Thomas Glavinic - Night Work

But these images proved that those minutes had elapsed. They had come and gone. If he went there now, he would encounter a different bridge at a different time from the one he was seeing. Yet it had existed, even though he hadn’t been present.

He put in tape 4, followed by 5, 6 and 7. He made rapid progress. From time to time he got up to refill his glass, make a snack or simply stretch his legs. He never took long, but it was dark outside by the time he played the tape showing Gaussplatz.

The Spider grazed a parked car and went into a skid. It rammed a car on the opposite side of the street, then skidded back across the roadway and collided with a van. The impact was so violent, Jonas stared at the screen transfixed. The Spider cannoned off the van and out onto the roundabout, where it spun several times on its own axis and finally came to rest.

For a minute nothing happened. Another minute went by. And another. Then the driver got out, went round to the back of the car and opened the boot. After looking for something, he sat behind the wheel again.

Three minutes later the car drove on.

Jonas still hadn’t transferred this sequence to the video recorder. He rewound the tape, but he didn’t press the record button even then. He watched the accident in disbelief, saw the driver get out and look around to see if he was being observed, then go to the back of the car. Why had he done that? What was he looking for in the boot?

And why couldn’t he, Jonas, remember all this?

The tape came to an end at half past eleven. He still hadn’t watched the second circuit. Maybe he would catch up with it another time. One circuit would suffice for the present. He would watch it when he got a chance.

Jonas roamed the flat, glass in hand, thinking how many years he’d lived there. He made sure the front door was locked. Read Marie’s text messages on his mobile. Flexed his stiff shoulders. Contemplated the knife in the bedroom wall.

Catching sight of his eyes in the mirror as he cleaned his teeth, he gave a start and looked down while the humming electric toothbrush whipped the toothpaste into foam. He spat it out and rinsed his mouth.

Back in the bedroom once more, he gripped the hilt of the knife and tugged with all his might. It didn’t move a single millimetre.

He examined the carpet on his knees. It seemed to him that the carpet beneath the knife was a little cleaner than the surrounding area.

He took the vacuum cleaner from the bedroom cupboard, where the unwieldy contraption was kept for lack of space. Removing the bag, he went into the bathroom and emptied its contents into the bathtub. A cloud of dust went up. He coughed, one hand shielding his face and the other probing the wad of compressed fluff. He soon came across some white powder.

Plaster dust.

Perhaps order was the key.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to fix the thought in his mind. Order. Changing as little as possible and, wherever possible, re-creating the original state of affairs.

He blinked. He’d had a dream, a bad dream. About what?

He looked at the wall. The knife had gone. He sat up abruptly. The camera, the shotgun, the computer, all were in their proper places. But the knife had disappeared.

He scanned the floor while trying to button his shirt with trembling fingers. Nothing. He went into the living room. No knife.

His head was aching badly. He took two aspirins and breakfasted on some marble cake straight from the plastic wrapping. It tasted artificial. He washed it down with orange juice. The memory of his dream came back to him.

He was in a room full of undersized pieces of furniture that looked as if they’d shrunk or been made for midgets. Seated in an armchair facing him was a body without a head. It didn’t move.

Jonas stared at the headless man. He thought he was dead until one of his hands moved. So, soon afterwards, did his arm. Jonas muttered something unintelligible. The headless man made a dismissive gesture. Jonas noticed that the place between his shoulders from which the neck would have emerged was dark with a white circle in the middle.

Without knowing or understanding what he was saying, Jonas addressed the headless man once more. The upper part of the headless man’s torso moved stiffly, as if he meant to turn and look sideways or over his shoulder. He was wearing jeans and a lumberjack shirt, the top two buttons undone to reveal a chest covered with curly grey hair. Jonas said something. Then the headless man started to rock in his chair. Back and forth, back and forth he went, much faster than normal strength and agility would have permitted.

Laying aside his slice of cake, Jonas drained his glass and jotted down the outline of the dream in his notebook.

*

All he could find in the tool drawer was a small hammer suitable at best for knocking picture hooks into a plywood partition. He looked in the box beneath the bathroom washbasin, where he kept tools when he was too lazy to take them downstairs. Empty.

He took the lift down. His compartment in the cellar smelt of cold rubber. The toolbox containing the bigger tools was behind the Toyota’s winter tyres.

Jonas swung the sledgehammer experimentally. That would do the trick. He got out of the cellar quickly and ran back up the stairs. From below came more and more noises he didn’t like the sound of. He was imagining them, of course. But he didn’t want to expose himself to them for too long.

He stood in front of the wall. For a moment he debated whether it wouldn’t be better to abandon the whole idea. Then he raised the sledgehammer and swung it with all his might. It struck the very spot where the knife had been embedded. There was a dull thud. Flakes of plaster rained down.

He took a second swing. This time the sledgehammer made a big dent in the wall. Red brick dust trickled from it.

Bricks in a building made of reinforced concrete?

He swung at the wall again and again. The hole grew bigger. Before long it was the size of the mirror-fronted cabinet over the bathroom basin. Now, whenever the sledgehammer landed on the edges of the hole, it bounced off them.

He explored the cavity with his hands. This part of the wall really did consist of brittle old brickwork, whereas the surrounding area, which was impervious to the sledgehammer, was concrete.

His fingers felt something wedged between two bricks.

Carefully, he knocked them out. A piece of plastic. He yanked at it, but it seemed to be deeply embedded.

There was so much debris on the floor by now that he had to fetch a broom and sweep it up. Deeper and deeper into the wall he went. He didn’t like the look of the thing he was tugging at, so he slipped on a pair of rubber gloves. The dust was making him cough.

Having exposed a substantial area with one hard blow, he gave the object another tug. With a jerk, it came away in his hand. Holding it gingerly, he took it through to the bathtub.

Jonas examined his find closely before turning on the tap. He wanted to make sure that the grey film adhering to the surface was ordinary dust, not powdered potassium or magnesium, substances that gave off an inflammable gas when in contact with water. It might even be some kind of explosive that detonated under similar circumstances. He would simply have to risk it.

Using the shower head, he washed off the dust and dirt that clung to the object. It was indeed made of plastic. It looked like a raincoat. He mopped his brow and used the same cloth to dry the object. Then he picked it up and spread it out.

It wasn’t a raincoat. It was an inflatable doll. Although, on closer inspection, it lacked the orifices that would have identified it as a sex toy.

*

Jonas deposited the two suitcases beside the Spider. He circled the car, closely examining the bodywork. He could now understand why the front had been so badly damaged. After a crash like that, it was a miracle the car still went.