Хеннинг Манкелль - A Treacherous Paradise

‘What has happened?’ she asked again.

O’Neill was still holding the knife at the ready, as if he was afraid that she would jump at him. Carlos was lying unconscious, but Ana could see from the rising and falling of his chest that he was still alive. Whatever else O’Neill had done, she would never forgive him for attacking an innocent chimpanzee and almost killing him.

O’Neill suddenly answered her question. It was as if he were flinging the words out of himself.

‘I went into her cell and finished off what I failed to do the last time. This time she really is dead.’

Ana became stone cold. She groaned. O’Neill took a step towards her.

‘I couldn’t stand by and watch the women’s earnings being squandered by you on a black woman who murdered her husband. Now I’m getting out of here. And I intend to take all your money with me. You won’t even be able to afford a coffin for her funeral.’

Ana sat down tentatively on the edge of the bed. It was as if O’Neill’s knife had severed something inside her. She had only one desire just now, and that was to mourn the death of Isabel: but O’Neill was standing in her way. He wouldn’t leave until he had received the money, and he wouldn’t believe what she said about most of her wealth being in the commanding officer’s office. Perhaps this was the end of the remarkable journey that had begun with a sleigh-ride in what seemed to be the far distant past. She would die here in this room, stabbed to death by a raving lunatic of a man she had made the mistake of employing. A man she personally had taken on for a trial period without knowing that in doing so, she had allowed a murderer into her house. She would die in this bedroom where she had spent her widowhood, and would die together with the remarkable chimpanzee who used to work as a servant in the brothel, dressed in a white suit.

But could what O’Neill had said happened possibly be true? She looked at him, and it struck her that this could be a trap she had fallen straight into. She had failed to notice the gap that had suddenly opened up in front of her, and was about to fall into it.

‘Why did you kill her? And why should I believe you?’

‘Because nobody else was able to do the only right thing — killing her — I took it upon myself.’

‘How could you get into her cell? Twice?’

‘Somebody helped me, of course. Left doors open. But I’m not going to say who it was.’

‘Was it the commanding officer? Sullivan?’

O’Neill made an energetic gesture with the knife, and in doing so happened to tread on Carlos, who whimpered.

‘No, it wasn’t Sullivan. But I shan’t answer any more of your questions.’

He picked up a grey sack made of jute that was lying on the floor beside him.

‘Fill this with your money!’

‘I can’t.’

Something in her voice made him hesitate rather than repeating his demand immediately in an even more threatening tone.

‘Why can’t you?’

‘Because nearly all my money is locked up in the commanding officer’s office, in the fort.’

She could see that he was nervously swaying between doubt and fury. The sack was hanging down in his hand.

‘Why has he got your money? You didn’t know that I was going to come here tonight.’

‘I gave the money to him as a bribe,’ said Ana. ‘So that he would secretly allow me to fetch Isabel and arrange for her to leave Lourenço Marques. Later this morning I was due to go to him with the rest.’

‘So there is more money here in the house?’

‘Not more money, no. The rest of the bargain was to be paid in a different way.’

‘How? With what?’

‘With me.’

O’Neill didn’t move. She could see that he was confused. He didn’t understand what she meant. His uncertainty gave her the upper hand despite his knife.

‘I promised to become his whore. Who would believe the immoral proprietess of a brothel if she tried to explain afterwards what had happened?’

At last the penny dropped for O’Neill. What Ana said couldn’t be a lie, something she had simply made up. He picked her up from the bed, grabbed hold of her throat and shook the sack violently.

‘Everything you’ve got,’ he said. ‘Absolutely everything. And you must never breathe a word to anybody that I was the one who came here.’

‘People will understand that even so.’

‘Not if you don’t say anything.’

He thrust her away so hard that she fell down on to the stone floor. She landed with her face right next to Carlos, who was still breathing awkwardly.

Just as she was about to get up, Carlos cautiously opened one eye and looked at her.

Ana stood up and began gathering together the money she still had in the house. She had filled two porcelain vases decorated with oriental nymphs with money she was going to use to compensate the women for their reduced earnings. She put it all into the sack while O’Neill urged her to hurry up. On the floor in the wardrobe she had two of Senhor Vaz’s leather suitcases filled with money intended for her journey to wherever she eventually decided to go. The money she received for selling her house and the brothel would go to the people who worked there. She didn’t intend to keep any of that herself.

When she had emptied the last of the suitcases, she saw that the sack was still less than half full. If the money in the CO’s office had been available, O’Neill would have needed two, possibly three sacks.

‘That’s everything,’ she said. ‘If you want any more, you’ll have to talk to Sullivan.’

O’Neill punched her, hard, a blow loaded with his disappointment: he had expected so much more. In the midst of all the pain that the punch caused her, Ana managed to think about how brutal O’Neill was. How could she have failed to see that earlier? That she had appointed as a security guard a man who was worse than the worst of her clients?

‘There must be more,’ he said, his face so threateningly close to hers that she could feel his stubble against her cheek.

‘If you like I can swear on the Bible, or on my honour. There is no more.’

She couldn’t make up her mind if he believed her or not. But he pulled off the rings she had on her fingers and dropped them into the sack. Then he hit her so hard that everything went black.

When she came round Carlos was sitting looking at her. He was swaying back and forth, as he always did when he was frightened or felt himself abandoned. O’Neill had left. Ana had the feeling that she hadn’t been unconscious very long. The open window overlooking the upper veranda indicated the way O’Neill had chosen to leave, and perhaps also the way he had got in. She went outside and saw that the two guards were sitting by the spent remains of their fire, yawning as if they had just woken up. If she had had a gun, she would have shot them — or at least, the temptation to do so would have been very great. But even if she had aimed at them she would no doubt have pointed the pistol at the sky before pulling the trigger: she would never be able to kill anybody. She was a mucky angel, not a murdering monster.

She sat down on the bed and dabbed at Carlos’s wounds with a damp sponge. Nobody would believe me if I told them about this, she thought. Me sitting on my bed after being attacked, tending the wounds on a chimpanzee’s bleeding forehead. But I’m not going to tell a soul.

Quite early in the morning she left the house and was driven down to the fort. Julietta and Anaka had been horrified by the state of the bedroom — the torn sheets, the bloodstains and the broken mirror — but Ana had simply told them that Carlos had had nightmares. He had caused the wound on his own forehead. She didn’t bother to comment on her swollen cheek.