Hour of the Wolf (2 page)

Nor for his mum to be urging him to do so.

But these were mere thoughts. He pressed on notwithstanding. Through the municipal forest – along the sparsely lit path for cyclists and pedestrians, half-running if truth be told, and emerging onto the main road sooner than expected. He took a deep breath, and slowed down. Not far to go now, he thought. Just the long, boring walk along the main road – nothing to look forward to, to be honest. There wasn’t a lot of room for pedestrians and cyclists. Just a narrow strip between the ditch and the road along which to walk the tightrope, and the cars travelled at high speed. There was no speed limit, and no street lighting to speak of.

Twenty minutes’ walk along a dark road in November. He’d only walked a few hundred metres before a cold wind blew up and dispersed the mist, and it started pouring down.

Oh, shit! he thought. I could have been in bed with Katrina now. Naked, with Katrina pressed up against me, her warm body and caressing hands, her legs and her breasts that he had very nearly managed to touch . . . This rain must surely be a sign.

But he kept on walking. Kept on walking through the rain and the wind and the darkness, thinking about the girl who would be his first.

Would have been.

He had parked slightly askew, was forced to back out, and just when he thought he had managed it to perfection he bumped into a dark-coloured Opel, hitting it with his right rear wing.

Oh, bugger! he thought. Why didn’t I take a taxi? He opened the door carefully and peered back. Realized that it was only a glancing blow and nothing to worry about. A mere bagatelle. He closed the door. Besides, he told himself, the windows were all misted up and he could hardly see out of them.

He didn’t bother to work out just how relevant that was, but instead drove rapidly out of the square and down to Zwille with no difficulty. There wasn’t much traffic about; he reckoned he would be home in a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes at most, and while he sat waiting for the traffic lights in Alexanderlaan to turn green he started wondering if in fact there was any of that eucalyptus bath gel left. He was slow to react when the lights changed, and stalled. Restarted in a hurry and raced the engine – this bloody dampness was causing havoc . . . Then he cut the corner as he turned and hit the traffic island.

Only with the front wheel, of course. Not much damage caused . . . None at all, to be precise. Keep a straight face and press on, he told himself – but it dawned on him that he was rather more drunk than he’d thought.

Damn and blast! he thought. I’d better make sure I don’t drive off the road. It wouldn’t be a good idea to . . .

He wound down the side window a couple of inches and turned the air conditioning up to maximum to get rid of the mist. Then drove commendably slowly for quite a while as he wormed his way through Bossingen and Deijkstraa, where there had not been a sighting of a traffic policeman for the last thirty-five years; and when he emerged onto the main road it became obvious that the danger of icy roads was non-existent. It had started to pour down: he switched on the windscreen wipers, and cursed for the fiftieth time that autumn for having forgotten to change the blades.

Tomorrow, he thought. I’ll drive to the service station first thing tomorrow morning. It’s madness, sitting here driving without being able to see anything properly.

Looking back, he could never work out if it was what he saw or what he heard that came first. But in any case, what persisted most clearly in his memory was the soft thud and the slight jerk of the steering wheel. And in his dreams. The fact that what flashed past in a fraction of a second on the extreme right of his visual field was linked with the bump and the minimal vibration he felt in his hands was not something that registered on his consciousness.

Not until he slammed on the brakes.

Not until afterwards – after the five or six seconds that must have passed before he drew to a halt and started running back along the soaking wet road.

As he ran, he thought about his mother. About an occasion when he was ill – it must have been just after he’d started school – and she’d sat there pressing her cool hand onto his forehead while he threw up over and over and over again: yellowish-green bile into a red plastic bucket. It was so devilishly painful, but that hand had been so cool and comforting – and he wondered why on earth he should think about that just now. It was a memory of something that had happened over thirty years ago, and he couldn’t recall ever having remembered it before. His mother had been dead for more than ten years, so it was a mystery why she should crop up just now, and how he . . .

He saw him when he had almost run past, and he knew he was dead even before he’d come to a halt.

