Nele first saw Franz drop the camera and then collapse next to her, the blood streaming off him. He uttered no sound, not even a stifled groan as he struck the metal floor with his face without trying to break his fall whatsoever.
The splintering sound of his skull cracking and nose breaking reminded her of her most horrible moment down in the pit. It was that first time she was sure she was being rescued and the darkness above had brightened a little because someone had removed that wooden cover.
Someone who had destroyed all her hopes with a single phrase. ‘Just die,’ he said before covering over her dungeon again.
The exact same person who had now returned to betray her yet again.
‘David,’ Nele wanted to yell, the name of her ex-boyfriend, but her mouth couldn’t get out much more than a broken whisper since the fear was cutting off all her air.
‘Livio,’ he corrected her, smiling. ‘I’m now going by my real name again. Not in the mood for cheap tricks anymore. David Kupferfeld has fulfilled his duties.’
He tossed the brick down next to Franz dead on the floor, wiped the dirt off his gloves on his jeans, and looked around the cold storage walk-in.
‘Why?’ she screamed at him.
‘You still don’t know? You infected me, you slut.’ He was trembling with rage, the veins of both temples throbbing. It wasn’t enough for you to get knocked up with some brat by me. I now have to spend my life in that clinic in Wedding, just like you. HIV-positive. It’s all your fault.’
Another bout of rage hit him. He grabbed Franz’s body by the collar, hauled it up and pulled it towards Nele.
‘So this was your big plan?’ she said, stunned. She couldn’t believe how easily he’d turned from a violence-prone stalker into an actual murderer. ‘All because I infected you? All because you didn’t want to support your baby?’
‘Don’t give me that.’ He pulled Franz along another half metre or so. ‘I had nothing to do with this lunatic, that’s for sure. But he is a gift from God. Your just punishment.’
Saliva gathered in the corners of his mouth as he talked.
‘When you kicked me out, all I wanted to do was piss you off somehow. So I distributed a few “presents” around your apartment.’
Nele remembered those razor blades between the cushions.
‘But then, when I got my diagnosis, I wanted to flatten you just like those tyres I slashed.’
And as dead as that rat you left in that basket outside my door.
‘But I didn’t have any plan. In contrast to this nutjob here. Man, you really are good at being a pain in men’s asses. Got no clue why he was so pissed at you, but I’m good with whatever it is he’s doing to you here.’
‘Why did you come back?’
‘Because I was worried this psycho wouldn’t be able to go through with it. And, lo and behold, it’s just as I feared: here you are, still alive. Speaking of, where’s Feli?’
‘Who?’
He dropped the corpse about half a metre from Nele bound to the bed frame.
‘Felicitas Heilmann. That doctor who was looking for you.’
‘You leave her alone!’
‘Says who? You?’ Livio shook his head. ‘Don’t worry. I did my standard routine, reeling her in. The old “charming-scammer-awakens-protective-instincts” number works every time on you chicks.’ He grinned filthily. ‘But I wasn’t looking to get into her pants. Just wanted her to lead me to you. And now I need for her to keep her trap shut. So where is she?’
Nele’s stomach tightened up. All at once, she felt a deep sorrow inside her. The fact that she was so alone and abandoned and lost had never been made so clear to her.
‘Do what you’re gonna do with me, Livio. Hit me like you used to, you hothead piece of shit. I’m not going to betray the one person who helped me.’
‘Helped you how?’
Livio picked up the brick he used to kill Franz. Nele started talking faster, horrified of sharing her kidnapper’s fate.
‘Franz hurt her really badly with an iron rod, but she was still able to help me with the delivery. There was some problem with the umbilical cord. Without her, I wouldn’t have made it. Feli took care of me.’
Livio kept two arm’s lengths away from her. The brick switched from one glove to the other.
‘You didn’t tell her about me, did you? She know who I am?’
No, dumbshit. You think we had time for a nice chat? Nele thought, furious, but she also knew what Livio was actually trying to find out – if Feli would somehow be able to testify that he had found Nele down in the hole and left her in the lurch.
That he was a murderer exploiting another person’s crimes for his own goals.
So Nele lied. ‘Yes. I told Feli everything about you. She knows who you are. If you kill me now, the police will know who it was, and you’ll be sitting behind bars your whole life.’
Livio recoiled a second, then he roared with laughter. ‘You’re lying. I know you too well.’
Still snickering, he pulled Franz back up, grabbing him by his long hair this time, then held him under his arms and shoved him at Nele on the metal bed.
