Read Online Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson - Free Book Online Page A

rained during the night. I mop up the water, using tissues from beside the bed. I’m about to go and shower when Klaus knocks on the door and asks if I’d like coffee.
    /
    I sit at the breakfast bar in a fluffy white bathrobe, finishing the café-au-lait Klaus made for me before he left for work. On the breadboard is a paper bag of croissants but I’m not hungry yet. When the hum of the fridge cuts out I can hear the murmur of traffic. Otherwise it’s quiet. I put on another pot of coffee, then I read yesterday’s paper and the latest edition of
Der Spiegel
. Later, I walk to the window and stare out over the pale-yellow gables of the houses opposite. On the roof of an office block a huge Mercedes sign revolves. It’s strange how distant Rome seems, and how irrelevant; I thought I would miss it more. I picture the apartment on Via Giulia — the shelves of books on war and politics, the golden sofa with its lilac and burnt-orange cushions, the autumn sunlight spilling across the parquet floor … What will my father think when he returns? Will he put his bags down in the hall and call my name? Will the atmosphere strike him as unusual? Will the rooms look warm and lived in, or abandoned, bereft, forlorn? First my mother left. Now me.
    I turn back to the breakfast bar and pick up the scrap of paper Oswald gave me. I scrutinize his handwriting, which isn’t spidery, as I imagined it would be, but forthright, bold. I study the creases in the paper, the perforated edges. I’m so used to looking for signs and clues; there’s nothing that can’t tell me
something
. When I hold the piece of paper to my nose I smell cured meat. I fetch Klaus’s phone and call the number.
    Oswald answers almost immediately. I tell him it’s the girl who took the package to the station.
    “I know,” he says. “I recognize your voice.”
    I don’t say anything.
    “I wasn’t expecting you to call,” he goes on. “I thought you’d lose my number.” He pauses. “How did the negotiations go?”
    I smile. “Really well.”
    “I’m glad.”
    “What are you doing?”
    “Right now? I’m walking the dog. It’s my day off.”
    “You have a dog?”
    He laughs. “Is that so strange?”
    I smell the piece of paper again. Perhaps it isn’t meat after all. Perhaps it’s dog.
    “You wanted to show me something,” I say.
    “That’s right.”
    Since he is working long hours for the next three days he suggests we meet on Tuesday, in the evening, at a fast-food place on the Ku’damm.
    “You can’t miss it,” he says. “There’s a neon sign. Three red sausages with white flames underneath.”
    I imagine Oswald walking in a drab windswept park, his eyes glistening like olives in brine, his black shirt flattened against his raw pale body. He throws a stick, which cartwheels through the sky. His dog runs off in the opposite direction.
    That afternoon I visit Schloss Charlottenburg. The gardens are shrouded in a clammy mist. Statues stare at me with blurred blank faces, and tree-lined avenues end in nothingness. Though I don’t see any other people I have the feeling someone is following me, or about to make contact. Why now, though? I have only been gone a few days, and I’m not due in Oxford until the first week of October. So who am I expecting? Massimo? He would be hopeless in Berlin. I can almost hear the piteous voice he puts on when he thinks he’scoming down with something.
Mi sento fiaco. Pienso di avere un po’ di febbre
. I don’t feel good. I think I might be a bit feverish. What about Daniela? I see her in skinny jeans and a parka with a fur-trimmed hood. When we hug each other, her body begins to tremble and I realize she’s crying.
Sometimes you frighten me
. I hold her tight.
It’s all right, Dani. It’s fine. Everything’s fine
. But Dani isn’t likely to appear. She’s still at her parents’ house in Puglia. Is there anyone who might be able to track me down? The airline database will show that I boarded