Alphabet House

by Adler-Olsen, Jussi

  ‘Can’t you remember at all what it was like at the hospital, Bryan? Weren’t you there for six months, maybe a bit longer? And so what?’ James glanced at the women. Petra gave him a pleading look and let go of the other woman who was still leaning against her. ‘Can you imagine nearly thirty years of that?’ he continued. ‘Do you have children now, Bryan?’ He sneered, looking at the muck dripping off Bryan’s nodding chin. ‘All that time! While you were having children, while you were making love, while you were experiencing the world, while you were enjoying life, while you slept, while you took walks in your parents’ garden, while you became one with your dreams and fulfilled them – I was sitting here. For thirty years!’ He screamed out the last sentence, tearing Bryan out of his dull indifference with a start. He looked up at his friend, who stuck his hand in his pocket.

  A big bottle of pills appeared. ‘Would you like to relive that time? Would you like to know what it was like for me while you were living your life? Would you like to know where I disappeared to?’

  Bryan opened his mouth without resistance. With the very first pill he recalled the chlorine-based medicine’s characteristic dryness.

  After thirty years, his salivation reflex was aroused instantly.

  ‘Take one!’ James shouted and stuffed another pill in him. ‘Take one for every year you let me down!’ James thrust the pills firmly into the back of Bryan’s mouth until he nearly vomited. In his still drunken state he was unable to resist. ‘And take these for good measure!’ James pushed still more down his throat. Bryan swallowed them all. When the bottle was empty he could tell it wouldn’t be long before he began slipping into unconsciousness.

  The next few minutes were an inferno of noises. Women’s cries, and James’ ceaseless insults, curses and impossible questions. Bryan didn’t answer them, nor could he understand them. He turned to look up at his friend. There was no mercy in his eyes.

  And Bryan couldn’t care less.

  Chapter 66

  Laureen was beginning to get some colour in her cheeks. The scene beside the swimming pool had her clinging to Petra as she kept repeating her prayers, again and again. Petra shook her head, grasping the rabbit knife firmly. She intended to use it if there was no alternative.

  Petra squeezed Laureen’s hand so hard that it hurt. None of Gerhart’s words made it easier to understand why her life had turned out as it had. But the sentences clarified the years that had passed. Explained the self-deception. Put the events of recent hours into perspective. And made her want fervently to understand more.

  Even though it might be too late.

  Laureen stamped the terrace tiles in impotence as Gerhart forced the pills into her semi-conscious husband. When he stopped, his victim began swaying gently from side to side.

  Petra was clearly horrified. If they didn’t do something, the dose James had given Bryan would be lethal. She begged Gerhart to listen, pleaded with her beloved to stop. Tried to make him understand that it still wasn’t too late. That they would be able to get away and bury the past. That they had a life to be lived ahead of them. That this was something he owed her.

  And still he waited passively as he watched Bryan slowly doze off. Madness and revenge had become one.

  Laureen’s hold on Petra’s hand was convulsive, tightening and relaxing, tightening and relaxing. Finally she let go. She took a quick, impulsive step to the side, then stopped abruptly. Just as she was about to make a last, hopeless attempt to rescue her husband, Petra lunged forward with her knife raised. If she stabbed Gerhart, she would have no reason to go on living. Gerhart aimed the gun at her face as he followed her gaze. He looked from Petra to Laureen and back again. Petra didn’t hear his warning. Not until the knife was heading for his throat did she become lost in the bottomless depths of his eyes. By the time her hand reached his face, she’d dropped the knife.

  The blow on his cheek fell as gently as a mother’s slap. Gerhart seized Petra’s hand and clutched it hard until she relaxed completely. Then he dropped her hand, gave her a soul-penetrating look, let the pistol fall and stumbled onto the lawn. He stood there, stock-still, hyperventilating.

  Laureen was already holding Bryan’s head in her lap as Petra came to herself.

  ‘Lift him up!’ Petra ordered, sticking most of her hand roughly down Bryan’s throat. She made Laureen take a firm grip around her husband’s waist, and press. The third attempt worked. A fit of coughing was accompanied by acid, slime and half-dissolved white clumps. He was blue in the face. ‘Help him,’ she ordered again, demonstrating how to force his face backwards and try to make him breathe normally by means of artificial respiration.

