Dr Roth nodded.
‘That's how it was. On commercials, it's described as “muscle pain and general discomfort”, but there's always one part of the body that soldiers on.’
‘The mind, I suppose.’
‘Right. I needed to get some rest, so I took a couple of Valium and prayed for the weather to improve.’
‘But the ferry couldn't sail?’
‘No, I was trapped by Hurricane Anton. The coastguard issued a special warning to the residents of Parkum, advising us to stay inside except in an emergency. But in my case, the emergency was already underway.’
‘Another problem?’
‘A disappearance – and in my own house, as well.’
‘Who was it this time?’
Viktor lifted his head a little and frowned. ‘Before we go any further, I'd like to propose a deal. I'll tell you the rest of the story on one condition.’
‘What?’
‘You give me my freedom.’
Dr Roth smiled a tight-lipped smile and blew air through his nose. They had discussed the matter already. ‘You know I can't do that – not after your confession. Not only would I lose my job and my licence, I could be sent to prison as well.’
‘I know, you made yourself clear the first time. I'll just have to take the risk.’
‘What risk?’
‘I'm going to tell you the story, the whole story, and when I'm finished, you can decide what to do.’
‘Dr Larenz, surely you realize that it's out of my hands. I'm here to listen to you, to talk to you, but I'm not in a position to help – regardless of how often you ask.’
‘Very well. As I said, I'm willing to take that risk. Listen to the rest of the story and maybe you'll change your mind.’
‘I wouldn't bet on it.’
Viktor wanted to raise his hands soothingly, but he was tied to the bed. ‘We'll see.’
He closed his eyes and Dr Roth leant back in his chair to listen to the next chapter in the story – the next chapter in Viktor's tragedy.
17
Two days before the truth, Parkum
The effect of the tablets had worn off and Viktor was yanked from his dreamless sleep. He wanted to linger in the pain-free vacuum that the Valium had created for him, but the drug had loosened its numbing hold on his consciousness and dark thoughts permeated his brain.
Anna.
Charlotte.
Josy.
The blood on the bathroom floor . . .
Viktor sat up slowly and nearly flopped back against the pillows. The sudden heaviness of his body reminded him of a diving trip in the Bahamas years earlier with Isabell. They had both been wearing buoyancy compensators, and he hadn't noticed the weight of the equipment until it came to climbing back into the boat and he suddenly seemed to weigh a thousand tons. He was experiencing a similar drag on his body now, but this time the Valium, or maybe his influenza, was to blame.
A fine mess you're in, he thought, summoning the strength to stumble out of bed. Now you don't know whether you're in this state because of the pills or because you're really ill.
He felt shivery in his sweat-drenched pyjamas, so he took a silk dressing gown from a hook on the door and pulled it over his shoulders. Then he set off shakily in the direction of the bathroom, which – mercifully for him – was only a few metres away. He didn't have to tackle the stairs – at least, not yet.
He was shocked to see his own reflection. Now he knew for certain that he was ill. Glazed, lifeless eyes, tired features, pale, greyish skin, and beads of sweat on his forehead. But that was only part of the problem.
I can sense something's wrong.
He stared at his reflection and tried to lock gazes with himself. It didn't work. The more he focused on the mirror, the blearier his reflection became.
‘Bloody pills,’ he mumbled, reaching into the cubicle to turn on the shower. He shunted the lever to the left and pulled it up, leaving the water to run. As usual, the ancient generator took ages to heat the water, but at least he didn't have to listen to Isabell complaining about the waste.
Viktor leant over the marble basin and peered at the mirror again. He felt a numbing tiredness come over him. The drumming of the water in the shower seemed to reinforce the gloominess of his thoughts.
I can sense something's wrong, but what? It's all so . . . hazy.
