He rejoined the architect and the site manager, wiped the dust from his forehead, listened to them, studied their plans, and a quarter of an hour later was on his way to the Hauptbahnhof to talk with the traders at their stalls. He thought little of the hotel that would sit where there was now a hole. What filled his mind was the image of a seashore where a boat would come, and the enormity of what would follow.
The ferry carried Oskar Netzer back to paradise. One day in every two months he took the boat to the mainland, to Nessmersiel, and from there a bus brought him to Norden. In the town he shopped. As a pensioner he travelled free on the ferry and what he bought in Norden was cheaper than in the island's supermarkets. The tide was far out and the mudflats crept to the limits of the channel used by the ferry. He stood on the back deck and watched the mainland shore, all he hated, diminish.
The wind came hard off the mud, from the north-west.
They had travelled together, he and Gertrud, on that same ferryboat five years before. She could have gone by ambulance to the hospital in Norden. Oskar had refused that. He had taken her. They had stood together, her leaning on his arm for support and the blanket round her to keep the chill from her, where he stood now – where he always stood on the boat. And a week later, he had brought her back, and when the crane had lowered the coffin on to the quay at Baltrum, the crew had taken off their caps in respect for her, and he had held the horse's bridle that pulled the cart carrying her to the cemetery at Ostdorf.
Sometimes, and that day he did, he wept as he stood alone at the back of the ferry; his jaw quivered and his cheeks were wet with tears.
When the ferry swung to starboard for the approach to the island's harbour, he saw the seals on their sandspit close to the wreck. It pleased him, lightened the blackness of the mood that sat on him each time he took the ferry. Beyond the seals and the wreck, out in the North Sea, was a darkening skyline that merged into the horizon.
No goodbyes, no farewells, he switched off the lights and locked the door.
Malachy dropped the keys of flat thirteen, level three, block nine, into the hatch beside the barricaded door of the housing offices.
Its use for him was finished and he was gone from the Amersham into the night.
Chapter Eleven
Music blared from high loudspeakers, pounded at Malachy Kitchen.
He stepped from the train that had brought him from Cologne. The Hauptbahnhof of Hamburg echoed with Beethoven. Something of it lifted him and he stepped out along the platform, carried by the swell of passengers, as if a little of his purpose was regained – he knew what he would attempt to achieve in that city, but not why. The Amersham was behind him and after ten hours of travel from Waterloo International to Brussels, from Brussels to Cologne, from Cologne to Hamburg, the estate had already faded in his mind. He no longer felt its pulsebeat. He stepped on to the escalator and was carried up to the concourse. He heard announcements in a mass of languages, the arrivals and departures of trains from and to all of Europe. His stride was bolder than at any time since he had come down the tail ramp, exhausted and sweating, in the heat's blast off the Hercules aircraft that had done the corkscrew descent on to the runway at Basra. But the road had been long, so damn long, into what was unknown… It was as if he clutched at the pride so that he should not lose hold of it. The concourse was scrubbed clean, and high above it, like a cathedral's arched roof, was the great shape of glass and iron. He held, tight in his hand, the black plastic sack containing all the clothes he owned that were not on his back, and among the smells of the quick food stalls was the whiff of the petrol still embedded in the heavy coat. He saw police with guns and unarmed men in uniform with the flash of the Bahnwacht on their sleeves. He crossed the concourse and saw nothing that threatened him. He walked to the exit for taxis and in front of him were stalls of cleaned vegetables, piled fruit and cheerful flowers; above them, the wind tickled the multi-colours of the awnings. At the tourist kiosk Malachy asked in halting German, learned at Chicksands, for a tourist map of the city and was told where he could find a cheap room near to the Hauptbahnhof. The smartly dressed girl behind the kiosk counter curled her lip in disdain at his appearance, and drew a line on the map down a street – that was where the inexpensive rooms were.
For politeness, he said, 'It's a fine station – and I enjoyed the music.'
'The music is not for your enjoyment,' she responded curtly.
'I don't understand. Why, then, is it played?'
'Psychologists told us to – narcotics addicts hate classical music broadcast loud. It's why they are not here. The music makes the station free of them. We have in Hamburg a big drugs problem, and you should be careful in the city, most careful where accommodation is inexpensive… We are cursed by immigrants and the crime levels they bring, most particularly the Albanians. Enjoy your visit.'
He went out into a brittle midday sunlight. The wind trapped his hair and scoured his face. Beyond the stalls, when he reached the edge of the big, wide square that burst with traffic, he paused, opened the map and took his bearings.
He had come to destroy a man, but did not know how and would have been hard put to articulate why
– except that breaking the man was the only road sign posted to him as a way back for his pride.
After he had crossed the square and had started out down a wide street, he understood why the woman in the tourist kiosk had curled her lip when he had insisted on a cheap room. So little money had been given him that he must husband it. She had sent him to where rooms were inexpensive, on the Steindamm.
He passed shops that sold sex videos and sex gear, and by cafes where Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians or Afghans lounged on plastic chairs, and by doorways where hookers – young and old, heavy-hipped and skeletal thin – waited, smoked and eyed him. He saw the sign for rooms to rent. He stopped.
A woman, African, stared at him. Her chest bulged in a halter-top and her thighs were bare below the short, tight skirt. She sucked at her cigarette, then blew the smoke at him but the wind snatched it away.
He smiled, but shook his head. The recruits in Basic Training had talked sex – talked sex, described sex, gloried in sex. Had sat around the TV while the videos played sex, had boasted sex. Malachy Kitchen's first sex had been with a girl from a farm, in a barn, on the edge of the Devon village where his parents had moved to. Second sex had been with a corporal's wife, and he'd washed for a week afterwards, had scrubbed himself and prayed there wouldn't be a rash to show for it. Third sex had been with a girl at the end of a ball at the Royal Military Academy: he hadn't known her name, had been half-cut and it had been under a tree across the grass from the Old Building. Fourth sex had been with Roz. He gestured, he hoped politely, to the prostitute from Africa that he wanted to pass by her and she moved aside with reluctance. He went inside and there was a man at the counter, small, wiry, with plastered hair, and he asked in the correct German, as taught him, for a room.
'For one hour or for two hours?'
He shook his head.
'For a half-day?'
He said he wanted a room to stay in, and sleep in – alone.
'For how many nights?'
Malachy was about to say that he did not know, but that seemed inadequate. For three nights. He was given a price. No haggling, no dispute. The key was handed to him, and then, as an afterthought, a residents' book was opened on the counter and a pen pushed forward.
He thought of giving the name Ricky Capel, and the address Bevin Close. He shook his head, heaved the black plastic sack on to his shoulder and started to climb the stairs. On the first landing, in one of the rooms that would have been hired for an hour or two he heard a bed's springs whine. On the second landing a man came by him still pulling up his zip. He was wondering how long it would be before the African girl took a client to the first or second floor. He went on up.
The room allocated to Malachy was bare but for a bed, a basin and a faded print of a mountain scene. He crossed a worn rug over linoleum and dropped his sack.
He was there because of what had been said to him, and said of him – none of it yet wiped.
