by Tim Weaver
‘So what happened then?’
‘In 1976, I get a call. Now I haven’t forgotten about Martin or his case – not least because his letters keep coming – but it’s been a long time.’ Callson swallows and rubs his fingers together. They make a coarse sound, like sandpaper. ‘I kind of think about it less often, I suppose. Something about it still eats at me, but only when one of his letters turns up, or I open that file again, which isn’t happening as much.’
‘Who called you?’
‘Someone patches the call through and says the guy won’t give his name but that he’s requested me specifically. So I pick up and the guy says, “Is that Detective Callson?” and I say, “Sure.” And he says, “I’d like to talk to you about the murder of Életke Kerekes and the wrongful conviction of Martin Nemeth.” ’
There’s a pause.
‘I was in my fifties by then. I’d been a cop for over twenty-five years. I was thinking of getting out. The seventies, they were a pretty shitty time at the LAPD. Racism and corruption and whatnot. I guess what I’m saying is, I was pretty down on the job when the call came through – I didn’t give much of a damn – but when I picked up, it was like my blood started pumping again.’
‘You were excited?’
‘For about thirty seconds, yeah.’
‘Only thirty seconds?’
‘This guy,’ he says, and then stops.
‘Did he tell you who he was?’
‘No. Not to start with.’
‘Did you meet him?’
‘No. He said he was “overseas” somewhere. It was a long-distance call, so the line was terrible. But this guy, he sounded …’ Callson looks away. He seems uncomfortable. ‘I thought he was some sort of kook.’
‘Crazy?’
‘Yeah. I mean, he was talking so fast I could hardly even hear him, and when I told him to slow down, I realized the guy was loaded.’
‘He was drunk?’
‘Yeah, absolutely stinko. I said to him, “Hold on a second, hold on a second. Let’s start with the basics here. What’s your name?” He said to me, “It doesn’t matter what my name is, just listen to what I’m trying to tell you,” and he started telling me how Glen Cramer and Saul Zeller were responsible for the death of Életke Kerekes, and that another man who he didn’t ID was involved too, and that they – all three of the men – framed the kid to cover up what they’d done.’
Callson pauses for a moment. ‘I said to him, “I’m extremely interested in what you’ve got to say” – and I meant every word of it – “but I need your name before we can go any further,” and he said, “Just look into it! Just look into it!” I mean, he’s screaming down the phone like a fucking lunatic at this point. I said, “Calm down and give me your name, sir. I want to hear what you have to say. I genuinely mean that.” But he was already talking over me again, saying, “Zeller will try to tell you someone else did it, but it was him, it was him. I know it was him. He killed Életke Kerekes, so did Cramer, so did …” He stops short of telling me the name of the third guy. Then he said, “Look, if you don’t do anything about it, I’m going to go to the newspapers.” At that point, I knew he was bluffing. He wasn’t going to go to the newspapers, or anyone else for that matter, because he’d already given himself away. He’d given himself away when he’d stopped short of telling me who the third guy was. So I waited there, let him chew on the silence for a while, and I said to him, “Were you the third guy that night, sir?” ’
‘What did he say to that?’
‘He said he wasn’t.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘I’m not sure what I believed at the time. You’ve got to remember, this guy sounded like a crank. We had junkies and freaks and fanatics calling us all day every day confessing to things, trying to get people they hated arrested for crimes they’d never committed. Half my time used to be spent filtering out pricks like that. But this case was so old by that time – why would someone call up over twenty years later just to feed me a bunch of bullshit?’ Callson looks over at the windows, huge and black now that night has fallen. ‘It didn’t make any kind of sense to me.’
‘So what did he say next?’
‘Nothing. He hung up. He got cold feet.’
‘Cold feet?’
‘I think the reason he called was to confess. I could hear it in his voice. But he didn’t have the stomach for it. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.’
‘Did you go and see Zeller and Cramer again?’
‘Yep.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Same as before. I didn’t tell them about the phone call I got, because I couldn’t corroborate it. I just told them I was looking through some old files and came across the Kerekes murder. They were just as helpful in ’76 as they had been in ’53, but two decades after the crime, what the hell was I likely to find tying them to a murder?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Exactly. Zero.’
‘But, eventually, you found out it had been Robert Hosterlitz who had called you that day – is that correct? And you found out that he was telling you the truth?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How did you find out it was Hosterlitz?’
Callson, who has been looking directly into the lens, shifts his eyes left, just to the side of where the camera is set up on its tripod.
He is looking at the person asking the questions.
‘Because, two days ago, he turned up on my doorstep.’
70
The rain had finally stopped.
I dropped my eyes to the letter again, to the last few paragraphs. The handwriting had become less legible, the letters slanted, everything more hurried.
