The Devil's Sanctuary (6 page)

“HERE IT IS,”
Max said breathlessly. “This is my favorite place.”

He pointed with his rod as he moved among the rocks in a damlike, still section of the rapids. All around him the water tumbled down small waterfalls and drops.

“There’s a little pool behind these rocks. There are usually five or six of them here, floating completely motionless. You just have to fish them out. I haven’t shown this place to anyone else. Just you.”

During the next couple of hours they were completely absorbed with fishing. Daniel wasn’t used to it, but he was a quick learner, and by lunchtime his casting technique was pretty good. He had had no idea that his brother was a decent fisherman. He guessed it was the element of gambling that appealed.

“Do many tourists come up here?” Daniel asked when they’d sat down on a flat rock and Max had gotten their lunch from the bikes, which they’d left in a clump of fir trees nearby.

“Tourists? In Himmelstal?”

Max handed him a ham sandwich and laughed as if Daniel had said something funny.

“I mean, it’s so beautiful here,” Daniel added.

“Not beautiful enough. The valley is narrow and shaded and the mountains are too steep for skiing or hiking. No, no one comes to Himmelstal for the scenery. They come here to avoid being seen.” Max opened a bottle of beer and held the cap in place to stop the frothing liquid from escaping. “This valley is a hiding place.”

“A hiding place?”

Max took a deep swig of beer, then sat there, one knee raised, with the bottle in his hand. He looked out over the rapids and said, “This has been a hiding place since the Middle Ages. There used to be a convent here where they looked after lepers. Right where the clinic is now. The convent is long gone, but the old churchyard is still there at the bottom of the hill. Only lepers could be buried there, no one else. Banished even in death. Unclean.”

He picked up a pinecone and threw it angrily into the water, where it was caught by the current and twisted round and round.

“A vile disease,” Daniel agreed. “I can imagine that there might have been a sanatorium here as well. After all, the Alps are full of old sanatoriums that have been turned into hotels and private clinics.”

Max snorted.

“Oh, no. Tuberculosis patients were a completely different class. They never came to Himmelstal. It was far too inaccessible. No railway. And no vehicle access before the nineteen-fifties.”

“How do you know all this?” Daniel asked, impressed.

“I got sent a brochure when I signed up for the clinic. Sometime during the nineteenth century the convent was rebuilt as a home for the disabled. For people with learning difficulties, the mentally ill, and handicapped. In other words, new groups of undesirables that people wanted to hide out of the way. The staff lived in the village, or in the home itself, and they were pretty much self-sufficient. It must have been like its own little world. Then the whole place burned down. A number of patients died. One of the patients is supposed to have started the fire.”

There was a pause as Max took another swig of beer, and Daniel saw a series of unpleasant images in his mind’s eye. To get rid of them he said, “Didn’t it used to be a cosmetic surgery clinic as well? That’s what the taxi driver who drove me up here said.”

“That’s right. The perfect hiding place for freshly operated faces. Christ, what a place. A dumping ground for poor bastards for hundreds of years. Sometimes I think you can sense it back there at the clinic. Bad vibes. That’s why I try to get away as often as I can. Down into the village or up here to the rapids.”

A fish jumped out of the water. Like a discarded knife it arced past and landed in the bubbling eddies of one of the higher pools.

“They’ve got such strength,” Daniel exclaimed.

Max smiled grimly. “They don’t get far. There’s a sluice just up there. That’s what makes this such a good spot for fishing. Right, let’s carry on.”

Max stood up and grabbed his rod.

Daniel was able to manage without instruction now, and Max moved to a rock farther out in the rapids. Sixty feet apart they each stood and fished on their own. They shouted to each other every now and then, holding up their catches whenever they caught something, congratulating each other. Otherwise they were silent, concentrating on the fishing and their own thoughts. The air was full of the smell of fir trees, and above the noise of the water Daniel imagined he could hear the sound of cowbells every so often. It sounded like the cowbell the girl in the bierstube had rung during her song.

The two brothers had now been together for the best part of twenty-four hours. And so far nothing had happened. No violent flashes of temper, no malicious remarks, no stupid practical jokes. Max seemed harmonious, happy. A bit restless, maybe, but that was just part of his character.

