Flashback

Chapter Ten

Berlin

Jem woke fully clothed on Saskia’s bed. As the fog of sleep cleared and the events of the day before pulled into focus, she noticed Ego sitting in a patch of streetlight near the edge of the duvet. He blinked a slow greeting and looked towards the window.

‘What’s new, pussycat?’ she asked, following his gaze.

There was nothing to be seen through the window but the corner of an apartment block. She turned back. The cat was gone.

‘Ego?’ She shifted the duvet and checked the floor. ‘Where are you?’

But Ego was staying with a Turkish friend of Saskia on the other side of Berlin. Jem had overheard Saskia making the arrangements.

‘I’m hallucinating cats. Different.’

Jem checked her phone. Now, in the dark, she understood that its vibrating alert had woken her. She rubbed her eyes. The bright egg timer tumbled twice before a message appeared.

She replied:

She flopped back against the oversized German pillow, but a new text arrived before she closed her eyes.

Jem remained staring at the words until the display dimmed. She could admit that she was scared. No need for lies; not here. Be honest: she had slept fully dressed because there was something odd about Cory. In fact, hadn’t she come in here intending to give it an hour before leaving unnoticed? She must have fallen asleep.

What to do? Who was sending her messages?

She thumbed out a reply:

She waited, drumming the back of the phone. She looked at the door. Was it locked? Yes. Her heart was sprinting.

You are in danger. Meet me at the door to the apartment. Cory is a killer. This is the last message I can send.

The screen faded. Its stamp-sized afterimage floated before her eyes as she glanced around the room, checking shadows.

Was someone really waiting for her downstairs? She imagined a man in the coats, studying the darkness of the upper hallway for a sign that she had emerged. With a suddenness that surprised her, Jem decided it was the policeman she had spotted outside Wolfgang’s apartment. What was the connection between Wolfgang and Cory? Why send her a text message? If the policeman had evidence that Cory was dangerous, why not arrest him?

Yet the message felt genuine. She eased herself from the bed, walked to the door and turned its key. The hallway was gloomy and quiet. She strained to hear something from downstairs, but there was no breath, shoe scuff, or creak. The door to the spare bedroom, through which Cory had retired, was still closed.

She stepped out and rolled each foot heel-to-toe. Her rucksack was near the telephone. The rucksack found her shoulder with a practised swing. Another glance at Cory’s door. At the top of the stairs, she checked for Cory once more, and, as an afterthought, swiped her knickers from the kung fu wooden man.

Midway down the landing, she strained to look at the entrance space. Its coats were bulky enough to conceal her caller, and the scattered shoes might obscure his feet, but she felt certain that she was alone in the flat with Cory.

She took careful seconds over the final steps and let her rucksack slip, easy doing it, to the floor. A riser creaked behind her. She looked up. Nobody there. Just cooling wood. She put her eye to the spy hole and checked the outside hall: empty.

She texted:

Jem looked at the door and its array of locks. Her doubt rested on the warning about Cory. He had not convinced her that he was the father of Saskia, but, then, there was not a great deal to know about Saskia, as the woman herself had said on countless occasions over the past month.

Her phone vibrated again.

From behind her came the sound of a footstep. She turned time-lapse slow.

Cory’s white cane had fallen across the lowest riser. Jem blew out her trapped breath and replaced the cane among the umbrellas.

The phone felt wet in her grip.

You’re close. Look for an envelope.

Why is his cane down here when he’s up there?

Faster now, she played the glowing screen of the mobile across the black trainers, a pair of Birkenstocks, her own boots, and found nothing. Then she remembered that, two days before, when she and Saskia had returned from their shopping trip, Saskia had asked her to collect her post from the box in the lobby. Had there actually been any post? Jem could not remember either finding any or giving it to Saskia. She reached now into the outer pocket of her duffle coat and withdrew two items of junk mail. The first announced that Saskia had won a lottery and the second that she had been selected for a limited-offer credit card. The latter was dusty and dented. It had been redirected three times. The sender was ‘Proctor Prospects’ and its exterior read, ‘We deliver same day, next working day, and last week!’ Jem flexed the envelope. There was something stiff inside.

She ripped it open and fanned the contents across the floor. The covering letter was dated December. There was nothing in that, or the enclosed leaflet, or the fake credit card, that could be a message from her mysterious correspondent—but, as she looked, a handwritten message appeared near the foot of the leaflet. It read, ‘Hold on, Saskia—D.’ Jem blinked and looked again. It was gone.

A white light pulsed on the floor and she reached towards it, expecting another text. But the phone was already in her hand. This radiance came instead from the credit card. Bemused, Jem touched it. The card was warm. She looked close and saw the long number slide away. The coloured sections parted. It became a pale tile.

Text scrolled across the centre.

Please attach the earpiece.

‘There is no earpiece,’ she whispered. ‘Who are you? Where are you sending these messages from?’

Lower your voice. Where is Saskia?

‘Stop asking me that. Saskia’s dead.’

The text scrolled away. Absurdly, Jem felt that the card was thinking.

How?

‘Her plane crashed.’

Where did it crash?

‘I’m leaving.’

She rose and tugged on her boots. But before she zipped them, curiosity returned her eyes to the card.

WAIT.

‘What?’

We can help each other.

‘How? Who says I need help?’

I know what you want.

Jem paused. The world bled brightly from the edges of the door and through its spy-hole. Behind her, Cory might have been on the topmost riser, watching. She whispered, ‘Her system?’

I will show you, but not here. It’s not safe.’

Jem stood. She was coiled again, set for release. Berlin was out there and ready to absorb her like an electric current, earthed, escaping to everywhere.