Ripley's Game (15 page)

Reeves had asked, ‘Did the Swiss bank write you yet?’ They hadn’t, but a letter from them might well have come this morning to his shop, Jonathan thought. Would Simone open it? The chances were fifty-fifty, Jonathan thought, depending on how busy she was in the shop. The Swiss letter would confirm a deposit of eighty thousand marks, and there’d probably be cards for him to sign as samples of his signature. The envelope, Jonathan supposed, would have no return address on it, or nothing identifiable as a bank. Since he was returning Saturday, Simone might leave any letters unopened. Fifty-fifty, he thought again, and slid gently into sleep.

In the hospital the next morning, the atmosphere seemed strictly routine and curiously informal. Reeves was present the whole time, and Jonathan could tell, though the conversation was all in German, that Reeves did not tell Dr Schroeder about a previous examination in Hamburg. The Hamburg report was now in the charge of Dr Perrier in Fontainebleau, who must by now have sent it to the Ebberle-Valent Laboratoire, as he had promised to do.

Again a nurse spoke perfect English. Dr Max Schroeder was about fifty, with black hair modishly down to his shirt collar.

‘He says more or less.’ Reeves told Jonathan, ‘that it is a classic case with – not so cheerful predictions for the future.’

No, there was nothing new for Jonathan. Not even the message that the results of the examination would be ready for Jonathan tomorrow morning.

It was nearly 11 a.m. when Jonathan and Reeves walked out of the hospital. They walked along an embankment of the Isar, where there were children in prams, stone apartment buildings, a pharmacy, a grocery shop, all the appurtenances of living of which Jonathan felt not in the least a part that morning. He had to remember even to breathe. Today was going to be a day of failure, he thought. He wanted to plunge into the river and possibly drown, or become a fish. Reeves’ presence and his sporadic talking irked him. He managed not to hear Reeves finally. Jonathan felt that he was not going to kill anyone today, not by the string in his pocket, not by the gun either.

‘Shouldn’t I think about getting my suitcase,’ Jonathan interrupted, ‘if the train’s at two something?’

They found a taxi.

Almost beside the hotel there was a shop window of twinkling objects, glowing with gold and silver lights like a German Christmas tree. Jonathan drifted towards the window. It was mostly tourist trinkets, he saw with disappointment, but then he noticed a gyroscope poised at a slant against its square box.

‘I want to buy something for my son,’ Jonathan said, and went into the shop. He pointed and said,
‘Bitte’,
and acquired the gyroscope without noticing the price. He had changed two hundred francs at the hotel that morning.

Jonathan had already packed, so all he had to do was close his suitcase. He took it down himself. Reeves stuck a hundred-mark note into Jonathan’s hand, and asked him to pay the hotel bill, because it might look odd if Reeves paid it. Money had ceased to matter to Jonathan.

They were early at the station. In the buffet, Jonathan didn’t want anything to eat, only coffee.

So Reeves ordered coffee. ‘You’ll have to make the opportunity yourself, I realize, Jon. It may not work out, I know, but this man we
want
… Stay near the restaurant car. Smoke a cigarette, stand at the end of the carriage next to the restaurant car, for instance …’

Jonathan had a second coffee. Reeves bought a
Daily Telegraph
and a paperback for Jonathan to take with him.

Then the train pulled in, daintily clicking on the rails, sleek grey and blue – the Mozart Express. Reeves was looking for Marcangelo, who was supposed to board now with at least two bodyguards. There were perhaps sixty people getting on all along the platform, and as many getting off. Reeves grabbed Jonathan’s arm and pointed. Jonathan was standing with suitcase in hand by the carriage he was supposed to enter, according to his ticket. Jonathan saw – or did he? – the group of three men that Reeves was talking about, three shortish men in hats climbing the steps two carriages away from Jonathan’s and more towards the front of the train.

‘It’s him. I saw the grey in his hair even,’ Reeves said. ‘Now where’s the restaurant car?’ He stepped back to see better, trotted towards the front of the train, and came back. ‘It’s the one in front of Marcangelo’s.’

The train’s departure was being announced in French now.

‘You’ve got the gun in your pocket?’ Reeves asked.

