The Insult

Chapter 1

She had talked almost continuously, for hours. As I listened to her, as I filled with unease, foreboding and even, in the end, with dread, she seemed, ironically, to grow accustomed to me, she began to feel comfortable, and her visits to the kitchen became more frequent, less disguised. She didn’t get drunk, though. She didn’t slur her words or lose her thread.

By the time we climbed the stairs, the birds were singing.

I spent the entire day in bed. Dreams of black lakes, crashed cars. People maimed, contorted, splashed with blood. Once, I saw Emerald Joe slumped in the corner of the room, his arms and legs all jumbled up, his jewelled tooth shining.

I was afraid to sleep, afraid to be awake. Each time I dozed, I woke again like someone who’d just touched an electric fence: bolt upright, soaked in sweat — my nerve-ends charred, my brain a grate containing nothing but a white-hot emptiness.

Then, towards evening, I washed and dressed. I was scrupulous. I invested every movement, every detail of the process, with my fullest concentration — from the first soaping of my face to the final lacing of a boot. It must have taken me an hour. Before I went downstairs I called Munck. I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was simply a way of clearing my mind, of breathing different air. I wanted someone to talk to — someone who wasn’t Edith Hekmann. Munck wasn’t his usual self, though. He seemed both guarded and inquisitive. I realised it had been at least two weeks since I’d spoken to him.

‘Where are you calling from?’ He had to shout; it was a bad line. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you. I tried the Kosminsky, but they told me you’d left. In the middle of the night.’

‘That’s true. I had to leave.’

‘It seems suspicious,’ Munck said, ‘in the circumstances.’

I laughed. ‘Not to me.’

His tone sharpened. ‘What can I tell my superiors?’

‘Tell them I’m out of town for a few days. Tell them it’s personal.’

Munck didn’t say anything.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That’s the best I can do.’

I promised to call him as soon as I returned. Then I put the phone down. I heard the clock strike seven in the hall below. I took a deep breath and began to make my way towards the staircase.

When I took my place at the table in the dining-room I was surprised to find myself alone. I asked Martha where Mrs Hekmann was.

‘I haven’t seen her,’ Martha said.

‘Is she ill?’

‘Not so far as I know.’

I thought she was probably still recovering. Not everyone was used to staying awake all night.

Martha put a plate of boiled beef and cabbage in front of me. I ate slowly, but I couldn’t finish it. I had no appetite. And anyway, the food tasted of nothing.

The pale-pink lampshade, the dismal paintings.

I shivered as a draught moved past my back.

While I was drinking my coffee, the door to the dining-room opened behind me. I heard shoes on the bare boards. It wasn’t Martha; she was busy in the kitchen.

‘Mrs Hekmann?’

There was no answer. I knew it was her, though. And then I remembered what she was. A murderer. A murderer. It seemed absurd, exaggerated. I didn’t know how to think about it. It was like trying to picture a million people, or describe the face of God. In my nervousness I knocked a fork off the table. As I was bending down to pick it up, her shoes moved past me, into the room. I heard a cork spring from a bottle. She’d opened it right in front of me. She’d abandoned all pretence.

‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked.

I stared at her. ‘Yes — thank you. That would be nice.’

What had induced this sudden change in her? I looked for some clue in her appearance, but there was nothing. She was wearing a calf-length skirt, a cardigan, a pair of sturdy shoes. I couldn’t read her face at all.

She handed me a glass. I thanked her. She sat in her usual place.

‘Now,’ she said quietly, ‘who are you, exactly?’

It took me a moment to reply. I’d been expecting the usual question. How was your meal? What did you think of the boiled beef?

Who are you?

‘It’s in the register —’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ Her voice sliced through mine. It was a tone I hadn’t heard her use before.

She set her glass down on the table.

‘My son,’ she said. ‘He’s come back. You remember I told you about my son. Mazey.’

‘Yes. You told me.’ I wasn’t likely to forget.

‘I’ve been talking to him,’ she said.

She took a cigarette out of the open packet at her elbow and lit it. I just looked at her. I waited.

‘He had some interesting things to say about you.’

‘About me?’ I said. ‘But I’ve never —’

‘He’s seen you before,’ and she paused, ‘in the city.’

She seemed to be waiting for me to speak, but I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t know where this was leading. To steady myself, I concentrated on her cardigan. It was a dull grey-green. Her skirt was brown. Her shoes, they were brown, too.

‘You’re the police, aren’t you,’ she said suddenly.

I was staring at her again. Police? What was she talking about?

‘You’re some kind of detective. Aren’t you. I was wondering when you’d come.’

‘Mrs Hekmann,’ I said, ‘I don’t —’

‘Don’t lie to me.’ Ash dropped from her cigarette and shattered on the tablecloth. ‘It’s no use lying, not now. That phone-call you made, for instance. Who were you speaking to?’

She didn’t give me time to answer. ‘It was the police, wasn’t it. Your colleagues.’ Her voice was level, but only just. ‘That was clever of them, sending me a cripple. Oh, that was clever. They knew it would catch me unawares, arouse my sympathy. Send in the blind man. It always works.’ She crushed her cigarette out on a plate, and with it she seemed to be crushing any need for ambiguity or restraint. ‘You walk into my house, you accept my hospitality, and all the time —’ Her chair scraped backwards and she stood up. ‘You betrayed me, Mr Blom. You betrayed my trust.’

She walked away across the room. When she reached the window, she stopped. The handle creaked as she opened it. ‘It’s snowing,’ she said. ‘You probably hadn’t realised.’

I shook my head. Her cardigan had brown buttons on it. I counted them. One, two, three, four — and there was one missing, at the bottom. They were unusual buttons; they looked like hazelnuts.

