Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

‘Me,’ said Niemand. ‘I’m the baby.’ He said the words without thought but he didn’t regret them, wanted to apologise more fully, thank her.

Jess didn’t reply. She went to the doors, fiddled with keys and unlocked two padlocks. Niemand opened the doors, new doors. The Audi’s lights lit a large space, new concrete floor. A vintage Morris Countryman was to the left, the one with a wooden frame. On a rack against the back wall were big tools: snipper, chainsaw, hedge-trimmer. In front of them stood a stack of bags of fertiliser. To the right, in a line, were an ordinary lawn mower, a ride-on mower, two trail bikes, a mulcher, all new-looking and clean.

Jess parked the Audi.

Lights off. Pitch dark.

The cabin light came on, she got out, opened the back door and removed their bags, closed the door. Dark again.

They didn’t move for a moment, silence.

‘Good gear,’ said Niemand. ‘And neat.’

‘Doctors,’ she said. ‘They’re rich. He’s a slob but she loves order. She wants to come and live here for a few years, grow things.’

He took the bags, closed the doors, and she padlocked them. They walked around the house to the front door, crunching the gravel.

‘No electricity,’ said Jess.

Inside, she found a candlestick close to the door and lit the candle with a plastic lighter. They were in a small hallway, coats and hats above a bench. Three doors opened off the room. She went first, through the lefthand one into a big low-ceilinged room. He could make out armchairs, a sofa, an open hearth.

‘There’s a generator,’ she said, ‘but the lamps will do tonight.’

He followed her through a door into a kitchen. There were Coleman lamps on a shelf. She lit two, she knew what she was doing, how to pump them. The grey-white light brought back memories for him, other places far away and long ago.

‘You need to eat,’ she said.

‘No,’ Niemand shook his head. ‘No thanks.’

In the car, he had woken each time with the nausea he always felt after fear, after firefights, any violence, the sick feeling, and with it the physical tiredness, as if some vital fluid in his body had been drained.

‘Are you…?’

‘Yeah, fine.’

His whole torso hurt, felt battered. It wasn’t a new feeling. The first time was at the School of Infantry, he had boxed against men much bigger, much stronger, badly overmatched, taking heavy body punches, to the ribs, the shoulders, low blows too.

‘Sure?’

‘Sure.’

‘Sleep then. It’s late.’ She pointed. ‘Through there. A bedroom, down the passage there’s a bathroom, I’ll light the water heater.’

Niemand looked around the room. He didn’t want to say it.

‘Jess,’ he said, ‘this place, they can connect it with you?’

‘Nice to hear you say my name,’ she said. ‘Con, who are they?’

‘I don’t know. The owners are your friends?’

‘Yes. I was at school with her sister.’

He was tired, he had trouble standing, legs weak, he had the feeling of not having feet. He put a hand on the back of a chair. ‘Who would know you could get the car, come here, this house?’

Jess touched her hair, pushed it back, he could see the tiredness in her.

‘I’ve been here with the owners,’ she said. ‘They’re in America. I keep an eye on their house in London. I don’t think anyone knows I’ve got these keys.’

Niemand tried to think about this but he gave up.

‘Listen, Jess,’ he said, ‘tomorrow I’ll go and you stay here and I’ll make sure they know you’re not with me, you’re not involved.’

‘Will you tell me what’s going on?’

‘Yes. In the morning. What I know.’

‘Go to bed,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’

For a moment, they stood looking at each other. Then he took a lamp and went to the bedroom, stripped. He walked down the narrow, short passage holding the lamp, almost bumped into her coming out of the bathroom, lowered the lamp to cover himself.

‘It’s too late for modesty,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’ve seen everything you’ve got.’

He showered, trying to keep the water off his bandage. Then he went back to the bedroom, dressed again and lay on the bed under the eiderdown, lay in the dark and listened.

Noise of the wind, hollow sound, lonely. He thought about the Swartberge, the survival course in the mountains, eyelashes frozen in the morning, lip cracks opening, the way human smells carried in the clean cold air.

They could find them here. There was no point in thinking otherwise. In the morning, he would ring the Wishart woman, tell her Jess knew nothing about the film, had never seen it, was only involved by accident. He would catch a bus, a train, go somewhere where he could work out how to get another passport.

The Irishman would help him. That was a possibility.

He drowsed, drifted away, not peaceful, exhausted.

…HAMBURG…

‘I’m regretting this,’ said Alex. ‘I was regretting it before I got into the car. It’s stupid of me. An imposition.’

She was holding two bottles of red wine and she offered them to Anselm.

‘To drink,’ she said. ‘Tonight.’

Even in the dim light, he could see that she was flushed. She had been crying and he thought she looked beautiful and desirable.

‘Welcome to the house of remorse,’ said Anselm. ‘Here we regret almost everything we do.’

He took the bottles, showed her into the study and went to the kitchen. It was a choice between a 1987 Lafite and a 1989 Chateau Palmer. He drew the corks of both bottles and went to the pantry for good glasses. He’d broken many Anselm wine glasses, glasses his great-great grandfather might have drunk out of. But there were enough left to see him out.

In the study, Anselm said, ‘This is kind of you but this wine’s too good for me.’

‘From my ex-husband’s collection,’ said Alex.

‘It’s nice of him to donate it.’

‘He killed himself in Boston yesterday.’

Anselm poured the Lafite. They sat in silence, each in a cone of lamplight, the wine dark as tar in their glasses.

‘I don’t know why I’m upset,’ said Alex. ‘For a long time I hated him. And then I came to terms with my feelings.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘A colleague of his rang an hour ago. I felt so…fuck, I can’t express it.’

‘Why would he do it?’

‘Apparently the woman he lived with left him about a month ago. His colleague says he was depressed, he’d been drinking a lot, not going to the university, missing classes.’

More silence. She finished her wine and he refilled her glass. She leant her head back, half her face in shadow. ‘He rang me about two weeks ago,’ she said. ‘I didn’t let him speak. I told him I had nothing to say to him.’

Anselm wanted to say that it wouldn’t have made any difference but he could not bring himself to. ‘Would you have taken him back?’ he said.

‘No. Never.’

‘I wouldn’t dwell on it then. How long were you married?’

‘Six years. He left me for the American woman.’

Anselm rolled wine around his mouth, swallowed. ‘You can keep coming around with this stuff,’ he said.

‘Kai wouldn’t open a bottle except to impress. One day he brought his head of department home for a drink, a fat man, a medievalist, so self-important you wanted to kill him. But you would not be able to get your hands around that pig neck. And Kai opened a fifteen-year-old burgundy. The man couldn’t believe it. Life’s too short to drink inferior wine , Kai said. This is from a man who bought house wine from that little place next to the canal in Isestrasse, do you know it? You take your own bottles, he fills them with terrible Bulgarian liquids full of brake fluid. Whatever that is.’