So he sat, unmoving, in the dark and the silence. Waiting for the moment of convergence.
Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel is an area known for its energy and even this late on a Thursday evening there was a fair amount of activity. But this narrow side street was quiet and lined with cars. It was a risk to use his own car, but a calculated risk: it was a dark VW Polo and anonymous enough to sit inconspicuously among all the other parked cars. No one would notice the car; but the danger was that they might notice him sitting in it. Waiting.
Earlier, he had switched the car radio on low and had let the chatter wash over him. He had been too preoccupied to listen; his mind too full
with the raw energy of anticipation for the reports of the campaigns of the various contenders for the Chancellorship to stimulate the contempt that they normally provoked in him. Then, as the time approached and his mouth grew dry and his pulse grew faster, he had switched the radio off.
Now he sat in the dark and silence and fought back the emotions that surged up in great waves from deep within. He had to be in the moment itself. He had to shut everything else out and focus. Be disciplined. The Japanese had a word for it:
zanshin
. He had to achieve
zanshin
: that state of peace and relaxation, of total fearlessness while facing danger or challenge, that allowed the mind and body to perform with deadly accuracy and efficiency. Yet there was no denying the feeling of a monumental destiny about to be fulfilled. Not only had his entire life been a preparation for this moment, more than one lifetime had been dedicated to bringing him to this place and to this time. The point of convergence was close. Seconds away.
He carefully laid the velvet roll-pouch on the passenger seat. He cast a glance up and down the street before untying the ribbon fastener and unrolling the pouch flat. The blade gleamed bright and hard, sharp and beautiful in the street light. He imagined its keen edge parting flesh. Paring it from the bone. With this instrument he would still their treacherous voices; he would use its blade to shape a shining silence.
There was a movement.
He flipped the dark blue velvet over to conceal the beautiful blade. He placed his hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead as the bicycle passed the car. He watched the rider swing one leg
over, the bicycle still in motion, before dismounting. The cyclist removed his chain and padlock from the bike’s pannier and wheeled the bike into the passage at the side of the building.
He laughed quietly as he watched the cyclist’s small ritual of security. There’s no need, he thought. Leave it for someone to steal. You won’t need it again in this lifetime.
The cyclist reappeared from the passage, slipped his keys from his pocket and let himself into the apartment.
In the dark of the car, he sheathed his hands in the latex of a pair of surgical gloves. He reached into the back, picked up the toiletry bag from the back seat and placed it next to the velvet roll-pouch.
Convergence.
He felt a great calm descend on him.
Zanshin
. Now justice would be fulfilled. Now the killing would begin.
She stood for a moment and looked up at the sky, screwing up her eyes against the morning sun that shone so optimistically on the Schanzenviertel. It was her first appointment of the day. She checked her watch and allowed herself a small, tight smile of satisfaction. 8.57 a.m. Three minutes early.
Above all else, Kristina Dreyer prided herself on never being late. In fact, as she was about many things in her life, Kristina was obsessive about her punctuality. It was part of her reinvention of herself: of how she defined the person she had become. Kristina Dreyer was someone who had known Chaos: she had known it in a way that most people could never begin to imagine. It had engulfed her. It had stripped her of her dignity, of her youth and, most of all, it had ripped away from her any sense of control over her life.
But now Kristina was back in charge. Where her life had previously been anarchy and tumult beyond her understanding, far less her control, it was now characterised by her absolute regulation of every day. Kristina Dreyer led her life with an uncompromising exactitude. Everything about her life was simple, clean
and neat: her clothes, including her working clothes, her small, pristine apartment, her VW Golf, with the lettering
Dreyer Cleaning
on the door panels; and her life, which, like her apartment, she had chosen to share with no one.
Kristina’s uncompromising exactitude really came into its own in her work. She was supremely good at her job. She had built up a client list across Eimsbüttel that meant her week was full, and each customer trusted her for her thoroughness and honesty. And most of all, they trusted her for her total reliability.
