by Jo Nesbo
I nodded as I gazed out across the beach. Looked different today. No sun. Waves that whispered peacefully as they rolled onto the sand without breaking.
After a brisk twenty-minute walk we were out on the point and looking up at Where Eagles Dare. It looked more intimidating with the steel-grey clouds hanging over it. We put on our climbing harnesses and Julian handed me two bunches of quickdraws.
‘I imagine you probably want to climb it onsight,’ he said.
‘Thanks, you overestimate me, but I’ll see how far I get.’ I clipped the quickdraws into the harness, attached myself to the rope, pulled on the old but comfortable climbing shoes I had used in the Lake District and dipped my hands into the bag of resin fastened on a cord around my waist. Instead of stepping the two paces to the wall, I walked out to the edge of the path and looked down.
‘That’s where they found him,’ I said, nodding down towards the breakers. They were calmer today but the sound still reached up to us after a short delay. ‘But you already knew that.’
‘Yes, I knew,’ said the voice behind me. ‘How long have you known?’
‘Known what?’
I turned to face him. He was pale. Maybe it was just the light, but for a moment that almost white pallor made me think of Trevor. But there again, nowadays I think quite often of Trevor.
‘Nothing,’ he said, his face and voice expressionless as he threaded the rope through the manual ATC brake fastened to his halter and ritually checked his equipment list. ‘You’re in, the carabiner is fastened, the rope is long enough, and your knot looks fine.’
I nodded.
Placed one foot in the overhanging wall and gripped into the first obvious handhold. Tensed my body and got my other foot up.
The first ten metres of the climb were fine. I moved easily. Losing those kilos and getting the muscles back had made all the difference. And my climber’s psyche was in good shape too. The previous year I had fallen several times on routes that were minimally bolted, and when the rope stopped my swaying fall after some eight or ten metres I didn’t even feel relief, only a mild disappointment that I hadn’t managed the route without a fall. But here the permanent bolts were close together, and in the event of a fall the drop would be short. I actually began to wonder if I had brought along enough quickdraws as I fastened them to the bolts and clipped in the rope.
I heard a gull screech at the same instant as my thin limestone hold broke away. I fell. It lasted only a moment, that state so often and so inaccurately described as weightlessness. Then the rope and the harness tensed around my waist and thighs. A short, hard fall. I looked down at Julian who was standing on the ground with the rope tensioning out from the brake in the harness.
‘Sorry,’ he shouted. ‘You fell so quickly I didn’t have time to take your fall.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I shouted back, and since I couldn’t get close enough to the overhanging rock face I started to pull myself up the rope using just the muscle power of my arms. Even though it was barely three metres and Julian used his body weight to pull in the slack, the climbing rope was so thin and slippery that by the time I reached the bolt from which the rope hung I was completely exhausted. I looked at my hands. I had already worn off a lot of skin.
After a rest I continued climbing. I had to grab hold of one of the quickdraws at the crux, the toughest point of the route, but apart from that I felt the coming of the flow, when there’s no need to think, the hands and feet seem to solve the stream of equations with one and two unknowns all by themselves. Reaching the top fifteen metres later I clipped the rope into the anchor with a sense of inner content that was deep and calm. I hadn’t managed it without a fall, but the climb had been magical nevertheless. I turned to take in the view. According to George, on a clear day you could see the coast of Turkey from Kalymnos, but today I saw only: the sea, myself, the route. And the rope that ran down to the man I had saved, and who would save me.
‘Ready!’ I shouted. ‘You can lower me down!’
I sank down through the still, heavy afternoon air. Daylight was already fading; once Julian had tried the route we would have to head back if we were to avoid walking along the steep, stony path in the dark. But something told me that Julian wouldn’t be making the climb when, after a few metres in which I lowered myself, I suddenly saw the dark section on the yellow rope passing inside me on its way up to the anchor.
The midpoint marker.
‘The rope’s too short!’ I shouted.
