The Stranglers Honeymoon

9

After darkness cometh light, after strength cometh weakness.

She had read this somewhere or other, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that a few days passed after her risky outing to the cafe on Sunday before she plucked up courage to go out again.

Once, just once, her mother went to the corner shop and bought in a few necessities, but Monica stayed put. She in her room, her mother in hers, full stop. Time passed, and yet again seemed not to affect them. When her mother summoned up all the pathetic sense of duty she was capable of and asked why her daughter wasn’t at school, Monica said she had the flu, and that was accepted as a sufficient explanation.

She read, then hid what she had been reading. Wrote, and threw away what she had written. It was not until Wednesday evening that she could summon up sufficient strength and energy to dare to venture as far as the library in Ruidsenallé.

She had a plan. It was simple, and she had been considering it ever since it came to her during one of her sleepless nights.

If Benjamin Kerran had been found dead in his bathroom nearly a week ago — she had concluded — there must be something about it in the newspapers. It would be implausible for there not to be.

And so all she needed to do was to check. She asked for copies of Neuwe Blatt and Telegraaf for the last six days, sat down at an empty table and started leafing through them. Calmly and methodically, leaving nothing to chance. Page by page, newspaper by newspaper. No hurry. It took twenty minutes.

Not a word.

Not a single word about a man stabbed with a pair of scissors in a flat near the university. No death notice. Nothing.

Ergo? she asked herself as she gazed out of the aquarium-like windows at the square, and listened to the blood pounding in her temples. What does this mean? What has actually happened?

The answer was obvious. Or rather, the alternatives were obvious.

Either he had survived. The scissors had not damaged any vital organ. He had simply fainted as a result of the pain, come round again and pulled out the scissors. Driven to the hospital and had his wound dressed. Or managed it himself.

Or — the other alternative — he was simply lying dead on his bathroom floor, just as she had left him, waiting to be discovered.

It would soon be a whole week. Was that plausible? Was it possible? How soon does a body start to smell? When would the neighbours begin to suspect foul play? His colleagues at work?

She slid the pile of newspapers to one side and allowed her thoughts to wander between the two possibilities. Trying to weigh them up and working out which one was the more likely.

If he had survived, if he was still alive, she thought — trying to ignore the cold and remarkably slow shudder working its way up along her spine — shouldn’t he have been in touch? Shouldn’t she have known by now?

She took a few deep breaths and tried to think clearly. Surely it was extremely odd that he hadn’t made some sort of counter-move? He couldn’t possibly have failed to see that she had tried to kill him. Even if he hadn’t registered what happened during the critical moments, the scissors must surely have indicated what had happened. They couldn’t have landed there of their own accord. She — that crafty sixteen-year-old Monica Kammerle — had tried to finish him off, there was no mistaking that.

Attempted murder. She wondered how long a sentence such a charge would involve.

A few years? That was for sure. But of course, not as many as it would have been if she had succeeded in her attempt.

Self-defence, of course. And perhaps it was classified as manslaughter. Attempted manslaughter? That didn’t sound so bad. And surely one had a right to defend oneself against unwanted sexual advances? Surely she would be able to plead attempted rape and self-defence?

She gave a start when she realized that she was beginning to lose sight of the basic facts. She had had sex with him several times of her own free will, and there was not really much point in sitting there speculating about the possible consequences of that.

Besides, he’s dead! she suddenly decided, gritting her teeth. He can’t possibly be still alive without getting in touch somehow or other! Impossible. He’s lying up there in his bathroom, rotting away: old buildings made of stone are solidly constructed, and it can take months before the stench starts to become noticeable. Weeks in any case. Art Nouveau, wasn’t that what he’d said?

But then, it wasn’t the stench from the corpse that was the crucial point, she realized. His employers and workmates must start wondering what was going on — in local government, she seemed to recall he had said — and sooner or later they would begin to suspect foul play. In fact, they had probably already started to do so: colleagues and close friends. . relatives as well, assuming he had any he was in regular touch with, she didn’t know. . They must surely catch on to the fact that something odd must have happened — not everybody was as isolated as a certain mother and a certain daughter in a poky little flat in Moerckstraat.

