Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

Jenssen came into the room with an unusually large briefcase. Gisbert’s heart missed a beat, but then he realized that this case was black, not brown like his. The policeman in the corduroy jacket introduced himself in a friendly way, showed Fasch his badge, and placed the briefcase on the table behind him against the wall. This poor fellow has not got any health insurance, and yet he can afford a private room, Jenssen thought. With his powerful hand he pushed aside the white curtain to cast a glance out over the magnificent park. Then he looked around appreciatively.

“Nice room you’ve got here.”

This empty phrase might have been a polite prelude to particularly bad news, or was it the start of an entirely new topic? At any rate it was unusually personal for a policeman he didn’t know from Adam.

“May I see your ID again?” Fasch asked.

Jenssen obliged.

“Mr. Fasch, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. This isn’t a formal interview, and I’m not here because of the fire in your apartment either. I’d like to ask you some questions about your road accident.”

Fasch squinted past the man’s broad shoulders at the black case on the table. “You don’t have my notes in there, by any chance?”

Jenssen smiled slyly. “My colleagues from accident investigations found these documents in the wreck of your car.” Jenssen opened the briefcase and handed Fasch an envelope a quarter of an inch thick. Fasch tore it open. To his disappointment it contained only a Moreany Publishing House catalogue, the photocopy of a 1979 register of names from Saint Renata, and a few photo clippings of Henry. One of them was the magazine picture of Henry and his wife on the sofa. Fasch had circled Henry’s likeness with a felt-tip pen, which in retrospect seemed ridiculous.

“How do you know Mr. Hayden?”

There was no point in denying it. “He pulled me out of the car and brought me to the hospital. But you probably already know that.”

Jenssen nodded. “How can you remember? You were unconscious, weren’t you?”

“It’s an inference. The man who brought me to hospital is the same man who pulled me out of the car.”

“Absolutely correct. How did he come to be present at the accident?”

“I can assure you,” replied Fasch, who was prepared for this question, “that Mr. Hayden is in no way to blame for the accident.”

“I believe you there. So he was there purely by chance?”

“Yes. You said this wasn’t an interview.”

The athletic policeman cast a melancholic glance out the window. He’d never get such a lovely private room if he were ever ill. “I’m going to be quite frank with you. Only an hour after he’d dropped you off at the emergency department, we met at the Institute of Forensic Medicine where Mr. Hayden was to identify his wife.”

“She drowned. I read about it.”

“The dead woman at forensics wasn’t his wife.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“A few days ago another woman fell victim to a crime of violence. A young woman at Moreany Publishing House who edited among other things the novels of Mr. Hayden. Good writer, this Hayden. I like his style. Do you know him well?”

Fasch decided on a reply of moderate precision. “Who knows anyone well?”

“But you’re collecting material about him?”

“Not just, I mean, not any longer. It’s all burned, but you know that already.”

“I’ve been wondering”—Jenssen drew up a chair—“what interests you about Mr. Hayden’s past.”

“We were at the Saint Renata home together.”

“That was an orphanage?”

“Yes, it’s quite a long time ago.”

“You’re not writing any kind of biography of him, are you?”

Gisbert Fasch was only one answer away. They could have become friends, he and the policeman. He might have gotten out of the wretched arson trial and, together with the police, he could have hunted Henry down.

“At the moment I’m working on my autobiography by trying to get better.”

There was a brief silence. Jenssen didn’t for an instant believe in a chance encounter between the two men. But he understood that this wasn’t going to get him any further. The poor fellow wasn’t going to say a thing — after all, he owed his life to Hayden. That much was made perfectly clear in the admissions office. What was odd was that later at the forensic institute Hayden hadn’t said a word about his selfless act.

“Then I can only offer my heartfelt wishes for a speedy recovery.”

“Thank you.”

Jenssen took the briefcase from the table. It was still heavy. He held out his hand in good-bye.

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“My brown briefcase hasn’t turned up by any chance?” asked Fasch as he shook Jenssen’s hand.

“I’m afraid not. Did you say — brown?”

“Brown with a strap round it. About the size of yours.”

“Perhaps it was flung into the sea by the impact.”

“I’m sure that’s it,” Fasch replied. “It wasn’t strapped in.”

Henry saw the figure from the kitchen window as he was carving the pheasant. It darted through the half shadow of the blackberry bushes to the barn. One of the double doors was shut but the other stood wide-open. Poncho was lying next to him on the cool kitchen floor, perfectly still. He didn’t seem to have noticed. Henry put aside the carving knife and climbed backward over the prostrate dog.

It was the third time in a week that he’d seen the intruder. A few days ago he’d spotted him in the distance, walking across the fields that belonged to his seventy-five-acre estate. Henry had taken him for someone out for a walk who hadn’t realized that he was trespassing on private land, as there was no fence or sign to bar the way. When he noticed that the walker was pacing up and down parallel to the house, he fetched his binoculars from the studio. But by then the walker had disappeared. Two days later he was on the drive, standing between the poplars only a hundred yards from the house. He was leaning against a tree and looking across at Henry as if he wanted to establish contact with him. It wasn’t Obradin and it didn’t look like that policeman Jenssen either; he was broader in the shoulders and blond. Nor could it be that poor soul Fasch, who was still in the hospital. Henry waved to the figure, but it remained propped against the poplar and didn’t wave back. Once again Henry fetched his binoculars, once again the figure disappeared.

Now it was in the garden.

Henry opened the door to the broom cabinet, took out the short ax, left the house by the veranda door on the west side, which was still in shade at that time of day, and crept toward the back of the barn. Poncho followed him, panting. Keeping his head down, Henry stole along the wall of the house and sought cover behind the stack of arm-length pieces of oak wood.

Swarms of midges danced over half-empty water butts that were quietly stagnating against the back wall of the barn. Henry clambered onto a rusty threshing machine that was covered in bird droppings with a scattering of rotten straw like a strange kind of wig. He swung himself through an opening into the barn. Poncho stayed put, wagging his tail, then tore around the barn, seized with hunting fever.

An old lamp swayed on a wire. Swallows had left their nests and were circling agitatedly beneath the wooden rafters. Now Poncho came running through the open door, stopped and panted, raised his muzzle and sniffed. Henry waited, the ax in his fist. Without much interest, Poncho began to run to and fro, but in the end he cocked a leg and marked a post. Henry lowered the ax.

“Hello?”

There was only the will-o’-the-wisp fluttering of the swallows. Henry stretched out his arm and stilled the swaying lamp. The beat of the birds’ wings must have set it moving. To Henry’s right was Martha’s white Saab. The paw marks of a cat showed up in the fine dust on the hood. Henry noticed that the driver’s door wasn’t quite shut. Half of Martha’s face and the fingers of her right hand were visible through the side window. Her pale fingers were moving. Henry dropped the ax and backed away a couple of steps. The half face opened its mouth and shut it without any sound coming out. Henry could feel thousands of little muscles pushing up every hair on his skin.