Magdalena said Tommaso’s name as he entered the hospice. “Signor di Barbara?” she whispered. A blissful peace reigned over the place. No one ever raised a voice. As if the intent were to prepare the dying for the eternal silence they would soon encounter.
“Your mother was suffering badly last night. I sat with her all night.”
She looked at him with her lovely eyes. It was crude of him to have such a thought, but he couldn’t help it: Why had she become a nun when she was so beautiful?
“You have a good heart, Sister Magdalena. My mother is lucky to have you at her side.”
“And to have a son like you.”
She meant what she said—Tommaso had no doubt about that—but like clockwork, his guilty conscience instantly flared up.
“I’ll have more time now.” He hesitated. Why should he tell her? “I’ve been suspended from my job.”
She took his hand. “Maybe that’s a blessing.”
He had to suppress a slight chuckle. A blessing?
“Your mother has been asking for you.”
“I’m sorry about that, but I was working the night shift at the station.”
“It sounded like she was worried about you. She kept saying that there was something you shouldn’t pay for.”
“Pay for?”
“Something about money that you shouldn’t pay. That it was dangerous.”
Tommaso gave her a puzzled look. “My mother said that?”
“Yes. Several times. ‘Don’t pay the money, Tommaso—it’s dangerous.’ ”
Sister Magdalena watched Tommaso di Barbara head down the corridor, carrying a shopping bag in one hand and a big cardboard box under his arm. There was something dejected about him, she thought as he walked past the eight rooms that the only hospice in Venice had at its disposal. Tommaso’s mother was in the room at the end, facing the courtyard. Except for one palm tree, the trees were all bare. As if to make up for this, the nurses in the hospice had put up Christmas decorations in the hall: boughs and some shiny garlands around the portrait of Mary and the newborn Savior.
Sister Magdalena always listened carefully to the last wishes of the dying. She knew from experience that those who had one foot on the other side were sometimes allowed a glimpse into the future, into the beyond. Most often what dying people said was sheer gibberish. But not always. Magdalena had taken care of the terminally ill ever since she entered the Order of the Sacred Heart fifteen years ago. She had seen and heard a great deal. She knew that it couldn’t always be dismissed as nonsense.
In her former life—that was how she always thought of it—Sister Magdalena had been a prostitute. But God saved her. She had no doubt about that. She even had proof: the receipt for a bicycle that she’d taken in to be repaired.
In Manila she had been the frequent companion of an American who was an ex-pilot. He had settled in the Philippines and spent his pension on girls and alcohol. He’d fought in the Vietnam War and had scars to show for it on his stomach and legs. Probably also on his soul. But now he was dying. It was not a dignified death; he’d never managed to master his desires. Magdalena was supposed to come every day to give him a blow job. He paid her, of course, but as the cancer ate away at his body, it took longer and longer for him to reach orgasm.
This was before she took the name of Magdalena. It was another time, and she was another person. The aging pilot once owned a bar, most likely to give himself an excuse for his alcoholism. It was there that Magdalena had met him. Now he was ill and would die all alone.
But something happened that had changed her life. The last time she went to visit the pilot, he was delirious. He grabbed Magdalena’s hand and said, “Don’t go there.” At first she had tried to comfort him, telling him to “calm down” and “everything will be fine.” But he kept insisting. “You mustn’t go there.” Then he described the building across from the Shaw Boulevard Station, right around the corner from where Magdalena rented a room. There was a bicycle repair shop on the ground floor. Green shutters, peeling blue paint revealing that the facade had once been a different pastel color.
The next day the pilot was dead. The following week the building near the Shaw Boulevard Station collapsed. Magdalena had taken her bicycle to the shop to be repaired, but she hadn’t dared to pick it up. Nineteen people had died.
She had taken her vows. Entered the Order of the Sacred Heart. Changed her name to Magdalena—the whore whom Jesus saved from being stoned to death.
