You (29 page)

“That my stuff is crap?”

“No, that your stuff is actually my stuff.”

You freeze, he smiles.

“You know what I’m trying to say? What we have here is eighty-eight percent pure heroin. Five kilos of it. We’re talking about a market value of two and a half million euros. And this is all in your possession. On a day like today? In a year like this one? You’ll have realized that there are no more misunderstandings.”

You don’t know how he did it, but his arm is around your shoulders now, he’s scarily close and speaking into your ear.

“That kind of thing doesn’t happen twice in a city like Berlin. Not in these amounts, not with this quality. The question is, how on earth does someone like you get hold of drugs that my little brother is storing?”

His question hangs in the air. You had anticipated everything. You were even sure for a long time that he was really a cop, and that you’d soon be spending three hundred hours doing social work. But this has taken you completely by surprise.
Little brother? Storing?
The equation is quite a simple one.
Taja’s uncle is sitting next to me and his little brother is Oskar, who’s lying in a freezer right now, and by the way I’m really fucked
. You quickly dismiss all those thoughts as if Taja’s uncle could see inside your head, and start calculating your chances. You’ve always been good at that. Your mind works best under stress, as if you need trouble to function right.
What now?
If you react right away, you might manage it. A forward jab, catch him in the face with your forehead, and while he’s spitting out his teeth, you run off and disappear down Neue Kantstrasse to join Ruth on the opposite bank and—

“Don’t even think about it,” he interrupts your thoughts. “I could break your neck so fast you wouldn’t even notice.”

You look at each other. There’s an affinity, and the affinity repels you. He’s got a deep tan, he’s clean-shaven. His mouth smiles amicably, no more mockery, as though he could be nice if he wanted. But it’s deceptive, it’s all deceptive when you look at those eyes. Metal. Those eyes don’t intend to be nice. On his left cheek there’s a small sickle-shaped scar, the skin’s lighter there. You automatically want to touch your own skin where Taja’s elbow caught you. The skin has turned purple there.
What does this asshole see when he looks at me?
you wonder, and find the answer in his eyes.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, because I don’t really exist for him
.

His hand rests flat on your back, it gives off an unpleasant kind of heat. As if a fire were creeping up your spine.

“Let go of me,” you hiss at him.

The hand disappears. You get to your feet. He sits where he is. His voice is still calm, you wish he would show more emotion.

“It’s up to you now. Whatever you promise me in the next minute, I’ll take you at your word. And if you break your word, I will hunt you down. Have I made myself understood?”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be afraid, girl, you should be shitting yourself in fear.”

He gets up. He’s a head taller than you. You try to resist looking up at him. You look up. He wants to know what your plan was.

“You turn up without my merchandise, and then?”

“I’ve got it all in a bag. I’ll fetch it once I’ve got the money.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s exactly so.”

You and your plans. When you got out with Ruth at the station Kaiserdamm, you explained that you didn’t trust anyone, and you put the sports bag in a safe-deposit box. Your plan was to swap the key to the box for the money. You were of the opinion that that’s what professionals do.

At this moment a professional should look different. Not so surprised. Standing facing Taja’s uncle, you understand that it would be the end of the line for you here if you’d brought the drugs. It is a feeling as if someone is standing by your grave waiting for you to lie down in it.

He’d never have let me go
.

“Good plan,” says Taja’s uncle. “In your place I wouldn’t have trusted my son either. You can go now. You and I are done.”

He looks at his watch.

“I give you till tomorrow morning. You bring my goods back to where you stole them. I don’t want to know how you managed to rob my brother. I’ll drive out to see him tomorrow morning, and when I ask him where the heroin is, he’ll open his metal case and the heroin will be in there and I’ll slap him happily on the shoulder and have breakfast with him. After breakfast I’ll have forgotten that you and your friend over there ever existed. Have you got all that?”

You grip the safe-deposit box key in your right hand and nod, you’ve got it, no problem, that’s exactly what you’ll do. You’re almost about to thank him, when your brain processes what he’s just said.
After breakfast I’ll have forgotten that you and your friend over there ever existed
. You look across to the shore of the Lietzensee.
How does he know that Ruth’s over there?

“… involved?”

“What?”

He repeats his question patiently, he’s not in any hurry.

“Is Taja involved?”

You hesitate for a moment too long, that’s answer enough for him.

“I’ve never liked that kid,” he admits, and turns away from you. He has said what he wanted to say, you can go. You leave the football
field. As you’re going up the steps to the street, you cast one last glance through the fence—Taja’s uncle has his phone to his ear, and is standing with his back to you, legs spread like a footballer defending his goal.
He has already forgotten about me
, you think and then you hear him say, “Hurt her.”

He snaps his cell phone shut, turns around and looks at you.

“Run,” he says.

And you run as you have never run before.

The new day exists for two hours, nineteen minutes, and forty-eight seconds, and no one in the world seems to be interested. You sit wearily on the terrace and wait for Ruth to come back with Stink. You rather regret not having been on Ruth’s side. But fifty grand is fifty grand, and if no one gets hurt, then it’s a present that shouldn’t be tossed aside.

Schnappi is sleeping beside you in the deck chair. Everything is calm. At the moment you don’t even need to worry about Taja, she’s completely knocked out by the medication. You looked in on her ten minutes ago. She’d kicked the blanket off and pulled her knees up to her chest, as if she wanted to disappear into herself.