‘I know your kind,’ she said.

‘My kind?’ My voice sounded weak.

She stood with her back to the window, the snow blowing past her, into the room. I watched it settle on the floor and melt. I was shivering.

‘Your kind,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen your kind on television.’

‘You — you really think I’m a policeman?’

‘I know you are.’

‘What is it I’m supposed to be investigating?’

‘My granddaughter. Nina Salenko.’

I stared at Edith Hekmann’s grey-green cardigan. There was a loose thread near one of the cuffs. If she didn’t mend it soon, the whole sleeve would probably unravel. I thought I should point it out to her. ‘You’ve got —’

‘You were seen,’ she said. ‘Mazey saw you. You were together.’

I could hear Munck’s voice. About the man in the station … tall, apparently … pale hair … staring … Then I remembered what Loots had told me on the night he came into my room. His description of the man he’d noticed in the hotel car-park. Mazey. Mazey Hekmann. I reached for my glass. It wasn’t there.

‘You’re looking for her,’ she said, ‘aren’t you.’

I shook my head again. ‘I’m not. Not any more.’

‘That’s just as well.’

Something rose in my throat and hardened, like a stone. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because she’s dead.’

I couldn’t swallow; I could barely speak. ‘How do you know?’

Edith Hekmann did not reply.

I stood up. A snowflake landed on the tablecloth, white on white. ‘I think I’ll go to my room now,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Aren’t we going to talk tonight?’

I moved towards the door.

‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’ Her voice had softened.

‘No,’ I said.

‘You don’t want to know the truth?’

‘You shouldn’t tell me anything,’ I murmured, ‘not if I’m a policeman.’

Snow slanted between us and suddenly it was like watching something on an old TV. Any minute now, I was going to lose her completely.

‘I trusted you,’ she said.

I reached the top of the stairs. Turning right, I walked to the far end of the landing and sat down on the small upholstered chair beside the phone. I thought of calling Munck again, but I couldn’t see what good it would do. And anyway, I wouldn’t have known what to tell him. I called Loots instead. My fingers kept missing the holes. Three times I dialled the wrong number. The fourth time his uncle answered. I asked him if I could speak to Albert. He put the receiver down. ‘Albert?’ he shouted. ‘Al-bert?’ In the background I could hear the sounds of an ordinary household: voices, music, cutlery.

When Loots came to the phone, he asked me how I was. It wasn’t a question I felt capable of answering.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘When are you coming?’

‘Tomorrow.’ His plan was to leave in the morning, he said. He’d be with me sometime in the early afternoon.

‘Can’t you come any sooner?’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Not really. Not unless I leave right now.’

It was my turn to be silent.

‘You want me to leave now?’ His voice lifted, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

‘I wouldn’t ask,’ I said, ‘not unless it was important.’

‘What’s wrong? Are you in trouble?’

‘Yes, I think I am.’

‘I knew there was something about that place —’ He checked himself. ‘What kind of trouble?’

‘I can’t talk, Loots.’

‘You can’t tell me anything?’

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Just come.’

Back in my room I stood at the wash-basin, leaning on it, with my head lowered. I wondered if Edith Hekmann had listened to that call as well. The porcelain beneath my hands. The coolness of it. The smooth, rounded edges.

Don’t you want to know the truth?

All I could see now were the buttons on her cardigan. The four brown buttons. Like hazelnuts. And that sleeve of hers, unravelling, unravelling –

You don’t want to know?

Something was coming apart. I didn’t dare to lift my head. I couldn’t look into the mirror.

I was afraid of what I might see.

Of what I might not see.

During the night I left my room and tiptoed through the darkened house. Halfway down the stairs I heard somebody murmuring. It seemed to be coming from behind the wall. I thought it must be one of the residents — old people having trouble sleeping. The clock struck three as I stepped on to the porch. The snow had stopped. I’d walked out into an odd silence, a padded world.

I crossed the car-park and, passing through the clustered fir trees, started down the stone steps towards the pool. Then, suddenly, I lost my footing. I was rolling, over and over. I had to throw my hands up around my head, to protect it. When I landed at the bottom of the steps, my glasses and my cane were gone.

I lay on my back in the snow. I didn’t seem to be hurt. Just shaken. Had I woken anyone? I lay there, listening. All I could hear was the sound of sulphur water tumbling into the pool. I sat up. Rubbed my elbow, then my knee. I’d been lucky. One of these days I was going to break something.

Why had I fallen, though?

I hadn’t been careless or impatient — in fact, I was sure I could remember watching my feet sink, one after the other, into the pure, unblemished snow. There was no reason to have fallen, none at all.

I limped to the edge of the pool. I knelt, reached down with one hand. Above the waterline the walls were sharp to the touch, encrusted with mineral deposits; below it, they were smooth, almost velvety, the consistency of dust. A rope had been fastened along the side in even loops, for people to hold on to. Over the years it had petrified, and it was now as hard as china.

The sound of the water, that sulphur smell, the rope’s strange texture — all this I could claim to know.

I slowly raised my head.

But what about the things my undiminished senses couldn’t help me with? What about the trees on the far side of the valley? What about the stars?

The night before, in the middle of her story, Edith Hekmann had taken me to Mazey’s room. She was so insistent, pulling on my sleeve, that I couldn’t refuse. It was up the stairs and through the door I’d put my ear to once, the door marked PRIVATE. Then along a cramped passageway, no more than shoulder-wide. Mazey’s room was at the end, on the right. She let me go in first. After what I’d heard, I’d been expecting something bizarre, extravagant — if not demented. I was disappointed. It was a room like any other room. A window, a single bed, a chair. A basin in the corner. Taps. A perfectly ordinary room. And Edith Hekmann was just a mother, proudly showing off her child. I found myself thinking of Gabriela, the Gabriela who appeared in my dreams. Always being admired for something, being special, winning.

