He was exposed here, but he had to get sorted out. He would go to the Turk in the morning and tell him what he had seen in the Polizeipräsidium. The Turks would know what to do: they might, for once, even give him a little something on account. He had also written a letter to his mother, the first proof he had given her in five years that he still drew breath. In it he had come as close as he was capable to apologising to her; asking forgiveness for having destroyed her only son and extinguishing every hope and dream she had had for him. It was ironic that, after a decade of fear and threat, and five years in which his mother and sisters had probably assumed him dead, Hansi had come to terms that this was now, probably, his time. It was now that he made amends; it was now that he had left a message that would endure beyond his life.

Hansi was scared. Hansi was always scared, it was his natural state: but now his fear had switched up a gear. Somewhere, infused into his bones, was some memory of childhood that had not melted away with the flesh that had once given his frame some form. Whenever Hansi had been ill or afraid, his mother had let him sleep with a low light by his bed. The wraith Hansi now reached back to the child Hansi and remembered the soft, warm pool of light, the smell of fresh linen, the sensation of polished skin after his bath and the tickle of joy and cosy security that snuggling down into his bed had brought.

Now, twenty years on, all that was left to Hansi was a naked bulb burning bleakly and ineffectually in the ceiling as a talisman against the chills and the aches and the terrors that wracked his wasted, craving body. He heard footsteps out on the landing. Normally he would have ignored them: there was always activity in the squat, people coming and going, drunk or high, fighting or calling out in their sleep. Unmoving, he strained his ears but the footsteps had stopped.

Not faded away. Stopped.

He had just started to raise himself up on one elbow when the door slowly opened. Hansi actually found the mental time to note that he would have expected them to burst the door open, instead of gently and quietly easing it open the way his mother used to when she checked on him as a child. The older man held the door open and allowed the younger man, the one built like a bodybuilder, to enter and move swiftly and silently across the short distance to Hansi’s bed. The cry that started to rise in Hansi’s throat was muffled by the younger man’s huge, powerful hand as it clamped down hard and immovable onto Hansi’s mouth. The older man came in and closed the door. Smiling at Hansi, he produced a metal case from the pocket of his tan leather coat. Still smiling and tilting his head slightly, he held the oblong case up between finger and thumb and rattled it, like a parent teasing a child with the offer of some candy.