Ever since, she had sat at the bedsides of the dying for six days of every week. One week during the nighttime, the next in the daytime. Then one day off, during which she slept and watched Friends on TV.
Sister Magdalena had told the doctor in charge of the hospice about her experience, although she’d left out most of the sleazy details. The doctor had smiled and patted her hand. What other proof did anyone need? she asked herself. The old pilot had never seen the building that housed the bicycle repair shop. It was not in a neighborhood frequented by foreigners, and yet he was able to describe it in detail. It’s important to listen to the dying, no matter how big a sinner the person might be, she often thought. The pilot had gone to war; he had killed people. Then he had turned to drink, and he’d beaten the girls he hired for sex. Yet God had chosen to speak through him to save her life. It was important to listen to the dying.
Sister Magdalena hoped that Tommaso di Barbara would listen to his dying mother.
Tommaso’s mother was asleep, her mouth open. She was snoring very faintly. Tommaso set the bag with his purchases on the small stove and the box containing the murder investigation documents on the floor. The materials from his office wardrobe were all inside the box that Marina had smuggled out of the police station. As if the documents were condemned to shun the light—something that no one wanted to hear about.
Tommaso had brought spicy salami, tomatoes, and garlic for his mother. She had no appetite, but she was fond of the strong smells. That was something Tommaso could understand. He also felt a need to cover up the overwhelming smell of death and cleaning fluids in the hospice. Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to do. Even though all the rooms had been newly remodeled, each with a stove and a bed for the patients, no ventilation had been installed over the stoves. The smell of basil and thyme quickly spread through the building. And that was a blessing.
“Mother?”
Tommaso sat down next to her bed and took her hand. Her skin was stretched tight over her knuckles. There was so much they hadn’t talked about. So much that he didn’t know about her life. Such as the war period, when Tommaso’s father had spent several months in prison. He had supported the wrong side, although that was probably not how he viewed it, even later in life. He had remained a faithful fascist for the rest of his days, dying prematurely. “Now we’ll finally have peace,” Tommaso’s mother had said when they buried him in the cemetery. Cremated. The urn was added to an amazing mosaic of urns stacked on top of one another. It was a labyrinth, and Tommaso nearly got lost the first time he paid a visit. The cemetery on the island outside the city couldn’t get any bigger. To solve the problem of limited space, it had been built upward. The result was passageways that towered against the sky, one corridor after another stacked with small rectangular boxes. Tommaso doubted his mother would want the space that had been reserved for her next to his father. It was time to ask her.
“Mother?”
She woke up. Looked at him without saying a word and with no sign that she even recognized him.
“It’s me.”
“I can see that. Do you think I’m blind?”
He smiled. She was a tough cookie. Never reluctant to deliver a good thrashing or a spanking. But also capable of offering comfort. Tommaso took a deep breath. He couldn’t put it off any longer. “Mother. You know the place where Father’s ashes are kept . . .”
No answer. His mother was staring up at the ceiling.
“When you pass away one day, is that where you’d like to have your ashes
?”
“Did you bring the groceries?”
“Mother.”
“Cook me some food, my boy. Just so I can enjoy the smell of it.”
He shook his head. She patted his hand. “I’ve told Sister Magdalena everything that you need to know. She’ll tell you. Afterward. Be sure to listen to her.”
He tried to get up, but she squeezed his hand with astonishing strength. “Do you hear me? I’m going to tell everything to Sister Magdalena. Do as she says.”
He hesitated. Remembered the sister telling him some nonsense about money that he wasn’t supposed to pay. He smiled, wanting to reassure her. “All right, Mother. I’ll do that.”
20
Helsingør—Denmark
An hour’s drive, and a whole new world opened up.
It was as if he saw the city only when he headed out into the countryside. The noise, the crowds, the traffic—he lived in a state of constant upheaval. So the question was whether he would truly see the countryside when he arrived back in the city. The wide-open sky. The flat, expansive landscape dotted with summer houses that he encountered as dusk fell. Fields, paths, and clearings all merged into one. He caught a glimpse of the waters of Øresund beyond a cluster of dark trees.
