Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

Anselm thought of a woman with tape over her mouth, tied to a bed. Screaming through her eyes.

He went back to work, wrote an authorisation for Herr Brinkman to pay Inskip and Carla the equivalent of $6250 each.

Blood money. They were bounty hunters. The woman could be dead. He could find out, but he didn’t want to.

Through his slice of vision, Anselm looked at the sky, the lake, both still. The day was darkening. Perhaps it would snow. An early snowfall. It wouldn’t be a proper snowfall, though, just tiny flakes that turned into slush when they touched the ground. The earth wasn’t cold enough yet. When he was about twelve, he had been in the garden helping his grandfather fork over the vegetable patch.

‘Weather experts, they know nothing,’ the old man said. His hair was the colour of the sky. ‘The earth tells the clouds when it’s time for snow.’

Thinking about his grandfather, about cold earth, a day came into his mind like a ghost. He remembered the hotel, the down mattress that buried you, folded over you. Rising early, long before first light, walking down the creaking corridor to the bathroom where the pipes shrieked and keened and moaned and hammered. Hours later, climbing, climbing in the elderly Mercedes, first gear most of the way, they came around the side of a mountain. Suddenly they were above the mist. It lay below them, seething, stretching away, a savage sea, and, poking out of it, dark mountaintops like steep and inhospitable islands.

Where was that?

A cough from the doorway. Carla.

‘You look…distant,’ she said.

‘Visions from the past. Come in, sit down.’

Unusually, she did. She kept her bad leg straight when she sat down, took her weight on one arm, then the other. ‘This is difficult,’ she said. She did not quite meet his gaze.

Anselm nodded. ‘Nothing easy from Bowden.’

‘I can find a Luxembourg bank. That is it so far.’

Carla had the sad, lip-biting air of a child who thought she had disappointed. Bad marks, failed to win the race or didn’t jump high enough, far enough.

‘Well,’ said Anselm, ‘you’ll find something sooner or later.’

Carla refolded her hands. He hoped she wouldn’t crack her knuckles. They were hands too big for her thin frame, elegant, long fingers, the nails well kept, rounded for typing. Erotic hands.

‘Kael,’ she said.

‘Kael?’

‘Serrano is connected with Kael, not so?’

She didn’t know about the bugging of Serrano and Kael.

‘Yes.’

‘The connection includes these papers?’

‘Probably.’

‘Kael isn’t an investment consultant. You know that?’

‘I know that.’

She shifted again. ‘Kael. Herr Baader could possibly…I don’t know…’ It hung. He knew what she was saying.

‘Wait.’

Anselm went down the corridor to Baader’s office. He was on the phone, a knee against his desk. His head movement said, come in. Anselm sat down. Baader was answering someone with yes and no. Then he said: ‘Na klar. Die Sache is erledigt. C’est fini. Schonen Dank.Wiedersehen.’

He looked at Anselm, shaking his head. ‘My life is moving beyond intolerable. Into a new phase.’

‘You can’t go beyond intolerable.’

‘You can. You’re not German enough to understand that. What?’

‘O’Malley’s interested in dealings connected with Werner Kael.

Carla’s on it.’

‘So?’

‘She thinks you could help. She’s embarrassed.’

Baader’s head went to one side. He ran a finger back and forth over his upper lip, over the day’s regrowth. Anselm could hear the faint sawing sound.

‘I had dealings with Kael,’ said Baader eventually.

‘Dealings?’

‘I knew him.’

‘I thought you were an analyst?’

‘I did other things first. You earn the right to become an analyst.’

‘I’ll file that. Carla’s idea?’

‘It’s not a favour I want to ask.’

‘O.K.’ Anselm got up.

‘Kael’s file is sanitised. I told you, he’s got friends.’

‘Well, O’Malley’s worth a lot to us. But…’ ‘Find another direction. What have you got? Have you got banks?

So-called banks?’

‘One, I think. Luxembourg.’

Baader slid his chair back, pushed off the desk, spun around, feet off the ground, like a child on a roundabout. ‘Give me the bank,’ he said. He kept spinning. ‘I’m more at ease approaching from that side.’

Anselm watched him going around. ‘Stefan,’ he said, ‘if you ever feel the need to talk to someone, you know where to find me.’

‘Damaged,’ said Baader. ‘Both of us, we’re damaged goods. Return to sender.’

‘Address unknown, no such number, no such phone.’

Baader smiled, a happier fox now. ‘A man who knows his Elvis cannot be damaged beyond repair.’

Anselm went back to Carla. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll see what we can do with the bank. Give me the details. And have a try at Bruynzeel.’

She nodded and left. Anselm rang O’Malley.

‘This is not proving easy.’

‘I was rather hoping your distinguished head of chambers might weave his magic.’

‘He may yet.’

‘Carry on, Hardy. Ring me tomorrow. In the p.m. With luck, I’ll be celebrating with my learned friend.’

‘Eating your smoked ham with your pickles, beetroot, drinking your Krakow pils. And making use of your…’

‘Not another word.’

…LONDON…

She had been gone for a while, perhaps half an hour, when the phone in the kitchen rang.

Niemand was watching television, the news, a dark-haired woman and a man with glasses taking turns reading it. The woman was finishing an item about illegal Kurdish immigrants found in Dagenham.

He let it ring. Her answering machine came on. Her calm voice saying, ‘Thank you for calling Jess Thomas Architectural Models…’

On television, the man was talking about calls for new crowd-control measures at football grounds, a teenager had died in Belgium, crushed.

Niemand pressed the mute button on the remote.

‘…and leave a message,’ said Jess’s voice on the machine.

The tone.

‘Get out now,’ said Jess, quick urgent. ‘Just go. I don’t know how long you’ve got.’

He was up, took his valuables holster, his jacket, stuffed them into the bag, went for the fire-escape door. He was there when he remembered and he went back and tore the page off the pad, her cellphone number.

The steel door’s bar resisted, not opened for a long time, rusted, painted over, many times, he couldn’t get it to move. He dropped the bag, put both hands to the lever, pushed down.

It wouldn’t move. Did not give at all. Solid.

Take your time said the inner voice. The voice of his first instructor, in time his own voice. The careless, languid voice: Take your time, chicken brain.

Jolt it free.

Hit it.

With what?

He looked around and he looked across the kitchen, across the big space of the sitting room and workroom to the far wall.

Three shadows.

He saw three shadows flit along the bottom of the big industrial window. Gone in an instant, just bits of grey behind the wire-impregnated security glass.

Tops of heads.

Three heads, quickly, stooping but not stooping low enough, the lights from outside throwing shadows upwards.

Niemand hit the lever with his clenched hands, brought them down, used them like a flesh hammer, the pain was instant. In his hands, his back, his shoulder.

The big lever jerked free, upwards. He grabbed the bag, swung the steel door inwards, went out into the cold, drizzling night. Closed the door. He looked for a way to bolt it from the outside. No bolt. Stupid. It was a fire escape.