It has snowed in the night; the snow has laid a white sheet over the world, and, at least for a moment, returned its innocence to her. From up here the city looks as if it has sprouted from a white crystal.
A beautiful image. A beautiful, final image.
The wind up here is cold, and prickles his face like needles, but he scarcely feels it. The man beside him is shivering. Ever since he gave him the gun, he no longer speaks, only shivers.
The killer is silent because he has understood. If he shoots they will both be plunged into the depths, no matter who the bullet hits. The handcuffs see to that. He threw away the key as soon as they assumed their position on the parapet. He thinks he might even have heard the soft pling as the metal struck the roof of the restaurant one hundred metres below.
The horrified expression of the man at the moment of realisation! They are two dead men sitting on the parapet and there is nothing anyone can do.
He doesn’t want to spare him the fear of imminent death, those torturous final minutes knowing that the end has come, and that it is inevitable.
He had to wait the entire night, and when the killer finally emerged from his car half an hour ago on Lietzensee, still intoxicated, and gazed into the barrel of a gun, he had no inkling of what awaited. He pulled out his purse, but soon realised it wasn’t about money.
With the gun in his coat pocket he drove the killer onto the Funkturm and into the lift. The attendant didn’t notice a thing, and let them out on the viewing platform on the upper floor. ‘You haven’t exactly picked the best day for it!’
They stood facing each other for a moment in silence, before he forced the killer upstairs, out onto the platform, into the wind and cold. There he took the handcuffs out of his pocket and gestured towards the parapet. The killer still didn’t know why, but he climbed to the top of the railing, shivering with fear and cold, and babbling, endlessly babbling, to drown his fear. Then he sat down, knees facing outwards, hands clinging to the rail until his knuckles turned completely white.
A killer frightened to death. Babbling like a child.
For a moment he gazed at the white knuckles before pushing the piston all the way down. A single shot for himself, that’s enough, the killer should be fully conscious for his own demise. Then he sat down next to the man, clicked the handcuffs shut and listened to his jabbering.
‘What’s going on here? This is dangerous! Did Rath send you? Don’t go thinking you can intimidate me like this!’
Since he has held the gun in his hands, the killer no longer speaks. He has understood the significance of the gesture. Even a pistol can’t help you now.
Victor Meisner will die in the next few minutes, because that’s what Wolfgang Marquard wants, and even with a gun in his hands he is powerless to prevent it.
Down below, police cars are circling. They have picked up his trail again. Perhaps the lift attendant did notice something after all.
All the better, let them see it!
It is almost time, the pain is over. He feels the fine film of sweat on his skin. All his muscles relax, completely loose now. He is ready.
Just one question occupies his mind.
Will he be able to hear it?
Can it be heard at all?
Then it comes and answers all his questions, because he can hear it. Hear it approaching, as quickly and inexorably as a raging tornado. Hear it ploughing everything else to one side, the roar of the world, the whistling of the wind, even the unbearable racket deep within his own heart until, finally, it arrives.
The silence before death.