The Club

by Takis Würger

  Billy had spoken to me before I’d possessed a tie in the right colors. I wondered how I would explain to him that the life he’d thought was mine had been a lie. Billy would understand, though. Friends do.

  I thought of Alex, too, sometimes. It kept occurring to me that the first time I met her in Cambridge she had asked me, “You still box, don’t you?” She’d known all along that the Butterflies had something to do with the boxing club, but she couldn’t have known it from Charlotte, because Charlotte had no memory of the Butterflies. It seemed monstrous, but I could only think of one explanation. I knew that Alex had been at Cambridge forty years ago. So had Angus Farewell. She had told me that she “sort of” knew him. I recalled the look on her face.

  That morning I made a promise to myself. It seemed important, and was actually quite simple: I would never lie again.

  Charlotte had known for a week now that her father was part of the same group as her abusers. Shortly after our departure he sent her a long e-mail in which he swore that he had never hurt any woman, and would do everything in his power to prove his innocence. Charlotte should ask me about it, he said; we’d discussed this subject only recently, and the fact that he was worried about the way things were going with the Butterflies. I told Charlotte that this was true.

  We were already at the hotel on Lake Garda when Charlotte got the e-mail from her father. She was lying beside me while I wrote in my diary, and when she spoke she broke the silence.

  “I’ll only get through this if you stay with me,” she said.

  When I gave her the piece of paper Josh had written on in the library, she nodded immediately. All the same, I asked her to compare the word “night” on the paper with the word “night” in the Butterflies’ letter, which I’d brought with me. The writing was identical. Charlotte folded both pieces of paper and threw them in the wastepaper basket by the bed. She asked me what that person was called. I’ll never forget how she said the words “that person.” I said Josh’s name. She typed it into her phone. I was glad she didn’t speak of it any further.

  I watched Charlotte swimming in the lake. The reflection of the sun on the water was so bright it blinded me. She’d swum out too far. For a moment I was worried about her. I didn’t know whether she would ever get over all this.

  She came out of the water, sat down beside me on the jetty and put an arm around my shoulders. Her skin was wet and cold. The scar on her chest from the rabbit scratch was a little paler than usual. Probably the cold, I thought.

  “Do you think they have badminton racquets here? Maybe we should do something to help us think about nice things. Do you fancy a game?” she asked.

  I took her fingers and kissed her wrist. I’d meant to kiss the back of her hand, but I missed. I knew it didn’t bother her, though. Which was one of the reasons why she was the one.

  She looked as if something was glowing inside her.

  “No. I don’t,” I said.

  I looked out over the lake. The old man who owned the hotel had told us the previous evening that there was a shack up in the village where the vintners’ sons sometimes boxed.

  Alex

  At six in the morning I got up, went to the corner shop and bought the newspaper. I read the cover story about the Butterflies once, quickly, all the way through, then again, more slowly.

  Angus

  Night, soft soles, black clothing.

  I entered the house through the servants’ entrance, which wasn’t locked. Apart from the kitchen, all the rooms were dark. I’d been watching the place for a week and had waited until only Josh Hartley, his grandmother and the cook were at home. I knew that Hartley’s room was on the second floor, facing the sea, and that at this hour he was almost certainly asleep.

  One month earlier I’d received a postcard on which was written, in Charlotte’s hand: The person who did that to me is called Josh Hartley. I burned the postcard in the garden. The reverse was a photo of the Old Town in Verona. The flames flickered blue and red.

  My lawyers advised me to sue the paper that had accused me of being a rapist, and to do nothing else. The Butterflies were gone, but it was never just the name that made them powerful. There would always be a network, as long as the University of Cambridge existed and as long as men aspired to power.

  I’d done everything right. That, at least, was what I felt, and that was precisely what I couldn’t bear. I had lost my daughter, and when I received her postcard I knew what a father had to do in this situation.

  I disassembled the falling block rifle, cleaned and lubricated it, wrapped the parts up separately and packed them in a suitcase. Then I hired a car and drove to Cornwall.

  I opened the door to Hartley’s room. Moonlight shone through the slats of the blinds. Hartley was lying in bed, asleep. I saw a pair of boxing gloves on the writing desk, and beside them a photograph of him arm in arm with Hans Stichler. The shotgun weighed five and a half kilos. The man who sold it to me called it “the elephant killer.” Hartley’s body was covered by the duvet. Only his head was visible, and one pale hand, hanging over the edge of the bed.

  Hans

  I was with Charlotte when the policeman called. She put her phone on speaker. The policeman said he was very sorry, that they didn’t like to break news like this over the phone.

  The only witness they had been able to question was the cook, who’d been on the ground floor. She’d said the shot had been so loud she’d dropped the bowl in which she was whisking lemon juice, butter, egg yolk and sugar. She’d been planning to serve Josh a lemon tart with his tea the following morning; he was so fond of it. When the cook had heard the shot she had climbed into the cupboard under the sink, and that was where she was crouching when the second shot rang out.

  The policeman said he’d never seen anything like it— the effect of a large-caliber rifle fired at close range. As if the shooter had wanted to erase every memory in both their heads.

  The policeman’s reconstruction of the crime had led him to the following conclusion. Angus Farewell must have snuck into the house, gone up to the second floor, put the gun to the young man’s forehead as he lay in bed and pulled the trigger. He had then loaded a second cartridge, removed one shoe, positioned the rifle with the stock on the ground and the barrel between his teeth, and pressed the trigger with the big toe of his right foot. It was an extremely long shotgun. With the barrel in his mouth, not even a very tall man would be able to reach the trigger with his hands. The policeman said he had himself performed a reconstruction with a broomstick, to make sure.

  The motive was unclear. The only clue was a photo. The policeman had found it in the shooter’s left jacket pocket. It showed Angus Farewell, a woman, and a blonde child with curly hair.

  Someone, presumably the shooter, had written something on the back of the photo. It said: “All of it is true.”