Daniel was also discovering that he had become more tolerant of his brother’s slightly pushy manner, his self-absorption, and inability to listen. He didn’t find it upsetting, as he so often had when he was younger. Max was evidently pleased to have him there. He’d taken him out to dinner, and here they were, fishing together. That was what Max had to offer, and these days Daniel understood the value of that sort of gift. Maybe they had finally found a frequency on which they could communicate as adults, as independent people.

The monotonous roar of the rapids, the whispering trees, and the distant cowbells put Daniel into a sort of meditative state. He hardly even noticed that Max had left his stone and was now cleaning the fish at the edge of the water. He only woke up when Max shouted at him to go and fetch some wood for a fire.

There was wood under the trees, covered by a waterproof arrangement of branches and a tarpaulin. The cut sections of wood had the letters “T O M” written on them in bright pink spray paint.

“This wood’s been marked. Is it okay to take some of it?” Daniel called.

“It’s fine. I know the farmer,” Max said from down by the river.

He had clearly made a lot of new contacts at the bierstube in the village.

A short while later they were sitting by a small fire, and while they were waiting for the flames to die down, Max said, “Can I ask you for a favor?”

He said it in a breezy tone of voice. Maybe it was to do with passing him something he couldn’t reach, or getting something, more wood perhaps. But these simple words, so gently and pleasantly uttered, struck Daniel like a punch. The air went out of him and he had to take several deep breaths before he could talk again.

“Oh?” he said stiffly.

Max stirred the embers with a stick and seemed preoccupied with this for a moment before he finally said bluntly: “I’ve got some problems.”

“What with?”

“I’ve been at the clinic for a while now and the bill has mounted up badly. Personal trainer, tennis lessons, mental coaching, massage, food and wine. No one ever mentions money, it just gets added to the invoice. In the end it feels like it’s all free, even though you know it’s absurdly expensive.”

“You can’t pay the bill, is that what you’re trying to say?”

“One of the hostesses handed it over in a pale-blue envelope during the late-night round. Discreet, smiling. I didn’t open the envelope until she’d gone. I almost fainted.”

Daniel felt upset. He found the clinic’s billing methods very odd, and in Max’s case distinctly inappropriate. Maybe they weren’t aware of his problems? But he composed himself and said as calmly as he could, “I can’t pay to get you out of the clinic, if that’s what you’re thinking. I work as a substitute teacher, and I’ll be unemployed as of this autumn. I just don’t have the money.”

Max crushed some glowing pieces of wood with his stick.

“I’m not asking you for money,” he said tersely. “I’ve got money.”

Instead of being reassured by this response, Daniel felt even more anxious.

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that I can’t get at my money. I can’t leave the clinic without paying the bill. And I can’t pay the bill without leaving the clinic. Catch twenty-two.”

“But you’re away from the clinic now, aren’t you?” Daniel said. “You come and go just as you like.”

“Only as long as I’m in my cabin at eight o’clock in the morning and twelve o’clock at night. The staff make daily rounds. To keep an eye on us, as they put it. But they’re actually making sure that no one tries to get away without paying.”

“So why do you have to leave the clinic? Can’t you just transfer the money over the Internet or something?”

“The money isn’t in a bank account. It’s somewhere where it needs to be moved to somewhere else. In person. Not digitally. In cash. The Mafia are a bit old-fashioned when it comes to that.”

“Oh,” Daniel said, taken aback. “I’m not sure I’m quite with you now. Are you doing business with the Mafia, Max?”

Max shrugged his shoulders beseechingly. Far in the distance came the quirky, clanging sound as the cows moved. Sometimes there was just a solitary little ring, sometimes a whole peal.

“Not if I can help it. But in this case I had no choice. I won’t bore you with the whole story. But I’ve got money to collect there. An investment I made that’s paid off, so to speak. Not strictly legal, as you can probably imagine.”

Daniel wasn’t particularly surprised. Max had gotten mixed up in things before. There had been proceedings and court cases. But, as far as Daniel was aware, they had all been in the civil courts. He had never actually been accused of breaking the law. Had he?

