Rupert Thomson - The Insult

He stepped out from behind Nurse Janssen, who turned and walked away, leaving us alone together. This was the first time I’d seen him. He was a tall, gangling man, with dark hair that was neatly parted and rather dry, and teeth that were ridged, like celery.

‘No, I suppose not.’ I laughed. ‘I thought you were my fiancée. My ex-fiancée, I should say.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Munck drew up a chair.

‘No, no. Don’t be. It was over long before all this,’ and I gestured to include the ward and all the blind men in it. ‘This just made everything clear to me. Does that sound odd?’

‘Paradoxical, perhaps. Not odd.’

I liked Munck. He was somebody I could talk to. He had a brain. And that sleepy voice, I now saw, was perfect for the work he did. It was an instrument for winning confidence. He could use it to coax information out of witnesses. Or lull criminals into confessions.

He opened his briefcase, took out a brown-paper bag and put it into my hands. ‘I don’t know whether you like pears,’ he said.

‘How kind.’ I opened the bag. Inhaled.

‘I was passing the market and, well —’

‘Thank you.’ I told Munck about my trips to the city as a child and how my grandmother always used to bring a pear for me to eat on the tram.

He was nodding. He seemed happy to have chosen the right fruit.

‘But this is not a social visit, surely,’ I said. ‘Is there some news?’

‘No, I’m afraid not. Not really.’ He leaned his forearms on his knees, hands dangling. How old was he? Forty? Forty-five? ‘There was something I didn’t ask you before. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning …’

‘Oh?’

‘The night you were attacked, a woman saw a youth running out of the car-park. He was wearing a T-shirt with a message on it. A slogan. It said, THIS TIME IT’S FOR EVER.’ He paused again, looked up. ‘I don’t suppose that rings any bells?’

I searched my memory, but there were no running youths in it, no T-shirts. ‘No,’ I said.

‘Just the tomatoes?’ he said.

I smiled.

‘We checked with the manufacturers. They do a whole range. THIS TIME IT’S FOR EVER, YOU KILL ME, I LOVE YOU TO DEATH. They sell hundreds every month, apparently.’ He sighed. ‘And, anyway, the woman didn’t think she could make a positive identification.’

I wanted to comfort him, but didn’t know how.

‘Sometimes you’re looking for connections and they’re just not there,’ he said after a while. ‘It’s small things that you’re looking for. Habits, for instance.’

‘Habits?’

‘Yes.’ His voice had quickened. ‘Take you, Mr Blom. You have an interesting habit.’

‘I do?’

‘Yes. You have this way of passing your hand across your head. Slowly, almost warily, from front to back. It’s what some men do, men who are worried they might be going bald —’

‘It must be the operation,’ I said, ‘the plate I had put in.’ I was slightly disconcerted; he’d told me something about myself that I didn’t know.

‘There you are, you see? A connection.’ The triumph in his voice didn’t last. ‘But this youth with the T-shirt —’

He sighed again and this time I sighed with him.

‘As the victim of an unsolved felony you’re in the majority, of course. I only wish it was otherwise. I’m afraid most crimes in this country go unpunished.’

I had the impression that he felt personally responsible for what had happened.

‘You know,’ he went on, ‘I always wanted to be a policeman. Ever since I was a boy. I used to dream I’d solve some famous case and then I’d have a street named after me. Or a square —’

‘Maybe you should’ve gone into politics,’ I said.

He didn’t answer for a moment. Then, dreamily, he said, ‘Avenue Paul Munck.’

I smiled. ‘Sounds good.’

‘It’ll never happen.’

‘It might.’ I was trying to encourage him, this seemingly doom-laden man.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s like I told you. Most criminals are never brought to justice. Not by me — not by anyone.’

‘That’s interesting, though,’ I said, ‘about the habits.’

‘Yes.’ He rose wearily to his feet. ‘Well, it’s time I was going.’

‘It’s been a pleasure, Detective. Do call in again. If you’re ever in the area, that is.’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘And thanks again for the fruit.’

‘Don’t mention it.’ Munck lifted a hand as he turned away, then lowered it as he remembered I was blind. ‘Goodbye, Mr Blom.’

‘Goodbye.’

I watched him move off down the ward, arms paddling in the air, feet slapping on the floor. So it was Munck who walked like somebody in flippers. This knowledge endeared him to me, and I hoped it wouldn’t be too long before I saw him again.

Towards the end of September I made one final attempt to solve the mystery about the X-rays. As usual, the clinic fooled me and I was soon adrift in a maze of corridors and hallways. In some places, the ceilings were low and curved; I could touch bare brick if I reached up with one hand. There didn’t seem to be any windows. It was damp too, a chill that I felt on the back of my neck but, curiously, nowhere else.

So far as I could tell, I was still at ground-level. I needed to be higher: three floors up, maybe four. As I walked, I was sure I could hear people behind me — the whisper of crepe soles on the lino, murmured words — but when I turned round, there was never anybody there. I wondered if this wing of the building could be haunted. Certainly it was antiquated enough. Almost derelict. It was a disgrace, really, now I thought about it. Just because we, the patients, were blind, they felt they could keep us in conditions that were scarcely even fit for animals.

I found a stairwell and began to climb. Up and up it took me, opening at last on to a landing that was unfamiliar to me. The air was still, the floor littered with empty pill bottles, old magazines, bits of broken glass. I noticed a dandelion flower floating motionless above me, as though it had been there for centuries. Dead flies lay on the windowsill in heaps. At the far end of the landing was a door with a horizontal bar on it. I leaned on the bar and the door opened. A cool night wind. The roof. But which part of it?

I picked my way through heating-vents, fuel-gauges, pipes, my shoes sticking to the soft, tarred surface. There was a sudden rush of air above my head. Pigeons. I heard the clock strike three, each note blown out of shape by the wind and the cold. No walkway anywhere; no lit windows. I reached the edge of the roof and lifted my face towards the sky. I could smell salt now — no more than a trace element, but it was there. It was the sea that I could smell, pushing against low dunes some twenty kilometres to the west. The city lay south-east of where I stood, its skyline of domes and spires concealed behind a ridge.

I climbed on to the parapet, feeling like a swimmer at the beginning of a race. I bent from the waist and stretched my arms out past my ears. Then peered down. A drop of thirty metres, maybe more. I wasn’t tempted. Those thoughts of suicide that Visser had predicted, they’d never be mine. I had to reshape my life, that was all. I would live the way people lived in primitive societies, only the other way round: I’d get up when the sun went down and go to bed when it came up again. I was glad it would be winter soon. What good was daylight to me? No good at all. It was an obstacle, a hindrance — the last thing I needed. I remembered Claudia’s idea — how she wanted to look after me. I imagined her constant presence, her careful ministrations. I shuddered. It would have ruined everything.

‘Martin?’

I jumped.

‘What are you doing, Martin?’