Even though there was no wind, it might well have been the case that the surf, the crying of the gulls or simple absent-mindedness meant that he didn’t hear me and continued to haul me down.
‘Julian!’
But he continued to pay out the rope, faster now.
I looked down at the sea, then in towards the path where the rest of the rope snaked its way up, like a cobra dancing to a flute. And I could see it now, there was no knot in the loose end of the rope.
‘Julian!’ I shouted again. I was so close to him I could the deadness in his facial expression. He was going to kill me, there were only a few seconds remaining before the end of the rope slid unhindered right through the brake, and I would fall.
‘Franz!’
The elasticated rope was pulled tight and tensed above the drop. My harness was pressing into the small of my back. My descent had stopped, I swayed up and down in the empty air. It was just two or three metres down to Julian, but since I was hanging vertically from the anchor at the top, I dangled over the edge where the track ran. If the rope passed through the brake I would fall past Julian and all the fifty or sixty metres down to the rocks where the waves frothed like the contents of a smashed champagne bottle.
‘Looks like the rope isn’t eighty metres after all,’ said Julian. ‘Sorry – to err is human.’ His face didn’t look as if he was sorry.
It was his endgame now. That end was located twenty centimetres below the brake and his hand. Right now it was the only thing holding me. Owing to the angle and the friction in the brake it wasn’t hard for him to hold me there. On the other hand, he couldn’t do it forever. And when he let go it wouldn’t look like a murder but like an all too common type of climbing accident: the rope was too short.
I nodded. ‘You’re right, Franz…’
He didn’t respond.
‘…it is human to err.’
We studied each other. Him half standing on the track, half sitting on the halter and the rope, me dangling directly above him, over the abyss.
‘Paradox,’ he said at length. ‘That’s a Greek word, isn’t it? Like when Ferdinand is afraid of the dark when it’s bedtime and he wants Daddy to tell him fairy stories until he’s asleep. But he insists that they’re scary stories. Isn’t that a paradox?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Perhaps not.’
‘In any case, you can see the darkness coming, maybe you should tell a scary story now, Nikos. And then maybe you and I won’t be so afraid.’
‘How about we resolve this situation here first?’
He loosened his grip on the rope, let it slip a few centimetres closer to the brake.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that the resolution will lie in the story you tell.’
I swallowed. Looked down. A fall of sixty metres doesn’t take long. But you can get through quite a lot of thinking in the time it does take. Unfortunately you also have time to reach a speed of 123.5 kilometres an hour. Would I hit the water, just about survive the fall and drown? Or would I hit the rock and die an instantaneous and pain-free death? I had seen that one close up. The stillness and the absence of drama had been the most striking thing, even in the seconds after he hit the ground, before everybody began to scream and run around. It had turned cold, and yet I could feel the sweat running like molten wax. I had not planned to expose the fake Julian in this way, with my whole life quite literally in his hands. On t
he other hand it was logical. Indeed, in a way it made everything easier. The ultimatum would be clearer.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Are you ready?’
‘I’m ready.’
‘Once upon a time…’ I took a deep breath. ‘Once upon a time there was a man named Franz who was so jealous that he killed his twin brother Julian, so that he could have the lovely Helena all to himself. He took his brother down to a beach, shot him in the head and threw the body into the sea. But when Franz realised that Helena loved Julian, and only Julian, and that she didn’t want Franz, Franz arranged things in such a way that it looked as though it was him and not Julian who had ended up in the sea with a bullet through the head. Afterwards he chained himself up in a cellar, and when he was found he pretended to be Julian, and to have been there ever since Julian had been reported missing. Everyone believed him, everyone believed he was Julian, and so Franz did get his Helena, and they all lived happily ever after. Satisfied?’
He shook his head but still held on to the rope. ‘You’re not a born storyteller, Nikos.’
‘True.’
