Lindstrom's Progress

by Moss, John

  She moaned at his touch.

  The room from outside had seemed impenetrably dark, but inside was filled with the diffused light of the moon and the city sky. She no longer appeared like a painting but like the embodiment of brutalized human flesh.

  He could tell in the muted light that whoever had done this knew precisely what he was doing. The cuts had been into her veins, not arteries, so she would not bleed out. She was the victim of torture; death would have been collateral damage.

  With the most primal of responses, Harry settled onto his side, easing forward into the curve of her back, and brought his thighs up snug against the back of her drawn up legs. With his lower arm gently under her head he lay his other arm lightly across her body in a motionless caress. He could feel his own heartbeat pick up the rhythm of her pulse and he whispered over and over that it was going to be okay. She moaned several more times and Harry drew her closer, flexing and relaxing his muscles as they picked up the same rhythm.

  He was lying in blood.

  A part of his mind disengaged, as if he were hovering above a Grand Guignol diorama. He listened for a siren and heard several, but none were close by. No one had reported his break-in. What he observed were two human beings, bonded by incomprehensible horrors.

  Harry, Karen urged gently.

  The man on the blood-drenched rug holding the battered remains of a living woman smiled into the dark, dank nape of her neck before slowly pulling away. The woman moaned and the man’s heartbeat paused in that moment before bursting then resumed. He got up.

  Their ungodly embrace had lasted perhaps two or three minutes. He drew the curtains, turned on a light, and shuffled into the hallway. He looked back as she rolled gingerly onto her back. He could see by the bruising and blood between her thighs that she had probably been raped. He closed the door to the landing. The locking apparatus hung from splintered wood, but the door settled securely into its frame. Although it had been locked from inside, he was confident no one else was in the apartment. The intruder, torturer, rapist, had left his victim in darkness. He returned to kneel down beside her. He ran his hands slowly over her body, doing an inventory of the damage, then got up, reached for a pocket, paused, started for the phone on a desk against the wall. He seldom carried a cell phone. Accessibility paradoxically made him feel trapped.

  “Don’t,” she said. Her voice was tremulous but resolute. “No police.”

  “An ambulance, then,” he said, squatting beside her. “You need help.”

  “No,” she repeated emphatically.

  Harry rose again, catching himself in the full-length mirror beside the French doors from the hallway. What he saw was the appalling figure of some creature that might have crawled over an abattoir floor standing close to another creature’s flayed carcass; as he watched, the other creature rose to her feet and stood beside him, battered, but with a fierce determination. Submission apparently had not been an option. Harry put his arm around her and slowly they walked out of their framed reflection into the hallway.

  She guided him to the bathroom on the right. Straight ahead was the kitchen, with a small dining area that looked out over the street and opened on the side onto a living room, with the bedroom hidden from view.

  Removing their watches, Harry tested the water in the shower, dancing his hands under the flow until it was tepid. He turned the pressure low and steadied her as she stepped over the tile ledge into the stall. She remained still as the gentle stream soothed her wounds and the pool at her feet turned crimson and swirled down the drain. Harry held the glass door open, ready in case she collapsed.

  He tried to hand her a sponge, but she ignored him. He found a bottle of body wash on the granite-topped counter beside the sink, opened it, and created a rich lather on the sponge. Then he leaned through the open door into the stall and began to wash her, hardly making contact with her flesh, pressing just firmly enough to dilute the caked blood until it ran free. He started with her face and worked down.

  At her breasts he stopped. He realized a crimson wash was still sheeting down from her hair and he withdrew, found a bottle of shampoo, worked up a lather in his hands, then stepped fully clothed into the stall and ran his fingers through to her scalp, working out the dried blood.

