When Hanna dropped me off at the Werther Tor, the town was beginning to come to life. People were moving about the cobbled streets, on their way to mass at the church of Sts Chrysanthus and Daria or to one of the open bakeries for their morning rolls. It would simply be too conspicuous to drive up the Werther Strasse in Herr Landberg’s Mercedes, and hardly worth the risk, since I had only a few hundred metres to walk to reach home.
We had not spoken much on the way back to the town. I had half expected Hanna to ask me about the money, which was still crammed into the little drawer of my bedside table. Either I had misjudged her, however, or she had other things on her mind. She didn’t mention it at all and was preoccupied for most of the drive. When she let me out at the Werther Tor I thought she seemed to be on the point of saying something, but there was another car close behind us and she had to pull away immediately, leaving me standing alone in the shadow of the great stone gate.
I walked up the street, doing my best to look as though I had been up to nothing more suspicious than taking an early-morning stroll. Although there was a freshness in the air, the sky was a clear bright blue. I thought it was going to be a fine summer’s day. The waitress at the Italian ice cream parlour was opening up the striped awning in front of the shop. She nodded and smiled at me as I passed and, in spite of myself, I felt my spirits begin to lift. Up there in the woods, in the mouldering wreckage of a dead woman’s house, the world seemed bleak and menacing, a tortured labyrinth of winding corridors and dead ends leading inexorably to confusion and darkness. In the bright sunshine, however, the memory of the ruined house and what we had done there seemed unreal. Even the fear of running into Julius was diminished. This was broad daylight, after all, and I knew nearly every one of the people gazing out from shop doorways or strolling past with paper bags of bread rolls tucked under their arms. I even knew the sleek ebony cat that lay sunning himself on the cobbles, descendant of the inky-black tomcat who had terrorized the town’s lapdogs when I was a child. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps it really is possible to put it all behind me. Perhaps this is the end of it.
I followed the bend in the street and I was within a hundred metres of the bakery’s front door when I saw it. I don’t suppose anyone else would have recognized it: just an old black bicycle, flaking rust, so battered that the owner hadn’t even bothered to chain it up to anything. It was leaning against the wall by the river. There was no sign of Julius anywhere near it, but I knew better than to think that he had abandoned it. He must be somewhere very close by. I didn’t bother to scrutinize the street ahead. Heart pounding, I turned on my heel and walked back the way I had come, doing my best to look nonchalant, although my cheeks were burning and I was sure that the shock I felt must be evident from my face.
Damn you, I thought sickly. I can’t even go in and out of my own front door in broad daylight.
I could outfox him, though. The bakery’s back door was accessible via a little alley which ran behind the building. If I went in that way, I could be through the kitchen and upstairs with all the doors locked before Julius even realized that I was home.
Then what? I asked myself. You can’t hide forever.
I turned off the Werther Strasse, half ran up the side street to Alte Gasse, then slowed my pace. I risked a glance over my shoulder, aware of how furtive my behaviour must look. The street was deserted; no sign of anyone following me. I reached the alley and looked back again, but still there was no one. Fumbling for my keys, I slipped into the alley. It was short, a bottleneck leading to a small yard where Achim Zimmer had habitually smoked his cigarettes. I actually had the back door of the bakery in my sights, was within a couple of seconds of reaching it, the keys in my outstretched hand, when it all went wrong.
Even if my nerves had not been strained to the extent that I was almost humming like an electrical wire, I would have jumped. All I was aware of was a movement glimpsed out of the corner of my eye and then, before I had time to think of turning, of trying to escape, I was struggling in his grasp. I didn’t need to look up into his face to know who it was. Julius had found me.