A Necessary Action

by Per Wahlöö

  ‘My brother.’

  ‘And Siglinde?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘With the knife. From behind.’

  Neither of them moved. The cat sat between them and licked its behind.

  ‘I don’t ask you to believe me,’ said Santiago Alemany, ‘but we didn’t mean to, not from the beginning. And when I did it I thought it the only solution. Ramon didn’t want to do it. It was a … a necessary action.’

  Willi Mohr noted those last words ‘una cosa forzada’. It was a good expression.

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ said Santiago. ‘It wasn’t planned, but I knew it might suddenly happen. I have never wanted anything so much as I wanted her. I betrayed two hundred people, who were relying on me, just for the chance of seeing her bathing. After that I didn’t know what I was doing. And yet everything happened quite by chance. It wasn’t a matter of chance that you killed Ramon.’

  ‘No,’ said Willi Mohr.

  ‘It was planned. You lay in wait for him.’

  ‘Yes. Especially towards the end. Every minute, for twenty days. It was a long time before he realized it.’

  ‘He didn’t think all that clearly. Especially the last six months.’

  The conversation was being carried on quite calmly. They still hadn’t moved.

  ‘You took the money he had with him,’ said Santiago absently, as if he were thinking of something else.

  ‘Some of it.’

  ‘It wasn’t his. He was supposed to give it to a contact over there. In Corsica.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. And if I had, I shouldn’t have bothered about it.’

  ‘It was all wrong,’ said Santiago Alemany. ‘I haven’t thought about anything else except those people for the last six months. I’m no good at killing people.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  They looked at each other, silently and blankly.

  ‘It’s time we got going now,’ said Santiago Alemany, pushing himself away from the wall.

  He stopped with his hand on the handle and turned his head.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ he said.

  ‘Go home.’

  ‘To your country?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Santiago opened the door and went out, and Willi Mohr followed him. When the other man had climbed into the driver’s seat, Willi Mohr put his shoulder against the back and got the van moving. It ran easily on the gentle slope and he felt it rolling away from him. As he made his way down the narrow crooked alley, he felt surprised that Santiago had been able to get there without lights. Suddenly he bumped into a corner of the back of the van and realized that he had reached the main road. As he walked past he rapped on the mudguard with his knuckles to show he had passed. There was no patrol at the crossroads. He walked ten yards in each direction but saw nothing. Then he stood on the roadside with one foot on the stone wall and waited. A few seconds later the fish-van rolled past. He heard the bearings squeaking and the splashing round the wheels, but all he saw was a vague movement in the darkness.

  When he walked back towards Barrio Son Jofre, it was as if he had lost all sense of hearing and sight in the dark. He stumbled round in the rain, and up in the alleyway, he collided several times with walls of houses and protruding corners. The intuitive ability to react he had become used to having at his disposal had suddenly deserted him, like cutting the whiskers off a cat. But he was thinking, and again and again he put a hypothetical question to himself: What would have happened if he had broken off the conversation, gone over to his rucksack and fetched the pistol, or if Santiago Alemany had drawn his sheath-knife?

  4

  The paraffin lamp was still burning when Willi stepped into the room. He noticed that the floor was wet and muddy and that the half-drowned cat had curled up in his bedclothes and spread a large wet patch round itself.

  When he took off his raincoat he saw that his legs and feet were muddy and his arms filthy with the offal from the fish-boxes. The smell was foul. He felt an intense repugnance and looked irresolutely round the room. Then he went over to the corner where his rucksack and dirty clothes and his painting things were standing, moved them all aside and picked up the ripped-up sack that had been lying spread out on the floor.

  After shaking it out several times, he put it down on the mattress, took off his clothes and with his sandals in his hand, went out on to the steps. He stood for a long time letting the rain wash over his body before he put on his wet sandals and returned to the mattress. He dried himself with the sacking, which was so coarse it scraped great red marks on his skin. Then he locked the door, pushed aside the wet cat and lay down under the blanket. Before putting the lamp out, he smoked a cigarette and looked at his watch. It was half-past three.

  He was nervous and restless and not at all sleepy. He knew that the last thing he had said to Santiago Alemany was true. If he could only get away from here, he would go home. To Dornburg or Jena or perhaps Berlin, it did not really matter which. But preferably Dornburg, as his mother was not all that old and was probably still alive. His motive was not yet really clear to himself, but he was quite certain it was not for his mother’s sake that he wanted to go home. He also knew that he would not shoot Santiago Alemany, and that there was no reason for him to stay any longer than was absolutely necessary.

  And why should it be necessary at all? What had Tornilla said when they had parted at the door?

  Otherwise perhaps we shall not meet again.

  This was undoubtedly otherwise.

  Willi Mohr went on thinking. He would probably not be able to sleep, and as soon as it grew light it would be time to get to work. He would destroy his notebook and throw away the pistol, which could cause unpleasantness if it were found in his luggage. It would be easy to let it disappear into the rubbish heap behind the house. Then he would load his things on to the camioneta and drive to the provincial capital. He could be there by midday and the first thing he would do would be to hand in his passport for an exit-visa. That he had no money was a minor problem. At worst the Federal Republic would be forced to help him. All that seemed futile, as long as he got away from this house and these mountains, these stone streets and these faces. For the first time he had seen the town up in the mountains as a deathtrap, and the year he had been there as a long, paralysing illness.

