Читать книгу The Skinner's Revenge - Chris Karsten - Страница 20

Abel walked back, stripping off the gloves. He had taken off the doctor’s coat and wore only the flimsy hospital gown. Folded inside the bloody coat was the face of Dr August Lippens.

He pushed the coat and gloves into one of the large green medical waste containers. Then, glancing around furtively, he used the hem of the gown to open the doctor’s car door. He retrieved his dressing gown, fumbled in the black medical bag, and found a few useful articles, including a syringe.

Without switching on the lights, he drove out of the parking lot in first gear and parked the car in a side street, leaving the key in the ignition. He made sure he’d left no fingerprints on the car, then walked back to the hospital, climbing through the window of his ward. He fastened the catch and wiped the window, removing all possible prints. With a Kleenex from his nightstand he cleaned and polished his shoes. When he was satisfied that all signs of blood had been removed, he put the shoes with the rest of his clothes.

He lowered his plump thighs onto the bed and sat, his bare feet swinging under the hem of the dressing gown. He reached for the brown bottle containing the cough syrup. His Adam’s apple bounced as he swallowed the entire bottle.

In the bathroom he took off the dressing gown, washed his face and hands, and urinated in the empty cough syrup bottle. He drew a few milligrams of the liquid into the hypodermic syringe, tapped the needle with his finger to allow the air to escape and injected the urine subcutaneously into his left armpit. Then he flushed the needle down the toilet.

On his way back to bed he deposited the cough syrup bottle and the syringe into a garbage bin at the door of the ward, filled with used cotton wool swabs, plasters and bandages. Early the next morning, before the end of her shift, a night nurse would take it outside and empty it in the dumpster.

He plumped up his pillows, got back into bed, snuggled down, wiggled his toes to get comfortable under the blankets and closed his eyes.

Half an hour later he felt the effects of the ipecac overdose from the cough syrup. He retched, and threw up in his bed. Just after midnight he pressed the alarm button to summon the night nurse.

His armpit, where he had injected the urine, was showing signs of a rapidly spreading infection. Soon his forehead was burning. At four in the morning, with the rain rattling against the windows, his white blood cell count shot up.

Delirious, with the matron and the rest of the night staff gathered round his bed, the feverish patient had just a hint of a smile on his lips. When the quack’s body was discovered in the undergrowth around the frangipani, when the time of his death was established, no suspicion would fall on Mr Lomas. The patient would have a solid alibi: he was in his hospital bed, sick as a dog, the infection having flared up again and spread. The entire night staff of Ward B would testify to it.

The poor man had been on the mend, the trauma doctor would add. If you looked carefully, he even had some of Dr Lippens’s physiognomic features.

* * *

On the second day the fever broke, and the infection was under control.

“Where’s my doctor?” Abel asked. “I want my doctor.”

“We can’t find your doctor,” said the nurse, wiping his face with a cool cloth. The swelling and discolouration had almost gone and the scars had all but healed. Only a few faint white marks were left, behind the ears and under the chin, where the prominent implant had been inserted.

“Can I go home? Dr Lippens was going to discharge me.”

“He hasn’t been at his rooms for two days. No one knows where he is.”

“How can a doctor just disappear?” asked Abel.

“It’s a mystery,” said the nurse.

“Then I’ll discharge myself. When he pitches up, I’ll phone his surgery to make an appointment for the modifications he mentioned to my nose and chin.”

“Your discharge will be at your own risk, Mr Lomas. If something happens, a new infection, perhaps, the clinic will not be responsible.”

“I’ll sign an indemnity. Bring me the form. What about my medication?”

“Dr Lippens didn’t leave a prescription.”

“Can I have something for pain? And antibiotics, in case the infection flares up again?”

“I’ll ask the trauma doctor who treated you to write a prescription.”

“Draw the curtains around my bed.”

Abel put on his clothes and shoved the hospital gown and his few personal belongings into a plastic bag. He drove to his boarding house in his 4X4 bakkie with the bull bars and thick chrome exhaust pipe. The bakkie had a Burundian licence disc and registration plates. His friend Jules Daagari had handled the documentation.

