Winter had arrived. There could be no doubt about it. Up here in the former smoking room of Park Clinic, now used as a patient lounge, the harbingers were already clear to see. The floor-to-ceiling panorama windows of the main building’s fifth floor offered a view far above the grounds of this facility that ten years ago had still been strictly a mental hospital but had now, under the guidance of its unconventional chief physician, grown into a comprehensive and highly renowned private hospital.
The oaks’ and lindens’ leaf-deprived branches bowed in the wind. The lawn that a week before the patients and their loved ones were still using for one last soak of the fall sun was now looking grey and hard. You could easily imagine it covered by the snow that would soon fall from the dirty grey blanket of clouds and release a constant drizzle.
Nele got a chill thinking about what it would’ve been like getting kidnapped in this crappy cold and wet weather. She then got a chill thinking about all that she had been spared. Thanks to the woman who was sitting across from her in a wheelchair and warming her hands with a coffee. Two scoops of sugar, but no milk.
Neither one of them was going to be drinking milk anytime soon.
‘You really doing okay?’ Nele asked, and Feli nodded. Her head was still bandaged, no wonder considering the wounds she had thanks to Franz. The blow from the iron pipe hadn’t been especially hard, according to the doctors, presumably not with any intention to kill, but it had still led to a severe concussion and a fracture on the top of the skull. When the police officers had found the doctor in that pit in the decommissioned meat plant, their first thought was that she was dead.
And Feli presumably would have died down there where Franz left her if Hirsch and his team hadn’t discovered her just in time.
‘Everyone’s talking about what a marvel you are.’ Nele smiled and grabbed Feli’s hand. ‘No regular midwife could’ve pulled off such a miracle with injuries like that.’
Feli smiled, and just like Nele’s her gaze wandered over to the Maxi-Cosi car seat holding the little baby munching on its pacifier in peace. With big eyes opened a tiny crack, and a blissful angelic smile on its dozing face.
‘Without you, we would’ve died down there.’
‘You mean without your father,’ Feli corrected her, gently.
In truth, both deserved the honour. Franz had frisked Feli and found a doctor’s ID in her pocket. When she confirmed his question of whether she could act as Nele’s midwife, he had lowered her down into the pit using the winch despite her severe head wound. Down there, among the filth, the stench and the tight confines, the doctor had performed a superhuman feat.
Feli attempted to play it down. ‘All I did was try and remember that nursing internship I had in gynaecology.’
If she hadn’t solved the problem of the umbilical cord with some bold handiwork, mother and child would’ve likely died together in agonising pain. And if her father hadn’t solved the mystery involving Livio, they never would’ve identified their location using his phone signal. And never found the calf fattening facility in Liebenwalde.
‘Have you decided on a name?’ Feli asked, prying her eyes off the infant.
‘Viktoria,’ Nele said, and they both had to laugh.
‘The goddess of victory,’ Feli said. ‘That fits.’
‘Sure does.’
They had found Viktoria in a calf pen past another walk-in refrigerator. Somewhat chilly and thirsty, but alive and kicking and otherwise unscathed. Franz actually had, true to the logic of his madness, never wanted to kill the baby but only wanted to keep it separated from its mother. Whether Viktoria had suffered any long-lasting damage, and especially whether she’d got infected during her now quite dramatic and bloody birth from Nele, couldn’t be determined at this time and would be clarified within six weeks at the earliest. But that was beside the point considering the fact that she had already survived what was guaranteed to be the hardest test of her life. HIV was not a death sentence any more. That Viktoria was alive was all that mattered now to Nele.
Again Nele thanked Feli. ‘You’re my hero.’
‘I’m an idiot,’ the doctor replied, but smiled. ‘As a psychiatrist, I probably should’ve recognised that something wasn’t right with Livio.’
Nele scrunched up her nose. ‘Believe me, I’m the first to admit that a person can fall for his charms. Me, I even fell in love with his wild and reckless ways.’
‘But you were never taught to recognise the narcissist behind the facade. I haven’t been able to get over missing that.’
Feli pulled her phone from the dressing gown that all patients wore here in the clinic, and placed it on the table.
‘Yesterday, after I could think again clearly for the first time, I called that pharmacist in your building. On my request, they went through all the surveillance videos again.’
‘And?’
‘On the same day of your kidnapping, when your father sent me to your home? He’d got inside your apartment.’
‘Livio?’ Nele was confused.
‘Yes. You left the door open in your rush after your water broke, which was the way I got in too. He came in and looked around, and I must have surprised him.’
Feli showed Nele her left hand, and at first Nele wasn’t sure what she meant. Feli explained: ‘He heard me talking on the phone with Mats about your kidnapping. Once I was in the bathroom, he turned off the lights and smashed my fingers in the door so that he could take off. On the tape you can see him running out of your building right before me.’
