Amberville - By Tim Davys Page 0,44

Tom-Tom skeptically, putting a rusk into his mouth.

Sam threw out his hands. That’s the way it was. Without a doubt. Without the dramatic hood that the Chauffeurs wore, and dressed instead in the Deliverymen’s typical green uniform, a bit reminiscent of the bus drivers’ jackets and peaked caps, it had been none other than ChauffeurTiger who had sat behind the wheel of a green pickup, with one of the two wolves beside him.

“Hmm,” said Snake Marek, for once markedly laconic.

They sat around the kitchen table, Sam on the edge, all staring incredulously at him. The Morning Weather was in the process of letting up and the rain would cease any minute now. It was Tuesday morning, just over two weeks since they’d started their surveillance of Hotel Esplanade, and Eric had almost forgotten how the apartment looked in daylight. The parquet floor shone with an oiled luster, and even the sticky ring marks from beer bottles on the kitchen table looked more pleasant during the day. Sam had emptied out a carton of breakfast cereal, honey-glazed rice puffs, and Tom-Tom sat down by mistake on the chair where the cereal had ended up. The crushed puffs now spread a sweetish smell through the apartment which was not at all unpleasant.

“You may believe what you want to,” said Sam bitterly.

“I believe you,” said Eric. “But it still sounds unbelievable.”

“It’s just that…oh, what the hell, you have seen things before…” said Tom-Tom, swallowing his third biscuit. “The kinds of things you’ve told us about. Hell’s dragons and colors and…you know…those sort of frigging…roller-coaster rides.”

Sam put on a wounded expression. The white and black rings that made his eyes seem bigger than they were reinforced his innocence, and the corners of his eyes glistened as though from tears. He put his head to one side and stroked his broken horn.

“I hadn’t taken anything for several hours. At least,” he whined. “That is really narrow-minded. Believe me, after all the years that I’ve used a little…extra stimulation…you learn to see the difference between reality and fantasy. It’s only in reality that my little energizers run out.”

“No, damn it,” Tom-Tom now tried to take back what he’d said, “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s clear as hell that I believe you. It’s just…no…damn it, then, I believe you.”

The crow’s words subsided in a silence that might be called reflective. Snake broke the silence.

“It’s not implausible,” he said, wriggling up onto the kitchen table.

They all looked at him with a certain surprise. Up till then Snake had sat silently, weighing arguments for and against. Finally he’d made his decision, and this despite his contempt for the gazelle, which he no longer concealed.

“Apart from the fact that there only remains a sliver of credibility in our little gazelle, who seems to do whatever it takes to get a little attention from our straight-backed lead bear,” Snake began with venomous irony, whereupon protests were heard around the table, “it’s not at all implausible. One might say that it’s actually just the opposite: rather obvious. Chauffeurs and Deliverymen are only different sides of the same coin. It’s so foolishly predictable that it’s amazing no one has uncovered them before. In addition, from the perspective of the authorities, it’s rational. One contract, one garage, one rent…”

“…and one transfer!” said Eric.

The thought struck him when he had his guard down. He got up from the chair with such force that it fell to the floor.

“The lists,” he said, without even noticing Snake’s irritation at being yet again interrupted in the midst of a lengthy statement. “I know how they handle the Cub List at the ministry. How the transfer itself takes place. Are you imagining that there really is a Death List, and that it’s delivered at the same time?”

Sam nodded enthusiastically.

“Darling, that doesn’t sound improbable at all,” he said.

“I don’t really flipping get it,” said Tom-Tom.

He was still hungry, but didn’t want to take more biscuits as there were only three left.

“But it’s…”

“What?” asked Snake.

“It’s today.”

Eric nodded without anyone understanding what he meant. Since the four of them had shut themselves up in the apartment at Yiala’s Arch, none of them had been concerned about what day it was. The nights had come, the days had passed, at a more and more ominous pace.

“It’s the sixteenth today,” said Eric. “And it’s on the sixteenth that the transfer takes place.”

He was so agitated he was shaking.

“That’s this evening!” he repeated.

“Is he talking about that frigging Cub List now?”

Tom-Tom put the