Niels stomped on the brake. He checked the road sign and backed up a few feet. Gravel crunched under the tires. Then he turned off and drove forward a couple of hundred yards and parked near the only house on the road, at the end. A faint light was visible in a window. The name plate on the mailbox said LUND.
Nobody opened the door when Niels knocked.
He stood there, listening. A mosquito whistled past his ear. He waved it away with surprise. Shouldn’t all the mosquitoes be dead now that it was December? He knocked again, this time harder. Still no answer. Niels walked around the side of the house. Not a breath of wind. The air was calm and cold. He stepped onto a small veranda facing the sea. He was about to knock on the terrace door when he heard a faint splashing. He turned around and saw someone standing on the dock below. A woman. Niels could see only the outline of her body. He walked down the slope.
“Excuse me.” Niels felt almost guilty at interrupting such a beautiful moment of silence. “I’m looking for Gustav Lund.”
The woman turned around and stared at him. She was holding a fishing pole in her hand. “Gustav?”
“I’d like to speak to him.”
“He’s in Vancouver. Who are you?”
“Niels Bentzon, from the Copenhagen Police.”
No reaction at all, which was unusual. Niels was used to prompting all sorts of reactions whenever he announced that he was from the police. Fear, panic, contempt, defiance, relief. The woman merely looked at him and said, “I’m Hannah Lund. Gustav won’t be coming back. I live here alone now.”
The furniture wasn’t really appropriate for a summer house.
It was much too nice. Too expensive. Niels wasn’t interested in furniture, but there were periods—or so it seemed to him—when Kathrine talked of nothing else. That was why he recognized a number of designer pieces. Wegener, Mogensen, Klint, Jacobsen. If the furniture in this summer house was genuine, it was worth a fortune.
A pair of gleaming cat eyes regarded Niels with curiosity as he looked around the house. The living room was a huge mess. There were plates and dirty coffee cups on all the tables. Cat toys, shoes, and old newspapers littered the floor. Laundry had been hung up to dry over one of the ceiling crossbeams. A piano took up most of the space at one end of the room. The other end was filled with books. The disarray was in sharp contrast to the expensive furniture, though it somehow lent the pieces a sense of purpose. Maybe because it was nice to see such costly furniture actually being used. Whenever Niels and Kathrine, on rare occasions, visited some of Kathrine’s architect colleagues—Niels usually tried to get out of such visits—an uneasy feeling always came over him. A feeling of inadequacy. He didn’t like standing in one of those fancy apartments in the Østerbro district, sipping his Corton-Charlemagne white wine, which cost six hundred kroner a bottle, surrounded by Europe’s most expensive designer furniture, and hardly daring to sit down on the sofa. Kathrine just laughed at him.
“So Gustav is supposed to be a good person?” Hannah suppressed a smile as she handed Niels a cup of coffee. “Are you sure you’ve got the right man?”
“That’s what they all say. Except for the guy from the Red Cross.” Niels stirred his instant coffee, catching sight of a small framed photograph showing Hannah next to a tall, lanky teenage boy. Clearly her son. She had her arm around him. They were standing in front of Foucault’s pendulum in Paris.
“Why Gustav?”
“The computer chose him. Because of something he said when he accepted the Fields Medal.”
“ ‘In the long run, it will be a mathematician who saves the world.’ ”
“Exactly.”
“And that’s why Gustav’s name showed up on the screen?”
“Gustav is your ex-husband?”
