In the Evil Day

Silence. Sounds, bumping sounds, the ferry hitting the chop as it passed another vessel.

Kael: You should wear a hat in Provence in summer.

Silence. A noise. Anselm thought it was Serrano clearing his throat.

Serrano: Well, fuck you. Maybe you need a smarter person. Have you got one?

Silence, the bumping sounds, a cough.

Kael: Don’t be so sensitive. Hollis? What does the cunt say?

Serrano: He’s shitting himself. He thought he was doing the right thing.

Kael: He should. He should shit himself. I’m going to kill him personally. Tell Richler.

Serrano: What?

Kael: What do you fucking think? Just tell him. They’re up to their balls in this. If the Ashken stuff is in the papers, well… The ferry was docking, they could hear the sounds of movement, the voices of passengers.

Kael: I walk from here. Thomas will take you.

‘Good bug,’ said Anselm. Tilders nodded.

Kael’s Mercedes, dark blue, was waiting about fifty metres from the landing, the driver standing at the rear passenger door. He was a big man in a dark suit, feet wide apart, hands at the buttons of his jacket. Tilders got him on the monitor. The shutter release was silent.

Serrano and Kael were the first passengers off the ferry. Anselm looked at the monitor. The two men were on it, Tilders was looking at the screen and taking pictures.

Silence until the men were at the car. Anselm saw Kael give Serrano something. Serrano: What’s this?

Kael: Ring the number and leave a time, five minutes before the ferry I’ve marked leaves.

Serrano: Extreme, this is extreme.

Serrano got into the Mercedes and was driven away. Kael walked off in the direction of his house. The last passenger off the ferry was a fat man in a suit carrying a briefcase. Anselm watched him come in their direction. When he was near you could see that he was a dispirited man, in him no satisfaction at the end of the working day, no expectation of ease to come. He walked past them with his head down.

‘Otto will go to Hofweg,’ said Tilders. ‘I don’t know if all this is worth it.’

‘They pay for a full record,’ said Anselm. ‘We don’t have to ask whether it’s worth it.’

17

…HAMBURG…

On the outer fringe of Barmbek, once a working-class suburb, O’Malley was waiting for him, beer on the counter.

Anselm looked at the brown walls, brown carpet, brown curtains, the dead-faced barman.

‘Impressive venue,’ he said.

‘Well, you’re not Bavarian,’ said O’Malley. ‘This is a Bavarian hangout. Beer fresh from the cask. Stick around, you’ll be singing old Bavarian songs.’

‘Songs wildly popular in the 1930s, no doubt,’ said Anselm. He was rubbing his dead fingers, bending them, turning his hand. He wanted to be outside.

The barman brought another beer without being asked.

O’Malley paid.

‘I thought the Marriott was more your speed,’ Anselm said, casual voice, he could do that, he got better at it every day. ‘Full of rich and dubious people. Still, I can see they know you here.’

O’Malley drank, ran an index finger along his lower lip. ‘I’m the customer,’ he said, ‘with all the rich meaning the word holds. And I like the beer. Also I’m staying nearby. How’d it go?’

‘Well.’

‘Listen?’

‘Part of the service.’

‘So?’

‘Serrano told Kael about someone that’s gone wrong. They talked about people now dead. Kael told him to tell a person called Richler. He could be an Israeli. Serrano’s coming back tomorrow.’

‘Dead people?’

‘Shawn. Lourens. Something like that.’

A card game in the corner detonated, exclamations of disbelief.

Anselm went rigid, every muscle, tendon.

Four players. War babies, in their fifties, leather-faced men in leather jackets. Brown leather jackets.

Anselm drank. The beer had the feral-yeast taste. That and the men in playing cards brought a hotel on the Ammersee into his mind. Had he forgotten it? He hadn’t remembered it for a long time. The woman’s name was Paula, an artist, he’d lived with her in Amsterdam for a while. They’d gone on holiday, had an argument that night about another woman. Seated in the hotel’s dining area, the locals looking on, she’d punched him in the mouth, a full swing across a table. Her little walnut fist drew his blood but a bone broke in it. Worth it, she said to him later, in pain, unrepentant.

‘We may have to go on,’ O’Malley said.

Anselm found a cigarette, put it on the table, let it lie. Any delay in lighting up was good. Some tension left him. ‘I would warn of expense. If that’s of consequence.’

O’Malley raised his hands, not high, big and pale strangler’s hands. ‘Discount for repeat business?’

‘Second time’s much harder.’

‘Yes, women have said that to me,’ said O’Malley. His eyes went to the door.

Anselm looked, tight muscles in the stomach, shoulders, thighs.

Two young men came in from the street, one tall, one average, short haircuts, soft and expensive leather jackets, not brown. They were not at their ease, eyes going around, over O’Malley and him.

The barman didn’t care for them, just a small and telling shift of hips and shoulders.

O’Malley drank his final centimetres, leaned closer. His expression was amused. ‘Well, got to go, a dinner date,’ he said. ‘These boyos…’ Anselm didn’t look at the two men. ‘Is there an anxiety you haven’t told me about?’ He held O’Malley’s eyes, smoked, sipped beer.

‘You never know,’ said O’Malley. ‘Serrano’s a dangerous man. Give me something else.’

Anselm felt in the inside pocket of his jacket. Condoms, a packet of condoms, old, some forgotten optimism in the purchase. ‘I’m going to give you something worth much more than any tape,’ he said.

O’Malley nodded, smiling, teeth showing, the O’Malley smile that meant nothing, not pleasure, not fear. ‘I’m parked about twenty metres down, left.’

‘Cowbarn beer, Bavarian nostalgics, now it’s intrigue. Anything else?’

‘Give it to me, mate.’

Anselm slid his hand out of his coat, put it palm down on the table.

O’Malley smiled, covered his hand, gave him a pat, a gesture of friendship from a large hand, scar tissue on all the knuckles.

‘Compadre,’ said O’Malley.

Anselm removed his hand and O’Malley pocketed the condom packet.

‘I liked Manila,’ said Anselm. ‘Can we go back?’

O’Malley shook his head. ‘Ein ruheloser Marsch war unser Leben. All the fun people are gone, Ferdie’s gone, Imelda’s gone, Bong-Bong’s gone.’ He paused. ‘Angel’s gone too. So am I. Anyway, you can’t go back, anywhere.’

Anselm saw Angelica for a moment, the tiny tip of pink tongue, the swing of dark-red hair half curtaining an