Jules had good contacts. He had recommended the boarding house, and was helping Abel with other matters as well. Jules boasted that his forger – he called him his “fabricateur” – could duplicate any document.

In his room Abel lay down on his bed with the curtains drawn. He took his medication and fell asleep. When he woke up, it was night.

He unpacked the contents of the plastic bag, removing the facecloth from around the Russell knife, and washed the knife thoroughly in warm water and a bleaching agent with a strong ammonia smell. With his nailbrush he scrubbed the blade and hilt. He didn’t know how sophisticated the forensic investigators in Bujumbura were, but even if they employed modern techniques and used a substance like Luminol, which revealed bloodstains under ultraviolet light, the bleach would have removed every trace.

For safety’s sake, he decided to get rid of the shoes he’d been wearing, as well as the nightgown. He gazed intently at the bunch of keys from Dr Lippens’s bag and wondered whether the police had begun to investigate the surgeon’s disappearance. He doubted it. It usually took a few days. Most people who were reported missing were not really missing at all. Absconded with a lover, hiding from debtors. He wondered whether, at his age, Dr Lippens had a lover. The gossiping nurse had mentioned that he wasn’t married.

At half past eleven Abel left the grounds of the boarding house and walked into the night. It was warm and the air was moist on his skin. A fog from Lake Tanganyika had descended on the city and hovered over the streets, drooping from the trees like old rags. He did not switch on his torch. In the fog every streetlight was surrounded by a dim white halation.

It took him less than twenty minutes to reach Dr Lippens’s house, where Mr Lomas had consulted with the surgeon in the front rooms that served as his surgery.

As Abel had expected, there was no light in the windows. He walked round to the back door and tried the keys until he found the right one. When he pushed open the door, he saw no flickering sensors, heard no siren. During his consultation with the doctor he had noted the absence of a burglar alarm.

The dark house smelt stale and mouldy. He inspected the rooms by the light of his torch. He found the surgery in which he had sat while strange fingers probed his face. He looked round, found a box of latex gloves on a cabinet. He pulled on a pair and switched on the computer, dropping the box into his plastic bag.

The cabinet contained patient files. He searched for L, found a file labelled LOMAS, and placed it in his plastic bag as well, along with the doctor’s personalised prescription pad.

On the computer Abel found the photographs of his former face. For a moment he stared at the familiar features. Then he sighed, and deleted the photos. Next he deleted the electronic file containing details of Patient Lomas’s reconstructive facial surgery. It was plain sailing. He used an advanced software programme himself when he recorded his cosmic observations.

Finally he picked up the doctor’s state-of-the-art digital camera and made sure that his photos had been deleted from the memory card after they were loaded onto the computer.

He began to search for the safe. He knew the doctor would have one for his personal documents and money. Despite the heavy burglar bars in front of the windows, a safe was essential in Bujumbura. Because of regular unforeseen power cuts, the residents in the old houses could not rely on burglar alarms; yet they saw no need for installing generators if there was a reliable, cheap alternative, such as a safe.

Abel found it bolted to the concrete floor inside a wardrobe in the bedroom. It was an old Chubb with a lock, not a digital code that relied on electricity. He found the safe key among the others on the bunch.

He had no interest in the wads of banknotes in Burundian francs; he was not a common thief. The personal documents aroused his interest though: the ID document and, in particular, the passport. A maroon Belgian passport with silver letters embossed on the outside: KONINKRIJK BELGIE ROYAUME DE BELGIQUE KONIGREICH BELGIEN.

He opened it at the page displaying the identity and photograph of the passport holder. AUGUST GODELIEVE LIPPENS. In the beam of his flashlight he studied the face, in particular the nose and chin. Though the passport was valid for four more years, the photo seemed to have been taken some time ago. It would do, Abel thought.

Before he left, he created a Microsoft Word document on the computer and saved it on the Desktop, where the icon – simply labelled MESSAGE – would catch the eye of anyone who switched on the computer.

Back in his room, he recalled everything he’d done, every step he had taken in Dr Lippens’s house. He’d been careful. There would be no sign of a break-in.

Now he no longer needed to be Mr Lomas, he thought. Now he could be Lippens.

