The Insult
Page 42
‘Now, Mazey. You do it now.’
Only then did he look down at her, a look that stopped just behind her eyes, at the entrance to her brain. It angered her, to think that he might challenge her.
‘Right now,’ she said.
He stood there for a while longer, frowning. At last he moved past her and opened the door on the driver’s side. He ducked sideways for a moment. His music started up – the tape she’d made for him.
‘Quieter, Mazey,’ she said. ‘Quieter.’
He grinned at her and pushed the hair out of his eyes.
She watched him reverse into the road and drive away. That night there was a storm. A month’s rain fell in less than twelve hours. Even the church flooded; hymn-books were found in the meadow, swollen to twice their normal size. Mazey did not return.
He was gone for three days.
I heard a car in the distance. Thinking it might be Loots, I swung my legs on to the floor. But the sound didn’t grow any louder; instead, it seemed to pass at a tangent to the village.
‘Three days it took him,’ Edith Hekmann said, ‘and when he came back he was on foot.’
I asked her what had happened to the body. She didn’t know.
‘You’ve no idea?’
‘That’s right. I’ve no idea.’ She seemed to relish the fact. She’d tortured me with what she knew, but that wasn’t enough. Now she wanted to torture me with what she didn’t know as well.
‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘He would’ve told you.’
‘He didn’t tell me.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t ask.’
‘You’re lying.’
She laughed. It was only air, almost inaudible, but utterly contemptuous at the same time. I reached out and my hand closed round a lamp. I pulled it hard, snapping the wire, and threw it at her. It hit the wall and shattered.
‘You’re in a bad way.’ Her voice came from the corner of the room.
I didn’t say anything.
‘You’ll never make it in the police,’ she said. ‘You’re not cut out for it. If I was you, I’d start looking for some other kind of work.’
‘How many times –’ I began, but she talked over me.
‘Those castles in the mountains,’ she was saying, ‘those battlements. They don’t exist.’
I stared at her.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘you’re blind. You won’t see a thing.’
‘What do you mean?’
There was a click made up of two quick sounds, but I didn’t have time to identify it because it was followed, almost immediately, by a deafening explosion. I felt bits of something land on me. At first I couldn’t imagine what it was. It felt like mud thrown up by the wheels of a passing car. It was solid, and strangely warm. It went cold fast, though. Then I knew.
I couldn’t move.
‘Mrs Hekmann?’
My voice sounded far away, as if there was a wall between me and what I’d said.
‘Mrs Hekmann?’
I listened for a whisper, breathing, anything – but all I could hear was people coming up the stairs. Two people. Both men, by the sound of it. I listened carefully. Yes, two men.
The brothers from the village.
I sat on the steps of the hotel, my suitcase on the porch behind me. I remembered my call to Loots. He’d told me he would drive through the night. He would be with me by dawn, he said, or shortly after – I’d made him promise – but it was after dawn and he hadn’t appeared yet. I was sitting on the steps waiting for the sound of his car in the distance. I hoped it wouldn’t be much longer.
The police had already been, tyres slurring on the gravel as they braked. I didn’t understand what the hurry was. There was nobody to arrest or apprehend. There was hardly even anyone to question. All the crimes had been committed and all the criminals were gone.
‘Are you the blind man, sir?’
The policeman was too alert. There was something farcical about it. He was like someone who thought it was the beginning of the story when really it was the end.
‘Well?’ His voice moved closer, officious now and slightly nasal. ‘Are you?’
Don’t ever ignore policemen. If there’s one thing they can’t stand.
I nodded wearily. ‘I’m the blind man.’
‘We’re going to need some kind of statement.’
‘It’s no good asking me,’ I said.
‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘I didn’t see a thing.’
‘You were there, though,’ the policeman said.
No sense of humour. No sense of humour whatsoever.
I dictated a few sentences for him. I said that I had fallen into the pool and that Mazey Hekmann had drowned while trying to rescue me. When Edith Hekmann learned of her son’s death, she had shot herself. The real crimes were hidden between the lines. I was keeping them for Munck. I thought Munck should get the credit. I wanted him to have that street named after him.
I reached for my suitcase, pulled it closer. The old people would be sitting at their tables in the dining-room, waiting for their breakfast to be served. If only Loots would come. I already knew what I was going to say to him. I’m blind. I realise that now. But still. Don’t ever tell me what you look like. I’ve got my own ideas. You’re thin, just as Nina’s beautiful. I don’t want to hear any different. I don’t want to know. You’re thin, with red hair. You’ve got shoulderblades that stick out. Cheekbones, too. You do extraordinary things on bicycles. No, don’t laugh. It’s what I think. It’s true. Somehow I felt that he would understand. I couldn’t wait for him to arrive. I wanted to throw my arms around him, embrace him.
The sun slowly warmed the left side of my face.
To think that I’d entertained the notion of a silver room! I could still imagine it – the walls and ceiling lined with kitchen foil, and bits of wire radiating in all directions – but I knew I’d never build it, not now. I couldn’t spend my life in a place like that. Nobody could. And besides, it wouldn’t have been going far enough. After all, what would happen when I left the room? Everything I’d been trying to avoid would be waiting for me just outside the door. No, a silver room would never have sufficed. I’d have needed more protection than that. A silver suit, perhaps, like something an astronaut might wear. A helmet, too. But why stop there? In the end I would have been forced to take the idea to its logical conclusion. Silver skin.
I took a deep breath and let the air ease out of me. The smell of the countryside in winter. Wood fires and muddy fields. Snow.
At last I heard the car. It crept, soft-tyred, along the road and parked outside the inn. I stood up, stretched. A door opened. Footsteps across the grass, keys bouncing on a hand.
Loots.
‘About time,’ I said.
The footsteps stopped. A shadow fell across me. ‘There you are.’
I stared. Because it wasn’t Loots’ voice. It was Visser’s.
‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
I stepped backwards, stumbled, almost tripped. What I felt was partly surprise – I’d been expecting someone else – and partly trepidation, which was the legacy of all the hallucinations. But there was nothing to be frightened of, I told myself. There was nothing to fear. Visser was my doctor. And excellent he was, too, by all accounts. He would only have my best interests at heart.
‘How are you, Martin?’
‘You know, you were right,’ I said. ‘You were right all along.’
There was a silence, one of Visser’s famous silences, but I knew that, if I’d been granted a moment’s vision, if I could have seen him, just for an instant, standing there in his overcoat (if indeed he wore an overcoat!), he would’ve been smiling down at me, with pride.
At the same time, though, now that he was here, in the village, it was hard to rule out the possibility that he might simply have discontinued the experiment. Just kind of disconnected me. Brought the whole thing to an end. Out of pity. Believing, finally, that I’d had enough.
&n
bsp; It was possible, surely.
After all, on the far side of the moon, there are intelligent life-forms who are keeping us under constant observation.
And there is always somebody behind you, with a gun.
A Note on the Author
RUPERT THOMSON is the author of eight highly acclaimed novels, of which Air and Fire and The Insult were shortlisted for the Writer’s Guild Fiction Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize respectively. His most recent novel, Death of a Murderer, was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Novel Award. His memoir This Party's Got to Stop was published in 2010.
By the Same Author
Fiction
Dreams of Leaving
The Five Gates of Hell
Air and Fire
Soft
The Book of Revelation
Divided Kingdom
Death of a Murderer
Non-fiction
This Party’s Got to Stop
First published 1996
Copyright © 1996 by Rupert Thomson
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