  For the first time too, he was free of the memories of that day he had sat and waited on the quay in the puerto, and the last minutes with Ramon Alemany in the fo’c’sle of the Englishman’s boat.

  He did not want to kill anyone. He wanted to live.

  There’s a chance, he thought. This has gone, is past, is nothing to do with me any longer.

  It was nothing to do with him any longer. He repeated the words silently to himself, then formulated them with his lips.

  Willi Mohr lay there in the darkness and whispered: ‘It’s nothing to do with me any longer.’

  He thought: I want to sleep now and get a couple of hours in, then wake when it’s light.

  And: Perhaps it’ll stop raining.

  Someone knocked on the door, not very hard, but urgently and persistently.

  ‘Coming,’ he called.

  The knocking went on. Whoever was standing out there in the pouring rain obviously could not hear sounds from within the house.

  Willi Mohr fumbled for the matches. They were damp and he used about ten before he managed to get one alight and light the lamp. He wrapped the blanket round him, thrust his feet into his sandals and went over to the door.

  He opened it in the certainty of seeing Santiago Alemany, but the figure on the steps was wearing a dark-green oilskin coat with a pointed hood and was so protected from the rain that neither hands nor face were visible.

  The civil guard stepped over the threshold without saying a word. Willi Mohr nearly burst out laughing. The man stood in the room as if he had grown out of the stone floor. He looked like a Martian from some foolish newspaper strip, but he could equ
ally well have been a half-erected tent or a successful carnival figure.

  A green arm came out of the cape and tugged at the hood to draw it off from the shiny cap, while at the same time the mouth of an automatic-pistol protruded through a crack in his oilskins.

  Willi Mohr had never seen the man before. He was quite young, with plump cheeks and reddish hair, but when he spoke his voice was sharp and cold.

  ‘You’re Willi Mohr, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I must ask you to come with me to the guard-post.’

  Willi Mohr nodded.

  ‘Please get dressed. It’s urgent.’

  Willi Mohr shook his head and pulled on his damp clothes. Meanwhile the man in the oilskins stood on the same spot and looked round the room.

  When they were out on the steps and Willi Mohr had locked the door, the man put out his hand and took the key.

  ‘Please may I have that. Walk to the left. I’ll be just behind you.’

  It was in fact raining slightly less heavily than before, but it was still quite dark. Although they walked right through the town, Willi Mohr saw not a single light, and the only thing to be heard apart from the rain were the occasional brief instructions from the man behind his back. Go on straight ahead. Turn left here. Look out, there are some steps here. Walk a little faster.

  The street lights were still out. The electricity works had evidently given up.

  What a town, thought Willi Mohr.

  He was not nervous about the meeting with Tornilla. At this stage he thought he knew the man and his habits, and the thought of exchanging the dripping house in Barrio Son Jofre for the relative comfort of the interrogation room was not entirely repugnant to him. He might have to spend a few hours in a cell, of course, as he had the first time, but that did not matter either. And so far as their conversation was concerned, he knew exactly what he had said before and what he ought to say now. Perhaps there would even be a brazier in the room. The thought cheered him and he lengthened his stride. The civil guard had hustled him several times, which implied that Sergeant Tornilla was already sitting waiting in his place under the circle of light from the green shade. As he had nothing special against meeting him, there was no reason to keep him waiting any longer than was necessary. He himself had several matters to settle when it grew light, and so the interrogation ought not to take too long.

  Willi Mohr knew that this was his last day in the town up in the mountains. It was also the first day for a very long time that he looked forward to with some expectations.

  They were already walking along the straight road between the olive trees.

  ‘A little more to the right,’ said the civil guard, poking him in the back. ‘We’re there now.’

  There was not a single light to be seen in the building.

  They were inside the hall. Behind Willi Mohr a pair of nailed boots clanged on the concrete floor. Five seconds later, the civil guard jerked open a door and pushed him over the threshold.

  5

  The room was large and bare, with whitewashed walls, a concrete floor, and filled with the blinding glare of an oil lamp hanging from a hook in the ceiling. There were four people inside and not one of them was Sergeant Tornilla.

  Willi Mohr looked round and blinked in bewilderment in the cold, clear light. The interior was spartan. In the middle of the floor was a long, sturdy, wooden table, on which were a number of scattered papers and an old American typewriter. Round this table were half a dozen plain wooden chairs and there was a window with a blind drawn down over it in the far wall. An iron stove stood in one corner, the smell of soot and smoke emanating from it. That was all.

  At one end of the table sat a tall officer with his jacket unbuttoned and gold braid on his sleeves. His shiny cap with its broad gold band lay in front of him and beside it was his belt and shoulder-strap holding his pistol holster. Willi Mohr had seen him before and even remembered his name: Lieutenant Pujol.

