Killing Me Softly

observer might have thought it the same as the beginning of our relationship when neither of us could physically bear to be apart from the other. Now it was more like a very conscientious doctor who couldn’t let an unstable patient out of his sight for a moment because of the suspicion that she might do herself harm.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that Adam followed me everywhere I went. He didn’t accompany me to work every single day, nor was he there to meet me every day. He wasn’t phoning me there all the time. But it happened enough so that I knew that any more of my private investigations would be risky. He was around, and I was sure that there were times when he was near and I didn’t notice. Once or twice, walking along the street, I would look round feeling that I was being watched or that I had glimpsed someone, but I never saw him. But he could still have been there. It didn’t matter anyway. I had the feeling that I knew everything I needed to know. It was all there in my head. I just had to think about it all. I had to get the events straight.

Greg was going to fly out to the States for a few months and, on the Saturday before he left, a couple of friends arranged a party to give him a send-off. It rained almost the whole day and Adam and I didn’t get out of bed until almost noon. Then Adam suddenly got dressed, briskly, and said he had to go out for a couple of hours. He left me with a cup of tea and a hard kiss on the mouth. I lay in bed and I made myself think about it all – clearly, point by point, as if Adam was a problem I had to solve. All the elements were there, I just needed to get them in the right order. I lay under the duvet, hearing the rain pattering on the roof, the sound of cars accelerating through puddles, and I thought about everything until my head hurt.

In my mind I was going over and over the events on Chungawat, the storm, the altitude sickness of Greg and Claude Bresson, the extraordinary achievement of Adam in directing the climbers down the Gemini Ridge, the failure of the guiding line and the consequent disastrous wrong turning of the five climbers: Francoise Colet, Pete Papworth, Caroline Frank, Alexis Hartounian and Tomas Benn. Francoise Colet, who had just broken off with Adam, and who had been conducting an affair with Greg.

Adele Blanchard had broken off with Adam. How would the Adam I knew respond to being left? He would have wanted her to die and she disappeared. Francoise Colet broke off with Adam. He would have wanted her to die and she died on the mountain. That didn’t mean he killed her. If you wanted someone to die and they died, did that mean you bore some responsibility, even if you hadn’t caused it? I went over and over it. What if he didn’t try hard enough to rescue her? But, then, as everybody else said, he had already done more than anybody else could have done in the same circumstances. What if he put her group last on the list of priorities while he saved the lives of other people? Did that make him just a bit responsible for her death and the deaths of the other members of the expedition? But somebody had had to assess priorities. Klaus, for example, couldn’t be blamed for the deaths because he hadn’t been in a condition even to rescue himself, let alone decide the order in which other people were rescued. It was all stupid. Adam couldn’t have known about the storm anyway.

Yet there was something, like a little itch that is so tiny you can’t even locate it exactly, you can’t decide whether it is on the surface of the skin or somewhere underneath but it won’t let you relax. Maybe there was some technical mountaineering detail, but none of the experts had mentioned anything like that. The only relevant technical detail was that Greg’s fixed line had come loose at the crucial point, but that had affected all the descending groups equally. It was just a matter of chance that it was Francoise’s group who took the wrong route down. Something wouldn’t leave me alone. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about it?

I gave up. I had a long shower, put on some jeans and one of Adam’s shirts, and made myself a piece of toast. I didn’t have time to eat it because the doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting anybody and I certainly didn’t want to see anybody, so at first I didn’t answer. But it rang again – longer this time – and I ran down the stairs.

A middle-aged woman was standing outside under a large black umbrella. She was quite stout, with short, greying hair, wrinkles around her eyes, and running down from her nose to the corners of her mouth. I thought at once that she looked unhappy. I had never seen her before.

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘Adam Tallis?’ she said. She had a thick accent.

‘I’m sorry, he’s not here at the moment.’

She looked puzzled.

‘Not here,’ I repeated, slowly, watching her stricken expression and the slump of her shoulders. ‘Can I help you?’

She shook her head, then laid her hand on her mackintoshed chest. ‘Ingrid Benn,’ she said. ‘I am the wife of Tomas Benn.’ I had to strain to understand her, and talking seemed to require an immense effort. ‘Sorry, my English not…’ She made a helpless gesture. ‘I want to speak with Adam Tallis.’

I opened the door wide, then. ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Please come in.’ I took the umbrella from her and closed it, shaking off the drops of water. She stepped inside and I shut the door firmly behind her.

I remembered now that several weeks ago she had written to Adam and to Greg, asking if she could come and see them to talk about her husband’s death. She sat at the kitchen table, in her smart, sensible suit, with her neat brogues, holding a cup of tea but not drinking it, and gazed at me helplessly, as if I might be able to provide some kind of answer, although like Tomas she spoke almost no English, and I knew no German at all.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘About your husband. I really am sorry.’

She nodded at me and started to cry. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she didn’t wipe them away but sat patiently, a waterfall of sorrow. There was something rather impressive about her mute, unresisting grief. She put no obstacles in its way but let it flow over her. I handed her a tissue and she held it in her hand as if she didn’t know its function. ‘Why?’ she said eventually. ‘Why? Tommy say…’ She searched for the word then gave up.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, very slowly. ‘Adam is not here.’

It didn’t seem to matter all that much. She took out a cigarette and I fetched a saucer for her and she smoked and cried and talked in fragments of English but also in German. I just sat and looked into her large sad brown eyes, shrugging, nodding. Then gradually she subsided and we sat for a few moments in silence. Had she been to see Greg yet? The image of them together was not appealing. The article on the disaster in Guy magazine was open on the table and Ingrid caught sight of it and pulled it across. She looked at the group photograph of the expedition and she touched the face of her dead husband. She looked at me with the hint of a smile. ‘Tomas,’ she said, almost inaudibly.

She turned the page and looked at the drawing of the mountain, which showed the arrangement of fixed lines. She started jabbing at it. ‘Tommy say fine, he say. No problem.’

Then she switched to German again and I was lost, until I heard a familiar word, repeated several times. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Help.’ Ingrid looked puzzled. I sighed. ‘Help,’ I said slowly. ‘Tomas’s last word. Help.’

‘No, no,’ she said insistently. ‘Gelb.’

‘Help.’

‘No, no. Gelb.’ She pointed at the magazine. ‘Rot. Here. Blau. Here. Und gelb.’

I looked blank. ‘Rot is, er, red, yes? And blau is…’

‘Blue.’

‘And gelb…’

She looked around the flat, pointed to a cushion on the sofa.

‘Yellow,’ I said.

‘Yes, yellow.’

I couldn’t help laughing at the mix-up and Ingrid smiled sadly as well. And then it was as if a dial had been turned in my head; the last number in a combination lock ratcheting into place. The doors swung open. Yellow. Gelb. Yes. He wouldn’t have called out in English as he lay dying, would he? Of course not. Not the man who had hampered the expedition by not knowing a word of English. His last word had been a colour. Why? What had he been trying to say? Outside, the rain fell steadily. Then I smiled again. How could I have been so stupid?

‘Please?’ She was staring at me.

‘Mrs Benn,’ I said. ‘Ingrid. I am so sorry.’

‘Yes.’

‘I think you should go now.’

‘Go?’

‘Yes.’

‘But…’