The Insult

by Rupert Thomson

  He turned to the friend, the thin one with the lisp. ‘You?’

  ‘No.’

  The story that emerged was simple. The two youths had been in the city centre, drinking. It was a Wednesday night and they were bored. When they saw a car with the keys left in the ignition, they couldn’t believe it. It was like an invitation, a gift. How could they say no?

  I interrupted. ‘The keys were in it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did they see anybody on the street?’

  ‘Nobody. It was late. Two-thirty in the morning.’

  ‘You believe them, don’t you.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Munck sounded gloomy.

  It was a breakthrough, but it took him backwards. Nina had disappeared – but not in the car. That was all he knew. Or anybody knew. There were fewer facts than ever.

  ‘Would you mind coming in tomorrow?’ he said. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  I went to bed early. It had been a long night and I was tired. As I lay on my side, waiting for sleep, I thought of Karin Salenko – her lacquered hair, that lazy voice of hers, the tall drinks. I would never have guessed that she was Nina’s mother. I remembered what she’d said about looking like her daughter. She’d said something else, too, something unusual. Inside, we’re not alike at all. I could only think one thing: it must have been the inside that I was looking at.

  The next evening, just after sunset, I left the hotel. The police headquarters was located in the 2nd district, on the west bank of the river. I took the most direct route, over one of the city’s famous bridges. There were old-fashioned street-lamps, which gave the stonework a deceptive warmth, and on the balustrades there were statues of nineteenth-century statesmen and generals. I was thinking of Visser as I walked along. He hadn’t shown his face since that evening with Munck in the suburbs. He was following me, though. I knew that much. What else would he have been doing on that lonely piece of waste-ground at six o’clock on a Tuesday evening? Halfway across the bridge I stopped and leaned on the parapet. I looked down. Currents twisted like muscle in the slow green body of water. Weeds floated by in clumps. Broken branches, plastic bags. Was Visser watching me now? And, if so, what would be going through his mind? Did he think I was suffering? Did he think I might jump? I glanced over my shoulder. Stranger after stranger walking past.

  When I arrived at the police headquarters I was told to wait. It was a grim eight-storey block, with metal grilles fixed like cages over the ground-floor windows. The radiator next to the front entrance had been covered with a piece of carpet. I thought it was probably because the police didn’t want to hurt offenders accidentally on their way into the building. They’d rather hurt them deliberately, in a room with no windows, somewhere higher up. From where I was sitting I could see an officer in dark-green fatigues, with his back against the wall and his legs on a bench. He was reading a comic-book that Victor sometimes read. A man walked in off the street and sat down opposite me.

  ‘All right?’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘How are you?’

  He wore a soiled check jacket and trainers, and he had a deep cut on his forehead.

  I waited almost half an hour. At last a metal door scraped open and Munck emerged. It could only have been Munck. Each step he took, his foot flicked at the air, then slapped down on the floor. The way he walked, it always sounded as if the floor was wet. But there was someone with him, someone I didn’t recognise.

  Munck shook my hand. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you, Martin.’ He turned to include the other man. ‘This is Jan Salenko. Nina’s father.’

  Salenko took my hand awkwardly and shook it for too long. ‘I just arrived in the city this morning,’ he said, ‘by bus.’

  He was one of those people who say too much, either out of nervousness or a desire to please.

  ‘I thought we’d go round the corner for a drink,’ Munck said. ‘Mr Salenko?’

  ‘Yes. A quick one, maybe. Thank you.’

  I asked Munck if Slatnick was coming.

  ‘No,’ Munck said. ‘He’s off sick.’

  Psychological problems, I imagined. That stone-age buckle of bone above his eyes, that shot-gun nose. It couldn’t be easy.

  Munck took us to a place called Smoltczyk. He liked it, he said, because it was entirely without character. There was nothing to look at. No pictures, no hunting-horns, no china donkeys. It was just a bar, with drinks in it. I nodded. Salenko nodded, too. We ordered three brandies.