  Beside him, nonchalantly leaning against the table, stood the small bald man who had been drinking anis at the Café Central the day before. He had hung his jacket over the back of the chair and was wearing a blue striped shirt with sleeve-bands and yellow cuff-links. A little farther away sat the handsome youngster with smooth hair and a dimple in his chin. He was not in his shirtsleeves, but had unbuttoned his collar and turned round so that he could rest his forearms on the back of the chair. His soft brown eyes looked indifferent and bored as he rocked slowly back and forth on his chair.

  The fourth person in the room was a civil guard in green linen uniform and brown shoes. He was kneeling in front of the table busy adjusting the mantle of an oil lamp with a cone-shaped black metal shade.

  The bald man glanced without interest at the newcomer and said: ‘Have you searched him?’

  ‘No,’ said the civil guard in a rain-cape, who had come into the room immediately behind Willi Mohr and was still standing just behind him.

  ‘Do it then, for God’s sake.’

  The civil guard took off Willi Mohr’s hat and plastic coat and fumbled through his pockets and down his trouser legs. Finally he said: ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Good,’ said the bald man. ‘Then you can go.’

  Then he turned to the officer at the end of the table and continued the conversation that had evidently been interrupted when the door had opened.

  ‘So you sent a man to the electricity works. What did they say?’

  ‘They’re repairing the line. And a steam-pipe’s burst.’

  ‘And the telephone?’

  ‘Don’t know. They didn’t tell us,’ said Lieutenant Pujol.

  His forehead was glistening with sweat and he seemed tired and irritable.

  ‘Are things always like this?’ asked the man in shirtsleeves in a complaining voice. ‘There’s been no light now for eight hours or telephone for five. And the stove smokes. It’s just as well the actual building is still standing.’

  Lieutenant Pujol did not reply.

  ‘So this is the man you’ve been interrogating for three months?’

  ‘This is Willi Mohr,’ said Lieutenant Pujol.

  ‘Yes, you and your experts. The civil guard is all right, I suppose, for scaring peasants, but not much use for this. Anyhow it’s not your department, so there’s no cause for offence. Where is this expert of yours, anyhow?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘You’re his superior officer, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, officially.’

  The bald man sighed and leant over the table.

  ‘How are you getting on? Have you finished?’

  The guard in linen uniform had stopped fiddling with the lamp and seemed to be fully occupied listening.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said hastily. ‘It’s O.K. now.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d try lighting it then,’ said the handsome young man in a friendly way.

  The civil guard hunted through his pockets for a while, apparently for matches. When he found them, he fumbled for a long time with the box before succeeding in lighting one. He pumped up more oil, and the lamp spread a harsh light over the floor.

  ‘No more?’ said the man on the chair.

  The guard gave the lamp a few extra pumps and the white light intensified.

  ‘I daren’t any more. It might explode.’

  ‘We brought that with us, so it’s good stuff,’ said the bald man. ‘But that’s all right now. Put the shade on and hang it up.’

  The man in the linen uniform fiddled with the screws and managed to let down three sections of the black shade. Then he got up on to a chair and laboriously hooked the lamp on to two hooks in the ceiling.

  ‘Not in that direction, you idiot,’ said the man in the striped shirt.

  The lamp was finally placed as it ought to be. The harsh light fell on to a sharply limited section in front of the table.

  ‘Bring the wretch here and we can get it over and done with.’

  The guard went over to the door, grasped Willi Moh
r’s arm and led him up to the table. The light was so bright that he could not see any of the other men, only hear their voices. He fumbled for the chair and sat down.

  ‘No one asked you to sit down, as far as I know. Get up!’

  That was the younger of the two civilians.

  Willi Mohr got up.

  ‘Are we taking a statement now?’

  That was the guard in the linen uniform.

  ‘No, we’ll write out the whole confession later.’

  That was the bald man.

  Willi Mohr felt himself seized with rage, cold sullen rage, which rose slowly and inexorably, making him think quite calmly and with crystal clarity. He said: ‘What are you playing at? American gangster-films?’

  ‘Keep quiet when you’re not being spoken to.’

  ‘Take me straight back to my house and then leave me alone. I’m a foreign citizen and whatever happens I’ll report you to the authorities. If you want to ask me something, then you must first get in touch with the nearest German Consul. Anyhow, I don’t even know who you are.’

  ‘These gentlemen belong to the Security Forces,’ said Lieutenant Pujol.

  Willi Mohr had been looking down to avoid at least some of the blinding white light. He heard someone laugh, presumably the younger of the two civilians, but the one to speak first was his colleague, the man in the striped shirt.

  ‘That’s the situation. We’ll do you the service of telling you from the start that the game is up. Your friends have confessed everything and denounced you. All that remains is for you to do the same.’

  ‘I haven’t any friends.’

  Willi Mohr’s eyes could not get used to the light and he was unable to distinguish anything. But the voices from the other side of the table penetrated through to him, hard and metallic, in a shower of questions and statements. Both the men from the Policia Secreta spoke swiftly but never simultaneously. All through, it was the younger man who used the most caustic phrases and threatening tones.

  ‘You’re a Communist provocateur, sent here from East Germany.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Where have you hidden the arms?’

  ‘Don’t know.’