It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Conscious malice – ruthless fury – but no detectable Doric twang. The pain in his arm increased as she spoke and her weight on his chest pushed him down upon the thorny floor. His chin and his cheek were pressed up against her right thigh and he could smell her skin through the elastic fabric of blackish-blue threads that masked her muscles. Struggling to get out of her solid grip he looked up over her stomach to her breasts which distended the tight cloth of her dress – and at her face while she scrutinised him with such a snaky rage that he almost felt forced to close his eyes – but he kept looking – hypnotised by her intensity.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Hissing her question down into his face she tried – by the power of her will – to force him to confess – but in spite of the violence of her temper – her innate sensuality – the presence of which was given and beyond her voluntary control – permeated him like a field of force. As he felt she would intensify her attempts to undo him he began – first subconsciously and then an instant later deliberately – to relax and lift his legs upward. That was the only chance he had and he only had it once. Moving his lips as if answering her question he induced her to concentrate on imagining what it was he was trying to say but as she failed to find any meaning in his whispers her impatience increased and she pressed his arm further and further back.

  “Oh heaven no!”

  As his hardly articulate words were fused with moaning she leaned a little forward to catch the drift of what he was trying to convey. His feet were almost level with her shoulders and she might now see what he was doing and dodge him by leaning forward.

  “The night – ”

  He was only muttering partly because he wanted to focus all of her attention and partly because the pressure of her pubic bone across his throat made speaking difficult. With her head slightly aslant she was closely watching his lips and his eyes for a clue when he swung his heels up against her shoulders and pushed her backwards. As she lost her balance and he began to disentangle himself from her legs he heard a bump and a loud groan of pain. She must have hit her head on the edge of the table. Crawling away he rose – bewildered and sore – ran around the sofa – pushed the curtain aside and slipped out through the door that still stood ajar – suddenly amazed to encounter a new world of fresh green grass – translucent leaves – burnt umber shadows and glittering sunlight. Looking back while running out of her driveway he saw that the door now was wide open and that she did not intend to follow him. Reaching the road he stopped running and walked down to his car – but as the extent of his failure began to become obvious he felt lost. Balayées les amours. His right shoulder was sore and it hurt when he moved his arm. What a confounded fool he had been to think that she would faint for joy in his arms because he had broken into her house to shower her in roses and bathe her in Champagne. There was no excuse for such indulgence in rapturous dreams about his own infallibility. Had he been dreaming ex cathedra? If so his dream had turned into a nightmare – a real nightmare – and yet he had felt attracted to her by a spontaneous compulsion. The four fused forces of her being in this world – fury – sensitivity – strength and sexuality – had thrown him three times over – again – as if to seal his fate once and for all. She had a peculiar sinewy muscularity that enhanced her femininity with natural grace – like that a Leopard or a Dolphin could not but show whether fighting for life or playing for joy. Monotonous physical exercise would instead tend to diminish femininity by forming abrupt straight lines lacking in three-dimensionality like abstract expressions of dissonance. The traits of her character were expressed in her self-reliance – in her spontaneous preference for attacking when feeling threatened – in her determination to get at the truth of the matter immediately – but also in her awkward lack of discrimination – for when confronted by a glass of Champagne and a large bouquet of red and pink roses she ought to have realised the friendliness of his intentions and understood that a more civilised approach would have yielded a better prospect of the truth – though not of course if she had suspected that such a civilised approach only would have resulted in a glib prevarication concerning the real motives for his presence in her house. It was not all that easy to drive and he used his right hand as sparingly as he could – the pain kept radiating from the glenohumeral joint out into the bone. So he had given her a shock. Poor Caitlin! But she had given him a shock as well by showing such a degree of ferocity. The release of adrenaline had boosted her strength and determination – but in order to react with such a spontaneous violence she would have to be permanently alert – and such a state would in the long run have a detrimental effect not only on her ability to be alert but also on the efficacy of her immune system. Readiness to fight or flee had only developed as a fleeting affective state and was only sustainable as such. Driving home among the flat fields and the clusters of human habitation he noticed the green landscape as well as the large accumulations of white clouds that revealed the blue Sky where the wind made breathing holes in their vaporous layers – but the colours he saw failed to make him vibrate according to their respective frequencies. He had become blind with disappointment. Parking the car without being aware of parking it he tried to engage his senses in the present by making a cup of tea and eating oranges and bananas – but they tasted indifferently and not as he knew they ought to taste and smell. So what should he do now? Give up of course. That was the most realistic option. He had imagined that she would react sensibly and be sceptical until he had had a chance to explain – but instead she had reacted as if he had been a threat but it would naturally have looked quite differently from her point of view. He must have appeared to be a real threat. To survive he needed space in which he could breathe freely and he had imagined that she would have been prepared to share his space and even to expand it with her own sense of being alive – but what had made him imagine that he stood a chance of living in comparable peace and partial happiness with her when the prospects all around him were so bleak? His fate would doubtless be the common fate of a gradually escalating extinction of species – sensitivity and culture. The diminishing of inner movement – all emotion when the final hour of zero left him as a corpse for Crows and Ravens. Everything was dark – pitch dark – and his sense of disappointment only increased – minute by minute – as the reality of what had happened became more and more inescapable – but at the very fringe of his awareness he surmised that there was something he had missed. A crucial point – maybe – or maybe not – but trying to realise what it could be would only put it off – and it would disappear down into the murky depth of his unconscious as soon as he tried to reach it. So he sat down to breathe in – hold his breath and breathe out – to wait – before inhaling again as slowly as he could without getting short of breath – to prolong each cycle and to disregard the images that floated by of what she had looked and felt like. Necessity prevailed so he had to forget her for a while and disregard everything but his breathing. Pause – inhalation – pause – exhalation – pause. Again and again for nothing else mattered now and then attention to what mattered should cease as well till there were no distinctions or attention left.

