It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  “It’s half past six and the light will only fade around half past nine.”

  “If we want to be at the brink beneath her house, say, at twenty past ten, we should start about ten minutes to ten. Dismantling the scaffold will take fifteen minutes, so if we begin at half past nine it means that we have to wait here for about three hours.”

  “It might be better to wait at the inlet south of her house, we will be less visible there.”

  “Then we should sail as soon as we have heard her car. Have you activated the receiver?”

  “Oh yes!”

  “What a dreary journey. It was all grey and dull. And not a bird apart from ducks and swans.”

  “But there were only a few boats.”

  “The weather favours our enterprise.”

  “No hybris, no hybris, as you say; but there’s a strange smell here, from the mulch maybe.”

  “Or from decomposing trees. It reminds me slightly of truffles or mushrooms.”

  “Let’s take the scaffold down now while there still is plenty of light.”

  Having enclosed the mattress and the blanket in the plastic bag he lifted the tarpaulin up over the scaffold and loosening the rafters they placed them along the starboard gunwale.

  “If you’ll lift the boards up I’ll bail out the bilge water.”

  “It has stopped raining but we should take off the sou’westers before going into the house. They will impede our movements and we should leave our shoes on the mat in a plastic bag.”

  “But before you take the two transmitters opposite the doors remember the transmitter on the Alder where we disembark.”

  “Yes, and when we’ve found that we’ll have to pacify the dog.”

  “I can smell the meat.”

  “So to a dog it must be very potent.”

  “ And I have the smelly cloth here.”

  “And the ketamine and the syringe?”

  “Yes, and you have the pick gun and the electric gun, but you can leave the receivers to the doors in the boat and just keep the receiver to her car.”

  “And we have the infrared binoculars here. So we’re ready?”

  “We can expect her soon, for I suppose she’s a woman of firm principles and fixed habits?”

  “That’s the impression I have of her.”

  Listening to the greyish sound of tires slashing across wet asphalt in the distance they waited for the humming of the receiver that lay beside them on the transom. Drops from the leaves overhead spread ringlets out on the still surface of the water with each breath of air. Another motorboat came roaring down the north arm of the river – as incongruous here as torture in a church.

  “It’s ten past seven now.”

  “She may be a few minutes late.”

  “If she’s not here by eight we might as well go back and wait till next week.”

  “Maybe? Now listen! There she is!”

  The humming was easily audible from where he was sitting. Caitlin looked at her watch and he looked at her watching the seconds as they turned into minutes. The sound became intermittent before it vanished. Did the increased humidity of the air – which felt sultry and heavy – have any influence on the transmission?

  “Six minutes, that would fit roughly with six kilometres if she took the road across the bridge.”

  “Yes, but there would probably be less risk of meeting another boat if we waited here. People are now only concerned with coming from one place to another before it gets dark, so the traffic is limited to the northern arm of the river. If we start at half past nine we will be less likely to meet another boat than if we start now when it’s not even twilight yet.”

  “Yes, but it seemed more convenient to wait at the inlet as it is so close to her house. Look!”

  Forming a huge dark silhouette against the Sky a Grey Heron came down over the tree tops with slow and heavy wingbeats to settle in the shallows at the edge of the sedges a little further upstream – probably without regarding them as anything but a part of the brink. Taking a step forward she turned her head slightly sideways as if to get a better look at something – and stood still – as if lifeless. Patience was a necessity – both their patience and hers but for the Heron this was easier as her central nervous system was boosted directly by the reward of the chase. She was in her right element now as dusk was beginning to deepen and frogs – fish and Water Voles – taking advantage of the diminishing light – were coming out from hiding places in sedges and burrows to eat their fill before nightfall. As her tail feathers just touched the surface of the water the depth would be about thirty centimetres – hence movements at the bottom would still be discernible. Slowly their attention slackened as they were getting tired of watching the stilleven but then there was a slight movement just in front of the sedges and in the next instant she stood with an Eel or a Grass Snake writhing tortuously between her mandibles – but with quick abrupt movements of the neck she managed to place the head of her still living prey so close to the edges of the bill that she could begin to eat it. And as she did so the swallowing convulsions of her throat forced the Eel or the Snake further and further down – and a minute later there were no signs of her meal left and she stood again still and alert with hunger to survey her hunting ground for signs of life.

  “It was still alive when it was eaten.”

  Her whisper was crinkled with a slightly intrigued disgust.

  “Death would be caused by asphyxiation, not by the grinding of the gizzard or by disintegration of fleshy tissues in the acid of the proventriculus.”

  “But who are we to be critical? Industrial slaughter houses are beyond civilised imagination.”

  “Natural animals kill quickly and eat with grace.”

