The Lie (40 page)

She'd never thought about it like that, but she just couldn't see Michael as a threat. And she was intensely irritated by the way Dieter was slipping back into his old way of treating her. And he was forgetting one thing. If Michael was already at home and Susanne Lasko's ex-husband turned up, that would considerably increase the chances of her being unmasked.

It was dark outside as they emerged from the car park one after the other. She led the way again through the heavy evening traffic and Dieter
followed. In the city there was no real chance of overtaking but on the autobahn things were different. The Alfa was much more manoeuvrable than the dark-green estate. There wasn't a lot of room, but enough for a bit of motorway slalom. For a couple of seconds she could still see him flashing his headlights in the rear-view mirror. Then they were submerged in the sea of light.

Twenty minutes later she stopped in the drive. The Jaguar was already in the garage. She braced herself for an angry outburst or a breath test and went into the hall expecting her wrist to be grabbed. But Michael was nowhere to be seen. There were dirty pots and pans in the kitchen. It looked as if he'd made himself a meal but hardly eaten any of it. She went upstairs, hung the mink jacket back in the dressing room and checked all the rooms. No trace of Michael. When she went back downstairs, she heard him calling from the basement.

He was sitting on the side of the pool, naked and wet. His eyes were reddened, probably from the chlorine. His voice was completely toneless as he said, “I thought you'd gone.”

“I just had to take a few things back to the office. Been home long?”

“Since half three. Who was Susanne Lasko and what did she have to do with you?”

“With me, nothing,” she declared. “Philip was involved with her, I'm sure of that. The man who threatened me must have confused me with her. That's the only explanation I can think of.”

He nodded, sunk in thought. Without indicating whether he believed her or not, he looked up and smiled. “Do you feel like kissing me dry?”

“Not just now,” she said.

“Have you been drinking?”

She shook her head. He stretched out his hand and, thinking he wanted to do a breath test again, she took a couple of steps towards the edge of the pool. Before she knew what was happening, he'd pulled her down. For a second she could feel his thighs under her back, his hand behind her head and his mouth on her lips. Then, despite the fact the she was fully clothed, he gave her a push. She slipped off his legs and the water closed over her head.

He stayed sitting on the side, watching her desperate struggle. If she'd let herself slide into the pool carefully, she could probably have kept her head above water. Being thrown in was quite a different matter. Her
shoes came off. She couldn't touch the bottom and there was nothing for her to grab on to either. Flailing her arms and thrashing her legs only took her further from the side. She didn't dare breathe in, holding her breath until she thought her lungs and her head were going to burst.

Twice she saw him, refracted through the water, sitting motionless on the side. Since he did nothing, she was convinced he was trying to kill her - that is, Nadia. Then he finally pushed off and was beside her in a moment. He pulled her to him and lifted her head above water. Only to kiss her. She didn't even have time to take a deep breath.

“Why can't you understand what I really want,” he murmured, then dived down with her. He seemed to take the way she clung to him in panic as passion. Even under the surface he continued to kiss her, at the same time fiddling with the zip of her trousers. Then back up to the surface. Time for a quick gasp for breath before he clamped his mouth over hers again.

Her pulse was a deafening throb in her ears. The necklace tore as he pawed her. A few pearls drifted through the water, the rest of the string swirling as it sank to the bottom. It was green down there and blue, with the first dark patches as she began to lose consciousness. The last thing she felt was his hands round her waist, under her pullover, his lips on her breast and water up her nose. She didn't even get round to cursing her driving skills. Nadia had been wrong about one thing - drowning while making love was definitely not a wonderful death. But Nadia's had been even less wonderful, had been horrible.

She felt terribly cold when she came to. There was an immense weight on her chest. Then it eased and light returned. Michael was kneeling beside her, pressing rhythmically under her ribs with both hands. She coughed, wheezed, spat out water and heard him begging her breathlessly, “Yes, come on, come on, come on. That's it. Keep breathing.”

