Hour of the Wolf (16 page)

As usual, his father was sitting in his bed, gazing at his hands. It often took some time to get him to look up, but on this occasion he did so more or less immediately. He had barely managed to move the chair to the side of the bed and sit down before his father slowly raised his head and looked at him with those bloodshot, watery eyes of his. Just for a second there was a sign of recognition, but perhaps that was wishful thinking.

Why should he recognize him today when he hadn’t done so for the last six years?

After half a minute his father’s chin sank gradually down towards his chest, and he returned to studying his hands, which were lying on top of the blue blanket and slowly rotating around each other.

He sat there for ten minutes. He couldn’t stand it any longer than that. He couldn’t see a nurse or care assistant he recognized, and didn’t bother to ask about his father’s condition.

How is he? Is he all right?

Such questions were pointless. Had been pointless for several years; it felt better not to ask them. He had often wondered what the point was of keeping him alive, but nobody at the care home had so much as whispered the word euthanasia, and he didn’t want to be the first to do so. Besides, his sister in America would be against it, he knew that without needing to ask.

So his father just sat there. Never spoke to anybody, never read a book or a newspaper. Never watched television or listened to the radio. Didn’t even get up nowadays to go to the toilet. The only sign he gave of being in some sort of a conscious state was that he opened his mouth when a spoonful of food was approaching.

My father, he thought. One of these days I shall be like you are now. Nice to see you.

And he made up his mind that he would make the most of life while he still could.

That Friday night became very difficult. Bearing in mind that Vera would be coming the next day, he gave the whisky a miss. He didn’t want it to become a habit. And he didn’t want to overdo the Sobran tablets either. He took a weak sleeping tablet instead, but it only made him feel sluggish and slightly sick.

His decision to wait for Monday’s letter before deciding what to do next was of course the right one – the only conceivable one: but in no way did it mean that he could stop thinking about it.

Those persistent gloomy thoughts and images of what would happen to him. Speculations about what kind of scenario ‘a friend’ would propose for handing over the money this time. And about what he would be forced to do. Again.

Whether there was going to be any possibility of doing it.

Killing him.

Killing one last time and drawing a line once and for all under his former life. Without needing to sum it all up or look back at all. Simply waking up to a new, blank day.

He wished he were already at that point.

Wished it were all over. So he could make the most of his life while he still could?

The last time he looked at the clock it was ten minutes to six.

It was raining when he woke up a few hours later. Persistent rain, and a strong wind hurling it at the windows. He stayed in bed for a while, listening to it. Then he got up and had a shower.

He spent the morning and the early afternoon preparing the evening meal. Did some vacuuming and tidying up, and opened some bottles of wine to breathe. Sorted out the laundry as well. Shortly after two he had a call from Smaage, reminding him that the next meeting of the Fraternity was due to take place the coming Friday; they chatted for a while, and afterwards he was surprised at how easy he had found it. How uninhibited he’d been. After all, it had been immediately after the previous meeting that it had all begun. After that damned meeting of the ‘brothers’ his old, secure life had been brought to a halt, and everything had shot off in different directions. He promised Smaage that he would be there, provided nothing unforeseen cropped up – and it was when he said ‘unforeseen’ that he suddenly felt a flash of dizziness. Smaage wished him a pleasant weekend, and hung up.

Then there was one more hour during which he had nothing to do but sit around, waiting for her. Between four and five, as darkness was falling and the wind seemed to ease off a little. But the rainbows kept coming and going. He spent quite a long time by the bedroom window, looking up at the low, restless sky over the strip of trees planted along the back of the row of terraced houses.

Stood there wrestling with a completely new thought.

I’ll tell her, he thought. She would understand. Then we’d both be in it together, and could give each other strength. Surely that would be a good thing.

She rang the doorbell at exactly five o’clock. When he went to open the door he suddenly felt weak at the knees.

It was their most difficult evening so far. At least at the beginning there was something reserved about her behaviour, and even though she didn’t say so straight out, it was evident that she was tormented by the situation between herself and Andreas.

