The Gloaming (26 page)

‘Did she have any visitors?' he asked, and Alice translated for the boy. He squinted in thought before speaking. ‘The boy says Mama Gloria came sometimes. And there was a taxi with a white man inside. A few days ago only.'

Strebel took out the picture of Koppler. ‘Was this him?'

The boy looked at the picture and Alice translated. ‘He isn't sure,' she said, and added with no embarrassment: ‘You all look the same.'

Holding back a laugh, Strebel asked the boy to think again—was the man fat? Thin? Did he have a lot of hair? Or no hair? Did he have glasses? Was he old or maybe young—younger? Maybe, Strebel tripped over the thought Gloria had implanted in his head, maybe a hot young buck to go to Zanzibar with.

The boy studied Koppler. It was hard to tell, he explained, because he didn't really see the man. The man never got out of the car. On the other hand, he would easily recognize the taxi driver; he was from the boy's tribe, Usimba.

Alice felt she must note that Usimba were not local people. They were from the middle of the country, near Tabora. And they were a very old tribe. She had read in school how they made paintings on the rocks that scientists said were many thousands of years old, maybe thirty thousand. Strebel nodded as if this interested him.

The boy agreed to speak with Mr Tabu and describe the other driver of the Usimba tribe. Mr Tabu nodded definitively, ‘Yes, yes, I know him.'

Strebel reached for his wallet to pay the boy, but Alice discreetly stayed him. ‘Do not turn him into a beggar. To speak is free, one person to another.'

Mr Tabu drove them to the bus station. A solitary bus trembled and shuddered under a canopy of mango trees.

As soon as Mr Tabu stopped the taxi, a swarm of ticket touts surrounded the car, offering Strebel passage—Morogoro, Dar, Pangani, Arusha, Mombasa. They leered at Alice, for they knew what she was: a pretty young black girl with a middle-aged white man.
Malaya
, Strebel heard, and he guessed at the meaning from the tone: whore.

He felt her fold herself in, as if she could stack her skeleton more tightly. She crossed her thin, dark wrists over her lap and gazed straight ahead, attempting the look of a duchess, impervious to their lewd chattering. Mr Tabu waved his arms and shouted at them and they sloped back to the shadowed interiors of the ticket offices. He then went off in search of the driver, Mr Peter.

But Mr Peter had taken a holiday; he had gone to see his family near Tabora. Despite this unfortunate news, Mr Tabu looked pleased with himself as he spoke to Alice. She translated: Mr Peter had been able to take this holiday because he had come into some money—a
mzungu
client who had paid him very well.

‘When?'

Mr Tabu consulted the group. ‘A few days ago.'

‘The thirtieth?'

More discussion. ‘Maybe beginning Wednesday.'

The twenty-ninth.

Strebel had left Zurich for Dar on the twenty-eighth. Today was the second of June. Koppler could still be around.

And the client? Strebel pushed to know—could Mr Tabu show them the photograph of Koppler? Mr Tabu went off with it and after a few minutes returned, tilting his head from side to side. ‘They are not sure,' he said, through Alice. ‘They saw him only once. They say yes, maybe. They say maybe, maybe.'

‘But they don't say “No”?'

Mr Tabu concurred, ‘They don't say “No.”'

‘Do they know anything else?' Strebel pressed. ‘Where Mr Peter took this man or, when he left, did he take a bus? Or a plane? To where?'

But there was nothing more. Only envy that Mr Peter had been so lucky.

Strebel sat back and felt the sweat along his spine. He knew he'd reached a dead end—unless he traveled to this Usimba place and found Mr Peter's village. But he would not do that. This was far enough. He suddenly felt sour. He could smell himself, and he was ashamed that Alice could smell him, that she would see the smear of his sweat on the seat, the slow drip of it off his face.

At the opposite end of the bus station, a mother scolded her young child. Strebel could have no idea why she was angry, but he remembered the ways Ingrid had scolded Caroline: when she refused to hold her mother's hand crossing the road, when she wanted ice cream for supper, when she would inexplicably, inconsolably, lie on the floor and sob. Strebel had been sure that her distress was existential: an inexpressible need that therefore could not be fulfilled. It's this rage and sorrow we carry in us forever, he'd thought—I need, I need, I need—the need a craving without object, an insatiable hunger that has nothing to do with food. Or love. Or sex. These were merely surrogates. He'd imagined the giant, gaping bill of a baby bird, whom nothing would satisfy, except perhaps to swallow the universe whole.

