Read Online JF04 - The Carnival Master by Craig Russell - Free Book Online

remember who you are. You adopt a new identity without the biography of your real one.’
    ‘But Aichinger hadn’t lost his memory.’
    ‘No. But if he hadn’t killed himself he might have walked out of that door and disappeared. Not just from the world but from himself.’
    ‘God knows there have been times when I’ve wished I could have disappeared from myself. Standing in front of Aichinger while he blew his brains out was one.’ Fabel smiled bitterly.
    ‘Well, you are, in a way. As soon as you walk out of the Presidium for the last time and put police work behind you.’
    ‘Yeah …’ Fabel took another sip of wine. ‘And leave it all to the likes of Breidenbach.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The new breed.’ Fabel sipped his wine.
6
.
    Stefan pulled up outside the all-night convenience store attached to the petrol station. He’d been at work until an hour ago. Now he felt good: freshly shaved and showered; wearing a brand-new shirt and his best cologne. He had phoned Lisa and she had agreed he could come and stay the night. This was the only store he knew that stayed open this late and it always had a good range of wines.
    He had been seeing Lisa for a couple of months now. She was a great girl. A good laugh. Smart, and pretty with it. They had been drifting along in a casual manner and he genuinely had fun in her company, but Stefan was beginning to think that Lisa had ideas of it becoming a more serious relationship. He didn’t want that. Or at least he thought he didn’t want it. Things were fine as they were and he wasn’t ready to get serious withanyone. Although sometimes the idea didn’t seem so bad. But the fact was that, at the moment, the only thing Stefan had time to be serious about was his career. He had tried to explain to Lisa how important being a policeman was to him. He was up for his Commissar’s exams in a couple of months and he had to get his head down to do some serious study. Not tonight. Tonight was going to be fun. But first he had to pick up the wine.
    Stefan knew there was something wrong the instant he walked through the door.
    The door chime drew the attention of the two men who were the only others in the store. A thin man with long, lank hair and dirty-looking clothes stood in front of the counter; the middle-aged Turk who ran the store was behind it. The two men were still. Too still, too tense. The young man turned suddenly to face Stefan. Stefan could see the fear in his eyes, the jerky motion as he swung his arm around to point his gun at him. Stefan held his hands away from his body.
    ‘Easy …’ he said. Stefan’s training kicked in and he did a threat analysis. He took in as much as he could in as short a time as he could. The gun was an early Walther P8. Practically an antique. No, the barrel was too short for a P8: it was a P4, the type used by the Hamburg police after the war. Still, it was old and it didn’t look cared for. Stefan wasn’t entirely sure that it would be in working order, but it was impossible to tell for certain. ‘Just keep calm,’ he said, realising that the young man with the wild eyes and unwashed hair was the most frightened person in the room. Stefan thought back to the way Principal Chief Commissar Fabel had handled the situation in Jenfeld. ‘Just take it easy.’ Stefan sawthe shake in the gunman’s arm. The red rims to the wild eyes. A junkie. Desperate. Frightened. And Stefan’s training told him a scared man with a gun is infinitely more dangerous than an angry man with a gun. Stefan did a mental calculation of the chances of the gun jamming and, if it did go off, of the junkie missing his target.
    ‘Stay where you are!’ the junkie shouted at Stefan.
    ‘I’m not moving,’ said Stefan calmly.
    ‘You …’ the junkie called over to the Turkish shopkeeper. ‘Fill a carrier bag with the money from the till.’
    The Turk exchanged a look with Stefan. He had served Stefan many times before and knew that he was a policeman. The Turk