‘Would you mind…?’ Palandt sniffled and looked around as if he were searching for something specific in the living room, then he appeared to have found it, for he turned away from Emma and took a step to the right. ‘Would you mind if I sat down?’
Without waiting for an answer, he slumped into the armchair that stood at an angle to the sofa and where Philipp liked to read the paper on a Sunday. It was made of dark-green leather with concrete-coloured armrests, an ugly industrial look, Emma thought, that was totally out of place in this otherwise rustically furnished house. But it was an heirloom from Philipp’s mother and he was attached to it. Palandt appeared to be comfortable in it too; at any rate he gave a sigh of relief, wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand and closed his eyes.
Emma, who was standing indecisively beside the coffee table, was worrying that her neighbour would fall asleep when Palandt opened his eyes again. ‘I find it very embarrassing, Frau Stein, but I’m not especially well, as you can perhaps see.’
Frau Stein.
Emma wondered momentarily where the neighbour could know her name from, because it wasn’t on the door. Then it occurred to her that Salim must have written it on the delivery note.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked, although she was actually seeking other answers. Whether he’d found her mobile phone, for starters. What was wrong with his hair. Whether he was playing a game of cat and mouse with her and they’d just entered a quiet phase in which Emma was supposed to think that the weak, suffering Palandt represented no danger, whereas in truth he was just waiting for the right moment to go for her throat.
‘I’ve got cancer,’ he said tersely. ‘A tumour in my liver. Metastases in the lungs.’
‘That’s the reason for the medicines?’ They both looked over at the desk.
‘Morphine and GHB,’ Palandt said outright. ‘One takes away the pain, the other either stimulates me or helps me get to sleep depending on the dose. Today I probably took too much and missed the delivery man.’ He laughed sadly. ‘I’d never have thought I’d become a junkie one day. All my life I’ve played sport, eaten healthily, never drunk – well, I wasn’t allowed to in my profession.’
Palandt spoke quickly with that mixture of excitement and shame so typical of lonely people who after a long time finally find the opportunity to talk to someone, even if it’s a total stranger.
‘I was in the circus,’ he explained. ‘Daddy Longlegs they called me. Perhaps you’ve heard of me. No? Oh well, it was a while ago. Anyway, Daddy Longlegs like the spider, because I’ve got long legs too, but I can make myself very small. My God, I was really flexible. I used to get the loudest applause for my suitcase routine.’
‘Suitcase routine?’ Emma asked.
‘Yes, I could bend my body to fit into a small suitcase.’ Palandt gave a sad smile. ‘I had rubber bones back then. These days it hurts when I tie my shoelaces.’
Emma swallowed. She couldn’t shake off the thought of a man squashing himself into the farthest corner of a room to avoid being discovered before its occupant went to bed.
But in Le Zen there wasn’t a single corner to hide in. Not even for a contortionist.
Emma looked at the window. Snowflakes spun beneath the head of the streetlamp like a swarm of moths around the light in summer. She felt a dull ache pressing against her forehead from the inside. Emma couldn’t help thinking that even half of one of those pills on her desk would be enough to kill the pain, however severe the migraine became that was now brewing.
Noticing that Palandt had followed her pensive gaze over to the package, she said, ‘It’s none of my business, but, well, I’m a doctor.’
Palandt gave a squeaky laugh. ‘And you want to know why I order these cheap copycat drugs on the black market?’
Emma nodded.
‘It was a stupid idea,’ Palandt explained. ‘I never had any health insurance, you see. What was the point? All my life I was healthy and if things took a bad turn, I thought, I could live off my savings in my mother’s house.’
‘Frau Tornow?’
‘That was her maiden name. She took it again after the divorce. Did you know her?’ Palandt appeared to be delighted and he smiled softly.
‘We bumped into each other on the street from time to time,’ Emma said. ‘I haven’t seen her in ages.’
‘She’s in Thailand,’ he said. ‘In a nursing home right on the beach.’
Emma nodded. That made sense. More and more German pensioners were spending their retirement years in Asia, where you could get better healthcare for far less money. And where it didn’t get as cold in winter as at home. ‘I’m supposed to be looking after the house in her absence.’ Palandt was about to add something, but put his hands to his mouth abruptly. A sudden coughing fit shook his entire body.
‘Sorry…’ He tried to say something, but had to keep interrupting himself and didn’t seem to be getting enough air.
Emma fetched him a glass of water from the kitchen. When she came back his face was bright red and he was scarcely intelligible as he wheezed, ‘Would you mind giving me a pill?’
She handed him the morphine from the desk.
Eagerly he swallowed two pills at once, then coughed for a further thirty seconds until eventually settling down and relaxing.
‘Excuse me,’ he said with jittery eyelids. He’d briefly removed his glasses to dry his tears with the back of his hands. ‘Sometimes I wake up with such bad pain that I can’t help crying.’
Palandt put his glasses back on the bridge of his nose and smiled apologetically. ‘I know I look like a scarecrow with these on, but if I didn’t wear them you could get up and leave the room and I’d continue chatting to the sofa cushions.’
