‘Just one moment…’ Feli stood and tried protesting.
But Klopstock kept pressing the button for the intercom and said with fake kindness: ‘Can I call you a taxi, Frau Heilmann?’
Feli nearly choked on her words and had to cough from anger. ‘You know something? I couldn’t stand you before I met you. Thank you for now giving me even more reason not to.’
She strode resolutely out of the office and tried to slam the door behind her but was prevented from doing so by a mechanism that made sure the door closed softly.
What now?
Feli took a deep breath, gave a friendly parting nod to the reception lady, who wasn’t at fault for her boss’s impossible behaviour, after all, and stomped back to the elevator without knowing where to turn next.
Not true.
She basically knew exactly what she needed to do, but she was afraid of doing it. How would Mats react to her news that there was a possible connection between Klopstock and a taxi driver with the nickname Bono but that she couldn’t tell how that would help him get Nele free?
Her phone rang right as she pushed the button for the elevator.
Janek!
She wanted to dismiss the call but did it wrong and got him on the line.
‘Darling, where in the heck you been hiding this whole time?’
Using a term of affection didn’t hide the tension in his question. Her fiancé was clearly irritated, which Feli understood quite well. He’d probably been searching long and hard for some rational explanation why he’d been unable to reach his soon-to-be wife either on her mobile phone or landline with just a few hours before the ceremony. She should’ve been at home, freshening up, blow-drying and doing her hair, possibly with a glass of champagne in her hand, yet another manifestation of all the anticipation filling her every breath.
Instead she’d let his texts and calls go unanswered and had now picked up at possibly the most inconvenient time of all.
All worked up, confused, and without a plan.
‘I’m at a colleague’s on the Ku’damm,’ she said more or less truthfully and pressed the elevator button again since she wasn’t getting any signs that the elevator was moving anywhere.
‘Where are you?’ Janek sounded so dumbfounded, she might as well have confessed that she’d spontaneously emigrated to Australia. ‘You’re not still working, are you?’
‘No,’ she said, forcing herself not to get short with him. It would’ve been easy for her to launch a counterattack, simply by asking why certain privileges only applied to the male in the marriage. He was the one who’d gone into the office today and not her. But paying him back with such a comeback was only projecting her anger on him when it was really about herself and the situation she was in. An impulsive surge of goodwill had let her be taken in by a person whose concerns she’d wanted nothing more to do with. He’d already used her once after the death of his wife. Even though he knew that she loved him and wanted far more from him than only one night, he had misused her as temporary consolation. And he dropped her again as soon as Nele had found out and never wanted to see him again. A stronger man wouldn’t have only stayed with his wife for the final minutes of her death – he would’ve given the future a chance and attempted to create a new life for himself, one in which Feli might have had a chance too. But Mats had fled and left her behind.
‘Something bad has happened to Mats Krüger’s daughter,’ Feli told her fiancé after deciding not to taint her big day today with a lie. ‘I’ll see you at home in a bit, okay? Then I’ll tell you everything.’
As much as I can.
‘Huh,’ Janek grunted over the phone, and Feli wasn’t even sure whether he’d heard the name Mats Krüger.
‘A half hour more, then I’m home,’ she promised and included an ‘I love you’ when Janek had nothing to add.
Well, that’s not exactly setting the best mood for the big celebration, she thought and looked at her watch. She had exactly three hours and twenty minutes until the registry office.
Ugh.
Now she was mad at herself for sending Livio away after he’d dropped her off in his banged-up Renault here at the corner of the Ku’damm and Meineckestrasse. Now she had to figure out how to make it home on time without a car. The streetcar was probably faster than a taxi.
Ping!
The elevator opened, but Feli didn’t get in. At the very second the chime sounded, she’d realised the mistake she’d made.
Just now, in Klopstock’s office.
She turned around and hurried back to the reception desk.
‘You know, I was thinking,’ she said to the beauty behind the reception desk.
Klopstock!
He had put out his hand for a shake but she’d rebuffed him. Feeling slighted, angry about her apparent dismissal.
‘The thing is,’ she told Klopstock’s reception lady, ‘I’m getting married today and still have to run all over town.’
His hadn’t been a dismissal at all, but rather an offer: ‘Can I call you a taxi?’
‘And, the good doctor was saying he could recommend a dependable driver.’
‘Dependable?’ The reception lady crinkled her nose. ‘He was supposed to pick the doctor up from home this morning, but he never showed up.’
‘That so?’ Feli could feel her cheeks flushing from the excitement. This meant that she wasn’t far off. The only question was why Klopstock had just prevaricated so much. And which one of her findings made him so visibly nervous, possibly even scared.
‘Could you try the driver again anyway?’ Feli asked.
Without saying a word, the reception lady fished a tattered business card from a note box and hooked her phone headset behind an ear.
‘We’ll see. Maybe Franz will pick up now.’