  Behind them, Gerhart had become very quiet. Then he groaned and sank to his knees.

  Petra was at his side immediately. ‘Gerhart, it’s over,’ she sobbed, as she put her arms around his head, stroked his cheek and kissed him.

  She smiled at him and stroked his cheek again. She called him Gerhart, James, Erich. He was pale. His eyes were vacant. She took hold of him, hugged him and looked at him again. He didn’t react.

  ‘Gerhart!’ she shouted, shaking him. She begged him, admonished him, alternated between his names, caressed him, and addressed him in German, English and then German again.

  He was kneeling very quietly, his trousers soaking up moisture from the ground. He was in another world again. Withdrawn into himself. Swallowed up by nothingness. He stared emptily into space.

  Over by the edge of the pool Laureen’s husband’s speedy return to consciousness took her unawares. He awoke with a start, almost as drunk as before. He smiled when he saw her and drew her instantly to him, unaware of his state and unappetizing appearance. She let him kiss her greedily, laughing and crying at the same time. Then they sat, hugging each other without a word.

  Petra’s face lay buried in James’ shoulder. They hadn’t moved for some time. She looked up and saw Laureen reaching cautiously to one side in search of the gun.

  Finding it, she got up carefully, pulling her tipsy husband after her. It was only after Petra mouthed a silent prayer at her that Laureen let the weapon fall again.

  * * *

  Bryan stared around as if realising where he was for the first time, and tottered over to the couple on the lawn. He sank to his knees so close to them that he almost pushed them over. Inserting his arm between Petra’s face and James’ neck, he turned his friend’s face towards him. James made no attempt to resist.

  Then he bent forward and babbled drunken nonsense in his ear. Petra loosened her hold and buried her face in her hands.

  ‘Well, James, this time I’m not leaving you behind, am I?’ Bryan bumped his nose against his friend’s cheek. James had an alien smell. ‘Can’t you say something, James? Come on, don’t be such a wet blanket.’ He took hold of his face with both hands and shook it, then patted him on the cheek. ‘C’mon, say something!’ Bryan didn’t protest when Petra pushed him away. His present state made him oblivious to her scorn and despair.

  She took hold of her loved one again. He didn’t react. Neither Gerhart, Erich nor James had been liberated in this kneeling man.

  Laureen noticed Petra’s dismay and wept freely as Bryan flopped down on his back in the dew-soaked grass and began to laugh. Then he whistled a couple of snuffled bars and laughed some more.

  His state of intoxication was a blissful one.

  Bit by bit it came back. The song they had made their own when they were boys. The irrational, crazy and trivial words came back to him. I don’t know what they have to say, it makes no difference anyway! Bryan howled with laughter at its meaninglessness.

  The starry sky was infinitely deep and magnificent in spite of the moonlight. The darkness drew the meaning of all that had happened out into the universe and swallowed it up. Bryan turned onto his side, looked at his childhood friend and sang as if the past had returned. Fragments of memories came to him from when they were young and used to climb the cliffs of Dover. The roar of the sea below them, the warmt
h and smell of the urine spreading embarrassingly in the crotch of his shorts.

  ‘Can you remember, James?’ he laughed, and continued, ‘“I’m against it!”’

  Laureen squatted down beside him and pulled him up a bit more vertically as he bawled out his song so loudly that it re-echoed from the fringe of Schwarzwald. ‘“Your proposition may be good, but let’s have one thing understood. Whatever it is, I’m against it!”’

  When he finished, he sang it all over again. At the last beat, he laughed with relief.

  The figure a few yards away lay immobile in Petra’s embrace. She raised her head and looked at Bryan as though he’d desecrated a sacred moment. Her tear-swollen face had aged. James’ body twitched violently as she laid her head back on his shoulder, making her jerk as if she had received an electric shock. She clutched him tightly before he fell over. Something rattled deep inside James’ chest. He shook as though he were in the midst of a malarial fever. Again and again he let out a sobbing roar.