  Los animales comen con hermosura – al leopardo – caer sobre la presa y devorar como devora el fuego – sin más sin insistir – though Leopards often ate rather messily they killed cleanly.

  “To minimise the concomitant risks. But we have forgotten the bucket.”

  He pushed the motor away from the middle of the sternpost and as he did that the Heron flew away possibly annoyed with herself for having failed to detect them when she came.

  “You can sit here on the stern.”

  “I must hold on to something.”

  He gave her his hand.

  “It’s not comfortable and I’m pulling you right out of the boat. You’ll have to lean backwards.”

  “I am leaning backwards.”

  “But I’m touching the water already and falling further and further down, and I don’t want to get wet with all the things I have in my pockets.”

  “You’ll not slip down any further.”

  “This is not very funny!”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “I can feel that you’re almost laughing.”

  “That must be because you’re almost laughing yourself.”

  “All right. Help me up!”

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “No, not apart from your flippant attitude.”

  “You have a wet leaf sticking on to your skin there.”

  He took it away and gave her a long kiss.

  “And here’s a towel. Let’s have a cup of tea and a sandwich while we wait.”

  “It was impossible to get an impression of the speed with which the heron moved its head.”

  “In fifty milliseconds she had caught her prey, but it might as well have been a Grass Snake as an Eel. At this distance it was impossible to see what it was. Here’s your tea and a sandwich.”

  “We should not eat too much now though we still have to wait one and a half hour.”

  Side by side they sat watching the darkness come in from the east and thicken over the black expanse of still water that flowed on and on between the leafy brinks. It had begun to rain again and
they made certain that the plastic bag around the mattress and the blanket was closed properly. Feeling each other’s impatience grow they smiled exasperatedly with mutual empathy knowing that it would be far worse if they began to talk about it. From time to time she glanced at her watch like he looked at the deepening twilight. The humid air felt breathless and oppressive with lack of motion. The evolution of processes formed time – a change in the configuration of elementary particles and in the chemical bonding of atoms. Without matter there would be no time but how did emptiness create matter and how did matter create space? An eerie light shot for an instant through the clouds. With an expanding universe there was no space beyond the expanding cluster of galaxies. Then time would be a function of the speed of the processes involved so it would increase with the heat of the system – but it made no sense in their world. Because time passed so slowly they were both on fire – and he felt a distinct itch – a distinct excitement – an inclination to act – which a strictly cognitive effort only could dampen physically and the closer they came to the appointed hour of activity the harder it became to wait. An exercise in applied Stoicism? A false – a forced attempt to remain calm. A faint flash fled like a ghost across the water and though he strained his ears to listen he could not hear the thunder yet – but tempered by prior experiences Caitlin smiled at his anxious impatience although also appreciating it as a token of his spontaneous engagement.

  “It’s about half past nine now and rather dark, so should we begin?”

  He switched on the motor and the boat slipped out into the middle of the shallow stream. A streak of grim light shot through the clouds to illuminate the pock-marked surface of the river and he counted to thirty-six before the low deep rumbling – which began to roll in from the West – touched the drum skin from the audible horizon. The trees loomed in over them as they sidled up along the left brink which – forming a denser darkness than the water – indicated the way forward by the faint light that was reflected from the clouds or which even oozed down through them from the starry Sky. They had passed the three broad bends and were now sailing up along the straight stretch bordered by open fields. The soft increase in light made the low bushes seem greyish black though with faintly different hues – depending on the green shade of their leaves – and as long as they did not meet any boats everything would be fine and even if they did it would not matter all that much for the small lights to port and starboard he had attached to the gunwales as a formal precaution would only be visible at close quarters – so the darkmans would protect them from inquisitive eyes – and the constant susurrus of drops hitting the water and the leaves was also a good cover – especially if the dog should begin to bark. The force of the current increased steadily – the raindrops thickened the air like froth of heavy seas though without the lulls of troughs. They approached the wooded area where her house lay and as he heard Caitlin take out the receiver a bright flash illuminated for half a second the whole river – but when the thunder approached and he had counted to sixteen his retinae were still saturated with photons. Maybe a good omen? But such a weird superimposition of a purely subjective notion on reality was symptomatic of far too fervent an expectation. Gradually the sensitivity of his eyes began to increase but considering the indistinctness of the topography of the river at night the electronic beacon would save them from a long or maybe even a too long search. While keeping so close to the east brink that he could see the open fields as a treeless space to the North of her house he sensed rather than saw how eagerly she stretched out her arm to point. The brink seemed almost to be pitch black but as they came closer he could discern the outlines of individual bushes and see – scattered among the leaves – pinpricks of lights from the windows. Another lightning splintered the darkness of the Summer night to reveal slender Alder Trees and densely leafed shrubbery in a naked glimpse the violence of which contrasted with the absence of shapes and silhouettes a second previously so that an isolated image of the scenery in front of them imprinted itself on their open and astonished senses – but as the light now had come from behind it had not blinded him in the same way as before when he had been looking directly at its flaming source. The echoes of expanding air rumbled through the clouds while she examined the likely branches at the height her recollection indicated. At last he heard her sigh with satisfaction and stepping down from the prow she showed him the transmitter before putting it away in her pocket.

