Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

He needed to piss, urgently. He sat up, put his feet on the floor. His shoulder felt stiff but there was little pain.

He stood up, went to the bathroom naked. There was a mirror above the toilet and his face looked pale. He went back to the bed, wrapped the sheet around his waist and went to the top of the staircase. Looking down made him feel dizzy. Below was a big room with a long trestle table at one end under a row of windows. On the table stood several models of buildings and what looked like a model of a town, a village with a church in a square.

She was not in view. He didn’t know her name.

Niemand started down the steep stairs. The woman appeared, a knife in her hand.

‘Not you too,’ said Niemand.

She frowned, then she realised. ‘I’m cooking,’ she said. ‘I’m chopping vegetables.’

‘How long has it been?’

She looked at her wristwatch, a man’s watch. ‘Nearly twenty-four hours.’

There was no point in hurrying. They’d have found him before this if they could.

‘My clothes,’ Niemand said. ‘I have to go.’

‘You can’t wear what you came in. Except for the jacket, that’s okay.’ She pointed to her right. ‘In there, there’s a cupboard. You might find something to fit you.’

He was at the bedroom door, when she said, ‘Or you could just carry on wearing that sheet. Won’t raise an eyebrow around here.’

He liked the way she spoke. It was a musical sound, it had tones. In the bedroom, a wall of cupboards was full of men’s clothes, one man’s clothes, jackets, suits, shirts, shoes. He found underpants, a pair of jeans, they looked a bit short in the leg for him, too big in the waist. They would do. He took a grey T-shirt, too big, that didn’t matter, found socks.

He went back upstairs and showered in the big cubicle, wetting the bandage. When he went to soap his side, he felt a sharp pain at the collarbone, in his back.

The clothes didn’t look too bad. His shoes were under the bed. He put them on and went to his bag on the dressing table. The money was in bundles held with rubber bands. He opened one, saw the fakes immediately, only the top notes looked real.

‘Bastards,’ he said without venom. It didn’t surprise him. It had been nothing but betrayals since the beginning. Plus he had been stupid.

He examined all the bundles. Probably five hundred pounds in real notes. His jacket and his nylon holster were hanging over the back of a chair. Blood had dried on the jacket lining. He put the real money in the holster, took the bag and went downstairs.

The kitchen was a counter along one wall. She had her back to him, doing something with a pot.

‘Did I say thank you?’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

She turned, not surprised, she had heard him on the stairs. She was a good-looking woman, a strong face, dark eyes.

‘Quite all right,’ she said. ‘I often pick up wounded men. It’s a service I provide to the community. Are you hungry?’

Niemand thought for a moment. He should leave. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Please.’

‘It’s a kind of stir fry. Chicken. Sit down.’

She put out two plates, cutlery, napkins, two wine glasses, a bottle of red wine, not full. She poured wine without asking.

The food was good. She wasn’t bad to eat with either. No noises, she kept her mouth closed when she was chewing, she didn’t talk with food in her mouth.

‘Your name’s Con,’ she said. ‘I’m Jess.’

He waited until he’d swallowed. ‘Jess. Where are we?’

‘Battersea.’

He knew where it was. He pointed at the trestle table to his left. ‘Is that your hobby?’

‘I’m a model maker. I do it for a living. A very bad living.’

‘Make models?’ It had never occurred to him that there could be such an occupation.

‘For architects. Usually. The village there, that’s a development in Ireland. A typical Irish village for millionaires. Americans.’

They carried on eating. Then she said, direct gaze, ‘Who shot you?’

Niemand finished chewing, swallowed, wiped his mouth with the napkin. He drank wine. He liked red wine, it was the only alcohol he liked. ‘A man dressed as a woman,’ he said.

Jess drank. ‘I’ll put that again. Why did you get shot?’

She had probably saved his life. She had a right to ask.

‘I was stupid,’ he said. ‘I was selling something to people I didn’t know.’

‘Drugs?’

‘No.’

‘They shot a dealer around the corner the other day. In his car. Two men. One from each side.’

‘I’m not a drug dealer.’ He didn’t have strong feelings about dealers in drugs, the whole world was built on addictions, but he didn’t want her to think he was one. ‘I’m not a drug dealer,’ he said again.

‘Point made.’ She finished her wine and stood up. ‘I have to go out,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back around ten, ten-thirty.’

He stood up too. ‘I’ll be gone. Thanks. I’ll wash up.’

There was a moment of awkwardness.

‘You should stay quiet for a few days, the doctor said,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t really have a bedside manner, your doctor.’

He heard the sound upstairs. Pivoted.

Christ, no, not again.

‘It’s the cat,’ she said. ‘Climbs up the pipes, gets into the bathroom. Always knocks something over. Deliberately. It’s not even my cat, thinks it owns the place.’

‘Just the night,’ said Con. ‘Would that be okay?’

There was a pad and pen beside the phone. She wrote.

‘My cellphone number. Ring if you come over weak.’

He nodded. ‘What floor are we on?’

‘Third. There’s another one. It’s empty.’

‘How’d you get me up here?’

‘In the lift. This was a factory. The fire-escape door’s in the corner over there. They made radio parts, valves and condensers, stuff like that.’

‘How do you know about old radios?’

‘My dad,’ she said. ‘He wanted a boy, so he taught me how to fish and shoot and change a fuse and hotwire a car.’

Niemand sat down. ‘I wish I’d met you earlier in my life,’ he said.

…HAMBURG…

They ran on the river path, saw the backs of the houses across the water, here and there a rowboat pulled onto the bank, fowls strutting and pecking, a man hanging washing. There were few runners, many people on bicycles. The sun came and went, gave no heat.

Anselm had not run with anyone since college, since his runs with his room-mate Sinclair Hollway, who went on to become a Wall Street legend for putting twenty-six million dollars on a nickel play. The unauthorised money lost, Sinclair was found dead in his house on Cape Cod a week later.

‘Anselms have been in Hamburg for a long time,’ she said.

He looked at her. Her hair was pulled back and she was wearing anti-glare glasses, the kind target shooters wore, yellow. She looked different.

‘What do you know about Anselms?’

‘I looked them up. I suppose you know all the family history.’

‘Some.’

‘Pioneers of the Hanseatic trade with America, it said.’

‘That’s quite possible. How old are you?’

The yellow eyes. ‘Thirty-seven next month. Why?’

‘No reason.’

‘You simply wanted to know?’

‘Yes. Simply wanted to know. Innocent inquiry. Or isn’t it?’

‘I have no opinion.’

‘No innocent inquiries. Is that it? Nothing is innocent.’

‘A question about age, that could certainly be innocent, yes.’

‘But you don’t think this is?’

‘I didn’t think you had any curiosity about me. This is really a conversational cul-de-sac. What kind of books do you enjoy? Do you read novels?’

‘I read novels.’

Once he had read two or three a week, on planes, while eating, waiting for something, someone, somewhere. He never went anywhere without at least two, usually three, buying five or six at a time and leaving them where he finished them. He had donated books to planes, airports, trains, railway stations, left them in parks and bars and hotels and coffee shops, government offices and embassies, taxis and buses and hire cars. Once he left a book in a brothel, the woman had seen it in his coat pocket, asked for it.