Tormented by the need to tell her husband that she was in the process of leaving him for somebody else. He understood her difficulties. Realized that she still hadn’t put him on the spot, even though she had promised to do so. But he didn’t press her. Didn’t allow any impatience or disappointment he was feeling come up to the surface. Nevertheless there was a cloud hanging over them, something that he had never felt before; and it wasn’t until they had drunk almost three bottles of wine that they began to make love.

It was just as enjoyable as ever. Perhaps even better: for a brief moment he had the feeling that it was due to the bitter whiff of disaster in the air, but the feeling went just as quickly as it had come. He managed to give her four or five orgasms, and afterwards she lay with her head on his chest, weeping. His own head was as empty as if an atom bomb had exploded inside it.

They eventually shared yet another bottle of wine: it felt as if the blood was finally starting to flow through his veins again. Soon afterwards he took her one more time – slightly brutally, as she liked it – on the kitchen table, and then they each drank a glass of Glenlivet to round things off.

He would regret that glass of whisky for the rest of his life, as that is what made him lose his sense of judgement and embark on the path to ruin. He never thought there was any other explanation.

There couldn’t possibly be any other explanation.

As he stood in the bathroom, getting washed, he realized that he was quite drunk – more drunk than he had been that evening, for instance – but that there was something he must do. He needed to do it. The doubts that had plagued him earlier in the week seemed to have been blown away, and when he examined his face in the mirror all he saw was strength.

Strength and determination.

He grinned at his own image and went back into the bedroom. Sat down on the edge of the bed and played for a while with one of her nipples between his thumb and forefinger.

I’ll tell her now, he thought.

He realized that it had been a terrible mistake the moment he saw the look on her face.

FOUR

18

Jochen Vlaarmeier had been driving buses between Maardam and Kaustin for more than eleven years.

Six trips in each direction. Every day. Apart from his days off in accordance with the company rota. And the occasional week’s holiday, of course.

The first and last trip of every day were pointless, in a way. But only in a way. There was no sensible reason to drive out to Kaustin at half past six in the morning, and no sensible reason to drive back from there twelve hours later. But the bus spent its nights in the garage in Leimaar Allé, and Vlaarmeier had nothing against driving an empty bus now and then. Nothing at all. Over the years he had begun more and more to regard passengers as an annoying aspect of his work, and he reckoned the evening drive back to Maardam among the best parts of his life. No traffic on the roads. An empty bus and another day’s work over and done with. What more could anybody ask for?

On Sundays the number of trips was reduced to four. Two in each direction. He drove out to Kaustin at nine a.m. – an empty bus was always guaranteed – and returned at ten o’clock with a cargo of four farmers’ wives on their way to morning service in Keymer Church. Because their own church wasn’t good enough, for some reason. Or perhaps their village church wasn’t functioning any more. Vlaarmeier had no time for things sacred ever since he lost a girlfriend to a callow theology student thirty years ago.

At two o’clock he would drive the farmers’ wives back home again. By then they would have partaken of coffee and cakes at Heimer’s cafe in Rozenplejn.

Always the same four. Two dumpy little women, two emaciated and hunched up. He had often wondered why the company didn’t arrange for a taxi instead. It would have been much cheaper.

This cold Sunday – 29 November – there were only three, as fru Willmot, one of the dumpy ones, had flu. This was announced by the windswept fru Glock when she clambered aboard outside the school.

Thirty-eight degrees and two swollen tonsils, she informed him. A running cold and aches and pains all over. Just so that he knew.

It was also fru Glock who screamed so loudly that he almost drove into the ditch. It happened shortly before the long bend into the village of Korrim, and it sounded as if a seagull had flown into Vlaarmeier’s ear.

He managed to get the bus back on course, and glanced at the inside mirror. The old lady was half-standing and hammering away with her hand on the side window.

‘Stop the bus!’ she screeched. ‘Oh my oh my, stop for God’s sake!’

