The Ghosts of Altona (16 page)

He let go of Goedecke’s neck. The young man backed away until he came to rest against the hip-high wall unit in the corner of the emergency room.

‘Is there another way out of here?’ Frankenstein asked, tearing off the monitor pads from his chest and the IV drip from his arm.

Goedecke shook his head, his eyes filled with the terror that the wrong answer would cost him his life.

‘Stay.’ Frankenstein pointed a huge finger. He was still wearing his sweatpants and he grabbed the white plastic bag that hung at the bottom of the trolley. He took out his T-shirt and sweatshirt, but both had been cut through to get them off his unconscious body. He scanned the room: there would be nothing he could steal that would fit him. He saw some blue surgical scrubs hanging by the door. He grabbed the top and pulled it over his head, but, even though it was sized extra-large and was meant to be a baggy fit, he couldn’t wriggle into it.

He would have to go bare-chested. Frankenstein was not the kind of figure to go unnoticed at the best of times, but stripped to the waist he would draw the attention of anyone who so much as glanced at him. He needed to get out as quickly as possible. His guardian had predicted that he’d be taken to the emergency department of the Klinik Nord. Three, maybe four doors and he would be outside the hospital. A 100 metre sprint and he’d be out onto Tangstedter Landstrasse. He just hoped that his guardian would be there, waiting, like he’d promised.

But there were still the JVA prison guards. And one would be back in the room at any moment.

Frankenstein turned back to Goedecke, who still cowered in the corner.

‘I’m going now,’ he said. ‘I may kill people to get away. If I find out that you raised the alarm after I left, I’ll hunt you down and kill you slowly. You understand?’

The shaking Goedecke nodded dumbly, nursing his bruised throat.

Frankenstein looked around the emergency room for something, anything, he could use as a weapon. He went over to a metal tray that sat on the unit by the window. The scalpels looked ridiculously small in his huge hands.

The door swung open. Frankenstein lunged forward, expecting it to be the prison officer, but it was the nurse returning. She was tall and blonde, about thirty, her pale blue eyes wide with terror as she stared at Frankenstein. She had padded leather restraints in her hands but let them fall.

He didn’t check his momentum but closed the gap before the nurse could scream. The fear. The sweet fear in her eyes. He grabbed her, looping an arm around the small of her back and pulling her into him, his other hand clamping her mouth. He stared into her eyes, now glossed with tears and terror. He held her for a moment, savouring her fear, feeling himself grow hard against her. She felt him and the terror in her eyes deepened. He laughed.

He pushed her away and held her at arm’s length, his hand still clamped over her mouth. There would be time enough for that. Time enough for them all, later. He raised his other fist, drawing it back. She would go out like a light, but she’d be haunted by this moment, maybe for the rest of her life. It would be a memory he could leave her with. Frankenstein paused, his fist poised ready to smash into the young woman’s face. He turned to Goedecke and smiled.

There was shouting.

Frankenstein turned to see two shaven-headed men in JVA prison officer uniforms. One could only have been about 175 centimetres tall, the other 190, but both were solidly built. The first officer through the door was the smaller of the two and Frankenstein threw the nurse at him as if she had been a doll. Without rushing, he walked forward, shoved the nurse to one side and grabbed the prison officer’s head, holding it between his hands. The officer screamed as Frankenstein stabbed his thumbs deep into his eyes before slamming the back of his head against the wall. The second officer was on him now, trying to prise him away from his colleague. Frankenstein let the first officer drop and slammed his elbow into the mouth of the second. He felt the grinding of teeth breaking and the wetness of blood on his elbow and he spun around to seize the prison officer by the throat, pinioning him against the wall and slamming his free fist over and over into the blood-smeared face.

Now. He had to move now.

Frankenstein reckoned that neither officer was capable of giving chase, and the doctor and nurse were frozen by their terror, so he made his break. He rushed out into the corridor, which was luckily empty of people, and started towards the main hallway that led to the exit. As soon as he appeared in the hallway, a dozen heads turned in his direction. He ignored them and bustled towards the exit, knocking over two people.

A cop.

Frankenstein saw the blue uniform with the red and white Hamburger Tor shield on the upper arm. He avoided eye contact but could see the officer get up as he approached.