All I’d wanted was to meet you once, to see you again as a grown woman, to see with my own eyes that you were flourishing, and then I’d hand myself in and take the punishment that I deserved. But, halfway through that conversation with Callson, I just had this epiphany. I was drunk when I called him – that was the last drink I ever took – but not drunk enough to misunderstand the opportunity I had. As I talked to Callson, I thought, ‘It doesn’t have to be the end. I can make things up to Viktoria’ – or Lynda as you were then. ‘If I go on and do this movie with her instead of handing myself in, I can work with her every day.’
Again, basically, I was – I am – a weak man. I suppose, in a way, this cancer is my punishment. To die like this is my punishment. I never dreamed you might be attracted to me. All I wanted was the chance to meet you and spend some time with you – to listen to you talk. I would have been happy just to look at you and watch you. But I got more than that, much more, and it was wonderful. And yet, the whole time, the secret I was keeping from you, the fact that I still hadn’t confessed, was playing on my mind. A part of me needed to confess, even then, because I knew it was the right thing to do, the moral thing; but another part couldn’t because I didn’t want to hurt you, and I didn’t want what we had to be over. Our life, our marriage. So that was why I hid those messages in my films. I was confused, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Maybe I thought the truth would pass to you by osmosis – the more you watched the films, the more questions you’d ask, the more you’d understand what I was saying. But the better I hid things, the less likely I realized that would be, and that made me happy too. I tried to tell you and I tried not to tell you; I wanted to and I didn’t want to – and that was the battle that raged inside me for ten years.
Didn’t you ever wonder why I always used to film your eyes in close-up? Why I’d use them as windows to the rest of the scene? You would reflect silhouettes and shadows, as if they were the memories of the life you never knew, playing out inside your head. Didn’t you ever wonder why I repeated the same sequence of events, over and over? Maybe you did, but you never asked. I think a part of me was waiting for you to bring it up. Once, when I asked you for that paperback for my birthday, that true-crime book, I actually handed it to you and said, ‘I think this one case is
particularly fascinating,’ and I pointed to the chapter on the Venice Angel. I did it blatantly, almost willing myself to be caught, for you to finally ask, ‘Why do you find that case so fascinating?’ But when you didn’t read it, I was so relieved. My whole existence with you was both utterly wonderful and quietly torturous.
I thought a lot about Zeller and Cramer too. I needed them to know that I hadn’t forgotten. I wanted them to see the footage of Pierre Street in my films. They never would have known you were Viktoria at the time – it took me so long to realize it myself – but they would have seen your likeness to Életke. They would have understood the message I was sending them both. But the sad truth was, no one watched those films. I was sending a message into the void.
The letter ended, unfinished, soon after that.
I don’t have the original negatives for any of the films we made together in Spain. Maybe they’re lost for ever. But everything I have is in the garage. Do you remember that old Super 8 I had? That’s there too. There’s something else as well. I bought it after I went to see Zeller and Cramer in LA. Once you get into the garage, you won’t be able to miss it. I’ve taped instructions to it. You’ll need your wooden angel as well. Look in my notes and you’ll see why. It’s the answer to everything. I’d hoped to have enough time to do everything myself, but, alas, I’m not sure I have.
That was the last thing he’d written. He didn’t sign off properly because he thought he was going to come back to it.
Instead, he’d died days later.
I looked at Korin. ‘ What’s this thing he talks about – this thing he bought and stuck instructions to?’
Korin studied me for a moment. ‘Did you ever wonder why I carved that illustration into the tree at Stoke Point before I disappeared? Why I left a key in the back of the photo, and that box next to the electric meter? What about the security footage? The Post-it? Did you ever wonder why I left those?’
‘Because you wanted me to find you.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But it’s not as simple as that.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I spent months reading about you. I saw what kind of man you were. I saw the cases you’ve solved and the people you’ve helped. I knew you wouldn’t give up once you caught a glimpse of what was going on here, because that’s who you are. You care. You know what’s right. But I could only have you begin to look for me when I was ready for you to start looking. It took me ten months to get to that stage, because Robert left instructions. But they were so hard. It’s so hard.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘That’s why the clues I left were so difficult,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want Zeller using them to find me before you did. I’d taken my work as far as it could go up here, and I needed you to help me figure out the rest. I needed you to help me with the final piece of the jigsaw – the angel.’
‘Stop talking in riddles, Lynda. What’s going on?’
‘I can’t find any reference to it in his notes. I don’t know why he calls it “the answer”.’
‘Lynda.’
But this time she didn’t reply.
Instead, she looked down towards the door of the caravan. In the silence, I became aware of the rain again, driving against the windows on which Korin had built the hidden history of her husband.
‘Lynda?’
‘Do you hear that?’ she said.
‘Hear what?’
‘That.’
‘The rain?’
But then there was something else: a dog barking.
I glanced at the door. ‘A dog – so what?’
‘It’s coming from the farm,’ she said, and there was a flicker of fear in her face now. ‘Joe, the owner, the guy who rents me this place, he’s away now. He’s not home again until tomorrow. That dog – she’s so soppy, so quiet. She never barks unless …’
‘Unless what?’