Jonathan nodded. Reeves had reminded him, when he went up to his hotel room for his suitcase, to put it in his pocket. ‘See that my wife gets the money, whatever happens to me.’

‘That’s a promise.’ Reeves patted his arm.

The whistle blew for a second time, and doors banged. Jonathan got on the train and didn’t look back at Reeves who he knew would be following him with his eyes. Jonathan found his seat. There were only two other people in the compartment, which was for eight passengers. The upholstery was dark red plush. Jonathan put his suitcase on an overhead rack, then his new coat, folded inside out. A young man entered the compartment, and hung out of the window, talking to someone in German. Jonathan’s other companions were a middle-aged man sunk in what looked like office papers, and a neat little woman wearing a small hat and reading a novel. Jonathan’s seat was next to the businessman, who had the window seat facing the way the train was moving. Jonathan opened his
Telegraph.

It was 2.11 p.m.

Jonathan watched the outskirts of Munich glide past, office buildings, onion towers. Opposite Jonathan were three framed photographs – a chateau somewhere, a lake with a couple of swans, some snow-topped Alps. The train purred over smooth rails and rocked gently. Jonathan half closed his eyes. By locking his fingers and putting his elbows on the armrests, he could almost doze. There was time, time to make up his mind, change his mind, change back again. Marcangelo was going to Paris like him, and the train didn’t arrive until 11.7 p.m. tonight. A stop came at Strassburg around 6.30 p.m., he remembered Reeves saying. A few minutes later, Jonathan came awake and realized there was a thin but regular traffic of people in the aisle beyond the glass-doored compartment. A man came partway into the compartment with a trolley of sandwiches, bottles of beer and wine. The young man bought a beer. A stocky man stood smoking a pipe in the aisle, and from time to time pushed himself against the window to let others pass him.

No harm in strolling past Marcangelo’s compartment, as if
en route
to the restaurant car, Jonathan thought, just to size up the situation a bit, but it took Jonathan several minutes to muster his initiative, during which time he smoked a Gitane. He put the ashes into the metal receptacle fixed under the window, careful not to drop any on the knees of the man reading office papers.

At last Jonathan got up and walked forward. The door at the end of the carriage was sticky to open. There was another pair of doors before he reached Marcangelo’s carriage. Jonathan walked slowly, bracing himself against the gentle but irregular swaying of the train, glancing into each compartment. Marcangelo’s was instantly recognizable, because Marcangelo was facing Jonathan in a centre seat, asleep with hands folded across his abdomen, jowls sunk into his collar, the grey streak at the temple flowing back and up. Jonathan had a quick impression of two other Italian types leaning towards each other, talking and gesticulating. There was no one else in the compartment Jonathan thought. He went on to the end of the carriage and on to the platform, where he lit another cigarette and stood looking out the window. This end of the carriage had a w.c., which now showed a red tag in its circular lock, indicating that it was occupied. Another man, bald and slender, stood by the opposite window, perhaps waiting for the w.c. The idea of trying to kill anyone here was absurd, because there were bound to be witnesses. Or even if only killer and victim were on the platform, wouldn’t someone very likely appear in a matter of seconds? The train was not at all noisy, and if a man cried out, even with the garrotte already around his neck, wouldn’t the people in the first compartment hear him?

A man and a woman came out of the restaurant car, and went into the carriage aisle, not closing the doors, though a white-jacketed waiter at once did this.

Jonathan walked back in the direction of his own carriage, and glanced once more into Marcangelo’s compartment, but very briefly. Marcangelo was smoking a cigarette, leaning forward fatly, talking.

If it was done, it ought to be done before Strassburg, Jonathan thought. He imagined quite a lot of people getting on at Strassburg to go to Paris. But maybe in this he was wrong. In about half an hour, he thought, he ought to put on his topcoat and go and stand on the platform at the end of Marcangelo’s carriage and wait. And suppose Marcangelo used the loo at the
other
end of his carriage? There were loos at both ends. And suppose he didn’t go to the loo at all? That was possible, even though it wasn’t likely. And suppose the Italians simply didn’t choose to patronize the restaurant car? No, they would logically go to the restaurant car, but they’d go all together, too. If he couldn’t do anything, Reeves would simply have to make another plan, a better one, Jonathan thought. But Marcangelo, or someone comparable, would have to be killed, by him, if he was to collect any more money.

