The Truth and Other Lies (11 page)

Henry opened a bottle of single malt and filled three glasses. Moreany disappeared briefly into the visitors’ restroom, walking unsteadily. Betty looked around herself. The room had been very tidy when she’d examined it in the dark the night before. Now everything was a mess and it reeked of tobacco. She scrutinized the hairy dog blanket next to the desk chair and the wastepaper basket overflowing with rejected ideas, probably worth millions even half-full. In the darkness she’d discerned the drilling rig as an unidentifiable structure standing in the room. Now it had vanished.

Moreany came back looking even worse, his hands smelling of soap. Henry handed him a glass.

“Ice?”

“One cube, if you have some.”

“Martha didn’t leave a note.” Returning from the kitchen with the ice, Henry began his report. “Her bike was on the beach.”

Moreany stirred the ice in his glass with his index finger. “Did
you
find her?”

“No one’s found her. The current pulled Martha out to sea. Her rubber sandals, her things, the bike—everything was still there.”

“On the beach?” Betty asked.

Henry saw her astonished look.

“Yes. Down in the little bay next to the harbor where she always goes swimming.”

Henry took a large swig of scotch, sucked the ice cube briefly and spat it back into the glass. He didn’t seem to be suffering overmuch, Betty thought, but then what does suffering look like?

“When she didn’t come back for lunch, I went to the beach. Down by the water there was a woman in Martha’s green parka, but it was someone else.”

Again Henry saw Betty’s astonished look. “The wind had blown it over the beach and she was cold. She’d put it on.”

“How old was she?”

“A little younger than you.”

“Do you know her?”

“No. Does it matter?”

Moreany cleared his throat. “Excuse me for blurting this out, but is it out of the question that Martha’s still alive? I mean, couldn’t something unusual have happened?”

“And what might that be?” Henry asked.

“Well . . . you live here without any kind of security at all. Isn’t it conceivable that Martha”—Moreany paused to formulate the thought—“was kidnapped in order to blackmail you?”

“Who’d be that stupid, Claus? Any sensible person would kidnap
me
and then blackmail Martha, wouldn’t they?”

Betty lit a cigarette and snapped the lighter shut with a flourish.

“Such people exist, Henry. Stupid, evil people.”

Henry didn’t like her tone. “And who might they be?”

For a while it was quiet in the room. Henry saw smoke streaming out of Betty’s narrow nostrils like dragon’s breath. She was punishing him, because she knew he was lying.

“Who called the police?” It was Moreany who broke the silence.

“No one so far.”

“I’m going to do it now,” Moreany said, patting his pockets.

Henry put his glass down. “I think I’d better do that.”

He went into the kitchen to make the call. He should have done it ages ago. How annoying. He had clean forgotten.

Betty was playing with the hovawart in the garden while Moreany and Henry waited in the kitchen for the police. The dog jumped up at her; she threw a stick. Word must have gotten around among dogs that, if you bring human beings sticks or balls, they will throw them tirelessly. Betty’s immaculate skin shone in the sun; there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The two men watched her, each deep in his own thoughts.

Henry noticed that Moreany was clutching the countertop, swaying slightly. He’d grown old in the last few months and had lost weight. Tiny beads of sweat glistened at his hairline. His fingers had felt cold when Henry had handed him the scotch.

“Would you like a bite to eat, Claus? I’ve made some lentil soup. It won’t take a moment to warm up.”

Without waiting for a reply, he got the bowl of soup out of the fridge, peeled off the foil, and sniffed it.

“Today’s not the day to talk about this, Henry, but I was going to propose to Betty earlier on.”

“What?”

Henry turned his back to Moreany, put the bowl in the microwave, and wondered whether the news was bad or absurdly good. He could see Moreany’s distorted outline reflected in the microwave door.

“You heard me. I’d like to marry Betty. I know I’m too old for her, but I love her. What do you think about that?”

Henry peered out the window. Betty was nowhere to be seen.

“This was
today
?”

“A little while ago in my office. She comes in and I want to ask her if she’d like to be my wife, but I’m completely tongue-tied. Instead I ask her twice what’s the matter with her car. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

I don’t deserve to be this lucky, Henry thought. “What is the matter with her car?”