‘But, what was he doing at my place?’
Feli leaned forwards and placed her other arm on the table as well. They now held both of each other’s hands.
‘A narcissist can’t get over rejection. He stalked you after your breakup, Nele. Later he probably wanted to exact revenge for being infected and for the baby, which he saw as an imposition. The police are assuming he was also responsible for slashing the tyres on your street. He only did the other ones so it wouldn’t look so suspicious.’
Feli’s revelation made Nele remember that razor blade between her cushions. Your blood kills! Livio had apparently placed them there right before she had the locks changed because of that scare with the rat basket.
Way too late.
Rats, car tyres, razor blades, revenge.
It all sounded logical. There was just one thing Nele couldn’t figure out.
‘How did the two of you end up searching for me together?’
Feli nodded. ‘He cleverly manipulated me. Makes me so mad. I should’ve recognised it.’
The psychiatrist leaned back a little without letting go of Nele’s hands. ‘First, Livio hears in your apartment that you’re being kidnapped. He wants to know more. He follows me to Klopstock and manages to reel me in using sleight of hand.’
‘He stole your phone.’
‘Exactly right. And then lets himself get caught like he’s trying to sell it.’
Nele gently drew her fingers away and stood. ‘Oh, man, I can see it exactly, how he set it all up. In the beginning I ran around after him like some love-crazed teen. And those sleight-of-hand tricks were how he made his living.’
Feli still looked sad. ‘At the very latest, I should’ve become more suspicious when we were in that old dairy and split up. I checked the front basement area, he checked the back. When we finally parted ways upstairs, he looked at me in such a funny way. But I had just slipped while searching around and had got all dirty. I wasn’t able to interpret that wariness in his eyes. Now I know that he was worried I’d realise he’d discovered you. And then he was suddenly in such a hurry to leave me alone there. Damn it. I shouldn’t have called Mats – I should’ve called the police right away.’
‘No, you did everything right.’
Nele sat down again and reached for Feli’s hand. She touched the doctor’s engagement ring in doing so. Silver filigree topped with a half carat.
‘Do you have a new date?’ Nele asked cautiously.
Feli blinked and looked towards the window. It was only 4 p.m. but already much dimmer, and the streetlamps in the park were starting to come on.
‘Janek is the opposite of what I look for,’ she said quietly. ‘He is not wild, not chaotic, not unpredictable.’
She turned her head back to Nele. ‘But the thing I’ve searched for my whole life, it keeps trying to wreck me.’
Nele swallowed and wiped an incipient tear from the corner of her eye with her index finger.
‘You’re telling me.’ She gave Feli a sad smile. She too had always been on the hunt for a certain prey and it had only ever punished her. Livio wasn’t the first who’d hit her – who’d needed to dominate. Though he was the first who’d wanted her dead and in the process had even, always the freeloader, tried to exploit the crimes of a certain fanatical animal rights activist.
The two women said nothing for a while, just holding each other’s hands and listening to the soft creaking of the patient fridge and the gurgle of the coffee maker next to the door.
Finally Nele mustered the courage and said: ‘You know, my father always told me that falling in love happens automatically. You’re powerless against this sudden, all-encompassing feeling that strikes you like lightning. “Falling in love is random,” he always said. But, love itself…’ Nele took a brief pause, in which the last of the park lights came on, bathing nature in a sulphurous yellow light. ‘Love is a decision.’
Feli nodded, but Nele wasn’t certain she was following.
‘There’s no partner that fits a person one hundred per cent. Maybe it’s only seventy – or eighty. And there will always be people who fulfil their significant others twenty to thirty per cent. The question is: do you stick to your decision anyhow, or do you break it off with every new challenge and keep on looking?’
‘You have a smart father,’ Feli said, and Nele thought she saw her face darken a little. Maybe she was recalling the day that Mats had gone away.
‘So?’ Nele asked, stroking Feli’s engagement ring again. ‘What about Janek? Have you decided?’
Feli took a deep breath. ‘He did. Janek still wants to marry me. Despite everything. But I…’ She pulled her hand back. ‘I have to think about it. I’m still not so sure.’
Feli reached for her coffee, which had surely gone cold in the meantime, and made a hand gesture like she was shooing a fly. ‘But, there’s something you need to do now.’
Nele felt a lump swelling in her throat and stood up, still a little unsteady on her legs. She had been lying too long. Her muscles were flabby.
‘You’re right. I should hurry.’
She picked up her car seat with a sleeping Viktoria, thanked Feli once more for everything, then she left the visitor’s lounge and started out on the hardest journey of her life.