The Crooked Letter (3 page)

‘I am sorry,’ said the detective. ‘The phones are out, including mobiles. I need to talk to you about what happened. Tell me what you know, and there might yet be time to act.’

‘There must have been witnesses. The train was full. Ellie ...’ He swallowed. ‘How did I get here? Did someone call you?’

The detective tilted his head. ‘You were found in a cul-de-sac and brought here for treatment. Do you recall this?’

‘What about Seth? Was he there?’

‘Tell me what you remember, Hadrian. Then I will tell you what I know about Seth, and we will see what we can do about it.’

Swiss? Belgian? Hadrian couldn’t place the man’s accent. It was slight, but discernible: a faint hint of something Germanic. Whatever it was, it was definitely not Swedish.

Hadrian was distracting himself. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t want to remember what had happened. He was doing his best to forget whole slabs of it.

‘There’s an awful lot I don’t understand,’ he said.

The detective nodded again. ‘That makes two of us. Together, perhaps, we can work it out.’

Hadrian resigned himself to the inevitable. ‘All right. But is it possible to do it out of here?’ The murmur of voices beyond the curtain had fallen echoingly silent. ‘There must be somewhere else we can talk.’

The detective shook his head. ‘Again, I am sorry. The hospital is very full. There have been many accidents overnight. We can keep our voices down.’

Hadrian nodded, and quashed a question about what was going on beyond the walls around him.

* * * *

All his life, Hadrian had struggled to deal with a concept that other people seemed to accept quite happily. He and his brother were identical, but at the same time they weren’t. They were reflected, opposite. Although it sounded simple, it wasn’t. How could the opposite be the same as identical? It was in fact very confusing. They had both become so deeply tired of trying to explain their difference to ignorant strangers that sometimes they denied that they were identical at all.

As with many twins, they had gone through phases in which other people had seemed less important than the made-up worlds they shared or the secret languages they invented, but they had eventually grown bored with that, and worse. Hadrian suffered frequent migraines as a teenager, and was treated for depression at fifteen. Seth always said that it was because Hadrian thought too much, that he should just accept his role as the smaller, frailer twin without fighting it.

There was more to it than that. Although they could barely conceive of life apart, there was only so much one could do with one’s reflection — hence, the holiday.

Within a month they had met hundreds of new people and had seen sights to rival their childhood dreams. Yet even in such strange surroundings, there was no escaping who they were. They had the same blue eyes and olive skin; the same slender build and average height; the same dark hair, which they both kept very short; the same long fingers. Wherever they went, the Castillo brothers were asked less about their origins than about their relationship. Some people thought twins were lucky and actively sought their company; others avoided them or made strange signs with their hands to avoid bad fortune.

They had only met one other set of twins in their journey, and that had been an unsettling encounter. The four of them had sat in a dive in Turkey for half an hour, awkwardly trying to kick-start a conversation, before giving up and going their separate ways.

Those twins weren’t mirrors, Hadrian remembered. They were just identical and couldn’t understand what it was like. There had been no point of commonality. In all their lives, Hadrian and Seth had never met another set of true mirror twins. Probably, he had come to think, they never would.

* * * *

‘Perverts? I would never have guessed.’

‘Not perverts, El Capitan.
Inverts.
From
situs invertus.
That’s what we are.’

‘My little introverts,’ Ellis said, her voice echoing out of her pint glass as she drained its contents. It hadn’t taken them long to get drunk. Three of a dozen young people in a backpacker bar, they had come looking to make new friends and relax, or at least explore a common language. There was a sweaty, flushed look to all of them that spoke of too much exercise, not enough sleep, and infrequent access to showers. Hadrian had surreptitiously checked his underarms when their new friend joined them.

Ellis Quick was slight and perhaps twenty years of age, a little older than Hadrian and his brother and only a little shorter. Light brown hair hung in a tidy ponytail between her shoulderblades. Her eyes were hazel and she wasn’t wearing any make-up; her nose was bent slightly, as though it had once been broken. She smoked but never bought her own cigarettes.

It was impossible to tell who she had noticed at first: Hadrian or Seth. But something about one of them must have caught her eye and prompted her to come over. Being fellow Australians, it was only natural that they should get on, or try to.

‘You’re not paying attention,’ Seth complained. ‘You broke your promise, and now I’m trying to explain. It’s very important.’