  “There is no response from her car.”

  So she had not returned from another direction while they had been sailing.

  “She’s not here, at least the car’s not here.”

  Holding on to the branches she jumped ashore and he followed her with the rope to the prow in his hand. The brink felt soft and boggy beneath his feet and while he groped around among the dripping leaves for a stout-sized bush he could feel her impatience grow like a steepening breaker closing in on the shore – but took his time to find a sturdy branch and make a double bowline knot. They began to walk slowly forward trying with their toes to forefeel the nature of the ground before letting it bear their full weight. The excitement of the chase that made the Sedge Warbler catch mosquitoes – the Red Deer search for succulent bark on saplings and the Tiger stalk a Chital – animated the steps of her stealthy approach. At the fringe of the grove the lights in the house changed the darkness to dusk and they had now only an open patch of tall grass left to cross. Touching his sleeve she stopped him and scanned the area behind the house with the infrared binoculars to see if there were any signs of the dog. After a little while she shook her head emphatically and they began again to go forward side by side – pausing though for every three steps or so to see if the dog should have heard them. The intermittent lightning came now just in front of the thunder but in the rainy haze they did not see the fence before they almost touched it. Shaking the smelly piece of meat out of the plastic bag he dumped it on the other side of the fence and put the bag back in his pocket. Caitlin was holding a small shining object in front of her mouth – a whistle – when he placed the smelly cloth with canine pheromones beside the meat. They could not do anything now but wait for the dog to come. She held the electric gun pointing in over the fence and he had placed his thumb on the switch of the red torch. Either the dog was stone-deaf – too lazy to move or suffering from hydrophobia. Caitlin whistled again and again – inaudibly – and he felt how easy it would be to succumb to solicitudinous misgivings. If the dog had been left inside the house he would be bound to bark when she began picking the lock. Then it would be best to wait for a week – but then the sound of running paws was followed by a deep threatening snarl. He pressed the switch forward and in the reddish glow from the torch the large dog – eager to defend himself and guard his property – rekindled his childhood nightmares about the Hound of the Baskervilles for although the phosphorescence was missing the raindrops that glistened in his black guard hairs gave him a ghostly air and his canines – bared in unmitigated aggression – glinted with pinkish spittle as if with blood – but being confronted by two strangers – a piece of juicy meat and the even more attractive smell of the female of the species he hesitated in doubt about his immediate priorities – aggression or desire. The spectral light illuminated the smooth hair on his shoulder and the sharp click of the electric gun was a prelude to a loud angry growling as he began rolling around in the grass. Simultaneously they crawled up over the fence and while Caitlin twisted the smelly cloth around the head of the dog he took the torch between his teeth and filled the syringe with the content of the phial. The convulsions of the wounded animal urged him to hurry so kneeling down in the wet grass he pressed the needle into his back leg – but the abrupt movements of the muscles meant that he also had to keep the leg still. Caitlin took hold of his paw and pulled it forward so that he could hold the syringe steady and press the plunger down. It took an inordinately long time to force the content of the syringe out into the tissue near the femur for the muscle was ra
ther tough – at least in comparison with that of the Sheep – but just as with the Sheep the dog quickly became unconscious. He pulled the needle out – detached it from the syringe and put them both back into the pocket where he had the empty phial. So far so good. Caitlin pushed the wet smelly cloth down into the plastic bag and when he had secured it in his pocket he tried to find the meat and became afraid of a delay. By looking at the fence and at the dog and moving the red light to and fro between them they saw it lying partly hidden in the grass. While he wrapped the bag around it to reduce the smell and she pulled the two small needles out of the dog’s shoulder he could feel that her impatience had gone. She was now calm and composed for the dog had been the only variable parameter in her artful equation. She took hold of his hand the better to let him share her excitement and they went round the corner of the house from where she scrutinised the driveway with the infrared binoculars even though the lamp in front of the door illuminated it as far as the bushes. Had the weather become part of the flow that prognosticated the result? Experience or intuition or intuition based on experience? Indicating that he should wait she walked across the lawn and stretched her arms up along the trunk of a Monkey Puzzle. A red light moved for ten or fifteen seconds around on the bark before she found it – and half a minute later they were hidden behind the house again.