Almost angrily, I said, ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’

Edith Hekmann laughed. ‘Above you.’

I reached up with my left hand. Nothing at first, just air. Then I felt something that was made of wood. It was smooth, carved into a shape. And it moved when I touched it.

At last I made the connection. ‘It’s a baby.’

I let go of it and it swung sideways. There was a series of small collisions, as wood knocked against wood. Click click CLICK CLICK click click — it reminded me of pool balls on a table, the sound they make when somebody breaks.

‘How many are there?’ I asked her.

‘I never counted.’ She came and stood beside me. ‘It’s years since he made one, but he still looks at them. Still lies there on his bed and looks at them.’ She walked past me, into the room. ‘He’s got talent,’ she said, ‘don’t you think?’

I didn’t know if talent was the word. I murmured something.

‘Karin took the baby away from him,’ she said, ‘and once they were gone there was no one who could explain it to him, not even me.’ There was a silence. ‘She turned him into what he is.’

I was only half-listening, though. I was still looking up into the mass of babies that were hanging from the ceiling …

It was a while before I turned to face her. She was standing by the window, looking out into the night. I thought she’d forgotten I was there. But then she spoke again.

‘Are you artistic, Mr Blom?’

I was still kneeling at the edge of the pool. I was no longer aware of my heart beating, or the places where I’d hurt myself; I was no longer aware of the cold. I was thinking about the wooden babies twisting on their strings –

A perfectly ordinary room.

There was a feeling now, a feeling that I remembered having in the car-park after I’d been shot. I was falling from a plane, and the plane was flying on without me. It wasn’t just separation, abandonment. It was the falling itself. Something giving way, something seeming to expand in front of me. A kind of gap had opened up, and it was widening. I left my screams behind, thin sounds curving into absolute infinity.

My dark glasses, my white cane. Where were they?

I tried to remember the lay-out of the steps. Think. THINK. There were three flights in all. You walked down the first flight, then turned to your right and walked down another one. Then you turned to your left. The last flight was the longest. I must have fallen somewhere near the top of the last flight.

I began with the bottom step, feeling the length and breadth of it, searching the ground on either side as well. It was a laborious process, and my hands were almost numb, but I could think of no other way. It would look odd, I thought, if someone saw me from an upstairs window. It would look like worship, part of some quaint religion.

I found my cane on the seventh step. I sat down and examined it; it seemed undamaged. The glasses would prove more difficult. A wind pushed at the trees near by — a night wind; I could detect no daylight in it yet. Not that it made much difference now. There would no longer be any days or nights for me. There would only be time — continuous, unvarying.

The eighth step yielded nothing. I was cold and tired. What if the glasses had landed some distance away, in the shrubbery?

As I started on the ninth step, my hand discovered something hard and rounded, with a kind of edge around it. I bent my nose to it. Leather.

It was a shoe.

‘Mrs Hekmann?’

Wait a minute. It wasn’t a woman’s shoe. It was too big to be a woman’s shoe.

‘Who are you?’ I said.

I found a second shoe.

‘Loots?’ I said. ‘It’s not you, is it?’

No, it couldn’t be. Not yet.

‘Who are you?’

My son. He’s come back.

‘Mazey?’

I was standing now. I could feel his breath on my face.

I had no idea what he intended. I had the feeling I should treat him as I would an animal. Stay calm. No sudden movements. Whatever you do, don’t run.

Something was placed against my chest. I was pushed backwards. I staggered down one step, then another. I didn’t fall, though. It must have been his hand.

I still had my cane. Supposing I used it as a weapon?

No sooner had the thought occurred to me than the cane was snatched out of my grasp. I heard it leave his hand. The sound it made, the sound a whip makes when it cuts through empty air. I heard it land in water somewhere to my left.

The violence was happening in silence.

Nothing was being said.

‘What is it, Mazey? What do you want?’

The hand pushed me backwards once again. I managed not to lose my balance. I had to be somewhere near the bottom now. I reached out with my foot, found level ground.

Words would be no use. He wasn’t even going to speak.

Was he trying to frighten me? Probably not. He didn’t know what fear was. I remembered what Edith Hekmann had said. The simple things he doesn’t understand. Like we get older.

Like we die.

I thought she must have told him that I’d wronged her. Now he was trying to get rid of me. He wanted me gone. Was he capable of measuring his own violence, though? Somehow I doubted it. He could kill me and not even be aware of it. He would stoop over my body with a kind of abstract curiosity, not understanding why all the movement had gone out of it.

It was also possible that she’d loosed him on me like a dog.

I walked backwards, trying to determine where he was. But he was moving quietly, if he was moving at all; the snow took every sound and softened it. Suddenly my heel tipped; there was nothing under it. I’d reached the edge of the pool. There was only one way to keep track of him — at least, only one that I could think of. I had to translate each movement he made into a noise. I had to make him visible.

I turned quickly, jumped in.

It was warm, warmer than I’d expected. Almost the same temperature as a bath. I rose to the surface. My head cooled as the night air closed over it. I was out of my depth. I worked the toe of one shoe against the heel of the other. I worried that Mazey might leap in after me, land on top of me. I wouldn’t stand a chance then.

At last my feet were free of my shoes. I slipped out of my jacket and swam away from it. I had no sense of where Mazey was. My plunge into the pool must have taken him by surprise. Confused him.

I don’t like swimming-pools. The words came to me, but they were strangely meaningless, redundant. Could it be that one fear cancels another? I was making for the middle. I was calm. Moving cautiously through the water, scarcely disturbing it. So I could hear what was happening.

