by James Church
I started running through the list of possibilities in my head. That put her at least at thirty, maybe a little younger, but I was doubtful. It meant she’d been with a Kazakh man when she was just a girl. I sighed without thinking. Maybe an arranged marriage. I could feel the pulse pounding in my temples.
“You have nothing to say? You don’t care? You despise me?” At this rate, the volcano inside her would explode just as the headache broke across the top of my skull. I looked at her dumbly, more dumbly than I intended.
I shook myself into speech. “No, why should I despise you? You have a child. I’m glad of it.” I brightened at the sound of that thought. “Yes, I am, I’m glad of it. It makes you, I don’t know”—I held up my hands in hopes that the gesture would release me, but it only made me look like I was holding a watermelon—“it makes you fuller, more complete, even more beautiful.” Was that what I meant to say? It was, I think it was, or close to it. But it wasn’t why I had come over, or was it? I couldn’t remember. Such a horrible moment, when everything hung in the balance, maybe this was like being in front of a firing squad. I’d seen a prisoner shot, once. He had held his breath, waiting. I decided to breathe, chanced another breath, a small one. Unless she was listening closely, she wouldn’t know it was a sigh. She put her head down on the table and began to sob. “Yes,” I said, not knowing what to do, “a son is good, and I know he must be a fine boy.” This was an impossible conversation. I had never had a conversation like this, sat so close to a beautiful woman, a woman who was sobbing, her body convulsed with sobs, and I didn’t understand why, I couldn’t have told anyone why. It escaped me utterly, what I was to do. I felt diminished, unequal, drowning. It was a relief when the sobbing stopped, when she lifted her head and looked at me, straight into my eyes, and I shivered at knowing, in that instant, who I was.
5
The next day, as soon as my head cleared, I went into the office. If I stayed in my place, I’d only think about Miss Chon, and I didn’t want to do that. If she knocked on my door again, this time I might not ask her to leave. And I still didn’t have any chairs. Even worse, letting another day go by without any progress in figuring out a rational way to arrange the pieces of this case simply increased the chances of another session with the ash club. Case? What case? I didn’t even know what this was about anymore. Or maybe I did. Maybe the man in the brown suit was trying to motivate me to find out what he couldn’t discover on his own. If so, it was effective technique, up to a point. Other than avoiding Miss Chon, there was nothing else on my mind except not seeing him again, either. I needed to solve the problem, but I couldn’t do that unless I defined it first.
“This is a simple bookshelf problem,” I said to Boswell.
“Textbook case, you mean.” Boswell’s eyes were closed. He was resting his head against the wall, the far wall where the bookshelf belonged.
“No, Superintendent, I mean bookshelf. As in, building a shelf to hold books. A box, basically, four ninety-degree angles. A plain board in the middle, maybe two, depending on your sense of symmetry and the number of books you own.”
Boswell opened his eyes. “We are not amused, as royalty used to say. What is the point, exactly?”
“Every problem is reducible to essential elements. Pull off the finials, the decoration, the brass fittings. There has to be a basic structure, something that holds the problem upright, keeps it unified.”
“And this structure, this problem we are dealing with, this is a bookshelf?”
“Apparently. It seems to have four ninety-degree angles.”
“Such as.”
“The two Germans did not enter the country legally. Neither did the robbers from Kazakhstan. Ninety degrees. Clear and crisp.”
“What does it mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything, necessarily. I’m just describing what is; in carpentry, you have to start with reality. Ninety degrees is just an angle, after all.”
“Well, what if the Germans had come in legally, but not the Kazakhs?” An interesting question. The answer might not be important, but the question was.
“Forty-five degrees,” I said.
“You can’t build a bookshelf with that angle?”
“No. Not even Scandinavians do that.”
“Go on, Inspector.”
“The Germans have both been associated with, or at least in close proximity to, banks that were robbed in the past in various countries. The man hit by the bus, one of the robbers, was Kazakh.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“That’s ninety degrees?”
“It is.”
“Pretty thin gruel.”
“You’re thinking oatmeal, Superintendent. Don’t.”
“What if you’re wrong, Inspector?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. It’s no different with a bookshelf. If the angles aren’t right, you’ll know it soon enough. No use trying to force anything. It won’t work. You can’t force boards together any more than you can hammer facts into fitting.”
“But you shave boards, don’t you?”
“No, you plane them. But only to get at the truth. You can’t plane a board to do something it won’t. If you have a twisted board, that’s all there is. It’s twisted.”
“I suppose.”
“You’re a skeptic, that’s good. But in the end, you still need somewhere to put your books. I’m going to build you a shelf.”
“Life isn’t like carpentry, Inspector.”
“Says you. Look, German radicals, a bank robbery, and a threat to a foreign dignitary.”
“Coincidence.”
“Maybe somewhere else on the planet. Not here. Here, it’s a ninety-degree coincidence.”
“What’s left?”
“I don’t know.”
“You only have three corners.”
“That’s right.”
“So you don’t have anything, really. The thing wouldn’t stand by itself.”
“Correct.”
“You need another angle.”
“Ninety degrees more, Superintendent, and we’re in business. Without that, we have a pile of lumber.”