When he woke up later in the morning, he would attend to the prescriptions. He had faith in Diprivan, one of the drugs his mother had been treated with when she had fallen ill. It was a white emulsion, like milk, made of soya oil and propofol. Doctors – often fond of insider jokes – jokingly referred to it as “milk of amnesia”.

Propofol was a strong sedative, usually administered as an anaesthetic, but in Diprivan, propofol was a quick-acting tranquilliser. Within forty seconds of being administered, either by intravenous drip or by injection into a large vein in the forearm, the patient fell into a coma. He would use Dr Lippens’s pad to write a prescription for Diprivan Injectable Emulsion with 10 mg/mL propofol per vial.

His mother did not survive her stroke. The pop singer Michael Jackson did not survive the overdose of propofol he had taken either. But Diprivan had never let Abel down. He had tested it on his skin donors and the results had been most satisfactory. He planned to write more prescriptions, which he would take to different pharmacies, to augment his supply. Dr Lippens, cosmetic surgeon, would be familiar with Diprivan. His prescriptions would not be suspect.

He now had three passports in his possession: a South African one, issued to Abel Lotz; the latest one, in the name of Dr Lippens; and Mr Lomas’s Portuguese one. The Lomas passport had not been difficult to acquire. En route to Bujumbura, in Mozambique, Abel had obtained it in Beira, from the real Mr Lomas.

Abel had been roaming the streets of the port, ill at ease. He was not a social creature. He was unused to strange places. He had grown up in a sheltered environment, under the vigilant eye of his mother. She had guided him along the path she had laid out for him. He had run every decision past her, seeking her approval and permission. Shortly before his fiftieth birthday his whole life had been turned upside down. In the course of a single night everything had changed. He’d had to leave behind his home, his gallery, his mother, and flee.

In Beira he had sat in his 4X4 bakkie, fearing the unknown future. Behind him were the hunters. He couldn’t stay, he had to carry on. In Bujumbura, with his friend Jules Daagari, he would be safe. Not as safe as with his mother, but Jules would help.

Abel scoured the backstreets of Beira’s waterfront. From his bakkie, watching the doors of restaurants and bars, he saw women seduce drunken men with their sinful bodies, the wantonness of the flesh that his mother had always warned him against, their bodies mutilated with tattoos and trimmings. He looked closely at their complexions, at the visible degeneration and neglect, and shuddered. These women’s skins were abhorrent to him.

He tore his eyes away from them. He was not looking for a woman, but a man. A middle-aged man, with a baby face. But the men who came stumbling out of the bars and taverns carried in the grooves and wrinkles of their faces the traces of hard lives, and Abel’s anxiety increased. He had to get away, out of Mozambique, across the border to Tanzania on his way to Burundi. But at roadblocks and border posts they would have the model and registration number of the bakkie on their computers, and they would recognise Abel Lotz’s name when he tendered his South African passport.

Then, on the day he turned fifty, he met Mr Lomas. Abel had been sitting in his bakkie late at night when, with a knock on his window, Lomas offered himself as a birthday present. Abel wound down the window and inhaled the familiar smell of brandy on a man’s breath. The smell of his father and brother. But they were in their graves, and Abel stared at the face at his window, the round baby cheeks, the full lips.

“Você pode me ajudar?”

The man was drunk and spoke in tongues.

“I’m sorry,” Abel answered in English. “I don’t understand.”

The man tilted his head, focusing his eyes on a spot somewhere behind Abel in the dark interior of the bakkie. With the back of his hand he wiped the dribble from his unshaven chin while with the other hand he steadied himself against the door of the bakkie.

“Você Inglês?”

“What?”

“Meu carro … ” With a mucus-coated hand the man waved at a car, old and rusty, leaning against the pavement near the door of the bar. “Minha bateria … ”

“The battery of your car?”

“Sim, sim.” The man nodded excitedly. “Bateria, bateria.”

Abel looked at the imploring face, the round, slightly bulging eyes.

“Get in. Where do you live?”

The man stumbled to the passenger door, got in. He patted Abel’s shoulder, leaned over and spoke confidentially against his cheek: “Você é meu amigo. Muito obrigado, obrigado, amigo.”

He gave directions.

“Is this where you live?”

“Sim, sim.”

In vain he fumbled for the door handle and Abel had to lean across him to open the door.