Then, some distance behind me, the water erupted. It was him. It had to be. He’d stood there on the edge and thought about it. Then he’d jumped.

I started swimming faster, away from the noise. Staying afloat was hard, especially in clothes; it was sulphur water, and it didn’t support you the way water usually does. I could hear splashing coming from behind me. It didn’t sound as if he swam too often. That was a relief. It meant I was in my element, as opposed to his. Unless it was his fury I was hearing …

I felt the bottom with my feet; I’d reached the shallow end. I couldn’t stop to rest, though. I had to keep moving away from him, around the pool. While I was crouching there, with my head turned in his direction, I noticed that the sounds were weaker than before. They didn’t seem to be coming any closer either. It was as if he hadn’t moved in the water. And suddenly I realised. All that splashing. Swimming didn’t sound like that. But drowning might. Then I understood why he’d hesitated so long before he jumped. He’d never been in the pool before. He couldn’t swim.

I began to make my way towards him. It was quiet now and I had the feeling I was entering a trap. The silence, I didn’t trust it. What if he was waiting for me? I swam more slowly, trying to listen out for him.

I trod water, called his name.

There was no reply.

I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but I thought I sensed something move beneath the water, something reaching sluggishly for the surface. An arm, maybe. A hand.

I took one deep breath and dived. I touched the bottom of the pool. There was a kind of dust down there, centimetres thick, and soft as velvet. I pushed my fingers through it. But there was nothing else.

I rose to the surface, took some air. Then dived again.

Nothing.

The water was so warm, so dense.

I shifted some distance to my left and dived a third time. The fingers of my right hand touched his teeth. His mouth was open. He’d been lying right below me.

I came up shouting. ‘Mrs Hekmann? Mrs Hekmann?’

I dived again and tried to lift him. But he weighed more than I did. I got halfway to the surface, then I had to let him go. I had the feeling I was sweating, even though I was underwater.

It was probably too late anyway. His body was a dead weight: no movement in it, no resistance. I swam until I reached the side of the pool. I clung to the rope that felt like porcelain and began to shout again.

‘Mrs Hekmann?’

I just clung to the rope and shouted.

‘You must have woken just about everyone in the village,’ she said, ‘screaming and yelling like that. What’s the matter with you? Did you fall in the pool?’

‘It’s your son,’ I said.

‘What about him?’

I was sitting on the terrace in wet clothes, my hands wedged under my arms. I could still feel the imprint of his teeth at the end of my fingers.

‘What about my son?’ she said.

‘He’s dead.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘He’s at the bottom of the pool,’ I told her. ‘He drowned.’

Her voice was in my ear suddenly. ‘I could shoot you for saying that.’ She stepped back. ‘Why would he be in the pool? He can’t swim.’

‘He jumped in.’

‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘He wanted — to kill me.’ I was shivering. It was hard to speak’. ‘I jumped in to get away from him. He came after me. I tried to save him, but it was too late.’

She walked away and when she returned she was dragging something along the ground. I thought it was probably one of those long-handled nets that people use for scooping leaves out of a pool. Or it could have been a gardening implement. A hoe, for instance.

‘There’s nothing there,’ she said after a while.

‘He’s further out,’ I said, ‘towards the middle.’

The water swirled as she poked at it.

‘You’ll need some men,’ I told her.

‘I found a jacket,’ she said, ‘that’s all.’

‘It’s probably mine.’

She lifted it clear. I heard it dripping, then it landed on the ground beside me with a soft slap.

‘There’s nothing else,’ she said.

‘You should get some men,’ I said.

But she wasn’t listening. She’d started talking, half to herself, I heard the words child and lake. She was back in her story again, somewhere near the beginning.

Her voice faded, the way stations fade on the radio. Then it came back, stronger than before. I thought she must be pacing up and down beside the pool.

Her life was made up of everything that she could not forget. That wasn’t so uncommon. The difference was, she had to rehearse it constantly, as if it hadn’t happened yet. She went over it again and again, even though she knew it off by heart.

My teeth were clattering so hard, I couldn’t keep my mouth closed. My body ached from being held in one position for too long.

‘Get some men,’ I said.

One hand on the banisters, I climbed the stairs to the first floor. Though I didn’t expect Loots for a while yet, I doubted I’d be able to sleep. All I could think of was the dead man lying in the dust at the bottom of the pool. Martha had fetched two brothers from the village. I hadn’t caught their names. One of them ran the grocer’s shop. They were out there now, dredging the water for Mazey’s body. I wondered how soft his skin would be by the time they brought him up. I wondered whether they would find my shoes.

I felt for the lock and slid my key into it. I needn’t have bothered; the door was already open. I walked into my room. I could tell there was someone there. I could tell who it was, too. The smell of smoke gave her away.

‘Mrs Hekmann?’

Where was she? I remembered the chair and table by the window. I thought she must be sitting there.

‘Did they find him yet?’ she said.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe he went to the city. He’s always doing that —’

‘I told you. He’s dead.’

‘But of course there’s no reason for him to go there,’ she said, ‘not now.’

She was sliding a hard object around on the surface of the table. The ashtray, probably. I doubted if she knew she was doing it. It was like Nina and the beer mats.

Nina …

‘I’ve decided to tell you the rest,’ Edith Hekmann said.

I shook my head. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

‘Of course he didn’t tell me everything. I’m going to have to make some of it up. But I’ve got a pretty good idea. The bare bones of it, in any case.’ A hollow chuckle.

‘You don’t have to do that,’ I said. ‘I just told you.’

‘You’re not chicken, are you?’

I laughed, but it sounded unconvincing.

‘It won’t take long,’ she said.

