She glanced at it from the corner of her eye. “No. I’ve never seen you before. Should I have?”
“No,” I breathed, sinking back into the seat. “You shouldn’t. I need a place to stash this body for a while.”
“Why?” Her voice harder than the tarmac beneath our wheels.
“I don’t believe this body to be a threat to you–he’s primarily interested in me. But he has attempted to kill me, and if that’s a problem, please, say so, and I’ll go and there’ll be no hard feelings.”
Her lips curled in, as she tasted, chewed and digested the idea. Then, a single brisk shake of her head. “My husband sells real estate. There’s a house we can keep him. Can we sedate you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We stash, we sedate, you run your business, and I’m at the school gate by 2.30 p.m. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“There will be no charge. You… and I have an understanding. For services previously rendered.”
“That’s very kind.”
“Half past two,” she said. “The clock is ticking.”
The house was a square mansion of timber and glass with architecturally immense windows built on to balconies of terracotta. Empty rooms were waiting for happy people, white walls too bright to be besmirched, a kitchen too clean to cook in, and a bathroom of polished black stone. I rummaged through my bag for the handcuffs and Coyle’s medical kit of needles and blades. I pulled my sleeve up, disinfected the hollow of my elbow, rubbing to bring up the vein, and injected the sedative straight in. The fluid was cold as it entered my body, then warm as it spread. I handcuffed myself to the nearest radiator, both hands behind my back, while Ute disposed of the needle. She knelt down beside me and said, “Is it working?”
I giggled and didn’t know why. A flicker that might have been a smile–and I hadn’t yet seen her smile–passed across her lips. “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, slipping her hand into mine. “Shall we?”
“… dance?”
Her voice, my words.
I looked down on Nathan Coyle as he opened his eyes. I pulled a sock and a roll of gaffer tape from his bag, stuffed the first in his mouth and wrapped the other across as an indignant blare of sound tried to push up from between his lips. Ute’s body was older than the last time I’d worn it, her knees creaked, cartilage wearing thin. Coyle kicked against the floor, strained against the radiator. His eyes moved without focusing, and he tried to snarl again, the sound deteriorating before it had a chance to grow.
“Bye,” I said to the rolling whites of his eyes.
I drove back into town in Ute’s car. It seemed to me unimaginable that Ute had a single point on her driving licence, and to sully this record induced a childish fear in me. Getting your body a parking ticket and walking away without paying the fine is the height of rudeness.
There was something numb in my chest, a weight I couldn’t explain. It was not pain, nor discomfort, nor chills nor an irritant to be scratched. I was halfway up Schönhauser Allee before I realised it was the emptiness left by a surgical scar, a place where flesh had been cut away. Had I focused any awareness on it, it could have dominated my senses, but the need to drive safely and not disturb any of Berlin’s highly pedantic policemen pulled my senses away from full understanding.
Ute had not spoken of her scars, and I would not ask.
I parked the car round the corner from Pankow, left the key in the ignition and waited for a dark-skinned businessman to walk by. His hair was short, his shirt was long, his shoes were smart, and as he passed I said, “Excuse me, do you have the time?”
His stride faltered in merely considering whether or not to answer, and as he looked to his watch, my hand curled around his wrist, and I jumped.
Ute swayed a little, supporting herself against the side of the car. I caught her by the shoulders, dropping my briefcase to the ground, and waited for her gaze to come back into focus.
“It’s… been a while,” she said.
“You all right?”
“Fine. I’m… fine. How am I doing for time?”
“Plenty. And thank you.”
She glanced at her watch, scrunching and unscrunching her face as the hands shifted back into focus. “I can wait one more hour,” she said. “If you need me.”
“I’ll be fine. The important thing was stashing Coyle.”
“Is that his name?”
“No,” I replied. “But it’ll have to do.”
She looked me up and down, assessing my body, then said, “Is that your style now?”
“No,” I grumbled, picking my briefcase up in a sulky sweep. “And I’ve got athlete’s foot.”
Neat streets of neat houses. A neat bakery, selling neat loaves on neat trays. Cars, neatly parked, and bicycles politely dinging. Berlin is a city which knows how to keep up appearances.
I walked the few blocks to a neat yellow apartment block on a perfect right-angle corner. Up a cobbled path lined with bins for paper, tin, plastics and organic recycling, to a thick blue door. I looked down the list of names by the buzzer. Alice Mair hadn’t bothered to disguise hers.
Wheels rattled on cobbles. I turned to find an elderly lady behind me, a shopping trolley in her hands, hat low on her head. The curvature of her spine pushed her head out almost horizontally from her shoulders, and as I stood aside, she went into her pocket for her door keys. With a slight shudder of apprehension, I reached out and touched her hand.
I hate being old.
Switching from legs which swing along merrily to hips of crumbling calcium and not much hope of repair is a quick path to injury. I took a step and nearly fell over, misjudging the stability of my own bones. I took another far more conservative step and felt tremors rush up my knees and shake my spine. My left hand was curled around the keys in my pocket, and as I pulled them out I saw twitching fingers, skin like a withered date. Half-bending to get a better look at my keys, aches down my back, it occurred to me that to drop them now would be a minor catastrophe all of its own.
Behind me a confused man with a battered briefcase thought about asking me where he was, how he came to be there, but who asks doddery old ladies anything these days?
Alice Mair lived on the third floor.
I took the lift and left my trolley on the landing.
I buzzed a brass bell once, twice. No reply. I considered knocking, but my knuckles felt hollow and my arm no stronger than a roll of paper soaked in rain.
I buzzed again.
A voice called out in German, “Coming.”
The door opened an inch, on the chain. I fixed my face to a foolish, denture-filled smile and said, “Have you seen my keys?”
A single eye, sky blue, peeked through the gap in the door. “Your… keys?”
“I had them,” I explained. “But I lost them.”
The eye considered.
Everyone knows that ghosts are vain; why would we be anything else? I am told that the old do not notice that age has come upon them until they are in the full throes of pain, in much the same way as an asthmatic assumes that the breath they struggle to draw is the same struggle fought by all men. No ghost ever chooses to be old.
“A moment,” said the voice.
I heard the rattling of the chain, and the door swung wide. A woman, five foot five, with blonde hair cut short and a hint of freckle across her flushed cheek, stood in jogger’s T-shirt and Lycra shorts, and as she opened her mouth to offer some charit able advice to the ageing neighbour who stood on her doorstep, I smiled my most sublime of smiles and caught her by the hand.
I don’t think she even had time to be afraid.
“Ma’am,” I said as the old woman blinked before me, “do you need help getting your shopping into your flat?”
Chapter 45
Impressions of the body of the woman called Alice Mair.
Good teeth, chemically whitened; nice hair; unplucked softly curving eyebrows. A twinge in my shins that might be the result of too much running in cold weather. Eyes seem good and she’s wearing sensible shoes. Itchy nose. A relief to be young again.