Free In Free Fall by Juli Zeh Page A

of wires hanging loose beneath the dashboard. As he twists the two ends together, the engine springs to life. When his shin brushes against the tangle of wires, the headlights flicker and the engine splutters. Sebastian spreads his knees as far apart as he can, gets into gear, and drives off.
    There are a handful of cars on the A81, heading toward unknown destinations. After the first few miles, Sebastian turns on the radio. I haven’t moved since the call came . He sings along quietly in a monotone.

 
    CHAPTER 3, IN SEVEN PARTS
High time for the murder. Everything goes according to plan at first, and then it doesn’t. Showing that waiting is not without its dangers.

 
     
    [1]
    THE HOUSE IS IN THE FARTHEST CORNER of a cul-de-sac and keeps its distance from the other buildings, proud to be the home of a single person. Even in the darkness, you can tell that children do not play in the garden and that the lawn is mown by hired help. There is a stone statue on the strip of grass by the driveway, a crane stretching its neck up toward the sky, prevented from taking off by the plinth on the ground. It has the blank air of an object that brings pleasure to no one.
    Sebastian did not even have to ring directory assistance to find Dabbelink’s address. He simply looked in Maike’s address book. He has been crouching behind the trash cans for two hours with his back against the wall of the house. He has watched a glorious sunset through the gap between the bins (the sky a three-colored sea, mountainous clouds with a halo of gold) and is feeling melancholy, as one does after witnessing the optical phenomena of the evening sky. Heedless of his feelings, night has fallen, and Sebastian has spent the time since looking at the flickering windows of the apartments next door. At least three living rooms are watching the same film. There was a fire a little while ago, and then a shoot-out. And now the murderer is taking his time explaining to his final victim the meaning of the plot so far. There follows the hectic flicker of hand-to-hand fighting, interrupted by thecolorful flash of an advertisement break. Sebastian thinks he knows who the murderer is.
    He shifts his weight and stretches his legs out from time to time in order not to tumble into the driveway at the decisive moment. A snail is moving astonishingly quickly across the spade that Sebastian found in the shed. Every time he looks at the spade it seems a little bit farther away from him, and he pulls it closer.
    From the long spells of pale light shining through the windows, Sebastian can tell that the neighbors are now watching the late evening news. The doors and windows of Dabbelink’s house look as if they have been painted on. Just as Sebastian is starting to doubt whether the senior registrar will ever return to this place, the garden bursts into life. Headlights shine on a couple of trees and then cast them back into the darkness. Shadows scurry across the grass. The fence leans to the left and the crane revolves. Sebastian has tucked his legs under his body and is crouching in the position of a sprinter, three fingers of each hand pressed into the gravel. The gate slides open. The car stops a few centimeters from the house. The handbrake sighs and the headlights go out. Sebastian watches through the gap in the bins as Dabbelink gets out, yawns theatrically, stretching his arms, and turns to get his bag out of the backseat. There is no unexpected woman sliding out of the passenger seat; no one is walking past the gate. Dabbelink is alone.
    Sebastian is basically a weak person. His friends and colleagues may say that he is strong-willed, but actually, he thinks, as he looks at Dabbelink, a strong will is precisely the mark of a weak person. For only the weak constantly desire things. They have to work and strive, experiment and practice, whereas strong people achieve things quite naturally. Some days, Sebastian can barely muster the energy to sit on a bench by the