He dragged himself away from his reflection, hung a towel on the shower door, and stepped into the steamy glass cabinet. The sharp aroma of Acqua di Parma cleared his nostrils and gave him a boost. He finished his shower feeling considerably improved. The warm jet of water had blasted away the outer layer of pain and washed it down the plughole. If only it were able to take away his thoughts.
I know something's wrong, something's different. He couldn't work it out.
Viktor rummaged through the closet and pulled out a pair of old Levi's and a blue roll-neck top. He knew Anna would probably pay him a visit; in fact, he wanted her to come so he could hear the next instalment of Charlotte's story, or maybe even the end. But it was too much effort to dress for the occasion. She would have to put up with him in his casual clothes – not that she was likely to care.
Viktor negotiated the stairs, gripping the wooden banister just in case. He went into the kitchen, filled the electric kettle, fetched a teabag from the cupboard and chose a big-bellied mug from the row of wooden hooks between the sink and the oven. He sat with his back to the rain-streaked window, ignoring the dark clouds gathering ominously over Parkum, and tried to focus on his breakfast. But his thoughts refused to submit to the morning routine.
Something's missing. What is it?
He stood up to fetch the milk and caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass-ceramic stove top. He looked even blearier, so bleary that his face seemed distorted. And then he realized what was wrong.
Gone!
His eyes moved down the stove and swept the individually laid marble tiles.
He was seized by the same awful feeling, the feeling of apprehension that had taken hold of him yesterday while he was guiding Kai through the cabin in Sacrow.
He dropped his cup and ran into the hall. Tearing open the door to the sitting room, he stormed towards his desk.
A stack of files, the printout of the email from Bunte, the open laptop. Everything was there.
No, something was missing.
Viktor closed his eyes, hoping that everything would be back to normal when he opened them again. But he hadn't been mistaken. Nothing had changed when he next surveyed the room.
He bent down and peered beneath the desk. Nothing.
Sindbad was gone.
He ran back to the kitchen and scanned the room.
Nothing.
There was no sign of Sindbad. His feeding bowl was missing, as were the tins of dog food, his water bowl and the blanket beneath the desk. It was almost as if the retriever had never entered the house. But Viktor was too frantic to notice.
18
He stood on the beach, rain streaming down his face, and tried to marshal his thoughts. Strangely enough, he wasn't completely distraught. Sad, yes, but not beside himself with grief. Since losing Josy, he had lived in fear of a catastrophe such as this. First his daughter, then his dog. Both had vanished without trace.
The double blow was precisely why he had never advised a grieving patient to think about getting a pet. All too often, heartbroken husbands and wives would try to replace their loved ones with a dog, only for the precious animal to be run over by a car.
Missing or dead.
Sindbad was nowhere to be seen. Viktor marvelled again at his composure. So far, he hadn't suffered a nervous breakdown, run screaming through the village, or knocked on all the neighbours’ doors. He had simply left a message on Halberstaedt's answerphone and hurried outside to look for Sindbad on the beach. Now, two hundred and fifty metres or so from the cottage, he was poking about in the driftwood. There was no sign of the golden retriever's tracks; perhaps there nev
er had been.
‘Sindbad!’
He was wasting his breath. For one thing, the dog couldn't hear him; and for another, he certainly wouldn't obey. Sindbad took fright so easily that innocent noises, such as unexpected splutters from the hearth, were almost the death of him. Firecrackers were a thousand times worse: Isabell had to mix tranquillizers into Sindbad's food on New Year's Eve. And Sindbad had once run all the way from Grunewald to Schwanenwerder after hearing a single gunshot in the woods. Viktor and Isabell had bellowed and whistled to no avail.
The roar of the waves was enough to frighten a braver dog than Sindbad, and Viktor wondered how he had summoned the courage to leave the house. It didn't make sense, especially since the doors had been locked.
Viktor had checked the whole cottage, scouring the rooms from basement to attic. Nothing. The generator shed was padlocked on the outside, but he had searched it all the same. He was aware that retrievers weren't capable of picking locks, but then where else could Sindbad be? He must be somewhere on the island. Unless . . .
