Hour of the Wolf

12

He woke up shortly before dawn — in the hour of the wolf.

He did that occasionally. Nowadays.

Never when he had Vera Miller with him, or when she had just left or was soon due. Never then. As things had turned out, they met once a week and spent Saturday and Sunday together. It was in the intervening period when he missed her most that it usually happened. That he woke up in a cold sweat. In the hour of the wolf.

And it was while he was lying awake, between three and four in the morning, during those merciless, never-ending minutes while the rest of the world was asleep, that he peered through the protective membrane that surrounded him. Saw the horrific things he was guilty of having done in the cold light of retrospection, and became fully aware of how the delicate membrane could give way at any moment. At any moment. He wasn’t aware if he had dreams as well. Or at least was unable to recall any images from them. Didn’t even try, naturally enough, neither this night nor any other night. Got up in the darkness instead, tiptoed over to his desk and switched on the lamp. Flopped down on the chair and started counting the days in his diary: found that twenty-five had passed since he killed the boy. Ten since he killed the blackmailer. It would soon be a new month. Everything would soon be forgotten.

Out of mind and out of this world. The newspapers weren’t writing about it any longer. They had done so at the beginning of the week. The police had found the body of the young man last Saturday, but by now the media had already lost interest. There had been nothing on either Thursday or Friday.

That’s the way it was. People in the twenty-first century would be ephemeral — here today and gone tomorrow, he thought. Draw a line, work out a sum of money if there is any. Forget and carry on as usual. That would be the order of the day. Actually, that was what he was like himself, he realized. A good representative of the future, yes indeed. It was only these sleepless hours that anchored him in the past and provided continuity. In fact.

Nevertheless, nothing was the same as it had been. It was paradoxical how that evening with the light thud and the boy in the muddy ditch could change everything. Could change the perspective to that degree. Open the door. Cut through the moorings. Let Vera Miller in, let his new life in. Yes indeed, the word is paradoxical, and chaos is the neighbour of God, as the poet said.

The murder out at Dikken did not weigh in as heavily. Not at all, that was merely a consequence. Something he had been forced to carry out, an inexorable consequence of having been accidentally observed that first evening. Billiard balls that had been set in motion and had no alternative but to roll in a given direction — he had read about theories of that kind in scientific journals not so long ago. A sort of neo-mechanical conception of the world, if he had understood it correctly… Or psychology. But at the same time a retribution applied to his own life, of course. After only a day or so the Dikken event had ceased to trouble him. The man he had killed out there had tried to line his own pocket at the expense of the bad luck of others, his own and the boy’s… You could even argue that he had deserved to die. Tit for tat, as they say. A simple blackmailer who had grown into a terrible threat in the space of a week, but whom he had met on his own ground and liquidated. Simply and painlessly. The path to further development was open again.

The development with Vera Miller. He no longer had any doubt at all that this would be how things would go. Not for a fraction of a second, not even while he was awake again and again during the hour of the wolf. She hadn’t yet told her husband that she had found another man and that they must divorce, but that was only a matter of time. A question of a few weeks and a bit of consideration. Andreas Miller was not a strong person, she didn’t want to crush him. Not yet. But soon.

While they were waiting for this to happen they refrained from making any plans. But they were there all the same, they were in the air all the time they were together. While they were making love, while he was inside her, while he was sucking her nipples and making them hard and stiff and tender. While they were sitting opposite each other, eating and drinking wine, or simply lying together in his big bed, breathing and listening to music in the darkness. All the time. Plans — hitherto unexpressed hopes for the future and a new life. Somewhere else. Him and Vera Miller. He loved her. She loved him. They were both mature adults, and nothing could be simpler. They would live together. Half a year from now. A month. Soon.

He tried to imagine it in secret. Strong images, warm and satisfying. Images of a future in which he would never need to lie awake in the hour of the wolf.

Never need to peer through that membrane that was on the point of splitting.

Never need to wipe foul-smelling cold sweat from his body.

Vera, he thought. For your sake I could kill again.

He featured in a police Wanted notice printed in Saturday’s Neuwe Blatt. He read it at the breakfast table, and after an initial moment of apprehension he burst out laughing. It was not a threat. On the contrary. He had been expecting it, in fact. After all, it would have been unreasonable to think that nobody had noticed him during the few minutes he had spent in the bar, totally unreasonable — and he soon realized that the information given in the newspaper, far from putting him in danger in some way or other, was more of an assurance. An assurance that the police investigation had come up against a brick wall, and he had no reason to fear anything that they might come up with. No reason at all.

Why else would they come up with such laughable information?

A man of an uncertain age. Dressed in dark, probably black clothes. Long, dark, probably black hair. Beard and glasses. Possibly disguised.

Possibly? He smiled. Did they expect him to put it all on again and go out to be seen in public? Return to the scene of the crime and call in at the Trattoria Commedia once again? Or what? He had never entertained an especially high regard for the competence of the police, and it became no higher that Saturday morning.

Detectives? he thought. Stupid country bumpkins.

Vera arrived in the afternoon. She had bought some wine and food from the covered market in Keymer Plejn, but they hadn’t seen each other for six days and were forced to start making love out there in the hall. How amazing that there could be such passion. How amazing that such a woman could exist.

They eventually got round to the food and wine. She stayed the whole night, and they made love several times, in various different places, and instead of waking up in the hour of the wolf he fell asleep more or less in the middle of it.

Tired out and satisfied. Full of love and wine and with Vera Miller as close to him as could be.

She stayed until Sunday afternoon. They spent a serious hour talking about their love: about what they ought to do with it, and about their future.

It was the first time.

‘Nobody knows you exist,’ she said. ‘Not Andreas. Not my sister. Not my workmates and friends. You are my secret, but I don’t want it to be like that any more.

He smiled, but made no reply.

‘I want to have you all the time.’

‘Your husband?’ he asked. ‘What do you intend to do about him?’

She looked at him long and hard before answering.

‘I shall deal with that,’ she said. ‘This week. I’ve thought it through, there aren’t any short cuts. I love you.’

‘I love you,’ he replied.

He worked late on Monday. On his way home in the car — just as he was passing the concrete culvert in the ditch — he realized he was singing along to the car radio, and it dawned on him that it was still less than a month since that evening. It was still November, but everything had changed to a far greater extent than he would have believed possible.

It was unreal. Totally unreal. But that was life.

He smiled, still humming away as he took the day’s post out of the letter box. But he stopped only a few seconds later as he sat at the kitchen table and read the letter. As far as he could recall — if he remembered rightly: he had disposed of the others — it was written on exactly the same type of writing paper and was in exactly the same sort of envelope as the two earlier ones. It was handwritten, and no more than half a page long.

Two lives.

You now have two lives on your conscience. I have given you plenty of time to come forward, but you have hidden yourself away like a cowardly cur. The price for my silence is now different. One week (exactly seven days) is available to you for producing 200,000. Used notes. Low values.

I shall get back to you with instructions. Don’t make the same mistake twice, you won’t have another opportunity to buy your freedom. I know who you are, I have incontrovertible evidence against you, and there are limits to my patience.

A friend

He read the message twice. Then he stared out of the window. It was raining, and he suddenly sensed the smell of cold sweat in his nostrils.