Rupert Thomson - The Insult

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I know.’

I didn’t, though. I didn’t even know what part of the world we were talking about. She went to the fridge and brought me another beer. I hadn’t asked for one. It was because she wanted a drink herself. I watched her drop new cubes into her glass.

‘You don’t have to drink it,’ she said.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll drink it.’ I sat down again.

She stood over by the window, as before.

‘It’s ironic, really,’ she said. ‘He isn’t even her real father.’

‘Who isn’t?’

‘Jan. Jan Salenko.’ The ice-cubes jangled as she drank. ‘I already had her when I married him.’

‘So who’s her real father?’

She turned to me, her dress flashing in a hundred places as it caught the light. ‘You don’t understand. I was raped.’ She was laughing. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’

Because I was blind? Because she was drunk? I didn’t know either. I was still drawing patterns in the carpet with my stick.

‘Did Nina know?’ I asked her.

‘I always kept it from her. But maybe she found out. Maybe that’s why she disappeared —’

‘Found out?’

‘The truth.’

I hesitated. ‘Which is what?’

She didn’t answer. She’d lowered her head and she was shaking it from side to side.

‘You can’t talk about that?’ I said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t talk about that.’

‘Can anyone?’

She lit a cigarette. It was a long cigarette, with a white filter. When she spoke again, her voice was bitter, almost vitriolic. ‘My mother. Edith Hekmann. She’d probably tell you.’ She took the smoke into her lungs, then blew it out as if she hated having it inside her. ‘Up there in the mountains. It’s like a different century up there.’

‘Where?’

She mentioned the name of a village. I’d never heard of it.

She stared into the corner of the room. The tears came again. I waited for a moment, and then I muttered something about my train. I heard her follow me across the room.

‘No, that’s the kitchen,’ she said.

‘I’ve never had much of a sense of direction,’ I told her with a smile. ‘Ever since I was young.’

‘Is that when you went blind? When you were young?’

‘No, no. It happened last year.’

At the front door she touched me on the arm. ‘You came all this way. And I behaved so — I just cried the whole time.’ She fumbled in her bag and handed me a card. ‘It’s a special discount voucher for the casino,’ she said. ‘You get a pile of free chips to start you off.’

I looked down into her face, which was eager suddenly, her eyes bright behind the smeared mascara. ‘Do people ever say that you and Nina look alike?’

‘They used to,’ she said. ‘When Nina was thirteen, fourteen. They used to think we were sisters. But it was probably just because we were so close in age.’ She studied the end of her cigarette for a moment. ‘Inside, we’re not alike at all.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘About what happened.’

She nodded quickly, sniffed. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘It was a long time ago.’

Outside, the wind was stronger. Clouds sliding past the rooftops like the world was under ice and moving fast.

She’d told me there were always taxis on the seafront. I flagged one down. All the way to the train station there was that smell. The smell of things wedged under rocks. Things in shells.

I left the voucher on the seat. There’d be someone who’d appreciate it. Who knows, maybe they’d even get lucky.

I’m on my way to Nina’s apartment. It’s not far from the flower market. When I reach the street, it’s dawn and people are unloading vans. The stalls are open, colourful. The cool morning air has seams of fragrance running through it.

I walk into a courtyard, pass beneath an archway. I climb a narrow winding staircase. It’s on the third floor. A dark wooden door on an even darker landing. Part of me’s excited. So this is where she lives. Her house-keys are warm, almost illicit in my hand. And yet I feel as if I know the place, as if I’ve climbed these stairs before, with her, after a dinner out somewhere, or a party, our arms around each other, drunk.

Then I’m in her bed. The pillow smells just like her skin. I lift my head. She’s standing by the window.

She’s wearing a long, dark-blue dress; her arms are bare. There’s an expression on her face I can’t decipher. It’s not surprise at seeing me in her apartment, or anger. It’s not even curiosity.

‘Nina?’ I say.

She’s standing by the window, looking down into the street. The wall behind her is plaster: grey and cream and pale-pink. A slab of bright, white sunlight falls across it.

‘Nina?’

‘I used to be,’ she says.

I’m crying out as I wake up. There were two people in the compartment with me before I fell asleep. I begin to apologise.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘a nightmare —’

Then I look around and realise I’m talking to myself. The compartment’s empty. By the time I reached the Kosminsky it was almost two in the morning. Three messages were waiting for me at hotel reception, all of them from Munck. Upstairs in my room I dialled his number at police headquarters. It didn’t surprise me when the switchboard put me through. I’d already identified Munck as a man who worked late into the night. Either he’d never been married or he’d been married too long. He’d forgotten how to go home.

‘Munck,’ I said.

‘Ah, Blom,’ he said. ‘Feeling better?’

‘Much better, thank you.’

Two youths had been arrested, he told me. They were to be charged with the theft of Nina Salenko’s car. He described them for me. They were both fourteen years old. One wore a denim jacket with the arms cut off. His hair was light-brown, shoulder-length. The other one was thin, with cropped hair and a speech impediment, a kind of lisp.

They didn’t sound like anyone I knew.

Munck described part of the interrogation. Both youths were shown a photograph of Nina. The one in the denim jacket took a long, close look.

‘Wouldn’t mind a bit of that,’ he said.

Munck asked him if he’d seen her before.

The youth grinned. ‘Didn’t know we was here to talk about girls.’

Slatnick came up behind the youth and clouted him on the head with the back of his hand.

‘You should’ve seen Slatnick,’ Munck said. ‘Like the shadow of a cloud, he was, the way he came up behind that boy.’ He chuckled. ‘The boy never knew what hit him.’

‘I can imagine,’ I said.

Munck described how the youth bellowed, as much in shock as pain, and clamped one hand over his ear.

‘You’ve never seen her before?’ Munck asked the youth again.

‘I told you. No.’

He turned to the friend, the thin one with the lisp. ‘You?’

‘No.’

The story that emerged was simple. The two youths had been in the city centre, drinking. It was a Wednesday night and they were bored. When they saw a car with the keys left in the ignition, they couldn’t believe it. It was like an invitation, a gift. How could they say no?

I interrupted. ‘The keys were in it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did they see anybody on the street?’

‘Nobody. It was late. Two-thirty in the morning.’

‘You believe them, don’t you.’

‘Yes, I do.’ Munck sounded gloomy.

It was a breakthrough, but it took him backwards. Nina had disappeared — but not in the car. That was all he knew. Or anybody knew. There were fewer facts than ever.

‘Would you mind coming in tomorrow?’ he said. ‘I need to talk to you.’

I went to bed early. It had been a long night and I was tired. As I lay on my side, waiting for sleep, I thought of Karin Salenko — her lacquered hair, that lazy voice of hers, the tall drinks. I would never have guessed that she was Nina’s mother. I remembered what she’d said about looking like her daughter. She’d said something else, too, something unusual. Inside, we’re not alike at all. I could only think one thing: it must have been the inside that I was looking at.