The Truth and Other Lies Page 21

  Two days before the funeral, Henry Hayden put in an appearance at the office. He was wearing a dark suit. He kissed Honor’s hand in greeting and invited her to call him Henry. They drank gunpowder tea and talked for a while about the deceased man. Honor told him how they had spent his last days together in the city of lagoons until his liver failed and he proposed to her in the Ospedale Giovanni e Paolo. Henry sat in Moreany’s Eames chair and listened to her, deeply moved. He was ashamed not to have seen his friend and patron Moreany one last time.

  Honor laid her hand on his. “It was so quick and so many awful things have happened, Henry. Things we can’t comprehend. The greatest gift for him was finding your novel again.”

  “Have you read it?”

  Honor nodded, smiling. “I know you didn’t want me to. Claus printed it out and took it with him to Venice. We read it together. It’s a great book, Henry. It’s great literature.”

  “And the end? What did you think of the end?”

  There was a longer pause. “That was amazing,” Honor finally replied. “I found it quite by chance in the mail.”

  She got up and went over to Moreany’s desk, opened a drawer, and took out a brown envelope. She pulled out a pile of typescript, half a finger thick. Henry recognized the font of Martha’s typewriter.

  “It was a very odd feeling reading this, Henry.”

  She handed Henry the pages. He sat glued to the seat of the Eames chair, his ears burning. It felt as if a hot, wet cloth had been pressed into his face. In Martha’s handwriting on the front page was a—how shall we put it?—a note.

  Dear Henry, my darling husband, I’m saving you and saving this ending, because I could never bear to leave you without anything. I don’t know what has happened or what is going to happen today, but the bright colors which shone out of you from the day we first met are now granite-black. I’m frightened for you.

  At this point we must pause, because Henry was sobbing so much that with the best will in the world he couldn’t carry on reading.

  Whatever it is that drives you to destroy the things you love, I have always felt exempt from your rage. You protect me, you understand me, you let me be myself. You have thrown away this beautiful ending to your novel in order to follow your demon to a shady rendezvous. I shall make sure it gets to you. I shall keep it for you and send it to Moreany. With fondest love, Martha.

  We often have the wrong idea about things we’ve never actually seen. When we do finally get to see them, they are often surprisingly familiar. Honor had never seen a grown man cry. Henry cried long and hard, like a child calling for its mother. If Honor hadn’t gently taken the manuscript from him, his tears would have made a watercolor out of it. She left him alone and closed the door to Moreany’s office behind her.

  When she had found the last chapter among Moreany’s unopened mail, late in the evening of the night before last, her first thought had been that it was a mistake, especially as Martha’s note was addressed to Henry. But on the envelope, in her exquisite handwriting, Martha had written Moreany’s private address. It couldn’t be a mistake. To Honor’s esoterically broadened intellect, the connection between Martha’s disappearance and this lovingly sinister farewell letter was irrefutable. Martha wrote of ruin and of Henry’s shady rendezvous with his demon; there was something disturbing about her note. Honor would have informed the police if she hadn’t been the director of a publishing house and Henry Hayden its golden idol. The closing chapter of the novel was a blank check and as such it took priority over moral reservations. For that reason, rather than consult the police, Honor Moreany, née Eisendraht, consulted the Arcana of Tarot. The eleventh card fell from the deck—Justice. Well, there you are then. Some doubts are dispelled all by themselves.

  ———

  If it is true that there are funerals at which the mourners make a show of false humility and shocked grief, then it is often the dead themselves who are to blame for this hypocritical playacting: maybe they didn’t keep the best company when they were still alive, or just met the wrong people. Claus Moreany was buried as he had lived. With respect, with pathos, and attended by honest tears. A lot of people had gathered in the little cemetery on this overcast day in early autumn. Some three hundred mourners lined the path from the chapel to the mausoleum, many of them without umbrellas. The coffin was carried past them and at that moment it began to rain.

  Within eyeshot of Henry were Jenssen and a few other gentlemen from the police. They were the only ones not dressed in dark clothes, which suggested they had come on official business. Why not? thought Henry. Today’s a good day to talk about death. Between a couple of old plane trees stood Gisbert Fasch. He waved shyly with a crutch when their eyes met. He had put on weight, and hair now covered the shaven side of his head. About an hour later the last mourners placed their flowers on the coffin, then the procession moved toward the cemetery’s exit, where a convoy of vehicles was waiting to shuttle the guests to the wake in the Moreany offices.

  “We’ve found your wife,” Jenssen murmured to Henry as he passed him. The heartless nature of this greeting must have become clear to Jenssen the minute he’d spoken, for he fell silent—or perhaps it was Henry’s glare.

  “Are you sure you’ve got the right woman this time?” Henry asked.

  Jenssen’s superior, the aforementioned genius of case analysis, butted in. “My name is Awner Blum. I’m in charge of the homicide squad and I’d like to apologize for the somewhat brusque manner of my colleague.”

  Henry came to a halt. “You really have found my wife?”

