The Insult

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘And that’s Moler,’ said the man with the visor. ‘M-O-L-E-R.’

  They both laughed again.

  I sat down on one of the beds. Suddenly I could have closed my eyes and slept. Even on that bare, stained mattress, among strangers.

  ‘You look like you could use a drink.’

  The man in the visor gave me a glass and poured some of the clear liquid from his bottle into it.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked him.

  ‘Vodka.’

  There were flies’ legs floating on the surface. They looked like Chinese writing. I drank half the vodka, wincing at the taste. Then I drank the rest. Was I called something different now? What was my name?

  Edith? Is that you?

  The man in the visor stood at the window, grey light beyond him. He told me how he’d found Erik sleeping on a park bench one morning. When he sat down next to Erik, Erik showed him a photograph. It wasn’t anyone he recognised. He thought Erik might be hungry so he took him back to his apartment. They’d lived in a different building then. He heated up some old tomato soup, with macaroni. Erik ate as if he hadn’t eaten in days. He stayed with them that night, and the next night, too, and then he left. He didn’t say goodbye or thank you. In fact, it was only after Erik had gone that they realised he hadn’t really spoken to them at all. They didn’t think they’d see him again. Well, at least he hadn’t stolen anything. But three months later, Erik was back.

  They talked about him sometimes when he wasn’t there. They saw that he had a different way of doing things to most people. He didn’t need words, for instance. That was fine. Time didn’t mean much to him either. If you gave Erik a clock, he’d sit with it for hours. He’d watch the second-hand go round. Or else he’d put it to his ear and listen to it, the way people used to listen to transistor radios. They could deal with that. They thought Erik needed a home, though. So they adopted him. The man with the visor, Ackal, picked up the bottle and drank from it. He’d adopted Erik legally, he said. He had the documents somewhere. He gestured at a battered metal filing cabinet in the corner of the room. The air moved glassily behind his hand. I thought I might pass out.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ I muttered.

  ‘I already did.’ He was almost gloating, his mouth all crooked.

  ‘But he’s my son. I’ve taken care of him since he was six months old.’ And then I said something I never in my life imagined I would say. Think, maybe. But not say. ‘He’s all I’ve got.’

  I saw the two men exchange a glance.

  ‘If he’s really your son,’ the man in the visor said, ‘then how come the poor bastard was sleeping on a park bench all night, cold and hungry?’

  ‘He’s forty-three years old,’ I said. ‘What am I supposed to do? Tie him up in the yard?’

  That silenced them.

  Then I said, ‘I just never realised he’d go so far.’

  All the time I’d been talking to Ackal, the other man, the one called Moler, had been staring at me lazily from his bed, lifting a hand every now and then to examine his fingernails or adjust his leather cap. Now he spoke to me.

  ‘Erik’s a man with a mission.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘It’s something to do with the photograph,’ he said. ‘It’s of a girl. Seems like he’s looking for her. Sometimes we take the piss, saying she’s his girlfriend, but he doesn’t like it when we do that.’ He laughed. ‘He doesn’t like it, does he, Ackal?’

  Suddenly I realised which photograph it was that he was talking about. I saw Mazey in the kitchen, with his hand curling and uncurling. Where’s the baby?

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’ I stood up. ‘I should be going.’

  ‘Will we be seeing you again?’ Ackal grinned unpleasantly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Moler, looking out of the window, ‘you simply must drop by.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

  I walked to the door and opened it. Ackal followed me.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘He turns up here, he’s always in good hands.’ His chuckle wasn’t reassuring, but then it wasn’t supposed to be.

  Over his shoulder I saw the man in the leather cap. He was yawning. I had the peculiar sense of never having set foot in that room at all. Of never having even entered the apartment. The man in the visor had his hand on the door. I saw him clearly for the first time. His dim round face. Small eyes. A mouth like an owl’s.

  ‘Does he ever talk to you?’ I asked.

  ‘Erik?’ he said. ‘No.’

  ‘Not ever?’

  ‘No.’