And though the room was different, it was just like that other night. She began a long way back, in a place where the story ran smoothly. She set you afloat on it. You drifted. Then, quite suddenly, you were in white water and by then, of course, there was nothing you could do.

She’d found out that Mazey was going to the city and she’d found out why. He had a photograph of Nina, the one Jan Salenko had sent. He thought it was Karin, though. Not that they looked identical. They didn’t. But the girl in the photo and the girl in his memory were the same age. For Mazey, that was enough. The two girls were the same girl, and he was determined to find her. He had a question for her. An important question.

The photo never left his hand, not even when it was winter and he wasn’t wearing any gloves. His fingers would practically freeze around it. He would walk into a bar or a cheap café or a fast-food restaurant, and he would lay the photo down in front of him and then he would stare at his hand and wait for the life to flow back into it. People in those places, they were always teasing him. Is that your little sister? Is that your girl? You think I could make it with her? How much? And when he didn’t say anything, when he just looked at them with eyes that turned them into ghosts, they sometimes said, What are you staring at? You got some kind of problem? And he’d come back to the village with a tooth missing, or flakes of dried blood in his ears. Other times they were fascinated by the picture and they bent right over it and studied it close up. No, they’d say. Don’t know her. No, I’ve never seen her.

He found her by chance. It was a spring evening and he was walking in the streets behind the flower market. She came out of a corner shop and stood on the pavement, looking up into the sky. All the light was up there, above the rooftops; down on the street it was almost dark. He stood beside her, facing her. He waited. At last, sensing his presence, she turned and looked at him. He showed her the photo. She stared at the photo, then at him. Then at the photo again. She asked him who he was. He didn’t answer. He was still holding the photo up for her to see.

‘Where’s the baby?’ he said.

She glanced beyond him, waved her arm. A taxi appeared. She opened the door and climbed in. He watched the taxi pull away with her inside it. Why had she left like that? What had he done?

Edith Hekmann’s chair creaked as she shifted on it. I was still sitting on the bed. Nina in profile, gliding out of reach. I remembered Kolan talking. She saw it as an omen. Then he’d corrected himself. A warning. I put my head in my hands. My face was wet.

‘People say men don’t cry,’ Edith Hekmann said, ‘but they do. They’re always crying.’ She paused. ‘I think it’s a sign of weakness.’

I spoke into my hands. ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think.’

‘My husband used to cry.’ She paused again. ‘But I already told you that.’

She was still moving that object around. It sounded more like a bottle now. Or maybe it was an ashtray after all. One of those heavy ones. Cut-glass.

‘Anyway,’ she said.

Each time Mazey was in the city, he went to the corner shop in the hope of seeing her again and getting an answer to his question. He always appeared at sunset, which was when he’d seen her last. He stood and stared at soap-powder, cereal, canned fruit. Sometimes he was in there for over an hour. He never bought anything. Finally the owner became suspicious. Threw him out. But Mazey got it into his head that the girl must be hidden there somewhere. He pushed past the owner, back into the shop. Then he began to look for her, pulling tins and packets off the shelves. The police were called. Mazey spent a night in a prison cell on a charge of disturbing the peace. When they released him, he hitched a ride north, one and a half days in a lorry that was piled high with grit.

Three weeks later he was back again. He stayed with Ackal and Moler in their two-room apartment near the bus station. He lay on the bare mattresses and drank vodka out of dirty glasses. They taught him card games. Teased him about his photograph. During the long hot evenings he watched the corner shop, but the girl did not appear.

It wasn’t until December that his luck changed. On his way south he stole a van. He’d been waiting at the service station for hours; nobody had even looked at him. He was cold and tired, and the van had a cassette machine in it. He forced the door. Soon he was driving past the petrol pumps and out on to the motorway. His tape was playing, the tape of Miss Poppel’s chimes. He turned it up so loud, he could hear the wind moaning in the background. His mouth widened a fraction, which meant that he was smiling. Later, Ackal asked him if the van was stolen. He nodded. Ackal turned to the man with the jewel in his ear. ‘Learns fast, doesn’t he.’

One afternoon Mazey was driving through the western suburbs when he saw the girl walk out across the pavement and climb into a car. It wasn’t excitement that he felt. It was more like a kind of recognition or contentment: things had fallen into place at last. The car was a gold colour. He followed it. His photo lay on the dashboard, weighed down with a stone.

The girl drove through the city centre and on into what used to be the railway yards. As she passed a low, concrete building she slowed down. The building had a pink flashing sign on it and no windows. She parked just beyond it. He watched her from across the street as she walked up to the black man who was standing by the door. They talked for a moment, then she disappeared inside.

Mazey waited there all evening. It was a wide street, badly lit, with rubbish blowing over it. Just traffic-lights and tramlines. And that sign, of course — flash, flash, flash. He stared at it so long, it was printed on the air in front of him, even when he looked away; he had to shake his head like a money box to rid himself of it. Every now and then he got out of the van and walked up and down the pavement, but he never took his eyes off the girl’s gold car, not for more than a few seconds. Once, he went up to it and wiped the window with his hand and peered in. There was nothing much to interest him except the objects dangling from the rear-view mirror. He couldn’t quite make out what they were — there was too much condensation — but he knew why they were there. He nodded when he saw them. Chimes.

By the time she appeared again, it was after midnight. The black man walked her to her car. He leaned on the top of the open door while she sat behind the wheel. Mazey could hear their voices. Finally the man took a step backwards and her door slammed shut. She sounded the horn as she pulled out into the fitful late-night traffic. She seemed to enjoy driving through orange lights. He often had to drive through red ones to keep up with her. Though she drove like someone who was being followed, she didn’t seem to realise he was there.

