been expecting it, in fact. After all, it would have been unreasonable to think that nobody had noticed him during the few minutes he had spent in the bar, totally unreasonable — and he soon realized that the information given in the newspaper, far from putting him in danger in some way or other, was more of an assurance. An assurance that the police investigation had come up against a brick wall, and he had no reason to fear anything that they might come up with. No reason at all.
Why else would they come up with such laughable information?
A man of an uncertain age. Dressed in dark, probably black clothes. Long, dark, probably black hair. Beard and glasses. Possibly disguised.
Possibly? He smiled. Did they expect him to put it all on again and go out to be seen in public? Return to the scene of the crime and call in at the Trattoria Commedia once again? Or what? He had never entertained an especially high regard for the competence of the police, and it became no higher that Saturday morning.
Detectives? he thought. Stupid country bumpkins.
Vera arrived in the afternoon. She had bought some wine and food from the covered market in Keymer Plejn, but they hadn’t seen each other for six days and were forced to start making love out there in the hall. How amazing that there could be such passion. How amazing that such a woman could exist.
They eventually got round to the food and wine. She stayed the whole night, and they made love several times, in various different places, and instead of waking up in the hour of the wolf he fell asleep more or less in the middle of it.
Tired out and satisfied. Full of love and wine and with Vera Miller as close to him as could be.
She stayed until Sunday afternoon. They spent a serious hour talking about their love: about what they ought to do with it, and about their future.
It was the first time.
‘Nobody knows you exist,’ she said. ‘Not Andreas. Not my sister. Not my workmates and friends. You are my secret, but I don’t want it to be like that any more.
He smiled, but made no reply.
‘I want to have you all the time.’
‘Your husband?’ he asked. ‘What do you intend to do about him?’
She looked at him long and hard before answering.
‘I shall deal with that,’ she said. ‘This week. I’ve thought it through, there aren’t any short cuts. I love you.’
‘I love you,’ he replied.
He worked late on Monday. On his way home in the car — just as he was passing the concrete culvert in the ditch — he realized he was singing along to the car radio, and it dawned on him that it was still less than a month since that evening. It was still November, but everything had changed to a far greater extent than he would have believed possible.
It was unreal. Totally unreal. But that was life.
He smiled, still humming away as he took the day’s post out of the letter box. But he stopped only a few seconds later as he sat at the kitchen table and read the letter. As far as he could recall — if he remembered rightly: he had disposed of the others — it was written on exactly the same type of writing paper and was in exactly the same sort of envelope as the two earlier ones. It was handwritten, and no more than half a page long.
Two lives.
You now have two lives on your conscience. I have given you plenty of time to come forward, but you have hidden yourself away like a cowardly cur. The price for my silence is now different. One week (exactly seven days) is available to you for producing 200,000. Used notes. Low values.
I shall get back to you with instructions. Don’t make the same mistake twice, you won’t have another opportunity to buy your freedom. I know who you are, I have incontrovertible evidence against you, and there are limits to my patience.
A friend
He read the message twice. Then he stared out of the window. It was raining, and he suddenly sensed the smell of cold sweat in his nostrils.
THREE
13
Erich Van Veeteren was buried after a simple ceremony on Monday, 30 November. The service took place in a side chapel of the Keymer Church, and in accordance with the wishes of his closest relatives — especially his mother — only a small circle of mourners were present.
Renate had also chosen both the officiating clergyman and the hymns — in accordance with some sort of obscure principles she claimed were important for Erich, but which Van Veeteren had difficulty in believing. Besides, it didn’t really matter as far as he was concerned: if Erich had felt the need for spirituality, it was hardly likely he would have found it within the realm of these high-church ceremonies and under these menacing spires reaching heavenwards, he was convinced of that.
The vicar seemed comparatively young and comparatively lively, and while he spoke and proceeded through the rituals in a broad accent revealing his origins in the offshore islands, Van Veeteren spent most of the time with his eyes closed and his hands clasped in his lap. On his right was his ex-wife, whose presence he found difficult to tolerate even in these circumstances; on his left sat his daughter, whom he loved above everything else on this earth.
Directly in front was the coffin holding the mortal remains of his son.
It was difficult to look at it: perhaps that’s why he kept his eyes closed.
Kept his eyes closed and thought of Erich when he was still alive instead. Or rather, allowed the thoughts to flow freely: and it seemed that his memory picked out images completely at random. Some incidents and memories from Erich’s childhood: reading him stories on a windy beach, he wasn’t at all sure which; visits to the dentist, visits to the skating rink and Wegelen Zoo.
Some from the difficult period much later on: the years when he was a drug addict, the times in prison. The suicide attempt, the long, sleepless nights at the hospital.
Some from their last meeting. Perhaps these were the most important and frequent of all. As these more recent images rolled past, he was also uncomfortably aware of his own egotistical motives — his compulsion to derive something positive from that meeting; but if it is true that every new day carries with it the sum of all the preceding ones, he thought, perhaps he could be excused.
Today, at least. Here, at least, in front of the coffin. He had sat with Erich at the kitchen table at Klagenburg on that final occasion. Erich had come to return an electric drill he’d borrowed, and they had sat down to drink coffee and discuss things in general, he couldn’t recall precisely what. But it had nothing to do with his addiction to this and that, nothing to do with his ability (or inability) to take responsibility for his own life, or with social morality versus private morality. Nothing at all to do with those difficult topics, which had been discussed before at enormous length.
It was just chat, he told himself. Nothing to do with matters of guilt. A conversation between two people, it could have been anybody at all; and it was precisely that, the simplicity and insignificance of what they discussed, which provided the positive outcome of the situation.
Something positive among all the negatives. A faint light in the eternal darkness. He recalled yet again Gortiakov’s walk through the pond carrying a candle in Nostalghia. He did that often. Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia… And now, as he sat there in that ancient cathedral, in front of his son’s coffin, with his eyes closed, with the vicar’s measured litany floating up to the Gothic arches above them, it was as if… as if he had achieved a sort of kinship. Perhaps that was too much to expect; but nevertheless a kinship with so many weighty things. With Erich; with his own incomprehensible father who had died long before Van Veeteren had the slightest chance of getting to understand and become reconciled with him; with suffering and with art and with creativity — all possible kinds of creativity — and eventually also with a belief in something beyond this world of ours, and in the visions and