  He must have fallen asleep for he woke up with a feeling as if having had a long bath – but the sensation of an unknown potentiality remained so he should keep his attention away from this point of all-consuming interest – and do something which could engage him so deeply that his unconscious would be left alone to explore its own labyrinthine inclinations. Consequently he changed clothes and began weeding the bed with Leeks – Onions – Carrots – Parsley and Basil though practically only using his left hand. The grass was long and sinewy with wide-spread tentacles – the Nettles were tough and rough with coarse leaves already darkened by excess chlorophyll. It was a slow and laborious undertaking with his right arm thus hors de combat – for it did still hurt even if exercising a minimum of strength but using only hi
s left hand he was determined to finish the weeding before it grew dark. If she had continued a little longer she might quite easily have dislocated his shoulder or maybe even – εὕρηκε! Throwing the trowel up in the air he laughed for joy. So that was the answer. George! How he had died. Of course. He had the clue now – the whole chain of events – link by iron link. Rushing into the bathroom he washed his hands and telephoned Mary.

  “Good afternoon, Mary, it’s Ralph. Do you have a spare minute?”

  “Oh yes, what – ”

  “Can I come over right away and see you?”

  “Of course, any time, if it’s urgent – ”

  He dropped the telephone – ran out to his car – took off and cut every corner he could on the way to ‘Beech Hall.’ It took him four and a half minutes and Mary must have heard him brake for as soon as he knocked on the door she opened it.

  “You certainly are in a hurry, and have you been gardening?”

  “Yes, but can you keep a secret?”

  “Are you teasing me?”

  “No, but at least till I tell you that it’s a secret which you now are at liberty to divulge.”

  “You insist on tormenting me, I see, but come in and have a glass of Sherry.”

  He followed in the wake of her swanny gait into the living room and sat down impatiently while she fetched two glasses and the decanter.

  “Cheers! Now what is this really all about?”

  “Mary, do you remember you told us about a friend of yours, Suzy, whose husband, George, was found as a corpse in the river last year? Could you telephone Suzy right away and ask her to send you a copy of George’s autopsy and photographs of her lost jewellery? You can say that there is a chance of recovering some of it but that I cannot make any promises.”

  “I shall not be able to get a wink of sleep before you have told me everything.”

  “You must give me a week, and tell her that I knew George peripherally from the City.”

  “All right, but maybe you should speak to her yourself?”

  Having scrolled down the list she found the right number and telephoned Suzy while he helped himself to another glass of Sherry. It was pale and dry though fruity.