  ‘That should keep the chill out,’ Munck said.

  As soon the drinks came, Salenko leaned forwards, both hands round his glass. ‘I understand from the detective here that you were the last person to see …’ He hesitated. ‘To see my daughter.’ He couldn’t bring himself to say her name.

  ‘So they tell me.’ I stared at him, but I couldn’t establish any physical resemblance. Then I remembered what Karin had said. Of course. Why would Salenko resemble Nina?

  ‘That’s what I’m told,’ I said.

  ‘How was she? Did she seem,’ and his hands opened, showing me his glass, ‘upset?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Actually, it was me who was upset.’

  My answer seemed to take Salenko by surprise. It took me by surprise as well. But I’d been asked the same question so many times. There was what I’d felt, and I was tired of walking round it.

  ‘I’d been going out with her for about six weeks,’ I went on. ‘That was the night she told me it was over.’

  I wasn’t looking at Munck, but I knew his eyebrows were halfway to his hairline. This was the first he’d heard of my rejection.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Salenko said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I was sorry, too.’ I sipped at my brandy, felt the warmth spread through me. ‘Strictly speaking,’ I said, ‘you’re not her father, are you?’

  ‘Not strictly speaking, no.’

  ‘You know who is?’

  ‘No. I never asked.’

  I watched Salenko carefully. The silence seemed to embarrass him.

  ‘I just treated her like my own,’ he went on, ‘and she grew up believing it. She was only a few months old when we were married, her mother and me. Not even talking yet.’ He paused, thinking back. ‘First word she ever learned was Dad.’ He smiled sadly, looked down into his drink.

  Then he roused himself. ‘Karin, she never told me anything. She didn’t like to talk about the past. If it ever came up, she’d throw things. Or she’d drink. Or leave the house.’ He tilted his glass on the table and watched the brandy climb the side. ‘I didn’t want to lose her, I suppose.’

  ‘But you did,’ I said.

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Lose her.’

  ‘In the end I did,’ he said, ‘but that was later.’

  He took a deep breath. When he breathed out, I could hear his heartbeat in it.

  ‘Something you’ve got to understand,’ he said. ‘I didn’t deserve her. That’s what I felt when I first set eyes on her, and I never stopped feeling it the whole time we were married.’

  There was a river outside the village where he lived and one day he was standing on the bridge. A truck was parked at the far end, facing away from him. He saw a girl climb into the back of it, over the tailboard. Her dress looked handed-down – too big for her, anyway; it swirled around her skinny legs, made climbing difficult. She was about eight years old. Then a man walked out of the field and up the grass bank, and the truck lurched with his weight as he got in. The girl was standing in the back, both hands on the metal rail that ran along behind the cab. The man shouted something from the window, probably, Hold on, then the engine caught and the truck set off down the road, heading west, and that was all there was to remember, think of, dream about: that girl clinging to the rail as distance claimed the truck, her brown hair loose and streaming against the shoulders of her ill-fitting, pale-blue dress. Afterwards he was still standing on the bridge, only the road was empty now, and the wires that linked one telegraph pole to the next, th
e sun was shining through them, and the way their shadows fell across the tar, it looked as though a car had braked hard, as though there’d been some kind of accident.

  By the time she was fifteen – the age he’d been that morning on the bridge – she was the prettiest girl in the county. She didn’t seem to know it either; it was as if she’d never looked in a mirror, or even in a window, or a pond. He was nothing special, though. He won a memory contest once by reciting an entire page of the local telephone directory, not one name out of order either, but where would that get him with a girl who could turn his stomach over like a ploughed field just by looking at him? And besides, his memory was something people mocked him with. There was a rhyme that everybody in the village knew:

  Jan Jan

  The Memory Man

  Remember remember

  As much as you can

  Remember you’re ugly

  Remember you’re weak

  Remember that rubbish

  Comes out when you speak

  With his memory, of course, it was impossible for him to forget the rhyme – and verses existed that were far less innocent.