  Petra held him to her and stroked his neck, trying to catch his glance. She wiped away his tears as his body trembled like a leaf and his eyes sought the ground, manifesting all the pain that had been inside him. It was impossible to express in any other way.

  Bryan stared at him in confusion and crawled towards him on his knees. Petra and James couldn’t stop crying. They sat together like that for some time. Laureen began to freeze and hugged her arms to her body.

  Then James raised his head so slowly that even Bryan could follow its movement. Laureen pulled Bryan gently away from the two. James was looking straight into Petra’s eyes. He stroked the skin on her cheek and kissed her gently on the mouth. She closed her eyes and hugged herself to him. There they sat, letting the moment pass in silence.

  A fit of shivering made Bryan tremble repeatedly. A few snowy white clouds were floating above the dark foothills of Schwarzwald’s magnificent panorama. The September night became increasingly clear.

  Then James sighed, staring out into space. He tried to clear his throat and raised his head hesitantly towards Bryan. He looked at him for some time. The muddled expression that met Bryan’s gaze made him smile. James couldn’t quite get hold of the words. He stammered a couple of times and paused. After a further couple of minutes it came out quietly. ‘Bryan,’ he said, with a voice that sounded as familiar as his own father’s. ‘Tell me: What was the name of David Copperfield’s second wife?’

  Petra and Bryan looked at him, moved and bewildered. Bryan closed his eyes and tried to grasp what was going on. The question seemed infinitely trivial to him. Looking at his friend, he tried to find an expression that would reflect his assortment of mixed up feelings. His smile turned out apologetic.

  Laureen pulled her husband’s confused head towards her and ran her fingers through his hair. ‘Her name was Agnes, James,’ she said. ‘Her name was Agnes.’

  Chapter 67

  The events of the previous day were still vivid for them both. The nausea was wearing off but the physical pain was still much in evidence. The gunshot wounds, the stab wounds, blows and kicks would take months to heal. Bryan had had to change his bandages three times during the night. He gave Laureen an anxious look. She hadn’t slept a wink either, and had a headache that was killing her. Repeated attempts to put on make-up hadn’t been able to hide the beating she’d taken.

  Bryan fumbled with his cigarettes. He was as white as chalk as he grabbed the receiver again.

  ‘Couldn’t we just fly home?’ she’d suggested.

  Ever since Bryan had checked out of his hotel that morning, he’d sat glued to the telephone in Laureen’s hotel room.

  Laureen finished packing, though she was forced to sit down several times during the process. It had been a hectic morning. Having Bridget around had been a colossal irritation. She was ready to attack Bryan physically when she saw the bruises on Laureen’s face, but settled for giving him a tongue-lashing. They let her believe what she liked. She’d understood nothing of the previous day’s events, thank God.

  Finally Laureen sent Bridget into town with 500 marks in her pocket, declaring that she and Bryan had a lot to discuss.

  Bridget was dumbfounded. Though it was Sunday, she’d have no problem spending the money.

  Just as Bryan replaced the receiver, the phone rang again. After a few seconds he began to chuckle. Laureen was startled and looked at him aghast as he clutched his sides with laughter.

  ‘It was Welles,’ he said, when he hung up. Laureen nodded, partly relieved, partly uninterested. ‘He wanted to tell me he’d found a psychiatric patient in Erfurt named Gerhart Peuckert.’ He attempted another smile, but gave his shirt a worried glance instead. It had stopped turning red. ‘What do you think of that? In Erfurt!’

  Laureen shrugged. ‘Did you get the passport?’

  ‘I found one that should work,’ he said, dialling the next number. ‘We’ll take the train to Stuttgart and fly from there. I don’t think we should fly from Basel-Mulhouse.’ He stopped and held up his hand, requesting silence. He’d finally got through.

  ‘Petra Wagner,’ came the voice. She sounded worn out.

  ‘How far have you got?’ Bryan took a last puff and stubbed out the cigarette.

  ‘It’ll be expensive, that’s all I can tell you,’ came the cool response.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Can we trust her?’

  ‘I’m quite convinced you can.’

  ‘Then do what you have to do. And James? Or perhaps I should say “Gerhart”?’