  “Suzy! It’s Mary. How are you doing? I’m awfully glad to hear that. Now, listen, an old friend of mine, Ralph, who knew George, has just told me that there is a chance of recovering some of your lost jewellery if you still have photographs of them, but you had better speak to him yourself. All right, here he is.”

  Handing him the telephone she basked in the chill of partaking in the light-hearted conspiracy of robbery and even murder because it could have no serious consequences for herself or Suzy.

  “Good afternoon, my name is Ralph, Ralph Drummond, I’m a painter, and I happened to meet George occasionally in the City, but I did not know about what had happened as I am abroad most of the time. A story I chanced to hear the other day in London may have a connection with the burglary, about which Mary told us at a dinner recently, so if you still have photographs of your jewellery there might be a chance of recovering some of it.”

  “How extraordinary! I do indeed have the photographs somewhere, but I have already had the money from the insurance company; however, some of the jewels have a sentimental value, and if you think you can get them back, I will send you the photographs right away.”

  “Excellent, but do you have a digital camera, and can you transfer pictures to your computer?”

  “Yes, of course. You want me to photograph them and send an attached file to Mary?”

  “Then I can have them straight away and the sooner the better. Do you have Mary’s email?”

  “I’ll just have a look. But you must tell me how all this concerns you, a total stranger, I mean – ”

  “That’s a very reasonable question, and a question I hope to be able to answer soon. In the meantime I beg you to trust me when I say that I have nothing but a disinterested, an academic interest, you might say, in the story. But I will be happy to give you a full explanation in a week’s time, I hope, and by the way do you have a copy of George’s autopsy?”

  “Oh, God! No, but Thomson, my lawyer has, now the mystery deepens. Are you a detective?”

  “No, God forbid, just, as I said, a painter of paintings.”

  “What motives do you prefer? Yes, here it is, Mary’s email.”

  “In my paintings I try to suggest the ineffable, that which lies beneath the surface, the soul if you will as it manifests itself in the forms and colours, and in the empty spaces of this world. I can send you some photographs if you want to have a look.”

  “Oh yes, do by all means, but why do you want George’s autopsy? There’s surely more to what you say than meets the eye here.”

  She had the good grace to laugh.

  “Indeed, there is. But I can hardly explain very much at the moment as my assumption may be totally unfounded. So it’s not much more than a shot in the dark, I’m afraid.”

  Though in the light of a perigee Moon.

  “Never mind, I’ll phone Thomson and ask his secretary to send it to Mary.”

  “Thanks, and I’ll call you as soon as I have definite news.”

  “I must say I’m curious and astonished. Right out of the blue. So good bye for now.”

  He replaced the telephone with a buoyant feeling – the blood on the leaves had not coagulated.

  “I’ll have another glass, may I?”

  “Of course, as much as you like. You’re excited, and it’s contagious. I just wish you would take me into your confidence. You know you can trust me.”

  “Of course I know that, but you see, I have formed a theory about how George died. It may be right, and in that case I shall tell you everything, but in case it’s wrong, it would be highly unfair to several people to tell you or anybody else anything about it. And his death may be connected with the jewellery and then again it might not. That’s what I am trying to discover.”

  “Then I am bound to be disappointed, and I might be unable to concentrate on my new part.”

  “Oh Mary, I do certainly not want to be responsible for distracting you from – ”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s my curiosity, but let’s see if Suzy has managed to take the pictures.”

  Mary opened the mail box. There was an email from Thomson – Thomson – Thomson and Thomson. ‘Could you please confirm your name as Mary FitzGerald.’ Mary sent a confirmation and a minute later a new email came from the secretary of one of the Thomsons with an attached file.

  “Let’s print it out.”

  There were fourteen pages.

  “Now we just have to wait for the pictures. Where’s Peregrine by the way.”

  “There’s an auction this afternoon.”

  He could hardly wait to read the autopsy – but suppressed his impatience.

  “I hope Suzy can take the photographs, and that she can send them.”

  “Not all women are technical morons, you know.”

  “I never said so.”

  “No, you just implied it, but she’s quite sophisticated, and you must send her some photographs of your paintings. When she comes to London she always has a look at the galleries.”

  “I’ll send her a sample if you’ll give me her address, but excuse me a minute.”

  He went back to have another Sherry and returned with the glass in his hand.”