A boy in a dark duffel coat. Lying in the ditch. Contorted at impossible angles, with his back pressed up against a concrete culvert and his face staring straight at him. As if he were trying to make some kind of contact. As if he wanted to tell him something. The boy’s face was partly concealed by the hood, but the right-hand side – the part that seemed to have been smashed against the concrete – was exposed like . . . like an anatomical obscenity.

He stood there, trying hard not to throw up. The same reflexes, the same old reflexes he’d felt thirty years ago, definitely. Two cars passed by, one in each direction, but nobody seemed to have noticed anything amiss. He had started shaking, took two deep breaths, and jumped down into the ditch. Closed his eyes, then opened them again after a few seconds. Bent down and tried to feel a pulse, on the boy’s wrist and on his bloodstained neck.

No sign of a heartbeat. Oh hell, he thought, feeling panic creeping up on him. Bloody fucking hell – I must . . . I must . . . I must . . .

He couldn’t work out what he must do. Cautiously, he slid his arms under the boy’s body, bent his knees and lifted him up. He felt a stabbing pain at the bottom of his back: the boy was rather heavier than he’d expected. Perhaps the saturated clothes were adding to the problem. In so far as he’d expected anything at all. Why should he have done? The rucksack caused a bit of a problem. The rucksack and the boy’s head. Both of them insisted on leaning backwards in a way that was quite unacceptable. He noted that the blood from the side of the boy’s mouth was dripping straight down into his hood, and that he couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen years old. A boy aged fifteen or sixteen . . . About the same as Greubner’s son. You could tell by the sort of half-finished features of his face, despite the injuries. Quite a handsome boy, it seemed: no doubt he would develop into an attractive man.

Would have done.

He stood down there in the ditch with the boy’s body in his arms for quite some time, while thoughts whirled around in his head. It was only a metre or so up to the road, but it was steep and the rain had made it slippery and treacherous: he doubted whether he would be able to get a sufficient foothold. No cars passed by while he stood there, but he heard a moped approaching. Or possibly a low-powered motorbike, he thought. When it passed by he could hear that it was in fact a scooter, and he was momentarily blinded by its headlight. Presumably – or so he thought later on with hindsight – presumably it was that very second of blinding light that started him functioning again.

Functioning, and thinking rational thoughts.

He lay the body down again next to the culvert. Wondered if he should wipe the blood from his hands onto the wet grass, but decided not to. Scrambled up onto the road, and hurried back to his car.

He noted that he must have automatically switched off the engine, but left the headlights on. Noted that the rain was pouring down like some sort of elemental force. Noted that he felt cold.

He slid down behind the wheel and closed the door. Fastened his safety belt and drove off. He could see rather better now through the windows, as if the rain had cleaned the inside of the glass as well.

Nothing has happened, he thought. Nothing at all.

He felt the first signs of a headache coming on, but then he remembered his mother’s cool hands again – and suddenly he was convinced that there was a drop left of that eucalyptus foam bath gel after all.

2

He woke up, and his first feeling was immense relief.

It lasted for three seconds, then he realized it had not been a nasty dream.

That it was reality.

The pouring rain, the sudden slight jerk of the steering wheel, the slippery ditch: it was all reality. The weight of the boy he was carrying in his arms, and the blood dripping into the hood.

He stayed in bed for another twenty minutes, as if paralysed. The only sign of life was the shudders that took possession of his body from time to time. They started in the ball of his foot, made their way up through his body and culminated in the form of white-hot flashes of lightning in his head: every time it felt as if some vital part of his brain and his consciousness had crumbled away. Frozen to death or burnt to a cinder, incapable of ever being revived to start working again.

Lobotomy, he thought. I’m being lobotomized.

When the insistent red figures on his clock radio had reached 07.45, he picked up the telephone and rang his place of work. Explained in a voice as fragile as newly formed ice on a mountain tarn that he was suffering from flu, and would have to stay at home for a few days.

Influenza, yes.

