Hour of the Wolf

5

He was twenty minutes early. While he waited behind the wheel of his car in the almost empty car park, he read the instructions one more time. Not that it was necessary — he’d been rereading them all day: but it was a way of passing the time.

The money: banknotes in bundles of fifties and one hundreds packed in double plastic bags and placed inside a carrier bag from the Boodwick department store.

Place: Trattoria Commedia at the golf course out at Dikken.

Time: Tuesday, six p.m. exactly.

Instructions: Sit down in the bar. Order a beer, take a few swigs, go to the gents after about five minutes. Take the carrier bag containing the money with you, leave it well camouflaged by paper towels in the rubbish bin. If there are others in the gents, wait until they have gone. Then leave the toilets, go straight out to your parked car and drive away.

That was all.

The same sort of paper as last time. The same handwriting, presumably the same pen.

The same signature: A friend.

No threats. No comments about his weakness.

Nothing but the necessary instructions. It couldn’t be any simpler.

At two minutes to six he opened the side window and got out of the car. He had parked as far away from the restaurant as possible, next to the exit. Without seeming to hurry, he walked quickly the fifty or so metres over the windswept gravel to the restaurant. It was low and L-shaped, its facade plastered with dark pebble-dash. Gaudi windows with black steel frames. He opened the imitation jacaranda door and went in.

It looked pretty deserted, but nevertheless inviting. He had never set foot in the place before: he assumed it was probably a favourite haunt of golfers, and that it could hardly be high season, given the chilly late-autumn weather. The bar was on the left as you entered: a lone woman in her forties sat smoking in the company of an evening newspaper and a green drink. She looked up when he came in, but decided that the newspaper was more interesting.

Before sitting down he peered into the restaurant section. It branched off at right-angles to the bar, and most of the tables he could see were empty. An unaccompanied man was busy eating a pasta dish. A fire was crackling away in the hearth. The furniture and fittings were a mixture of dark brown, red and green, and a piano sonata was struggling to find its way out of hidden speakers. He put the carrier bag down at his feet and ordered a beer from the bartender, a young man with a ponytail and a ring in one ear.

‘Still windy, is it?’ asked the barman.

‘It certainly is,’ he replied. ‘You’re not exactly jam-packed this evening, it seems.’

‘You can say that again,’ said the barman.

His beer was served in a tapered effeminate-looking glass. He paid, drank about half of it and asked where the gents was. The bartender pointed towards the open fire, he thanked him, picked up the bag and made his way there.

It smelled of pine forests and was strikingly empty. And clean. The bin between the two washbasins was only a third full of used paper towels. He put the Boodwick carrier bag into the bin and covered it over with new paper towels that he pulled out of the holder one by one, crumpling them up slightly. All in accordance with the instructions. The whole procedure took ten seconds. He remained standing there for another ten, contemplating with some surprise his reflection in the slightly scratched mirror over the washbasin. Then he left the room. Nodded to the barman as he made his way to the door and continued to his car. There was a tang of frozen iron in the air.

So far so good, he thought as he sat down again behind the wheel. A piece of cake, dammit.

Then he opened the glove box and took out the metal pipe.

He only needed to wait for exactly six-and-a-half minutes.

The man who emerged from the restaurant seemed to be in his thirties. He was tall and lanky, carrying the bag with his right hand and dangling a set of car keys from his left. He was obviously heading for an old Peugeot about twenty metres away from his own car. One of the total of five vehicles standing in the large car park.

Before the man opened the car door, he had time to reflect on how amateurish the procedure was. Waiting for such a short time and then marching out into the car park with the bag in full view — surely that indicated pretty poor judgement? It seemed obvious that his opponent was easy game, despite what he had thought previously — and most importantly, that the man had seriously underestimated his own calibre.

He caught up with him just as he was about to insert the keys into the lock.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I think you dropped something.’

He held up his cupped hand half a metre in front of the man’s face.

‘What is it?’

He glanced quickly around the car park and beyond. It was growing darker by the second now. There was not a soul in sight. He hit the man on the head with the pipe, using all his strength. Caught him just over his left ear. He fell to the ground without a sound. Flat on his stomach with his arms underneath him. This time he aimed at the back of the man’s head, and hit him with full force once again. There was a short crackling sound, and he knew the man was dead. If he hadn’t already died from the first blow. Blood was pouring profusely from the man’s head. He carefully detached the casualty from the carrier bag and the car keys, stood up straight and looked around.

Still no sign of life. The place was dark and deserted. After a couple of seconds’ thought, he took hold of the man’s feet and dragged him into the thick undergrowth that surrounded the car park. There were clear marks left in the gravel, but he assumed that the rain would soon cover them up. He took a few steps backwards and established that nothing could be seen from a few metres away. At least, not for somebody who didn’t know what he was looking for. Or that there was anything to look for in the first place.

He nodded in satisfaction and returned to his own car. It would do no harm if it was a few days before anybody came across the body. The more days, the better, in fact. He wrapped the pipe in a newspaper and put it into the carrier bag together with the money.

Started the engine and drove off.

He kept his bushy black hair, his beard and his blue-tinted spectacles on until he had passed that fateful concrete culvert on the main road to Boorkhejm, and half an hour later when he was pouring himself a tot of Glenalmond in a plain glass tumbler in his kitchen at home, he offered up thanks to those Sobran tablets — those little blue miracle pills that had kept him calm and in complete control of himself all afternoon. And the previous few days as well. It was not a disadvantage to have a certain degree of insight into one’s own mind and its need of psychopharmacological drugs, he thought. No disadvantage at all.

He emptied his glass.

Then took a long, relaxing bubble bath.

Then he phoned Vera Miller.