  Jan Salenko smiled ruefully into his drink. He didn’t think Karin had ever called him ‘Memory’, as the others did, nor had she ever chanted those rhymes at him. When she saw him in the village she’d say, ‘Hello, Jan Salenko,’ as if the sound of his name said all at once amused her. She was always friendly, but somehow that was worse than if she hadn’t noticed him at all.

  Then something happened. Nobody knew for sure what it was, only that Karin wasn’t seen around any more. The autumn he was twenty-three and the whole of the winter that came after. She just disappeared. And when she appeared again, in the spring, she had a baby. But there was no mention of a husband. And nobody could say who the father was. There were jokes, of course – immaculate conception, virgin birth; there was even some sarcastic talk about the second coming (the trouble was, the baby was a girl). The year before, Karin had been courted by half the boys in the county. Now they stayed away, every single one of them.

  He gathered his courage. One morning towards the end of April he walked out to old man Hekmann’s place. It was a fine day, clouds running in the sky, trees with their new leaves. He found Karin crouching in the shadows on the back porch. She had her baby with her. No one else was about.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s you.’

  She stepped out into the sunlight. Her eyes were dull and her face looked thin. Her brown ringlets were tied back with a piece of chicken wire.

  He stood in front of her and began to remember her out loud. He remembered every time he’d ever seen her in his life, starting at the bridge eight years before. He described where and when each meeting had taken place, how the weather had been on each occasion and what she’d looked like, not just the clothes she was wearing, but the smallest details – how long her hair was or whether she had a graze on her knee. If she’d spoken to him – or to anyone else, for that matter – he recalled the words for her. If she hadn’t spoken, he told her whether she’d smiled or not, and what kind of smile it was. At last he reached the most recent encounter, which was still happening, of course, and he told her what he’d remembered so far – the April sun, the wind, her faded dress, the wariness he saw in her, the split in her lip (had someone hit her?), the baby sleeping in her arms, her first three words.

  Afterwards, she was silent for a moment, then she looked at him in an entirely new way and said, ‘That’s the best present anyone ever gave me.’ Then she looked off into the trees for a long time.

  They didn’t talk much after that, but he wasn’t uncomfortable sitting on the porch with her. He didn’t think she wanted him to go. He felt he fitted cleanly into the air beside her. They could’ve been two staves in a fence.

  The next time he sat on her porch, three days later, she turned to him with the baby in her arms and said, ‘Sometimes I think I’m going to drown the both of us.’

  Her eyes moved to the trees and the shallow pond that lay beyond the clearing, just an area of grey light on the ground. ‘Better to be done with it,’ she murmured. ‘No one will have me now, not with a child.’

  He had to wait until his heart slowed down. He remembered the exact look of the trees and the temperature of the air.

  ‘I would,’ he said. ‘I’d have you.’

  She stared at him, and then she laughed. He didn’t know what she meant by the laughter. For a moment he feared that the rhyme might follow it. Jan Jan The Memory Man… But the laughter stopped and she was still staring at him.

  ‘Why don’t you marry me then,’ she said, ‘and take us away from here?’

  Leaves whispered at the edge of the clearing and the sun went in.

  ‘Marry me, Jan Salenko.’

  Salenko cleared his throat, then looked across at Munck. ‘I’m sorry. I ran on a bit.’

  Lifting his glass, he finished his brandy. I finished mine, too. I knew something Jan Salenko didn’t. His ex-wife, Karin, had told me how the child had happened. We were the same, I was thinking, Nina and I. We’d both come close. With me it was a bullet. With her, that shallow pond beyond the trees.

  ‘Another drink, Mr Salenko?’ Munck said.

  ‘Thank you, no. I should be going. My bus …’ He rose out of his chair.

  When he’d gone, I looked at Munck.

  ‘I’ll have one,’ I said.

  ‘This case,’ Munck said.

  He had something on his mind. I waited. The brandies arrived.