She stopped on a street that was lined with trees. He watched her climb a flight of steps. A door opened. She was inside the house for almost an hour and when she came out again, there was a man with her. He was wearing a leather jacket. They drove back to the city centre and parked in a side street behind the railway station. The man said goodbye to her and left. Mazey followed the girl into the station. It was the middle of the night, but there were still crowds of people around, some walking in unsteady circles, others asleep on benches. They didn’t surprise or upset him at all; he’d often done the same thing himself.

The girl disappeared into the café. He stayed outside, leaning against the hot-drinks machine. He liked the sound it made when someone put their money in, the way it shook and rumbled. He hadn’t been there long when a man with dark glasses and a white stick passed by. Mazey didn’t know what a blind man was. He’d never seen one before. The dark glasses, the white stick. It worried him, somehow.

It worried him even more when the blind man walked into the café and sat down opposite the girl. The blind man was facing the window. After a while he took his glasses off and wiped his eyes. Was he crying? Mazey pulled back from the window, puzzled. But there was nothing he could do — nothing he could do except go back to the drinks machine and wait. And wait. The hands on the station clock only moved if you didn’t look at them.

At last the door of the café opened and the girl came out. She was alone. Mazey took a step towards her, then he stopped. She looked up and saw him standing there, staring at her. Just then, the café door opened again. It was the blind man. He called the girl’s name several times. As she turned to speak to him, Mazey drew back into the shadows.

The blind man and the girl left the station together. Mazey followed them. It was snowing now, bitterly cold, and the wind cut through his coat. He reached into his pocket for the vodka Ackal had given him. His hands were numb; after he’d drunk from the bottle, he could hardly screw the top back on. Halfway down the street the blind man swung round and stared at him. The girl, too. Mazey stopped, uncertain what to do. But then they hurried on again. It looked as if they were making for her car. When they reached the car, though, the blind man turned his back on the girl and walked away. Mazey was relieved. The blind man had begun to frighten him.

The girl stood on the pavement, snow sticking to her hair. She shouted something, but it was taken by the wind — and, anyway, the blind man had already disappeared into a building; he couldn’t help her. She found her keys and unlocked the door of her car. She didn’t notice the van that was parked behind her. From where he was sitting, hands on the steering-wheel, Mazey could see the shape of her head framed in the rear window. He thought of a morning by the stream. The shape of the girl’s head on the ground, hair covering her face. And then, when he had finished, she jumped into the water and she stood there, and her dress spread around her on the surface like the green pad of a lily …

It took her a while to start the car. But when she drove away, she drove fast. This time he was ready. He followed her to a tall grey house on a street not far from the flower market. Then, as she opened her car door and got out, he walked up to her and hit her with a jack. She slumped against the side of her car as though she had suddenly, and mysteriously, fallen asleep. He lifted her into his arms and –

‘You’re making this part up,’ I said.

‘You think so?’ Edith Hekmann’s voice was sharp. When I didn’t answer, she said, ‘What about the rest of it? Was that made up?’

‘I don’t want to hear any more.’

‘Yes, you do.’ After pausing for a moment, as if to emphasise the truth of what she’d said, she continued:

He lifted the girl into his arms –

I knew what she was doing now. This story was her revenge on me. I was going to hear it whether I liked it or not (and if I didn’t like it, maybe that was even better). There was a door in the room, but I would never find it, not until she’d finished talking. I tried not to listen, but her voice got through. Perhaps, after all, she was right. There was a part of me that had to know.

— into his arms and carried her to the van. He opened the door on the passenger side and lowered her on to the seat. But when he closed the door, her head fell sideways, the skin above her eyebrow flattening against the window. He opened the door and she collapsed. He had to push her further along the seat, further in. He closed the door again. This time she stayed sitting up. He looked left and right. There was nobody about. She lived in a quiet area. And besides, it was late. Probably three or four in the morning.

As he turned out of her street he slid his tape into the stereo. There was a calmness then. Snow lay on the windscreens of parked cars. Houses came and went like dreams — bright and strange, but instantly forgotten. He heard a sigh. The girl had woken up. Almost immediately she bent over and was sick on the floor. A hot, bitter smell filled the inside of the van.

He took the route he would have taken if he’d been driving home. He recognised the buildings, the roundabouts, the signs. Everything was comforting, familiar. Even the girl who was in the van with him. Once, though, she opened the window and started shouting. He had to hit her on the head again to keep her quiet. She slept for a long time after that.

She was still quiet when he turned off the road, into a building site. He stopped the van. He put his arms around her and lifted her out through the driver’s side. He laid her carefully on the ground. It was a damp, muddy place. A cold wind blowing. Plastic sheets shifted and billowed against the scaffolding. Mazey stared at the photograph in his hand, then he stared at the girl who was lying below him. Somewhere not too far away there was the sound of metal knocking against metal.

When she opened her eyes, he bent down and held her wrist. He meant to be affectionate. But then he remembered that she didn’t like him to touch her and he took his hand away.

‘Where’s the baby?’ he said.

‘What baby’s that?’ she said in a faint voice.

‘Your baby,’ he said.

She frowned slightly. ‘I don’t have a baby.’

‘You have a baby,’ he said. ‘You hid it.’

She tried to sit up, but he put one hand on her chest and pushed her down.

He asked her again. ‘Where’s the baby?’

She closed her eyes and would not answer.