‘Sorry. Where did you get up to?’

‘Mirror twins are two people who share the same genetic code.’

‘Like identical twins?’

‘Like identical twins, but with one very important difference. Identical twins are identical. Mirror twins are reversed. We’re back to front. Reflections. My hair parts on the right; Hadrian’s on the left.’

‘How do you tell?’ she asked, glancing at Seth’s scalp then Hadrian’s. Their hair was jet black; both of them preferred to keep their heads shaved.

‘We just can.’ Hadrian remembered long nights as a child spent checking for details that had been reversed: this crooked toenail, this eye slightly lower than the other, that weak knee. There was no doubt about it. They were like the butterfly paintings they’d made in kindergarten by blobbing paint on one side of a piece of paper then folding it over to create a reversed image on the other side. It had been disconcerting to realise that, were this analogy true, he constituted half a painting, not a whole.

‘How deep does it go?’

‘All the way,’ Seth said, his tone boastful. ‘Hadrian’s heart is on the wrong side of his chest. His stomach and liver are reversed too. That’s what it means to be
situs invertus.
He’s a reflection of me right down to the bone.’

‘We’re reflections of each other,’ Hadrian corrected.

‘Even your brains?’

‘Not our brains. That’s impossible.’

‘Have they checked?’

‘No.’ Seth looked irritated for a second, although it was a question that had often fascinated Hadrian. ‘It just couldn’t happen.’

Hadrian leaned in close to her, relishing Ellis’s rich, spicy smell. He still couldn’t quite believe that they were all getting along so well. He supposed he had her natural confidence to thank for that.

‘Go on,’ Ellis Quick had said on coming up to them and introducing herself. ‘Get them out of your system. Quick and the dead. Quick off the mark. Quick tempered.’

‘Never occurred to me,’ said Seth, the oldest and always the fastest to react to social situations. ‘Honest.’

‘I think you’re lying, but thanks all the same. I guess you can sympathise. You must get people trying to be funny all the time. You’re twins, obviously.’

‘That’s right.’ Hadrian found his voice, then took a sip of his beer to cover the slight waver he heard in it.

‘Identical twins, even,’ she persisted. ‘People must always be telling you that you look the same, as if you didn’t already know it. Well, I won’t ask you any questions about being twins if you don’t give me any grief about my name. Deal?’

She held out her hand and Hadrian shook it. Her fingertips were damp from the glass she’d been holding, but her skin was warm.

‘Deal,’ said Seth, and she gripped Seth’s hand in turn.

She had forgotten her end of the bargain within the hour.

‘Which of you is the original,’ she asked next, slurring only slightly, ‘and which the reflection?’

‘Hadrian is the invert,’ Seth said. ‘His heart is on the right side.’

‘If it’s on the right side, how can he be the invert?’

‘Not the
right
side: the right side of his
body.’
Seth patted his left breast. ‘Want to check? Take a listen.’

‘I don’t need to press up against your manly chest to prove anything.’ She laughed happily. ‘With lines like that, boys, it’s lucky you’ve got plenty of beer money.’

Hadrian could have kicked his brother. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘He didn’t mean to —’

‘I know what he meant.’ Ellis’s good humour was direct and frank. ‘It’s okay, really. I’ve heard a lot worse in the last few weeks.’

‘I’ll bet you have,’ said Seth.

‘Do you do this often?’ she asked. ‘Chat up strange girls in bars together?’

‘Never,’ said Hadrian, although they had fantasised about it in the past — of sharing one woman while she, in effect, experienced the same man reflected. It was an engaging dream, if an unlikely reality.

Her gaze danced between them. ‘Do you swap girlfriends, then? If you’re exactly the same, you could trade places without them knowing.’

‘We’re not exactly the same,’ said Seth, unable to hide another flash of irritation. ‘We’re reversed, remember?’

‘I remember. I didn’t say
I
couldn’t tell you apart.’ She raised her glass in salute. ‘I’m very observant. Not much gets by me. Try anything, and you’ll be in trouble.’

‘We’ll be on our best behaviour,’ Seth assured her. ‘Honest.’

‘I didn’t say that either.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘Let’s not go dismissing too many options here ...’

* * * *

‘Where was it you met Ms Quick?’ asked Lascowicz. ‘Vienna, did you say?’