She stood up and carried the newspapers back to the issuing counter. Dead, she told herself once again. I have murdered Benjamin Kerran. It’s only a matter of time before his body is found, and the whole of Maardam will be able to read about it.

But just as she was about to thank the well-upholstered librarian for her help, once again that shout echoed inside her head.

Monica!

She felt herself shaking, and hurried out through the entrance hall. I’m a sick rose, she thought. A sick, sick rose.

Thy dark secret love does my life destroy.

It was not until an afternoon four days later that she left her flat the next time. Four days. As heavy as lead and as empty as a vacuum.

She had only come as far as the corner of Falckstraat and Zwille when she bumped into her English teacher, fröken Kluivert; and a few minutes later she saw a group of classmates crossing over Grote Torg. Girls with their arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing away somewhat artificially. It was Saturday, a free day.

She survived both incidents, just about, but made up her mind to postpone what she planned to do next until that evening, when it would be dark. She had realized that daylight, and the pale September sunshine, were not a combination likely to assist her in achieving her aims.

Not that anybody would have been especially interested, put two and two together and wondered why she had been off school for over a week. Certainly not.

But she had no desire to meet anybody. The bottom line was that it was her interests at stake, nobody else’s. She didn’t want to talk to anybody, or to look anybody else in the eye. These people had nothing to do with her, had never had any importance, and even less now. Everything was as it always had been, she thought, but her life had acquired a sort of significance that it hadn’t had before. A sort of transparency.

When she got back home she found her mother on the telephone. For a moment she thought it might have been Benjamin, and her heart felt as if it had just been kicked by a horse. Then she heard that it was in fact her aunt Barbara, and it was just the routine check, the call that came every third or fourth week, like clockwork, and which contained about as much empathy and sisterly love as there was blood in an ice crystal — to use an expression her father used occasionally. An expression based on deeply felt emotions.

Her mother kept a stiff upper lip to the best of her ability, and the call was terminated after less than a minute.

‘Have you met that Benjamin again lately?’ — the words slipped out of Monica’s mouth before she could stop them. She hadn’t planned to say that, but it seemed that her words had suddenly acquired an uncontrollable will of their own. She knew after all that her mother hadn’t set foot outside the door for a week.

‘Benjamin?’ said her mother, as if she had already forgotten who that was. ‘No, I don’t think there would be much point.’

‘Has he been in touch at all lately?’

That was also a pretty pointless question. She had barely been more than ten metres away from her mother recently.

‘No.’

‘Okay, I was just asking.’

‘I see.’

Monica went back to her room. Lay down on her bed and prepared to wait for the arrival of dusk. Stared up at the ceiling. Thought for a moment about Pastor Gassel, but pushed any such thoughts to one side as she had already done several times before. She had never really managed to believe wholly in him, and to do so now was a step too far. Much too far. She took out her Blake instead, and picked out a poem at random.

Cruelty has a Human Heart

And Jealousy a Human Face

Terror, the Human Form Divine

And Secrecy, the Human Dress

She read those lines over and over again until she was sure that she knew them off by heart. Then lay down with her eyes closed and repeated them over and over again, until she fell asleep under her blanket.

There was no Benjamin Kerran in the Maardam section of the telephone directory. Nobody by the name of Kerran at all, in fact.

An ex-directory number, then; but if things had been different, she could have asked her mother, of course.

There was nothing in her mother’s room either, in fact: she took the opportunity of making a search while her mother was in the bath with a glass of wine. Nothing in the address book. No number scribbled down on a scrap of paper or in the margin of a newspaper, places her mother liked to use for noting down important things.

So she would have to drop the idea of phoning him. There was nothing she could do about it, she thought. Never mind — perhaps she wouldn’t have dared to anyway, when the chips were down.

And directory enquiries had no current number for anybody called Kerran, no subscriber by that name. . And no, of course it was not possible to supply information about so-called ex-directory numbers: why did she think people took the trouble of keeping their private lives private?

Monica sighed. Back to plan A, then. Another little visit to see if it was possible to find out anything.

If there was a light in one of his windows, perhaps.

Or in the chink under the door.