He picked up the jack and hit her with it, then he put it on the ground beside her. He undid the buttons on her leather coat and opened it. Grasping her sweater by the hem, he lifted it up over her body until it covered her face. It wouldn’t go any further. His hands hovered in the air above her, undecided. He took hold of the vest that she was wearing underneath. Pushed it up over the sweater. Her arms were still trapped in the arms of her coat. They stretched out on either side of her, bent at the elbows; she looked oddly relaxed. He tucked his fingers under the waistband of her skirt and pulled at it until the zip broke. He tugged it down below the level of her hips. Her underpants came with it. Next, he took his pen-knife out. He chose the longest of the three blades and snapped it open. Tested it against his thumb, the way he’d been taught. Placing the tip of the blade in the middle of her rib-cage, just at the point where the two halves joined, he pressed down hard. He cut in a straight line until the blade ran up against her pelvic bone. Blood slid across her belly. He put the pen-knife down and reached inside her. There didn’t appear to be anything alive in there –

I didn’t recognise the woman at first. She was bathed in radiance and I was walking towards her. I weighed almost nothing. The ground didn’t seem firm enough to be the real ground. Her hair wasn’t hair at all but light. Her hands reached out eagerly to welcome me.

She showed me some clothes that were dirty and her face was troubled. What should I do? she seemed to be asking. What can I do? I didn’t know. I, too, was filled with despair.

‘Mr Blom?’

A voice was calling me. I didn’t want to answer it.

Time passed miraculously fast and suddenly the clothes that she was holding up for me to see were clean and white, and she was smiling. I wanted to rejoice with her.

‘Mr Blom?’

‘What is it?’ I was irritable. ‘What?’

I could feel carpet under my left eyebrow. Under my cheekbone as well. And my right hand.

‘You passed out.’

It was Edith Hekmann’s voice.

‘Probably all that talk of blood,’ I heard her say. ‘Some people faint even at the mention of it.’

I pushed myself up off the floor and sat on the edge of the bed with my head between my knees. She talked on. I didn’t have the strength to stop her. After a while I lay back. Then I turned over, on to my side. The blankets were warm beneath me. I felt peculiarly comfortable all of a sudden. Peculiarly well.

— He wrapped her in her leather coat and lifted her and put her in the back of the van. He covered her with a piece of blue tarpaulin. Not far from the van there was an oil-drum filled to the brim with rainwater. He washed his hands and arms in it. He didn’t panic; it wasn’t in his nature. He just climbed into the van and turned it round and drove out of the building site. The snow eased as he moved north. For a while there was sleet. Then, finally, just rain.

When it was light, he pulled into a petrol station. The man who worked the pumps wanted to talk. First he said something about how early it was. Mazey just nodded. Next he mentioned the weather. Mazey agreed with him. Then, as he walked round the van to put the pump back on its bracket, he said, ‘You’ve got something bleeding in there, mister.’

Mazey looked up from the money he was counting.

‘There’s something bleeding in the back of your van,’ the man said.

‘Deer,’ said Mazey.

‘Making one hell of a mess.’

Mazey nodded.

‘Deer, eh?’

‘Shot it this morning. Back there.’ And Mazey angled his thumb over his shoulder, back along the road.

He paid for the petrol.

‘Interesting music,’ the man said.

‘Yeah,’ said Mazey.

Then he drove away.

It was late afternoon when he reached the village. She remembered that she was taking the washing in when he came round the corner of the building. She remembered watching him as he walked towards her. There was nothing nervous or hesitant about him, nothing to suggest that something might be wrong. There never was.

But then he took her by the arm and though his touch was gentle there was a pressure in it.

‘What is it, Mazey?’

‘The van,’ he said.

‘What van?’

He led her to the car-park at the side of the hotel and showed her the van. It was pale-blue, with rust around the headlights and the wheel-arches.

‘Where did you get it?’ she asked him.

‘I took it.’ He told her the name of the service station. Then he opened the back doors and lifted the tarpaulin.

She reached in quickly, drew the tarpaulin over the body, then glanced behind her. The windows of the inn were black, empty. At that time of day the residents would be sitting in the drawing-room and listening to the news on the radio. Martha would be preparing supper in the kitchen. No one could have seen anything. She bent down, felt for a pulse. Not that there was much chance of that: the injuries were too severe. But she had to make quite certain.

The girl was dead, and had been dead for hours. She wasn’t sure whether or not she should feel relieved.

‘When did this happen?’ she asked.

Mazey stood beside her with his hands in his pockets. He was also looking at the inn, not furtively, though, as she had done, not guiltily at all, but with the complacency of somebody who called it home.

She had to repeat the question.

‘Last night,’ he said.

‘Did anyone see you?’

He shook his head.

She took him by the arm. ‘You have to get rid of the van. I don’t care how you do it. Just get rid of it. Do you understand?’

‘Maybe tomorrow.’

‘Now, Mazey. You do it now.’

Only then did he look down at her, a look that stopped just behind her eyes, at the entrance to her brain. It angered her, to think that he might challenge her.

‘Right now,’ she said.

He stood there for a while longer, frowning. At last he moved past her and opened the door on the driver’s side. He ducked sideways for a moment. His music started up — the tape she’d made for him.

‘Quieter, Mazey,’ she said. ‘Quieter.’

He grinned at her and pushed the hair out of his eyes.

She watched him reverse into the road and drive away. That night there was a storm. A month’s rain fell in less than twelve hours. Even the church flooded; hymn-books were found in the meadow, swollen to twice their normal size. Mazey did not return.

He was gone for three days.

I heard a car in the distance. Thinking it might be Loots, I swung my legs on to the floor. But the sound didn’t grow any louder; instead, it seemed to pass at a tangent to the village.

‘Three days it took him,’ Edith Hekmann said, ‘and when he came back he was on foot.’

I asked her what had happened to the body. She didn’t know.

‘You’ve no idea?’

‘That’s right. I’ve no idea.’ She seemed to relish the fact. She’d tortured me with what she knew, but that wasn’t enough. Now she wanted to torture me with what she didn’t know as well.

‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘He would’ve told you.’

‘He didn’t tell me.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t ask.’

‘You’re lying.’

She laughed. It was only air, almost inaudible, but utterly contemptuous at the same time. I reached out and my hand closed round a lamp. I pulled it hard, snapping the wire, and threw it at her. It hit the wall and shattered.

‘You’re in a bad way.’ Her voice came from the corner of the room.

I didn’t say anything.

‘You’ll never make it in the police,’ she said. ‘You’re not cut out for it. If I was you, I’d start looking for some other kind of work.’

‘How many times —’ I began, but she talked over me.

‘Those castles in the mountains,’ she was saying, ‘those battlements. They don’t exist.’

I stared at her.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘you’re blind. You won’t see a thing.’

‘What do you mean?’

There was a click made up of two quick sounds, but I didn’t have time to identify it because it was followed, almost immediately, by a deafening explosion. I felt bits of something land on me. At first I couldn’t imagine what it was. It felt like mud thrown up by the wheels of a passing car. It was solid, and strangely warm. It went cold fast, though. Then I knew.

I couldn’t move.

‘Mrs Hekmann?’

My voice sounded far away, as if there was a wall between me and what I’d said.

‘Mrs Hekmann?’

I listened for a whisper, breathing, anything — but all I could hear was people coming up the stairs. Two people. Both men, by the sound of it. I listened carefully. Yes, two men.

The brothers from the village.

I sat on the steps of the hotel, my suitcase on the porch behind me. I remembered my call to Loots. He’d told me he would drive through the night. He would be with me by dawn, he said, or shortly after — I’d made him promise — but it was after dawn and he hadn’t appeared yet. I was sitting on the steps waiting for the sound of his car in the distance. I hoped it wouldn’t be much longer.

The police had already been, tyres slurring on the gravel as they braked. I didn’t understand what the hurry was. There was nobody to arrest or apprehend. There was hardly even anyone to question. All the crimes had been committed and all the criminals were gone.

‘Are you the blind man, sir?’

The policeman was too alert. There was something farcical about it. He was like someone who thought it was the beginning of the story when really it was the end.

‘Well?’ His voice moved closer, officious now and slightly nasal. ‘Are you?’

Don’t ever ignore policemen. If there’s one thing they can’t stand.

I nodded wearily. ‘I’m the blind man.’

‘We’re going to need some kind of statement.’

‘It’s no good asking me,’ I said.

‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘I didn’t see a thing.’

‘You were there, though,’ the policeman said.

No sense of humour. No sense of humour whatsoever.

I dictated a few sentences for him. I said that I had fallen into the pool and that Mazey Hekmann had drowned while trying to rescue me. When Edith Hekmann learned of her son’s death, she had shot herself. The real crimes were hidden between the lines. I was keeping them for Munck. I thought Munck should get the credit. I wanted him to have that street named after him.

I reached for my suitcase, pulled it closer. The old people would be sitting at their tables in the dining-room, waiting for their breakfast to be served. If only Loots would come. I already knew what I was going to say to him. I’m blind. I realise that now. But still. Don’t ever tell me what you look like. I’ve got my own ideas. You’re thin, just as Nina’s beautiful. I don’t want to hear any different. I don’t want to know. You’re thin, with red hair. You’ve got shoulderblades that stick out. Cheekbones, too. You do extraordinary things on bicycles. No, don’t laugh. It’s what I think. It’s true. Somehow I felt that he would understand. I couldn’t wait for him to arrive. I wanted to throw my arms around him, embrace him.

The sun slowly warmed the left side of my face.

To think that I’d entertained the notion of a silver room! I could still imagine it — the walls and ceiling lined with kitchen foil, and bits of wire radiating in all directions — but I knew I’d never build it, not now. I couldn’t spend my life in a place like that. Nobody could. And besides, it wouldn’t have been going far enough. After all, what would happen when I left the room? Everything I’d been trying to avoid would be waiting for me just outside the door. No, a silver room would never have sufficed. I’d have needed more protection than that. A silver suit, perhaps, like something an astronaut might wear. A helmet, too. But why stop there? In the end I would have been forced to take the idea to its logical conclusion. Silver skin.

I took a deep breath and let the air ease out of me. The smell of the countryside in winter. Wood fires and muddy fields. Snow.

At last I heard the car. It crept, soft-tyred, along the road and parked outside the inn. I stood up, stretched. A door opened. Footsteps across the grass, keys bouncing on a hand.

Loots.

‘About time,’ I said.

The footsteps stopped. A shadow fell across me. ‘There you are.’

I stared. Because it wasn’t Loots’ voice. It was Visser’s.

‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

I stepped backwards, stumbled, almost tripped. What I felt was partly surprise — I’d been expecting someone else — and partly trepidation, which was the legacy of all the hallucinations. But there was nothing to be frightened of, I told myself. There was nothing to fear. Visser was my doctor. And excellent he was, too, by all accounts. He would only have my best interests at heart.

‘How are you, Martin?’

‘You know, you were right,’ I said. ‘You were right all along.’

There was a silence, one of Visser’s famous silences, but I knew that, if I’d been granted a moment’s vision, if I could have seen him, just for an instant, standing there in his overcoat (if indeed he wore an overcoat!), he would’ve been smiling down at me, with pride.

At the same time, though, now that he was here, in the village, it was hard to rule out the possibility that he might simply have discontinued the experiment. Just kind of disconnected me. Brought the whole thing to an end. Out of pity. Believing, finally, that I’d had enough.

It was possible, surely.

After all, on the far side of the moon, there are intelligent life-forms who are keeping us under constant observation.

And there is always somebody behind you, with a gun.