“I could pay you a bit extra,” argued the young man. “I'm a writer. Alois Muhren, I don't know if you've heard of me?”
“I don't think so.”
“What I'm looking for is a nice, quiet hideaway where I can write the final chapter of my new book. I certainly don't need more than a month. All the people and the hustle and bustle of a city make things so difficult for a writer, if you see what I mean.”
“I certainly do,” said Jelena Walgens as she searched through her memory.
But she couldn't think of anybody by that name. She read quite a lot, and had always done so; but he was a young man, and maybe she hadn't quite heard the name right. Alois Muhren? Was that what he'd said?
“One month,” she said. “Until the first of April, that is. Is that what you want?”
“If possible. But perhaps you have other prospective tenants?”
“A few,” she lied. “But nobody who's committed themselves yet.”
In fact this was the third week in succession that she'd placed the ad in the newspaper, and apart from an off-putting German who seemed to have misunderstood everything it was possible to misunderstand, and no doubt stank of sauerkraut and sausages, he was the only one who'd called. What was the point of hesitating? A month was a month, after all.
“Would you be happy with five hundred guilders?” she asked. “It's a bit of a nuisance having to advertise again when you move out.”
“Five hundred guilders would be fine,” he said without hesitation, and the deal was done.
After lunch she drew a map and wrote instructions. One kilometer after the church in Wahrhejm, take a left when you come to the hand-painted sign. Two hundred meters through the trees toward the lake, no more. Three cottages. The one nearest the lake on the right was hers.
Keys and an explanation of how to make the awkward water pump work. The stove and the electric mains. The boat and the oars.
She had only just finished when he arrived. Rather a pale young man. Not very tall, and with polished manners, she thought. She offered him coffee, of course-it was already brewed. But he declined. He couldn't wait to get out there and start writing. She understood perfectly.
He wasn't the least bit impolite or cocky. On the contrary. He was courteous, as she would explain later to Beatrix Hoelder and Marcela Augenbach. Courteous and polite.
And a writer. When he'd left, she tasted the word several times. “Writer.” There was something sweet about it, that had to be admitted. She liked the idea of having somebody sitting and writing in her little cottage by the lake, and perhaps she even entertained the hope that at some point in the future he would remember her and send her a copy of the book. When it was finished, of course. That would take time, she imagined. What with publishers and all the rest of it. Perhaps he would dedicate the book to her, even? She made up her mind to go to the library before long and see if he was represented on the shelves.
Muhlen, was that his name? Yes, that's what it said on the contract they had both signed. Alfons Muhlen, if she had read it correctly. He seemed a bit effeminate, she had to say, and she wondered if he might be homosexual. A lot of writers were, even if they pretended not to be, according to what Beatrix had maintained once. But then again, she maintained all kinds of things.
She'd never heard of him, that was for sure. Neither had Beatrix nor Marcela, but he was a young man, after all.
Still, he'd paid in cash, without quibbling. Five hundred guilders. She would have been satisfied with three.
So, it was an excellent deal, all things considered.
Alfons Muller?
Ah, maybe she had heard the name after all.
38
He felt cold.
For the fifth morning in succession, he was woken up by feeling freezing cold.
For the fifth morning in succession, it took him less than one second to remember where he was.
For the fifth morning in succession, he felt for his pistol and looked out the window.
The house was still there in the hesitant light of dawn. Just as untouched, just as unvisited and unaware as when he had fallen asleep at some point during the night.
Unmolested. She wasn't coming. She hadn't come last night, either. The cold made his body ache all over. It was inconceivable how impossible it was to keep warm up here, despite the abundance of quilts and blankets. Every morning he had woken up in the early stages of dawn, frozen stiff. Checked the state of everything by looking out the window, then gone downstairs and into the house and the warmth created by the stove. He always made a big fire in the evenings when he came back from the inn. A really roaring fire in the iron stove in the kitchen, making sure that it would retain its heat until well into the following morning.
He followed the same routine this morning. Carefully scrutinized the whole area, outside in the raw morning air and inside the house. Gun in hand. With the safety catch off.
Then he sat down at the kitchen table for coffee. Took a couple of drams of whiskey as well, to drive the cold out of his body. Listened to the seven o'clock news on the radio while he made plans for the coming day. Pistol close at hand on the worn, fifty-year-old waxed tablecloth. Back against the wall. Invisible from the window.
Getting through the day was becoming harder and harder. He couldn't endure more than three or four hours at a time in the forest, and when he came back in the early afternoon, on the alert as ever, he generally sat down on the sofa again. Or lay down in the loft for an hour or two, waiting.
He would sit or lie there and glance through something from his father's library, which was not exactly voluminous and not particularly varied. Adventure stories. Brash, cheap literature bought by the meter at auctions or at sales time. He would quite like to read the occasional one, to be honest, but found it hard to concentrate.
Other things nagged and disturbed him. Other things.
Then he would go out for another walk, for an hour or so. As dusk drew in he would come back home in the dark. It felt like something he was waiting for, this darkness: a confidant and an ally. He knew that he had the upper hand as soon as night fell. If they were to confront each other while it was dark, he was at an advantage. He might need it.
Then he would have dinner in the dark kitchen. He never switched on a light-the worst-case scenario would be if she came across him in a lit-up window.
He had been into the village only once, to do some shopping. He tried to avoid it, during daylight hours at any rate. Nor did he go there during the evenings those first few days, but he soon realized that the isolation would be intolerable if he couldn't at least spend an hour at the inn with a beer.
He went there on the third evening. He made a risk assessment before setting out, and realized that the dangerous part would be returning home. On the way in, he could make sure he was walking behind hedges, through private gardens, or along the village street, which had no lighting. Inside the inn, lots of the drinkers had a clear view of the door. That fact would hardly present her with an opportunity, even if she found out where he was.
But walking back home was a different matter. Dangerous. If she knew he'd been at the inn, she had every opportunity of setting up an ambush, and so he took every possible precaution on his walk back to the house. Avoided the road. Dashed out of the inn and around the corner of the building, staying in the shadows there for quite a while. Then he would head for home cross-country, over terrain he had known in detail since he was a boy-changing direction, zigzagging irrationally, and approaching the house from a different direction every night. Extremely carefully, and gun in hand. Every sense on red alert.
But nothing happened.
Night after night, and absolutely nothing happened.
Not a single dodgy incident. Not the slightest indication. Nothing suspicious at all.
