He saw the way others looked at him. But today Roman did not care. Today he had a mission to fulfil, a purpose that was, for once, not all about him. He went to the DeutschePost office first and bought five padded envelopes, dropped a memory stick and a handwritten note into each. He paused for a moment before he let the envelopes slip from his grasp and into the mail chute; in that moment, he thought of Meliha, the woman in the cafe, the woman behind the truth. He hoped that somehow, somewhere, she would be aware of what he was doing for her.
After the post office, Roman went to an ATM and withdrew five hundred euros, folded the notes neatly and placed them in a sixth envelope. On the way home he visited two more ATMs, using a different card each time; each time removing five hundred euros. By the time he reached the main door of his apartment building, Roman was wheezing and sweating profusely. He leaned against the wall and looked up at the sky. High above him, the distant glint of a passenger jet left a trail of vapour, like a needle running white thread through blue silk. There is never just one reality, he thought as he watched the jet, wondering what the passengers saw of Wilhelmsburg from that altitude. There are as many realities as there are people on the planet: reality is what lives in each person’s head. When they kill me, he thought, my reality will end, but I will have no sense of it ending. Just as I was not aware before my birth, I will not be aware after my death, so all time only exists as I perceive it. Time began with me and will end with me. I am immortal.
When he had recovered enough, he entered his apartment building and started the slow, painful climb up the stairs. His breathing was even more laboured by the time he reached the door of the apartment beneath his. When the Albanian opened the door and recognised Roman, his face darkened with dull anger; then he seemed to notice the state Roman was in and the anger was replaced by concern.
‘Are you all right? You no look so good…’
‘Jetmir…’ Roman spat the words out between rheumy wheezes. ‘That’s your name, isn’t it… Jetmir?’
The Albanian nodded and moved out to help Roman. Roman nearly laughed: Jetmir was a small, wiry, dark man whom Roman reckoned would be crushed to death if he fell on him.
‘You come in. You not well man. I get doctor, maybe.’
‘No doctor, Jetmir. I’m sorry. I’m the one who kept calling the police. You knew that anyway, but I’m telling you now, it was me and I’m sorry.’ He pushed the envelope containing the fifteen hundred euros into the Albanian’s hands. ‘Take it. I want you to have it. I know you don’t have a lot of money.’
The Albanian stared at the cash. ‘Why?’ he asked. But he made no attempt to return it.
‘Because I’ve been a bad neighbour. And because I want you to do something for me. It’s payment in advance.’ Roman paused. A pain started to shoot across his chest and down his right arm. He grabbed the Albanian’s shirt front and pulled him close. With his other hand he shoved a second envelope against his chest. ‘This is for the police,’ he said. ‘It’s very important that they get this. There are bad men coming, Jetmir. They’re coming for me.’
‘Then I get police now…’
‘No!’ Roman shouted and tightened his grip on the small Albanian. ‘No. That could be dangerous for you and your family. Listen, if anything happens to me, you’ve got to give that envelope to the police. But only to a policeman called Fabel. Jan Fabel. His name’s on the front. Have you got that? Don’t give it to anyone else.’
The Albanian nodded vigorously. ‘You wait here, I get you some water.’
It took a full fifteen minutes for the pain to ease and for Roman, sipping slowly at the water, to get something of his breath back. While they sat together on the stairs, Roman and the Albanian talked. They chatted about the most inconsequential things, about Jetmir’s home in Albania, about his children and how they sounded just like Germans. But throughout the whole conversation the earnest expression of concern never left the Albanian’s face. Roman remembered how the Albanian had tried to talk to him when the family first moved in, how they had made an effort to befriend him. He felt bad when he thought about that. They were people, after all; not just a noise, an annoyance, on the periphery of Roman’s existence.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Roman, slowly and painfully easing himself up from the stairs. ‘I’ll be fine. Just don’t forget your promise.’
‘I won’t forget. We is good neighbours now. You are my fqinj. We look after each other.’
The Albanian helped Roman up the rest of the stairs to his front door.
‘I’ll be fine now. Thanks for your help, Jetmir.’ Roman unlocked his door, smiled and waited until he heard the Albanian shut his own door one floor down. Only then did Roman step into his apartment.
Roman looked around. It really was a nice place, if only he had kept it tidier. He regretted that now. There was a lot he regretted now. He stood leaning against the door, still struggling with his breathing.
There were three of them in the flat. None of them spoke. They all wore identical grey suits and had Bluetooth earpieces jammed into their ears as if fused there. One was sitting at Roman’s computers, another held Meliha’s cellphone in his hand. The third stood directly in front of Roman, staring at him with nothing in his face.
Roman had known they would be there. Before he had left to carry out his chores he had reassembled Meliha’s phone, including the tracer, and had left it switched on. A beacon. A digital lighthouse. They were big on that kind of metaphor, he thought.
He started to laugh at the absurdity of it all just as the Consolidator closest to him stepped forward, slipped the large plastic bag he had in his gloved hands over Roman’s head and pulled the drawstring tight.
Chapter Thirty-One
Fabel knew that it would be panic that would kill him. He forced the thought to the front of his mind. He had been winded by the first impact and his lungs were still depleted of oxygen; a primal instinct screamed within him to open his mouth and breathe: to suck in the filthy river water; to fill his lungs with something, anything.
The natural buoyancy of his body was pushing him up against the fabric roof of the car as it sank and he knew he was being dragged deeper into the Elbe. The wharf had originally been intended as a shipping berth, meaning the water was deep enough to accommodate a large ship’s draught. Deep and dark.
Now Fabel could see nothing. This was the car he had owned for ten years but suddenly its interior was totally alien to him. A strange and toxic environment. One window, he knew, was open and offered a quick exit. The other was intact. A simple choice: one direction or the other. He pushed himself toward what he thought was the right side of the car. No steering wheel. He found the edge of the passenger window and pushed himself through. He was out of the car. And rising. His lungs screamed and a searing pain he had never felt before sliced through his chest. He could now see the surface above him but it did not seem to get any nearer. The light above started to dim, the water around him growing darker again. He felt renewed panic when he realised he was going to black out. He was going to lose consciousness and he would never regain it. His arms and legs became leaden and he knew he was sinking again.
All fear left him and he let his held breath go in an explosion of bubbles.
Something closed over his mouth and pinched his nose shut. A hand. There was someone in the water with him. Another arm looped under his armpit and around his chest. Fabel instinctively fought against the hand bruisingly clamped over his nose and mouth: the logic that it was preventing him breathing in the filthy dock water lost in primal panic.
He knew they must be rising, but the water became even darker. Black. He no longer felt his limbs, the chill of the water, the hammering in his chest.