  I nodded and, looking down, I smiled to myself.

  ‘Hey, what do you –’

  But I’d already turned away. I was already walking down the stairs.

  ‘Hey!’ The man in the visor was shouting. ‘What the fuck do you mean by that?’

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t even look round. I just kept walking down the stairs. And out through the front door, and back along the street. The weather had changed. The sky was a sandstone colour now, thin silver sunlight reaching through the clouds. I passed the shops with their metal grilles. I passed the tall apartment blocks. The city moved around me, whispering, like a conspiracy. I could imagine walking for days, and finding nothing familiar, recognising no one. I was astonished when I saw my neighbour’s car, astonished when the key I took out of my pocket opened the door. It shouldn’t have been that easy.

  Driving home took thirteen hours. In the middle of the night I stopped at the edge of the road and slept for forty-five minutes. In my dream I was driving and Mazey was beside me, dozing. I saw his long nose, his slightly drooping upper lip, his blond hair falling across his forehead. There were no knives anywhere. I was happy.

  When I woke up, my heart jumped. I was behind the wheel, exactly as I’d dreamed I was. It took me a while to realise that the car wasn’t moving and I wasn’t going to crash. I rolled the window down. Breathed the cold night air. Then I turned the key in the ignition and drove on. I was still tired, though. My eyes kept trying to close and when I forced them open it felt as if they were revolving in their sockets. All I could find on the radio was static – the noise trains make in tunnels. I had to smoke cigarettes to stay awake.

  At dawn I stopped again. I slept for an hour. Waking, I saw a stork standing on one leg in the fast lane. For a moment I just stared at it. That it could be there, in that unlikely place, and look so unconcerned. But I didn’t want a car to run it down. I reached for the door handle, thinking I’d shout or clap my hands, do something that would scare it off. The sound of the door opening was enough. It lifted into the air, legs dangling like bits of a broken deck-chair. The first few wing-beats were ungainly, but by the time it cleared the trees, it had achieved a kind of grace.

  A few kilometres south of the village I shifted on the seat and felt something in my coat pocket – a small glass, cold and faintly sticky. I held it up above the steering-wheel so I could look at it. It was the glass I’d drunk vodka from. I must have put it in my pocket without thinking. I could still see the room. It was pale-yellow, and there were beds in it. I could see the man with the diamond pellet in his ear. I could see the other man, too, the upper half of his face bathed in a deep green shadow. They were like someone else’s memories. But the vodka glass was proof of what had happened, it was evidence, and I wasn’t sure I wanted any. I felt as if the glass had been planted.

  The next day Mazey came home. He walked in through the back door, as usual. He ran the cold tap, cupped a hand under it and bent his head. In that moment, standing in the kitchen and watching him drink, I realised I would never follow him again. There was nothing more I needed to know – in fact, maybe I already knew too much. I’d tried to guide him, keep him safe, but I’d reached the limits of my power, my influence. He’d invented a kind of freedom for himself.

  I remembered the articles they ran in the paper all those years ago. WHO COULD DO SUCH A THING? I could never quite understand why nobody
found out about him, why he was never caught. I thought I knew why now. It had to be something to do with the way his mind worked. There were reasons behind the things he did, but they weren’t reasons anyone else would think of. What was a reason for him would be madness for them. He lived in a different dimension. That difference was what protected him.

  ‘How are you, Mazey?’ I said to him.

  Still bent over the sink, he looked at me sideways, the water splashing down into his hand and overflowing. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something else.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Just drink.’

  Silver Skin

  Chapter 1

  She had talked almost continuously, for hours. As I listened to her, as I filled with unease, foreboding and even, in the end, with dread, she seemed, ironically, to grow accustomed to me, she began to feel comfortable, and her visits to the kitchen became more frequent, less disguised. She didn’t get drunk, though. She didn’t slur her words or lose her thread.

  By the time we climbed the stairs, the birds were singing.