‘You have, for example, no proof.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘With proof you wouldn’t have come here alone, and I would have been arrested a long time ago. And I happen to know that you’ve left the police force. These days you spend your time sitting in the National Library reading books, am I right?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I use the Gennadius Library.’
‘So then what’s this visit all about? Is this the old man come to pursue the case that won’t give him any peace because he no longer feels certain he discovered the truth?’
‘It’s true I’m not at peace,’ I said. ‘Though it’s not about this case. But it is not true that I’m here in search of proof, because I already have proof.’
‘You’re lying.’ The knuckles of the hand holding the rope whitened.
‘No,’ I said. ‘When the DNA from the body in the sea matched what we got from Franz during the interrogation, everybody thought that wrapped things up. But of course there was one more possibility. Because identical twins come from the same egg and share a genetic heritage, they also have the same DNA profile. So in theory the body we found could just as well have been Julian as Franz.’
‘So what? Just as well is not the same as proof that it wasn’t Franz.’
‘Correct. I didn’t get my proof until I received the fingerprints that you, Franz, left on the glass you drank from during our conversation at the police station in Pothia. I compared them with the prints I had at home in Athens.’
‘Athens?’
‘To be precise, on a box on a shelf above my bed. On the stone you gave me at the hospital. Yes, paradox is Greek, and the paradox here is that even though twins have identical DNA profiles, their fingerprints are not identical.’
‘That’s not true. We compared fingerprints, and they are the same.’
‘Almost the same.’
‘We have the same DNA, so how is that possible?’
‘Because fingerprints are not decided one hundred per cent by genetics. They’re also affected by your surroundings in the womb. The position one foetus lies in in relation to the other. The difference in the length of the umbilical cord which, in turn, creates a difference in the bloodstream and the access to nourishment which, again, determines how quickly the fingers grow. By the time your fingerprints are fully formed, which is at some point between week thirteen and week nineteen of the pregnancy, small differences have arisen which are detectable on close examination. I gave them a close examination. And guess what? The fingerprints on the stone I got from you at the hospital when you were claiming to be Julian, and on the glass that you, Franz, drank from at the police station, were identical. In a nutshell, the two people were…’
‘…one and the same.’
‘Yes, Franz.’
Maybe it was just the onset of darkness, maybe just our always biased gaze that adjusts its bias on the basis of every new item of information received, but it seemed to me I could see Franz emerge in the person beneath me, see him throw away his mask and step out of the role he had been playing all these years.
‘And you are the only one who knows this?’ he said quietly.
‘That’s correct.’
From out at sea came the single, pained cry of a gull.
It really was true, the work I had done in reconstructing the crime and the identity switch had been done in isolation, and with no other tools but these fingerprints, my halting logic, and my vivid powers of imagination.
He killed Julian the night they drove to the hospital, probably while they were still quarrelling and in a moment of jealous rage. I presumed it was true that in an effort to get Franz to give up Helena, Julian claimed to have been in touch with her that same day, revealed that he was the twin brother and had tricked her, and that Helena nevertheless said that it was him, Julian, that she wanted. Julian lied to Franz; Helena didn’t know she had been with both twins until I told her. And yet Julian knew he was right, that she would prefer him, because when it came to capturing a woman’s heart he would always win out over his gloomy brother. I guessed that Franz, maddened by jealousy, pulled out the Luger and shot his brother there and then. And that in that same blind rage, with no thought for the consequences, sent that text message to Helena saying he had killed Julian, the one he thought she had promised herself to. But then Franz regained his composure. And it became clear to him that, if he played his cards right, Helena might still be his. He found a spot where he could drive all the way down to the sea, undressed the body and threw it into the sea. After that Franz drove back to Massouri, returned Julian’s clothes, phone and other personal items to the room, and reported him missing the following morning, saying he had gone out before daybreak for a swim. Even though it was credible that Julian had drowned, Franz knew that if we found out about their quarrel the previous evening, it might make us take a closer look at him, so he deleted the message he had sent to Helena. He also deleted the log that showed he had made eight attempts to call Victoria, who had seen him return home alone that night. Probably he wanted to talk to Victoria to explain it away, and to persuade her not to complicate matters by telling the police. But after talking to me at the police station in Pothia he realised that we could trace the log and the text messages through the phone company. He also learned that I had spoken with Helena, and while on his way to the rock face at Odysseus he had seen me talking to Victoria. Franz realised that the net was closing in on him.
