Comments: The patient has clearly been troubled for some time with an overweening sense of his own infallibility. He presents with a disturbing level of overconfidence in his own abilities. He has a grandiose self-image and is reluctant to concede the possibility that he might be subject to valid criticism.

When challenged, he appears offended and clearly has difficulty masking his indignation. He sees no need to defend himself, regarding it as self-evident that he is right, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. His capacity for self-analysis is clearly limited. A typical response to a question is to deflect it with a question of his own. He shows a marked reluctance to examine his own behaviour or the consequences of his actions.

He lacks insight and the concept of a wider responsibility. He has mastered the appearance of affect, but it is unlikely that this is more than a convenient mask.

Therapeutic Action: Altered state therapy initiated.

1

Blue is one colour the Danube never manages. Slate grey, muddy brown, dirty rust, sweat-stained khaki; all of these and most of the intermediate shades sabotage the dreams of any romantic who stands on her banks. Occasionally, where boats gather, she achieves a kind of oily radiance as the sun shimmers on a skin of spilled fuel, turning the river the iridescent hues of a pigeon’s throat. On a dark night when clouds obscure the stars, she’s as black as the Styx. But there, in central Europe at the turning of the new millennium, it cost rather more than a penny to pay the ferryman.

From both land and water, the place looked like a deserted, rundown boat repair yard. The rotting ribs of a couple of barges and corroded components from old machinery, their former functions a mystery, were all that could be glimpsed through the gaps in the planks of the tall gates. Anyone curious enough to have stopped their car on the quiet back road and peered into the yard would have been satisfied that they were looking at yet another graveyard for a dead communist enterprise.

But there was no apparent reason for anybody to harbour idle curiosity about this particular backwater. The only mystery was why, even in those illogical totalitarian days, it had ever been thought there was any point in opening a business there. There was no significant population centre for a dozen miles in any direction. The few farms that occupied the hinterland had always required more work to make them profitable than their occupants could provide; no spare hands there. When this boatyard was in operation, the workers had been bussed fifteen miles to get to work. Its only advantage was its position on the river, sheltered from the main flow by a long sandbar covered in scrubby bushes and a few straggling trees leaning in the direction of the prevailing wind.

That remained its signal selling point to those who covertly used this evidently decaying example of industrial architecture from the bad old days. For this place was not what it seemed. Far from being a ruin, it was a vital staging post on a journey. If anyone had taken the trouble to give the place a closer look, they would have started to notice incongruities. The perimeter fence, for example, made of sheets of prefabricated reinforced concrete. It was in surprisingly good repair. The razor wire that ran along the top looked far more recent than the fall of communism. Not much to go on, in truth, but clues that were there to be read by those who are fluent in the language of deviousness.

If such a person had mounted surveillance on the apparently deserted boatyard that night, they would have been rewarded. But when the sleek black Mercedes purred along the back road, there were no curious eyes to see. The car halted short of the gates and the driver climbed out, shivering momentarily as cold damp air replaced the climate-controlled environment. He fumbled in the pockets of his leather jacket, coming out with a bunch of keys. It took him a couple of minutes to work his way through the four unfamiliar padlocks, then the gates swung silently open under his touch. He pushed them all the way back, then hurried back to the car and drove inside.

As the driver closed the gates behind the Mercedes, two men emerged from the back of the saloon. Tadeusz Radecki stretched his long legs, shaking the creases out of his Armani suit and reaching back into the car for his long sable coat. He’d felt the cold as never before lately, and it was a raw night, his breath emerging from his nostrils in filmy plumes. He pulled the fur close around him and surveyed the scene. He’d lost weight recently, and in the pale gloom cast by the car’s headlamps the strong bones of his face were a reminder of the skull beneath the skin, his darting hazel eyes the only sign of the vitality within.

Darko Krasic strolled round to stand beside him, angling his wrist up so he could see the dial of his chunky gold watch. ‘Half past eleven. The truck should be here any minute now.’

Tadeusz inclined his head slightly. ‘I think we’ll take the package ourselves.’

Krasic frowned. ‘Tadzio, that’s not a good idea. Everything’s set up. There’s no need for you to get so close to the merchandise.’

‘You think not?’ Tadeusz’s tone was deceptively negligent. Krasic knew better than to argue. The way his boss had been acting lately, not even his closest associates were prepared to risk the flare of his anger by crossing him.

Krasic held his hands up in a placatory gesture. ‘Whatever,’ he said.

Tadeusz stepped away from the car and began to prowl the boatyard, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. Krasic was right in one sense. There was no need for him to involve himself directly in any aspect of his business. But nothing was to be taken for granted just now. His mindset had been shaped by his grandmother, who, in spite of the noble blood she insisted flowed in her veins, had been as superstitious as any of the peasants she’d so despised. But she’d dressed up her irrational convictions in the fancy clothes of literary allusion. So, rather than teach the boy that troubles come in threes, she’d enlisted Shakespeare’s adage that ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions’.

Katerina’s death should have been sorrow enough. Tadeusz prided himself on never allowing his face to give him away, either in business or in personal relationships. But that news had transformed his face into a howling mask of grief, tears flooding his eyes as a silent scream tore through him. He’d always known he’d loved her; he just hadn’t grasped how much.

What made it worse was that it had been so ridiculous. So very Katerina. She’d been driving her Mercedes SLK with the top down. She’d just left the Berlin ring road at the Ku’damm exit, so she’d probably still been going too fast when a motorbike shot out from a side street in front of her. Desperate to avoid hitting the careless rider, she’d swerved towards the pavement, lost control of the powerful roadster and careered into a newspaper kiosk. She’d died in the arms of a paramedic, her head injuries too appalling to comprehend.

The biker was long gone, unaware of the carnage he’d left in his wake. And mechanical examination had discovered a fault in the circuit that controlled the anti-lock braking in the Merc. That, at any rate, was the official version.

But once his initial grief had receded to the point where he could function again, Tadeusz had begun to wonder. Krasic, ever the loyal lieutenant, had reported that in Tadeusz’s temporary absence there had been a couple of more or less subtle attempts to move in on his business. Krasic, who had stoically refused to be distracted by his boss’s bereavement, had dealt ruthlessly with the threats, but as soon as Tadeusz showed signs of life again, he had laid out the full story before him.

Now, the word was out. Tadeusz wanted the biker. The police officers on his payroll had been little help; information from witnesses was scant. It had all happened so fast. It had just started to rain, so passing pedestrians had their heads down against the weather. There were no surveillance cameras in the immediate area.

The private investigator Tadeusz had hired to re-interview the witnesses had come up with a little more. One teenage boy had been enough of a wannabe rider himself to have noticed that the machine was a BMW. Now, Tadeusz was waiting impatiently for his police contacts to provide a list of possible candidates. One way or another, whether her death had been an accident or a more cruel design, someone was going to pay for it.

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