The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

“The choice is yours,” Frank shouted over the rush of air, as Horst released the catch on the door and let the side wind tear it from his hand. But he hesitated too long on the threshold for his own good. With a sharp boot in the kidneys, Frank helped him on his way. Wolfgang was in no position to offer any more resistance than the dead weight of his body, and with only a little coaxing, he followed his partner without knowing what he had let himself in for.

Closing the door on the pleasures of vengeance proved a tougher proposition than exacting the revenge itself. But when eventually he swung the door to, his elation was complete. And he was unable to suppress a laugh, which bordered on hysteria. Patricia still stood where he had left her, looking beaten, confused and frightened. She had good grounds for sharing in his mirth, but fear had paralysed her every move.

“Come on,” he said, putting an arm around her without thinking. “Let’s get you back to our compartment and have a look at you.”

She accepted his gesture without a word. But he sensed that it was not so much a positive acceptance as the resignation of defeat.

Once in the light of their compartment, he could see that she had been badly beaten about the face. Her left eye was already blue and swollen, as was the embattled line of her bloody upper lip. The trauma lent her face a cruelly misshapen quality that underlined the obtuseness of her beauty. Not certain and not altogether caring whether his attention was appreciated, he touched the bruises lightly with his lips.

“This is a hell of way to start a holiday,” he whispered.

The trace of a smile appeared to flicker in the intact parts of her face. But any impression of affection was abruptly censored by her pain. Or perhaps the hint of a smile was simply the flash of light shooting through the trees as they sped past the window. She said nothing.

“What were they doing here anyway? Were they looking for us?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Her words came out ravaged and warped by the injury, and made her wince as she spoke.

“Okay, don’t say another word.”

Frank sat down beside her again, one hand on hers and a comforting arm around her shoulder – more cautiously this time, with the circumspection of a refugee seeking asylum. But she seemed glad to accept the gesture now, and nested herself tenderly in his arms, letting her hair cascade away beneath his coarse unshaven chin. They remained like this, in silence, until they had to change onto a narrow-gauge line up into the mountains.

Patricia sensed the nervous tension when she took Frank’s arm as they alighted onto the platform in Landquart to catch the connecting train. Like her, he found it hard to believe the incident with Wolfgang and Horst could have passed unnoticed. Even if he had managed to keep his revenge discreet when he bundled them both off the train – which seemed especially unlikely in the case of Wolfgang, who looked as if he had never known what it meant to be inconspicuous from the moment he was born – it struck him as highly improbable that the two of them would be travelling without Breitner. And if that were the case, then he would be wondering where they were right now.

Since the colourful bruises on Patricia’s face would only add to her glaring presence on the station platform, she covered herself as best she could with her scarf and installed herself in a quiet corner of the waiting room. Frank meanwhile made sure their path was clear and went to locate their connecting train to Davos. Although he could see no sign of Breitner, he felt uneasy. He had convinced himself by now that even a first-class train journey would be below the dignity of a man like Breitner; that he would almost certainly get Lutz to drive him wherever he wanted to go in his Maybach Zeppelin. But he could not shake off a sense of being watched. And he could not escape the feeling that, even if Breitner was not on the train, he was travelling. And that they had a common destination.

It was already dark by the time their little red Rhaetian Railways train rolled through the sleepy village of Klosters and on into Davos. Even in the railway station, the air was clean and fresh. And when they walked outside, the bracing Alpine chill invigorated the lungs so agreeably that he could appreciate why doctors all over Europe sent their wealthy tuberculosis patients here. As if to reinforce this liberating sense of vigour that came with the mountain air, he felt a sense of relief to find that Breitner was not among the holiday-makers who poured from the train. This made him feel a little easier about suggesting to Patricia that they walk from the station.

“It’s not far,” he said, taking her suitcase, “and the cold night air will do the swelling good.”

For the first time on their long journey, she managed something that unmistakably passed for a smile.

“It already feels much better,” she assured him. “But you still haven’t said where you’re taking me.”

“It’s a little place that belongs to a friend of the family. My father’s lawyer, actually. After my father died, he said I could have the use of the place whenever I felt in need of a holiday.”

It was good to feel the crunch of snow underfoot and the cold air in the lungs. It took him away from the oppressive greyness of the last few weeks around the basin of the Rhine. Put him in mind of the times he used to come on holiday to the Alps with his father, who always maintained it was for Frank’s education. But Frank felt his father saw it more as a good opportunity to get away from home whenever he was back