The Insult (52 page)

As he turned out of her street he slid his tape into the stereo. There
was a calmness then. Snow lay on the windscreens of parked cars. Houses came and went like dreams – bright and strange, but instantly forgotten. He heard a sigh. The girl had woken up. Almost immediately she bent over and was sick on the floor. A hot, bitter smell filled the inside of the van.

He took the route he would have taken if he’d been driving home. He recognised the buildings, the roundabouts, the signs. Everything was comforting, familiar. Even the girl who was in the van with him. Once, though, she opened the window and started shouting. He had to hit her on the head again to keep her quiet. She slept for a long time after that.

She was still quiet when he turned off the road, into a building site. He stopped the van. He put his arms around her and lifted her out through the driver’s side. He laid her carefully on the ground. It was a damp, muddy place. A cold wind blowing. Plastic sheets shifted and billowed against the scaffolding. Mazey stared at the photograph in his hand, then he stared at the girl who was lying below him. Somewhere not too far away there was the sound of metal knocking against metal.

When she opened her eyes, he bent down and held her wrist. He meant to be affectionate. But then he remembered that she didn’t like him to touch her and he took his hand away.

‘Where’s the baby?’ he said.

‘What baby’s that?’ she said in a faint voice.

‘Your baby,’ he said.

She frowned slightly. ‘I don’t have a baby.’

‘You have a baby,’ he said. ‘You hid it.’

She tried to sit up, but he put one hand on her chest and pushed her down.

He asked her again. ‘Where’s the baby?’

She closed her eyes and would not answer.

He picked up the jack and hit her with it, then he put it on the ground beside her. He undid the buttons on her leather coat and opened it. Grasping her sweater by the hem, he lifted it up over
her body until it covered her face. It wouldn’t go any further. His hands hovered in the air above her, undecided. He took hold of the vest that she was wearing underneath. Pushed it up over the sweater. Her arms were still trapped in the arms of her coat. They stretched out on either side of her, bent at the elbows; she looked oddly relaxed. He tucked his fingers under the waistband of her skirt and pulled at it until the zip broke. He tugged it down below the level of her hips. Her underpants came with it. Next, he took his pen-knife out. He chose the longest of the three blades and snapped it open. Tested it against his thumb, the way he’d been taught. Placing the tip of the blade in the middle of her rib-cage, just at the point where the two halves joined, he pressed down hard. He cut in a straight line until the blade ran up against her pelvic bone. Blood slid across her belly. He put the pen-knife down and reached inside her. There didn’t appear to be anything alive in there –

I didn’t recognise the woman at first. She was bathed in radiance and I was walking towards her. I weighed almost nothing. The ground didn’t seem firm enough to be the real ground. Her hair wasn’t hair at all but light. Her hands reached out eagerly to welcome me.

She showed me some clothes that were dirty and her face was troubled. What should I do? she seemed to be asking. What
can
I do? I didn’t know. I, too, was filled with despair.

‘Mr Blom?’

A voice was calling me. I didn’t want to answer it.

Time passed miraculously fast and suddenly the clothes that she was holding up for me to see were clean and white, and she was smiling. I wanted to rejoice with her.

‘Mr Blom?’

‘What is it?’ I was irritable. ‘What?’

I could feel carpet under my left eyebrow. Under my cheekbone as well. And my right hand.

‘You passed out.’

It was Edith Hekmann’s voice.

‘Probably all that talk of blood,’ I heard her say. ‘Some people faint even at the mention of it.’

I pushed myself up off the floor and sat on the edge of the bed with my head between my knees. She talked on. I didn’t have the strength to stop her. After a while I lay back. Then I turned over, on to my side. The blankets were warm beneath me. I felt peculiarly comfortable all of a sudden. Peculiarly well.

– He wrapped her in her leather coat and lifted her and put her in the back of the van. He covered her with a piece of blue tarpaulin. Not far from the van there was an oil-drum filled to the brim with rainwater. He washed his hands and arms in it. He didn’t panic; it wasn’t in his nature. He just climbed into the van and turned it round and drove out of the building site. The snow eased as he moved north. For a while there was sleet. Then, finally, just rain.