Or if the mailbox down in the entrance hall seemed to be chock-full. There ought to be several indications to look for and interpret, without her needing to go so far as to press her nose against the keyhole and sniff for the smell of rotting flesh. Even if she couldn’t be certain, surely there would be a pointer or two.

A clear pointer, and with a bit of luck, certainty. Plan A it would have to be.

She left Moerckstraat at about nine. She noticed to her surprise that the evening was quite warm. Fifteen degrees or thereabouts. As far as she could recall it hadn’t rained all day, and the wind that had died away to become no more than a mild whisper was distinctly friendly as it wafted in from the south, despite the fact that it was almost October. She took the route past the canals and Keymer Plejn: it was a bit of a detour, but she felt that the walk would do her good. She also decided to skirt round the cemetery rather than cut through it, and when she turned into the right alley and could see the dreary old university building in the background, it was already turned half past nine.

She stopped on the pavement opposite, just in front of the steps down to some sort of zoological shop. She gazed up at the dark façade on the other side of the street. Five storeys, just as she had remembered it — the bottom floor some way above ground level so that nosy parkers peeping in through the windows were not a problem.

But Benjamin Kerran didn’t live on the bottom floor, and she suddenly realized that she wasn’t sure if it was on the third or fourth.

But surely it must be the fourth, she thought. The top floor, that must be it. In any case, he had windows both looking out over the street and into the courtyard, she was sure of that.

But which ones were they? Which windows? The building extended along the whole length of the alley, from the university at one end and the cemetery wall at the other, and she counted up to eighteen windows on the top floor, under the overhanging roof. Unless she was completely mistaken, the ones she was looking for should be slightly to the left of the centrally placed entrance door, from where she was standing.

But how many to the left?

At least four, she thought; and with the aid of some kind of obscure, intuitive sense of direction she picked out the four most likely ones. It was dark in two of them, light in the other two — a warm, yellow, slightly subdued light. No cold blue light from the television through lace curtains in this block. There were also lights in the windows to the right of the ones she had picked out, while on the other side everything was dark all the way to the cemetery. The shortcomings and uncertainties in these observations and calculations struck her at about the same time as she realized that the whole business of light and dark windows was nothing much to go by in any case.

If Benjamin Kerran was alive and at home, then of course he was likely to have lights on at this time in the evening.

But if he was at home and lying dead in the bathroom, it was at least as likely that he wouldn’t have had the strength to heave himself to his feet in order to switch off the lights that she must have left burning nine days ago. There had only been a candle burning in the living room, she remembered that: but all the lights had been on in the bathroom and the hall.

She congratulated herself on reaching those brilliant conclusions, then plucked up courage, crossed over the street and tried the entrance door.

It was not locked. She hesitated for a moment, then opened it and went into the courtyard. Paused and looked around.

A dark-haired young woman appeared, carrying a basket of newly washed clothes. There was a smell of cooking coming from an open window on the ground floor on the right. The old wrought-iron lantern in the corner by the bicycle stands was switched on, as were the small yellow lamps over the various staircases. The woman went in through one of them, but that wasn’t Benjamin Kerran’s door. Monica took a deep breath and established that there was no stench of rotting flesh lurking in the air in the courtyard, only that cooking smell. Something with mushrooms and garlic, no doubt, and she suddenly felt hungry. She hadn’t had a cooked meal for over a week now, so that was hardly surprising. Not surprising at all.

She scanned the façade of the building from this side as well, from the inside as it were, but didn’t bother to try to work out which windows were relevant. It looked as if people were at home in most flats, in about two-thirds of them in fact, she estimated. Some of the windows were even open — it was such a warm evening, so why not? She could hear noises from televisions and radios here and there, and the occasional conversation, muted somewhat by the thick walls and the dense atmosphere of. . well, of middle-class civilization. She noted that the overall impression was of unambiguous homeliness — a feeling of homeliness impervious to pressures from the outside — and she could feel a lump forming in her throat.

I mustn’t start crying now, she thought — and at that same moment she realized that she couldn’t remember the name on the door of the flat.

It had been something different: not Kerran. . But the name of a lodger who had since moved out, and she hadn’t a clue as to what that name was. How come she had overlooked this state of affairs? Until now?

