We don’t know who you are.” Lotte surprised King by speaking, and he had to move slightly so that he could look into her face.

She blinked back at him, paler than before but strangely beautiful with her blond hair spread across her shoulders where it had fallen during the struggle.

“You will be fine. I’ll see to it. We have doctors. Trust me.”

“Let my daughter go.”

King looked toward the front of the shop, suddenly afraid that Eric was going to run away.

“She is only a child. Please, let her go.”

King raised a hand, motioning that she should be quiet.

“I promise I’ll give you no trouble if you let her go,” Lotte tried again.

“That isn’t going to happen. I’m sorry.”

The bell sounded above the door.

Cook jogged back toward them, stopping just short of King.

“Get the woman and put her in the car,” King said in English, now that there was no point in pretending to be German.

Cook nodded, then nervously approached Anja and Lotte.

Anja tensed, half turning to Cook as she hunched across her mother, causing Cook to look at King, unsure of what to do next.

King lowered the pistol. “Help him to put your mother in the car, and then we’ll get her some help.”

Anja looked unsure as Cook nodded, holding out his hands, palms out. He gestured that they should lift Lotte together. Anja nodded and Cook approached cautiously before crouching down. He tugged on the tourniquet once more and then grabbed an arm; with Anja’s help, he lifted Lotte from the floor.

King stepped back as Anja and Cook supported Lotte between them. They headed for the front door. He looked briefly at the tailor on the floor and then bent down to pick up Lotte’s handbag. He saw a cash register at the back of the shop and quickly moved around the counter to open it.

There was less than three pounds inside, but he took the money and then knocked the register onto the floor. He looked once more at the dead man and gave a slight shake of his head. It was time to go.

 

CHAPTER 6

YOU SAID YOU were going to take us to the hospital.” Anja’s face was wet with tears.

Her mother’s head lolled in her hands as the car thudded through a rut in the snow.

Lotte moaned softly.

“I didn’t,” King replied as he eased the car to a halt at a red light.

“You did! You said you would!”

King looked over his shoulder at Anja and then at Cook, who was crouching in the footwell of the backseat, pressing against the wound at the top of Lotte’s leg.

Cook’s hands were wet with blood.

“I said I’d see to it that she was okay.” King turned back to looking at the traffic lights, which were still resolutely stuck on red.

“She needs the hospital, please!” Anja shouted, tears tumbling, looking first at the back of King’s head and then at the top of Cook’s.

“Maybe we should call the embassy, Frank?”

Cook sounded panicky. King glanced at Anja in the mirror and then at her mother. He could see that Lotte’s cheek was daubed with some blood off Anja’s hands.

The snow, which was still falling, had cleared the streets of pedestrians and traffic. King lifted his foot from the brake and thought about driving through the red light, before changing his mind again and deciding to wait.

He pressed down again on the brake. He didn’t want some bored cop pulling him over when he had a woman bleeding to death on his backseat. The windscreen wipers juddered on the glass as the snow lessened; he switched them off and looked again at Anja, who was whispering to her mother as she stroked her face.

“Keep an eye on her, Eric; they’re whispering.”

Cook looked up at Lotte and Anja. “She’s out cold.” Cook shifted his position so that his head was inches from the back of King’s. “We really need to get her to the hospital, she’s bleeding out.”

Anja started to cry again.

The lights finally changed and the car started to move.

“Just keep her alive; maintain pressure on the wound. We’ll sort things out when we get to the flat and I get to speak with control.”

COOK LOOKED AT Anja and Lotte, chewed down on his lip, then returned to pressing on the wound. King had collected a handful of woolen scarves as they had left the shop, and Cook picked up another to wrap around the three blood-­soaked ones that were already on Lotte’s leg.

A rainbow of colors that was slowly staining deep bloodred.

Blood pooled around his fingers when he pressed the wound. He looked up to check if Anja had seen how bad things were. She had. She sniffed and wiped her nose, then met Cook’s gaze.

“Please,” she whispered. “My mother is dying, you have to help her.”

The car jolted and Lotte groaned again. Cook looked down at her and then wiped his face, smearing it with blood.

“She needs a hospital, please,” Anja tried again, reaching forward to help Cook tie off the scarf he was wrapping. Her hand brushed against the back of his, he looked up at her, and she took hold of his fingers.