse.

‘Don’t look so horrified.’ Engler was still chuckling as he strode round the car. ‘You’ve brought all this on yourself.’

He took a canvas bag from the back seat of the car and tossed it on the ground in front of Stern.

‘First Harald Zucker, then Samuel Probtyeszki. You simply couldn’t let the dead rest in peace.’

Stern felt a gust of wind pluck at his trouser legs. He wished it would turn into a hurricane and blow him away. Away from this nightmare.

‘I discovered the bodies of my associates years ago. If it had been up to me, they would still be rotting in their hiding places.’

‘Why?’ Stern grunted uncomprehendingly. It sounded like the groan of a wounded animal, but Engler understood it in spite of the gag and looked at him as if he’d just asked the stupidest question in the world.

‘Because I didn’t want to investigate myself.’

Oh God
.

A floodgate seemed to open in Stern’s brain, releasing a whole host of realizations at once. The murdered men had all been Engler’s associates. As long as they were only thought to be missing, no one had needed to go looking for them. Everyone was glad the scum had disappeared until Simon turned up and their bodies were found. Now everyone was looking for their killer. Engler had to find the avenger before someone else did. And before someone found out that Engler’s own name was on his hit list.

Stern shivered when it dawned on him what role he’d been assigned in the final act of this drama.

The inspector looked at his watch and gave a satisfied nod. Whatever he had in mind, he seemed to have it well in hand.

‘We still have fifteen minutes. I want to use the time to thank you for warning me. I still can’t understand how Simon got to know of this morning’s rendezvous aboard the
Brücke
, but it doesn’t really matter. Once you’d tipped me the wink, I realized that the buyer’s order from me – a very convincing one, I might add – was a ruse, so he had to be the avenger we’re expecting in a minute or two.’

And you’ll sacrifice me to him in your place. I’m to be your scapegoat
.

Stern strained at his plasticuffs and tried to cry out when he grasped the truth: all that he’d done in the past few hours was sign his own death warrant. He had gone to the slaughter of his own volition. He was to be murdered in the course of a child-trafficking transaction, having previously done all he could to be mistaken for a paedophile capable of such depravity.

He swallowed involuntarily, tasting blood. Engler had clearly been less than gentle when he inserted the gag.

How could I have been so stupid?

He had thought the whole time that he was tracking down the voice. In fact, he’d merely been following a trail the latter had laid for him, which had ultimately lured him into this trap. First he had cast suspicion on himself by finding those bodies and making wild statements about reincarnation; then he had abducted a little boy from a hospital and left his fingerprints at Tiefensee’s surgery and in a paedophile’s lair; and finally, to crown everything, he had personally handed Engler a video of himself stripped to the waist and rushing into a room in which a child was being tortured.

Carina’s car was parked outside the estate agent’s ‘love nest’ and her fingerprints were on the door handle. Being in charge of the investigation, Engler would find it easy to brand him and his lady friend a pair of paedophiles – and his only witness for the defence was a former producer of porn films who had once been charged with rape. It was diabolical. Engler was laying the blame at his door. Worse still, he, Stern, had opened that door and taken delivery.

‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ Engler growled at length. He hawked and spat a blob of phlegm on the ground beside the canvas bag. ‘You didn’t do everything wrong. All I really wanted from you at first was the name of the avenger. You had access to the source, to Simon Sachs. Jesus, you nearly drove me crazy at that first interview. For years you’d been representing one shitface after another. Then along comes a potential client who could be useful to me and you turn him down. So I brought some pressure to bear the next day.’

The first DVD
.

‘That, by the way, was the only stroke of fate in the whole affair: the fact that you, a lawyer whose child had been switched by my people ten years ago, could be the key to the solution of my biggest problem.’

Stern looked up at the stormy sky – the nocturnal darkness was turning a dirty shade of grey. It reminded him of the walls of the police interview room.

Engler, the voice, gave another laugh. He bent over the bag and proceeded to unzip it. As he did so, Stern developed an unbearable stitch.

‘A shame you didn’t bring your girlfriend along, she could have kept you company. But let me guess: you got her to call the police at a prearranged time, didn’t you? Well, like to know why I couldn’t care less?’

Engler removed a grey plastic bag from the canvas one. It seemed light despite its bulk, like a pillow.

‘Because the police are already here. Three mobile units.’

Stern turned on the spot and peered into the gloom.

‘Twenty men or so, but all keeping well out of sight so as not to blow the stake-out. They’re waiting for my signal.’ He tapped a radio on his hip.

‘The road to the lido is a dead end. The roadblocks won’t be set up in preparation for the snatch until I signal the buyer’s arrival.’

He carried the plastic bag over to the boot of the Mercedes.