In other words, was she sure that she would be able to find the right door? And come to think of it, how about the entrance doors out here in the courtyard, leading up to the various staircases? Surely they wouldn’t be unlocked as late as this in the evening, allowing any old riff-raff to gain entry?

Hell’s bells, she thought. I must have forgotten that I’m just an idiot. What am I doing here? What the hell was that for a daft impulse, sending me back to the scene of the crime? Standing here in the courtyard like a halfwit, totally unable to take any steps likely to throw light on the fate of the dead body!

She shook her head, walked forward and tried the door in question — the one she thought she remembered, at least.

Locked. Just as anybody with a brain more functional than a walnut could have worked out. I might just as well give up, she thought. Just as well go home and continue to stare up at the ceiling, waiting for my collapse, the arrival of the social services and the Day of Judgement. . Bloody fucking hell!

She was just about to turn on her heel and turn this decision into reality when a light was switched on, visible through the small, frosted glass panes in the upper part of the door.

She had no time to consider. To make a decision. A balding, middle-aged man in tracksuit and trainers came out. Nodded to her, ran out into the courtyard and vanished into the street within three seconds.

She managed to catch the door before it closed and automatically locked itself, and before she knew where she was, she found herself inside. Paused for a moment and felt a sort of whirlpool welling up inside her. Gritted her teeth and clasped her hands. Looked around.

Now, she thought. Please, God, give me a chance.

On the wall to the left, before the stairs up to the lift, was a noticeboard inside a glass case, with the names of the tenants, floor by floor: and when she read it, she suddenly remembered — she recognized the name of the student. On the fourth floor, just as she had thought. At the top of the building.

If the circumstances had been different and her head clearer, she might have wondered why his name wasn’t here either, just that of the student lodger who had moved out some time ago — wondered for a moment about whether there was something odd about the correct name not being displayed in such obvious places.

But she didn’t. She didn’t question anything at all. The whirlpool inside her was too strong. Having come this far, Monica didn’t give herself time to reflect about anything. Even forgot to check the state of the mailboxes, which were lined up on the wall opposite the list of names.

Simply stepped into the lift — it was a well-lit and inviting old-fashioned wooden lift with folding seats covered in red velvet. She remembered it. Closed the noisy barred door and pressed the button.

The lift cage, which presumably dated back to. . did he say 1905?. . started moving and slowly, rattling and squeaking, raised her up inside the building — and as she stood there, swaying from side to side and watching floor after floor pass by, she remembered to start sniffing, wondering if she would be able to recognize the smell.

The sweetish smell of her lover’s rotting body.

But she didn’t smell it at all. Not even when she stepped out of the lift and stood in front of his door was there any trace of a suspicious stench.

Nor was there any sign of a chink of light under the door to his flat. But then, that would have been impossible in any circumstances, she realized, because there wasn’t so much as a millimetre’s gap under the bottom of the door. On the contrary, the door was just as dark and well-fitting and solid as everything else in the building, and the keyhole was certainly not of the type that you could peer through. Definitely not.

Monica swallowed, and stood there with her arms dangling by her sides. She felt that the whirlpool was fading away, and that she was once more close to crying — but at that very moment she heard footsteps on the staircase below.

She hadn’t heard a door opening and closing again, but perhaps somebody had come in through the door while she was still in the noisy lift.

Somebody was on the way up the stairs. She looked around, and wondered what to do. There was one more door on the landing where she was standing, a bit further down a short corridor. And four steps up was a solid-looking door made of iron or steel. Presumably leading into the attic space. It looked as securely locked as a safe in Switzerland.

She listened. The footsteps continued to approach.

Getting closer.

You are standing at the door of the flat in which you murdered your lover, an inner voice informed her. Somebody is on his way up the stairs, and he’ll discover you within the next ten seconds. .

Unless that Somebody isn’t on his way up to the top floor.

She pressed herself close to the wall next to the door and held her breath.

The footsteps paused on the landing below, and she heard the sound of a man coughing — then the jingling sound of keys being taken out of a jacket pocket.

Then the footsteps continued upwards.

She didn’t make a decision now either — there was no time.

She simply acted.

Took hold of the door handle. Pressed it down.

It was unlocked. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.