Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

“There’s our mystery caller!” crowed Blum later in the men’s room.

“And that,” Jenssen replied, concentrating on establishing a stream, “would make Martha Hayden the baby’s father, the man leading a double life who’s a master of disguise and knows all about location technology?”

Blum was already drying his hands. “A successful detective, Jenssen, must be capable of abandoning working hypotheses. Think abstract. We were barking up the wrong tree. Now there are new facts coming in.”

Jenssen washed his hands, which he wouldn’t have done if his boss hadn’t been standing next to him. “Why,” he asked, “does she call the editor rather than, say, her husband? What does she have to discuss with her? And why in secret?” Blum reached out for the door handle.

“That’s what we were born to find out. But not you, eh, Jenssen?”

When the two men returned, Henry had pulled the cover off the board and was looking at the photos again. “I can’t believe my wife crashed into the sea in that car. Are you sure it’s Betty’s? She told me it was stolen.”

“It is her car, Mr. Hayden, and that question is very much on our minds too. She reported the car stolen, but couldn’t produce the key. Of course she couldn’t, it’s still in the ignition, as we now know. She told the insurance company”—Jenssen looked at a document—“that she didn’t want any money for the car.”

“That’s odd. She told me about this man, this…”

Blum waved him aside. “If the car had been stolen, she would have had at least one key.”

Thank goodness for that key! More than once Henry had blessed the helping hand of fate, whose interventions are indifferent to personal status, to make small corrections that transform hopeless situations into victory ceremonies. He, who otherwise thought of everything, had not expected a trifling object like a car key to assume such significance. Or to be as helpful as it was proving in this case.

For criminals of every kind, and doubtless also for insurance frauds, this can only mean that there is no such thing as a trifling matter when it comes to fabricating stories. There are only details of equal importance to one another.

“We don’t believe either in the existence of this mystery man you mentioned.”

“But she was pregnant,” Henry replied. “Who’s the father then?”

Jenssen was going to say something, but Blum interrupted him again. “We hope you might be able to help us answer that question.”

“Help you? She didn’t tell me who it was. Did she tell anyone? I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

“Oh yes, I asked her. She only said he was a dangerous man.”

“She didn’t mean you, did she?”

Henry laughed. “You overestimate me, Mr. Jenssen. I don’t know whether to take that as an impertinence or a compliment.”

Henry thought it was time to let the gentlemen on to the secret of what had really happened on the cliffs. Awner Blum spoke the magic words that paved the way for him.

“So your wife and your editor went swimming together quite a bit.”

“That’s right and wrong at the same time. My wife was my editor.” Henry paused for effect. “She read every word I wrote every day. She saw things I didn’t see. Without her I wouldn’t have managed a single novel. I think that was tough for Betty.”

“And what?” Pensively, Blum formed a globe with his fingers. “What — if you’ll allow me the question — did your Moreany editor edit?”

“Nothing. She wasn’t competent. She was too ambitious. I didn’t trust her. When a novel was finished I’d take it in to the office. Betty only ever read the finished manuscript.”

“And what was she paid for then?”

A question that only a police officer could have asked. Henry smiled sympathetically, for what do bureaucrats know about literature? “Please don’t get me wrong. I have a lot to thank Betty for, if not everything, because she was the one who discovered my first novel, Frank Ellis —I don’t know whether you’ve read it.”

“I haven’t,” Blum replied, “but my colleague Mr. Jenssen here has. He’s our bookworm and he’s still waxing lyrical about it, isn’t that so, Jenssen?”

Jenssen nodded, embarrassed. Henry could see that the poor fellow hated being paraded as Blum’s isn’t-that-so-Jenssen dancing bear. There’s a motive for murder, thought Henry. Go on, Jenssen, shoot the bastard with your service pistol and chuck him into the yard. You have my blessing.

“Now and again,” Henry continued, “Martha would talk to Ms. Hansen about how my work was progressing. Probably when they were out swimming. Betty would convey the gist of it to her boss Moreany and pass it off as her own editing. When I realized this I was outraged. I was furious. How can you pass off someone else’s creative efforts as your own? But my wife just laughed and said: Leave her alone. Everyone does the best they can. Everyone is good at something. That was Martha for you. She only ever thought well of people.” Henry looked once again at the photos of his decomposed wife on the board. “Now I think that was a mistake.”

“You said your novel had disappeared. Now it’s turned up again.”

“The novel was finished. The date of publication was fixed. After my wife had disappeared I gave Betty the manuscript. She was supposed to take it to Moreany. She didn’t. The manuscript must have been burned in the car with her. Have they found out what happened to her yet?”

You’ll never find her and you know it, thought Henry. Even he didn’t know where Obradin had dumped her.

At last Jenssen found the right question for the large number of answers lying around all over the place. “And how did you find it again, your novel?”

“I didn’t. Honor Eisendraht who’s now running the publishing house discovered it by chance. On a USB stick. Ms. Hansen had secretly scanned the manuscript. I don’t know why.”

The coffin was made of rough-hewn pinewood and very small. Four iron mounts were fixed to the sides. Henry had decided that his wife’s remains should be cremated. Martha would not have wanted anything else. That way, nothing would be left of her but a quick blast of fire and then ashes. The heavy steel plate of the cremation furnace rose, waves of heat poured out, an electric conveyor belt shunted the coffin inside, the wood combusted, white light dazzled Henry, and the steel plate descended again. The fan started up, the computer-controlled furnace performed its automated work. Henry thought there was a certain reverential air about the whole process with its lack of all human involvement.

Martha’s funeral took place not far from Moreany’s family mausoleum. In accordance with the cemetery’s regulations, the undertakers carried the urn to a hole that had already been neatly dug, edged with a square wooden frame and covered with a green mat of artificial turf. On the black granite stone was just her name without a date. There had been no death notice and Henry had not invited anyone to the interment; only he would see the urn disappear into the earth. It was an almost anonymous funeral. As Henry had never been interested in God or life after death, there was no priest present, and no one delivered a eulogy. A strange woman holding a watering can paused, then kept going to her dead husband’s grave.

As Henry stood in front of the hole that now contained the urn, he was overcome by an immense weariness and wondered what to do with the rest of his life. His guest performance as an author had come to an end. Sonja hadn’t been in touch since the storm. She must have realized that there’s no such thing as a complete life with a man like him, that everything remains a mere fragment. Henry had carried off the perfect crime, but now he was alone again. There would be no more novels published, no woman to wait for him, no child to come out of school, no one to welcome him home except his dog. Even the police would lose interest in him sooner or later. Henry was aware that he would leave nothing behind but a highly entertaining story of imposture — but to whom was he to tell it? The only thing left was to make himself scarce. The undertakers began to fill in the little hole. Henry watched them.