  I spent the entire day in bed. Dreams of black lakes, crashed cars. People maimed, contorted, splashed with blood. Once, I saw Emerald Joe slumped in the corner of the room, his arms and legs all jumbled up, his jewelled tooth shining.

  I was afraid to sleep, afraid to be awake. Each time I dozed, I woke again like someone who’d just touched an electric fence: bolt upright, soaked in sweat – my nerve-ends charred, my brain a grate containing nothing but a white-hot emptiness.

  Then, towards evening, I washed and dressed. I was scrupulous. I invested every movement, every detail of the process, with my fullest concentration – from the first soaping of my face to the final lacing of a boot. It must have taken me an hour. Before I went downstairs I called Munck. I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was simply a way of clearing my mind, of breathing different air. I wanted someone to talk to – someone who wasn’t Edith Hekmann. Munck wasn’t his usual self, though. He seemed both guarded and inquisitive. I realised it had been at least two weeks since I’d spoken to him.

  ‘Where are you calling from?’ He had to shout; it was a bad line. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you. I tried the Kosminsky, but they told me you’d left. In the middle of the night.’

  ‘That’s true. I had to leave.’

  ‘It seems suspicious,’ Munck said, ‘in the circumstances.’

  I laughed. ‘Not to me.’

  His tone sharpened. ‘What can I tell my superiors?’

  ‘Tell them I’m out of town for a few days. Tell them it’s personal.’

  Munck didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That’s the best I can do.’

  I promised to call him as soon as I returned. Then I put the phone down. I heard the clock strike seven in the hall below. I took a deep breath and began to make my way towards the staircase.

  When I took my place at the table in the dining-room I was surprised to find myself alone. I asked Martha where Mrs Hekmann was.

  ‘I haven’t seen her,’ Martha said.

  ‘Is she ill?’

  ‘Not so far as I know.’

  I thought she was probably still recovering. Not everyone was used to staying awake all night.

  Martha put a plate of boiled beef and cabbage in front of me. I ate slowly, but I couldn’t finish it. I had no appetite. And anyway, the food tasted of nothing.

  The pale-pink lampshade, the dismal paintings.

  I shivered as a draught moved past my back.

  While I was drinking my coffee, the door to the dining-room opened behind me. I heard shoes on the bare boards. It wasn’t Martha; she was busy in the kitchen.

  ‘Mrs Hekmann?’

  There was no answer. I knew it was her, though. And then I remembered what she was. A murderer. A murderer. It seemed absurd, exaggerated. I didn’t know how to think about it. It was like trying to picture a million people, or describe the face of God. In my nervousness I knocked a fork off the table. As I was bending down to pick it up, her shoes moved past me, into the room. I heard a cork spring from a bottle. She’d opened it right in front of me. She’d abandoned all pretence.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked.

  I stared at her. ‘Yes – thank you. That would be nice.’

  What had induced this sudden change in her? I looked for some clue in her appearance, but there was nothing. She was wearing a calf-length skirt, a cardigan, a pair of sturdy shoes. I couldn’t read her face at all.

  She handed me a glass. I thanked her. She sat in her usual place.

  ‘Now,’ she said quietly, ‘who are you, exactly?’

  It took me a moment to reply. I’d been expecting the usual question. How was your meal? What did you think of the boiled beef?

  Who are you?

  ‘It’s in the register –’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’ Her voice sliced through mine. It was a tone I hadn’t heard her use before.

  She set her glass down on the table.

  ‘My son,’ she said. ‘He’s come back. You remember I told you about my son. Mazey.’

  ‘Yes. You told me.’ I wasn’t likely to forget.

  ‘I’ve been talking to him,’ she said.

  She took a cigarette out of the open packet at her elbow and lit it. I just looked at her. I waited.

  ‘He had some interesting things to say about you.’

  ‘About me?’ I said. ‘But I’ve never –’

  ‘He’s seen you before,’ and she paused, ‘in the city.’

  She seemed to be waiting for me to speak, but I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t know where this was leading. To steady myself, I concentrated on her cardigan. It was a dull grey-green. Her skirt was brown. Her shoes, they were brown, too.

