Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

‘Yes sir.’

…HAMBURG…

Baader raised his eyebrows and puffed his cheeks. After a while, he expelled air and said, ‘You’re asking me?’

‘No,’ said Anselm. ‘I’m just going around exposing my personal life to anyone who’s breathing.’

‘When did you last ask anyone for advice?’

‘I had the idea I should change,’ Anselm said. ‘Clearly a very stupid idea.’ It was. He was already full of regret.

Baader looked unhappy. ‘Well, change, you’re almost normal these days. Except for the fingers. Just hung over. Christ knows how you run with a hangover. I can’t walk with a hangover.’

‘It’s my way of punishing myself,’ said Anselm. ‘You get women to cane you. I run. Should I talk to her?’

‘I should cane myself. No, that doesn’t work. Like massage, can’t massage yourself. Can you buy a caning machine? Do they have that?’

‘Everything. They have everything. Are you hearing me?’

‘Jesus, John, talk to her. What does she look like?’

Anselm hesitated. ‘Not like Freud,’ he said.

A smile from Baader, the sly-fox look. ‘Attractive, that’s what you’re saying, is it?’

‘The academic look, not necessarily my taste. The scholar. A certain primness.’ He used the word geziertheit.

‘Glasses?’ Baader was interested.

‘No. Well, yes.’

‘I like glasses. Black frames?’

‘Me, we’re talking about me. Less about you.’

Baader looked away, bent his head, scratched an ear. ‘To be serious,’ he said, ‘what the fuck would I know? The things that happened to you, I can’t begin to…Well, are you feeling okay?’

‘I’m feeling fine.’

‘The memory?’

‘Bits come back. It doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.’

‘Well, talking can’t hurt. You’ve never talked to me. Who did you talk to?’

‘I’m sorry I mentioned this. Paid Gerda? If not, I’m looking for another job.’

A hand in the air, a stop sign, gentle. ‘John, relax. Gerda’s paid, the landlord’s been paid, everyone’s been paid. We’re up to date on payments. I’m personally skinned but everyone’s been paid.’

Anselm went back to his office. Talked to anyone? What was there to say? How did you talk about fear, about cringing like a whipped child, about pissing in your pants, other things, sobbing uncontrollably, other things?

Carla Klinger knocked. ‘The new file,’ she said. ‘The chemist. He flew to London. Now I’ve got him on a flight to Los Angeles from Glasgow, took off an hour ago.’

It was a second before he placed the chemist. Yes. The chemist’s company in Munich thought he was planning to defect to the competition. Five years he’d been on a research project, they were close.

‘That’s good work, Carla. Tell the client.’

She smiled her cursory smile, nodded, turned on the stick.

Good work? Thieves, contract thieves, spying, stealing to order, stealing anything for anyone. Anselm thought about the woman they’d found in Barcelona, Lisa Campo. He remembered his reply to Inskip’s question.

What do you think? Charlie gets his money back, they fall in love again, go on a second honeymoon. Eat pizza.

For all they knew, Charlie Campo wanted to find his wife so that he could torture her and kill her. For all they cared. Just a job with a success bonus. Good work? He’d enjoyed it at the start, four of them using Baader’s purloined software, learning how to search the waters for a single rare fish, the net ever expanding, dropping deeper. Sitting in a quiet room, in the gloom, watching the radar, waiting for the blip, waiting for the coelecanth. He’d felt removed from himself, a relief from the running introspection, the endless, pointless internal dialogue. Just the quiet lulling of the electronic turbines, the hard drives spinning, spinning, spinning. But now…

Anselm went down the passage to Beate’s office. She wasn’t there. He was grateful not to have to endure her remarks about health as he went onto the balcony to smoke.

A cold day but dry, patches of blue coming and going in the high, wispy cloud. In line with Poseldorf, a ferry with a ragged tail of gulls was cutting through the chop. Kael and Serrano would be off their ferry by now.

Alex Koenig.

He could ring her to say he would talk to her about what had happened to him. Within limits. He could set limits, things he wouldn’t talk about, the parameters of their talk.

What was the point of that? How could he set limits? What would they be?

Beate tapped on the glass. Anselm flicked his cigarette end into the garden below-not a garden, just balding lawn and unpruned leaf-spotted roses, no one cared.

This would be Tilders. He went inside. Beate smiled her beatific smile.

‘I’d have brought the phone but I saw you were almost finished with that vile thing.’

‘You’re never finished with vile things,’ said Anselm.

…LONDON…

The store was warm and fragrant, like a palace in a dream. As Niemand wandered around, the expensive scents of the women shoppers brushed his face, clung to him. On an escalator, he stood behind three youngish Japanese women in grey, sleek as pigeons, eyes rounded by the knife. They appeared to be crying.

When he’d finished looking, riding the escalators, he left by a back exit and walked around the block. He found a spot to watch the front doors and dialled. Caroline Wishart answered on the third ring.

He told her where he was, where to go.

He didn’t see her go into the store, there were two entrances, the pavement was crowded. After a while, he crossed the street, went into the store through the right-hand doors, turned right and climbed the stairs to the third floor. He went through jewellery and handbags, around four Asian women talking in undertones, rings on their fingers flashing like lights. At the escalator, he dialled again.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I got bored,’ he said. ‘I’m on the fourth floor looking at the toys. Come up the escalator next to the stationery, in the corner, know where that…’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’

He waited, saw her pass. Waited, watched the people, dialled her again.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to come down again. To the second floor.’

‘Don’t mess me around,’ she said. ‘This isn’t a spy film.’

He looked at his watch, stepped onto the up escalator.

Caroline Wishart didn’t see him until the last second, when he was offering the package. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, held out the bag with one hand, took the package in the other.

Niemand took the bag.

‘Goodbye,’ he said.

He walked up the escalator, three people ahead of him, bag in his left hand, three steps at a time, glanced back. She was off the escalator, half hidden by a man in a dark suit. Another man was in front of her, facing her, close.

When he turned his head, looked up, he saw a woman at the top of the escalator, back to him, a young woman in black, dark hair on her shoulders, talking on a cellphone held in her right hand, her head back.

Niemand thought: Who do these people phone? Who phones them? What do they have to say to each other? He looked down, watched the metal belt slide beneath the shiny steel plate, he’d always felt some unease at the moment; in his life he had been on escalators no more than a few dozen times.

He was taking the step to solid ground, to safety, when the woman on the cellphone raised her left hand, fingers spread, her hand moving, her fingers speaking.

She had hair on her knuckles, dark hair.

She turned, less than two metres from him, smiling, a nice smile, big mouth, dark lipstick, brought the cellphone away from her head, looking at it, chest-high.