Viktor spun round and scanned the length of the coast. He felt a brief wave of elation as he detected a slight movement on the landward side of the beach. Something was approaching and it was big enough to be a dog. But his hopes were dashed a moment later. The creature was too dark to be a golden retriever. And it was a person, not a dog. A woman in a dark coat.
Anna.
‘It's good to see you getting some fresh air,’ she called from a distance of ten or so metres. The wind tore holes in her speech, casting some of the syllables out to sea. It was hard to hear what she was saying. ‘Not many people would venture out in weather like this.’
‘I'd be inside if I had the choice,’ he shouted, suddenly aware of the inflammation in his throat. Sindbad's disappearance had made him forget about his ailments.
‘Why? Is something wrong?’ She stopped a few paces away from him, and Viktor was astonished to see that her patent shoes were impeccably clean. He wondered how she had managed to negotiate the track from the village without muddying her feet.
‘I'm looking for my dog.’
‘Your dog?’ said Anna, anchoring her headscarf with her right hand. ‘I didn't know you had one.’
‘You must have seen him – a great big golden retriever. He was lying under the desk.’
Anna shook her head. ‘No, I can't say I noticed a dog.’
Her strange denial hit Viktor with greater force than the hurricane. There was a ringing noise in his right ear, and the emptiness inside him gave way to paralysing fear.
He remembered Halberstaedt's warning. There's something funny about that woman.
Raindrops were catching in his eyebrows and splashing into his eyes. Anna's face became a blur. Snatches of their first conversation surfaced in his memory.
I battered him to a pulp. He didn't even look like a dog when I was finished.
Viktor was too busy worrying about Anna's lies and violent hallucinations to listen to what she was saying. He suddenly realized that her lips were moving. ‘Did you say something, Ms Glass?’
‘We should probably go inside,’ she repeated more loudly, nodding towards the house. ‘I'm sure your dog won't stay out in this weather.’ She reached for his hand.
Viktor stepped back a little too hastily and nodded. ‘You're probably right.’
He led the way slowly towards the house.
How could anyone fail to notice a big dog like Sindbad? He wondered why Anna would lie to him. What if she had something to do with Sindbad's disappearance as well as Josy's?
Had Viktor been less preoccupied with his own thoughts, he might have remembered the first piece of advice given to him by his mentor and friend Professor van Druisen: ‘Always focus on the patient. Listen carefully to what he or she has to say, and keep an open mind.’
Instead of that, Viktor was wearing himself out in a futile attempt to repress the clues that were surfacing from his unconscious. The truth was already visible. It lay before him, helpless and desperate like a drowning man in a frozen lake. But Viktor Larenz refused to punch through the thin layer of ice.
He still wasn't ready.
19
‘We ran.’
The conversation had taken a while to get going. Viktor, incapable of thinking about anything but Sindbad, had zoned out during the first few minutes, and when he finally started listening, he was relieved to discover that she hadn't said anything new. Anna was still recapping the story: she and Charlotte had driven to a forest, and Charlotte had waited while Anna broke into a cabin and heard a man crying in one of the rooms.
‘What were you running from?’ asked Viktor eventually.
‘I didn't stop to think. I just sensed that whatever had been hiding in the cabin was coming after us. I grabbed Charlotte's hand and we ran through the snow to the car. Neither of us dared to look back. We were frightened of what was behind us, and the path was quite slippery so we had to watch our step.’
‘Who was in the cabin? Who was following you?’
‘I can't say for sure. My first priority was to get Charlotte into the car, lock the doors and head back to Berlin. As soon as we were on the road, I tried to get some answers, but Charlotte was talking in riddles.’
‘Can you remember what she said?’
‘Things like: “I'm not here to give you answers. I'll show you the clues, but I can't explain their meaning. You're the one who's writing this story, not me.”’
