Sunken faces, bloodshot eyes, scrawny and nearly emaciated bodies belonging to people who could only raise their heads wearily, their hands folded in their laps.
As Feli passed through the waiting room of the Wedding Medical Centre, she couldn’t help thinking that all the people who worked here owed their livelihoods to personal tragedy. Tumours that embedded themselves in the lungs and spread metastases, radiation-resistant growths, autoimmune diseases whose treatment cost as much as a small car. This was obviously cynical and unfair. It was like saying that policemen profited from criminals. And yet Feli remained wary of that discreet luxury she’d encountered after opening the sliding glass doors so cleverly integrated into the former industrial building that they didn’t look strange in the old-fashioned walls. On the way to the reception, black-and-white photos on those walls recalled the past labours of this erstwhile printing house, now the medical centre run by Doctor Professor André Klopstock for treating the chronically and the terminally ill.
Then there was the patient who’d shamelessly jostled in front of Feli at the reception counter. He had more than enough energy. ‘Take heart, Solveig,’ he said to the doctor’s assistant behind the counter. ‘I mean, just look at me.’
The lean, roughly twenty-five-year-old dark-haired man took a step back towards Feli and in doing so shortened that distance requested for patient privacy. She was now the involuntary witness to a stage-worthy performance.
He grasped his chest with his feigned theatrics that had already elicited a smile from the motherly-looking assistant. ‘I’m at the end of my rope.’
‘I’m so sorry, Herr Kress.’
‘Livio. Please call me Livio.’
Feli rolled her eyes at the obvious flirting tactic.
‘I can’t fit you in anywhere, Herr Kress. And you know that.’
‘But I need my vitamin cocktail. Please, Solveig. Look into these brown eyes. At this part-Italian and entirely honest face.’
The man dropped to one knee and extended his hands in prayer to the assistant, beseeching her. She shook her broad head and pinned-up hair with regret.
‘You just had an infusion the day before yesterday.’
‘Which did me soo much good.’
Solveig placed a finger to her lips and appeared to consider something. ‘Would you take me out dancing tonight?’
‘Are you being serious?’ Livio asked, taken aback that his ploy might actually have success. He pulled himself up and patted the dust off his black cargo trousers.
The doctor’s assistant thwarted him with a smile. ‘No, I’m not. It was just a joke. You know insurance won’t accept that on a whim. If you want another infusion this early, then you pay out of pocket.’
Livio sighed, pretending to wipe tears from the corners of his eyes.
‘Then this might be the last time that we ever see each other again, Solveig. Please remember me when you read the headline: “He died all alone under a bridge. From a lack of vitamins.”’
Feli felt her whole body wince as the man abruptly turned around and ran right into her. She staggered, had to grab at the counter so as not to fall. That sent another jolt of pain through her squashed hand and it was all she could do not to scream out.
‘Oh, my bad, I’m sorry,’ the man said like he meant it, staring at her with his wide, dark-brown eyes. He held her firmly by both arms and asked, ‘Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to.’
His facial features comprised a peculiar combination not easy to classify. Angular on the one hand, which gave him a roguish, even slightly shifty aura. On the other hand, his eyes were so large and his mouth so full that Feli could’ve understood if Solveig really had been receptive to Livio’s attempt at flirting.
‘No, no, it’s fine.’ She shook off his hands, one of which held her shoulder and the other her hip as if he’d wanted to dance with her.
‘You sure?’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘I really am sorry.’
He took his leave with a sweeping gesture, not forgetting to wink at the doctor’s assistant one last time.
‘Such a scammer.’ Solveig kept smiling at him, then greeted Feli. ‘How can I help you?’
Good question.
She wanted to find out any connection between the supposed cab driver and this clinic – if there was any. Just five minutes ago, this had seemed like an audacious and yet reasonable idea to her. Now she wasn’t sure how to tackle it.
She was a psychiatrist, not an investigative reporter, let alone a detective. The only investigations she was supposed tackle today were whether her wedding dress fitted correctly and how she was going to keep her hairdo looking good in this drizzle all the way to the registry office. Instead she was playing Miss Marple for a former lover. And, strictly speaking, by searching for Mats’ daughter she was also helping him rediscover the main cause for their estrangement.
He never would’ve taken off to Buenos Aires if it wasn’t for Nele.
‘Is Dr Klopstock here?’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
Feli shook her head. ‘It’s personal. We’re colleagues.’
She didn’t need to tell Solveig that they didn’t know each other personally. Klopstock was known all over town, at least in professional circles. This wasn’t so much due to his – admittedly – respectable success with treatment as to his amazing business sense. He wasn’t just an oncologist but a psychiatrist as well, which gave him the advantage of being able to treat, as well as invoice, both the biological as well as mental impairments of his often terminally ill patients. He also operated one of the city’s largest blood laboratories and wrote popular non-fiction bestsellers with titles like: The Klopstock Method: Beat the Cancer of Your Soul So Your Soul Can Fight the Cancer.
‘Sorry,’ said the doctor’s assistant, ‘but he’s over in the clinic on Ku’damm today.’
Klopstock, seeing himself as more of an entrepreneur than a doctor, had several branches spread out over the city. He gave them the pretentious title of ‘clinic’ even when they were only one storey in a renovated old building.
‘Can I give him a message for you?’
‘No, but thank you.’ Feli moved to leave, but she thought otherwise when she searched her jacket pocket for her phone and felt the folded piece of paper.
Well, why the heck not…
Now that she was here, she might as well give it a shot.
‘Do you know this man?’ Feli asked and showed Solveig the photo the pharmacist had printed out for her.
‘Hmm…’
The assistant reached for reading glasses and scrutinised the zoomed-in, black-and-white video still. It wasn’t the best quality but better than many of those manhunt photos the police used to find subway thugs and other criminals from public surveillance cameras.
The assistant pointed at the lanky man with the gaunt face, whom Feli was calling a student. ‘You mean the taxi driver?’
‘Yes.’
She thought she’d spotted a brief flash of recognition on Solveig’s face, yet the assistant only shook her head and was about to say something when Livio suddenly barged in.
‘Look, my dear Solveig, what I just plucked for you!’
Adding a charming smile, Livio squeezed in next to Feli, leaned across the counter and handed the doctor’s assistant a bouquet of long-stemmed chrysanthemums.
‘Put those back now,’ Solveig demanded, no smile on her face this time. ‘In that vase by the doorway.’
Feli couldn’t tell whether Solveig’s sudden change of mood had anything to do with the Livio’s brashness or with the photo she handed back to Feli as soon as Livio pushed off again.
‘I don’t know him, sorry. I have to go see to something in the lab now.’
Solveig stood an On Break sign on the counter and said good day.
‘Very well, if you say so.’
Feli heard the front door close, Livio presumably having just left. When she turned back to the counter she saw Solveig had withdrawn to a back room, leaving her alone in the reception area.
All right, fine. I was high time she rushed back home to start changing anyway.
She put the photo back in her pocket and planned to call a taxi but found her other pocket empty. Irritated, she patted all her the pockets, in vain. Her phone was gone.
Could I have left it lying in the taxi?
No. She remembered she was still holding it when she stepped out of the taxi, then put it away.
In her trench coat.
That she had on the whole time.
Without taking it off.
Nothing had fallen out of it – she would’ve heard especially here on the clinic’s hard parquet floor. And even then it would’ve been lying right at her feet. Which meant it could only have happened when Livio had bumped into me, and held onto me…
LIVIO!
Her heart started racing, and she felt her hand throb with pain again.
‘That lousy bastard,’ he hissed, looking around, and rushed over to the door the patient had vanished through, into the stairwell.