by Alex Bell
Halsbach flinched as Ben approached him but he merely leaned down and picked the hundred Euro notes up off the floor, pocketing them before saying politely, ‘Thank you very much for your time, Herr Halsbach. We’ll show ourselves out.’
He turned away from the cringing scientist and took me by the elbow, steering me out of the room and back out to the car park, which felt blissfully cool and fresh after the stuffy, warm air inside.
‘You shouldn’t have lost your temper like that,’ I said reproachfully as we got back into the car. I couldn’t deny that it had been immensely satisfying seeing Halsbach get punched in the face, but for all we knew he might be reporting us to the police right this minute . . .
Ben glanced at me. ‘I didn’t lose my temper,’ he said levelly. ‘You were there, you saw what happened. I just wanted my money back, that’s all.’
He started the car engine and I frowned, trying to work him out. Now that I thought about it, it was true that he hadn’t appeared to lose control and he hadn’t so much as raised his voice to Halsbach, not even once. So perhaps he hadn’t been angry on Liam’s behalf, as I was. Perhaps he really had simply wanted his bribe money back and that was it.
‘What if he phones the police?’ I asked.
‘He won’t,’ Ben said. ‘Trust me. He’ll leave it be.’
As we pulled out of the car park, my eyes went to Ben’s hands on the steering wheel and the fact that he’d knocked the scabs off his knuckles and they were bleeding again - although he didn’t seem to be aware of it. I would almost have preferred it if he had lost his temper. At least that would have made him seem human, rather than cold and calculating . . .
Ben must have noticed my expression for he said, ‘Look - I’m sorry if what I did back there upset you. Just think of it as one for the rabbits - God knows the man deserved a punch in the face from them. Now what do you say we go and have some lunch courtesy of Herr Halsbach in a nice restaurant somewhere and get that horrible laboratory feeling off our skin?’
The weather in Munich was an unwelcome change from California, which, apart from that last night on the Queen Mary, had been pleasantly mild. In Munich it was bitterly cold but fortunately I still had the coat I had worn to the airport in England. We parked the car in the city centre and then walked towards Marienplatz - the main square in Munich - currently filled with the one-hundred-and-sixty-plus stalls of the Christkindlmarkt. I recognised it because I had been there with Liam two years ago when we had come for our long weekend.
The market was as atmospheric, lively, festive and colourful as I remembered. Liam and I had spent a whole morning looking at the stalls selling baked apples, roasted almonds, sparkly Christmas decorations, marzipan, toys, gingerbread, candles and handicrafts. Then we had stood before the impressive Neues Rathaus and eaten hot sausages and drunk mugs of spiced Glühwein.
The gingerbread stalls were my favourite. They had iced Lebkuchen hearts hanging from their covered roofs and beneath them stood traditional gingerbread witch houses from Hansel and Gretel, ranging in size, prettiness and price. The smell was warm and spicy and instantly brought another painful memory to the surface - Liam had bought me one of those Lebkuchen hearts when we came back to the Christmas markets one evening. The memory of that distinctively Germanic gingerbread was firmly linked in my mind with a sense of carefree happiness that made the sight of them now all the more melancholic. I had never dreamt then, as Liam and I wandered through the stalls together saying that we must come back again some day, that the next time I returned to Munich Liam would not be with me but would be in a coffin back home instead.
I pushed the memories aside and concentrated on keeping up with Ben who was striding through the throng, sparing no time for the gaily decorated stalls. Instead, he headed straight for the Café Glockenspiel on the fifth floor of a building directly opposite the Rathaus. By chance, we were seated at our table by the window just on the stroke of twelve o’clock and so had a good view of the mechanical figures of the Glockenspiel in the tower opposite coming out to perform their dance whilst a large crowd of tourists watched from the bustling square below. It was a welcome relief to be in a bright, lively, festive place after the awful laboratory and I felt a burst of warmth towards Ben for suggesting it - which was probably why I didn’t have more of a go at him for not telling me about the lake story earlier.
‘Did Jaxon tell the same version of it?’ I asked.
‘More or less,’ Ben replied. ‘Only he claimed it was Adrian and Liam between them who managed to kill the swan. I half-thought he might have been making the whole thing up, but now that Adrian’s verified it independently . . .’
A few months ago I would never have believed such a wild story, no matter how many people verified it. But since then I had seen black swans falling out of the air dead for no apparent reason and a black horse galloping around on the deck of the Queen Mary before disappearing into thin air before my eyes.
‘It was probably Adrian and Jaxon who killed the swan,’ I said.
Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘I would have said it was probably Adrian and Liam - as they were the ones who were apparently dragged into the lake.’
‘I can’t imagine Liam killing a swan, even by accident.’
Ben stared at me for a moment before giving a harsh, humourless laugh. ‘It’s not the magic swans you find hard to accept but the idea that Liam could kill one!’
‘Obviously I find the idea of a magic swan hard to accept,’ I replied irritably. ‘And the knight, too! But Liam loved animals - he would never have hurt one!’
‘And yet Adrian Halsbach was most certainly there that night,’ Ben replied calmly. ‘How do you explain his presence if you don’t believe the three of them were planning to dissect the swan in his laboratory later?’
