The Game (Tom Wood)

FIVE





Vienna, Austria

The patient wore a charcoal suit. It was a smart business garment of obvious quality and cut in a classic style. The jacket was open and a steel-grey tie rested over a white shirt. He was tall and lean but unmistakably strong, and sat with a relaxed yet rigid posture, his hands resting upon the arms of the visitor’s chair. He looked a little younger than the age listed in his medical records. His dark hair was cut short and neat but was notably free of product or fashionable style. Eyes darker still than his hair betrayed nothing of his personality save for a calm watchfulness and keen intellect. Dr Margaret Schule, who prided herself on her people-reading skills, found him quite fascinating.

She examined the site of the surgery and asked, ‘Are you experiencing any pain?’

The patient shook his head.

‘What about when I do this?’

The patient shook his head again.

‘Okay, that’s tremendous. I’m so pleased.’

Schule tugged the latex gloves from her hands, bunched them up, and used the toes of a shoe to push down a pedal and open the clinical waste bin. She dropped the gloves inside. The bin was the only object in the room that marked it as the office of a medical professional, and its presence was as unavoidable as its appearance was unpleasant. She kept it in a corner, where it was less likely to draw the eye and disrupt the room’s carefully composed ambience.

Her office was on the third floor of a late eighteenth-century Viennese townhouse that had once belonged to a conductor in the Royal Orchestra in the time of Mozart. Schule loved to tell her patients of this fact. Brightly patterned Turkish rugs covered much of the dark-stained flooring. She refused to have carpets for hygiene reasons. Classically painted landscapes hung from the walls. The furniture was comprised almost exclusively of antiques from the Baroque period, save for the ergonomic mesh chair where Schule spent a large portion of her time.

‘Can I get you a glass of water, perhaps?’ she offered her patient.

‘No, thank you.’

Schule returned to the chair and rested her forearms on her large desk as she examined the man before her. He looked back at her with the same pleasant yet neutral expression he always wore. He made no small talk. He didn’t fidget. He wasn’t bored. He wasn’t nervous. He offered nothing about himself and sat on the other side of the desk as though there was nothing interesting enough to know. Schule wasn’t convinced.

The visitor’s chair in which he sat was not where it had been positioned when the patient entered her office. She noted the change immediately because she had noted it each and every time the man had visited her and because she lived her life by a rigid desire to see each and every thing in its rightful place. When he left she would reposition the chair so that it sat square to the desk. Then she could look a patient directly in the eye from her own chair, which was also squared to the desk, without having to swivel the seat as she now did and destroy the careful equilibrium of the room. She liked to have her own chair and the visitor’s chair aligned with the office door on the far wall. She liked order. She liked straight lines.

The patient’s medical records listed him as a resident of Brussels, but those records began only from the day when the patient had first walked into her practice some months before. He had not supplied his medical history prior to that point. She found this somewhat curious, but it was not uncommon. Schule knew herself to be among the uppermost echelon of the planet’s cosmetic surgeons. Her clients ranged from Hollywood’s brightest and most beautiful to members of several European royal families and the wives of Russia’s super rich. Discretion was not only expected by her clients, but demanded. No one at Schule’s practice asked any questions that their clients did not want to answer. The man sitting opposite her didn’t look like a movie star or a prince, but he had to be as wealthy as one to afford her fees, or else vain enough to justify such extravagance.

As well as offering a complete range of the most common procedures, such as rhinoplasty, facelifts and liposuction, Schule was at the forefront of scar reduction. She had studied and taught across the world and her expertise was always in demand. The majority of her work in this area was in smoothing the results of her less skilled fellow surgeons.

She said, ‘I think we can say that the procedure has been nothing short of a spectacular success. I’m delighted with the results and I hope you are too. Of course the original surgeon did a perfectly adequate job of putting the ear back together, but alas he didn’t do you any favours when it came to minimising scarring. Fortunately, with the injury being comparatively recent, combined with your relative youth and exceptional level of health and well-being, the techniques I employed could not have worked any better. I’m sure you’ve seen for yourself in the mirror, but the actual scar tissue, which you know cannot be avoided and will always be present, is limited to a fine line that is only visible at especially close range. Over time its visibility will further be reduced and I would speculate that within a year even you will have a hard time identifying it.’