  The cuts on her body were deliberate, shallow incisions. He avoided lifting the flaps of skin as he cleaned away the blood. Livid bruises were scattered at random. Numerous welts began to emerge as if poppy blossoms had been smashed on her flesh. What he had taken as stubborn clusters of dried blood seemed to be cigarette burns. Some of them were suppurating as the blood cleared away. For the most part, the burns were on her breasts, around her nipples, but not on them. He expected to see more burns as he squatted down and washed between her legs, but despite the bruising there were no marks nor welts to interfere with the monstrous consummation of her attacker.

  He eased her out of the shower and patted her dry with two thick white towels, then dropped the towels on the floor and slid them about with his feet, trying to mop up the reddish pools of water that had drained from their bodies or splattered through the open glass door. She sat down gently on the side of the bathtub and watched him as he stripped off his sodden shirt and pants. Even his underwear was blotched vivid red and he stripped that off too. He stepped into the shower and rinsed thoroughly then towelled off.

  He helped her to her feet and examined her closely in the glare of the bathroom lights. Her wrists and ankles showed angry abrasions. There was a gouge deep into the flesh of her left wrist where her watch had been. Her back and buttocks appeared to be untouched—her attacker had wanted her to observe exactly what he was doing. When Harry bent close to examine her scalp for lacerations, he was surprised to find nothing. Her attacker had doused her hair in her own blood, gathered from wounds in her abdomen.

  She leaned on him as they walked naked across the living room toward her bedroom. She flinched at the door and when he turned on the light he realized this was the torture chamber. Her bed was sodden with slashes of crimson, drying to brown in air that smelled of iodine and rust, raw like a butcher shop. Tied to each corner post at the foot of the bed were pieces of pale blue silk, pyjama bottoms and a shredded top that had been used to bind her ankles. Tied to one head post was a black brassiere, and another lay on the bloodied sheets in a twist of straps and lace.

  She had been left to bleed slowly, to survive her wounds, to remember.

  5 THE FORCES OF EVIL

  Madalena Strauss pulled away from Harry and stepped tentatively into the bedroom then reached back and drew him with her. They moved through to the next room where he had found her. She had turned it into an office of sorts. Essentially, it was less a room than a spacious thoroughfare with bookshelves, a teak desk with a desktop Mac and assorted computer paraphernalia, an office chair from Ikea, an exercise bicycle, and a leather chair with a lamp on a stand for reading. There was a spare cot along the outer wall, and Madalena watched while Harry stripped off the sheets after moving three piles of off-season clothes to the floor.

  He wrapped one sheet around Madalena and the other he draped like a toga over his right shoulder and around his waist. With automatic movements, she adjusted hers the way women do, so that the material tucked over on itself above her breasts. She arranged it delicately to stay clear of her wounds. He had to use his left hand to hold his closed. Being naked together had seemed natural, although her nakedness represented extreme violation and his was a consequence of unmitigated compassion. Once they were covered they seemed more exposed.

  “Let me get you some juice,” he offered with absurd formality. He was concerned about her loss of blood and wanted something to stave off the effects of shock.

  “Coffee,” she mumbled, true to her Viennese heritage.

  He led her to the living room where she settled into the contours of a sleek leather sofa by the window and he went into the kitchen to find coffee. Several times while the water was rising to a boil he looked to see how she w
as doing. When he returned with a tray carrying two coffee mugs, a pitcher of warm milk, and a plate of biscuits, a thin smile crossed her lips although she didn’t look up or bring the room into focus.

  “Madalena,” he said, his voice was soothing but firm, “this isn’t something you can handle alone. You need medical attention, and you need police protection.”

  Her features froze like a black and white photograph.

  Find her, Harry! Look into her eyes.

  He called Air Canada to cancel his flight. It was too late, just five hours before take-off, so he’d be charged full fare. Piss off, he thought. Next time I’ll fly Air Austria if there is such a thing. He called the Kressler and requested his room for a few more days. They graciously obliged. Then he had the front desk transfer him to the concierge.

  “I have a bit of a problem,” he explained.

  “Yes sir, how can we help?”

