Frankenstein felt sick and his head pulsed with the most intense headache he had ever experienced.‘It’s okay, everything’s clear,’ said Zombie. ‘But get into the house as quickly as possible and wait for me. I’ll park the van at the back and out of sight.’Seeing him again, and in the context of the outside world for the first time, Hübner was struck by Zombie’s appearance. In the prison, Herr Mensing – as Frankenstein had then known Zombie – had always worn the same clothes: a white shirt, the too-big collar of which sat like a tie-fastened yoke around the stick of a neck, a blue pullover and grey slacks. The outfit always looked like it had been hung over the back of an unupholstered chair rather than worn on a body. Every time Frankenstein had had a session with him, he had noticed how bird-frail and pale the social therapist looked. To start with, Frankenstein had assumed he was terribly sick, cancer, most likely. But that, he came to realize, was not the ill that ate away at Mensing.