When it was light, he pulled into a petrol station. The man who worked the pumps wanted to talk. First he said something about how early it was. Mazey just nodded. Next he mentioned the weather. Mazey agreed with him. Then, as he walked round the van to put the pump back on its bracket, he said, ‘You’ve got something bleeding in there, mister.’

Mazey looked up from the money he was counting.

‘There’s something bleeding in the back of your van,’ the man said.

‘Deer,’ said Mazey.

‘Making one hell of a mess.’

Mazey nodded.

‘Deer, eh?’

‘Shot it this morning. Back there.’ And Mazey angled his thumb over his shoulder, back along the road.

He paid for the petrol.

‘Interesting music,’ the man said.

‘Yeah,’ said Mazey.

Then he drove away.

It was late afternoon when he reached the village. She remembered that she was taking the washing in when he came round the corner of
the building. She remembered watching him as he walked towards her. There was nothing nervous or hesitant about him, nothing to suggest that something might be wrong. There never was.

But then he took her by the arm and though his touch was gentle there was a pressure in it.

‘What is it, Mazey?’

‘The van,’ he said.

‘What van?’

He led her to the car-park at the side of the hotel and showed her the van. It was pale-blue, with rust around the headlights and the wheel-arches.

‘Where did you get it?’ she asked him.

‘I took it.’ He told her the name of the service station. Then he opened the back doors and lifted the tarpaulin.

She reached in quickly, drew the tarpaulin over the body, then glanced behind her. The windows of the inn were black, empty. At that time of day the residents would be sitting in the drawing-room and listening to the news on the radio. Martha would be preparing supper in the kitchen. No one could have seen anything. She bent down, felt for a pulse. Not that there was much chance of that: the injuries were too severe. But she had to make quite certain.

The girl was dead, and had been dead for hours. She wasn’t sure whether or not she should feel relieved.

‘When did this happen?’ she asked.

Mazey stood beside her with his hands in his pockets. He was also looking at the inn, not furtively, though, as she had done, not guiltily at all, but with the complacency of somebody who called it home.

She had to repeat the question.

‘Last night,’ he said.

‘Did anyone see you?’

He shook his head.

She took him by the arm. ‘You have to get rid of the van. I don’t care how you do it. Just get rid of it. Do you understand?’

‘Maybe tomorrow.’

‘Now, Mazey. You do it now.’

Only then did he look down at her, a look that stopped just behind her eyes, at the entrance to her brain. It angered her, to think that he might challenge her.

‘Right now,’ she said.

He stood there for a while longer, frowning. At last he moved past her and opened the door on the driver’s side. He ducked sideways for a moment. His music started up – the tape she’d made for him.

‘Quieter, Mazey,’ she said. ‘Quieter.’

He grinned at her and pushed the hair out of his eyes.

She watched him reverse into the road and drive away. That night there was a storm. A month’s rain fell in less than twelve hours. Even the church flooded; hymn-books were found in the meadow, swollen to twice their normal size. Mazey did not return.

He was gone for three days.

I heard a car in the distance. Thinking it might be Loots, I swung my legs on to the floor. But the sound didn’t grow any louder; instead, it seemed to pass at a tangent to the village.

‘Three days it took him,’ Edith Hekmann said, ‘and when he came back he was on foot.’

I asked her what had happened to the body. She didn’t know.

‘You’ve no idea?’

‘That’s right. I’ve no idea.’ She seemed to relish the fact. She’d tortured me with what she knew, but that wasn’t enough. Now she wanted to torture me with what she didn’t know as well.

‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘He would’ve told you.’

‘He didn’t tell me.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t ask.’

‘You’re lying.’

She laughed. It was only air, almost inaudible, but utterly contemptuous at the same time. I reached out and my hand closed round a lamp. I pulled it hard, snapping the wire, and threw it at her. It hit the wall and shattered.

‘You’re in a bad way.’ Her voice came from the corner of the room.

I didn’t say anything.

‘You’ll never make it in the police,’ she said. ‘You’re not cut out for it. If I was you, I’d start looking for some other kind of work.’

‘How many times –’ I began, but she talked over me.

‘Those castles in the mountains,’ she was saying, ‘those battlements. They don’t exist.’

I stared at her.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘you’re blind. You won’t see a thing.’

‘What do you mean?’

