Hour of the Wolf

23

Van Veeteren stared at the phosphorescent second hand making its leisurely way round the face of the clock. He had been doing that for quite some time, but every new circuit was a new experience even so. He suddenly remembered that a long time ago, in pre-puberty — if he had in fact ever been through such a phase — he used to occupy himself when he couldn’t sleep by taking his pulse. He decided he’d try that now.

Fifty-two the first minute.

Forty-nine the second one.

Fifty-four the third.

Good Lord, he thought. My heart is collapsing as well.

He lay there for a few more minutes without taking his pulse. Wished he’d had Ulrike by his side, but she was sleeping over with her children out at Loewingen. Or at least, with one of them. Jurg, aged eighteen, and the last one to fly the nest. She obviously needed to spend some time with him as well, he realized that. Even if he seemed to be an unusually level-headed young man. As far as he could judge, at least: they had only met three times, but everything seemed to point in that direction.

Apart from the fact that he wanted to become a police officer.

Van Veeteren sighed, and rolled over in order to avoid having to look at the confounded clock. Put one of the pillows over his head.

A quarter past two, he thought. I’m the only person in the whole world who’s awake.

He got up an hour later. It was impossible to sleep — the last few nights he had managed no more than two to three hours on average, and no known medicines helped.

Nor did beer. Nor wine. Nor even Handel.

It was just as bad with other composers, so it wasn’t Handel’s fault.

It’s not possible, he thought as he stood in the bathroom, splashing cold water into his face. It’s not possible to sleep — and I know why, for Christ’s sake. Why don’t I just admit it? Why don’t I stand on the mountain-top and shout it out so loudly that all mankind can hear it?

Revenge! Show me the father who can lie at peace in his bed while the search for his son’s murderer is going on out there!

It was as simple as that. Embedded deep down in the black hole of biology. He had known that when he wrote about it in his diary a few hours ago, and he knew it now. Action was the only effective antidote. Homo agentus. In all situations. Illusory or real. Do something, for God’s sake!

He got dressed. Checked the weather through the kitchen window, and went out. It felt freezing cold, but no rain and hardly any wind. He set off walking.

Southwards to begin with. Down over Zuijderslaan and Primmerstraat towards Megsje Plejn. When he came to the Catholic cemetery he hesitated for a moment, then decided to skirt round it: but when he came to the southeastern corner he felt that he’d had enough of all that asphalt and turned off into Randers Park, which was a sort of natural extension of the cemetery. Or perhaps the cemetery was a natural extension of the park, it wasn’t clear which. No doubt there was a history to explain it, but he wasn’t aware of it.

He thought the darkness in there among all the trees and bushes felt almost like a sort of embrace, and the silence was striking. The park is listening, he thought as he proceeded slowly… Further into the heart of darkness — that was an image that seemed unusually apt. Mahler used to claim that nature is alive during the night. During the day she sleeps and allows herself to be observed: but during the night she comes to life, and invites you to go out there and really feel her presence.

Absolutely right, no doubt about it. Van Veeteren shook his head to break that chain of thought and get away from all that verbosity. Tossed up inside his head and turned right when he came to a fork, and after a minute found himself in front of the statue of Hugo Maertens. It was lit up not very brightly by a single spotlight in the flower bed that surrounded the heavy pedestal, and he wondered why. Tourists in the park at night? Hardly. He checked his watch.

Ten to four.

Action? The only effective antidote? Give me a bit of space in which to act then, Mother Nature! Release me from captivity!

He shrugged, and lit a cigarette.

I’m just wandering around in the night in order not to go mad, he thought. For no other reason. Then he heard a twig breaking somewhere out there in the darkness. So I’m not alone, he thought. Animals and lunatics wander about during the night.

By three o’clock he felt unable to wait any longer. He went out to the garage, slung the plastic carrier bag on the passenger seat and clambered into the car. Started the engine and began the drive to the town centre. He didn’t meet a single car all the way along the unlit road, and as he passed by the concrete culvert he thought no more about it than he would have done about any other familiar old landmark. There was nothing to think about it. What had happened seemed now to be so far in the past that it was beyond recall. He couldn’t remember it. Even if he’d wanted to.

He turned left after the Alexander Bridge, followed Zwille as far as the Pixner Brewery and came up to Randers Park on its southern side. Parked outside the entrance where the minigolf courses were situated — they were not open at this time of night, of course. Nor at this time of year. He remained sitting in the car for a while. It was just short of half past three. The park looked dark and brooding, lost in its own deep winter slumbers. Nature closes down at night, he thought, and he wondered why his opponent had chosen this particular place. Did he live nearby, or was it the very inaccessibility of the place that had been decisive? If so that indicated excessive caution: at this time of night there must be hundreds of empty rubbish bins that were easier to get to. Last time he had chosen to carry out the transaction in a restaurant, with an abundance of possible witnesses, so tonight’s venue may have been chosen to avoid that.