Kristina cleaned well. She cleaned apartments, she cleaned villas. She cleaned homes large and small, for young and old, for German and foreigner. Every home, every task, was approached with the same scrupulously methodical approach. No detail was missed. No corner cut.
Kristina was thirty-six but looked considerably older. She was a short, thinnish woman. At one time in her life, less than a dozen years before but a lifetime away, her features had been fine; delicate. Now it merely seemed as if her skin was pulled too tight over the angular framework of her skull. Her high, sharp cheekbones jutted aggressively from her face and the skin that stretched across them was slightly reddened and rough. Her nose was small, but again, just below the ridge, bone and cartilage seemed to protest against being confined and hinted at an ancient break.
Three minutes early. She let the smile fade. Being too early was almost as bad as being too late. Not that her customer would be any the wiser: Herr Hauser would already be at work. But Kristina’s punctuality meant that the order of
her
universe
was maintained; that no randomness would enter into it and spread, like cancer, to become sanity-and life-threatening Chaos. The way it had been before.
She turned the key and opened the door, pushing against the spring with her back as she swung her vacuum cleaner into the hallway.
The way Kristina thought of it was that she had given birth to herself. She had no children – and no man to father children – but she had created herself anew: given herself a new life and put aside all that had gone before. ‘Don’t let your history define who you are or who you can become,’ someone had once said to her when she had been at her lowest. It had been a turning point. Everything had changed. Everything that had been part of that old life, that dark life, had been abandoned. Dumped. Forgotten.
But now, as Kristina Dreyer stood, halfway across the threshold of the apartment that she was due to clean that bright Friday morning, history reached out from her old life and seized her by the throat in an unyielding grip.
That smell. The rich, nauseous, coppery odour of stale blood hanging in the air. She recognised it instantly and started to shake.
Death was here.
The anxiety was hidden deep. To the casual observer, there was nothing in her composure that hinted at anything other than confidence and absolute self-certainty. But Dr Minks was no casual observer.
His first patient of the day was Maria Klee, an elegant young woman in her thirties. She was very attractive, with blonde hair combed back from the broad, pale brow; her face was a little long and seemed to have stretched the nose a fraction of a centimetre too low and made it slightly too narrow and therefore robbed her of true beauty.
Maria sat opposite Dr Minks, her slender, expensively trousered legs crossed with her manicured fingers resting on her knee. She sat upright: perfectly composed, alert but relaxed. Her grey-blue eyes held the psychologist in a steady, assured, yet not defiant gaze. A look that seemed to say that she was expecting a question to be posed, or a proposition to be expounded, but that she was perfectly content to wait, patiently and politely, for the doctor to speak.
For the moment, he didn’t. Dr Friedrich Minks took his time as he examined the patient’s notes. Minks was of indeterminate middle age: a short, dumpy man with dull skin and thinning black hair; his eyes were dark and soft behind the panes of his spectacles. In contrast to his poised patient, Minks looked as if he had been dropped into his chair and that the impact had crumpled him further into his already crumpled suit. He looked up from his notes and took in the carefully constructed edifice of confidence that Maria Klee presented with her body language. Nearly thirty years of experience as a psychologist allowed him to see through the sham instantly.
‘You are very hard on yourself.’ Minks’s long-gone Swabian childhood still tugged on his vowels as he spoke. ‘And I have to say that is part of your problem. You know that, don’t you?’
Maria Klee’s cool grey eyes didn’t flicker, but she gave a small shrug. ‘What do you mean, Herr Doktor?’
‘You know exactly what I mean. You refuse to allow yourself to be afraid. It’s all part of these defences you’ve built around yourself.’ He leaned forward. ‘Fear is natural. After what happened to you, to feel fear is more than natural … it’s an essential part of the healing process. Just as you felt pain as your body healed, you have to feel fear to allow your mind to heal.’
‘I just want to get on with my life, Dr Minks. Without all this nonsense getting in the way.’
