Night Work (9 page)

Jonas blinked. The bedside light was dazzling him. He groped for the switch, turned it out and opened his eyes. Twenty to twelve. The other duvet was lying on the floor with the overturned tripod and camera beneath it. He had no particular wish to speculate on the significance of this, so he left everything lying there and made himself some breakfast.

Before going into the bathroom he put a blank audio tape into the tape recorder and pressed the record button. He turned the machine so that it faced away from the bathroom. Then he showered, cleaned his teeth and shaved with care.

He got dressed in the living room. The display on the microwave said 12.30. The tape had been running for twenty minutes.

Standing right in front of the tape recorder’s built-in microphone, he said:

‘Hello, Jonas.’

He counted up to five with his eyes shut.

‘Good to speak with you. How are you?’

Three, four, five.

‘Feeling rested? Tense?’

He spoke for nearly three-quarters of an hour, doing his best to forget what he’d just said. A click indicated that
the tape had run out. He rewound it. Meantime, he finished getting dressed.

He dialled his mobile number on the landline. It rang, and he answered it. Placing the land-line receiver on the floor with the tape recorder just in front of it, he pressed the play button. Then he put a second tape recorder beside it, put in a tape and pressed the record button. With the gun over his right shoulder and the mobile in his other hand, he left the flat.

He cruised through Döbling, driving along streets he’d never visited before. He kept the mobile pressed to his ear for fear of missing something. He steered and changed gear with his other hand. It occurred to him that he was violating a road traffic regulation. At first this idea merely amused him. But it set him thinking about a more fundamental point.

If he really was all on his own, he was free to lay down a new penal code. Laws remained in force until new ones were agreed upon by the majority. If he constituted the majority, he could discard an entire social system. Being sovereign, he could theoretically exempt theft and murder from prosecution, or, on the other hand, prohibit painting. In Austria, the disparagement of religious doctrines was punishable by up to six months’ imprisonment. He could annul that law or increase its severity. Aggravated theft rendered a person liable to up to three years’ imprisonment, in contrast to non-aggravated theft, the relevant sum being 2000 euros or more. He could change that.

He could even decree that everyone had to go for one hour’s walk a day while listening to folk music on a Walk-man. He could invest stupidities of all kinds with constitutional status. He could choose another form of government. Indeed, devise a new one. Although the system in which he lived was really anarchy, democracy and dictatorship all in one.

‘Hello, Jonas.’

He nearly collided with a dustbin standing beside the road.

‘Good to speak with you. How are you?’

‘As well as can be expected, thanks.’

‘Feeling rested? Tense?’

It was himself he was hearing. He had spoken those words an hour ago, and now they were happening, happening again. At this moment they were becoming something that was happening, that was having an actual effect on the present.

‘Rested, not tense,’ he muttered.

He was struck by the difference between the voice in his ear and the one he heard inside himself. The one in his ear sounded higher-pitched and less agreeable.

‘It’s twelve thirty-two by my watch. What time do you have?’

‘Thirteen fifty-five,’ he replied, glancing at the dashboard.

He remembered how he’d knelt in front of the tape recorder in his living room and spoken those words into the microphone. He saw himself fiddling with the ring on his finger, studying the pattern on his coffee cup, turning up his trouser leg. He recalled what he’d been thinking when he’d spoken those words. That was then, this was now. And yet one was connected with the other.

‘Turn left at the next intersection, then sharp right. Then take the second turning on the left. Stop outside the second building on the right-hand side of the street.’

The instructions took him to a small street in Oberdöbling. His taskmaster had underestimated his speed, so Jonas spent a minute drumming on the steering wheel and shuffling around on his seat.

‘Now get out, taking the gun with you, and lock the car. Go to the building. If there are several floors, your
objective is the ground-floor apartment. You won’t need your crowbar, get in through a window. If it means a bit of a climb, so be it. Be athletic!’