  “I would like you to send someone to my room.” He gave his name and room number. “Have that person pick up my bag; don’t forget the toiletries in the bathroom. And there’s a black box on the dresser with silver clasps. About the size of a laptop computer. I’ll want that as well. Put it inside my bag. If there is no room, dump out some of the clothes.”

  “Is sir checking out by telephone?”

  “No, I’m still registered. I want you to have the bag delivered to the Gumpendorfer district, 23 Marchettigasse, fifth floor.”

  “I will bring it myself, Herr Doktor Professor.”

  Instinctively, Harry responded, “Harry, please.” He did not remember registering with outdated credentials, nor did he like being reminded of a past he eschewed.

  “As you wish, Mr. Harry. Is there an apartment number?”

  Harry did not want to give Madalena’s name.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll hear the elevator.”

  “Is there anything else, sir?”

  “No, thank you. Danke schön.”

  “Good evening, sir.” The concierge spoke as if Harry had made the most normal request in the world.

  “Oh,” said Harry. “Was ist, what is your name?”

  “Heinz,” he said. “Ichstadt.”

  “Thank you, Heinz Ichstadt, good evening.”

  After setting the door with the broken lock ajar so he could hear the elevator, he returned to the living room. Madalena was blowing across her coffee and sipping through swollen lips.

  “Thank you,” she said without looking up.

  He sat down beside her on the leather sofa. For all its Italianate modernity, it was surprisingly comfortable. He turned a little so they faced each other. She stared at her coffee. He wanted to see into her eyes.

  After a while, Harry walked into the bathroom and rummaged through an assortment of bottles and jars under the sink until he found a tube with a red cross on it that he assumed was first-aid ointment of some sort. When he showed it to Madalena, she nodded and without being directed swung around on the sofa toward him and loosened her makeshift covering.

  Harry gently drew the sheet away from her body. Then he squeezed ointment onto his fingers and delicately worked it across the shallow cuts and into the abrasions. He counted the cigarette burns. There were eleven on the upper sides of her breasts and seven between her navel and pubic mound. He returned to the bathroom and found a packet of bandages. He covered each burn with a dab of ointment and a bandage.

  He looked around for a receptacle to dispose of the bandage wrappings. There was no ashtray—of course, she wasn’t a smoker. But there were no cigarette butts. Where had her assailant disposed of the crushed cigarettes?

  He thought he smelled the scent of honey, of dried flowers, mixed with the lingering scent of fresh paint.

  “I need water,” she said. It was the first whole sentence she had uttered since he arrived on the scene.

  When he heard the elevator, he retrieved his wallet from his blood-soaked pants and went to the door. Heinz Ichstadt stepped out of the steel cage when it came to a jolting stop and bowed slightly from the waist. He handed Harry his suitcase.

  “The black box is inside,” he said, and then added with just the hint of a smirk, “Have a good evening Herr Lindstrom.”

  Harry realized it must be around three in the morning and he was standing in the doorway wrapped in a sheet. He blushed; he hadn’t blushed since he was in his teens. He wanted to explain but realized it would be inappropriate. And in any case, he could not possibly tell Heinz Ichstadt the truth.

  “Good evening to you, Mr. Ichstadt,” he said, handing the man twenty euros, then thought better of it and added another twenty. “I assume you came by taxi.”

  “I did. This will certainly cover the cost. Danke schön.”

  The concierge was staring at Harry’s wallet. Did he want more? That was about $60.00. Harry glanced down and saw that his hand was smeared with blood. The euros were bloodied, as well. Heinz folded them carefully, took out a billfold from his inside jacket pocket and placed the bills meticulously between layers of leather, returned the billfold to his pocket, then rubbed his hands vigorously to dry the blood that had transferred onto his fingers.

  “If there is nothing else, sir?”

  “No,” said Harry. “Not at the moment.”

  “Should I call someone, sir?” He was looking at the damaged locks.

  “Goodnight, Heinz. Everything is fine.”

