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

Frank, the man’s powers of recollection were sharper than his. As soon as he caught sight of the weary traveller from Cologne, he moved up the aisle of the tram in Frank’s direction.

“Mr Eigenmann, what a fortunate coincidence,” he said, sibilating the last syllable with particular effect and causing Frank to squirm inwardly as the man lowered himself into the empty seat beside him.

“I’m sorry. Have we met somewhere before?” Frank asked. While the man’s presence nauseated him, he saw no good reason to drop his guard and make his feelings felt. He preferred to know who he was dealing with first.

“We have a mutual acquaintance,” was all he offered.

The way he inclined his head as he spoke, like a self-satisfied hen, instantly put Frank in mind of that fruitless evening in the wine tavern, where he had waited in vain for Patricia. It was not enough to identify the man by name, but it told Frank where he had seen him before.

It was on that evening – after the man had raised his glass to Frank as he was leaving the tavern – that he had been pursued so mysteriously through the streets and become embroiled in the dealings of Breitner and his cronies. And it was this sequence of events which led him to assume now that the mutual acquaintance he spoke of was Breitner.

“Why fortunate?” Frank asked.

“Fortunate for you at least, Mr Eigenmann.” The man’s smile spread even wider across his face with particularly sinister smarm. “You see, I’m in a position to give you some advice which you would find very much to your benefit.”

“And why would you want to do that?”

“Let us say because I like you, Mr Eigenmann. Quite simply because I like you.”

He knew that Frank did not trust him an inch, and this clearly pleased him, adding an even bolder contour to his self-satisfied smile. But he was also shrewd, and he knew too that Frank’s curiosity would compel him to seek a way into his confidence. That all he had to do was wait.

“Well? What’s the advice?”

Frank’s response was clumsy in its abruptness. He was suddenly impatient for that confidence. The man sensed his hunger and preened himself on it with the manicured nails of a usurer exacting every ounce of advantage from his position.

“Mr Breitner is looking for you, Mr Eigenmann.”

“That’s no great surprise,” Frank said. “Nor am I sure it qualifies as advice.”

The man’s eyes narrowed as he fixed Frank with a sideways gaze.

“If you value your skin, Mr Eigenmann, I would strongly recommend you stay away from the apartment of Mademoiselle Roche.”

All at once a light went on in Frank’s memory. And the tired rehearsals of his brain were rewarded with a flash of inspiration. Those words had put him in mind of the last time he was with Patricia in her flat, of the fierce banging on the door that had so rudely trespassed on the early alpenglow of their lovemaking.

“Are you Lutz?” he asked.

The man answered with a hint of fabrication in his smile. It gave Frank the impression the question had unnerved him.

“This is my stop,” he said as the wheels of the tram ground to a halt. “It was a pleasure meeting you again, Mr Eigenmann.” Whereupon the man Frank took to be Lutz rose and melted away into the anonymous crowd behind him.

He felt the cold air of the city sweep in through the doors of the tram as they opened to let his greasy counsellor out. The man was instantly lost in the busy exchange of commuters. And when the doors closed again on the draught, Frank appreciated the cocoon of warmth that he knew he could count on until the next stop. But his slippery, self-appointed saviour had left him with a sense of apprehension. A foreboding that only served to heighten his awareness that the next stop would not be long in coming, that he would soon be treated to another blast of the wintry Bise which blew right across central Europe from the steppes of Siberia and so forcefully drove his need for shelter.

Frank now regretted his decision to take the tram into town. There were taxis. He could even have walked. It was not so far. Had he done so, he would have avoided the misfortune of running into Lutz and would now be happily on his way to Patricia’s flat. As it was, he found himself caught in a tangled web of doubt that held him fast in his seat, uncertain as to his next move.

The tram seemed full to bursting as more passengers climbed on board the further it continued into town. The air was becoming thick with the body heat. Hemmed in now by the standing passengers who crowded around him, he felt impotently small. Coats towered densely into the space above him, which narrowed a little more with inexorable malice at every stop of the tram. He sensed the heat of this confined space apply a pressure that came perilously close to his limits of endurance. The needle was in the red zone and still moving. His skull ached with the heat and the noise. He was aware of nothing else. The heat, the noise and the growing pressure in his head, which felt about to split open and gush its hot serous fluid on the spark of anxiety that Lutz had left behind.

In the havoc of this suffocating tension, his mind craved the deliverance of fresh air. He struggled to his feet through the thicket of anonymous coats, and forced a way to the doors of the tram. Crazed panic scored a line through the expression in his eyes so ferocious that a path spontaneously cleared through the dense wall of people around him, and he reached the doors in time to see the river speeding past. The tram slowed down as it reached the other side of the bridge, and when the doors opened, it was a caged and desperate animal they