“Muito obrigado,” he repeated, turning to face Abel. “Por favor venha e visite.”

Abel got out and walked around the vehicle to help him out.

“You live alone?”

“Sim, sim. Venha visitar-me.”

Abel took him by the arm and steered him towards the house while the man stumbled and searched for his keys in his trouser pockets. Abel took the keys from him and unlocked the door.

“Muito obrigado, meu amigo. Tenho vinho para beber.”

The man passed out in a chair, his chin on his chest, saliva dribbling down his chin, his breath an intermittent hissing through his nose.

Abel inspected the room. A mattress on the floor, a few items of clothing on hangers suspended from the picture rail, a wooden cabinet with drawers, another chair, a portable radio on a table with a Formica top, a hotplate, dirty plates and cutlery.

The drawers of the cabinet revealed underclothes, socks and a plastic file with documents: a lease agreement for the room, registration papers for the old Toyota, a work permit, a letter of appointment as cook on the squid trawler Douro, and a passport in the name of Diego Bartholomeu Lomas, aged forty-five.

Abel lifted Mr Lomas out of his chair, locked the door of the room behind them and helped him back into the bakkie. Back at the Toyota, he unscrewed the registration plates, threw them under the canopy of his bakkie with his travel bag and violin case, got back into his own vehicle and drove off. At daybreak he reached the bridge across the Zambezi, a hundred and thirty kilometres from Quelimane. He left the road and turned into the bushes, out of sight of the main road, and picked up the sleeping squid cook.

With his strong thumbs he pressed on the veins on either side of the cook’s neck, the rising sun warm on his face. There was no struggle, just a slight convulsion before the body went limp. He rolled the cook into the water and watched the current carry him downstream to the sea – if the crocodiles didn’t get him first. Then he put the Toyota’s number plates on the bakkie and drove on. Abel had just become Mr Lomas, with a passport issued in Lisbon.

He phoned Jules from Tanzania. He had to make sure that his friend was in Bujumbura when he arrived and not on one of his expeditions. Of course he had to put Jules in the picture about the reason for his unexpected visit, prepare him if he happened to read in the papers about a man called Abel Lotz who could possibly help the police with their inquiries into several murders in Johannesburg.

“Did you read about the murders I’m being accused of?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr Lotz,” Jules said on the phone. “Small reports, hidden away on the inside pages. Many gruesome things happen in Burundi; four murders in distant Johannesburg is hardly important news.”

“Four murders?” Abel thought. “What did the papers say?”

“If my memory serves me correctly – it’s been a while, you know – two women were killed. Pieces of their skin removed. And two men, stripped of their faces. They called them ritual killings.”

“Ritual killings … ” Abel mused.

“Africa is rife with ritual killings, Mr Lotz. Sangomas kill children, use their organs for muti. In the Congo women are burned as witches, and in … ”

“Only two women?”

“That’s what the papers said.”

* * *

Jules was waiting in the coffee shop, the first test for Abel’s new face. Abel took off the glasses for Jules’s inspection.

“Is it really you, Mr Lotz? I didn’t recognise you, only the voice … and the eye.”

“It’s me all right, Jules. In my mind I’m still Abel Lotz. I just had some work done to my face.”

“Mr Lotz … ”

Abel noticed his hesitation, waited for him to speak.

“Mr Lotz, our trip to search for masks … ”

Abel put his cup down, waved with his hand in the air.

“It’s okay, Jules.”

“There have been tribal wars in Jos, Nigeria, five hundred people killed. In Mali … ”

“You’ve helped me a lot. Without you I wouldn’t have managed. I’m not used to strange places and strange people. You’ve helped me, Jules.”

“These are dangerous times in Africa.”

In Africa, Abel suspected, times were always dangerous.

“We’ll go another time, Jules, later, when it’s calmer. I’m in no hurry to get masks.”

“No? Do you have other plans, Mr Lotz?”

“Jules, I’m overwhelmed by your hospitality. But I’ll be leaving for another destination. I’m not safe here.”

Had Abel imagined it, or was there a hint of relief on Jules’s face? No, it must have been his imagination.

“Will you be coming back, Mr Lotz?”