  ‘You’re the police, aren’t you,’ she said suddenly.

  I was staring at her again. Police? What was she talking about?

  ‘You’re some kind of detective. Aren’t you. I was wondering when you’d come.’

  ‘Mrs Hekmann,’ I said, ‘I don’t –’

  ‘Don’t lie to me.’ Ash dropped from her cigarette and shattered on the tablecloth. ‘It’s no use lying, not now. That phone-call you made, for instance. Who were you speaking to?’

  She didn’t give me time to answer. ‘It was the police, wasn’t it. Your colleagues.’ Her voice was level, but only just. ‘That was clever of them, sending me a cripple. Oh, that was clever. They knew it would catch me unawares, arouse my sympathy. Send in the blind man. It always works.’ She crushed her cigarette out on a plate, and with it she seemed to be crushing any need for ambiguity or restraint. ‘You walk into my house, you accept my hospitality, and all the time –’ Her chair scraped backwards and she stood up. ‘You betrayed me, Mr Blom. You betrayed my trust.’

  She walked away across the room. When she reached the window, she stopped. The handle creaked as she opened it. ‘It’s snowing,’ she said. ‘You probably hadn’t realised.’

  I shook my head. Her cardigan had brown buttons on it. I counted them. One, two, three, four – and there was one missing, at the bottom. They were unusual buttons; they looked like hazelnuts.

  ‘I know your kind,’ she said.

  ‘My kind?’ My voice sounded weak.

  She stood with her back to the window, the snow blowing past her, into the room. I watched it settle on the floor and melt. I was shivering.

  ‘Your kind,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen your kind on television.’

  ‘You – you really think I’m a policeman?’

  ‘I know you are.’

  ‘What is it I’m supposed to be investigating?’

  ‘My granddaughter. Nina Salenko.’

  I stared at Edith Hekmann’s grey-green cardigan. There was a loose thread near one of the cuffs. If she didn’t mend it soon, the whole sleeve would probably unravel. I thought I should point it out to her. ‘You’ve got –’

  ‘You were seen,’ she said. ‘Mazey saw you
. You were together.’

  I could hear Munck’s voice. About the man in the station … tall, apparently … pale hair … staring … Then I remembered what Loots had told me on the night he came into my room. His description of the man he’d noticed in the hotel car-park. Mazey. Mazey Hekmann. I reached for my glass. It wasn’t there.

  ‘You’re looking for her,’ she said, ‘aren’t you.’

  I shook my head again. ‘I’m not. Not any more.’

  ‘That’s just as well.’

  Something rose in my throat and hardened, like a stone. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because she’s dead.’

  I couldn’t swallow; I could barely speak. ‘How do you know?’

  Edith Hekmann did not reply.

  I stood up. A snowflake landed on the tablecloth, white on white. ‘I think I’ll go to my room now,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Aren’t we going to talk tonight?’

  I moved towards the door.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’ Her voice had softened.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t want to know the truth?’

  ‘You shouldn’t tell me anything,’ I murmured, ‘not if I’m a policeman.’

  Snow slanted between us and suddenly it was like watching something on an old TV. Any minute now, I was going to lose her completely.

  ‘I trusted you,’ she said.

  I reached the top of the stairs. Turning right, I walked to the far end of the landing and sat down on the small upholstered chair beside the phone. I thought of calling Munck again, but I couldn’t see what good it would do. And anyway, I wouldn’t have known what to tell him. I called Loots instead. My fingers kept missing the holes. Three times I dialled the wrong number. The fourth time his uncle answered. I asked him if I could speak to Albert. He put the receiver down. ‘Albert?’ he shouted. ‘Al-bert?’ In the background I could hear the sounds of an ordinary household: voices, music, cutlery.

  When Loots came to the phone, he asked me how I was. It wasn’t a question I felt capable of answering.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘When are you coming?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ His plan was to leave in the morning, he said. He’d be with me sometime in the early afternoon.