Walk Me Home by Sebastian Fitzek

Author:Sebastian Fitzek [Fitzek, Sebastian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781804542279
Publisher: Head of Zeus

34

JULES

I’ve found you, you fucking whore…

Had he just heard a man scream those words down the phone?

Jules turned up the volume on his headset, but the line was dead.

Shit!

He’d lost her.

The emotionally and acoustically fragile connection to Klara no longer existed, and it was highly unlikely that she’d call him again, even though he’d given her his private number earlier.

Whore…?

He suspected that Klara was in greater danger than at any point that evening, right when he couldn’t throw her a digital lifeline. As he put his headset down on the edge of the sink he felt like a failure.

The dripping tap that had lured him into the bathroom was smeared with dried toothpaste, typical of a household with small children.

Before the fire in Prinzregentenstrasse, when Valentin and Fabienne still romped together around the flat that was far too small for a family of four, the froth that ought to have landed in the sink after brushing made its way onto the most unlikely surfaces and into the most improbable crevices. Spread by tiny hands – poorly washed or not washed at all – that never tired of discovering a world full of secrets, hiding places and adventure.

And lethal dangers.

Even in your own flat.

Following the move there was far more space in Jules’s current apartment, but no more romping around after that fateful, deadly day when Dajana locked her children in and forever extinguished the light that burned inside her, a light he’d thought strong enough to show others the way and even bright enough for others to warm themselves by.

How could I be so wrong?

Jules avoided the mirror above the sink because he knew how exhausted and dishevelled he looked, with the dark rings around his eyes and the dry skin in the T-zone between forehead, nose and mouth. He wondered how often he’d been wrong in the last few hours alone.

Was Klara really in danger? Was she a victim of domestic violence? Or did a large part of what she’d told him exist only inside her head, as his father claimed.

‘You need to forget the woman. She’s not completely kosher. Yes, she was undergoing treatment at Berger Hof, but not as a participant in an experiment. She suffers from a dissociative disorder – or whatever you call it when people can’t distinguish between madness and reality.’

Had she really sat in her car and tried to take her own life tonight? Was she right now driving through the night beside a stranger dressed as Father Christmas?

And has this tap been dripping the whole time?

Jules had sensitive ears. The whole apartment had to be quiet for him to get to sleep. Dajana loved teasing him about his bat-like, ultrasonic hearing when he searched the bedroom for a device beeping in standby mode, or bled the radiators for the umpteenth time because the gurgling was driving him mad. It was hard to believe that he should have failed to hear the plopping coming from the bathroom. Besides, there were splashes on the enamel sink, a sign that the tap had recently been used and not turned off again properly.

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