“Later, Jules. Then we can go in search of masks. When Africa is calmer.”

“It’s a shame, Mr Lotz. I was looking forward to our expedition.”

“We’ll postpone, not cancel. Perhaps you could do it on your own in the meantime, as you did in the past. I would like to start a gallery again, somewhere in Europe, perhaps in Hamburg. The Germans love African artefacts, especially authentic relics, not the poor imitations sold by street vendors.”

Jules didn’t ask about his European plans, and Abel did not mention his e-mail friend in Belgium. No one, not even Jules, needed to know about Ignaz Bouts of Bruges.

Abel could see his friend had more on his mind.

“Mr Lotz, I’m sure that thing in Johannesburg … it’s just a misunderstanding, an unfortunate mistake, isn’t it?”

“Yes, a misunderstanding, Jules. But it’s a serious business. That’s why I had to get away in such a hurry. That’s why I feel unsafe, even here. They know I crossed the border to Mozambique. They know I’m somewhere in Africa.”

“But why flee, Mr Lotz? Isn’t it better to stay and prove your innocence?”

“Jules, you know the police. The police in South Africa don’t want to work. They get a name, decide he is a suspect, and find him guilty in advance. They will frame him, fabricate evidence – that’s what they do. They don’t search for evidence first. Isn’t the evidence supposed to lead them to a suspect? Isn’t that how it works, Jules? I don’t want to rot away in a prison cell while the real killer goes free. Do you know how many civil charges are lodged against the South African police for wrongful arrest every year? It amounts to millions, Jules. That’s why I had to leave in such a hurry. Would you be willing to sit in jail for someone else’s crimes?”

“No, Mr Lotz.” Jules shook his head. “You’d better keep running. Let them catch the real killer before you come back. Then we’ll go in search of masks together, on your way back to Johannesburg. You are going back to Johannesburg, aren’t you, Mr Lotz?”

“My mother is there – I can’t leave her on her own.”

“And the mask of Idia as well.”

“Ah, the queen mother of Africa,” Abel sighed. “It was a wonderful thing you got for me, Jules, that mask of Idia.” He wiped his cheeks, inserting his fingers under the new glasses with the amber lenses.

“Mr Lotz … don’t mention it. I just wondered about the Idia.”

“It’s okay, Jules.” Another soft sigh. “It was a beautiful gift for my mother, so fitting. You should have seen her with that mask on her face, so majestic, so pure. Now I’ll have the opportunity to view Idia’s death masks in the museums of Stuttgart and London, perhaps even the ivory mask in the New York Metropolitan.”

Jules put his cup on the table and pushed back his chair. “Mr Lotz, I –”

“Jules, I have a passage booked on the ferry. Will you take me, if you’re not too busy? Perhaps a taxi … ?”

“I’ll take you, Mr Lotz. There’s no need for a friend to take a taxi to the dock. And the truck?”

“Will you look after it while I’m gone? Drive it, if you wish.”

“I’ll look after it, Mr Lotz. It’s an expensive vehicle – must’ve cost a lot of money.”

When Jules Daagari had left, Abel ordered more coffee.

He was thrilled that only two female victims had been mentioned, not three. He was glad the warrant officer had survived. Detective Ella Neser. The slender one with the short, dark hair and the funky glasses. He would have loved to have harvested her skin as well. In fact, he had almost been finished when he’d been interrupted.

Abel did not think of himself as a killer. He was a cosmic traveller. And the skins were contributions from his donors for the covers of his journals. He already had a peacock, symbol of the constellation Pavo, for the cover of Cosmic Travels, Vol. I, and he had a hare, representing the constellation Lepus, for the cover of Cosmic Travels, Vol. II. If his work had not been so rudely and unexpectedly interrupted, Ella Neser would have donated a shooting star for Cosmic Travels, Vol. III, which would deal with his personal observations of asteroids, comets and meteors.

His plan was to have his own encyclopaedic atlas, in ten bound volumes. And on the cover of each, the tanned, tattooed skin of a young woman, soft like virgin parchment. Each tattoo – and this was a strict requirement – had to have cosmic significance. At present he had only two, but he had no doubt that in the end he would find covers for all ten his journals. There were many donors out there.