Алистер Маклин - Death Train

He managed to restart the Golf and as he slipped it into gear he began to think more carefully about the Range Rover. Had he seen it somewhere before? Had Karen mentioned it to him? The more he thought about it the more he was sure someone had referred to it in passing. He had met over a dozen different workers at the plant the previous day but he couldn’t place anyone who might have told him about it.

He snapped his fingers. ‘Leitzig,’ he said out loud.

Leitzig had a Range Rover that he used to go on fishing trips.

Whitlock’s head was throbbing by the time he found a public telephone. His suspicions about Leitzig grew stronger when he found out from the plant’s switchboard that he was not due at work until the afternoon shift. He found Leitzig’s home address in the directory, tore out the relevant page, and hurried back to the battered Golf. He would assess the damage later and use his credit card to settle up with Hertz. UNACO would refund him once he returned to New York. Kolchinsky wouldn’t be pleased

Leitzig lived in a run-down double-storey on Quintinstrasse overlooking the Old University campus on the eastern side of the Rhine. Whitlock parked the Golf at the end of the street, pocketed the Browning, then ran through the driving rain to the garage at the side of the house. He cupped his hands on either side of his face and peered through the cracked window. Although a piece of sacking had been erected as a makeshift curtain he could still see the red Range Rover inside. The paintwork was damaged on the passenger door. He couldn’t see the windscreen but he had all the proof he needed to confront Leitzig.

Next he turned his attention to getting into the house. He scaled a rickety six-foot wooden fence behind the garage and landed nimbly in the overgrown back yard where he remained on his haunches, Browning drawn, assessing the dangers. A veranda to his right, presumably leading into the kitchen. He made his way towards it through the knee-high grass, each squelching step soaking his feet more. A Christian Dior shirt stained with blood, a Richard James bottle-green suit saturated, and an expensive pair of Pierre Cardin slip-ons drenched. If they were ruined UNACO would pay for a replacement pair, whether Kolchinsky liked it or not.

He reached the veranda and tried the door. It opened.

An Alsatian was blocking his way, but instead of leaping up at him in defence of its territory it merely wagged its tail then returned to its basket to sleep. He decided against patting it, on the basis that he had already tempted fate too far. He slipped into the kitchen and closed the door securely behind him then reached down and removed his shoes.

Leitzig was sitting beside a small heater in the lounge, his back to the doorway. Whitlock paused and looked around the room in amazement. It was a shrine to one woman, with pictures of her from youth through to her middle years. Dozens of enlarged photographs, each mounted and framed, covered the walls, the ornamental mantelpiece and the chipped sideboard opposite the doorway.

All his pent-up anger seemed to dissipate and his voice sounded hollow when he finally spoke. ‘Dr Leitzig?’

Leitzig sprang to his feet and swung around to face him. There was a fury in his eyes. ‘Get out! Get out!’

Whitlock instinctively stepped back into the hallway, the Browning hanging limply by his side.

Leitzig was breathing heavily. ‘This is her room and I am the only other person allowed to share it with her. Nobody else!’

‘Then we’ll talk somewhere else. How about the kitchen?’

‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Surprisingly, Leitzig was hesitant.

‘Whitlock. You tried to kill me half an hour ago, remember?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out of my house or I will call the police.’

‘Please do, but don’t forget to mention your Range Rover in the garage. They might be interested in matching up its damaged paintwork with the paintwork on my Golf. I’m sure they’d come to some interesting conclusions. I do not think you would want the police here any more than I would.’

Whitlock was at the end of his patience, his equanimity finally deserting him. He grabbed Leitzig by the collar and slammed him against the wall. His voice was low and threatening. ‘I’m tired of playing games with you. I want some answers and I promise you I’ll get them.’

Leitzig shook his head. ‘You cannot hurt me any more than I have already been hurt. I am immune to pain now.’

Whitlock shoved Leitzig aside and entered the lounge where he picked up the nearest photograph. ‘I’ll smash them, one by one, until you tell me what I want to know.’

Leitzig stared at the photograph Whitlock was about to drop as though it were a priceless Ming vase. ‘Please, I beg of you, do not hurt her.’

‘You answer my questions and I won’t hurt her.’

‘I will answer any question you ask. Please, please, do not hurt her.’

Whitlock put the picture back on the sideboard and crossed to the heater.

Leitzig took the same picture from the sideboard and sat down in the single armchair.

‘My wife,’ he said softly, tracing his finger over the outline of her face.

‘I assumed it was. When did she pass away?’

‘Three years ago. I killed her.’

‘You killed her?’

‘She was dying from cancer. I could not bear the sight of her suffering so I killed her. I only did it because I loved her so much.’

‘Euthanasia,’ Whitlock said.

‘Call it what you like but I still killed her,’ Leitzig continued. ‘I took her back to Travemunde where we had spent our honeymoon twenty-six years before. I wanted her to have the holiday of a lifetime. On the last night there I deliberately got her drunk at dinner then took her for a walk along the beach.’ He gripped the frame in both hands and swallowed back the emotion which was threatening to surface. ‘That was when I drowned her.’

‘And you got away with it?’

‘The inquest recorded a verdict of accidental death, if that is what you mean. I did not go unpunished up here,’ Leitzig said, tapping his forehead. ‘The guilt is like a migraine. It will never go away. I have often thought about suicide but I do not have the courage to go through with it.’

Whitlock rubbed his own forehead; the throbbing was incessant. He touched the gash above his eye and was relieved to feel that it had stopped bleeding.

Leitzig seemed to notice Whitlock’s dishevelled appearance for the first time. ‘Do you want some dry clothes? I have plenty of sweaters and pants.’

It was a tempting offer but Whitlock was determined to remain in control. ‘You stay where you are.’

‘What’s going to happen to me?’

‘That all depends on your cooperation. How did you first get involved in the diversion?’

Leitzig stared at the photograph in his lap. ‘I was blackmailed into helping them.’

‘What did they have on you?’

‘I will show you. Can I get up?’

‘Where are you going?’ Whitlock asked.

‘To the sideboard.’

Leitzig opened one of the drawers and withdrew a brown envelope which he handed to Whitlock before sitting down again.

Whitlock extracted the six enlarged black and white photographs. They had all been taken with a night lens and showed Leitzig forcibly holding his wife’s head under the water. The last photograph had caught him as he was emerging from the sea, his wife’s lifeless body floating face down in the water. He slipped the photographs back into the envelope and handed it to Leitzig.

‘Those pictures would have put me behind bars for life.’

‘Who took them?’ Whitlock asked.

‘I do not know but I received them two days after the inquest.’

‘Then what happened?’