Just before 4 p.m., Jonathan forced himself to get up, to haul down his topcoat carefully. In the aisle, he put on the topcoat with its heavy right-hand pocket, and went with his paperback to stand on the platform at the end of Marcangelo’s carriage.

11

W
HEN
Jonathan passed the Italians’ compartment, not glancing in this time, he had seen out of the corner of his eye a confusion of figures, men pulling down a suitcase, or perhaps struggling playfully. He had heard laughter.

A minute later, Jonathan stood leaning against a metal-framed map of Central Europe, facing the half-glass door of the corridor. Through the glass, Jonathan saw a man approaching, bumping the door open. This man looked like one of Marcangelo’s bodyguards, dark-haired, in his thirties, with the sour expression and the sturdy build that ensured he would one day look like a disgruntled toad. Jonathan recalled the photographs on the jacket of
The Grim Reapers.
The man went straight to the w.c. door and entered. Jonathan continued to look at his open paperback. After a very short time, the man reappeared and went back into the corridor.

Jonathan found that he had been holding his breath. Suppose it had been Marcangelo, wouldn’t it have been a perfect opportunity, with no one passing from the carriage or the restaurant car? Jonathan realized he would’ve stood just where he was, pretending to read, if it
had
been Marcangelo. Jonathan’s right hand, in his pocket, pushed the safety on and off the little gun. After all, what was the risk? What was the loss? Merely his own life.

Marcangelo might come lumbering forward at any minute, push the door open, and then — It could be like before, in the German underground. Couldn’t it? Then a bullet for himself. But Jonathan imagined firing at Marcangelo, then tossing the gun at once out the door by the w.c, or out the door’s window which looked as if it opened, then walking casually into the restaurant car, sitting down and ordering something.

It was quite impossible.

I’ll order something now,
Jonathan thought, and went into the restaurant car, where there were plenty of free tables. On one side, the tables were for four people, on the other side for two. Jonathan took one of the smaller tables. A waiter came, Jonathan ordered a beer, then quickly changed it to wine.

‘Weisswein, bitte.’
Jonathan said.

A cold quarter-bottle of Riesling appeared. The
cluckety-cluck
of the train sounded more muffled and luxurious here. The window was bigger, yet more private somehow, making the forest – the Black Forest? – look spectacularly rich and verdant. There were endless tall pines, as if Germany had so many it did not need to cut any down for any purpose. Not a scrap of debris or paper was to be seen, nor was any human figure to be seen caring for it, which was equally surprising to Jonathan. When did the Germans do their tidying? Jonathan tried to summon courage from the wine. Somewhere along the line he had lost his momentum, and it was just a matter of getting it back. He drank off the last of the wine as if it were an obligatory toast, paid his bill, and pulled on his coat, which he had laid on the chair opposite. He would stand on the platform until Marcangelo appeared, and whether Marcangelo was alone or with two bodyguards, he would shoot.

Jonathan tugged at the carriage door, sliding it open. He was back in the prison of the platform, leaning against the map again, looking at the stupid paperback …
David had wondered, did Elaine suspect? Desperate now, David went over the events of.
.. Jonathan’s eyes moved over the print like an illiterate’s. He remembered something he’d thought of before, days ago. Simone would refuse the money, if she knew how he had got it, and of course she’d know how he had got it, if he shot himself on the train. He wondered if Simone could be persuaded by Reeves, by somebody, convinced – that what he had done wasn’t exactly like murder. Jonathan almost laughed. It was quite hopeless. And what was he doing standing here? He could walk straight ahead now, back to his seat.

A figure was approaching, and Jonathan looked up. Then he blinked. The man coming towards him was Tom Ripley.

Ripley pushed open the half-glass door, smiling a little. Jonathan,’ he said softly. ‘Give me the thing, would you? – The garrotte.’ He stood sideways to Jonathan, looking out the window.

Jonathan felt suddenly blank with shock. Whose side was Tom Ripley on? Marcangelo’s? Then Jonathan started at the sight of three men approaching in the corridor.

Tom moved a bit closer to Jonathan to get out of their way.

The men were talking in German, and they went on into the restaurant car.