Yes, it was unfortunate – but that’s life.

Yes of course, by all means ring if anything special cropped up.

No, he would stay in bed. Take a few tablets and drink lots of fluids.

Yes. Yes of course. No.

He got up half an hour later. Stood by the kitchen window and looked out at the gloomy suburban street, noting that the rain had faded away to be replaced by a heavy, grey, early-morning mist. As he stood there he entertained once more, slowly and gradually, a thought that he remembered from last night – and later, during the many hours he had lain awake, plagued by despair, before finally falling asleep.

Nothing has happened. Nothing at all.

He went out into the kitchen. There was an unopened bottle of whisky in the larder. Glenalmond, bought on holiday last summer. He unscrewed the top and took two large swigs. Couldn’t remember having ever done that in his life before – drinking whisky straight from the bottle. No, never ever.

He sat down at the kitchen table, his head in his hands, and waited for the alcohol to spread throughout his body.

Nothing has happened, he thought.

Then started to make coffee and analyse the situation.

There was no mention in the morning papers. Neither in the
Telegraaf
, which he subscribed to, nor in the
Neuwe Blatt
, which he went out to buy from the kiosk. For a few seconds he almost managed to convince himself that it had all been a dream after all, but as soon as he remembered the rain and the ditch and the blood, he knew that it was wishful thinking. It was real. Just as real as the whisky standing on the table. As the crumbs around the toaster. As his hands, impotently and mechanically searching through the newspapers – he dropped them onto the floor, and returned to the bottle of whisky.

He had killed a young boy.

He had driven his car while under the influence of drink and killed an adolescent boy aged about fifteen or sixteen. He had stood there in the ditch and the rain with the boy’s dead body in his arms – and then he’d abandoned him and driven home.

That’s the way it was. Nothing to be done about it. No use crying over spilt milk.

It wasn’t until a few minutes to ten that he switched on the radio, and heard confirmation in the ten o’clock news.

Young boy. Probably on his way home to Boorkhejm. Unidentified as yet.

But accurate details about the location.

Some time during the night. Probably between eleven and one. The body wasn’t discovered until early this morning.

Death had most probably been instantaneous.

No witnesses.

Hit by a car – also most probably. The driver couldn’t possibly have failed to notice what had happened. An appeal to all who had driven past the scene of the accident to come forward, and to anybody who thought they might have relevant information to tell. The police were very keen to contact everybody who . . .

The scene of the accident cordoned off, the rain had made police work more difficult, certain lines of investigation established . . . The police want to interview the driver who failed to stop . . . Renewed appeal to all who . . .

He switched off. Took two more swigs of whisky and went back to bed. Lay there for quite some time, his head swimming. But when he eventually got up again that misty Thursday morning, three thoughts had crystallized.

Three significant thoughts. Conclusions chiselled out in minute detail that he had no intention of compromising. Of abandoning, come what may. He had made up his mind, full stop.

First: the boy in the ditch was dead, and he was guilty of killing him.

Second: no matter what he did, he could not bring the boy back to life.

Third: there was nothing to be gained by giving himself up. Nothing at all.

On the contrary, he thought in connection with this number three. Why compensate for a ruined life by sacrificing another one? His own.

As he thought along these lines he knew that at long last he was on the right track. At long last he recognized himself again. At long last. It was just a matter of being strong. Not weakening.

That was all there was to it.

He devoted the afternoon to practical matters.

Washed the car in the garage, both inside and out. No matter how carefully he scrutinized the right side of the front and wing of the car, he could find no trace of any damage or marks: he assumed he must have hit the boy quite low down – at about knee height, with the bumper most probably, just a glancing blow. It seemed – when he tried to relive the scene down in the wet ditch – it seemed that the fatal outcome of the accident was due to the boy’s hitting his head on the concrete culvert rather than contact with the car at road level. Which – in a rather strange, perverted way – made his guilt rather easier to accept. That’s how it felt, at least. That’s how he wanted it to feel.