He kept kissing her again and again, not letting her get enough air. Cradling her face in his hands, he asked, “What was wrong? Did you bash your head against the side? You have been drinking, haven't you? Admit it, you've been drinking. Tell me again that you love me. I love you too. You, just you, not the money you can make.” He was stammering, as if he were going out of his mind. He squeezed the water out of her hair, brushed it off her cheeks, pulled her dripping-wet pullover off over her head and tugged her trousers down.

Her teeth were chattering. “I feel so cold.”

“You'll warm up pretty soon.” He took her in his arms and carried her upstairs. In bed it was anything but the standard deal. It went on and on, he couldn't get enough - of Nadia. The cold gradually faded, apart from one spot deep within, like an icy thorn that every “Nadia!” from his lips drove deeper into her flesh. Although extremely reluctantly, she realized that Dieter was right. When it came to the crunch, this man, who couldn't stop kissing her, caressing her, loving her, could represent a much greater threat than Zurkeulen and his thug. She had to get out of his life as quickly as possible.

At some point the telephone in the study rang. The answerphone clicked in. Nadia's voice with the message could be heard through the open door, then Dieter saying, “Are you mad? Where did you learn to drive like that? Ring me. I told you I haven't time tomorrow.”

The question suddenly brought Michael back down to earth. He stopped his lovemaking and pushed himself up. “Who's that?”

“I don't know. Must be a wrong number.”

She pulled his head back down to her. In the study Dieter was begging her for Heaven's sake not to try anything herself or what little was left would go down the drain too. She put her hands over his ears and clamped her lips to his until all was quiet again. He pulled away from her and looked down. “Nadia, I want to know what's going on. I have to know.”

So she told him - that behind her back Philip had been indulging in some nasty chicanery with a double, a woman who looked just like her. The words simply flowed, she was at least as good as Nadia at lying, after all, she'd had plenty of practice with her mother. “For weeks I didn't realize what was going on,” she said. “A few times when I came into the office, Helga asked me if I'd forgotten something. It sounded as if I'd been in already that day. But who would imagine something like that? No one expects there to be another version of themselves.”

The possibility only occurred to her, she claimed, the first time someone addressed her by the name of Lasko. No, not the angry man in the bank, Behringer's friendly office manager had greeted her in the lift and asked how she was getting on with her job at Alfo Investment. It was from nice Herr Reincke that she had learned that Susanne Lasko had applied for a job as secretary at Behringer's and that Philip Hardenberg
had torpedoed her appointment. Naturally she'd wondered why Philip had taken on her double - and that without Helga's knowledge. That was why she'd been travelling round so much recently, had had to stay away overnight and think up stupid excuses.

“I got the idea that Philip must be meeting this woman somewhere else, perhaps because Helga had become suspicious. I followed him when he went on business trips, but I never saw the woman. And I didn't like to ask Herr Reincke for her address. After that angry client went on at me last week, I tried to see what I could find in the office. I thought there must be some documents somewhere. But the only things I could find were that envelope with papers and the old key-holder, the things that were in the boot of the Alfa. On Friday I went to the address, in Kettlerstrasse. The keys fitted, but the woman wasn't there. I waited for hours, I wanted to have it out with her. That's why I was so late coming home. And I went there again on Saturday morning, again with no success. I wanted to have one more try on Sunday, but you stopped me. Now the woman's dead and Philip has clearly gone into hiding. Hold me tight.”

He did that, for most of the night, on the damp sheets. He only got out of bed once, to put his alarm in the bathroom. Then he clung tight to her again, murmuring his fears and feelings against the back of her neck. That he didn't know whether to believe her or not. That he was afraid he'd never be able to lead a normal life if he stayed with her, because she didn't understand what really counted in life. But he knew what he owed to her. And he was the one person she could count on, if she made a mess of things again. It flowed almost seamlessly into a whispered “You sleep on.” She felt his lips across her temple, then he was gone. An unpredictable factor. An incalculable risk. Nadia's husband.

