He kept his eyes on the road. Couldn’t have met hers even if he hadn’t been driving. ‘I thought it was for the best. We wouldn’t . . . She was dead. Frederick will have ways of tidying things like this up. He can’t afford to have his holy of holies splashed all over the front page of Bild Zeitung. Magda . . .’ He shook his head. What else was there to say?
The adrenalin surge from whatever had happened on the hillside was fading and Sarah slumped forward with her head on the dashboard. Her voice was muffled so he could barely make out the individual words.
‘I shot a man.’
‘What?’ His voice sounded shrill in his own ears, but he remembered the scream and realized that he’d already known. He modified the question. ‘Why?’
‘To delay them. They were coming. They would have got to the car before we could escape. So I shot him in the leg.’
‘That seems fair enough.’ Not in the real world, maybe, but certainly in this madhouse they had stumbled into.
She raised her head and he knew she was looking at him. ‘I took the gun from the one you . . . the one who fell. I grew up with guns. I learned to shoot when I was just a kid. I hid behind a tree and when he came past I pointed it at his leg and shot him.’
‘Frederick?’ he said hopefully.
She shook her head and began to cry. ‘Poor Magda.’
‘Yes, poor Magda.’
He drove for an hour, but the road signs might as well have been invisible. His eyes were more on the mirror than the road ahead and he switched between the autobahn, major roads and minor ones, taking exits and turns at random. He was confident they weren’t being followed. Hopefully.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Not back to the hotel?’
‘No. They’d be waiting for us.’
‘Unless they thought we’d gone to the police?’
He shook his head. ‘The one I . . . the tall one. I think I recognized his face from earlier today. Near the hotel. He was in one of those blue and white police cars they have here.’
‘What do we do now?’
‘I don’t know.’ It was the second time he’d admitted as much. The truth was that he hadn’t known what he was doing right from the start.
‘So when are you going to tell me about this journal?’
XXVII
THEY MUST HAVE travelled south, because by the time they reached the outskirts of the small German town the sun was coming up over the hills to their left. A sign informed him he was entering Fulda, but left him little the wiser. He avoided directions to the town centre and instead looked for an industrial area where he knew he’d find one of those cheap hotels that lorry drivers use when they don’t want to sleep in their cabs; the type that caters for arrivals at any time of the day or night and the receptionist is too bored or too tired to ask questions. When he found it, he parked the little Japanese compact in the corner furthest away from the hotel building and part-shielded from the road by a pair of green recycling bins. Sarah’s face was deathly pale and from the set of her lips he knew she was thinking about Magda.
He switched off the engine and they sat in a silent purgatory of exhaustion and disbelief, allowing the minutes to pass.
‘Do you feel up to booking in?’ he said eventually. ‘They may not be too fussy here, but I doubt I’ll be welcome looking like this.’
She turned to look at him, and he saw her flinch as she took in the blood that stained the front of his shirt and jacket. Her dark hair hung lank across her cheeks and weariness and grief had sharpened the planes of her face making her look like an urchin from a Dickens novel. She reached into a pocket to retrieve a tiny white handkerchief, spat on it and wiped at his face and cheeks. The gesture was almost motherly and he would have smiled except the linen came away pink and he remembered the wet spray as Magda had been shot. He felt as if he was going to be sick. Sarah’s frown deepened as she noticed something else. She reached up to the side of his head and gently searched amongst his hair. He felt a sharp pain as she tugged at some object embedded in his scalp and her hand came away holding a sliver of white.
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Upper left incisor, I’d say.’ They stared at it and suddenly they were both laughing, at first almost hysterically, but gradually the tension drained away as if someone had opened a valve.
‘Book a room for a week. If they’re suspicious they’ll want to get a couple of nights’ rent before they turn us in to anybody.’
‘You mean the cops?’
‘No, I mean anybody.’
* * *
The room was modern and clean. It had one double bed with a single bunk above, and just about enough room to sidle between the bed, a small chest of drawers and a sink that comprised the rest of the furniture. A sign informed them that the communal bathroom was along the hall. Jamie would have preferred a room on the upper floors, but this had been the only one available. It had a small square window, set high enough for privacy, which faced on to trees beyond the car park. Once Sarah had booked in and smuggled him past reception they had been too tired to feel anything but relief. Jamie closed the curtain while Sarah kicked off her shoes and lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. For a few moments he stood over her, wondering at the sheer resilience packed into that small, almost childlike body. He looked from the bed up to the bunk bed. To hell with it. He peeled off his bloodstained shirt, replaced it with the slightly less stained jacket and lay down beside her. Before he lost consciousness a little voice kept demanding: What the hell are we going to do now?