Notifications began to appear–calls missed, messages received–a dozen in total. I put the phone in my pocket and pushed my way on to the ice. I joined the circling mass of the crowd, laughed when they laughed, turned when they turned, and felt the sense of companionship that can only be found from doing a ridiculous thing with those who are as ridiculous as yourself. In that moment I loved Berlin, I loved the cold, the ice beneath my feet, the laugh that came from my throat, beautiful and vibrant, and I loved Alice Mair.

The best things cannot last for ever. Reality interferes like a bullet in the back.

After a few laps, the heat rising beneath my jumper even as my face grew numb, I felt the phone ring. I swung to the edge of the rink and answered.

“Hello?”

“Where the hell are you?” barked a voice–male, irritated, a strong French accent lacing his German.

“Potsdamer Platz. Skating.”

“What are you doing skating?”

“I like skating, I find it invigorating. I also went shopping, had a bite to eat, a pleasant walk…”

“What are you—”

“I should explain,” I cut in. “Alice isn’t in right now.”

Silence.

“Who are you?” he breathed at last.

“Your file calls me Kepler,” I replied. “Your file is full of lies. In fifteen minutes’ time, if you are not on this ice rink with a copy of Frankfurter Allgemeine under your left arm, Alice Mair is going to slit her wrists.”

“I’m half an hour away.”

“See you in fifteen,” I replied and hung up.

I skated for a few more minutes and realised I was smiling.

Chapter 48

Ten minutes after the body of Alice Mair answered the phone, I stumbled forward, my fingers brushed the back of the neck of the woman in front of me, and I switched.

Within fifteen seconds I was four bodies away and skating towards the exit.

Alice Mair stood where I’d left her, in the middle of the crowd, phone in her pocket, a stranger asking if she was OK. She did not move. She was locked, a piece snapped into place that could only be unbent by breaking, a woman frozen colder than the ice beneath her feet. Her eyes stared at nothing, and as the stranger asked again, are you OK, are you all right, her head turned to the woman who held her elbow, and she did not speak.

I sat down on a bench to peel off my boots, discovering that I had thick socks with reindeer faces on them and the beginning of blisters, and when I looked up again Alice’s shoulders were shaking, tears threatening to puncture her features.

Watch her: a thought strikes, and her hands move to her face, then hesitate, unsure whether to touch.

Watch her.

No one seems disgusted by her; she’s in no pain, perhaps her body has not been sullied and here it comes, the one question she wants to ask.

Exactly how much have I violated her flesh?

There’s another.

Exactly who has violated her flesh?

She dare not ask while the world turns around her, alone in the middle of the ice.

Alice Mair.

She will not cry.

And here–the next thought, see how it strikes into the blackness of her eye–I must be nearby.

Who held her arm when she opened her eyes?

Who is looking?

Who went away?

She turns now, ankles wobbling in her boots, and she’s looking for me. And I am sitting here, undoing my laces, knocking my blades together in a shower of shaven snow. I am happy for her to look, and in a moment she’ll reach into her pocket for her mobile phone, and then stop and think and…

there we go. She thinks and does not touch her phone. Clever, for the nasty creature that has been wearing her flesh like so many old clothes may have done things, she knows not what.

Now she is recovering her wits, she checks one last thing–the time–for how many hours has it been, how many days, since her body was acquired, and how many minutes have passed since she was freed? Will she have a sense of me? Will there be some re sidual instinct which tells her where I am and…

No.

There will not.

There is no one more humiliated, wretched or alone than the woman who waddles to the edge of the rink, knees knocking in her borrowed boots. She lowers herself gingerly on to the edge of a bench, then puts her head in her hands to hide the growing tears.

I feel…

… almost nothing at all.

I have seen this all before.

I jump from my reindeer-socked girl to a man in a checked shirt; from him to a woman composing amorous text messages, to the green-sweatshirted man scrubbing the sodden floor around the edge of the ice rink. He’ll do. Part of the furniture.

I scrub, and when I look up, a man is standing behind Alice, a copy of Frankfurter Allgemeine under his left arm. He studies her. His trousers are tucked into his socks, his socks secured with yellow bicycle clips. His shirt is tucked into his trousers; he wears his belt tight. Somewhere beneath the outer layers I suspect skintight Lycra covers his flesh. He wears several layers of glove, tucked inside the sleeves of his jacket. The only part of his skin that is exposed is his face, and even that is rimmed with hat and scarf.

I think he must be very hot under all those protective layers.

I think it unlikely that he came alone.

I finish scrubbing my patch of floor, twist the mop into the bucket, then turn and begin to wheel my work towards the door. I catch sight of one of Alice’s colleagues by the exit without even trying; there are only so many people who come dressed in full-body suits to an ice rink. He has a colleague nearby. They work in teams, one to monitor the other, a sensible precaution. I shuffle past the front desk, smiling at the receptionist, who grunts in reply.

In the heaving halls beyond I spot two more of Alice’s comrades. I walk past them without a glance to the rubbish bin smelling of vinegar into which I had tucked a plastic bag containing Alice’s wallet, her gun and my spare phone. Someone has thrown coleslaw on top of it. I scowl, wipe the bag clean and, as a security guard walks by, say, “Excuse me?” and grab his wrist.

I catch the plastic bag before it can drop, smile nicely at the befuddled boy, his hand still on my wrist, and walk away.

I had bought two mobile phones.

The other one was in Alice’s pocket.

I thumbed on the phone from the bag and called a number.

Somewhere in the spinning mass of the ice rink a phone rang.

Perhaps it was still in Alice’s pocket.

It rang a very long time, until…

A man’s voice, the same voice which had answered before: “Yes?”

“Hi there,” I said, sticking to German. “You’ve found her then?”

“I thought you wanted to talk.”

“I did. I do. We shall. You seem to have brought some friends.”

“What do you want, Kepler?”

I sucked air in between my teeth. “As of seven days ago, nothing. Nothing at all. Peace and quiet, to live my life, whatever life that happened to be. You refocused my interests. I have Coyle.”

“Prove it.”

“Scar on his stomach, claims twenty-twenty vision, is clearly mistaken, doesn’t like marmalade, four passports and a murder kit in the boot of his car, shot my host on the stairs of Taksim station and didn’t look back. Would you like his collar size too?”

A silence, a pause, a breath, the sound of the ice rink, cheap pop and easy screams, in the background. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want to know why Josephine Cebula died.”

“You know that already; you were there.”

“I read your file. I was hoping, however, that you were senior enough to know why it lied.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I will kill Coyle,” I said, “if that’s what it takes to get your attention. Who is Galileo?”