Read Katja from the Punk Band for Free Online Page A

house. He waits a few moments, listening to the footsteps, then eases his way along the passageway created by the house’s high wall and the overgrown bushes that line the next property. When he gets to the end he sees a girl with spiked hair lingering in the driveway that leads to the front door.
    She stands amongst high, rain-dampened grass and pieces of long-abandoned building materials, turns back and forth from the house to the end of the driveway and the street beyond. She’s got something in her hand and at first Nikolai thinks it might be a weapon, the gun responsible for the shot fired minutes before, then he sees it more clearly.
    The girl turns again, again.
    This is the object. A vial. I need you to bring me this vial.
    And she holds up her hand, considers the object she holds, the glass tube.
    And then she is gone, walking briskly down the driveway and out onto the quiet street outside and Nikolai swears to himself.
    Kohl had said it would be easy. Just go to the house, find the man, and get the vial. Go to the house, find the man, and get the vial.
    Go to the house.
    Check.
    Find the man.
    Check. The other figure he had glimpsed through the window must have been Januscz.
    Get the vial.
    Simple.
    Simple.
    Simple.
    Get the vial.
    So Nikolai jogs down the driveway after the girl.
     
    He watches her until she disappears over the rise in the street then runs to his car and starts the motor. He drives as calmly and normally as he can manage, trying not to make it look as if he is following her, keeping his eyes straight ahead as he passes her. Pulls onto a side street farther up, waits again until she passes, drives on past her again and thankfully there is other traffic around in which he can hide.
    He does this for almost ten minutes and it begins to rain and she quickens her pace and finally she dashes into a crappy-looking diner set back from the street and adjacent to a gas station. He parks outside, thinking she might have just been getting out of the rain but quickly grows nervous.
    It doesn’t feel safe or right to be sitting motionless in his car so he gets out, the gun still in his pocket, walks into the diner.
    He looks around at the booths inside but doesn’t see the girl and panics momentarily, thinking perhaps she had known she had been followed and already slipped out the bathroom window or some secret back entrance.
    She might still be in the toilets.
    Or she might already be half a mile away.
    Gone. With the vial.
    Shit.
    He continues to the service counter and sits down because it seems like the thing to do. A waitress is wiping the surface before him.
    Perhaps he’ll go and check out the toilets.
    And then he looks up and there she is, the woman, staring back at him through the little window on the other side of the service area, the great spikes of her hair beginning to droop under the weight of the rainwater.
    “Be with you in a minute,” she says to him.
    He nods, panic washing over him and then leaving just as quickly.
    She doesn’t know.
    She doesn’t know.
    Okay, so what now?
    “What can I get you?”
    And it’s her and she’s right in front of him, wearing an apron now. He brushes hair from his swollen eye as he looks up.
    “Coffee,” he mumbles. “Black. Six sugars.”
    And she pours him a cup and then hands him the sugar bowl.
    “Knock yourself out,” she says distractedly, looking around the diner instead of at him. She begins to wipe the counter but isn’t paying attention to that either. He thinks about using the payphone in the corner to call Kohl, ask him what to do next. Would he know who the girl was? And why she had shot the mule?
    This was too much for him, too big. He wanted a simple deal, money for drugs, not this shit. Not this.
    And what had she done with the vial?
    He imagines himself taking out the gun, pressing it to her forehead and demanding the vial. And then he thinks about pulling the trigger but he stops himself, realizes it just feels too wrong.
    And