Moreno leaned her head on her hands and thought.
‘If it were anybody else, I’d think you were nattering on in the spirit of romanticized boy scout mentality,’ she said. ‘But I must admit that I agree with you. It’s bad enough as it is, but it’ll be even worse if we let the murderer get away with it. Will you be contacting him tomorrow? I suppose he’ll want to know how things are going.’
‘I’ve promised to keep him informed,’ said Reinhart. ‘And I shall do just that. Whether I want to or not.’
Moreno nodded sombrely. Then they emptied their glasses, and left the cafe and the town and the world to their fate.
For a few hours, at least.
9
He woke up and looked at the clock.
A quarter to five. He had slept for twenty minutes.
Erich is dead, he thought. It’s not a dream. He’s dead, that’s reality.
He could feel his eyes burning in their sockets. As if they wanted to force their way out of his head. Oedipus, it occurred to him. Oedipus Rex… Wandering around blind for the rest of my life, seeking God’s grace. Perhaps that would be an idea. It might give things a meaning. Erich is dead. My son.
It was remarkable how the same thought could fill up the whole of his consciousness, hour after hour. The same three words — not even a thought, strictly speaking: just this constellation of words, as impenetrable as a mantra in a foreign language: Erich is dead, Erich is dead. Minute after minute, second after second; every fraction of every moment of every second. Erich is dead.
Or perhaps it wasn’t remarkable at all. Presumably this was exactly as it had to be. As it would always be from now on. This was the keystone for the rest of his life. Erich was dead. His son had finally taken possession of him: thanks to his death he had finally captured the whole of his father’s attention and love. Erich. That’s how it was. Quite simply.
I shall fall short, Van Veeteren thought. I shall fall to pieces and sink to the bottom, but I don’t care. I ought to have made sure I died at the right time.
The woman by his side stirred and woke up. Ulrike. Ulrike Fremdli. The one who had become his woman despite all the uncertainties and convulsions of the mind. His convulsions, not hers.
‘Have you slept all right?’
He shook his head.
‘Not at all?’
‘Half an hour.’
She stroked his chest and stomach with her warm hand.
‘Would you like a cup of tea? I can go and make you one.’
‘No thank you.’
‘Do you want to talk?’
‘No.’
She turned over. Crept up closer to him, and after a while he could hear from her breathing that she had fallen asleep again. He waited for a few more minutes, then got up cautiously, tucked the covers round her, and went out into the kitchen.
The red digital numbers on the transistor radio in the window said 04.56. It was still pitch black outside: only a few faint streaks of light from a street lamp fell onto the corner of the building on the opposite side of the street. Guijdermann’s, the bakery that had closed down. The objects he could make out in the kitchen were wreathed in this same pale, shadowy half-light. The table, the chairs. The cooker, the sink, the shelf over the larder, the pile of copies of the Allgemejne in the basket in the corner. He opened the refrigerator door, then closed it again. Took a glass from a cupboard and drank some ordinary tap water instead. Erich is dead, he thought. Dead.
He went back to the bedroom and got dressed. As he did so, Ulrike moved restlessly in the bed but she didn’t wake up. He stole out into the hall, closing the door behind him. Put on his shoes, a scarf and an overcoat. Left the flat and tiptoed down the stairs and out into the street.
Light rain was falling — or rather, drifting around to form a soft curtain of floating, feathery drops. The temperature must have been seven or eight degrees above freezing. No wind to speak of either, and the streets deserted — as if a long-awaited bomb attack were now imminent. Dark and self-absorbed, caught up in the all- embracing sleep of the surrounding buildings.
Erich is dead, he thought, and started walking.
He returned an hour and a half later. Ulrike was sitting in the murky kitchen, waiting for him with her hands wrapped round a cup of tea. He could sense an aura of reproachful worry and sympathy, but it affected him no more than a wrong number or a formal condolence.
I hope she can cope, he thought. I hope I don’t drag her down with me.
‘You’re wet,’ she said. ‘Did you go far?’
He shrugged and sat down opposite her.
‘I walked out towards Lohr and back,’ he said. ‘It’s not raining all that hard.’
‘I fell asleep,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I needed to get out.’
She nodded. Half a minute passed: then she stretched her hands out over the table. Left them lying half-open a few centimetres in front of him, and after a while he took hold of them. Wrapped his own hands round them and squeezed them tentatively. He realized that she was waiting for something. That he needed to say something.
‘There was an old couple when I was a little boy,’ he began. ‘They were called Bloeme.’
She nodded vaguely and looked enquiringly at him. He contemplated her face for a while before continuing.
‘Maybe they weren’t that old in fact, but they gave the impression of being the oldest people in the whole world. They lived in the same block as we did, just a few houses away from ours, and they hardly ever went out. You only ever saw them very occasionally on a Sunday afternoon… And when they appeared all games and all signs of life in the street came to a standstill. They always walked arm in arm on the shady side of the street, the husband always wore a hat, and there was an aura of deep sorrow around them. A cloud. My mother told me their story — I was no more than seven or eight, I should think. The Bloemes used to have two daughters, two pretty young daughters who travelled to Paris together one summer. They were both murdered under a bridge, and ever since, their parents stopped associating with other people. The girls came back home, each of them in a French coffin. Anyway, that was the story… We children always regarded them with the greatest possible deference. A hell of a lot of respect, in fact.’
He fell silent and let go of Ulrike’s hands.
‘Children shouldn’t die before their parents.’
She nodded.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Yes please. If you add a drop or two of rum.’
She stood up. Went over to the work surface and switched on the electric kettle. Searched round among the bottles in the cupboard. Van Veeteren remained seated at the table. Clasped his hands and rested his chin on his knuckles. Closed his eyes and once again felt his eyes throbbing in their sockets. A burning sensation inside them and up into his temples.
‘I’ve experienced it before.’
Ulrike turned to look at him.
‘No, I don’t mean at work. It’s just that I’ve imagined Erich’s death many times… That it would be me who had to bury him instead of vice versa. Not lately, but a few years back. Eight or ten years ago. Imagined it pretty tangibly… The father burying his son — I don’t know, perhaps it’s something all parents do.’
She put two steaming hot cups down on the table, and sat down opposite him again.
‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘Not in detail like that, at least. Why did you torture yourself with that sort of thing? There must have been reasons.’