The patient nodded. ‘Thank you.’

Schule wasn’t used to such reserved appreciation. She was used to huge smiles and endless streams of tearful expressions of gratitude. She had never known someone so emotionless. When she had first discussed the procedure with him he had listened intently, made a series of surprisingly astute queries, and showed neither uncertainty nor concern. On the day of the surgery he had been relaxed and without fear. His heart rate had been almost unnervingly low and regular.

He was at least twenty years her junior and it went against her professional ethics, but she found herself wanting to get to know him better. There was something about him she couldn’t articulate that went beyond an obvious attraction.

She cleared her throat. ‘If there is no pain or discomfort then I don’t believe you’ll need another check-up, but please do book an appointment if you feel the need to see me at some point in the future.’

The patient nodded.

‘If I may,’ Schule began, ‘I would love to use your case for a paper I’m writing for a surgical journal.’

‘I’d prefer to be left out of any literature, thank you.’

‘I can assure you that your anonymity will be protected. Only the injury, procedure and results will be included.’

‘The answer is no.’

Schule sighed. ‘Well, that is a shame. But it’s your choice. Do let me know if you change your mind.’

‘I shall.’

‘Then I think we’re all done.’

He said, ‘There is one thing that I wonder if you could help me with.’

‘Of course.’

‘I’d like to take any physical records of my procedure with me, and I would appreciate it if any and all electronic records could be deleted too.’

Schule smiled, friendly and reassuring. ‘I can promise you that your privacy is of the utmost importance to us here and no one but my staff and I will ever see those records. I’m sorry if I’ve made you nervous because of the journal. I respect your wishes not to be included.’

He nodded. ‘I appreciate that, but regardless of your paper, when I leave here I’d prefer that no record of my presence was left behind.’

‘I’m afraid we must retain your medical records, both for legal considerations and for any future procedures you might have with us. There really is nothing to be concerned about. I’ve been protecting the privacy of my patients since the very beginnings of this practice.’

‘Please, I’d like my records.’ His tone was calm but insistent.

‘I’m sorry,’ Schule said, ‘but I just can’t do that. It comes down to a matter of legality and I’m not prepared to break the law, even if I was comfortable with what you’re asking of me.’

‘Your name is Margaret Schule,’ he said. ‘You are forty-nine years old. You grew up in Gräfelfing, twenty kilometres west of Munich. Your father was a baker by trade. He joined the Nazi party in the summer of 1939. By the time the Second World War ended he had risen to the rank of lieutenant in the Waffen SS. He changed his name after the war, taking the identity of one of his childhood friends, and took his young wife to Austria. They lived there for over ten years before returning to Germany, where you were born. You studied medicine at the Berlin College of Medicine and spent six years practising in Germany before working in London and then the United States, where you specialised in cosmetic surgery and taught for a time at Princeton Plainsborough. You came to Austria fifteen years ago for your father’s funeral and eventually established this practice six years later with an investment from your husband, Alfred, who you first met while you were in London. He owns a fifty-five per cent stake in your practice and has absolutely no idea that you’ve been having an affair with his younger brother for the past eighteen months. You meet every Friday afternoon. He tells his secretary he’s playing badminton.’

There was no change in the patient’s expression. There was no malice. He sat still and relaxed, handsome yet cold, but everything about him demanded obedience.

Schule stared at the patient for a long time before regaining her composure. Her mouth opened to demand answers to questions that she couldn’t form the words for. Eventually, she reached across her desk and pushed a button on her intercom, then held the receiver to her ear.

When the line connected, Schule instructed her secretary to do as the patient wished, silencing the secretary’s protest’s with: ‘I don’t care. Just make sure they’re deleted and hand him all documentation.’

The patient stood without taking his gaze from her, repositioned the chair as it had originally been, and left the office without another word.