‘That’s right.’ Hadrian was sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring at the crumpled sheets while he recounted better times. The big detective was taking notes with erratic pen strokes, scratching softly when Hadrian faltered. His throat was still sore, and he sipped frequently from a glass of water as he talked. ‘We travelled together for a while.’

‘Why? Were you lovers?’

‘Not at first.’ The memory was exceedingly tender to the touch.

‘Was she using you?’

He looked up at that. Lascowicz was watching him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did you give her money, pay for her accommodation, buy her food?’

‘No. She was never short of cash. We divided everything equally.’

‘You said that you and your brother argued. Was it over her?’

Hadrian’s eyes fell.

‘Not so equally, then,’ the detective commented. There was sympathy in his eyes. ‘Please, I am not easily shocked. You must be honest with me if I am to understand the situation.’

‘There’s nothing to understand. It has nothing to do with Ellie.’

‘She was the one who first noticed that you were being followed. And she was there when you were attacked.’

‘But she wasn’t part of it.’ He rallied to Ellis’s defence not just because he felt he ought to but because he knew she was innocent. He had seen the look of horror on her face when Seth had been stabbed. He had experienced her nervousness in Sweden, and earlier. ‘It wasn’t a set-up. The Swede wasn’t her accomplice, and we weren’t being mugged.’

‘How do you know that? Have you accounted for your personal effects?’

‘I — no.’ Frustration and hurt turned all too easily to anger, as they had in Stockholm. ‘Listen,’ he said, with furious deliberation, ‘I’m tired of this. I want a working phone. I want to know what happened to Seth. I want you to tell me where Ellie is. If you don’t start giving me answers, I’m getting up and leaving right now!’

The detective eyed him coolly. ‘Your brother,’ he said, ‘is dead.’

Hadrian froze in the act of getting out of bed. He had seen his brother stabbed. He had woken up in unusual circumstances and known that something terrible had happened, but the words stated so bluntly, finally, still came as a shock.

He sat back down, feeling as though he weighed more than a dozen men.

‘His body was discovered next to yours. The attending officer thought you were both dead, at first, but she found your pulse and called for an ambulance.’

Lascowicz’s formal, accented voice was no comfort. The words fell on Hadrian like tombstones. All his life he had been a reflection of his older brother, the person who, more than any other, had justified his existence. Now that person was gone. What was he now, with no one to define him?

Seth was dead.

He was alone.

Lascowicz was saying something, but Hadrian’s thoughts had seized up. He felt as though he had been given an anaesthetic. His body ballooned out while the world fell in around him. The centre of him shrank down to a point, vibrating with such intense energy that it might explode at any moment...

He felt a distant hum rise through him, as though he was standing under a power transformer. Blackness rose with it, deep and impenetrable.

* * * *

‘I said, are you well? Shall I leave you?’

The detective’s voice seemed to come from the edge of the universe. Hadrian blinked, and suddenly everything was the way it should be. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, gripping the mattress as though in danger of falling.

‘No,’ he said, turning to face Lascowicz. The detective had put down his pen. Hadrian noticed for the first time that he had a tattoo on the back of his hand, a jagged zigzag that followed his knuckles in deep blue.

‘I don’t want you to go,’ Hadrian went on. ‘I want to know who did this. I want to know what you’re going to do about it. I want you to tell me that the man who killed my brother will pay.’

He couldn’t help the tears that trickled down his cheeks. Frustration, shame and loss filled him, made him burn inside. He was useless, impotent. It should have been Seth sitting there. Seth was the strong one, not Hadrian.

‘Describe him to me,’ said Lascowicz, ‘this man you call the Swede. What exactly does he look like?’

* * * *

They first saw the Swede in Prague, another ruinous, wonderful metropolis and the tenth stop on their tour of European cities. Hadrian felt as though he was drowning in a never-ending rush of sights, from church spires spearing the clouds to turbulent lakes surrounded by mountains. Slender masts swayed and danced on storm-swept harbours. Sinuous trains pierced the walls of deep valleys. Everywhere were ancient buildings, many of them crumbling and jumbled in a way he had never seen before. The citizen of a relatively new land, he felt out of place amid such antiquity. He was an interloper, gawping at the remains of a long-gone world that was uncomfortably sandwiched between glass skyscrapers and mobile phone towers like an old man at his one hundredth birthday party, relentless novelty pressing in on all sides the only thing keeping him up.