It’s so sultry that even the mosquitoes are taking time out. There’s a storm in the air, the hairs on your arms are standing up. You’re on your own and you’re pregnant on your own and you feel melancholic. You want to be the soppily romantic girl you were before you fell pregnant. One of those girls who dream of the rural life and a pony in the paddock.

You lean your head back and stare into the night. A nervous starry sky quivers above you, a point of light makes its way toward Tegel Airport, then there’s a quick flash of lightning and the sky goes negative for a few seconds. As you gaze up, you’re surprised by that overwhelming peace that you always feel when everything stops making sense. Like that summer four years ago. You were standing on the ten-meter board, and behind you was a line of noisy children. At that moment you understood that there was no turning back,
because there was no way they were ever going to let you go back down again. So you stepped out onto the springboard and looked down into the pool and knew very well that you would never survive it, that much was certain.
This is the end of me
. And while you were thinking it, that calm swept over you for the first time. The calm of the desperate.
Whatever happens now, it’s going to happen
, you thought, and let yourself fall.

The ringing of your cell phone brings the silence to an end. You don’t give a start. Something had to happen, and now it has happened. Schnappi, on the other hand, sits up with a jerk and glares at you.

“Are you trying to kill me, or what?”

“It’s just the phone,” you reassure her.

Schnappi falls back and wants to know why you don’t answer it, when it’s
just
the phone. You answer it. Stink’s on the other end. She sounds hysterical and she doesn’t want you to say anything. She speaks so quickly that you only understand half of it.

“Stink, slow down.”

She tells you where she is. She takes a deep breath. She tells you what you have to do. You want to ask her what has happened, but she interrupts you and tells you to hurry up. She says it twice.

“Nessi, please, hurry.”

The lights in the ceiling flicker on. There’s room for four cars in the garage, but there’s only one there.

“I thought her father drove a Mercedes,” says Schnappi.

“Me too.”

“Nessi, that’s not a Mercedes, it’s a monster.”

The Range Rover looks as if it’s come straight off the conveyor belt. It gleams coldly in the fluorescent light and looks as remote as the starry sky you were looking at a moment before. There isn’t a speck of dust on the black paint, the windshield is an insect eye that stares at you disparagingly.

“It’s too big for us,” says Schnappi.

“What choice do we have?”

At first Stink wanted you to phone one of the guys from the crowd and arrange for a car. It’s half past three on a Friday morning.
You tried. None of the guys answers his phone, and it’s hardly likely that they would borrow their parents’ car to come to your aid.

How the hell do you arrange for a car after midnight?

Schnappi had the idea of looking in Taja’s father’s garage. And you’re there now and you feel like dwarfs. You can’t even see over the roof of the Range Rover.

You pull on the driver’s door, which is of course locked. You look at the back tire, because Schnappi says people in movies always hide their keys on the back tire. Not in this movie.

“Nessi, this isn’t a good sign.”

You want to tape her mouth shut.

“I could ask my father,” she offers.

“Do you really think he’d drive us?”

Schnappi shakes her head.

“But I could ask.”

“Rather not.”

You go back into the house and look through all the drawers.

Nothing.

You think about waking Taja.

“But why should Taja know where her father keeps …”

Schnappi breaks off; you look at each other and have the same thought.

“Please don’t,” says Schnappi.

It’s time to go back into the basement.

Taja’s dad looks just like he did yesterday. Still, stiff, dead.

“I can’t do it,” you say.

Schnappi groans, leans forward, reaches into the cabinet and, after feeling around for a minute, finds the key ring in his front pants pocket. She snakes two fingers in and pulls a face as if she were rummaging in a bucket full of earthworms. After she’s fished out the key ring, she hands it to you. The keys are ice cold.

“And you’re sure you can drive that car?”

You nod, what else are you supposed to do, there’s no turning back now, Schnappi would never forgive you. Your mother gave you driving lessons when you went with her on holiday to Greece. It was easier than you thought. That’s exactly what you say to Schnappi.

“If it’s an automatic, I’m fine.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Then we’ll cross that bridge.”

Back into the garage.

The key fits.

You sit down in the car and search with your feet.

Only two pedals.

Bingo
.

For a whole five minutes you debate whether Schnappi should stay with Taja, but then Schnappi gets fed up debating and gets in the car.

“So show me what you’re made of,” she says and puts on her seat belt.

As far as the first traffic light you’re terribly nervous, it’s weird being so high up, it feels as if you were sitting on a pedestal and not driving the car yourself but being driven. The accelerator is very sensitive, the brake is like a feather. When you finally relax and are about to make a turn, the front tire bumps over the curb and you ram a garbage can, which falls over with a hollow crash and rolls into the street.

“Pull up,” says Schnappi.

You brake. The car jolts to a standstill at the side of the street. You take your foot off the brake. The car moves again. You slam your foot down on the brake again. You’re thrown forward and fly back, then all of a sudden you’re at a standstill and you set the car to park.

“Nessi, take a breath.”

Your hands clutch the steering wheel, your knuckles white. You loosen your grip and shake your fingers out. Dark patches have formed under your armpits. Pure panic. Your heart hammers. Schnappi observes dryly, “It’s because you’re pregnant.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Hormones and stuff.”

“I’m just fine.”

“I bet you’re secretly throwing up.”

“I’m not secretly throwing up,” you answer, and push open the driver’s door to throw up in the street.

“See,” says Schnappi and strokes your back.

It’s really annoying being pregnant, your body’s alien to you and does what it wants. It’s even more annoying that everyone’s solicitous about you and Schnappi’s proved right on top of everything else. She reaches into the glove compartment, and points out in passing that her father gave her driving lessons too.