  “Not a doubt about it. I’m . . . sorry, but that’s how it is. She’s been identified.”

  “Not by me, she hasn’t. Is she dead?”

  “I’m afraid she is. My condolences.”

  “Where? Where did you find her?”

  “We didn’t find her. She was found. But maybe, rather than discussing it here, we’d be better off talking in peace down at headquarters, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In forensics.”

  Honor Moreany left the head of the funeral procession to join Henry and the policemen. “What’s happened?”

  “They’ve found Martha.”

  Honor stared at the policemen. “And you come here to tell us that?”

  “We’ll explain everything calmly at headquarters, Mr. Hayden. It won’t take long.”

  Honor put her arms round Henry and gave him a big hug.

  “Go along with them, Henry. Claus would want you to.”

  Henry kissed Honor’s hand and looked at Jenssen. “Which way?”

  “Over here, please.” The man walked away from the funeral procession to the side exit of the cemetery.

  Henry caught the mourners’ speculative glances. “It looks as if you’re arresting me. Is that what you want?”

  “Not at all. Our meeting here is purely for reasons of convenience, Mr. Hayden. We need your help. This is not an arrest or a formal interview.”

  They had made a public spectacle of him. They could just as easily have waited for him at the exit. Experts on police interviewing tactics might like to note that neither Blum nor Jenssen had volunteered until asked by Henry the information that Martha was dead. They had not told him where, how, or when she was found. They had obviously decided to extract every last scrap of guilty knowledge out of Henry. Be my guest, motherfuckers, thought Henry. He was extremely well prepared.

  Jenssen stopped when he saw Gisbert Fasch limping along behind them as quickly as his stiff legs would allow. He went to meet him and they exchanged a few words while Henry, escorted by the three gentlemen from the police, left the cemetery grounds and got into a white Audi A6. Fasch remained behind. Henry never saw him again.

  23

  They had nothing.

  The merest shimmer of a hunch or the tiniest scrap of evidence would have made that pathetic intimidation ritual in the cemetery unnecessary. They had nothing, knew nothing, were not
hing. They were just doing their jobs and they wanted results. Solving crimes is as difficult and laborious as committing them, with the difference that the lunch breaks are paid.

  “When’s your new novel coming out?” Jenssen asked as they drove along.

  “In time for the Frankfurt Book Fair.”

  “May one ask what it’s about?”

  “Yes, you may.” Henry watched the symmetrical gray façades go past. It would be a long, tough battle. They had come four strong in order to register every movement, every word, and every contradiction right from the start. During the ten-mile drive not another word was exchanged.

  The redbrick wall with its topping of barbed wire ran for a whole block around police headquarters. The compound had served as a military barracks before the outbreak of the First World War, and the ensemble of buildings, walls, and razor-wire fences still had something of the charm of a doomed siege. “Saint Renata,” Henry said softly, as the barrier went up.

  The “meeting room,” as they called it, was a gas chamber with vents. Henry saw coffee stains like mold cultures on the linoleum floor. In the middle of the room was a large collapsible whiteboard covered with a mouse-gray cloth. Henry sat down in an upholstered swivel chair and eyed the concealed item. Jenssen brought him coffee. This no doubt was phase one of the inquisition—being left alone in front of the shrouded board. There is documentary evidence going back to the Middle Ages suggesting that just showing an offender the instrument of torture will be enough to break down his resistance.

  “We have many answers for which we are yet to find the right questions,” said Awner Blum by way of introduction. Pretty slick, thought Henry, sipping his coffee, which was hot, but extremely weak. “You must be wondering why we’ve asked you here to headquarters, Mr. Hayden.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me, Mr. Blum, but it hurts me that you’re keeping the truth from me like this. What happened to my wife?”

  Blum and Jenssen exchanged brief glances. “The fact is we’ve come up against a mystery such as I have never before encountered in my career. We need your help. You knew your wife better than anyone else.”

  “So it was a crime.”

  “Why do you think that, Mr. Hayden?”

  “Well, here we are in police headquarters and you’re from the homicide squad—or am I mistaken?”

  “Not altogether. What is certain is that your wife didn’t die of natural causes. But it could have been suicide.”

  Henry looked across at Jenssen, who gave a friendly smile and, like Henry, sipped his weak coffee. Had he woken up next to a woman this morning? Had he read the paper, taken the wet laundry out of the washing machine, and made himself a hard-boiled egg for breakfast? Or did he prefer his eggs runny? What distinguishes policemen from criminals or civilized people from barbarians apart from the brutality of their instincts and the consistency of their breakfast eggs?

  “I’ve already told Mr. Jenssen that suicide was not an option for my wife. She was happy. We were happy. She’d never have left me on my own.”

  Again silence descended.

  “Is this going to be a quiz?” Henry asked. “Am I supposed to guess what my wife died of?”

  Jenssen put down his cup. “You found her bicycle and swimming things on the beach.”

  “We’ve already had that. My memory of it is beginning to fade, but yes, that’s where I found them.”

