Rupert Thomson - The Insult

We crossed a wide expanse of grass. The wind dropped and I thought I could hear crows in the distance like old doors opening on rusty hinges, doors in horror films. Then only the keys in Loots’ pocket and our breathing. A sudden whiteness sizzled through the air in front of me. I had to stop and hold my head.

‘What is it?’

‘I can’t see.’

Loots didn’t say anything.

‘It’s almost like he knows I’m coming,’ I muttered. ‘Like he’s making it difficult for me.’

I’d been expecting a TV programme to follow that flash of white, but it didn’t happen. Instead, I could see the grey lawn reaching down towards the lake.

‘Do you remember where his office was?’ Loots said.

‘Not really.’ I tried to think. ‘There was a walkway outside. A metal walkway …’

Trees surrounded us. I glanced up into their branches, bare of leaves. I would like to have explained their significance to Loots, but there wasn’t time. A clock somewhere was chiming the half-hour. Loots tightened his grip on my arm. We were passing the main entrance.

He chose a window in the west wing of the clinic. It was more isolated, he said. No lights. He cut a small hole in the glass and knocked it through into the room. After waiting a moment, he cut round the edge of the pane, next to the window-frame. He put one hand into the hole and gripped the glass, then tapped on it sharply with the other. The pane came loose. He reached in, turned the handle.

‘You first,’ he said.

We stood in a room that smelled faintly of methylated spirits.

Loots crossed to the door and opened it. I asked him what was out there.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just a corridor.’

I warned him about the corridors — their labyrinthine qualities, their disturbing acoustics. If he thought he heard somebody behind him, he was not to worry; it was probably just his own footsteps, echoing. I spoke of the scale of the building, too and, while I was on the subject, I mentioned Kukowski’s memory techniques. Not that they’d ever helped me much, I said, but maybe he’d do better. It was important to remember which way we went in case we had to leave in a hurry. Loots listened with a slightly lowered face. He seemed to be absorbing everything I told him.

We left the room and began to walk. We were in a part of the building I didn’t know; I didn’t recognise the corridors at all. Every now and then a sizzle of white moved across my field of vision. That sudden, blinding wash of magnesium light: it was as if I’d put my face inside a photocopying machine. I didn’t want game shows, not now. I didn’t want the nervousness, the hysteria.

Once, we heard footsteps. It was a good example of what I’d been talking about, and I was just going to point it out to Loots when he opened a door and pushed me through it. I began to protest, but he put a hand over my mouth. I heard the footsteps grow louder, move past us, fade into the distance.

‘It was a nurse,’ he whispered.

A nurse? It could have been Maria Janssen on the early morning shift. What would she have said if she’d discovered us? Was she aware of what they’d done? I saw her walking among the pear trees with Visser. It was possible. When she was first assigned to me, they might have thought it best to let her in on it. Perhaps that explained her initial awkwardness with me. There’d been times when she seemed to be floundering, out of her depth … It might also make sense of the night when she took off all her clothes. That strip-tease could even have been part of the experiment.

Our luck held. We found ourselves passing a series of doors, and on the wall beside each one there was a plaque with a doctor’s name on it. Loots read them out to me. Metz … Czarnowksi … Feleus …

‘… Visser!’ he exclaimed.

The door wasn’t locked. When we were both inside the office, he switched his torch on and began the search. There were no files lying around, he said. No X-rays either. The room was neat and orderly, with every surface cleared of paperwork. He checked the drawers of Visser’s desk, but all they contained was stationery, a few memoranda, some business correspondence. The only place left was the filing cabinet, which was locked. I took this to be a good sign.

‘We’re going to have to force it,’ I said.

I handed Loots the screwdriver I’d brought with me and watched him work it between the drawer’s edge and the framework of the cabinet itself. The lock snapped open. The drawer slid forwards on its rails.

I paced the room impatiently as he searched the contents of the cabinet. ‘Have you found it?’ I asked him, every fifteen seconds. I couldn’t help it. So much depended on it.

At last Loots sat back on his heels and sighed. ‘It’s not here.’

‘It must be.’

‘They’re not files,’ he said. ‘They’re articles. Some of them Visser wrote himself, but most of them are by other people. There aren’t any files in here at all.’

I thought we should go through the desk again.

‘There aren’t any files in the desk either,’ Loots said. ‘I’ve already looked.’

‘Maybe he’s got a safe …’

Loots stood up. ‘There’s no safe.’

‘We’ll have to look somewhere else then.’ I went to the door and peered out. The corridor had a familiar shine to it, a mocking emptiness, like a mirror with nobody looking into it.

‘It’s almost six,’ Loots said. ‘It’ll be light in an hour.’

‘I don’t care.’

A sizzle of white and this time pictures followed it. I saw rows and rows of beds, with wounded men in them. Men with their heads wrapped in bandages, men with limbs missing. They could have been refugees from my dreams. Through the hospital window pillars of black smoke were visible. Grass lay flat as a helicopter came down. A man in a uniform was searching the hospital. There were stretchers everywhere. One had a girl on it. Her face floated beneath his distracted gaze for a moment, her dark hair pushed back from her forehead, her skin pale, drained of blood, her eyelids closed.

‘Nina?’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘Nina? Is that you?’

Loots seized me by the arm. ‘Quiet, Martin.’

‘I thought I saw Nina.’

‘She’s not here.’ Loots was shaking me. ‘There’s nobody here.’

‘OK, OK,’ I muttered. ‘It’s just a film.’

But the girl on the stretcher had looked so like her.

We were half-walking, half-running now. Loots was afraid that someone might have heard me shouting. Fighter planes swooped through the smoke. Their guns sounded like people typing. Somehow Loots found his way back to the same room. We climbed through the open window, dropped to the ground below. He took my hand. ‘There’s only lawn in front of us. Just run.’

I ran. But it was difficult. Shells were landing all around me. Flashes of white light and then fans opening in the air, fans made out of earth. I wanted to throw myself down on the grass. I might get killed otherwise. But Loots still had me by the hand and he wouldn’t let go.

Once, he stopped and stood there, panting. ‘I thought I heard something.’

‘I can’t hear anything,’ I said.

How could I? The hospital had just been hit. A fireball engulfed it, orange edged in black. A cauliflower of flame.

We ran on, plunging through some bushes. At last we reached the wall. Loots gave me a leg-up, as before. I waited for him on the other side, but he didn’t appear.

‘Loots?’ I whispered.

There was no reply. Only a startled, anguished cry and then Loots came scrambling over the wall. He rushed me across the road. It took him three attempts to open the car door. I heard another cry.

‘What is that?’ I said.

But Loots wouldn’t speak. He didn’t say a word until we’d driven fast for several minutes. ‘I dropped my keys,’ he said. ‘It happened when I was helping you over the wall. I looked around a bit. Found them. The next thing I knew, there was a man …’