“What do you think you’re missing?” He had been uninterested in the first part of the conversation, but I could tell he was suddenly paying attention.
“You are a foreigner, Superintendent, no offense. You work for a foreign service, in a country hostile to mine. Your government is allied with a government that is seeking the downfall of my own.”
Boswell said nothing. His fingers tapped on his knee. Then he pointed at me. “Politics. Don’t mix politics with police work, Inspector.”
I smiled. “Strange thing to say.” I turned to the window. “Pretty day. It’s the first of May, wonderful month to be alive, don’t you think?”
“Already the first of May? Time slips by in your country, doesn’t it, Inspector.” He was on the verge of saying more but pulled back.
“Have I showed you the trees along the riverside, Superintendent?”
Boswell stood up and stretched his arms over his head. “Do those trees have anything to do with bookshelves?”
“Unlikely, Superintendent, they’re mulberries.”
“So?”
“No good for shelves. A wood with too much of a mind of its own.”
“I’m surprised such trees grow here.” He paused and waited half a beat. “I mean, cold weather and all.”
Neither of us spoke on the walk to the park. It was hard to ignore the SSD checkpoints along the way. A woman with a black bag over her shoulder loitered on the corner at the end of the block. She moved away as we passed, walking in the other direction. A car drove up and parked across the street when we stood for a moment in the shade. Two old men waited, smoking cigarettes under a tree fifteen meters away, not talking to each other. These were just static posts. It would take a few minutes for the mobile team to arrive. Before that happened, I needed to get things clear with Boswell. We sat on a bench facing
the river. The sun was hot and the breeze was cool; the sky was brilliantly clear in all directions except for two small clouds drifting side by side. In a few weeks, on this sort of day all the new leaves would dance gently, in complete silence, still too young to give off the rustling that sits on the edge of summer, or that dry chorus six months away that sings of winter and death. I remembered the man in the brown suit asking me about Prague and felt my shoulder ache.
“You and the Irishman work together, do you?” I asked.
Boswell turned to me with a quizzical look. “Here? Now? You ready?”
“Ready?” I couldn’t arrest him; my meeting in Prague would be confirmed. I couldn’t smash his face or roar at him or break his thumbs. “No, I’m not interested in taking that road. I told Molloy I’m not working for your damned queen, and I’m not.” My shoulder flared again. “I don’t like you people setting me up. You’ll tell Molloy that, won’t you? Tell him my shoulder is not good anymore, and it’s his fault. Is that why they sent you, to see if I’m ready to bolt? Or is there something more? Why are you here, Boswell? And don’t tell me it’s on a security detail for your visitor. You don’t know the first thing about security.” I glanced around. The mobile team was taking its time moving into place. Boswell shifted uncomfortably. “Just listen,” I said.
He looked down at the grass. “If I can hear you, so can others out here.”
“No, not yet. Another few minutes, maybe.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small piece of persimmon I had been carrying around. “See this wood? It’s very complicated. Difficult to understand. You have to look at it for a while; even then you might not be able to figure out what it’s trying to say. That’s why furniture made out of persimmon can go wrong so easily.”
“Now you’ve lost me, Inspector.”
“Whatever this is, this German-Kazakh-British connection, it isn’t what it seems. It’s internal. I’m convinced of it. Someone on the inside has set it up. The body of the bank robber disappeared from the morgue, and they have orders not to talk.”
“Could be coincidence.”
“Again, you opt for coincidence. Is that a Scottish trait? Things just happen? Not here, Superintendent. Nothing just happens here. Not even close. The man in the restaurant, the dead one, his friend was sprung by people with influence. Then he falls over with a knife in his back. Not coincidence; a knife in the back is not a coincidence, especially when it happens outside Club Blue.” Boswell frowned. I continued. “The owner of Club Blue was sleeping with Miss Chon.” Boswell had stopped frowning; the blood had drained from his face. “Not important,” I said. “Anyway, he drowned, but a big man like him wouldn’t drown in a shallow pool of water without some help and, apparently, several days of torture. Just to add the final touch, I was hauled into a room with a man who is trying to find out something from me I don’t know. No coincidence. For the rest of my life, if it threatens rain, my left shoulder stops working. What do we call that?”
Boswell said nothing. I didn’t think he was paying attention anymore; his thoughts were somewhere off in the distance. Finally, he shook his head. “Rotten luck. Rotten all around.” He stood up and looked both ways down the path. “This man who was trying to find out something from you, do you know who he was?”
“What do you care? He won’t touch a foreigner, don’t worry.”
Boswell sat down again. “Are we getting any closer to your final ninety degrees?”
“A lot,” I said. “Someone on the inside set up the robbery. They used outsiders. Why? Do they want the foreign currency so badly? Not a chance. They could get it without stocking masks. All they have to do is to dip their hands into the cash bag. Easy to do. No, this has nothing to do with a bundle of small euro notes.” Something occurred to me, out of nowhere. “Funny, the person spreading the stories about the bank robbery was an Englishman.”
“So?”
“Next, someone wants to stage the assassination of a visiting dignitary. Who isn’t the issue, I suppose, it’s where. They want it here.”