“She has some problem or other with it. And then you rang up, and then it was too late.”

“What kind of problem?”

“You’ll have to ask her yourself. I don’t know.”

Again Henry looked into the future. Assuming this unlikely stroke of luck really did happen and Betty married Moreany, he would of course be best man. Betty would give birth to his child, who was sure to be a beautiful baby. Henry would be godfather to his own child, and would of course be the best godfather in the world. All these
interpersonal
problems would be solved—at least in part. But how to convince Betty of a marriage of convenience in this day and age? With the secret joy of a prospector who’s found a nugget as big as a fist, Henry laid both his hands on the shoulders of his friend and publisher.

“I’m so pleased for you, Claus. It’s never too late. Just follow your heart and pop the question.”

Moreany embraced Henry. Even in such desperate circumstances, Henry was magnanimous enough to be pleased at the happiness of others. Moreany couldn’t say anything, he was so touched.

The microwave chirped. Henry took out the soup bowl and set it down on the table in front of Moreany. Henry was visibly moved too.

“Would you like a slice of bread with it?”

———

Obradin’s incisors lay in the damp sand of the cellar floor. The steep steps that you had to go down backward at the best of times were now extra slippery with bloody saliva. Earlier Obradin had smashed the glass door of his shop, presumably because he couldn’t find his key, and had plunged headlong down the steps trying to fetch a second barrel of slivovitz from the cellar.

A big pile of shit next to the slivovitz barrels furnished evidence that Obradin must have been in the cellar since eleven in the morning. At lunchtime the little harbor pub opened, where Obradin lost a further tooth, because his idea of payment in kind did not correspond with that of the landlord’s. As it later turned out, the tooth was rotten and would have had to have been removed sooner or later in any case. Not one of the men who came rushing up to help managed to pacify the raging Serb.

He was finally hit by a tranquilizer dart from the game warden’s gun. The tranquilizer, known as Hellabrunn mixture, was dosed for a rhinoceros; even so, Obradin had enough time to sing the Serbian national anthem before falling into a deathlike sleep.

Helga, who had accurately predicted the course and duration of his rampage, was waiting outside the fishmonger’s together with the doctor when her husband was returned to her more dead than alive. It was heartbreaking to watch her suffer. In twenty years of married life she’d experienced half a dozen of these attacks, without ever finding out what caused them. The eruptions remained as unpredictable as earthquakes. Obradin claimed not to be able to remember what triggered them, which from a toxicological point of view was hardly surprising. The doctor diagnosed various hematomas and tooth loss in Obradin, but otherwise normal vital functions; the men carried him to the double bed he shared with Helga and there he remained for the time being.

———

Outside, Poncho was barking. A vehicle drew up. Henry saw that it wasn’t the police. Lashed tight with blue cord, Martha’s bicycle stood like a monument on the pickup bed. Henry had seen the bike countless times without feeling anything. What is there to feel at the sight of an old rusty bike? But now it was different. Standing at a right angle to the frame, the handlebars and the old lamp were pointing straight at him. The rust at the neck of the saddle was gleaming like dried blood—and there in the wheel was the broken spoke he’d never replaced.

At the steering wheel sat Elenor Reens, the mayor, and next to her the young woman from the beach. She was wearing a baseball cap and had set her sunglasses upon the brim. Elenor got out and took a packet containing Martha’s things from the backseat; the rubber sandals and Martha’s parka were in a plastic bag. She put everything on the hood.

“Just let us know if there’s anything we can do. No matter what. We’ll always be here for you. I’m speaking on behalf of everyone—you and your wife are in the thoughts of the whole town.”

“Thank you.”

Elenor followed Henry’s gaze.

“This is my daughter, Sonja.”

Sonja opened the door hesitantly, got out, walked around the car to Henry, and clasped his outstretched hand. She was wearing white sneakers and faded blue jeans; her khaki jacket was buttoned up to the neck as if she was cold. Her hand was cool and slender, her eyes were of topaz-blue earnestness, the line of her lips looked as if it had been drawn with a fine brush. Aphrodite stops at nothing to torment me, Henry thought. “How could I have forgotten? We’ve already met,” he said. Sonja nodded. Henry had the feeling she wanted to tell him something she couldn’t say in her mother’s presence.