  “Your wife didn’t drown on the beach. She drowned twenty miles further east,” Jenssen continued. The men watched Henry process this information. Henry pictured the camper van on the cliffs and the naked British children throwing pinecones at each other.

  “How is that possible?”

  “We’re wondering that too. Your wife was sitting in a car. She was still strapped in. She crashed off a sheer cliff in the car into the sea.”

  Henry jumped up. “That’s not possible!”

  “Why not?”

  “Her car’s still in the barn.”

  “It wasn’t her car.” Blum went over to the board and pulled down the cover with a jerk. “This car belonged to Ms. Bettina Hansen, your editor.”

  The photos were in color and terrifyingly precise. The Subaru in profile and face-on. Eaten away by fish, Martha’s body sat in the driver’s seat, held only by a seat belt. Her exposed skull was barely covered by shreds of skin, the fleshless mouth was wide open, the teeth perfectly preserved. Henry closed his eyes. Once again the pictures returned. He saw her screaming soundlessly as she hit the windshield, saw her trying to open the door and the horribly cold water entering her lungs. He saw Martha die.

  The men let him take his time. He contemplated the pictures in silence, then he turned his back on the men and looked out the window onto the bleak yard.

  Eventually Jenssen cleared his throat. “A landslide on the cliffs produced a shock wave which washed the car up to the surface between the rocks, in case you’re interested.”

  “Who did you say the car belonged to?”

  “It belonged to Ms. Bettina Hansen, your editor.”

  Henry turned around and looked into the men’s faces. They looked like deaf and dumb men hearing the Queen of the Night’s aria for the first time. “That’s the answer,” Henry said quietly, “and what’s the question?”

  “The question is: Can you, Mr. Hayden, explain why your dead wife is sitting in the car of your missing editor?”

  “I don’t see how it’s possible, no. Would you be so kind as to cover the pictures up again? It’s very painful.” Blum cast a glance at Jenssen, who pulled the cloth over the pictures again.

  “Did your wife and your editor know one another?”

  “They’d met. At a cocktail party in the garden of my publisher—now also deceased.” Out of the corner of his eye, Henry saw one of the police officers put his hand in his jacket pocket without taking it out again. He was presumably switching on a hidden recording device.

  “They sometimes went swimming together.” Henry could feel the atmosphere in the room gradually becoming charged. “I never went with them. Martha told me that Betty was not a good swimmer. You must know that Martha’s passions were swimming and hiking.” Jenssen whipped out a ballpoint pen.

  “Do you mind if I take notes?”

  “Not at all. We led a very—how shall I put it—regular life. I write at night. That’s when the best ideas come to me. In the mornings I sleep in. My wife would go swimming or hiking.”

  “Where? Did she have favorite hiking paths?”

  “That wasn’t her style. She always made quite spontaneous decisions. She liked to take out-of-the-way paths where you don’t meet a soul. She loved nature, solitude . . . Do you have a map?”

  The men looked at each other, then Jenssen shot out of the room and returned shortly afterward with the dart-riddled map. Henry watched as the officers struggled to spread the map out on the floor. He could see all the lines and dots on it. “Just ignore the holes in the map, Mr. Hayden. Do you know where your wife liked to go hiking?”

  “But of course,” replied Henry, crouching down. “She told me a lot about it.” He pointed to various regions. “Here, for example—this forest here where all the dots are, she often went walking there. It’s supposed to be quite beautiful.”

  The detectives were getting into a holiday mood. “And here?” Blum pointed to the area by the cliffs.

  “Martha loved the sea and had an excellent head for heights. She loved walking high up above the sea, right by the edge as it were—you couldn’t look at her. I always wanted to give her a phone so she could reach me in an emergency, but she didn’t want one. She hated mobile phones.”

  “There’s our mystery caller!” crowed Blum later in the men’s room.

  “And that,” Jenssen replied, concentrating on establishing a stream, “would make Martha Hayden the baby’s father, the man leading a double life who’s a master of disguise and knows all about location technology?”

  Blum was already drying his hands. “A successful de
tective, Jenssen, must be capable of abandoning working hypotheses. Think abstract. We were barking up the wrong tree. Now there are new facts coming in.”

  Jenssen washed his hands, which he wouldn’t have done if his boss hadn’t been standing next to him. “Why,” he asked, “does she call the editor rather than, say, her husband? What does she have to discuss with her? And why in secret?” Blum reached out for the door handle.

  “That’s what we were born to find out. But not you, eh, Jenssen?”

  When the two men returned, Henry had pulled the cover off the board and was looking at the photos again. “I can’t believe my wife crashed into the sea in that car. Are you sure it’s Betty’s? She told me it was stolen.”

  “It is her car, Mr. Hayden, and that question is very much on our minds too. She reported the car stolen, but couldn’t produce the key. Of course she couldn’t, it’s still in the ignition, as we now know. She told the insurance company”—Jenssen looked at a document—“that she didn’t want any money for the car.”

  “That’s odd. She told me about this man, this . . .”

  Blum waved him aside. “If the car had been stolen, she would have had at least one key.”