“Why?”
“A pretense. An excuse. Doesn’t matter if they kill him or not. Just the event, just a whiff of the event is enough.”
Boswell took an uneasy look around the horizon. “For what?”
“A coup, Superintendent.” This time the word didn’t just slip out. I had thought about it ahead of time, and that’s the word I wanted. “If there is such loss of control that a foreign visitor is threatened, that’s enough to galvanize support for a move by those who want to yank back hard on the reins, stop this foolishness with ideas about economic loosening. Moral laxness, that’s what they’ll say.”
“Can they do it?” He tried as hard as he could to make it an idle question. He did everything but yawn. It was almost funny. With that one question, it was obvious he had never done this before.
“Reassert control?” I waited half a beat. He half turned to me, then realized how anxious that seemed so turned away again and sat back. “Maybe. Probably. But there are winners and losers in that sort of crackdown. Unhappiness, grudges, egos.”
“So, who is on our side? Who helps us protect my man? You may not like my security technique, but he is my man.”
I saw the mobile team turn the corner and amble down the path toward us. A man and a woman. Terrible choice, typical of SSD. No one in his right mind would think this couple had anything in common. Couples who belong together walk in a kind of a rhyme, even if they’re mad at each other. There was nothing between these two; they probably didn’t even share the same office building. Probably only met five minutes ago. Hopeless, SSD was hopeless. No wonder the British sent such an amateur; they didn’t think we were much of a target. I’d mention something to Min, if I ever saw him again.
I turned back to Boswell. “Those trees”—I pointed at a line of gingko trees along the path—“they were planted soon after the war. Not many trees were left. What the bombs didn’t blast apart was used for fuel. Someone decided to plant replacements. They’ve grown to full height now. They make a kind of statement. Very calm place, right here, wouldn’t you say?”
Boswell stood up and walked a few steps. “I don’t know what I’d say, Inspector, not here, not now.” The woman on the mobile team moved her head slightly when he passed. Her companion looked up at the treetops and tried to adjust the microphone wire that was under his coat.
6
Boswell didn’t appear back at the office, so I sat at my desk and sketched a bookcase with three shelves. I put a door on it. I put on brass fittings. It didn’t matter what I did. The thought was stuck in my mind, and it wouldn’t shake loose. Boswell should have canceled the visit; as soon as I gave him my crazy theory, he should have demanded to be driven to the British embassy to have the whole thing shut down. He didn’t do that. Yesterday, he’d been adamant that he was going to call off the trip. Today, he didn’t even mention it. But why would he want it to happen? I must be wrong about the assassination attempt. Nothing fit. Or everything did. In that case, I’d cancel the visit myself. I’d just call the Ministry and say the bank robbery had raised enough questions to make it a bad time for us to entertain a foreign guest. If there were complaints, I’d say the visit would interfere with the investigation. I’d call the Ministry directly; I wouldn’t even tell Min.
There was a knock on the door. It was Min.
“We have to talk.”
“Shall we go to your office?”
“No, here.”
I stood up. Min gestured. “Sit, Inspector.”
“Something I did wrong?”
“What did you discover about the site where the Club Blue manager was found?”
“Funny place. Whoever did it must have scouted it beforehand.”
“The club manager was a former special service officer. I just found out.”
“What? Well, that explains the shoulders.” It explained the long gap between when he disappeared and when he showed up dead. They had to take their time sq
ueezing as much information out of him as they could and, when they thought they had it all, go back and squeeze some more, every drop. Make him reveal who was under surveillance, who had been turned around, which plans had been compromised.
“He was called back and put on assignment.”
“Oh.” Threads began tightening. Even before we had been given the robbery case, someone had been on the inside.
“Something happened to his cover. It cracked.”
“He had me fooled.” Me, but not everyone.
“You really didn’t know?”
“No one tells me anything; sometimes I think it’s better that way.”
“Well, like I said, I just found out. They were thinking you might have done something to finger him.”
“Tell them to go somewhere else, will you? My shoulder won’t ever be the same.”
“What do you know about Boswell?”
“Meaning what?”
“A question, Inspector, nothing more. Question-answer, a good sequence, wouldn’t you agree? Otherwise, a conversation would have no end.” He sounded like the man in the brown suit. My hip flared up. I gaped in pain and grabbed the desk. I should stop complaining just about my shoulder.
“You alright?”
“Fine,” I said. “Boswell says he is here to check security for a British dignitary. He has an inordinate interest in shadows.”
“You believe him?”
I was silent.
“I take it you don’t believe him.”
“What has prompted this, Min? If it’s a big secret, don’t tell me. Just let me drift in the normal fog of ignorance that covers my days.”
“I realize, Inspector, to you it sometimes seems that I am not paying attention. I know you don’t think I measure up to all of your expectations. And perhaps sometimes I don’t. Other things crowd in on me. My mind becomes occupied, overoccupied you might say. But this case, this robbery, has captured my attention as nothing else has for a long time. You don’t think it’s just a robbery. I agree. I think about it day and night. Nothing like it has troubled me to this extent. It is taking us someplace very bad; I feel it, and you do, too.”