The Truth and Other Lies Page 9

  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 gentleme
n 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.

  Henry went into his study and returned with a vacation photo of Martha and him together in Portugal. The policewoman examined it for a long time as if she wanted to creep inside it. Her pinched face with its narrow eyes under a bushy unibrow made Henry think of an opossum. Maybe he could pair her off with the marten in his roof at some point; it might result in some interesting offspring. The silver streaks in her dark hair seemed to suggest that she was severely over-acidified as a result of professional mistrust.

  She passed the photo on to Jenssen and curiously sniffed at the air, which Henry found irritating. Was she somehow checking for molecules of guilt and fear? All dogs can smell fear; some can even smell epilepsy and cancer. Why not guilt? Guilt emissions must linger around everyone who is afraid of discovery or punishment. Fortunately there are not yet any devices finely tuned enough to detect such molecules. But they may yet come.

  Henry’s suspicion intensified in the kitchen when the woman bent over the packet containing Martha’s clothes and sniffed it.

  “What color is her swimsuit?”

  “Blue. What do you smell?” he asked.

  “Can we take this with us?” came her reply.

  “Will I get them back again? They’re very private things.”

  “How often did your wife go swimming in the sea?”

  Her habit of not answering Henry’s questions was getting on his nerves. “My wife goes swimming every day. Even in the winter when it snows. She’s a fantastic swimmer. Do you swim too?”

  “Do you know the sea here?”

  “Only to look at. I don’t go in.”

  Jenssen now showed off his nautical knowledge—no doubt a legacy from his ancestors—and described the strong northwesterly currents. There were often shoes washed ashore after swimming accidents, especially plastic shoes; they drifted as far as Greenland, sometimes with a foot still inside. Henry remembered Obradin telling him he occasionally saw ownerless shoes floating in the sea. He suddenly thought of Obradin. Why hadn’t he come to offer his condolences?

  “But your wife wasn’t wearing swimming shoes when she went in the water.”

  The opossum was pointing at Martha’s swimming shoes with her spindly finger. The blood rose in Henry’s throat when he realized his annoying mistake. He hadn’t been thinking. It was logical that Martha would have gone in the water wearing her swimming shoes—why would she leave them on the beach?

  “To be honest, I’m surprised at that too,” Henry replied. “My wife always wears her rubber sandals when she goes in the water, because of the sharp stones. She has sensitive feet.”

  “It’s possible,” put in Jenssen, who had noticed Henry’s stoic use of the present tense, “that her shoes were washed up and then blown over the beach by the wind. That’s why you found them.”

  A good explanation. Henry was coming to like the fellow more and more. He decided to take a risk.

  “You know all about this kind of thing, Mr. Jenssen. Is it possible that my wife was kidnapped?”

  The policeman knit his brows. “Has anyone been in touch?”

  Henry shook his head.

  “Would you pay a ransom for your wife?” the evil colleague asked.

  This question showed that her sense of smell was considerably better developed than her cerebral cortex. Of course he’d pay! No sum would be too large if it would bring back his wife.

  “Money’s no object,” Henry replied with emphasis.

  “Did your wife leave a farewell letter?”

  Oh, these uneducated people! They didn’t know Martha. She wouldn’t have announced her suicide in writing or—worse still—given reasons for it. Everything she did, she did without giving reasons; everything was l’art pour l’art for her. Besides, it went against Martha’s fine sense of drama to announce something that then happened in any case.

  “No. She didn’t want to say good-bye, definitely not. Not to me, and not to life.”

  “Did she suffer from depression? Was she on medication?”

  “She laughs a lot and likes eating fish, if that’s what you mean.”

  The policeman ran his hand thoughtfully through his butter-yellow hair. He had no sense of humor. “If I may ask a rather straight question—you didn’t have any marital problems, weren’t planning to get divorced, were you? Just a question.”

  Henry touched the skin under his right eye. The numb feeling was coming back.

  “No way. Never.”

  Afterward, Henry showed the two of them through every room in the house. He spoke quietly, answered all their questions, gave a detailed and truthful description of the search for his wife, and of how he’d made dinner for her the evening before—and then burst into tears standing in front of her empty bed.

  Henry continued to speak of Martha in the present tense, as if she were still alive. He finished by showing them around the cellar, stables, barn, garden, and chapel. He gave them an old cardboard box for Martha’s clothes and then helped them lift her bicycle into the police car.

  Jenssen gave Henry his card.

  “Please let me know immediately if you find any trace of my wife,” Henry said as they parted. “No matter what it is.”

  After they left, he fetched a heavy mallet from the barn and started to smash up the wall behind Martha’s bed.

  9

  There was something not quite right about Henry’s story. Martha hadn’t drowned on
the beach. Betty didn’t believe she had returned home from the cliffs. What was clear was that her Subaru was still missing—who knew, maybe it was rusting away at the bottom of the sea with Martha in the driver’s seat. This all meant that Betty herself was mixed up in the affair. Strictly speaking, she was even partly to blame for Martha’s death, because she had stolen her husband from her—or had that been fate? If the car were to be found, there’d be a great many awkward questions. Betty decided to look on the bright side for the time being. Martha’s death had cleared the way for a life with Henry and the baby.

  She remembered how Henry had once said that if you make your dreams come true you have to live with them. He’d made happiness sound like a traumatic experience you could never entirely come to terms with. He himself no longer had any dreams, Henry had added; he’d already achieved everything. Apart from that, Henry had revealed hardly anything about himself. He never spoke of his past, as if it were some unsavory thing that had to be hidden away before the guests arrived for dinner. If he spoke at all, he spoke about the time after Betty had met him. She had the feeling that, for each person, Henry chose a past to suit the occasion. He twisted it like a kaleidoscope, always revealing a different aspect of the same thing.

  Moreany had proposed to her in his Jaguar in the parking lot outside the office. He spoke frankly of his feelings for her and of the fortune she would inherit when he was no longer around. Betty was surprised and genuinely touched. At the same time she felt another wave of nausea and asked him for some time to think it over, which she later regretted, because there wasn’t anything to think over. They parted with a kiss on the cheek. Moreany walked across the parking lot with a spring in his step; Betty unlocked her rental car to drive to the police. From long-established habit, she glanced up at the fourth floor. Honor Eisendraht was standing at the window.

  Honor tore a leaf off the dragon tree and crushed it between her fingers. She had observed the kiss by the Jaguar and now, watching Moreany cross the parking lot on winged feet, she felt a strong desire to flay the skin off her own face. When Honor had started to work for Moreany all those years ago she had been young and desirable. Why, oh why, had she kept quiet all those years in her office chair, serving and waiting until someone younger came along and took everything away from her? It is well known that our worst mistakes are the ones we don’t notice.