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

of the line. But he could see that they had not even reached the city centre. Like a lost sheep, he followed the crowds that poured out onto the pavement. And it dawned on him as they streamed onto the street that the city’s three days of Fasnacht were just getting under way. He recalled from the last time he was here that the carnival started at four on a Monday morning with drums, pipes and an endless parade of vast painted lanterns. The dense thronging crowds and droves of people on the streets came to him as a godsend. Gave him the cover of anonymity he needed on his journey through the city. And he let them lead him wherever they were headed – a murderer in their midst, however heroic he thought himself to be.

When he came to the bridge over the Rhine, he slipped away down the steps to the river where he had been accosted by Silverstone and the cloth cap. It occurred to him that there could be no better guardian of Patricia’s secrets than these swirling waters. He hunted around on the promenade for a stone that would take the pages and anchor them firmly to the river bed. Finding one of suitable size, he then wrapped the pages around the stone and threw it as far out into the river as he could. As it sank from view some thirty metres out, Frank knew that he would never be confronted any longer with the truths in Breitner’s file. He felt the last burden slip gently from his shoulders.

The relief proved premature. When he looked up, the crowds were still flocking above him towards their mysterious goal. They reminded him of lemmings, and he wondered whether it was wise to follow them. But what unsettled him in particular was the sight of a solitary figure standing out above them all. It was not only the fedora or the way he was moving more slowly, out of step with the rest, that caught Frank’s eye, as the familiar figure stopped now and then searching the crowd around him. Silverstone would catch his attention under any circumstances.

‘Is it me he’s looking for?’ Frank asked himself. ‘Has he seen me?’

He even wondered whether Silverstone might have also been at Breitner’s door on the night of the killing. Everything had happened too quickly to get a clear picture of how many there had been.

Silverstone’s role in the events that had so irrevocably shaped Frank’s life before he was thrown into prison remained as impenetrable as ever. But one thing was clear to him: whenever the American crossed his path, he seemed to be waving a flag of huge yet baffling significance in his face. This cold and absurdly early winter morning was no exception. Feeling safer with him in his sights, however, Frank hurried back up the steps and re-joined the flocking crowds on their flight across the bridge.

But in the time it took Frank to reach the throng, he had already lost sight of Silverstone. The American had melted into the mass of heads and shoulders marching on ahead of him. He could have been any one of a hundred or more figures bobbing up and down over the river. And by the time the flow of eager faces had carried him with them away from the swirling waters of the river that now held Patricia’s secrets in their grip and into the market square, Silverstone could have been anywhere.

The pavements around the square seemed fit to burst with all the people heaving into it to watch the cortège. The massive lanterns artistically decorated and daubed with obscure satire. The groups of drummers and pipers, like a macabre military parade in their grotesque masks and costumes. And confetti cast by clog-wearing figures in blue smocks and outlandish masks whose huge upturned noses competed for attention with bright yellow straw that passed for hair.

With the appearance and instant disappearance of Silverstone in this babbling current of colour and noise, Frank sensed an unseen menace in the shelter which this crowd had earlier seemed to give him. A menace he felt could strike from any direction at any time. He sought the refuge of a wall and sidled his way around to the far end of the square, where he found the relative safety of a shop doorway opposite the old town hall.

The cortège continued its procession through the square. Turning away from the heaving crowd in front of him, which was completely immersed in the parade, he slipped into the back streets and headed towards the zoological gardens and Patricia’s flat. The very thought of the sparkle in her eyes and the sweet charm of her lips as she opened the door had his heart pounding in expectation as never before.

The let-down came step by step. At this hour, he would expect the light in the window of her flat to be on as she prepared coffee and breakfast. The place was in darkness. It occurred to him that she might be out already enjoying the carnival. He tried the outside door, but it was locked. Frank recalled that, when Lutz had found this accommodation for her, he insisted that the nameplate beside her door bell be left blank as a precaution. But as Frank reached out to ring the bell, he saw that it now bore a name: ‘M. Hunkeler’. He searched the other nameplates. ‘P. Roche’ was nowhere to be found. Had he come to the wrong address?

No. Although Frank had only been to her flat once before their retreat to the mountains, this door was etched on his heart. And to see her nameplate now expropriated in this way overwhelmed him with alarm. As he was considering what to do, whether to ring the bell that should be hers anyway, the door opened. A man emerged. Mid-forties, well-dressed.

“Excuse me, does Miss Roche no longer live here?” Frank asked.

The man looked Frank up and down with