The Living and the Dead in Winsford

46

It’s Alfred Biggs who’s on duty. It’s morning, and there are no other customers in the centre, tapping away at their keyboards. He brightens up when I come in and wishes me a Happy New Year. I return the compliment. He goes out into the kitchen to make tea without even asking if I want any. I’ve forgotten to bring biscuits with me yet again.

I start with Martin’s inbox and find that I’m in luck: there actually is a message from Soblewski, just as I had been hoping. He wishes Martin a Happy New Year and attaches the short story he had mentioned in his previous message. ‘Change of Wind’ by Anna Słupka. He points out that the translation probably needs a bit more revision, but he wants Martin to read it and give his opinion of it.

And he asks Martin to pass on greetings to fru Holinek.

I read the ten lines twice, very carefully, and open the attachment: it strikes me that sending the text of a short story like this suggests that my theory about Soblewski being an accomplice is over the top. Why would they need to go to such lengths if it is all a fake?

Change of Wind? I drop the idea — at least until I’ve read fröken Słupka’s text properly. I also recall that the Swedish short story they had talked about had been written by a young author called Anderson, Anderson with only one s, but I make up my mind not to overdo the interpretation. The world is full of possible messages, and one way of going mad is to try to read all of them.

Nevertheless I have to be very careful of course when it comes to my (Martin’s) reply to Soblewski’s message, and it takes a whole cup of tea and twenty minutes before I’m satisfied with what I’ve written. I wish him a Happy New Year and say thank you for the short story. I promise to read it as soon as possible, and get back to him with a judgement within a week (Alfred Biggs helps me to print out the twelve pages); and with a minimum of fuss I describe how we have celebrated Christmas and the New Year down here in Morocco. In the end I write:

And I sincerely hope no new bodies have turned up in your village. Have they identified the last one yet?

Best, Martin

I was going to put ‘on your beach’ but I changed it to ‘in your village’. There was nothing about a beach in the previous e-mail — and nothing about a village either, come to that, but I can’t think of a better way of expressing it. I also think that my (Martin’s) tone is exactly right: a bit jokey but even so sufficiently serious for him to answer the question in his next message.

The fact that the body hasn’t been identified is of course the only possible answer.

As for the rest of Martin’s e-mails, the only one I bother to respond to is a brief greeting from Bergman. In accordance with my plan I write that I (Martin) have fallen a bit behind with my writing, but I hope that things will buck up in the new year. ‘A few problems have cropped up and I can’t see a satisfactory way round them just yet,’ I add.

That is all I need to say at this stage. I think my plan is working well.

My own inbox, which I don’t open until I’ve finished dealing with Martin’s, produces something unexpected — totally unexpected. Violetta di Parma writes that her mother back in Argentina has fallen seriously ill, and that her family wants her to come home as soon as possible. They say it can be a matter of months, possibly even weeks, and Violetta writes that she has made up her mind. Her contract with the Opera Ballet runs until the middle of April, but most of the work will be finished in January. The première will be in the middle of February, and she has already been given the okay by the powers that be to leave at the end of January.

And so Violetta writes that she wants to leave our house on the first of February, three months earlier than intended, and that is what she would like to discuss with us. How should we go about it? Would we like her to find a new tenant to look after the house for the remainder of the period? What shall we do about the money she has already paid in rent for the remaining three months? If we can’t find any other solution she realizes that she will have to abide by the contract as originally agreed.

It is a long and emotional message: she apologizes for causing us problems in this way, but she can’t see any other possibility for herself apart from going back home to Córdoba.

My first reaction is also that fate has been most unkind. I really need these months, this spring, in order to pull this off. As so often recently, I have no idea about what I mean by pulling this off: but after sitting and brooding over the e-mail — and being served another cup of tea by Alfred Biggs — I begin to see things in quite a different light.

What is there to stop me speeding things up a bit?

Why shouldn’t I be able to carry out my plan in one month rather than three?

In fact, might that even improve the outcome?

I spend the whole of the afternoon’s walk round Selworthy Combe and Bossington thinking about this new situation, and by the time we shut ourselves into Darne Lodge as dusk falls I am quite clear about what to do next.

We shall leave Morocco a month from now. It will work all right, and even make everything more credible if I handle it correctly. It needs more activity on my part, of course: but if there is one thing I have missed during my stay on the moor, it is active involvement in something.

As if to confirm that this conclusion is absolutely correct, this is what happens late in the evening:

Signe. Wrong.

Vivianne. Wrong.

Ingrid.

The screen flickers twice, and then the document ‘At Dawn’ opens.

Signe is his mother. Vivianne, as I have already explained, is his dead sister. His mother is also dead, incidentally.

Ingrid, on the other hand, is the woman with whom he was unfaithful in the middle of the nineties. She is most probably still alive, and he has evidently not forgotten her.

And I will not forget the password.