‘Don’t look so sceptical. I gave official notice of this undercover operation after my inquiries disclosed that you intended to meet the child abuser today and at this very spot.’ He grinned broadly. ‘I’m not here for my own amusement, I’ve come to arrest you. My one fear is that I’ll be too late to prevent the tragedy that’s about to take its course …’

So saying, Engler opened the boot of the Mercedes. Stern gasped when he looked inside. The gag in his mouth seemed to swell until it forced his jaws apart and his skull threatened to explode. With a single twitch of the hand, the inspector yanked off the green hospital gown that had been draped over the unconscious boy’s body. In the dim glow of the boot light, Simon looked as if he was already dead.

The boy was lying curled up like a discarded winter tyre. Stern couldn’t tear his eyes away.

‘Keep still!’

Engler had stepped behind him – Stern could feel him pressing up against his back. He thought the inspector was going to dislocate his wrists, he was twisting them so painfully. Then came a sudden click and his hands were free to move. Engler had severed the plasticuffs.

‘No false moves,’ he hissed. Stern could feel Engler’s breath through the thick material of the ski mask. ‘Now turn away.’

He felt dizzy. It took an immense effort to obey instructions and lose sight of Simon. Engler now stood facing him, his left hand holding a pistol with a halogen light mounted on the barrel. The other hand was clasping a baby to his chest.

Stern’s eyes widened, and it was a moment before he grasped that the flesh-coloured head was that of a doll. It was the only part of its body protruding from the white linen cloth in which the life-sized dummy was wrapped. ‘It can even speak,’ Engler said with a sarcastic smile, and pressed its midriff.

So that was it
. Stern remembered the whimpers he had heard beside the
Brücke
.

Engler shut the boot. No groaning or twitching. Nothing. Simon didn’t appear to have stirred at all.

‘I’m going to give you your final instructions. Then I shall sit in the back of your car and watch you. If you take it into your head to deviate from my instructions for any reason, I shall get out, open the boot, and smother your little friend. Is that clear?’

Stern nodded.

‘Do everything to my satisfaction and Simon will be found unconscious beside your dead body. He’s anaesthetized, so he won’t remember a thing. I’m not bluffing – I can afford to let him live. Believe it or not, I thoroughly detest killing children, unlike Probtyeszki. No good trafficker destroys his wares willingly. But it all depends on you.’

The sweat under the ski mask seem to burn like acid. Stern felt as if he were slowly suffocating in a woollen vice. Once he had run through Engler’s instructions in his mind he was handed the doll in a little wicker basket that the policeman must have taken from the back seat of the car. Then he felt an envelope being thrust into his hip pocket.

‘What is it?’ Engler had read the question in Stern’s eyes. ‘I keep my promises,’ he said in a ironical undertone. ‘I’ve written down your Felix’s address. Who knows, you may be able to do something with it in another life.’

Engler’s laughter stopped abruptly as the car’s heavy door clicked shut.

Stern had to summon up all his willpower not to hyperventilate. He tilted his head so as to accustom his eyes more quickly to the prevailing gloom, but he still couldn’t make out any headlights through the trees bordering the approach road.

But that would soon change. Death was on its way and would get here in a few minutes’ time. He tensed the upper part of his body in expectation of the pain that would soon transfix him. Then, reluctantly, he set off.

It never ceases to amaze me how much strength God can bestow on a person determined to fight evil
, thought the man. He cleared his throat, then coughed and quickly took his foot off the gas when he saw that his moment of inattention had caused him to exceed the speed limit. Sweat was trickling down his wrinkled brow into his bushy eyebrows. The truth was, his body was no longer up to the stress to which he intended to subject it today. He had overtaxed himself too much in the past, during his long years as a self-appointed avenger of the innocent.

It had all begun with a short article on child abuse. He had written it for the religious weekly because the editor was sick and he was the only person capable of standing in for her.

Today he regarded it as a sign. It couldn’t have been mere chance that
he
should have written about that terrible crime, given that his own brother had disappeared at the age of eight. When discovered six months later, his body was in such a dreadful condition that his parents had been advised not to look at it.

His article had expanded into a series and the series into the manuscript of a book, though the latter had never found its way to a publisher. He saw no point in publishing such a dark chapter in the history of humankind. It wouldn’t help any child to forget the torments it had undergone or dissuade any paedophiles from indulging in their perverted activities. Nor would it bring his brother back. Everything would go on as before.

One Sunday, when he perceived this bitter truth as clearly as he saw the images that robbed him of sleep every night, he decided to act.

The first two murders were the hardest. The others died more easily, unlike Zucker. He hadn’t meant to split Zucker’s skull at all, but the man was strong and had defended himself fiercely. He even managed to grab the gun. Fortunately God provided the avenger with another weapon when he needed it. Although the factory was a burned-out ruin even in those days, the axe was still hanging on the wall beside a soot-stained fire extinguisher. He had never been able to eat nuts after that. The sound of shells cracking was simply unbearable.

The old man mopped the sweat from his brow. He thought of turning on the radio but refrained. Although fond of music, he preferred to await the last act in silence.