  ‘You knew her pretty well,’ he said, ‘didn’t you.’

  ‘I don’t know about well.’ I swirled my new drink in its glass. ‘I told you. I only met her in November.’

  ‘She took drugs.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘I never saw her take any.’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Munck drank. When the brandy went down, it made a sound that doves make when they’re nesting – a kind of muffled squawk. ‘She was a stripper, wasn’t she?’

  ‘As far as I know, she worked behind the bar.’

  ‘In a strip club.’

  ‘In a club that has dancers,’ I said, ‘sometimes.’

  He let that go. Cradling his drink, he peered down into it. ‘She slept around.’

  ‘She slept with me,’ I said. ‘That’s all I can be sure of.’ I leaned forwards. ‘What are you getting at, Munck?’

  ‘I’m just telling you what they’re saying at the precinct.’

  It was another example of Detective Munck’s technique. He could say anything he liked in that soporific voice of his, the worst thing he could think of, and then he could step back with his hands raised and disown it all. It allowed him to provoke you and remain your friend.

  ‘They’re saying, girls like her, they disappear.’

  I drank some of my brandy. It was very smooth. I thought it must be imported.

  ‘Down at the precinct they’re saying she’s probably gone off somewhere. Be a hooker, something like that. Make some money.’ He mentioned a port in a neighbouring country that was famous for its red-light district. ‘They’re saying, girls like her, that’s what they do.’

  I swallowed some more brandy. Definitely imported.

  ‘They’re saying, girls like her, forget it. They’ve got it coming, they’re asking for it, they get what they deserve.’ He paused for breath. ‘Are they right?’

  ‘Munck,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what they’re saying.’ He shrugged, then he emptied his glass. ‘You want another?’

  ‘No. I think I’ll go now.’

  He ordered one for himself.

  ‘What else are they saying?’ I asked him.

  ‘They’re saying she could’ve been killed. That wouldn’t surprise them, a girl like her. That wouldn’t surprise them at all.’

  I lifted my glass to my lips, but there was nothing in it.

  ‘Sure you don’t want another?’ Munck said.

 
‘I’m sure.’

  ‘You loved her, didn’t you.’

  I nodded.

  ‘She told you it was over.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He paused long enough for me to hear the whole line of a song that was playing on a radio somewhere.

  ‘You want to know what they’re saying, Martin? I’ll tell you what they’re saying. They’re saying you could’ve done it.’

  That night, at one o’clock, I unlocked the door to Loots’ car and climbed into the driver’s seat. I turned the steering-wheel from side to side, just to get the feel, the weight of it. I tested the pedals with my feet. Down to the floor they went, resisting; up they sprang again. I moved through the gears once or twice. The transition from second to third was awkward; you could end up in fifth, if you weren’t careful. Then I was ready to fit the key into the ignition. When was the last time I’d driven? A Thursday evening, almost a year ago.

  I’d called round on Loots after my drink with Munck. Loots didn’t know I was coming, and his enthusiastic welcome startled me. I was still labouring up the stairs when he leaned over the banisters and shouted, ‘Blom, there’s someone here I want you to meet.’

  On the landing he took my arm and led me into the apartment and down the corridor. He stopped me in front of his cork-tiled wall.

  ‘I want to introduce you to Juliet,’ he said. ‘She’s going to be my assistant.’

  Juliet was a sex dummy, one of those plastic inflatable models with a mouth shaped like an O. She stood against the cork tiles with a look of shock on her face. I knew exactly how she felt. I’d been there myself.

  ‘What do you think?’ Loots said.

  ‘Does she have any experience?’

  Loots laughed.

  ‘Why Juliet?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s beautiful – and young …’

  I reached out and touched her. Her breasts were small and sharp, like ice-cream cones. ‘Loots,’ I said, ‘you’re going to have to buy her a bikini.’

  He thought that was funny, too.

  I explained why I’d dropped in. I wanted to know if I could borrow his car. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to do the driving.’

  Loots chuckled at the idea.