Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

Henry had indeed chosen the narrow, winding coastal road, because he wanted to make the most of his last opportunity to drive the Maserati flat-out. He was expecting the police to detain him on the spot, so he’d taken with him a small travel toothbrush, his reading glasses, and a paperback edition of Paul Auster’s Sunset Park , in case there was nothing to read in the cell; word has it that being held in custody is much more unpleasant than the prison term after sentencing.

It was about twenty-five miles from his property to the Institute of Forensic Medicine; he would get there over an hour early. Henry thought of his dog. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to kill it with the spade. Who was to look after Poncho if he didn’t return? He’d wanted to uncover the old well in the summer and have the stained-glass windows in the chapel restored. But now everything would go to wrack and ruin, or be auctioned off or razed to the ground by bulldozers.

Presumably the police divers had recovered Martha’s corpse from the Subaru. In that case the homicide squad already knew that the car belonged to Betty and were doubtless tapping his phone. That would explain why Betty had been so persistent in trying to get hold of him. She was cooperating with the police, so as not to be punished for Martha’s murder — and who could blame her? Henry would have done the same if he’d been in her shoes. After all, Betty’s pragmatism was the thing Henry really valued about her. It would be difficult now to pronounce Martha’s death a swimming accident, but what were lawyers for? They get paid to come up with explanations. Henry was able to afford the best lawyers, and since O. J. Simpson’s acquittal, nothing seemed impossible.

Henry could see his pursuer in the rearview mirror. The red car came nearer, then remained at a distance of about two hundred yards. He couldn’t make out how many people were sitting in the car, especially with the sunlight reflecting off its windshield. The police would hardly send such amateurs after him. Henry slowed down; the car behind him slowed down too. As soon as he put on speed again, the red car closed up. Maybe it was tourists or those bird lovers who came to the coast at this time of year to watch the mating flights of the seabirds. Alternatively, Henry thought, his pursuer might be a mere figment of his conscience; after all, the world is full of perils for anyone with a sense of foreboding.

Henry accelerated; the little car fell a long way behind. After rounding a bend concealed by high bushes, he slammed on the brakes, put on his sunglasses, got out of the car, and waited for his pursuer. Sea spray settled on his sunglasses like a veil. The coast dropped away here, falling some hundred feet, and hefty concrete blocks were set in front of the precipice to prevent accidents. The wind howled up between the cliffs; clouds drove shadows over the coastal road. Henry saw seagulls circling overhead. Half a minute passed, then he heard the car coming. It rounded the bend at high speed, its tires screeching.

Fasch saw Henry standing in front of his car. It was him all right. He stood there nonchalantly, his hands in his trouser pockets. His hair was still thick, his shoulders broad; he was wearing a checked English cashmere jacket with leather patches on the elbows just like in the showy portrait photo that ruined the covers of all his books.

With the impact on the concrete block, the windshield shattered into a million fractals. His face crashed through the glass and then back again. Everything slowed down and began to rotate. In the center of this revolving world, Fasch saw the photo of his mother, Amalie, hanging motionless while, all around it, everything moved. He wondered when he’d last called her and what he should give her for her seventieth birthday. Then there was an implosion in his chest and something pushed in on him from the sides and grew hot.

The Peugeot ended up lying on its roof. A shower of glass pelted down onto the road. Henry sprinted the hundred feet to the remains of the car. He nearly tripped over the fat brown briefcase that was lying in the road. Paper came fluttering out of it. The wrecked car hissed like a wounded dragon. A mixture of fluids flowed out of its gaping metal jaws and down the road. The roof was in shreds; one door and all the windows were gone; the rear right wheel was still turning. Henry took off his jacket — first things first — and knelt down in the iridescent pool to look inside the smashed-up car. First he saw the arm, the fingers on the hand twitching, and then the man, lying twisted and whimpering on the backseat. He was still alive, but he didn’t know a lot about driving.

Henry took hold of the arm and pulled. The man groaned. Henry let go, crawled into the wrecked car as far as he could, clasped the man around his bloody chest, and pulled him out. With no resistance to speak of, the body slid onto the road. The eyes were open, but the man didn’t seem to understand; his face was already beginning to swell; a trickle of blood ran out of his ear. Sticking out of the right-hand side of his chest was the broken-off shaft of a headrest. Henry put his ear to the open mouth of the injured man and heard his gurgling breathing.

Henry grasped the shaft in his chest and pulled it out; the ribs cracked. He listened again. After a few breaths the gurgling grew fainter; the man’s chest rose and fell quickly. There was now a lot of blood gushing out of the wound. Henry ripped a strip of cloth from his favorite shirt and pushed it into the hole in the man’s chest with his finger, the way you might fill a pipe.

At the five-mile marker, only a short distance from the junction where the forest track led off to the left toward the cliffs, Henry took a right in the direction of town. Fasch was lying on the backseat, his head on the briefcase, which Henry had been considerate enough to rescue. A bloodstain was spreading around the bag on the soft napa leather. Fasch’s legs were raised up and sticking out of the back window. He was whimpering softly, but was not conscious. The traffic was growing heavier. Henry was in complete control of the car at every overtaking maneuver — it has to be said that he was driving the race of his life — and he reached the hospital in under twenty minutes.

An ambulance was parked outside the emergency department with its rear doors open. A paramedic in fluorescent orange was sitting on a gurney reading a newspaper as Henry rolled up the ramp tooting his horn. “I’ve got an injured man!” Henry called out of the car window.

Stoically and without a single superfluous movement, the paramedic folded his newspaper. He saw a dozen injured people every day, dead people and dying people, delirious drunks, weeping mothers — and not for one damn minute was he left in peace to read his newspaper. Without a word he helped heave the unconscious man onto a gurney and push him into emergency.

Tired, and uncertain whether or not he could still be of any use, Henry got back in his car and wondered whether he should call Jenssen to cancel his appointment at forensics. He was now dreading the thought of seeing Martha’s body again. It would have begun to decompose. All the same, he did want to see her face, to touch it. He quite simply owed it to her. No doubt her expression would reflect the horror of the final moment, when she had realized her mistake. For all her synesthetic sixth sense and her great knowledge of human nature, she’d been wrong about him. Wrong out of love for him, until the cowardly moment he’d come up from behind and pushed her into the black water. It had been murder, even if it had been a mistake. Who else but he would see the disappointment on her face?

There was a knock on the window. A young doctor was standing at the car. Henry got out again.