Jochen Vlaarmeier slammed on the brakes and pulled up at the side of the road. Oh hell, he thought. One of them has had a stroke.

But when he looked at the back of the bus he could see that all of them were hale and hearty. Or at least, in no worse a condition than usual. The two sitting further back were gaping open-mouthed at fru Glock who was still hammering on the window and yelling incomprehensibly. He sighed, left his cabin and walked towards her.

‘Calm down now,’ he said. ‘Take it easy. What on earth’s got into you?’

She stopped screaming. Swallowed twice, making her false teeth click, and stared at him.

‘A body,’ she said. ‘A woman . . . Dead.’

‘What?’ said Vlaarmeier.

She pointed towards a black-looking field behind the bus.

‘Over there. At the side of the road. A body.’

Then she flopped down on the seat with her head in her hands. The other two ladies came striding along the centre aisle and started crossing themselves somewhat doubtfully.

‘A body?’ said Vlaarmeier.

She knocked on the window again and pointed. Vlaarmeier thought for a moment. Then he opened the pneumatic door, got out of the bus and started walking back along the edge of the road.

He found her after about twenty-five metres. Diagonally over the shallow ditch that separated the road from the newly ploughed field was the body of a woman. It was wrapped up in what looked like a sheet . . . A very dirty sheet, its edges flapping slightly in the breeze, that left one leg and part of her upper torso bare. Two large, white breasts and arms spread out at unnatural angles. She was lying on her back, her face staring straight up at the sky but largely hidden by her wet, reddish hair that seemed to have stuck fast to it somehow.

Oh Christ, thought Vlaarmeier. For Christ’s bloody sake. Then he sicked up the whole of his substantial breakfast – both the porridge and the sausage and eggs – before staggering back to the bus in order to telephone for help.

By the time Chief Inspector Reinhart and Inspector Moreno got to the village of Korrim it had started snowing. Large white flakes were floating diagonally down and melting on the wet, black soil.

A patrol car with two constables, Joensuu and Kellermann, was already on the spot. Joensuu was standing on the road next to the dead woman, with his back towards her and his arms folded over his chest. Legs wide apart, and uncompromising. Kellermann was standing beside the bus, pen and notebook in hand, talking to the driver and passengers. Three old women were standing pressed up against each other by the side of the yellow bus, as if they were trying to keep one another warm. All three were wearing dark-coloured overcoats and ghastly hats. They reminded Reinhart of crows, their feathers ruffled, jumping around on the road looking for scraps of food. The driver was marching nervously up and down, smoking.

Why don’t they sit inside the bus instead? Reinhart wondered. Haven’t they noticed that it’s snowing?

He ordered Moreno to go and assist Kellermann, and approached Joensuu in order to look at what he needed to look at.

For two seconds at first. Then he closed his eyes for five. And then looked once more.

That was what he always did. He didn’t know if it made things any easier, but it had become a sort of ritual over the years.

Anyway, a dead woman. Almost certainly naked, but inadequately wrapped up in something looking like a sheet, exactly as Vlaarmeier had said on the telephone. She was lying more or less flat on her back, her head resting on a clod of earth, her feet just reaching as far as the narrow strip of grass verge. Red toenails in the midst of all the mess, he noted: it looked almost surreal, or at any rate intensified the impression of unreality. Quite a well-built body, as far as he could judge. Somewhere between thirty and forty, it seemed, but that was only a guess, of course. Her face was largely hidden by her longish, dark red hair. Snowflakes were falling on the woman as well – as if the sky had wanted to cover up what it preferred not to see, it struck him. A tactful shroud. That was typical of the thoughts that usually occurred to him on occasions like this. Words, phrases, images: the same vain attempt to cover up the truth that the sky was busy with, more or less.

‘What a bloody mess,’ said Joensuu. ‘A good-looking woman. Not now, of course . . .’

‘How long have you two been here?’ asked Reinhart.

Joensuu checked his watch.

‘Fourteen minutes,’ he said. ‘We got the call at ten thirty-nine. We were here by fifty-eight.’