Elenor went back to her car. “Oh, by the way, Obradin went berserk again. The game warden brought him down with a tranquilizer gun.”

———

Every murderer ought to know that, as the science of criminal investigation, modern forensics are very thorough. If a person disappears, no stone is left unturned. The murderer has to prepare himself for an investigation that may go on for a long time and will brook no logical contradiction.

A murderer must be alert. His enemy is detail. The thoughtless word, the mere nothing he forgot, the trifling mistake that wrecks everything. He has to keep the memory of his crime alive and kindled within himself every day, but still keep silent. But keeping silent is against human nature. It’s not easy to keep a secret. A lifetime spent keeping silent is agony. Looked at that way, a murderer’s punishment begins on the day of his crime.

The wife-killers and husband-murderers among us should take particular note that any personal advantage derived from the disappearance of one’s spouse, whether it be life insurance or the understandable desire for freedom, will bring an even more thorough investigation in its wake.

No one knew this better than Henry. In his long days of leisure he had extended his knowledge of forensics, learning among other things that the police notify the insurance companies in cases of unexplained death. As everyone knows, insurance companies are not fond of paying back money they’ve already collected, no matter how small the sum. If they do settle, it should always be interpreted as an act of tempering justice with mercy. When it comes to paying out life insurance, they get particularly suspicious and let loose their detectives. You have to beware of these specialists, who work on commission and are paid by results. They know that all the world’s a stage and act accordingly, searching not for truth but always for untruth. Murder, fraud, and self-inflicted injury are insurance scams as far as these gentlemen are concerned—there’s no other way to describe them. In this way they deny the psychological aspect of the struggle for existence—and for them a policy payment is tantamount to the triumph of evil. So, as a basic rule, murder should look like an accident. That is harder than it may seem to begin with, because even an accident has a plausible story behind it; accidents don’t just happen. But more on this later.

Strictly speaking, Martha’s death wasn’t murder; it was an accident. Nevertheless Henry had already made two crucial mistakes. He had failed to call the police straightaway, and the whereabouts of Betty’s Subaru shouldn’t have been associated with him. Whatever the police found out, in the end it should be clear beyond doubt that Henry would not derive any advantage from Martha’s disappearance.

That corresponded entirely with the truth. There was no life insurance in his favor, only in hers. Henry wouldn’t inherit a thing from Martha, because it wasn’t Martha who was rich but he. Nor had she been in the public eye—that was just him. So far, so good. Thanks to his experience of lying, or merely making excuses, Henry was confident that people would continue to believe him as long as he lied. It was only the truth he had to be sparing and prudent with.

He put the packet containing Martha’s clothes on the kitchen island. Then he said good-bye to Betty and Moreany, who were going back to the publishing house together. Henry saw them to the Jaguar, embraced them both affectionately and with equal intensity, and whispered in Betty’s ear as he said good-bye, “Report the car stolen; I’ll explain everything to you later.” She waved to him. She’s got me in the palm of her hand, Henry thought, and waved back.

———

Jenssen was a young detective with butter-yellow hair and watery blue eyes. He was descended from Vikings; Henry could see that at a glance. He was athletic and he clearly worked out. His manicured hand felt strangely fat. He had read Henry’s novels, was a big fan of
Aggravating Circumstances
, and would have liked to have been a court reporter, but, as he told Henry, he couldn’t write. Well, who can? Henry thought.

“Your heroes are men of action, Mr. Hayden,” Jenssen enthused by way of greeting. “Always something going on. And you never know what’s going to happen next. Strange happenings, dark secrets, dangers lurking everywhere, and really brilliant villains.”

Henry took to him at once. He wasn’t so keen on his female colleague who always stood half a pace behind him. She was skinny and obviously unqualified, because she didn’t know any of Henry’s novels.

“Do you have a photo of your wife?” she asked, without a trace of sympathy or understanding.