As she lies on the sofa bed in the study, it is as if all is lost for a second time. It is getting light. Now, close to sleep, a heavy sense of despair awakens in her. Over the years, she has thought about what she would do if Fredrik was unfaithful. To handle the shock, to be ready and able to act quickly. But now she feels paralysed, all she can do is stare into the darkness. She feels ashamed and stupid; how can she have missed this? She has been made fun of. She had thought she was the most important thing to Fredrik, when in reality she had been utterly worthless in his eyes.
She remembers when she meant everything to him. She remembers when he came home with her the first time to her new, tiny flat. She remembers him sitting under a hand basin in the maternity ward crying with relief when Daniel was born, after the doctors had almost had to make an emergency intervention. She thinks of all the times they have slept together; she let him come in her just a few days ago. Did that mean nothing to him?
While the room gets lighter, she unravels all the memories like an old piece of fabric. She picks unhappily at the small things, the words she remembers, and tests their durability – it is as if there is a lie growing inside all the memories.
Perhaps Jane is just one of many. Perhaps there is a Chloë before her, an Amanda, an Elisabeth. If he wasn’t in Copenhagen, was he ever at the office over the last few years when he said he was working late?
She tries to distinguish which memories can still be saved. But even the future that she has only managed to think about as a hope is now being torn apart. They won’t grow old together, won’t see their boys and be reminded of them as children. They won’t age together, continuing to support each other down the years in spite of everything.
She sees the woman in front of her at the reception, close to Fredrik. She sees him lean forward towards the woman’s ear to be better heard, and how she strokes the hair behind her ear and exposes her throat in a sensual movement, and perhaps it is to receive a kiss. He must have kissed her there, she thinks. The pictures flood her mind, they are transformed and displaced. She sees Fredrik put his arm around the woman’s waist, sees them kissing in an intense embrace, naked in the hall, in bed, in a hotel. She tries to push them away, but they won’t stop.
13
It is as if the gravel paths are frozen in a forgotten era. The air is chilly and fresh. Jonathan pants as he runs down the slope; he is running for all he is worth. The anger is pulsing through him like black oil.
He has been sitting in that blasted flat waiting for almost twenty-four hours. No one has been in touch with him since they picked him up the evening after his meeting with Vermeer. But he knows they have him under observation. He has wanted to call Frances, but he doesn’t want Vauxhall Cross to listen in on another attempt to move her, and perhaps she won’t even pick up. He understands that he needs to be clean, but he hates being cooped up and he detests the thought that his confinement has almost certainly given Robert pleasure.
The two handlers arrived early, without warning. They came to collect him like a dog that needed taking for a walk. When they dropped him off in the car park by Kenwood House he got out of the car without a word and ran until his lungs smarted.
He loves being on Hampstead Heath early in the morning. When he lived in London, he and Robert used to come here to run. But this morning he is not part of the colossal calm that hangs above the grass. He is vigilant and turns at every sound.
He crosses a waterlogged patch of grass and reaches the woods. He is alone.
Oaks and beech trees tower over him, forming a muffled, green-glowing cavern. His effort increases by the minute and crumbles his thoughts to pieces until all that is left is a mumbling stream inside his head before even that falls silent.
He normally likes to push himself when running, and has to remind himself to maintain a calmer tempo. Yet after a while he attains the same feeling he usually does, that his worries are shrinking as if he were replacing them with a pleasant sense of emptiness with every mile he runs. Alert and focused, he runs towards the centre of the park.
He can see the pond. He ups his pace and reaches the far end at exactly the right time. Catching his breath, he steps from foot to foot on the gravel path.
There, another runner.
A man of about thirty, wearing black running tights and a thin anorak. Short, blond hair. No, he thinks, this is wrong.
The runner approaches the same way he did, using the path along the edge of the pond.
Typical – the entire park is deserted and yet he still can’t be left in peace. Now the annoying question arises as to whether he should let the other runner pass and do another lap, and be forced to have him in front of him the whole way, or whether he should disappear before the other runner arrives and then return. Because this is the meeting place. On the hour, every hour, until ten o’clock this morning was the agreement.
The other runner is now a hundred metres away. He squints.
Perhaps it is how the man is looking at him as he gets closer, perhaps it is his thin, ruddy beard. He doesn’t know, but he tries. When the man is fifty metres from him he begins running again, and goes round the end of the pond at a steady pace.
Behind him he hears the rhythmic steps of the other man.