He studied her as she began explaining her marital status in a long, roundabout way. How old was she? Forty? Forty-five? There was something disorderly about her. Something that matched the house: a bit gloomy and messy, yet interesting and complex. She had dark, serious-looking eyes. Her longish brown hair was tousled, as if she’d just gotten out of bed. Even though the floor was cold, she had kicked off her shoes and walked around barefoot. Jeans, a white shirt, a lovely fair complexion. A slender figure. She wasn’t beautiful. If Niels hadn’t had other things on his mind, he might have pondered why in the world he was attracted to this woman. It was probably quite simple, he told himself. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and Niels could see much more through her shirt than she probably would have liked.
“I started out as his student.”
Niels tried to concentrate on what Hannah was saying. She sat down on the sofa, wrapping a gray blanket covered with cat hair around her thin shoulders. “I’m an astrophysicist, and I had lots of discussions with him about mathematics. Gustav is one of Europe’s leading mathematicians.”
“You’re an astrophysicist?”
“Yes. Or rather, I used to be. We started seeing each other socially. At first I was mostly amazed that a genius like Gustav—and I don’t hesitate to call him a genius, because he really is—would bother to flirt with me. Later I fell in love with him. And then we had Johannes.” She stopped abruptly. Niels saw something else in her expression. Sorrow? Yes, sorrow. He saw it just as he remembered that Gustav Lund had lost his son. Johannes was dead. He had committed suicide.
Silence descended over the room. It wasn’t unpleasant. Neither of them tried to salvage the situation with superficial chatter. She knew that he knew.
“Do you live out here all year round?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you get lonely?”
“That’s not what you’re here to talk about.”
The abrupt chill in her voice was meant to cover her grief. He could tell by looking at her. It was something she preferred to keep to herself. Dealing with grief was the cornerstone of a negotiator’s job; it was what the psychologists had spent the most time teaching Niels and the other police officers. It was when people couldn’t handle their grief that things went wrong, leading to guns and hostages and suicide. More than once Niels had been forced to convey the terrible news to parents that their child was gone. He was familiar with the different phases that someone had to move through when overcome by grief. He wondered how long it had been since Hannah’s son had committed suicide. She seemed to be in the so-called new orientation phase: that stage when the grief-stricken person attempted to redirect her attention to the world. When she once again—although perhaps only briefly—dared to look toward the future. It was the phase that ultimately involved saying goodbye. Taking leave of the loved one. It was the most difficult phase of all, a long, inward journey, and many were forced to give up along the way. If they lost the battle, the result was a terrifying defeat: a life spe
nt in deep depression. In some cases, the individual would end up as a psychiatric patient, while others found themselves balancing on the edge of a bridge or the top of a building. And then Niels would be summoned to the scene.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you.” Niels made a move to leave. “As I said, it’s nothing major. No reason to worry.”
“I’m not worried. They can go ahead and shoot Gustav, if they like.” She fixed her eyes on Niels’s face, as if she wanted to underscore that she meant every word she’d said. She was standing a little too close, but Niels was probably the only person who would have noticed that. There was something awkward about her body language. He’d noticed it down at the dock. But maybe that’s just how scientists are, he thought. Their expansive intelligence took up more space in their brains, edging out the usual social skills.
Though he could smell the sweetness of her breath, he took a small step back. A phone was ringing somewhere. It took him a moment to pinpoint the sound to his own pocket. He pulled out his cell and looked at the display: a foreign number.
“Excuse me a minute. Hello?” Niels listened. At first there was only noise on the line. “Hello? Who’s calling?”
Finally, a voice became audible. It was Tommaso di Barbara, the man Niels had called earlier. He was speaking Italian, although very slowly, as if that might help.
“Do you speak English?” Niels asked.
Tommaso apologetically said no. At least he understood what Niels was asking. “Scusi.” And then he suggested French.
“No. Wait a second.” Niels turned to look at Hannah. “Do you happen to speak Italian? Or French?”
She nodded hesitantly, then looked as if she instantly regretted admitting to it. “French. A little.”
“Just a minute. You can speak to my assistant.” Niels held out his cell phone. “The police in Venice. Just listen to what he wants to tell me.”
The Last Good Man Page 11