  ‘You can say “James”,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Yes, I think it’ll work out.’

  Bryan looked at Laureen several times during the remainder of the conversation. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, hands resting limply in her lap.

  ‘How are you doing, Laureen?’ he said, finally. He lit another cigarette and felt his side.

  She shrugged her shoulders and didn’t answer.

  ‘Frau Rehmann, the director of Saint-Ursula’s, is asking for half a million pounds to discharge him and remove the case records.’

  ‘That’s quite a sum,’ Laureen answered apathetically. ‘I assume you’re going to pay.’

  Bryan knew her. She didn’t expect an answer. Of course he was going to.

  ‘As far as I can tell from Petra, there hasn’t been anything on the radio yet about the dead bodies. She doesn’t think they’ve found them.’

  ‘They will, sooner or later,’ she said.

  ‘By then we’ll be far away. They won’t connect us with what happened. They probably won’t be able to figure out what happened at all.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ She stared into space. ‘The taxi driver who drove Petra and me out there thought we had some business on the farm opposite Lankau’s. I don’t think he’ll be a problem. But there’s so much else.’ She looked worried.

  ‘The letter James forced Lankau to write will be very important evidence. They’re bound to connect the other two deaths with his. You needn’t worry about that.’

  ‘You told Lankau you’d left a message at your hotel saying you were out at his country house.’

  ‘You were the only one who believed that, Laureen.’

  She frowned and stared up at the ceiling.

  ‘The fingerprints, Bryan! What about them?’

  ‘In the car? There aren’t any. I took precautions.’

  ‘And around the house and the bungalow and on the terrace? There must be thousands of traces!’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll find anything. We were very thorough. You know that.’

  She sighed, then tried to think the whole thing through once again. ‘Are you sure, Bryan? It was dark when we cleaned up. You were drunk. Petra was beside herself. I can’t spend the rest of our life worrying that they might find out what happened.’

  ‘Lankau killed the other two! That’s what they’ll believe. They’ll find his letter and they’ll establish that he’s the one who wrote it.’

  ‘They’ll presume he inten
ded to shoot himself with the small hunting rifle Petra found out there. Is that the idea?’

  ‘That was our intention, yes. And that he didn’t manage to carry it out before he collapsed. The post-mortem will reveal a perfectly natural heart attack.’

  ‘And the wounds on his body?’

  ‘You saw all the scars! Lankau was hard on himself. They’ll wonder, but they won’t find any answer.’

  ‘And the hunting rifle and bullets?’

  ‘There’ll be only his own fingerprints on them.’

  ‘What about the other places? At Kröner’s and Stich’s? What’ll they find there? Are you sure they’re not brimming with evidence? James’ fingerprints must be everywhere.’

  ‘I’m sure they are! But they won’t find him anywhere. They won’t know where to look or who they’re looking for. It’s not even certain they’ll try. They’ll be busy enough trying to grasp the extent of the scandal these men’s double lives are bound to create. You shouldn’t worry about that at all!’ He sat thinking for a moment. Then the words came quietly, ‘In any case, should the unthinkable occur where the investigation puts them on the track of what’s happened, only James would be held responsible. Not you or me. But that won’t happen, Laureen, be sure of it.’

  ‘When that Frau Rehmann realises how many skeletons are in the cupboard of this whole affair, she’s bound to confess.’ Laureen dabbed the tip of her nose carefully with her handkerchief.

  ‘No, she won’t. Bribery and abuse of authority wouldn’t make good advertising in terms of her career. She’ll keep her mouth shut.’ Bryan patted his suitcase. Now all he had to do was phone the Olympic delegation and then they could be off. ‘Laureen,’ he said. ‘Frau Rehmann knows what she’s doing. She knows she’ll be able to live comfortably and securely for the rest of her life, providing she doesn’t react. She knew precisely how she wanted the half million pounds to be paid. It was as if she’d been planning for this to happen all along. She doesn’t want a cheque, does she? No, the money is to be transferred in her name directly to an account in Zürich. After that, it’ll be too late. She’ll have to keep quiet, even if she gets qualms of conscience.’