He kept his eyes locked on the doors, but as he drew near, the police officer stepped into his path. Frankenstein snapped his gaze into the cop’s. He could see the uncertainty in the policeman’s eyes, and the fear. Frankenstein was shirtless and shoeless. And he was what he was. The cop was not to know what had happened in the emergency room, but Frankenstein would look just wrong to him. He looked wrong to the world.

He saw him look at his sweatpants. Prison blue. Unlike the JVA prison guards, the police officer had a pistol on his hip. He would have to be dealt with. Getting the gun from him would be too troublesome: he knew from experience that Hamburg police holsters had an anti-snatch design, allowing only the wearer to draw the weapon.

Frankenstein shifted course by a fraction of a degree. And headed directly for the cop.

‘You’re in the right place.’ He smiled, his teeth small and gappy in the huge mouth. He saw the policeman’s hand drift to his hip and he slashed downwards with the edge of his huge hand. His target had been the cop’s throat but he missed and the blade of his hand smashed into his chin and jaw. The force threw the officer sideways and his shoulder hit the wall, bouncing him off it and back into Frankenstein’s hands. He could hear screams from behind him, near the admissions desk. He held the police officer by the elbows, pinioning his arms to his body and denying him the opportunity to draw his weapon. The side of his jaw was already swelling and his mouth looked twisted. Frankenstein realized he had dislocated his jaw and grinned.

The cop was stunned, eyes unfocused. That was no good. He had to know. He had to feel everything. Frankenstein shook him violently and his head wobbled for a moment before he locked his eyes once more with his attacker’s.

‘You’re in the right place, I told you that. You’re going to need a lot of treatment.’ Frankenstein smiled again. As if he were swinging some stone war club, he tilted his Easter Island head back before ramming it forward, full force, slamming his massive brow into the policeman’s face. He heard bone crack, felt something solid yield beneath his forehead. The screaming behind him increased. He let the policeman drop onto the polished hospital floor, bleeding heavily from his nose and mouth, making a low, half-gargled moaning sound. Frankenstein had to be sure the cop couldn’t draw his weapon when he had his back to him. Drawing his right knee up, he stamped down twice, his heel finding its target of the policeman’s temple. The moaning stopped. All movement stopped.

Frankenstein left him lying and ran for the door, people scattering as he burst out into the open.

The air was cool and fresh like water on his skin. He ran as fast as his huge bulk would allow. An ambulance was parked and a man in a red and white emergency service parka looked like he was going to challenge him, so Frankenstein barged into him, knocking him to the ground and stamping on his face with the heel of his shoeless foot.

There was a large arch that had been the main entrance to the hospital compound when it had first been built. Frankenstein knew there was no point in slowing to a walk – nothing he could do was going to make him inconspicuous, so he ran through the arch and out onto the main road.

Tangstedter Landstrasse was too busy a thoroughfare for the pick-up, his guardian had told him. Ignoring the traffic, he ran straight across the road, a car screeching to a halt and narrowly missing him. The other side of the road offered the cover of a screen of trees and once behind them he ran parallel to the road before cutting up past some high-rise apartment blocks.

Behind the apartments, just as he had been told, was a residential area with houses lined along cul-de-sacs. The end of the third cul-de-sac was Frankenstein’s goal.

‘Look for a white panel van,’ his guardian had told him. ‘It will have a small black and red FC Sankt Pauli sticker on the rear door. It will be unlocked. Get straight in the back and shut the door behind you. But
do not
get in if anyone can see you. The street has to be clear.’

‘What if they don’t take me to the Klinik Nord?’ Frankenstein had asked.

‘Then you’ll be dead,’ his guardian had said.

*

The van was there, just as his guardian had promised it would be. Frankenstein was approaching it from the grassed area and would not be seen from the houses. He opened the back door of the van, climbed in and dropped with a resonating metallic thud onto the floor.

‘Are you okay?’ A voice came from the front of the van. Frankenstein nodded.

‘Any problems?’ the guardian asked.

‘A cop. Had to deal with a cop. He could be dead.’

‘But no one’s following you now?’

‘No. But they’ll be looking soon. They’ll come soon.’

‘Then we had better go.’

In the driver’s seat, Zombie checked the side mirrors for any sign of the police. When there was none, he started the engine and drove off at a relaxed pace. As he did so, he smiled.

Now. Now, he had his Golem.

