You (40 page)

Now Lucy’s whole arm is trembling, and she has to use her other hand to support the weapon. Bruno sees a tear running down her cheek and wishes he could wipe it away. He knows she won’t shoot. He knows who’s capable of that kind of thing and who isn’t. She would never stand like that if she was. He’s not an idiot. He knows
the cowards, the hesitant ones and the killers. She’s not a killer. She’s a sweet little bitch that he’s cornered. She is his now. That’s exactly what he says to her.

“You’re mine now.”

She brings the gun down. The lights change. The cars stop. Bruno senses the drivers’ eyes. Lucy has her head lowered.

“Look at me.”

She raises her head and looks at him.

“And now come to me.”

Just as Bruno recognizes a killer, he also recognizes someone who’s broken. She comes closer, five steps, she’s standing in front of him. Close. So close that they’re touching. Bruno feels how aroused he is.

“Lean against me, it’s over.”

She leans against him. She’s so small that he feels her breath under his heart. The lights change. The cars set off. One driver can’t take his eyes off them. The other cars beep their horns. The car sets off with a jolt. Bruno strokes her beautiful black hair. His brass knuckles flash in the sunlight. Her head smells like hot sand. He knows he has to hurt her, but he also knows he’ll keep the pain within limits.

“Good girl.”

Her right hand rests on his chest, she looks up and there’s a smile and the smile doesn’t make sense, because she’s looking past him. Bruno turns his head to see what she sees and feels the pressure of her fingers. The push comes as such a surprise that Bruno doesn’t understand how it’s possible.
How could I have been so deceived?
It was all in her eyes, she was broken, she was lost, and it was all a lie. His left foot gets jammed at the curbstone, his right foot kicks back, his fingers slip out of her hair and for a fragment of a second they look each other in the eye, then a van from a flower shop hits him and Bruno is torn off the island and thrown into the oncoming traffic.

Oswald is better off than Bruno, because he doesn’t have to run far. The blonde doesn’t even know he’s behind her. She isn’t especially fast in her long skirt, and she’s probably thinking he’s still kneeling on the pavement, bleeding like a stuck pig.

Girl, you haven’t the faintest idea who I am
, Oswald thinks and closes his fist around her hair again. For a moment the blonde loses the ground under her feet, her head is pulled back, her mouth is an O, her legs fly forward. Oswald catches her, before she hits the ground. He holds her close, feels the heat of her body, and only now does he sense that something has changed.

I’m shivering. I’ve got to get a move on before—

The blonde screams, the blonde wriggles, Oswald loses his balance and falls without letting her go. The impact shakes him, his teeth click painfully against each other and bite off the tip of his tongue. The girl reaches back, claws him, pulls on his ears. Oswald is losing control. Pain and fury, fury and pain. His arms are tight around her. He presses hard and hears bones breaking, presses hard and hears her legs dragging along the ground, shifts his weight and rolls onto the girl, while someone is thrashing away at his back, while someone is pulling on his arms, he covers the girl heavily and securely and his tired body starts sucking the warmth from her until they’re both lying motionless in a puddle of blood and there’s nothing to tell them apart.

No light, no strength, and no warmth.

Oswald isn’t aware of them lifting him off the blonde. He isn’t aware of the redhead spitting at him and kicking and cursing, or one of the guests from the café dragging the redhead away. He’s part of the present that goes on existing without him.

Oswald will never know that the blond girl was called Ruth, that she was incredibly hungry for life and would have given anything to put her mark on the world. And he’ll never know that that same day two police officers rang the girl’s parents’ doorbell, that her mother broke down and clung to the father. He won’t be there when her parents arrive in Hamburg to identify their dead daughter in the morgue. And he’ll never know how it feels to die pointlessly at sixteen, and lose your friends and still be a hero because that one girl managed to stop a guy like Oswald. Forever. For eternity.

“It’s me.”

“I thought you were coming to Berlin?”

“I’ve been there.”

“What? You’ve been there?”

“Three days ago. The atmosphere wasn’t so great, so I left again.”

“Tell me, are you completely stupid? You come to Berlin and you can’t even visit your father?”

“I said—”

“That’s no excuse, Neil. I’m dying, and you’ve had a bad day, is that what you’re trying to say?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Boy, sometimes you’re a real idiot.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Does your half brother know about this?”

“No, and I haven’t seen him either.”

“Good. So what’s on your mind?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, I know you and I know what makes you tick. You’re not phoning me to tell me what sort of idiot you are. What’s really going on?”

“Does the name Ragnar Desche mean anything to you?”

“What have you got to do with Desche?!”

“Hey, calm down.”

“What have you got to do with Desche is what I want to know!”

“Nothing. I … Okay, a girlfriend has a problem with him, and I thought the name might mean something to you.”

“Stay away from him.”

“Who is he?”

“Neil, I want you to keep away from him, promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Fine.”

“So?”

“Your grandfather and Ragnar Desche worked together, that was at least fifteen years ago. Import, export. It had mostly to do with goods that the customs men weren’t supposed to know about. Desche was called the logistics guy. They said you could trust him your own soul, he’d stuff it away and give it back to you unharmed a decade later. There was nothing he didn’t store or deliver. Even corpses weren’t a problem.”

“Drugs too?”

“Drugs too, of course. What’s up with you, were you born yesterday, or what? Weapons, antiques, money, and information are goods every bit as much as drugs and people. Desche stayed out of human trafficking, you have to hand him that. Anything that needed to be secured or moved, Desche’s company took care of it. Are you getting the picture?”

“I am.”

“Neil, who’s this girlfriend of yours?”

“A passing acquaintance.”

“Get rid of her.”

“What?”

“I said, get rid of her. If she has a problem with Desche, no one can help her. What has she done?”

