JF03 - Eternal Read Free Page A

boyishness in his posture hinted at the youth who had preceded him, the silver that sparkled in the gold of his three-day-old stubble prefigured the older man to come.
    A woman approached from the dunes behind him: she was as tall as him and was dressed in a shirt and trousers of white linen. She also was barefoot, but carried a pair of low-heeled black sandals in one hand. The wind wrapped itself around her too, pressing and smoothing the white linen sleek against the curves of her body and making wild cables of her long dark hair. Fabel did not see Susanne approach and she stood behind him, dropping the sandals onto the sand and snaking her arms through his arms and around his body. He turned round and kissed her for a long time, before they both turned back to face the sea.
    ‘I was just thinking,’ he said at last, ‘that you could almost forget who you are, just standing here.’ He looked down at his naked feet and pushed at the sand with his toe. ‘It’s been wonderful. I’m so glad you came with me. I just wish we didn’t have to leave tomorrow.’
    ‘It has been wonderful. It really has. But, unfortunately, we have our lives to get back to …’ Susanne smiled consolingly, and when she spoke her voice was spun through with a light Bavarian accent. ‘Unless, that is,’ she continued, ‘you want to ask your brother if he needs another waiter.’
    Fabel drew a deep breath and held it for a moment. ‘You know, would that be so bad? Not to have to deal with all the crap and the stress.’
    She laughed. ‘You’ve obviously never worked as a waiter.’
    ‘I could always do something else. Anything else.’
    ‘No, you couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I know you. You would start missing it within a month.’
    He shrugged. ‘Maybe you’re right. But I feel like a different person here. Someone I prefer being.’
    ‘That’s just being on holiday …’ The wind blew a webbed veil of hair across Susanne’s face and she tugged it out of the way.
    ‘No, it’s not. It’s being here. It’s not the same thing. Sylt has always been special for me. I remember the first time I came here – I felt I’d known it all my life. This is where I came after I was shot,’ Fabel said, and his hand brushed, involuntarily, against his left flank, as if he were unconsciously checking that the two-decades-old wound had really healed after all. ‘I guess I always associate this place with getting better. With feeling safe and at peace, I suppose.’ He laughed. ‘Sometimes when I think of the world out there …’ He nodded vaguely over the sea to where the mass of Europe lay unseen. ‘The world we have to deal with, I get scared. Don’t you?’
    Susanne nodded. ‘Sometimes. Yes, I do.’ She circled him with her arm and placed her hand over his, over where his wound had been. She kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’m getting chilly. Come on, let’s go and eat …’
    Fabel did not follow right away. Instead he let the North Sea wind scour his face for a few moments more, watching the waves froth against the wide shoreand the few wind-driven clouds scud across the huge shield of sky. He listened to the cry of the seabirds and the fuzzy roaring of the ocean and wished, desperately, that he could think of some alternative to becoming a waiter. Or any alternative to becoming, once more, an investigator of death.
    Fabel turned and followed Susanne towards the dunes and his brother’s hotel and restaurant that lay beyond.
    The North Frisian island of Sylt lies almost parallel to the coastline where the neck of Germany becomes Denmark. Sylt is now connected to the mainland by a thread of man-made causeway, the Hindenburgdamm, upon which a rail line conveys Germany’s wealthy and famous to their favoured domestic holiday location. The island also has a regional airport and a regular ferry service running to and from the mainland, and in summer the narrow roads and traditional villages of Sylt clog with shining Mercedes and