“This is positively the last time I ever do a deal like this, you can be sure of that,” Max said through clenched teeth. “I hate those criminal bastards. They’ve got no morals at all. The problem is that I’m in debt to those scum.”

“The Mafia?”

It felt unreal, and almost rather thrilling, to use that word in conversation with his own brother.

“Yes, I was forced to borrow some investment capital. And I would have paid off every last penny if things hadn’t got messed up and the profit been delayed. You don’t need to know the details,” Max said quickly when Daniel looked like he was about to ask a question. “I worked day and night to be able to repay the debt. You don’t miss a payment when you’ve got creditors like that. I asked for an extension, but they wouldn’t even talk to me. And then I collapsed and signed myself in here. Just after I arrived I got a letter from the guy I borrowed the money from. I don’t know how he got hold of the address. Clinics like this are supposed to be protected by all sorts of confidentiality, but he knew exactly where I was. He gave me a new deadline for repayment of the money. A date. And a threat.”

“He threatened you?” Daniel said, horrified.

Max shook his head.

“Not me. Giulietta. In a few brief lines he implied that he knew that Giulietta was my fiancée, and the times when she usually goes to the market, and he said he hoped that nothing bad ever happened to her.”

“Shit.”

“Now I’ve heard that my investments have come good exactly as I thought they would, even if it’s taken time. I could repay the debt straightaway. The problem is that I’m in debt here at the clinic as well, and they won’t let me go and get the money. Do you see my dilemma?”

Daniel was starting to realize what Max wanted to ask him.

“I can’t get your money for you, Max. I want to help you, but I’m not going to get mixed up in anything criminal. There’s a limit to how much help I’m prepared to offer.”

Max stared at him in astonishment, then burst out laughing.

“No, no, Daniel. I’d never ask that of you. You wouldn’t be able to do it. Dealing with the Mafia is a science in itself.”

To his surprise, Daniel felt hurt. Somewhere deep down he had already made up his mind that he might just let himself be persuaded to take this on, something entirely new in his life.

“But you said you wanted to ask a favor,” he reminded Max. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing, really. Just what you’ve been doing today and yesterday. Have a beer at Hannelores Bierstube. Cycle up here and go fishing. Wander the alpine meadows. The sort of thing you were planning to do anyway during your holiday in Switzerland. Just without having to pay for a hotel.”

“I don’t follow.”

“No? I’m just asking you to stay here while I sort things out. Three, four days at most. You take my place.”

Max leaned closer, looked Daniel in the eye and went on. “I leave here as Daniel. You stay here as Max. We’re identical twins, had you forgotten?”

Daniel sighed and raised his eyes.

“Like those stupid games we used to play as children? Or when you took a girl from me in London? Do you think it’s as easy as that? Besides, we’re not even particularly similar anymore. No one’s pointed out how alike we are since I got here; have you thought about that? Not at the clinic, or in the bierstube. No second glances, no whispering, no comments. ‘Oh, are you twins, that’s great!’ No one’s so much as raised an eyebrow.”

Max smiled scornfully. “But how could they see how similar we are when you’ve got half your face hidden?” With these last words he leaned in close to Daniel, pinching his thumb and forefinger together as if he were thinking of grabbing Daniel’s beard.

Instinctively Daniel leaned back, his hand flying up to protect his cheek.

“That’s why you grew that ridiculous thing, isn’t it?” Max went on. “So we wouldn’t look the same? You wanted a face of your own. It works, actually, I’ve noticed it too. But beneath the disguise you look just the same as me. You just have to shave it off, Daniel, and we’d be like two peas in a pod.”

“So, I shave my beard off. And look like you. And your beard grows overnight and you look like me?” Daniel said sarcastically. “If your beard grows at the same rate as mine, it’ll take you several months to get one like this.”

“If it’s real, yes.”

Daniel let out a short laugh. “You’re thinking of wearing a false beard? Well, that’s one way to convince them that you’re mad. This isn’t one of your silly student pranks. A cheap false beard—assuming you could even get hold of one here, which I doubt—would look ridiculous. It wouldn’t fool anyone.”