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

“Breitner,” he called after him, his hand as firm as ever on the gun, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

Breitner stopped, and turned uneasily on the icy surface, but said nothing. Just waited.

“Whatever happened to Achim Zimmermann?”

“Your friend?” A thin contemptuous smile twisted its way across Breitner’s lips. “He was a fool.”

“What do you mean ‘was’?” Frank repeated.

Breitner’s smile thickened.

“I really should be grateful to you, Eigenmann.”

The puzzled expression on Frank’s face was not necessary. Breitner was going to elaborate anyway.

“For putting me onto Zimmermann. We might never have known about his little games if you had not made such a spectacle of yourself with your clumsy advances towards Mademoiselle Roche.”

Frank recalled that stupid evening in the wine tavern waiting in vain for Patricia. His first encounter with Lutz.

“Weak, so weak,” he heard Breitner say, and the man’s expression widened with a look almost of sympathy. “What a man will sacrifice for a woman. One might almost think you had gypsy blood in you.” He peered narrowly at Frank as if to test the truth of this hypothesis. It was plainly intended to be a defiant show of contempt. Frank ignored it.

“And his family?” The horrific scene flashed for an instant through his mind as he spoke these words. “What did they ever do to you?”

Breitner’s eyes snaked their way through the light reflected off the snow. Colder than ever. “I’ve never met his family.” He spoke with a slow deliberation which seemed to be saying that, for once in his life, he was telling the truth and he wanted Frank to know it. Then he turned his back on him to continue his slippery progress down the mountainside. For a good few minutes, Frank watched him from behind as he followed in his tracks, the images of Gertrude and her two baby boys flashing a collage of carnage across the landscape of white light.

They were completely alone now, and there was something pathetic about the sight of that arrogant bully sliding awkwardly over the vast expanse of snow. A solitary figure with the bearing of an injured animal. Now was the time to put the beast out of its misery. There was no going back.

“Breitner,” Frank called.

Again Breitner stopped, and turned on the side of the path in time to see the gun emerge from Frank’s pocket. The smile never left his lips. Frank moved closer to enjoy the fear in his lupine eyes. But there was none. They remained colder than the ice that chiselled away the rocks around them. And they glared at Frank with stony disdain.

“Put that thing away, Eigenmann. You’re not going to shoot anyone. You haven’t got the stomach for it. People like you have too much respect for human life.” His voice lingered on these last two words, and turned about on them like a thick boot stubbing out a cigarette butt in the gutter.

He was right, of course. But for all the wrong reasons.

“Trouble is, Breitner, you’re not human. You’re not even alive.”

As if to test the truth of these words, Frank dug the barrel of the gun into his ribs. Deep. Breitner winced. And instantly lost his balance in the snow. His smooth city shoes carried his feet from under him with exquisite treachery. A hand grabbed at Frank’s sleeve as he fell. But he was already out of reach, so fast was his ungainly body gathering speed as it dropped and slithered down the slope. A helpless bundle plunging into insignificance. With growing satisfaction, Frank watched him dwindle away into the distance until the dark heap came to rest a good hundred metres or so below him.

The chill of the breeze off the mountainside nipped at Frank’s face and reminded him that daylight was beginning to fade. But he felt comfortable in his sudden solitude – which was probably more than Breitner could claim as he staggered shaken and uncertain to his feet. Frank left him to his predicament and made his way back to the station before he too missed the last train down.

Yet, as he sat alone in the top compartment of the funicular, the comfort quickly began to show cracks where Breitner’s words still echoed through his mind. What did he mean about the spectacle of his advances towards Patricia? And what was the connection with Achim? He recalled that clumsy evening, the image of Lutz raising his glass to him as he left the bar, the clinging sense of menace that pursued him through the streets, the rustling leaves, the suspect shadows. He was convinced at the time that someone had been following him. So was it really he who had been so stupid and unwitting to lead Breitner to his old friend?

The severe rock face slipped away from him with a scowl on its icy black countenance, as if reminding him that he did not deserve even the tiniest comfort which its heartless austerity could offer.

‘And I have the gall to ride in luxury,’ he told himself.

Quietly, the train sank down the mountainside and dragged him with it into the pit of his own dull conscience. Into the terrors of his memory. Gertrude, her boys, and the squealing rats that crawled over their decomposing bodies.

‘Oh Achim, my dear old friend. How could you ever forgive me?’ he asked himself. ‘It was not you who betrayed our friendship. I was the traitor from the outset. And your family the defiled victim, sacrificed by my dumb stupidity.’

When the train eventually jolted to a halt, Frank stumbled out like a scatterbrained imbecile waking from a troubled sleep. What he had not anticipated was the devoted vigil of the two watchdogs. They had plainly been waiting for him to return with Breitner. And these attack dogs now barred Frank’s way when he emerged from the station alone.

Chapter 22

The two sports youth louts filled the width of the pavement with their overweening presence. They said nothing. But Frank was in no mood to play their boy-scout games.