I shook my head firmly. ‘I don’t know, but there must be another explanation. Liam would never have got involved in something like that.’
‘Huh,’ Ben grunted, sullenly. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it’s just a story they’ve made up between them and no such thing ever happened at the lake at all. But you’re wrong about Liam liking animals. He never liked them. I caught him torturing insects in the garden many times when we were growing up. He used to set traps for them. He even caught a rabbit once. He seemed fascinated with their struggles.’
‘Oh, don’t be absurd!’ I said abruptly, my skin prickling with distaste at such a blatant lie. I’d known Liam since he was four years old and I’d never seen him be anything other than gentle with every animal he’d handled. I couldn’t understand why Ben would even tell me such a story in the first place. What could he possibly hope to gain from it? He must realise I’d never believe it.
‘You never had any pets,’ he remarked calmly.
‘What?’
‘After you were married. If Liam loved animals so much, then why didn’t you ever have any pets?’
I frowned uncomfortably. We’d bought a dog just after moving into our new house but, oddly, it had taken an instant dislike to Liam. He couldn’t even get near the animal without it growling at him and, in the end, we’d been forced to find another home for it. I also remembered the strange way Liam had suddenly become reluctant to go riding at my grandparents’ stables when he had always enjoyed it so much before . . . But Ben wasn’t to know any of those things so I simply said, ‘It wasn’t the right time for us to have pets.’
Ben’s mouth twitched in what might have been a small smile but he said nothing and, at that moment, our food arrived.
‘Was Liam happy?’ Ben said abruptly once the waitress had gone.
‘What?’
‘Over the last year - was he happy?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘We both were.’
While we ate, he went on to ask me several other questions about Liam and the life we’d had together and I realised how little he’d really known about us. I supposed it made sense, for they had stopped talking just before Liam and I were married.
‘How did it happen?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘The engagement. I always thought the two of you were just friends.’
‘We were at first. But he bought me a Violectra,’ I said with a laugh. ‘How could I not love him?’
‘Liam bought you the Violectra?’ Ben asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘He knew how much I wanted an electric violin and he surprised me with it one day.’
‘It’s a striking instrument,’ Ben said, then added more quietly, ‘You play beautifully.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied, warming to him for the kinder manner he had suddenly adopted.
‘So have you ever been to Munich before yourself?’ Ben asked casually.
‘Just once,’ I said. ‘Liam and I came for a long weekend two years ago.’
‘I see. Did you enjoy it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, looking out of the window at Marienplatz below and remembering how we had stood there in that very square.
‘Jasmyn,’ Ben said after a moment. I turned to look at him, wondering whether I was imagining that odd undertone in his voice. He seemed to be looking at me very intently too. ‘After you got married,’ he began slowly, ‘did Liam seem at all different?’
‘Different?’ I repeated with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’
Ben made an impatient gesture with one hand and then leaned slightly forwards over the table. ‘You knew him for a long time,’ he said. ‘But after you were married, surely you must have noticed changes. They might have just been little things. Perhaps they only lasted a few months and then he went back to normal. Think! Surely there must have been something?’
I gazed at him, trying to keep my expression blank. I had noticed a few little changes but they had been small innocuous things that Ben couldn’t possibly have known about. After all, Liam had looked the same, sounded the same . . . The first time I noticed him change a habit was when he started putting his used tea bags in the sink rather than the bin. And then he started leaving the toilet seat up. And dropping his clothes on the bedroom floor in a messy heap rather than putting them away in the cupboard or into the wash as he’d always done before. I thought he was just being lazy and, at any rate, when I mentioned it to him he stopped doing it at once.
But the other thing I noticed was that he started kissing me differently. It wasn’t worse or better. It was just different. I thought at first that it was because of the split lip a drunken guest gave him on his way to the ice machine while we were on our honeymoon in the Caribbean. It’s a strange quirk of human nature that such things seem worse when they’ve been done intentionally rather than when they’re simply the result of an accident. The person who attacked Liam didn’t do it for any good reason - it just seemed to be a drunken guest looking to make trouble who was quickly scared off by another group drawn by the noise. But Liam came back to our room with a swollen eye and a split lip. They were not bad injuries - he didn’t even need stitches - so I was surprised by how much the whole thing upset me. He’d had a bit to drink by that time and if he’d fallen down the stairs by accident and got the bruises that way I know I would not have been anywhere near as distressed - indeed, I probably would have teased him over it mercilessly. But the thought of someone hitting him turned my stomach. The next morning he could hardly open his eye, it was so swollen.
He told me the hotel had kicked the drunken guest out but I almost wished they hadn’t so that if I saw him during the holiday I could hit him hard myself with something really heavy. At any rate, I had thought at first that his kisses felt different because of his split lip, but even after it healed they still weren’t quite the same somehow. And now that I really thought about it, I was not convinced that the difference had started in the Caribbean anyway. Perhaps that punch in the face had had nothing at all to do with it . . .