She spent most of the morning brooding over the pain his inability to give up Nadia was causing her. It was just before midday that the telephone took her mind off it. Dieter was on the line. Andrea was cleaning the big windows by the pool. It hadn't been emptied. Andrea didn't know how to let the water out, nor did she.

Dieter had switched his meeting with his publisher from lunch to dinner. He could understand why she hadn't rung him. He was ringing from Hardenberg's office. He thought it highly unlikely he would be interrupted in the next few hours. “The Mercedes has gone and I'm convinced that means Hardenberg has too,” he said. “From what I've
seen so far, there's no mention of the other eight men on the list, but I'm a long way from having checked everything yet.”

He wanted to know how much free memory there was on the hard disk in the study. Following his instructions, it took her only a few seconds to find the information. As Dieter had assumed, there was nowhere near enough storage space.

She sent Andrea home. Just thirty minutes later Dieter was there. She guided him into the garage. He had no objection to being shown round, but made no comment, neither admitting he was impressed nor suggesting mockingly that she fitted into the house like a pig in the parlour. When she mentioned the pool, all he said was, “I had a small pool installed in the garden last spring too.” The sight of the shimmering green did, however, elicit an awestruck, “My God, it's a proper indoor pool!”

“Do you know how to let the water out?” she asked hopefully.

“Why? There's nothing wrong with it. Have you any idea what it costs to fill a pool like that?”

“I don't want to fill it,” she explained. “I fell in yesterday.”

“Then just keep away,” he advised.

In the hall he quickly demonstrated how to open the letter box. It didn't need a key, she just had to stick her finger in the opening she'd assumed was a keyhole, press a tiny bolt to one side and pull out the flap. There were two envelopes in it. One was the telephone bill, the other came from a music agent's and had two more tickets for the Niedenhoff concert in the Beethovenhalle.

As they went into the study, the telephone rang. The answerphone switched in. It was Phil telling them, in incredibly fast English, that there was a small guest room available, but that Pamela could book them into a hotel, if they preferred. Dieter translated it for her, adding, with ironic emphasis, “You'd better get a sore throat.” Then, recalling her request, “I must have some language courses somewhere. English definitely. I did have a French course, too, but it's possible that Ramie…”

He broke off and promised, “If I find the things, I'll send you them. Then you can contribute the odd remark to the conversation without making a fool of yourself. But you mustn't overdo it. No one'll notice if a woman whose husband thinks she's fucked up again keeps her mouth shut.”

Then he sat down at the computer and fiddled around for a while to familiarize himself with it. “What's Sec?” he asked. She didn't know. All she could remember was that in September Michael had said something about taking it down. From that Dieter concluded they could do without Sec for the time being. He also deleted a few operational programs, commenting, “Better safe than sorry.”

When he thought they had enough storage space, he explained what she had to do in Hardenberg's office. He was uneasy about leaving the data transfer to her, but he couldn't see to it himself because of the dinner with his publisher.

Before he went, he had time to report what else he'd heard. That morning he'd been to the police again to find out if they had any clues about the acquaintance who'd phoned Susanne at the shop. They hadn't. On the Friday evening Jasmin Toppler had dropped her outside the multi-storey and driven straight back home. On Saturday Frau Gathmann had only seen the Alfa from a distance, hadn't noted the number and couldn't say what make of car it was. Nor could they establish where the two calls from Nadia had come from, since the confectioner's didn't have an ISDN line. It appeared the police hadn't stumbled across Alfo Investment yet. Naturally they didn't tell him everything but they'd hinted that their money was on an opportunist thief disturbed in the flat.

“By the way, she applied for the replacement documents at the beginning of August,” Dieter said. “Two days after she'd received the first report from the private eye and knew for certain that you had no contacts apart from your mother. It usually takes four to six weeks before you get the new documents. In the meantime you get a paper from the vehicle-licensing people certifying that you're permitted to drive. The council registration office also issues you with something you can use as ID if necessary. I suspect she'd have still put one over on you, even if you hadn't gone along with it. She probably only really needed you so her husband wouldn't get suspicious while she was off on her travels.”