He was standing outside a suburban house. A notice on the gate warned intruders of a savage dog. It was locked. He climbed over it and went up to the house. An Audi was parked outside the garage. The house was adorned with window boxes. The stretches of grass flanking the gravel path had been mown quite recently.

The nameplate beside the door read:
Councillor Bosch
.

‘Mind the broken glass! Now go into the kitchen.’

‘Easy!’

He peered through the window but couldn’t spot an alarm system. He smashed the pane with the butt of the shotgun. Glass rained down on the floor. There really wasn’t a burglar alarm. Having quickly knocked out the remaining glass, he climbed in.

‘Open the fridge. If you find an unopened bottle of mineral water in there, drink it!’

‘Don’t badger me!’

One door led to the bathroom, another to a boxroom, the third to the basement stairs. The fourth was the right one. Breathlessly, he opened the fridge, which was encased in beechwood. He really did find a bottle of mineral water, and it was unopened. He drank it.

While awaiting fresh instructions he surveyed his surroundings. The furniture was bulky and traditional. On the wall was a poster of Dalí’s
Soft Watches
, already affected by heat and steam from the stove.

He found the combination puzzling. The nature and quality of the decor suggested elderly occupants, whereas the poster belonged in a student’s digs. The owners’ offspring had probably insisted on this stylistic clash.

Beside the poster was a tear-off calendar. The top sheet said 3 July. Beneath the date was the motto of the day:

The truth knows its own value
. (Herbert Rosendorfer)

He tore off the sheet and pocketed it.

‘Now look for a ballpoint and a piece of paper.’

‘Will a pencil do?’

He found a ballpoint in one of the drawers. There was a notepad on the kitchen table. The top sheet had a shopping list written on it. He folded it over and shut his eyes, humming a tune and trying to think of nothing.

‘Write down the first word that comes into your head.’

Fruit
, he wrote.

Great, he thought. I’m sitting in some stranger’s kitchen, writing ‘Fruit’.

‘Put the piece of paper in your pocket. Now look round the place. Keep your eyes open. It’s better to look twice than miss something.’

Jonas marvelled at the banality of his taskmaster’s pearls of wisdom. He’d spent the whole time trying to remain on his own side of the line. Trying to avoid thinking of what he’d recorded on tape so as not to anticipate what was coming. Now he briefly stepped across the line. He thought hard, but he couldn’t recall having spoken the last sentence. He returned to his own side. Made his mind as much of a blank as possible.

In the living room he came across a sort of ancient Egyptian statue. He didn’t know much about the history of art, so he couldn’t say exactly what it was. It appeared to be the figure of a woman, possibly a life-sized effigy of Nefertiti. The face was expressionless and rather forbidding. With its massive head and voluminous, veil-like hairstyle, it reminded him more of a black rap singer on MTV. He wondered who could have installed such a thing in their living room. He’d never had any clients with taste like that.

He toured all the rooms, talking into his mobile as he went. He reported on the decor of the master bedroom, the rugs in the hallway, the empty birdcage, the aquarium in
whose softly gurgling water no fish swam. He described the contents of the wardrobes. He counted the files in the study, fingered a heavy ashtray made of some unfamiliar material. He rummaged in drawers. He went down into the basement and paid a visit to the garage, which reeked overpoweringly of petrol.

Just as he was leaving a girl’s bedroom, which wasn’t particularly clean and tidy, the voice in his ear said:

‘Did you see that?’

He came to a halt and looked back over his shoulder.

‘There was something there, did you notice? You caught a glimpse of it.’

He hadn’t seen a thing.

‘It was there for a moment.’

An inner voice warned him not to go back into the room. The voice in his ear urged him to do so. He hesitated. Shut his eyes, rested his hand on the handle and slowly pushed it down. The pressure of his hand eased a little, so little that although he knew it was happening he didn’t feel it. He pushed the handle ever more slowly.

He was gripped by a sensation that time was freezing beneath his hand. The brass handle felt soft. It seemed to be melting into its surroundings. Neither hot nor cold, it had no temperature at all. Without hearing a sound, he felt he was being subjected to a thunderous din that had material substance and emanated from no particular direction. At the same time, he became aware that he consisted of nothing more than the movement his hand was performing at that moment.