The daredevil stunts like parachute jumping definitely hadn’t started until after our marriage. I remembered teasing him that if he were ten or twenty years older I would have worried that they were the manifestation of a midlife crisis. And he no longer wanted pets and didn’t seem to want to go near horses any more . . .
I didn’t know if these could be the things Ben was referring to or not but it seemed unlikely for - apart from the sudden interest in extreme sports - they would only be noticeable to someone who actually lived with him.
‘I don’t know,’ I said at last. ‘Maybe the odd little thing but nothing major. Why do you ask?’
‘I just thought you might have noticed something, that’s all,’ he said, looking irritable. ‘After all, there was a lot going on with him at that time and you were his wife.’
He seemed determined to kick me where it hurt and I found myself wondering once again what I could possibly have done to make him dislike me so. There’d never been any argument between us as far as I was aware.
‘That’s true, but my door wasn’t the one he knocked on one night asking for help,’ I replied sharply. That fact didn’t make me feel any better, but perhaps it might make Ben feel a little worse. I was pleased to see him look suitably pained at my remark. That’s right, I thought, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
‘Tell me about what you’ve been doing,’ I said to change the subject before it could turn into another nasty argument.
‘You would be bored,’ Ben said abruptly.
‘Try me,’ I insisted, through gritted teeth. He must think I had the attention span of a gnat.
‘Well, I’ve been working,’ he shrugged. ‘That’s it.’
‘You can be an architect anywhere,’ I said. ‘Why did you move to Germany?’
Ben hesitated for just a moment before saying, ‘I met someone. ’
I suddenly remembered the woman who had answered the phone that time I had been trying to reach Ben and said, ‘A lady friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it serious?’ I didn’t know why I asked that question but Ben answered it by holding up his hand and, for the first time, I noticed the engagement ring on his finger. It was a simple band of white gold and I was struck by how beautiful it was.
‘Wow,’ I said, genuinely pleased for him. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Heidi.’
‘What does she do?’
To my surprise, Ben said with sudden iciness, ‘I’d rather not talk about her with you!’
Then he raised his hand to call the waiter over with the bill before I could respond. I was shocked by the speed with which he had gone from pleasantly amicable to coldly rude once again. When he had said that he didn’t want to talk about his fiancée there had been something almost . . . vicious in his tone.
‘Look, Ben,’ I said quietly once the waiter had left, ‘have I done something to piss you off or do you treat everybody this way?’
He looked right at me and the dislike he felt was almost palpable. ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘You haven’t done anything to piss me off. I just don’t want to discuss my private life with you, if that’s all right.’
My fingers itched to throw something at him for being so cold but I managed to resist the temptation, and soon we were back outside in the chilly Marienplatz. The fact was that I needed Ben right now if I was to have any hope of finding out what had happened to Liam. After that I surely wouldn’t need ever to see him or his parents again if I didn’t want to. There was nothing tying me to them now.
Strangely, I found the thought of never seeing Ben again oddly distressing and this irritated me even more. The man looked like Liam, but really that was all he had going for him. Good luck to his poor fiancée - she had sounded a nice enough girl when I’d spoken to her on the phone and I wondered what the hell she was doing marrying Ben. It just seemed so flat and final - Liam was gone and with him my tenuous connection to his family, as we had never had any children. Liam had been desperate for them but I had wanted to wait until we had more money saved up . . . How bitterly I regretted my caution now . . . Liam’s parents and I might send Christmas cards
for a few years but after that . . . well, what reason did we have to stay in touch? The sight of me would probably dredge up painful memories for them and vice versa. And his mother had already made her feelings on the matter perfectly clear.
‘So what now?’ I asked, trying to sound neither annoyed nor intimidated.
‘I want to go to Neuschwanstein and see it for myself,’ Ben said.
‘We’ll go in the morning. I’ll meet you at the hotel for breakfast at eight o’clock.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’ He glanced at me. ‘You might want to use the time to buy yourself some clothes. I don’t know how long we’ll be in Germany but I doubt your California wardrobe is going to work here.’
I did as Ben had suggested and found a Karstadt to buy a few things. He was right in that a lot of the clothes I had brought with me from California would not be suitable here in Europe’s chillier climate. It was difficult for I didn’t know how much longer it would be before I would be going home, but I tried to stick to the basics. I was already alarmed by the amount of money I was spending. I had not been rich when I’d been married but now that it was just me I certainly couldn’t afford to be extravagant, especially since my bereavement payment had by now run out and I was having to dig into my savings. I wouldn’t even have gone on the trip to California had the flight not already been paid for, and I knew there would be very little expense involved once I arrived because I was staying with a friend. This was different. It was becoming expensive and I could ill afford it. I knew my family would lend me money if I asked but I would have to tell them what it was for and I had no wish to start running up debts.
My feet hurt by the time I had finished shopping and I would have liked to have stopped by a Konditorei for a coffee on the way back to the hotel, but the money I had spent that afternoon was already weighing heavily on my mind, so when I came across one with beautifully dressed windows and a warm, welcoming smell wafting from the door, I steeled myself to walk right past it as if bitter coffee beans and rich marzipan gateau held no allure for me whatsoever.