Her eyes flicked to me. ‘Unless she’s barking at someone.’
71
The valley was dark.
I told Korin to stay where she was and lock the door, and then I headed towards the farm. The rain was hammering down hard, only vague shapes visible beyond the cone of the torch Korin had given me. I could make out the farmhouse in front of me, its angles like the pale lines on a blueprint, and – behind that – the ominous blackness of mountain slopes that climbed, and dissolved, into the night. When I looked back down the field to the caravan, it had been reduced to squares of dull light. The glow from the interior, subdued by the cardboard at the windows, made it look like a boat drifting to oblivion.
I climbed the gate and crossed the road, then slowed my pace. There was a potholed concrete track at the side of the farmhouse. I swung the torch from side to side, as the smells of the place hit me: mud, wet grass, ferns, manure, silage, straw. A tractor sat under a corrugated-iron roof to my left, and then the track split in two: one half wound its way to the house, where an alarm box blinked above a blue door; the other half ploughed further onwards, in the direction of the two barns. The dog was inside the house, barking so hard she was almost hoarse. She was scratching at the door too, her paws sliding on lino, the sound so distinct and desperate I could hear it even above the rain.
Something had definitely set her off.
Up close, the barns seemed vast, like the hull of some huge supertanker. In one I saw a quad bike and a furrow plough, and in the other I could see the vague, swollen shapes of the pigs. They were largely silent and most seemed to be still, but when I passed the torch across them, a few shifted and one made a deep snort. The dog started barking more vociferously.
I passed along the side of the barn with the pigs and found an annex built on the back, about the size of a garage. It looked like it might once have been a workshop, the only window – a panel of tall near-opaque glass – flecked with sawdust. The odour of old wood clung to it, even with the weather as it was, and there was the smell of oil, spirits and paint as well. The annex’s slanted roof had a tile loose, hanging at an angle like a puzzle piece that hadn’t clicked into place, and with no guttering, water fell from the roof in a sheet, machine-gunning against the ground and turning anything that wasn’t paved into an instant sloppy bog.
A noise.
I paused, listening. As if on cue, the rain eased off slightly. I directed the torch along the edge of the annex, down towards the back of the other barn. The only things there were old equipment, half submerged in mud, grass and old bricks. I turned my attention to the annex again. The door was a faded red that had peeled like burnt skin, and there were slide bolts top and bottom, both secured.
Then I heard the noise again.
I looked back the way I’d come, using my torch to illuminate the path. Rain drifted across the light like silver strands. In the barn, I could hear the pigs moving. In the house, the dog was barking even more frantically than before.
‘Hello?’
My voice disappeared into the night. I remained there, in front of the annex, my eyes on the path. Everything was still.
‘Hello?’ I said again.
When I got no response a second time, I headed back, swinging the torch from side to side. The beam cut through the dark, shadows forming in the ridges of the barns, in the brickwork of the farmhouse – but anything further out, beyond the lines of the light, was invisible.
Except that wasn’t quite true.
As the rain stopped, I noticed a very slight colour change on one side of the farmhouse, as if the building was being backlit by a security light. I hadn’t taken note of it on the way in.
I moved more quickly, tracing the circumference of the barn. The pigs reacted to the fall of my footsteps, snorting, scattering, and as they did, the dog became even more desperate than before. I checked the farmhouse windows and then moved along a flagstone path to the front door. The dog was going crazy on the other side now, the door jerking against its frame.
I tried the door, but it was definitely locked.
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Backing up, I continued in the direction of the caravan, along the path pitted with holes, between mountains I couldn’t see and trees I could only hear.
The caravan hadn’t even come back into view when something suddenly registered with me, giving me pause for a moment: the colour change I’d noticed on the house was an orange, not a white.
It wasn’t a security light, it was the caravan.
It was on fire.
72
Something ignited inside the caravan. A dull, guttural whump ripped across the darkness, and then smoke and fire erupted out of a window on the side, close to where the kitchen had been. For a split second, the entire valley lit up.
I broke into a run, crossing the silent road and springing over the gate. As I landed in the field – soil sodden beneath my feet – thick balls of smoke began to chug from a hole in the kitchen window. The faster I ran, the less control I had, my feet sliding on the grass. One hundred feet short of the caravan, the heat hit me, like running head first into a solid wall – and then I could smell the petrol. I pushed on, watching holes forming, a section of the roof seeming to drain away like liquid running into a plughole.
‘Lynda!’
Flames crawled and twisted, tendrils of fire wrapping themselves around the carcass of the vehicle – with no rain, there was nothing to stop it any more. One of the windows splintered and began to fall away, the grey of the cardboard that had been stuck to it long since gone. Minute pieces of paper – the remnants of the documents and photos that Korin had so meticulously mounted to the interior – were disappearing towards the sky in a trail of ash. Pretty soon, all that she’d found in the boxes would be gone for ever.