Viktor was forced to concede that Anna's story was becoming increasingly fanciful, which wasn't entirely surprising in view of her mental health. He only hoped that her imaginings bore some relation, no matter how tenuous, to the truth. At the same time he couldn't help but realize that his attitude towards her delusions was slightly pathological. He decided not to care.
‘Where was she taking you?’
‘To see the next clue. She said, “You've seen where everything started. It's time I showed you something else.”’
‘The first clue was the cabin in the forest?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what happened next?’
‘Charlotte said something really strange, something I'll never forget.’ Anna pressed her lips together and spoke in the whispered voice of a young girl. ‘ “I want to show you where the illness lives.”’
‘Where it lives?’
‘That's what she said.’
Viktor shivered. He hadn't warmed up since coming in from the beach, and Anna's unnaturally childish voice seemed to lower his temperature by a couple of degrees.
‘Where did you go?’ he persisted. ‘Did you find the illness?’
‘We drove back to Berlin via the Glienicke Bridge with Charlotte giving me directions. I can't remember the rest of the route. For one thing, I'm not familiar with that part of the city – and besides, I couldn't concentrate because Charlotte had taken a turn for the worse.’
Viktor felt a lurching sensation in his stomach. ‘What was the matter with her?’
‘It started with a nosebleed. We were near the lido on Lake Wannsee at the time. I parked outside a beer garden and Charlotte lay down in the back. The nosebleed stopped, but a moment later . . .’
She started shaking.
‘. . . she started shaking all over. She was shivering so violently that I wanted to rush her to hospital.’ She gave a forced laugh. ‘But then I remembered she didn't exist. A visit to the doctor's was hardly going to help.’
‘So you did nothing?’
‘To be honest, I thought it was best. It seemed foolish to pander to my hallucinations, but Charlotte kept getting worse. She was shivering all over and begging me to take her to the pharmacy.’
She needed penicillin.
‘She wanted antibiotics, but I knew it was hopeless: we needed a prescription. I tried to explain that to Charlotte, but the tantrums started. I couldn't calm her down.’
‘Did she shout at you?’
‘She was shouting, crying and screaming at the top of h
er lungs. It was dreadful to listen to her hoarse little voice.’
‘What kind of things was she saying?’
‘She blamed me for creating her. I remember her yelling, “You gave me this illness; you need to make me well!” I knew I was hallucinating and she didn't exist, but it was no good – I couldn't ignore her. In the end, I drove to the pharmacy, bought some paracetamol for her headache and charmed the guy behind the counter into dispensing the penicillin. He handed me the tablets and told me to come back with the prescription as soon as I could. If I'm honest with myself, I was doing it for my own good and not to help Charlotte: I knew I wouldn't get rid of my hallucinations unless I did what she said.’
‘Did it work?’
‘Things improved for me, but not for Charlotte.’
Viktor nodded and waited for her to explain.
‘Charlotte took two tablets, but I don't think they helped. If anything, she got worse, not better. She looked pale and listless, but at least she stopped screaming. I guess I was still in shock, though, because I can't remember how we got to the villa by the lake.’
‘But you remember the villa?’
‘It was stunning, simply stunning. I've never seen such a beautiful house in Berlin. It didn't seem to belong in the city – it was more like a country estate. The grounds must have covered a few thousand square metres at least, and the lawn sloped down to the water's edge. There was a private beach and a jetty, and the house itself was huge. As far as I could tell, the architecture was neoclassical with a few extravagant flourishes – oriels, turrets and the like. No wonder Charlotte called it a “palace”.’
Schwanenwerder.
Once again Anna's description was uncannily accurate. Viktor had heard enough to know that she was definitely involved.
‘The house and the gardens were impressive enough, but I hadn't reckoned with the commotion outside. The whole place was swarming with people and cars. We had to get out and walk a couple of hundred metres over a little bridge because the road was chock-a-block with vans.’