Hakan Nesser - The Stranglers Honeymoon

He inhales the fragrance from the olive groves, tries to experience it as if it were coming from the world’s first olive tree — or the world’s oldest — but he can’t manage it. Her last words get in the way, and the cigarettes have deadened his sense of smell considerably.

He goes back indoors, fetches the packet from the bedside table and lights another one. Then sits down on the white plastic chair on the balcony again, and thinks about the fact that they had been married for nearly eight years. That is a fifth of his life, and much longer than his mother predicted when he told her that he had found a woman with whom he was going to enter a serious relationship. Much more.

Even if she had never passed her opinion as explicitly as that.

When he has finished smoking this cigarette as well, he picks up his dead wife and carries her into the room. Lays her down at an angle over the double bed, takes off her T-shirt and panties, gets another erection but ignores it.

Lucky that she’s so light, he thinks. She weighs nothing at all.

He picks her up again and drapes her over his shoulders — as he will have to carry her eventually: he has only a vague idea of how rigor mortis works, and when he drops her back down onto the bed he leaves her lying in the U-shape she had assumed while hanging round the back of his head and over his powerful shoulders.

In case she starts stiffening up now.

Then he takes the tent out of the wardrobe — the lightweight nylon tent he had insisted they should take with them — and starts wrapping it round the corpse. He trusses it up, using all the loose nylon cords, and decides that it looks quite neat.

It could easily be a carpet or something of the sort.

Or a giant dolmade.

But in fact it is his wife. Naked, dead, and neatly packed into a two-man tent, brand Exploor. There we have it, all neat and tidy.

He wakes up at half past two after dozing off briefly. The hotel seems to be fast asleep, but there are still rowdy noises from the nightclubs along the street and the promenade. He decides to wait for another hour.

Exactly sixty minutes. He drinks coffee to keep himself awake. The night seems to be an accomplice.

His rented car is a Ford Fiesta, not one of the tiniest models, and there is plenty of room for her in the boot, thanks to the fact that she is doubled up. He opens the boot lid with his left hand and eases her down from his left shoulder by leaning forward and slightly to one side. Closes the boot, looks around then settles behind the wheel. No problem, he thinks. No sign of life anywhere. Not inside the hotel, nor out in the street. On the way out of the town he sees three living creatures: a thin little cat slinking along in the shadow of a house wall, and a street cleaner with his donkey. None of them pay him any attention. Easy, he thinks. Killing is easy. He has known that in theory all his life, but now he has transferred theory into practice. He has a vague idea to the effect that this is the point of life. Man’s actions are God’s thoughts.

The ravine has also been hovering in the back of his mind, but it is a somewhat shaky memory and he is forced to wait for the first pink light of dawn in order to find his way there. They passed by it a couple of days ago, travelling over the mountains on their way from Sami and the east side of the island: he remembers that she had wanted to stop there and take some photographs, that he did as she wished, but that she had difficulty in establishing the right camera angles.

Now they are here again. It’s really a crevice rather than a ravine. A deep cleft inside a hairpin bend, a thirty-or forty-metre almost perpendicular drop, the bottom hidden by a tangle of thorny bushes and rubbish thrown out of car windows by less than scrupulous car passengers.

He switches off the engine and clambers out. Looks around. Listens. It’s ten minutes past five: an early bird of prey hovers motionless over the barren mountainside to the south-west. Down at the bottom of the V between two other rocky precipices he can just catch a glimpse of the sea.

All is silence. And the distinct smell of a herb he recognizes but can’t identify. Oregano or thyme, most probably. Or basil. He opens the boot. Wonders for a moment if he should remove the tent inside which she is wrapped, but decides not to. Nobody will ever find the body down there, and nobody will ever ask him to explain what happened to his tent. He has use of the car for two more days and will be able to drive over to the other side of the island again. Get rid of the pegs, the ropes and the bag in some other crevice. Or in the sea.

Nothing could be simpler. Nothing at all.

He looks round one more time. He picks up the big bundle and heaves it over the low rail. It bounces off the steep cliff walls once or twice, then crashes through the dry bushes and disappears. The bird of prey seems to react to the noise and the movement, and moves further westward.

He stands up straight. It’s hard to imagine that it really is her, he thinks. Hard to believe that he really is here, doing this.

He lights another cigarette. He has smoked so much during the night that his chest is aching, but that is of minor importance. He gets back into the car and continues over the crest of the mountains.

Twelve hours later — in the middle of the hottest hour of the siesta — he opens the glass door of the travel agent’s air-conditioned office in the big town square in Argostoli — the angora, as it’s called. Sits down patiently on the sticky plastic chair and waits while two overweight and over-tanned women complain about the shortcomings of their hotel to the blonde girl in a blue suit behind the counter.

When he is alone with the blonde girl he adopts the most agitated tone of voice he can conjure up and explains that he has a problem with his wife.

He’s lost her.

She seems to have disappeared. Just like that.

Late last night. She was going out for a late-night swim. Needless to say there might be a perfectly natural explanation, but he is worried even so. She doesn’t usually vanish like this.

So perhaps he ought to do something?

Maybe he should contact the authorities?

Or the hospital?

What did she think he ought to do?

The girl offers him a glass of water and shakes her Nordic hair in a gesture of sympathetic concern. She comes from a different country, but they understand each other well even so. They don’t even need to speak English. When she turns to one side and reaches for the telephone, he catches a glimpse of one of her breasts right down to the nipple, and he feels a sudden surge of sexual excitement.

And while she tries in vain to make telephone contact during the hottest hour of the day, he begins to wonder who that other person could be, the one his wife had talked about.

The one she claimed to be in love with.

MAARDAM

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2000

Typical, thought Monica Kammerle as she replaced the receiver. So bloody typical. I hate her.

Her conscience pricked her immediately. As usual. As soon as she had a negative thought about her mother it emerged from the shadows and made her feel ashamed. Conscience. That internal, reproachful voice, telling her that you shouldn’t have negative thoughts about your mother. That you must be a good daughter, and acclaim rather than defame.

Be grateful, not hateful , as she had read in some girl’s magazine or other several years ago. At the time she thought the advice sounded so wise that she cut it out and pinned it up over her bed when they were living in Palitzerlaan.

Now they lived in Moerckstraat. The four-roomed flat in the Deijkstraat district — with high ceilings and views over the Rinderpark and the canal and the green patinated roof of the Czekar Church — had become too expensive now that there were only the two of them. They had managed to live there for three more years after her father died, but in the end the money he had left them ran out. Of course. She had known all along that they would have to move out, there was no point in pretending otherwise. Sooner or later. Her mother had explained that to her in great detail and unusually clearly on more than one occasion, and last spring they had moved here.