“She took something that didn’t belong to her.”

“What’s
something
?”

“Five kilos of heroin.

“…”

“Ritchie, are you still there?”

“Of course I’m still there. I don’t understand, where do you keep finding these airheads? I thought you had your life under control. Doesn’t your mother teach you anything? Do you want to end up like me? It’s no fun being me, you should have learned that by now.”

“What should I do now?”

“Stay away from the whole thing. No one takes something from Ragnar Desche and gets away with it. No one, you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Does your mother know about this?”

“No, of course not.”

“Say hi from me.”

“Do you want to talk to her? She’s—”

“I’m too tired.”

“You’re tired, but you can talk to me?”

“You’re different.”

“Ritchie, I’m your son and—”

“I know you’re my son, you’re rubbing it in every time we talk.”

“But she—”

“I don’t want her to hear me like this. I don’t care what you think about me, but I want your mother to remember me the way I was. Is that so hard to understand? It’s how I protect her.”

“And what if she doesn’t want to be protected?”

“You don’t know your mother, and anyway it’s strictly between you and me, grow up and sort out your own shit before you start messing around with mine. And now let’s hang up before I go all sentimental on you.”

He hangs up before you can say another word. You stand by the phone, and once again you don’t know what to make of your father. He’s never accepted the role, he’s just Ritchie and nothing more. Ten years ago he was diagnosed with cancer, for eight years he’s been hiding away in Berlin. He doesn’t want to see your mother and he only lets you and your half brother visit him. Ritchie’s thin, he’s ill and the chemo’s made his hair fall out, but as if by magic he clings to life. A dead man walking who doesn’t want anyone standing near him.

“You’re awake already.”

Your mother is standing behind you, tired eyes, tired movements. She turned sixty last year, and you’re sure Ritchie wouldn’t recognize her. She seems to be enfolded in a constant state of tiredness. Sometimes the cloak lifts, when your mother surrounds herself with people, but as soon as she’s alone again, all her strength leaves her and the tiredness settles on her again.

“It’s been a long night,” you say.

“I can see that. Have you had breakfast?”

You kiss her on the cheek and go with her into the kitchen to keep her company as she makes the breakfast. You can’t just disappear now. You’ve taken your father’s place, and that carries obligations. The girls have to wait.

You bring your mother coffee, you hand her the mail and listen. She takes you as you are. Since you finished school, you haven’t done much but spend money, watch movies, and meet friends. Nine years on the pause button. It’s a mystery to you how time could pass so quickly. You planned to study, you wanted to set up a club with a friend, you even tried your hand as a computer programmer. All your plans stayed just that. Plans. Sometimes you wonder if everything would have been different if your father hadn’t left Hamburg. You’re not a loser, you’re just pleased with this way of life—the world expects nothing from you, you expect nothing from the world. Your mother believes you’ll find your way eventually. But what if there is no way? What if you’ve already got there? The son of a rich heiress and a cancer-ridden crook. The end.

Darkness attracts darkness. Maybe that’s why you’re part of this story, who knows. The roots go deep. For three decades your father’s family was a big player in Hamburg’s crime scene. Everyone knew the name of Exner, and it all started with your grandfather Maximilian, also known as Grandpa Max, even better known as the Emperor. He founded his empire in the late 1960s, financed every rising nightclub on the Reeperbahn, and set up a regulation whereby signs were displayed on the barrier to the notorious Herbertstrasse, forbidding access to the prostitute-lined street to minors and women.
The Emperor keeps Hamburg clean
was his motto. Not only did he collect protection money and promise security for everybody, he also controlled prostitution and made sure that the whores underwent regular medical examinations. He was even in charge of farming out cash-in-hand building work. In the early 1970s he put the first fruit machines and pinball machines in pubs, engaged in property speculation, and extended his empire by moving stolen cars. In all those decades he stayed away from the drug and weapons trade. His
two sons from his first marriage were Ruprecht and Ritchie. Ritchie never had the ambition to take up the Emperor’s legacy. He was useful for small-time deals, like when a car had to be taken from A to B, but when it came to the hard stuff or a few people had missed their payments and needed an arm broken, Ruprecht was your man. Ruprecht was two years older than Ritchie and knew what he was doing. For him, there was only the Emperor’s empire, the rest was crumbs from the table.

Who knows where your father would be now if he hadn’t met your mother. Perhaps he’d have spent five years in jail like Ruprecht, or hidden himself away in a little Italian mountain village like your Uncle Fredo. At the end of the 1990s your father turned away from the family, and after Grandpa Max’s death he gave up on his legacy. Perhaps he was saved by money, because your mother has noble blood, owns a villa on the Alster, and doesn’t have to worry what the DAX looks like. But it could also be that your mother showed him another way of enjoying life. Whatever it was, your father’s now sick and alone in Berlin, and afraid to look his great love in the eye. No, you’re really not interested in being like your father.

“Perhaps you should go there,” you say.

Your mother is still holding her cup, even though it’s empty. You lean forward to give her a refill. At any moment your mother’s going to say
Yes, perhaps
. Your conversations are like games of chess. The openings are always the same.

“Yes, perhaps,” your mother replies and doesn’t really mean it. She gives you a quizzical look.

“How is he?”

“As always. No better, no worse.”

“Do you think his last course of treatment was successful?”

Ask him yourself
, you want to answer, but you just shrug. There are days when you want to put your mother in the car and drive to Berlin. You want to ring Ritchie’s doorbell, and go as soon as the door opens and leave the two of them alone. If you were brave enough, if your mother wasn’t resistant to the idea, if the sun rose in the west one day and your mother could crank herself up a bit and
overcome her cowardice. You make the next move and say, “You must hate him for hiding.”