Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

Anselm’s mind had returned to Alex but something passed over his skin like a touch, like walking into a cobweb, cold.

Serrano’s briefcase in the safe. Trouble over the safe keys.

Bruynzeel dead.

There was something wrong here.

‘Ring Tilders,’ he said. ‘Tell him not to get on.’

Fat Otto opened his mouth.

‘Do it,’ said Anselm. ‘Now.’

Fat Otto closed his mouth, tapped a number into his mobile.

Anselm watched Otto’s face. Otto’s eyes flashed at him, away.

Anselm’s mouth was dry. Something very wrong.

‘It’s off,’ said Otto. ‘He’s switched it off. Interference, he’s scared of that.’

Anselm closed his eyes. He felt sweat on his forehead, his skin was prickling, the car felt intolerably hot.

‘Was ist los?’

Otto was looking at him. Anselm shook his head. ‘ Eine Vorahnung. Nur einen Augenblick lang.

’ Otto shrugged. ‘I get them too,’ he said. ‘Before plane trips, I always get them.’ He turned his attention to the black box.

They sat and listened to crackling, to static. Anselm was rubbing his fingers, the premonition wouldn’t go away, he felt panic coming.

Sit up straight. Put your hands in your lap, palms up, open. Breathe deeply, breathe regularly.

‘From hearing-aid technology,’ said Fat Otto. ‘And the tuner you wear in your ear, like a hearing aid but tiny, invisible. Cordless. The mikes are in spectacles. Three mikes. You tune until you drop out everything you don’t want. To six or seven metres, phenomenal, the clarity. I heard this couple in Spitalerstrasse talking dirty, whispers, whispering dirty, she said to him…’ ‘This isn’t phenomenal clarity,’ said Anselm.

‘We had no time to test transmitting.’

They sat for a long time listening to crackling and hissing, Fat Otto fiddled, Anselm tried to still his mind, slow the turning of the planet.

Serrano’s briefcase in the safe. The keys to the safe. An argument about the keys to the safe.

Bruynzeel dead. Lourens dead. Falcontor. Credit Raceberg.

‘The transmitter,’ said Fat Otto. ‘Still, we’ll have it. Probably.’

The ferry came into view, sliding on glass, windows aglow, in the last moments of the day.

Anselm felt the panic recede. The beating in his chest was less insistent, his pulse rate was falling. He opened his mouth and his jaw muscles made a noise, relief from the clenching.

Kael’s dark-blue Mercedes was in the same spot fifty metres from the landing, the driver leaning against it, looking at a hand, his nails, bored.

Calm. Anselm felt it come, his mouth was moist again, the salivary glands working.

All that troubled the lake was the ferry’s wake, the chevron, corrugations expanding, dissipating.

The lyric lake.

Only the swan missing, alone and perfect. The swan had come along too early.

They would have to go somewhere to listen to Tilders’ tape, ensure that there was something to listen to, that this hadn’t been a complete fuck-up. Or they could listen in the car. This would have to be a separate bill, a private bill, this was not O’Malley work, O’Malley had his freezable assets, he had what he wanted. Not a bill, no, ask Tilders to name an amount for this evening’s work, pay him in cash. Tilders would be impassive. But there would be something in his eyes.

In the distance, another Mercedes, black, parked illegally, there was no parking there. A wife, a driver, picking up the weary financial analyst, not parking, just waiting.

The day was dwindling, the far shore dark now.

Fat Otto switched off the noise, the crackling, the sibilance.

‘We have to work on this,’ he said.

Anselm ran hands up and down his cheeks, heard the sawing of the beard. He would ask Fat Otto for a lift to Alex’s.

When they had heard the tape.

He thought about unbuttoning the shirt. She always wore shirts. Kissing the lower lip that she bit. Biting it for her.

He felt in his groin the possibility of an erection, perhaps more than a possibility. He moved his thighs apart, made room for possibility. The ferry was about to dock, a handful of people waiting.

‘An experiment,’ said Fat Otto. ‘Better next time.’

‘Yes,’ said Anselm.

Movement inside the ferry. Passengers getting up.

There was a sound, not loud.

The ferry lit up inside.

Light red as blood, dark streaks in it.

A hole appeared in the ferry roof, a huge scarlet spear through the roof.

The ferry lifted, not high, came down, settled on the water, listed, burning inside.

‘ Um Gottes Willen ,’ said Otto. ‘ Um Gottes Willen .’

Anselm was out of the car and running for the landing when he looked for the black Mercedes.

It was gone.

…HAMBURG…

It began to rain as Anselm neared home, cold sleet-like rain, but it didn’t bother him. He had sent Tilders to his death. There would never be any escape from that fact.

On a whim. Not on business. Not on behalf of a client. On a personal whim.

For that, Tilders was dead.

The house seemed colder than usual, the rooms darker. He rang Alex.

‘I was wondering about you,’ she said.

‘I won’t be coming,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been killed. A friend.’

A silence.

‘I’m sorry. That’s terrible. Of course, you must…Whatever you have to do.’

‘Nothing. There’s nothing to do.’

‘Where are you?’

‘At home.’

‘Well. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Yes, I’ll call you. I’m sorry.’

‘No, please, don’t be. These things, you need time.’

Anselm sat on the edge of the desk, looking at the carpet. He felt all his aches, no alcohol in the system to dull them.

A whim. Was it a whim?

No.

‘You aren’t a journalist anymore, John,’ O’Malley had said. ‘That part of your life is over.’

It wasn’t over. It had started again with the decision to put Tilders on the ferry. Sad-eyed Tilders, wry and icy-calm doer of the impossible, benchmark for reliability. It couldn’t stop because he had been blown to pieces. The opposite. It had to go on because he was dead.

Dead. How many people in this unfathomable business were dead. Now Tilders by chance, Serrano and Kael murdered, Bruynzeel, probably murdered. Lourens, probably. Shawn.

And, long ago, Kaskis and Diab.

He thought about the Wishart woman. She connected Kaskis and Diab to the film shown to her by Mackie, who was Niemand, and that brought in Serrano and Kael and Shawn and Bruynzeel and Richler and Trilling, whoever he was.

Anselm went to the cold kitchen and poured half a glass of whisky, took the bottle back to the study, sat in the ancestral chair behind the desk. He found the number and dialled.

It rang and rang and cut out.

The other number, he dialled that, it was a mobile number.

It rang and rang.

She answered.

‘John Anselm.’

‘Hold on, I’m in the car, have to pull over, I don’t have a hands-free.’

He waited.

‘Hi, hello,’ she said. ‘Sorry, the traffic’s terrible.’

He wasn’t sure how to put it, then he said it. ‘Mackie is a man called Constantine Niemand. He’s a South African mercenary. The film comes from South Africa. He came upon it by chance, I think.’

A sound, a sigh, perhaps a passing vehicle, too close.

‘Do you know what it’s about?’ Her tone was tentative, talking to a cat so as not to scare it away.

He didn’t know what to say.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but I think knowing about it is very dangerous.’

She said, ‘Yes. I know that. They tried to kill him again. Last night.’

‘Your paper knows what you’re doing?’