Emma spontaneously wrinkled her nose and sat back down on the sofa.
Is that true?
It was probably the reason why he was behaving so naturally towards her. Particularly as when he woke up earlier he may have been suffering the pain he was talking about. Without his glasses and with tears in his eyes he wouldn’t have been able to see her standing beside his bed.
Maybe he hasn’t found my mobile yet?
Emma’s paranoid self wanted to see things in a different light, of course, with Anton Palandt as a gifted actor merely feigning his illness to lull her into a false sense of security, after all, he is wearing a wig! But she was longing for a harmless, logical explanation for all the mysterious occurrences she’d experienced and witnessed today, and so Emma asked her neighbour bluntly, ‘Did you lose your hair because of the chemotherapy?’
Palandt nodded. ‘Yes, it looks ghastly, doesn’t it?’ He lifted the toupee briefly and Emma could see age spots dotted all over his head. ‘It’s a cheap thing off the internet and itches like hell. But I don’t dare go out into the street without it. With a bald head I look like a rapist.’
He gave a throaty laugh and Emma tried to put on a brave face by raising the corners of her mouth too.
A coincidence, her hopeful self said. ‘He’s playing with you,’ her paranoid identity countered.
Emma bent forwards on the sofa, as she used to do in her therapy sessions when she wanted patients to believe they had her undivided attention. ‘You said the foreign medicines were a bad idea? Do they not work?’
Palandt nodded. ‘They’re cheap copies. I should never have got involved with the people who supply me with them.’
‘Russians?’
‘No. Albanians. They get them on the black market and send them by post, anonymously of course, because they haven’t obtained them strictly legally.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘Those bastards are scammers. When you order the medicines, they cost less than a third of the normal products, which is why I opted for them. I can’t afford anything else, you see. All my money has gone on alternative therapies. Shamans, gene therapy, miracle healers – I wasted all my savings and hopes on these. But after the first delivery the bastards suddenly demanded more than a thousand euros from me. I don’t have that sort of money.’
‘And so they burgle your house?’
With this question Emma had flicked a switch. Palandt’s good-natured, grandfatherly facial features hardened. His lips turned to lines, then vanished, while his eyes assumed an other-worldly expression. ‘Yes, to collect the cash.’
He raised his right hand and pointed in Emma’s direction. His fingers were shaking like someone with Parkinson’s.
‘The threats were more subtle to begin with,’ he said, upset. His fury at the people who were blackmailing him made him forget his polite choice of words from earlier. ‘Those fucking arseholes continue to send me drugs. The quality keeps on deteriorating. They barely work any more, they just do enough to stop me from kicking the bucket before they get their money.’
Palandt wiped some spittle from his lower lip, then he appeared to notice how tense Emma was. Bewildered and shocked by his sudden mood swing, she was holding her breath.
‘I’m sorry, I got carried away,’ Palandt said, and the anger in him died down as quickly as it had flared up.
Emma wondered whether his illness might have set off a bipolar manic-depressive disorder. Deciding not to underestimate him, she invited Palandt to continue.
‘Well, Frau Stein, what should I say? They are doing all they can to intimidate me. For example they’ll put newspaper cuttings about gruesome murders in a package.’
Or a bloody scalpel.
‘As a warning that my name might appear in print too, do you see? But they’re not sticking to hints any longer. They’re rummaging through my house, threatening to beat me up. I can’t close my door any more, they broke it last time. And they were back there today.’
‘Why don’t you go to the police?’
Palandt sighed feebly. ‘There wouldn’t have been any point up till now. I mean, I don’t know who they are or where they live. Don’t know any names. What could the police do? Keep a round-the-clock watch on the house of a cancer patient? I fear they’ve got better things to do.’
‘How did they get onto you?’
‘I ordered via a Russian website.’
‘And what do you mean by till now?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You said you couldn’t report them till now. What’s changed?’
‘Oh, I see. Yes, the blackmailers made a mistake. They lost a mobile phone.’
Palandt gave a smile of triumph, while Emma’s body temperature rose by several degrees.
‘A mobile phone?’ she echoed.
‘Yes. I found it in the hall. You can get the owner’s number from it, can’t you?’
Emma shrugged. Her right eyelid started to twitch.
Yes, you can. Like a good girl I put in my contact number in case it ever got lost.
She felt sick.
‘Have you informed anyone about the break-in yet?’
To Emma’s relief he shook his head.
‘No. When I found the delivery card I decided to come to you first to pick up my medicines. I’ve got morphine at home, but I’m running out of drops.’
Palandt stood up. ‘Thanks so much for listening to me. And, of course, for the water. And please excuse me again if I gave you a fright by just coming in like that. Oh, would you have a bag by any chance?’
‘A bag?’
Palandt pointed at the torn package.
‘For my medicines. Then I can go back home and examine the phone.’
‘Why?’ Emma asked uneasily.
‘No idea. I’m not really sure yet. In truth I’m not a great fan of the police. But perhaps they can do something if I give them the name of the person whose mobile it is.’