He let go, breathing heavily and staring at the door.

‘But don’t bring it home with you,’ said the voice in his ear.

He spent the rest of the day packing boxes like an automaton. Apart from one short break, during which he grilled some sausages in the pub as he had the day before, he worked until early evening.

It wasn’t the incident in the house that disturbed him. What weighed on his mind was the potential significance of the overturned video camera. Did it have some connection with the Sleeper’s odd behaviour? Would it be worth investigating that wall? Should he break it open?

Having taped up the last box, he surveyed the empty cupboards and shelves. There weren’t as many as there had been. Where were the possessions they’d lived with in Hollandstrasse? Had they all been thrown away? Where was the picture that had so engrossed him as a child whenever he passed it in the hall?

Now that he came to think of it, there were other things he missed. The red photo album. The ship in the bottle. The linocut. The chessboard.

He either carried or dragged the boxes out into the street, depending on how heavy they were. When they were all loaded, he sat down wearily on the tailboard. Leaning back on his hands, he looked up. Windows were open here and there. The statues projecting from the walls stared forbiddingly over his head. The sky was a flawless, merciless blue.

The cellar stairs were narrow. Cobwebs clung to every nook and cranny, dusty skeins dangled from the ceiling. The plaster on the grimy walls was flaking off. Jonas shivered. Although he descended the stairs at a crouch, he hit his head twice. In a panic, he ran a hand over his face and forehead in case something nasty had stuck to them.

Pinned to the cellar door was an old damaged sign
vividly illustrating the dangers of rat poison. There were four panes of glass in the upper part of the door, one of them broken. The passage beyond lay in darkness. Jonas’s nose was assailed by a smell of mildewed wood.

He raised his shotgun and kicked the door open. Singing at the top of his voice, he quickly turned the light on.

It was a communal cellar divided into separate sections by timber partitions a hand’s-breadth clear of the floor and ceiling. There were no floorboards, just hard-packed earth studded with stones the size of a man’s fist.

Although Jonas had never been down here before, he identified his father’s compartment at once. He recognised, protruding into the passage from between two wooden slats, the hand-carved walking stick his father had used when walking in the woods at Kanzelstein. He hadn’t carved it himself. It was the work of a toothless old peasant who was versed in that craft. Jonas had fetched fresh cow’s milk from his farmstead every morning. He’d been scared of him, but one day the old man had called him over and presented him with a little carved walking stick of his own. Jonas could still remember what it looked like after all these years. He had proudly strutted around with it and worshipped the taciturn old peasant from then on.

He made sure that he was alone, and that the dimly lit compartments around him held no unpleasant surprises. Coming from one of them was a smell of paraffin so strong that he buried his nose in his shirtsleeve. One of the tanks in which the occupants stored paraffin for their stoves must have sprung a leak. But there was no danger as long as he didn’t strike a light.

He took his father’s bunch of keys from his pocket. The second key fitted. Jonas paused and listened before entering the compartment. The muffled, intermittent dripping of a tap could be heard. The dusty electric bulb on the wall was flickering. It was chilly.

With a cry of encouragement, he opened the door. And recoiled.

Most of his father’s compartment was filled with the boxes he’d just loaded into the truck.

He turned on the spot with his gun at the ready. The barrel knocked some bowls and saucepans off a shelf and sent them crashing to the floor. He cowered down, peered into the passage through the slats and strained his ears. Nothing to be heard but the defective tap.

Turning back to the boxes, he stared wide-eyed at the firm’s imprint.

Until he realised that they were different. Similar, but not identical. The longer he looked, the more clearly he saw that the two batches of boxes bore only a vague resemblance in shape and colour.

He tore one open and took out a bunch of photographs. He opened another. Nothing but photographs. A third. Documents and more photographs. The fourth contained books. So did the next three, which were the only ones he could get at without having to do a lot of rearranging.