They had only just walked through the door after a day filled with games, relaxation and reunion. Munster carefully placed the sleeping four-year-old in bed while Synn went to answer the phone.
“It’s DCI Van Veeteren,” she whispered, with her hand over the earpiece. “He sounds like a barrel of gunpowder about to go off. Something to do with the car.”
Munster took the receiver.
“Hello?” he said.
That was more or less the only word he spoke for the next ten minutes or more. He just stood there in the window recess, listening and nodding while his wife and his son prowled around and around him in ever-decreasing circles. A single look was enough for Synn to understand, and she passed on her knowledge to her six-year-old, who had been through this many times before.
No doubt about it. The car was not what this call was really about. She could hear that in the voice of her husband’s boss at the other end of the line: a muffled but unstoppable tornado.
She saw it in her husband’s face as well-in his body language, the profile of his jaw. Tense, resolute. A slight touch of white under his ears…
It was time.
And slowly that feeling of worry surged toward and over her. The feeling she couldn’t speak about, not even to him, but which she knew she shared with every other policeman’s wife all over the world.
The possibility that… The possibility of something hap pening that…
She grasped her son’s hand firmly, and refused to let go.
Grateful despite everything that she’d had the opportunity of coming here.
“About two o’clock?” asked Munster in the end. “Yep, I’m with you. We’ll assemble here, yes… OK, I can fix that.”
Then he replaced the receiver and stared fixedly ahead, looking at nothing.
“That was the damnedest…” he said. “But he’s right, of course…”
He shook his head, then became aware of his wife and son, staring at him with the same unspoken question on their faces.
“We’re going to arrest the Axman tomorrow morning,” he explained. “The others are coming here tonight to sort out tactics.”
“Coming here?” said Synn.
“Wicked,” said the six-year-old boy. “I’ll go with you.”
Plans were laid by half past four. It had taken a bit longer than
Van Veeteren had imagined; the question of motive had been kicked around, and nobody was quite sure how it all hung together. But they had sorted it out as far as possible. They couldn’t get any further now, and even if a few pieces of the puzzle were still missing, everybody was clear about the over all picture.
“No point in waiting any longer,” said Van Veeteren.
“Everybody knows what they have to do… I don’t think we’re exposing ourselves to much of a risk, but it’s just as well to take precautions. Mooser?”
Mooser tapped his bulging hip.
“Munster?”
Munster nodded.
“Chief of Police?”
Another nod, and Van Veeteren closed his notebook.
“All right. Let’s go!”
49
The thought of death came like a considerate guest, but once she had let it in, it decided to stay.
All at once it was living with her. Uninvited and inexorable.
Like a hand squeezing her midriff. Like a slowly swelling tumor. A gray cloud spreading throughout her body, smother ing her thoughts under still more hopeless darkness.
Death. Suddenly it had become the only reality she pos sessed. This is the end, she told herself, and it was nothing especially traumatic or upsetting. She was going to die… either by his hand or of her own accord. Lying curled up here on the floor under all these blankets, with this aching body of hers and with this writhing soul, which was the most fragile part of her… that was what would give way first, she knew now; once she had opened the door to death, the spark of life inside her was slowly dimming. Perhaps it would be only a hundred or seventy or even twenty intakes of breath before it would be extinguished. She had started counting now; people always did when they were in prison, she knew that. She’d read about prisoners who had kept themselves sane thanks to this constant counting, the only snag being that she had nothing to count. No events. No noises. No time.
Only her own breathing and pulse.
She was waiting for him now. Longing for him as if he were her lover… her warder, her executioner, her murderer?
Whatever. Every change, every incident, every imaginable interruption… anything but this constant intercourse with death.
Her considerate and demanding guest.
The dish of food was half full, but she could no longer get anything down. She would occasionally moisten her tongue with water, but she was not in the least thirsty either. She struggled as far as the bucket, but could produce nothing… all her bodily functions had left her, one after another, it was as simple as that.
Why didn’t he come?
Even if time no longer existed, she had the feeling that something must have delayed him. She made up her mind to count up to four thousand heartbeats, and if he hadn’t arrived by then, she would…
… she would count another four thousand heartbeats.
Was it possible to distinguish between a thousand heart beats and another thousand heartbeats? Could it be done? And if so, what was the point?
And as she counted, that hand squeezed tighter and tighter.
The cloud grew.
Death filled her.
“I’m late,” he said, and she could barely hear his voice.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He sat there in silence, and she noticed that she was now counting his breaths. Rasping in the darkness as usual, but even so his, not hers… something that didn’t emanate from her self.
“Tell me your story,” she begged.
He lit a cigarette and suddenly she felt the faint glow grow ing and forcing its way inside her… all at once the whole of her body was filled with light and the next moment she lost consciousness. She woke up in a glittering white world, where a pulsating and vibrant gleam was so strong and powerful that it was rumbling inside her. Vertiginous spirals spun around inside her head, and she plunged into them, was sucked up and carried by this infernally rotating whiteness, this flood of rag ing light…
Then it began to recede. The torrent slowed down and found a slowly swaying rhythm; waves and breakers, and the smell of earth returned. Of earth and smoke. Once again she saw only darkness and a trembling red point, and she realized that something had happened. She didn’t know what, but she had been elsewhere and was now back. And the cloud was no longer spreading.
Something had happened.
“Tell me your story,” she said, and now her voice was steady, like before. “Tell me about Heinz Eggers.”
“Heinz Eggers,” he said, and hesitated as he usually did at the start. “Yes, I’ll tell you about Heinz Eggers as well. It’s just that I am so tired, so very tired… but I’ll keep going to the end, of course.”
She had no time to reflect on what his words might imply.
