The Child (13 page)

Raindrops the size of raisins were spattering the nape of Stern’s neck at irregular intervals. He felt as if he was standing under a sodden tree and someone was shaking it violently.

‘There’s no Lucas, though. Let’s go. We can’t dig up the whole graveyard – those old girls would have a fit.’

Stern looked over at the parson, who was delivering a final address with his back to them. The freshening breeze from the lake was carrying his words away in the opposite direction.

‘OK,’ Stern said at length.
Anyway, I’ve had enough dead bodies for one day
. He was just bending down to scrape a brownish wad of wet leaves from the toe of his shoe when he stopped short.

There’s no Lucas …
Borchert’s words were floating around in his head. He shielded his eyes from the rain with his hand and tried to make some sense of the scene in front of him. It was like viewing his surroundings through a dirty windscreen equipped with worn wipers. The more he blinked, the more blurred the overall picture became.

That little group of people with the parson. The Pyramid of Khufu. Those orchids
.

Something was wrong here.

He had seen something significant but failed to classify it correctly. Like entering an important appointment in the wrong space in a desk diary.

‘What is it?’ asked Borchert, who had spotted his sudden tension.

Stern raised the forefinger of his left hand and used the other hand to fish out his mobile. At the same time he made his way back to the row of graves he had just been examining.

‘Is Simon asleep?’ he asked.

Carina picked up at the first ringtone. ‘No, but I’m glad you called.’

He ignored the note of concern in her voice because he himself felt scared of the question he was about to ask Simon.

‘Let me speak to him.’

‘No, not right now.’

‘Why not?’

‘He can’t talk now.’

Stern bent over one of the less elaborate tombstones. A nagging pain in his forehead was spreading to his eyes. He tilted his head back.

‘Is he all right?’

‘Yes. What did you want to say to him?’

‘Please ask him what name he wrote on the picture he drew at the hospital. Please, this is very important. Ask him how he signed it.’

The phone was laid aside. Stern wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard a car door creak open. The rustling and hissing in the background sounded like poor radio reception. At least half a minute went by before he heard a beep – Carina had inadvertently pressed a key when picking up the phone again.

‘Are you there?’

‘Yes.’ Stern’s fingers trembled as he ran them over the letters carved into the granite. He mouthed the name to himself as Carina said it.

‘“Pluto”. Simon signed his drawing “Pluto”. But you’d better come here right away.’

Stern had stopped listening. His replies were purely automatic.

‘Why?’ he asked softly, still staring at the tombstone bearing the name of the cartoon character. The rain made it look as if it were steeped in oil.

An animal? A human? A head?

He couldn’t think why Simon had brought them to this place, which corresponded to a drawing made by more than one person. By a boy and by someone dead. At this moment he could only try to work out why Carina was close to yelling at him in panic.

‘What’s happened, for God’s sake?’

‘It’s Simon,’ she replied in a clipped voice. ‘He says he’s going to do it again.’

‘Do what?’ Stern straightened up and looked over at Borchert. ‘What’s he going to do?’

And what does ‘again’ mean?

‘Hurry. I think he’d better tell you that himself.’

There was no one else there. The church was deserted, and he found it hard to believe that anyone could derive spiritual consolation from these bare surroundings. Stern took off his wet overcoat and draped it over his arm. He regretted this at once. It was cold and draughty inside. The air smelled of dust and old hymn books. It was lucky the sun wasn’t shining through the stained-glass windows or the peeling plaster might have seemed even more obvious to the eye. Stern wouldn’t have been surprised if the verger had hung the crucifix on the wall purely to conceal some structural defect. The church certainly didn’t generate an intimate atmosphere.

‘… I don’t know what to do. Is it right? Is it wrong? Should I do it, or should I …’

Stern listened with bated breath to the low murmur coming from the second pew from the front. He had, of course, spotted Simon as soon as he came in. At this range he looked like a miniature adult, an introspective little old man communing with his Maker. Stern tiptoed towards the source of the whispers but couldn’t prevent his leather soles from crunching on the dusty flagstones.

‘Please give me a sign …’

Simon gave a start and looked up. He quickly unclasped his hands as if embarrassed to be seen at prayer.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Stern, ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you.’

‘It’s all right.’ The boy shuffled sideways to make room for him.

No wonder church attendances are falling if the pews are so hard
, flashed through Stern’s mind as he sat down.

‘I won’t be a moment,’ Simon whispered, looking back at the altar. Stern wanted to grab the boy and hurry him outside. Carina, nervously smoking a cigarette, was waiting in the porch with Borchert.

‘Are you praying to God?’ he asked in a low voice. Alone or not, they were whispering as they had in that cellar at the zoo.

‘Yes.’

‘For something in particular?’

‘That depends.’

‘Never mind, it’s none of my business.’

‘No, it isn’t that. All I mean is …’

‘What?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.
You
don’t believe in God.’

‘Who says so?’

‘Carina. She says something bad happened to you once, and since then you’ve never loved anyone. Not even yourself.’

Stern looked at the boy. In the semi-darkness of the church he suddenly realized what aid workers meant when they spoke of the blank expressions on the faces of boy soldiers. Smooth-skinned youngsters with death in their eyes. He cleared his throat.

‘Just now you said something about a sign. What do you want God to tell you?’

‘Whether I should carry on doing it.’

Stern remembered Carina’s words:
He says he’s going to do it again …

‘Doing what?’

‘Well,
it
.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘I fell asleep in the car. Earlier on.’

‘You mean you had another dream?’

Click
. The candle on the altar seemed to mutate into the flickering light bulb that illuminated Simon’s nightmare memories.

