A Shadow Falls by Andreas Pflüger

Author:Andreas Pflüger [Pflüger, Andreas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Women Sleuths, Crime, Suspense, Thriller, Investigation
ISBN: 9781786690951
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2017-10-08T22:00:00+00:00

21

How is it possible not to notice the darkness, when darkness is all around? How is it possible to pretend she had firm ground under her feet, when she is sinking into the maelstrom of darkness? How is it possible to long, hour after hour, for a glimmer of light, and not despair of the darkness?

‘Where are we?’ she asks.

‘Dual carriageway.’

‘Not on the Circuit?’

‘We don’t have to make the detour anymore.’

‘Describe it to me.’

‘Salt, salt and more salt. Not even cactuses grow here. Everything is plastered with billboards. Beer, cigarettes, McDonald’s. They have a McKebab here.’

Her hunger for images is so enormous that she switches on the cinema in her head. She is driving through the desert on a Harley – Zabriskie Point 12 Miles – and is looking across an endless glittering plain. She stops, climbs off the bike and walks towards the glitter. It is near, but doesn’t draw nearer. Her boots crack the white crust that covers everything like hoar frost. She bends down, crumbles the crust between her fingers, licks them and tastes salt. Aaron runs and jumps into a mirrored wall of heat and stares into the sun that melts like a blob of butter.

Used images that will have to last her a lifetime.

‘Can you see the city?’ she asks.

‘It looks like an enormous wedding cake that has fallen from the sky, with the Koutoubia as the candle.’

‘Is there much traffic?’

‘It’s congested going the other way. Tomorrow’s a holy day, they’re already ringing in the weekend.’

‘What does the sky look like?’

‘Allah is counting sheep.’

‘What colour are the cars?’

He is silent.

‘Black and white?’

‘Aaron, what’s going on?’ Pavlik calmly asks.

She wants to tell him about the adrenalin that has raged in her cortex like an apoplectic seizure, the black web that is growing inside her, the dried-up, useless cells that she has to lug around with her for evermore. No, she doesn’t want to tell him, she desperately longs to. Then he will console her, he’s so very good at it. But if he knew what she is putting on the line, he wouldn’t allow this to carry on for another second.

That’s your father’s killer lying there.

Vesper was the first she’s killed out of revenge.

She has never felt so indifferent about taking a life.

Because the one that she grieved for ten years ago is lying in an empty coffin in Berlin. Because the one whose blood is drying on Layla’s carpet was nothing more than a hireling and the man who commands pain is still alive.

She could tell herself a thousand lies, she knows them all: that Layla only has to tell her where Varga is. That the Department will hunt him down. That Varga will go to court. That she starts the therapy and invents a new life for herself. And another lie, and another and another.

Bushid¯o states: Revenge is the highest court.

She wants to place her hand on Varga’s chest and feel that his heart is no longer beating.

Pavlik turns off the road and stops in a parking bay.

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