3 : Jump

It had been snowing in Hanover; the roofs were white with it under a full moon when we touched down. He was waiting on the other side of the gate, a short man with a deerstalker hat and a long green woollen scarf wound several times round his neck. He was rubbing his hands and blowing into them, watching me as I came through. 'From the office?' he asked me. 'Who are you?' 'Floderus. Have you got any baggage?' 'No.' 'OK. I've got a car here.' He led the way with short energetic steps, his hands in his coat pockets now. 'I want to see the clinic,' I said when we got outside. 'Did he tell you?' 'Yes. I only just caught the doc there: he's off on vacation first thing in the morning.' We got in the Mercedes. It was the only condition I'd made to Croder: I wanted to know everything I could about Schrenk, if I were going to do anything for him. 'What was it like in London?' Floderus asked. 'Pissing down: 'I should've known.' He got off the autobahn at the Hanover-Herrenhausen exit and drove south on Route 6 as far as the river. 'Are you expecting any problems?' I asked him. 'What? No.' He did it again. 'Why?' 'Fond of the mirror.' 'Oh. Habit.' I supposed he could have been in from the field; sleepers and a-i-ps aren't normally so nervous. 'What's this man's name?' I asked him. 'What man?' 'The doctor.' 'Oh. Steinberg.' Along Dorfstrasse he turned right and began slowing. The clinic was just after the church, a long white building with a board with gold letters. Floderus pulled up. Steinberg opened the door to us himself, tall, stooping, wrapped in a dressing-gown with cigarette burns on it, a man who worked too late. He took us straight into a consulting-room and I let Floderus stay. We spoke in German. 'You wish to know about your patient here, I understand.' 'Yes. I want to know the state of his mind.' He considered this, staring at the top of his desk through thick round glasses. 'I know nothing at all about his present state of mind, of course. He was abducted in violent fashion, and that would have induced further shock. I have no means of knowing what has happened to him since, in terms of his state of mind.' 'What was he like just before the abduction?' He lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke. 'At that time he was quite alert, quite normal. The nightmares had stopped, and he did very well in tests. Still rather bitter towards those people, understandably. We felt he -' 'Bitter?' He glanced up quickly. 'He harboured a grudge against them. Don't you feel that was understandable, Herr Matthofer?' 'I suppose so,' I said. It was as far as I could go; he didn't know who we were. But something was odd: we don't harbour grudges against the opposition, whatever they do to us; there's nothing personal: it's dog eat dog. I didn't see why Schrenk should have been 'bitter'. 'He put up quite a struggle,' the doctor said. 'The place was in a mess, with blood on the carpet and some glass from a broken syringe. One of my staff ran into the street after them, but they didn't stop.' 'You called the police?' 'Immediately. We are not used to that sort of affair in my clinic. It was very disturbing.'