‘Yes.’

‘About the murders?’

‘Yes, exactly.’ Simon cast a surreptitious glance at his upturned hands like a schoolboy with a crib written on the skin in ballpoint. Apart from the delicate tracery of lines on his fingers and palms, Stern could see nothing that was helping him to find the right words.

‘I’ve remembered why I wrote “Pluto” on the picture.’

Click
.

‘Why?’

‘It was his favourite soft toy.’

‘Whose?’

‘Lucas Schneider. He was exactly the same age as me. Back then, I mean. Twelve years ago.’

‘You think you killed him?’

Back then. In your other life?

Stern’s headache grew worse the closer he got to the heart of this crazy enigma.

‘No!’ Simon glared at him indignantly. The life had come back into his eyes, albeit mingled with anger. ‘I didn’t murder any children!’

‘I know. But the others, the criminals?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were a sort of avenger?’

‘Maybe.’

Simon’s shoulders began to shake.

Stern was about to call Carina. If Simon was going to have a fit, he hoped she’d brought the right medication with her. Then he noticed tears on the boy’s cheeks.

‘It’s all right. Come on.’ He put out his hand – gingerly, as if the boy’s shoulder might scorch it. ‘Let’s go.’

‘No, not yet.’ Simon sniffed. ‘I haven’t finished yet. I must ask him if I really ought to do it.’

Click. Click. Click
.

Having steadied for a brief moment, the cellar light seemed to be flickering more violently than before.

‘Do what?’

‘I didn’t finish the job.’

‘I don’t understand, Simon. What do you mean? What didn’t you finish?’

‘Those men. I killed a lot of them earlier on, I know that for a fact. Not just the two you’ve already found. There were more – lots more, but I didn’t deal with them all. There’s still one to go.’

Now it was Stern who found it hard to restrain his tears. The boy was in urgent need of a psychologist, not a lawyer.

‘I think that’s why I came back again, to finish the job.’

Please don’t. Please stop talking
.

‘To kill him. The last one. Two days from now. In Berlin. On a bridge.’

Simon turned away and looked at the figure of Jesus above the altar. He clasped his hands together, shut his eyes and began to pray.

Engler could scarcely find words to describe how pissed off he was with the whole situation as he ducked beneath the crime scene tape and, with a curt gesture, relinquished the site to the forensic pathologist. He had planned to spend the afternoon watching television in his warm bed, armed with a jumbo box of tissues, four aspirins and a six-pack of beer, while other people did the work for him. Instead, he was having to search for a dead body in a downpour. More precisely, for the rest of it. The head that had been found in the Rottweiler’s grave was so small, it could be taken away in a ladies’ shoebox once forensics were through.

Fuming, Engler splashed through a puddle and plodded over to the temporary shelter just behind the fence. The downpour had grown heavier by the minute since their arrival, and Brandmann had to poke the plastic tarpaulin roof with a stick at regular intervals, sending torrents of rainwater cascading over the sides.

‘Shit!’ Some of the latest flood had found its way down the special investigator’s neck. Not for the first time, Engler wondered how such a clumsy oaf could have made it into the Federal CID. He couldn’t wait for the overgrown schoolboy to leave. Then they would at last be able to revert to the tried and tested operational procedures they normally used.

‘How’s the head?’ Brandmann asked when Engler squeezed into the shelter beside him, shivering.

‘What do you mean, head? The bugger rammed a stun gun into my back.’

‘And you’re sure it wasn’t Stern?’

‘How many more times?’ Engler suppressed an urge to send a mouthful of phlegm onto Brandmann’s shoes. ‘I could only see the man’s eyes. He was wearing a surgical mask, a white coat and probably a wig. No, I’m not sure, but his voice sounded different and he looked a bit shorter.’

‘Funny. I bet we’ll find Stern’s prints at the scene.’

‘And I bet we—’

Engler broke off in mid-sentence, fished out his vibrating mobile and looked at the scratched display, which was signalling a call from an unknown number. He put a finger to his lips – although Brandmann wasn’t trying to say anything for once – and opened the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Was I right?’ he heard Robert Stern’s familiar voice ask.

Engler sniffed. He nodded gratefully to the uniformed policewoman who had just handed him a cardboard cup of steaming coffee.

‘Afraid so, yes. The coffin contained a skull.’

‘Human?’

‘Yes, but why did the information come from you? How did you know about the grave?’

Stern paused as if the answer had slipped his mind.

‘From Simon,’ he said eventually.

Engler thought for a moment, then put the call on speaker. The hands-free facility of his police-issue mobile was so poor that Brandmann had to crowd him so as not to miss the conversation.

‘That’s crap, Stern. Come on, what’s your personal involvement in this?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

Two loudly arguing policemen approached the shelter. Silenced by Engler’s furious gestures, they promptly veered off out of earshot.

‘How come you’re calling me again?’

‘I need some time. Take my tip-off about the graveyard as proof that I’ve nothing to hide. Simon is as much of a riddle to me as he is to you. I’ll crack it, but only if you leave me alone.’

‘Afraid it’s too late for that now.’

‘Why? I haven’t committed any crime.’

‘I take a different view. We found your car. It happened to be parked near the premises of a haulage firm in Moabit.’

‘So give me a ticket if it was in a no-parking zone.’

‘We got a description of the man who opened the freezer with the body in it. It fits you, curiously enough. Funny, no? Talking about parking restrictions, there was a black four-wheel drive double-parked outside Tiefensee’s practice in the Hackescher Markt. Were you there too?’

‘No.’

‘But a certain Andreas Borchert was, we checked the licence number. It seems you and the rapist are all buddy-buddies again.’