26

The van had been stopped for several minutes before the back door opened and Zombie pulled back the tarpaulin Frankenstein had used to hide himself. Frankenstein felt sick and his head pulsed with the most intense headache he had ever experienced.

‘It’s okay, everything’s clear,’ said Zombie. ‘But get into the house as quickly as possible and wait for me. I’ll park the van at the back and out of sight.’

Seeing him again, and in the context of the outside world for the first time, Hübner was struck by Zombie’s appearance. In the prison, Herr Mensing – as Frankenstein had then known Zombie – had always worn the same clothes: a white shirt, the too-big collar of which sat like a tie-fastened yoke around the stick of a neck, a blue pullover and grey slacks. The outfit always looked like it had been hung over the back of an unupholstered chair rather than worn on a body. Every time Frankenstein had had a session with him, he had noticed how bird-frail and pale the social therapist looked. To start with, Frankenstein had assumed he was terribly sick, cancer, most likely. But that, he came to realize, was not the ill that ate away at Mensing. The other thing that had struck Hübner was that despite the fact he could have so easily and so quickly crushed the life out of Herr Mensing, there had never been the slightest hint of fear in the social therapist’s eyes.

Here, outside the prison and dressed in a black parka, jeans and a T-shirt, Zombie looked even smaller, frailer, paler. Between them, Frankenstein realized, they were about the easiest couple of travelling companions for witnesses to take note of and remember.

So Hübner did as he was told, but as he hurried to the door of the old house, he took in as much of his surroundings as he could. It was all still new and fresh to him: the world without bounds, without walls, gates and locks and he wanted to drink it in. Here, though, it had a bitter taste: the forest seemed to hem them in and crowd in on the house, which itself was old and looked somewhere between a home and a municipal building. All the window shutters had been closed and the house looked grey, dark, unwelcoming. There was a small portico around a heavy, traditional herringbone-pattern wooden door. It was unlocked and yielded to Frankenstein’s touch. He stepped into a dark hallway that was empty of furniture, the floor grey with a patina of dust and what looked like rat or mouse droppings. A heavy-banistered wooden stairway led up into the shadows of the upper floors. He leaned a naked shoulder against the banister and breathed slowly to try to ease the thumping in his head and a profound swell of nausea.

‘What is this place?’ he asked when Zombie returned from parking the van in the rear courtyard.

‘Somewhere safe, where no one will look for you.’

‘But I mean, what
was
this place?’ Frankenstein’s voice resonated deep and dark in the empty hall.

‘It was the old forester’s house. It was owned by the City Parks Department, but they sold it off. My uncle bought it – he was the last forester to live here and the city let him have it at a knock-down price.’

‘So where is he? Your uncle?’ Frankenstein’s nausea swelled again.

‘Dead. He left me the house. Follow me . . .’

He led Frankenstein to the back of the hall and unlocked a door. Beyond it stairs descended to a cellar. Zombie started down but Hübner stopped dead, swaying slightly.

‘Wait . . . I need a toilet,’ he said between controlled breaths.

‘Behind you . . .’ Zombie nodded toward another door off the hallway. Frankenstein only just made it, dropping to his knees in front of the toilet bowl. His massive body convulsed as he vomited, voiding everything in his gut, then retching several times more.

When he came back out into the hallway, his massive face was as bleached of colour as his guardian’s.

‘It’s the after-effects of the drugs, the adrenalin and the shock,’ explained Zombie. ‘It’ll pass. The xylazine in your system should help, it’s actually also used as a nausea suppressant and anti-emetic. Drink this.’ He handed Zombie a bottle of water. ‘And follow me down into the cellar.’

*

The strange thing about it was that Frankenstein could see that Zombie had made an effort to make the cellar as comfortable as possible for him. There was a large box filled with provisions, plastic-wrapped blocks of bottles of water and two cool-boxes. The bed was two mattresses dressed in clean, new-looking bed linen. Next to the bed was a pile of paperbacks, some pornographic magazines and two cartons of cigarettes. In one corner sat another box with batteries, toilet roll, and toiletries; in the other sat the cool-boxes. Hübner’s inspection revealed that one cool-box was filled with cartons of fruit juice, and smiled when he saw the other contained enough beer for him to relax with, not enough for him to get drunk. This was carefully calculated hospitality.