‘It’s not nonsense. It’s a stage of post-trauma recovery that you have to go through. But because you see fear as a failure and you fight against your natural reactions, you are stretching out this stage of recovery … and I’m worried it’s going to be stretched out indefinitely. And that is exactly why you are having these panic attacks. You have sublimated and repressed your natural fear and horror at what happened to you until it has burst through the surface in this distorted form.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Maria said. ‘I have never tried to deny what happened to me. What he … what he
did
to me.’
‘That’s not what I said. It’s not the event that you’re denying. You’re denying your right to experience fear, horror, or even outrage at what this man did to you. Or that he has yet to be held to account for his actions.’
‘I don’t have time for self-pity.’
Minks shook his head. ‘This has nothing to do with self-pity. This has everything to do with post-trauma stress and with the natural process of healing.
Of resolution. Until you resolve this conflict within, you will never be able to connect properly with the world around you. With people.’
‘I deal with people every day.’ The patient’s grey-blue eyes now glinted with defiance. ‘Are you saying I’m compromising my effectiveness?’
‘Perhaps not now … but if we do not start laying ghosts to rest, it will, ultimately, manifest itself in how you conduct yourself professionally.’ Minks paused. ‘From what you’ve told me, you are increasingly showing signs of aphenphosmphobia. Considering the type of work you’re involved with, I would have thought it would present significant difficulties. Have you discussed this with your superiors?’
‘As you know, they arranged physical and psychological therapy.’ Maria angled her head back slightly and there was a defensive edge to her voice. ‘But no. I haven’t discussed these current …
problems
with them.’
‘Well,’ said Dr Minks, ‘you know my feelings on this matter. I feel that your employers should be aware of the difficulties you’re having.’ He paused. ‘You mentioned this man with whom you began a relationship. How is that going?’
‘Okay …’ There was no longer a defiant tone in Maria’s voice and some of the tense energy seemed to have seeped from her shoulders. ‘I am very fond of him. And he of me. But we haven’t … we haven’t been able to be
intimate
yet.’
‘Do you mean you have no physical contact … no embracing or kissing? Or do you mean sex?’
‘I mean sex. Or anything approaching it. We do touch. We do kiss … but then I start to feel …’ She drew her shoulders up, as if her body were being
squeezed into a small space. ‘Then I get the panic attacks.’
‘Does he understand why you withdraw from him?’
‘A little. It’s not easy for a man – for anyone – to feel that their touch, their close proximity, is repellent. I’ve explained some of it to him and he’s promised to keep it to himself. I knew he would anyway. But he understands. He knows I’m seeing you … well, not you specifically … He knows I’m seeing
someone
about my problem.’
‘Good …’ Minks smiled again. ‘What about the dreams? Have you had any more?’
Maria nodded. Her defences were beginning to crumble and her posture sagged a little more. Her hands still rested on her knee but the manicured fingernails now gathered up a small clutch of expensive tailoring.
‘The same thing?’ asked Minks.
‘Yes.’
Dr Minks leaned forward in his chair. ‘We need to go back there. I need to visit your dream with you. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘Again?’
‘Yes,’ said Minks. ‘Again.’ He gestured for her to relax into her seat.
‘We’re going back to your dream. Back to where you see your attacker again. I’m going to start counting, now. We’re going back, Maria … one … two … three …’
Kristina left the door open, leaning the vacuum cleaner and her cleaning tray as checks against the
door spring; leaving her escape route clear. Old instincts started to rouse themselves from somewhere deep within her, awoken by the scent of fresh death in the air. She became aware of a rhythmic rushing noise and realised that it was the sound of her pulse in her ears. She reached down and picked up a spray bottle of cleaning fluid from her tray, gripping it tight in her trembling hand, like a gun.
‘Herr Hauser?’ She called into the hall, into the quiet rooms beyond. She strained to hear any sound, any movement. Any sign of something living within the apartment. She gave a jump as a car drove past on the street outside, the thudding bass of raucous American dance music synchronising with the pulsating rush of blood in her ears. The apartment remained silent.