And was desperate.
The only card he still held was that Julian’s body had not yet been found. And that he and Julian had the same DNA, so that if Julian’s body was found, it might be possible to fool us into believing it was Franz.
Franz Schmid’s only hope was to disappear, to cease to exist. So he staged his own suicide. Called me from the beach and announced it in such a way as to leave no doubt about it. Planted the idea that maybe Julian wasn’t dead, that he might yet be found in his ‘prison of love’. He had to express it like that to give himself time to get up to Palechora before we solved his riddle, but he probably hadn’t reckoned on my taking several days to do it. After his phone conversation with me he left his clothes and mobile phone in the car, walked barefoot out into the waves and threw away the Luger so that if we found it that would strengthen the likelihood of suicide. Climbed ashore again on the rocks and from there made his way to Palechora, it can’t have taken him much more than an hour. It was night, there was a storm, so he knew the chances of encountering anyone or at least anyone who would recognise him were minimal.
‘You had a woollen blanket with you but you must have had clothing and shoes to get up to Palechora,’ I said. ‘Where did you get rid of them?’
I could see Franz loosening his hold, saw the yellow-taped end slide up towards his hand.
‘In Chora,’ he said. ‘In a rubbish bin below the fortress walls. Along with the packaging for the emetic and the laxatives I took so that it would look as though I had been chained there for a long time before you found me. I made it up to the cellar, and then I shat and puked like a pig. I really thought it wouldn’t take you long to find me.’
‘You stayed in the cellar the whole time?’
‘During daylight hours yes, otherwise I risked being seen from Chora, or by tourists. But I went out at night to get some fresh air.’
‘And of course, you didn’t chain yourself to the wall until you knew that “rescue” wasn’t far away. The key to the handcuffs, where did you hide that?’
‘I swallowed it.’
‘And that was all you ate while you were there? No wonder you looked a good deal thinner.’
Franz Schmid laughed. ‘Four kilos. It shows, when you’re already thin to begin with. I got a bit desperate when I realised you weren’t taking the hint. I started shouting for help. And when I finally heard people walking out there, I had shouted myself hoarse and almost lost my voice.’
‘That’s why your voice was different,’ I said. ‘You had just shouted until you were hoarse.’
‘No one heard me,’ said Franz.
‘No one heard you,’ I repeated.
I took a deep breath. The climbing harness tightened, constricting the circulation, and my feet were already beginning to contract. I knew, of course, that he might have two reasons for confessing. One was that, come what may, he intended to let me drop into the abyss. The other, that it feels good to confess. To shift the burden over onto someone else. It’s the reason that confession is one of the church’s most popular attractions.
‘So you assumed the life of your own brother,’ I said.
Franz Schmid shrugged. ‘Julian and I knew each other’s lives inside out, so it was easier than you might think. I promised Helena I would soon be back, then I travelled home. I kept away from people who knew us too well, like family and friends, and Julian’s work colleagues. The isolation and a couple of other strange situations were excused as loss of memory as a result of the trauma I had been through. The hardest thing was the funeral, when my mother said she was convinced that I was Franz, and that grief must have driven her mad. And the speeches, when I realised how many people loved me. After the burial I left my job, meaning Julian’s job, and came back here to Kalymnos. Helena and I had a small wedding – only Mother was invited from my side. But she wouldn’t come. She thinks I stole Helena from Franz, and that Helena has betrayed Franz. We had almost no contact until the birth of Ferdinand. But since I sent a few pictures of Ferdinand we’ve spoken on the phone. So we’ll see how it works out.’