the idea of it hanging in the air, as it were, without their needing to address it or comment on it. It was a sort of string between them that didn’t need to be plucked, but which was there nevertheless, binding them together. He also had the impression that Vera had nothing against it. That she felt more or less the same.
A sort of secret. A link.
And when they had sex later, it was as if they had drunk from the well of love.
Incredible. In a way, it was incredible.
How could life take off in entirely different directions without warning? Directions which turned all the habits one had acquired, all one’s powers of reason and all one’s worldly wisdom upside down? How was it possible?
And to cap it all, in just a few weeks. First that horrific Thursday evening, then Vera Miller and true love. He couldn’t understand it. Was it possible to understand it?
He spent most of the rest of that Sunday evening lying on the sofa with just one candle lit, thinking about how he seemed to be being hurled from one extreme to the other. Between feelings of doubtful, confusing, inadequate conceptions of reality on the one hand, and a very calm and rational interpretation of his existence on the other. Reason and emotions, but without connections, without synapses.
He eventually decided that despite appearances to the contrary, there was only one reality and that applied constantly: his feelings regarding it and his attempts to control it might vary, but it was only the point of view that varied. The perspective.
Two sides of the same coin, he thought. Like a toggle-switch. The mundane and the incomprehensible. Life and death? The thin band that separated them.
Remarkable.
After the eleven o’clock news on the radio he took out the letter again. Read it one more time before sitting down at his desk again. Sat there for a good while in the darkness, giving free rein to his thoughts, and soon — very soon — he began to discern another way of approaching things when he had previously comprehended only two.
A third way. It appealed to him. He sat there for a long time, trying to weigh up its advantages and disadvantages.
But it was still too soon to choose. Much too soon. Until he had received more detailed instructions from ‘A friend’, all he could do was wait.
Wait for the next day’s postal delivery.
5
He was twenty minutes early. While he waited behind the wheel of his car in the almost empty car park, he read the instructions one more time. Not that it was necessary — he’d been rereading them all day: but it was a way of passing the time.
The money: banknotes in bundles of fifties and one hundreds packed in double plastic bags and placed inside a carrier bag from the Boodwick department store.
Place: Trattoria Commedia at the golf course out at Dikken.
Time: Tuesday, six p.m. exactly.
Instructions: Sit down in the bar. Order a beer, take a few swigs, go to the gents after about five minutes. Take the carrier bag containing the money with you, leave it well camouflaged by paper towels in the rubbish bin. If there are others in the gents, wait until they have gone. Then leave the toilets, go straight out to your parked car and drive away.
That was all.
The same sort of paper as last time. The same handwriting, presumably the same pen.
The same signature: A friend.
No threats. No comments about his weakness.
Nothing but the necessary instructions. It couldn’t be any simpler.
At two minutes to six he opened the side window and got out of the car. He had parked as far away from the restaurant as possible, next to the exit. Without seeming to hurry, he walked quickly the fifty or so metres over the windswept gravel to the restaurant. It was low and L-shaped, its facade plastered with dark pebble-dash. Gaudi windows with black steel frames. He opened the imitation jacaranda door and went in.
It looked pretty deserted, but nevertheless inviting. He had never set foot in the place before: he assumed it was probably a favourite haunt of golfers, and that it could hardly be high season, given the chilly late-autumn weather. The bar was on the left as you entered: a lone woman in her forties sat smoking in the company of an evening newspaper and a green drink. She looked up when he came in, but decided that the newspaper was more interesting.
Before sitting down he peered into the restaurant section. It branched off at right-angles to the bar, and most of the tables he could see were empty. An unaccompanied man was busy eating a pasta dish. A fire was crackling away in the hearth. The furniture and fittings were a mixture of dark brown, red and green, and a piano sonata was struggling to find its way out of hidden speakers. He put the carrier bag down at his feet and ordered a beer from the bartender, a young man with a ponytail and a ring in one ear.
‘Still windy, is it?’ asked the barman.
‘It certainly is,’ he replied. ‘You’re not exactly jam-packed this evening, it seems.’
‘You can say that again,’ said the barman.
His beer was served in a tapered effeminate-looking glass. He paid, drank about half of it and asked where the gents was. The bartender pointed towards the open fire, he thanked him, picked up the bag and made his way there.
It smelled of pine forests and was strikingly empty. And clean. The bin between the two washbasins was only a third full of used paper towels. He put the Boodwick carrier bag into the bin and covered it over with new paper towels that he pulled out of the holder one by one, crumpling them up slightly. All in accordance with the instructions. The whole procedure took ten seconds. He remained standing there for another ten, contemplating with some surprise his reflection in the slightly scratched mirror over the washbasin. Then he left the room. Nodded to the barman as he made his way to the door and continued to his car. There was a tang of frozen iron in the air.
So far so good, he thought as he sat down again behind the wheel. A piece of cake, dammit.
Then he opened the glove box and took out the metal pipe.
He only needed to wait for exactly six-and-a-half minutes.
The man who emerged from the restaurant seemed to be in his thirties. He was tall and lanky, carrying the bag with his right hand and dangling a set of car keys from his left. He was obviously heading for an old Peugeot about twenty metres away from his own car. One of the total of five vehicles standing in the large car park.
Before the man opened the car door, he had time to reflect on how amateurish the procedure was. Waiting for such a short time and then marching out into the car park with the bag in full view — surely that indicated pretty poor judgement? It seemed obvious that his opponent was easy game, despite what he had thought previously — and most importantly, that the man had seriously underestimated his own calibre.
He caught up with him just as he was about to insert the keys into the lock.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I think you dropped something.’
He held up his cupped hand half a metre in front of the man’s face.
‘What is it?’
He glanced quickly around the car park and beyond. It was growing darker by the second now. There was not a soul in sight. He hit the man on the head with the pipe, using all his strength. Caught him just over his left ear. He fell to the ground without a sound. Flat on his stomach with his arms underneath him. This time he aimed at the back of the man’s head, and hit him with full force once again. There was a short crackling sound, and he knew the man was dead. If he hadn’t already died from the first blow. Blood was pouring profusely from the man’s head. He carefully detached the casualty from the carrier bag and the car keys, stood up straight and looked around.
Still no sign of life. The place was dark and deserted. After a couple of seconds’ thought, he took hold of the man’s feet and dragged him into the thick undergrowth that surrounded the car park. There were clear marks left in