There would be no assistant to collect the bag tonight. It would be the blackmailer himself, and he would know that his victim was of a different calibre than he had thought from the start. A very different calibre.

The thought almost made him smile, and no doubt the fact that he could sit here in his car and wait in the darkness without feeling worried at all indicated stability and self-control. If the blackmailer didn’t accept his conditions, the result could be that the police would be knocking on his door as soon as tomorrow morning. In just a few hours from now. It was not impossible.

He felt the package. Wondered whether his opponent would be able to tell immediately that it didn’t contain all the money he was expecting, or would he only find out when he got home? The two old newspapers he had torn up and stuffed into the plastic carrier bag were not intended to create the illusion of money. They were merely to give it a certain amount of bulk.

Two old newspapers and an envelope.

Five grand and a request for a delay of three days — that is what his opponent would receive for his night’s work.

The amount was carefully considered. It was exactly half of what had been demanded the previous time, and he would never receive any more. He would believe that 200,000 would be waiting for him on Thursday night instead, and surely he would swallow the bait? Three extra days to wait plus a bonus of 5,000 — what the hell did he have in the way of choice? Go to the police and collect nothing at all? Hardly likely.

He checked his watch. A quarter to four. He picked up the carrier bag, got out of the car and entered the park.

He had checked up earlier on the precise location of the Hugo Maertens statue, and that proved to be a good move. The darkness inside the overgrown park made it feel like a black hole, and it was not until he glimpsed the faint beam from the spotlight aimed at the statue that he was sure he hadn’t gone astray. He paused briefly before stepping out into the little opening where paths converged from four or five different directions.

He stood there listening to the silence. Thought that his opponent was presumably somewhere in the vicinity: perhaps he was also standing on tenterhooks with his mobile phone out there in the darkness, waiting. Or perhaps in a nearby telephone box.

Billiard balls, he thought again. Balls rolling towards each other, but avoiding a collision by no more than a couple of millimetres. Their paths cross, but the clash is avoided by minutes. Or even seconds.

Ridiculously short fractions of time.

He walked over to the rubbish bin and pressed down the plastic carrier bag.

On the way back to Boorkhejm he wondered what would happen if his car broke down. It was not a particularly pleasant thought. Standing by the side of the road and trying to hail some early bird of a driver to ask for help. It would be difficult to explain what he’d been doing, out at that time, to a police officer, especially if they started investigating. Supposedly off work sick, but on his way back home at half past four in the morning. And the back seat covered in traces of blood, which would hardly escape a trained eye.

Not to mention the consequences if he wasn’t at home to answer the telephone. No, not a pleasant thought at all.

But his car didn’t break down. Of course it didn’t. His four-year-old Audi performed immaculately today as on every other day. It had just been an idea he’d played with. He had lots of ideas these days… Bizarre thoughts that had never troubled him before, and he sometimes wondered why they had suddenly turned up in his head. Just now.

He parked the car in the garage, took one-and-a-half tablets and crept down into bed to wait for the call. Wondered rather vaguely if the blackmailer was intending to say anything, or if he would simply hang up. The latter seemed more likely, of course. There was no reason to risk the slight possibility of being unmasked. One’s voice is always naked. It was more likely that he would ring back later — when he had checked the contents of the bag and read the message. Much more likely. When he realized that he hadn’t been paid as much as he’d expected for all his efforts. For all his evil machinations.

If his clock radio was accurate the call came at exactly five seconds past five. He let it ring three times before answering — if for no other reason, to demonstrate that he wasn’t sitting by the telephone, tense and nervous. It could be important to make that clear.

He picked up the receiver and said his name.

For a few seconds he could hear the presence of the caller, then the line went dead.

Okay, he thought. Let’s hear what you have to say for yourself next time.

He rolled over in bed, adjusted the pillows and tried to sleep.

He succeeded very well. When he was woken up by the telephone ringing again, it was a quarter past eleven.

During the brief moment that passed before he picked up the receiver he began to realize that something had gone wrong. That things had not proceeded as he had expected. What had happened? Why had his opponent waited for several hours? Why had…?

It was Smaage.

‘How are you, brother?’

‘Ill,’ he managed to say.

‘Yes, I’d heard. The priest curses and the doctor’s ill. What sort of an age are we living in?’

He laughed in a way that made a rasping noise in the receiver.

‘Just a touch of flu. But it looks as though I’ll be off all week.’

‘Oh dear. We thought we’d have a little session on Friday evening, as I said. Will that be too much for you? At Canaille.’

He coughed and managed to produce a few heavy breaths. They sounded pretty convincing.

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be back at work by Monday.’

When he had said that, and when Smaage had expressed the hope that he’d soon be well again and hung up, it occurred to him that his prognosis had been one hundred per cent wrong.

Whatever happened — no matter how the balls rolled over the next few days — one thing was absolutely clear. Only one. He would not be going to the hospital on Monday.

He would never set foot inside the place again.

There was something extremely attractive about that thought.