There was a click made up of two quick sounds, but I didn’t have time to identify it because it was followed, almost immediately, by a deafening explosion. I felt bits of something land on me. At first I couldn’t imagine what it was. It felt like mud thrown up by the wheels of a passing car. It was solid, and strangely warm. It went cold fast, though. Then I knew.

I couldn’t move.

‘Mrs Hekmann?’

My voice sounded far away, as if there was a wall between me and what I’d said.

‘Mrs Hekmann?’

I listened for a whisper, breathing, anything – but all I could hear was people coming up the stairs. Two people. Both men, by the sound of it. I listened carefully. Yes, two men.

The brothers from the village.

I sat on the steps of the hotel, my suitcase on the porch behind me. I remembered my call to Loots. He’d told me he would drive through the night. He would be with me by dawn, he said, or shortly after – I’d made him promise – but it was after dawn and he hadn’t appeared yet. I was sitting on the steps waiting for the sound of his car in the distance. I hoped it wouldn’t be much longer.

The police had already been, tyres slurring on the gravel as they braked. I didn’t understand what the hurry was. There was nobody to arrest or apprehend. There was hardly even anyone to question. All the crimes had been committed and all the criminals were gone.

‘Are you the blind man, sir?’

The policeman was too alert. There was something farcical about it. He was like someone who thought it was the beginning of the story when really it was the end.

‘Well?’ His voice moved closer, officious now and slightly nasal. ‘Are you?’

Don’t ever ignore policemen. If there’s one thing they can’t stand.

I nodded wearily. ‘I’m the blind man.’

‘We’re going to need some kind of statement.’

‘It’s no good asking me,’ I said.

‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘I didn’t see a thing.’

‘You were there, though,’ the policeman said.

No sense of humour. No sense of humour whatsoever.

I dictated a few sentences for him. I said that I had fallen into the pool and that Mazey Hekmann had drowned while trying to rescue me. When Edith Hekmann learned of her son’s death, she had shot herself. The real crimes were hidden between the lines. I was keeping them for Munck. I thought Munck should get the credit. I wanted him to have that street named after him.

I reached for my suitcase, pulled it closer. The old people would be sitting at their tables in the dining-room, waiting for their breakfast to be served. If only Loots would come. I already knew what I was going to say to him.
I’m blind. I realise that now. But still. Don’t ever tell me what you look like. I’ve got my own ideas. You’re thin, just as Nina’s beautiful. I don’t want to hear any different. I don’t want to know. You’re thin, with red hair. You’ve got shoulderblades that stick out. Cheekbones, too. You do extraordinary things on bicycles. No, don’t laugh. It’s what I think. It’s true.
Somehow I felt that he would understand. I couldn’t wait for him to arrive. I wanted to throw my arms around him, embrace him.

The sun slowly warmed the left side of my face.

To think that I’d entertained the notion of a silver room! I could still imagine it – the walls and ceiling lined with kitchen foil, and bits of wire radiating in all directions – but I knew I’d never build it, not now. I couldn’t spend my life in a place like that. Nobody could. And besides, it wouldn’t have been going far enough. After all, what would happen when I left the room? Everything I’d been trying to avoid would be waiting for me just outside the door. No, a silver room would never have sufficed. I’d have needed more protection than that. A silver suit, perhaps, like something an astronaut might wear. A helmet, too. But why stop there? In the end I would have been forced to take the idea to its logical conclusion. Silver skin.

I took a deep breath and let the air ease out of me. The smell of the countryside in winter. Wood fires and muddy fields. Snow.

At last I heard the car. It crept, soft-tyred, along the road and parked outside the inn. I stood up, stretched. A door opened. Footsteps across the grass, keys bouncing on a hand.

Loots.

‘About time,’ I said.

The footsteps stopped. A shadow fell across me. ‘There you are.’

I stared. Because it wasn’t Loots’ voice. It was Visser’s.

‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

I stepped backwards, stumbled, almost tripped. What I felt was partly surprise – I’d been expecting someone else – and partly trepidation, which was the legacy of all the hallucinations. But there was nothing to be frightened of, I told myself. There was nothing to fear. Visser was my doctor. And excellent he was, too, by all accounts. He would only have my best interests at heart.