This thought led him to Ingrid. What if she found him like this, sweating in a taxi in a town on the edge of Africa, concocting an investigation with a young Swahili girl. Concocting, yes, because it wasn't his business to be here. His work—his
duty—
stopped with a trial or an inquest; what people made of their lives after that was up to them. And sometimes, yes, he found the separation a little shocking, for he was so embedded, so intimately familiar with the emotional lives of the participants, and then it was over. He felt oddly abandoned, as if a best friend or lover had stopped returning calls. It was too abrupt, the end.

Too abrupt, always, the ‘Take care of yourself.' Regardless of the softness of their skin or the curve of their dark eyebrows.

As for Pilgrim, he had failed to be objective. Professionally, he was beyond the pale. He had slept with a woman nearly half his age, a witness, vulnerable, traumatized.

If Ingrid found him, somehow, found him here, she would merely pity him. She would see the desperate machinations of a middle-aged man in need of antidepressants and a sports car. She would chide him as she had Caroline: You can't have ice cream for supper; it's not the way the world works. He would lie sobbing on the floor and Ingrid would firmly say: You can't have the pretty girl, you can't touch her and love her and have breakfast with her. It's not the way the world works.

‘The hotel,' Strebel said to Mr Tabu and he was sure he felt Alice flinch. But even to smile reassuringly would be to show his yellowing wolf teeth. So he sighed and let his head fall all the way back against the seat.

 

At first he didn't understand the sound—that it was knocking. For it began in his dream: a suspect he'd interviewed many years ago, tapping a soda can on the table, a taunting Morse code, for he refused to speak, only to tap-tap-tap, tap-tap, and to smile. Refused to say what had happened to the child, where they might find the body, only tap-tap-tap, and that smile. Strebel opened his eyes and listened to the knocking, let it bring him into the still, hot, dark room in Tanga.

‘Just a minute,' he said, and grappled with the sheet, pulling it around him. How could it be dark and so insanely hot? His first two nights he'd waited for the cool to seep in, a current of air to drift ashore. Like the cool fingers of a mother on the chest of her fevered child. But, no, the stubborn heat remained. Even on the balcony, he'd felt no relief. He'd seen a beggar down below, curled up in the open arcade of the market. The man had covered himself with a thick blanket and wore a wool hat.

Now he realized the knocking was urgent, a male voice saying, ‘Mistah Strebel! Mistah Strebel!'

‘Who is it?' he asked, already opening the door.

Mr Tabu stood there, his excited face coated with moonlight. ‘Your friend! They have found him! The police! Come! I take you!'

Strebel's heart seized. Then he paid attention to the words.
Him
. They have found him.

They drove through the dark, quiet town. None of the streetlights worked. Kerosene lamps illuminated the interiors of bars, cafés and street-side shops. Strebel was charmed—for the darkness hid the shabbiness, made it fairytale and glimmering, and the sounds were soft: a radio, people laughing, a bicycle bell.

Even the police station was without electricity. Mr Tabu took a flashlight out of his glove compartment. It was a cheap Chinese model with the power of a child's night light, but sufficient to light their way up the cement steps. Excited voices came from the dark ahead of them. Within moments, they collided in the dark. There was a brief scuffle, a conversation in Swahili, then at last the flashlight took hold of an image. The officer wore a sharply pressed tan uniform.

‘I am Chief Constable Elias Kulunju.' He held out his hand to Strebel. ‘I am sorry to inform you about the death of one of your countrymen. This man—' he gestured offhandedly at Mr Tabu, ‘He says you know the deceased.'

‘Yes, possibly,' Strebel replied, curious as to how Mr Tabu had involved himself to such a degree as to know about dead bodies found by the police. But he had in his mind, then, an image of the drivers sitting under a tree, chatting for hours on end. Taxi drivers were like Google: they knew everything. Some of their information was reliable, but much of it was gossip, speculation, opinion disguised as fact.

