By a strange quirk of fate, it was Herr Wegener who had given him Carbone’s number.
Carbone told him that, in among the villa’s telephone records, he had found the number of a gynaecologist in Merano. And putting two and two together . . .
At first, when the Trusted Man explained the reason for his visit, the gynaecologist (a white moustache, a bald pate between two tufts of curly hair) lost his temper.
How dare he waste his time?
The Trusted Man made him change his mind. It did not take long.
The doctor remembered Marlene, who, as far as he knew, was called Brigitte Egger, since that was how she had introduced herself to him. A very beautiful woman, and very happily pregnant. She had even confided over the telephone the name she had decided to give the baby.
“Don’t tell me. Klaus.”
“How did you know?”
“The trout in the Passer told me. Do you have anything else for me, Doctor?”
He had to insist a little, but not too much.
The doctor handed him Marlene’s file. The state of her pregnancy (everything normal) and her destination (a clinic in Switzerland).
Pregnancy. Theft. Escape. Clinic.
Marlene had bought herself a safe haven, the Trusted Man thought. Not a bad idea. Nobody knew she was pregnant. Nobody would think of looking for her in a clinic.
Having left the surgery, the Trusted Man made a call. Pretending to be the gynaecologist, he asked after his patient. He used the name Marlene had used to sign the doctor’s papers: Brigitte Egger.
The Trusted Man had no idea who this Brigitte was – a relative? a friend? a made-up name? – but took note of it for any future investigations. Best not to neglect anything.
Frau Egger had not shown up at the clinic yet. Perhaps something had happened to her? The Trusted Man reassured the secretary that everything was alright.
He said goodbye, wiped the receiver with a silk handkerchief and hung up.
Something had happened. But what?
There were still a few pieces of the puzzle missing. For example, the gynaecologist had sworn over and over again that he had nothing to do with the clinic. Even Carbone had never heard of it. So either it was chance (except that the Trusted Man had long ago stopped believing in chance) or Marlene had an accomplice. Or, if not exactly an accomplice, then someone with enough money and connections to help her one way or another.
Who and why?
Finding out would take him a step closer to his target. And so he set off for Switzerland.
Most of the roads had been cleared, but snow ploughs were still operating on some stretches, and the Trusted Man had to wait, listening to dull music on the car radio. It was a tiring journey, from Merano to Val Venosta, the Reschen Pass, the Swiss cantons.
He stopped just once, to refill, and chatted with the petrol station attendant about the rapid rise in the cost of petrol.
“It’s because of the financial crisis.”
“They say it’ll be over soon.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Nobody believed it. They had a good laugh.
When the Trusted Man took out his stuffed wallet, the attendant stopped being polite.
Despite exceeding the speed limit – something he rarely did – the Trusted Man got to the clinic just seconds before it closed its doors to visitors. He politely persuaded the woman at reception to let him in. He only needed a few minutes. It was an important matter.
“Extremely important, you understand?”
Now, sitting and leafing through a magazine, he was doing just what would have been expected from a man like him: discreetly checking the watch that protruded from his sleeve cuff as he turned the pages.
He was not reading the articles but admiring the photographs, fascinated by how casually they would skip from the picture of a little girl burned by napalm to an advertisement for a personal hygiene product. Then he grew bored with this game and passed the time thinking about does and vixens.
Wegener, Carbone and even Gabriel the dress designer had formed the wrong opinion of Marlene. All described her in more or less the same terms: a frightened doe who had gone crazy. Now that he possessed more information, he had a more precise portrait of Marlene.
This was not the whim of a young woman who had suddenly come into money, but the actions of a mother trying to protect her own cub (from what? from Wegener’s money?). The more the Trusted Man thought about it, the more convinced he was that their description had been misleading.
Marlene was no doe. She was a vixen.
And hunting a vixen required cunning, time and patience. Vixens have sharp teeth and are far-sighted. They can smell danger several kilometres away.
Hunting a vixen was—
“I’m Doctor Zimmerman.”
The Trusted Man stood up and shook hands with a short man wearing tortoiseshell glasses that made him look like a know-it-all sixth-form pupil.
“If you’d like to follow me . . .”
The doctor’s office had walnut panelling and smelled of pipe tobacco. The Trusted Man wasted no time. He placed Marlene’s file, which he had purloined from the gynaecologist with the moustache, on the desk.
“Your wife?”
“I only want to know who paid for the room.”
“Didn’t she?”
“Just tell me who paid. It wasn’t Frau . . . Egger, since at the time the booking was made, it would have been – how shall I put it? – impossible for her to raise the required sum without prompting questions.”
Zimmerman crossed his legs and tapped his front teeth with his index finger. “Are you from the police? Is the young lady a criminal?”
“No.”
“Are you a relative?”
“No.”
The doctor got to his feet. “In that case, you’re wasting my time and yours. Our clinic is well known for its privacy rules. Have a good evening.”
Had he not been hunting a vixen, the Trusted Man would have tried to reason with this skinny man with the thick, myopic lenses, but he was tired, and Dr. Zimmerman’s tone was getting on his nerves.
He took a pair of steel pliers from his leather bag. Not a tureen of soup or a portion of spicy chicken wings – one of his specialities – but a pair of steel pliers and a plastic bag containing ice and three fingers: index, middle and ring finger. The ice had partly melted and pink-coloured water had formed at the bottom of the bag.
“I was sorry to cut them off. They belonged to an artist. Art is one of the few things of any value in this world. I see you have a beautiful reproduction of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” Picasso is too violent for my taste, but I suppose you must have chosen it because you, too, like art. Don’t you think there’s something unique about artists?”
The colour had drained from Zimmerman’s face. “You . . .” he began, then stopped when he saw the Trusted Man start to screw the silencer onto the barrel of his gun.
“Unfortunately,” the Trusted Man continued, “you are not an artist. For all your fine qualifications, you’re not even a real doctor. Doctors are useful. But you’re not an artist or a doctor. What do you do for a living? You administer. You’re a bureaucrat.”
The Trusted Man pointed the gun at the little man’s head. Then he lowered the barrel to his stomach.
“How many bureaucrats are there in the world?”