She was buried under the weight of her dead kidnapper. She writhed in disgust, shoved the lifeless body off the bed.
‘You want it to look like it was Franz?’ she screamed once she was free, now stained with the blood of her kidnapper. She wiped at her face like mad with her one free hand but only ended up smearing it all over. ‘You seriously believe you’ll get away with this? The father of the child is the first one they always suspect.’
Livio shook his head and pointed at the camera on the floor. ‘There’s a video of the guy tormenting you. And there’s not a single thing linking me and this nutjob.’ He laughed again, cynically. ‘Yes, I do think I’ll get away with it.’
Livio threw the brick down next to Franz’s corpse on the floor. Far enough from Nele that she couldn’t get at it. But near enough to suggest to investigators that she’d killed her kidnapper in self-defence when he was careless enough to get too close to her.
The only question is, what’s Livio going to do with me? Nele thought in panic. Does he aim to kill me? Or simply leave me again?
She glanced towards the door, and couldn’t help but smile.
‘Besides, I was extremely cooperative,’ Livio said, though she was hardly listening to him now. ‘Plus, you told your gynaecologist I was the father before we had broken up. Oh, I got a call today from a nurse at the Park Clinic. Your dad’s lying in a coma there.’
‘What?’ He had her full attention again. ‘What did you just say?’
‘They’re trying to communicate with him somehow and they asked me about your perfume.’
My father’s lying in a coma?
‘What happened?’
Livio didn’t answer her, or had at least misunderstood the question, since all he said was: ‘He’s supposed to be dying. So I thought to myself, your old man definitely won’t want to give up the ghost knowing about his slut daughter sick with AIDS. I told them it was Shangril, that gross scent you keep in your bathroom in memory of your mother. Remember that time you made me smell it? Like I cared what your mother smelled like alive. Anyway, in the end it was just too good. They don’t make Shangril anymore, but I was courteous enough to tell them about a remainder shop in Friedrichshain.’
Nele closed her eyes. After all the pain she’d had to suffer over the last few hours, both physically and mentally, after all that had already strained and torn at her thoughts, the idea that her father was also about to die was now pushing her beyond the point of suffering.
‘You made a big mistake,’ was all she was able to say. Quietly, calmly, like someone having an awkward yet wholly civilised discussion.
‘With the perfume?’ Livio asked.
‘No, with the brick.’
‘I’m wearing gloves. There’s no fingerprints on it.’
‘That’s not what I mean. Franz was using it as a doorstopper.’
She watched Livio look over at the exit. Saw how his eyes widened, how they nearly fell out of their sockets as he realised what she’d already realised a little while ago. The door to the cold storage walk-in had closed all the way. And locked shut in doing so.
Livio whipped around and reached the door in two quick strides and patted at the aluminium panel.
‘You might as well spare the effort,’ Nele said and bent down with all the strength she had left. Stretching her free arm towards the corpse.
Livio meanwhile searched in vain for some kind of handle or opener. But the door only had a keyhole.
‘We’re trapped. And it’s in an airtight prison, sealed off,’ Nele said, although she wasn’t so sure. But after all the fear that she’d had to endure, it felt good to turn the tables and make Livio start panicking.
‘No. Nooo. It can’t be,’ he shouted and kicked at the door like a madman.
Nele meanwhile found what she was after, and pulled her hand back out of Franz’s anorak.
Right then Livio turned her way. She froze where she was.
‘What you got there?’ he said.
She clenched up the fingers of her tied-up hand.
‘Is that a key?’ her ex guessed, and she shook her head none too convincingly.
‘All right, fine,’ she said. ‘The psycho had a key on him.’
Livio came at her laughing crazily, and Nele slid back away from him on the bed, as best as she could.
‘Give it to me.’
Livio punched her in the stomach, bent down to her. She groaned, yet didn’t give in. He tried bending back her clamped fingers, and she didn’t last long with all his strength.
‘What’s this?’ he asked in surprise as she finally showed him what was inside her palm.
‘Chewing gum,’ she said, telling the truth.
Franz had some in his jacket. Nele had grabbed it with her free right hand and switched it to her left.
‘No key?’ Livio said, pale with despair.
‘Nope,’ Nele said, exhausted, but ready for anything.
‘No key, we’re going to die in here together.’
Then Nele slashed half his eyeball and down his cheek and shredded his carotid artery, all using the carpet knife she’d also found in her kidnapper’s pocket.