Kulunju carried on down the steps. ‘It is unfortunate that our mortuary is without electricity, so we have taken the deceased to the fish factory. They have a generator and have agreed to keep him in their refrigerator. Can we take your taxi? My car—' he began and then simply shrugged. ‘This country.'

Mr Tabu hurried to open the Corolla's door. Kulunju glanced distastefully at the back seat before getting in. Strebel sat beside him. Carefully—because he had to check—he said, ‘The body is that of a man. You're sure?'

‘My knowledge of anatomy is limited. But I am fairly sure men are the same, white or black.' Strebel wasn't sure if Kulunju was smiling as he said this.

‘It's just, there's a woman missing.'

‘White?'

‘Yes. About thirty. Dark hair.'

There was a long pause. ‘You
wazungu
and your marital dramas. Do you behave this way in your own countries? Or just when you come to Africa?' He drew out
Africaaaaa
to make the point. Then added, ‘No, nothing about a woman.'

The factory was on the outskirts of town. There were fewer lights and the black horizon of buildings became lower and more erratic. Then the darkness yielded suddenly to the blazing security lights that illuminated a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. A security guard approached the taxi, and, seeing Kulunju, snapped a salute and ran to open the gate. Inside the compound, Strebel saw order: neat paths, whitewashed buildings, clipped grass. The business, Kulunju told him, was owned by an Italian and managed by a Greek.

The Greek, a polite young man, stood waiting under the light in a whirling halo of moths and flying ants. ‘I'm sorry for your loss,' he said to Strebel. Strebel gave a polite nod. They went inside. There was only the faintest odor of fish—for it turned out the business was calamari and octopus for export to Europe. The Greek pointed out that the Mediterranean had been bereft of both for nearly two decades, due to overfishing. He led the way through an office and toward a set of high steel doors.

‘We have done our best,' he said to Strebel. ‘I hope you can appreciate the circumstances.'

The Greek switched on a light, opened the door, and they stepped inside. The cold embraced Strebel and he wanted to sigh with relief. The cold was delicious, pressing against his skin: he could strip off his clothes and stand naked just to feel the coolness on his balls. But instead he followed Kulunju and the Greek back between the shelves of frozen squids. In the very rear of the refrigerator, Koppler lay on a metal table. He was covered to his neck with a white sheet. He was mottled, his skin pale and flaky as pastry. His eyes were covered with packing tape. They had no lids and probably no eyeballs. Strebel considered that his face bore no less expression in death than it had in life.

‘Is this the man you know?' Kulunju asked.

‘Yes,' Strebel said. ‘Ernst Koppler. How did you know he was Swiss?'

Kulunju handed over a damp red passport. ‘He was carrying this.'

Strebel studied Koppler. He had begun to rot. ‘Can you tell me where—how he was found?'

Delicately, Kulunju pulled down the sheet to Koppler's waist. He had been partially eaten by things with small mouths. ‘Fishermen. It's hard to say how long he had been in the water. Perhaps one day. Not much more. His eyes—small crabs…' Kulunju paused to make sure Strebel was not about to be sick. ‘Small crabs and other marine animals but also the sea cause such damage.'

‘Did he drown?' Strebel asked.

Kulunju shook his head, and turned Koppler's hands palm-up, revealed the deep wounds on his wrists. ‘It appears he committed suicide.'

‘And then jumped in the sea?'

The chief constable shrugged. ‘What would you like me to say? That it is possible, impossible? Sometimes those who kill themselves wish to be found, as a punishment to their families. Others want privacy.' He replaced the sheet and stood back.

Strebel thought about what would happen now in Switzerland: the forensic team would scour every trace of the Raskazone house, of Gloria's house and Harry's house, their cars. He and his team would bring them both in for questioning. And the old boys at the bar. They'd locate Mr Peter in Usimba. The pathologist would decide if the knife wounds were indeed self-inflicted, or if there was evidence of foul play. How long the body had been in the water, and if he'd been alive or dead upon entry. The investigation would be exhaustive. And yet everyone would know from the outset that Koppler had killed himself and had reason. How his body got into the sea—by his own hand or another's—only mattered as a curiosity. No more: an exercise in efficiency. As if efficiency, like explanation, could ward off the stupid, random wanton cruelty of life.

‘We have arranged for one of the fish trucks to take him to Dar,' Kulunju said.