  “Goodnight, Herr Lindstrom.” The concierge backed into the elevator cage and drew the wrought-iron door closed without taking his eyes off Harry. The descent mechanism engaged, and the elevator shuddered and began to move. From Harry’s perspective, the man’s body slowly telescoped into itself until for a brief moment his head appeared to float at floor level, then he vanished amidst the hushed whirring of cables and gears. Harry waited for the whirring to stop and the metallic clang of the cage door as it swung back. He waited until he heard the outer door into the courtyard creak open on its huge hinges and snap shut. Then he turned and went back into the apartment.

  What are you thinking, Harry?

  I think that was a subtle attempt at extortion, but I’m counting on concierge-client privilege. He won’t say a word.

  Unless the fat man asks him.

  Yeah, maybe.

  You’re distracted.

  I am.

  Be careful, Harry. I’ve never known you to rely so exclusively on instinct. You’d better stop feeling, start thinking.

  They’re not mutually exclusive.

  Sometimes they should be.

  Harry nodded in acquiescence. There was no point in arguing.

  Closing the door, he walked back into the living room, trundling his suitcase behind him. Madalena looked up and made eye contact; she was coming around.

  After thoroughly washing his hands in the kitchen sink, he opened the suitcase, lifted out the box, and snapping open the silver clasps removed the painting from its velvet wrapping. He held it up at arm’s length for a moment to ensure that it hadn’t been damaged in transit, then seeking a wall that would never be exposed to direct sunlight and spotting the picture hook protruding from the plaster beside a landscape painting only a little bigger, he returned the Klimt to its rightful position. She watched passively, focusing on Harry.

  He dressed in a fresh outfit and then asked if she wanted help getting something on. He suggested pyjamas, but she insisted on clothes. She remained in the living room while he went into her bedroom and made selections. He tried not to focus on the bloodied bed or makeshift manacles. He was careful not to touch anything. He didn’t want to disturb the crime scene although he accepted that she wouldn’t allow him to call the authorities. Hell, he thought, she’s one of them. She’s a cop. If it’s not a crime scene it’s not a crime scene. It’s her call. She deserves that much out of all this.

  Madalena seemed preoccupied as she stepped gingerly into the pale blue panties he had chosen from the lingerie drawer, but when he handed her a lacy bra to match she rejected it and walked determinedly int
o her room and picked out a wispy affair made of the lightest silk. She quickly returned to the living room where she became temporarily modest, turning her back to him as she leaned over to adjust the weight of her breasts into the cups. Then she turned again and let him help her into the white cotton blouse and beige slacks he had selected.

  He got her another glass of water, but she handed it back to him, asking for scotch. In a cupboard above the kitchen sink he found a bottle of Glendronach single malt and poured her two fingers. She downed it and gestured for a refill. He brought it to her. His fears of dehydration were allayed when she took a small sip and then decisively set the glass down on the coffee table.

  With her head tilted to the side she offered him a pained smile.

  They sat close to each other, turned quarter on, so their knees almost touched.

  He wanted to ask if she was all right, but that seemed a ludicrous question. Instead, he tried to distract her by concentrating on something relatively neutral. He shifted his focus to the Klimt and she automatically followed his gaze.

  “It is very beautiful,” she said. She didn’t seem surprised at the painting’s return nor immodest that it looked so much like herself.

  “Yes,” he agreed, as his gaze shifted back and forth from Klimt’s picture to his companion until they seemed fused in his mind. Despite her abrasions smeared with ointment, the lividity of the cuts and bruises, she was the same woman the artist had conjured long before she was born.

  “His name is Dimitri Sakarov,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “The fat Russian. His name is Dimitri Sakarov.”

  Harry was stunned. He had assumed she wouldn’t want to talk about what had happened, but by the fierce tremor in her voice he knew exactly where she was going. She leaned forward and cocked her head to the side again so that her hair folded over and draped across the nape of her neck. They were locked in a gaze like a couple of kids on a roller coaster, revealing fear and exchanging confidence before the ride begins.