He turns off onto a narrow path crossing a patch of grass. His legs respond with pleasure on the uphill; he is strong, but holds back to make sure he doesn’t lose the other man. When he reaches the summit and ducks into the trees, he notices that the man is still there, fifty paces behind him.
The man is following.
He is surprised. He has to admit that he had expected a messenger for Ahrar al-Sham to be someone of Arabic appearance, not a sandy-haired white man who might as well be a younger version of himself.
Agitation and slight fear make it difficult not to run quicker. He heads into the trees in a wooded area and chooses a new path, moving forward through the gentle interplay of grey light and shadows.
It is like a silent game between him and the other man. A quick glance at his watch tells him he is running each kilometre at a steady four-and-a-half minutes. The joy of rushing forward through the chilly morning makes him smile.
He can hear the other man’s steps getting closer.
Then they are side by side. The messenger is younger but bigger than he seemed from a distance. The man could easily push him over. They silently run alongside each other through the trees. The unspoken violence is ever present; he knows he must be careful.
The thought that the rebels may have an entirely different plan in mind for him passes through him with peculiar clarity. They might abduct him or simply kill him, courses of events over which he has no control. Vauxhall Cross is tracking his fitness watch via GPS and knows where he is, but it will still take a while for anyone to get here if the man turns violent. If he is kidnapped, they wouldn’t be able to stop that either. All they would find would be a fitness watch in the woods.
He sees the messenger make a rapid movement with his right hand and thinks: knife. The man’s hand rises in a slow movement. Trees pass between them, ferns brush his calves; he is intensely alert and ready for battle. An object . . . not a knife, but he can’t tell what it is.
‘Take it,’ the man pants.
He holds out his hand.
The object drops onto the palm of his hand. A mobile.
Without a word, the messenger ducks away and disappears rapidly into the trees.
Jonathan continues alone through the rustling woods and emerges onto a sloping meadow. He stops, leans forward and groans loudly. His lungs want more air than he can manage to breathe in.
He examines the phone. A simple pay-as-you-go with a scratched case. Used and anonymous.
The sudden ringtone is loud and shrill. It is as if the artificial sound disturbs the woods: the birds fall silent.
When he puts the mobile to his ear, he hears a ma
n with a calm, nasal voice say:
‘Listen carefully.’
London accent. Not the same man who gave him the phone, this voice is lighter. The man says a series of numbers. He listens, trying to remember the series. Then he holds his breath and tries to perceive the details: the intonation of the voice, and in the background the tiny noises of the environment. A faint hum. Traffic. Cars passing.
‘Repeat that.’
The man repeats the number series. Two figures, period, six figures. Then minus. Two figures, period, six figures. He closes his eyes and lets the coordinates form a pattern that he can remember.
‘Understood?’
He says yes.
‘Every morning for the next three days. We’ll be waiting for you.’
The call ends.
He repeats the number series out loud to himself. Then he turns around.
After a kilometre or so he reaches a road running through the park. A man in a loden coat with a Labrador on a lead dodges anxiously out of the way when he explodes out of the bushes.
‘Do you have a pen?’ he gasps.
The man merely shakes his head in confusion.
A pen, he has to find one.
He runs along the park road and onto a well-kept avenue. He finds a corner shop close to Gospel Oak station and asks for pen and paper. The surprised-looking woman in a pink cardigan behind the counter looks at him in amusement. She gestures at the newspapers. He swears silently and pulls a fiver out of the pocket of his running tights and picks up a copy of The Times. The woman hands him a pencil that she sharply points out is only a loan.
The figures are close to falling out of order. He closes his eyes, calming his heart rate. Then he writes them down, one after the other, in the margin.
The handlers are waiting outside in a car.
Back in the flat, he sits with his mobile in his hand. He has entered the coordinates and already checked several times that they are correct. The location that the figures refer to on the map is nowhere near the Turkish border. What’s going on? he thinks to himself in dismay. The meeting point isn’t near the Turkish border, it is tens of kilometres inside Syria in northern Idlib. Deep in the war zone. He is overcome by lassitude as the realisation hits him that if there is one place on earth where he will probably die, this is it.
14
Bente examines her appearance in the vanity mirror and kisses a tissue. Cherry-coloured lipstick, foundation and a light application of mascara. Perhaps that is the deepest form of loneliness: spending an entire sleepless night lying alone because Fredrik is unfaithful, and then hiding the fatigue with make-up.
On the main road she calls Anne, who has already been in touch this morning. The number used by Jane is connected to an address in Ixelles, the analyst explains. Jane is an alias. Her real name is Heather Ashford.
She vaguely recognises the name, but doesn’t know where she has seen it. She has plenty of time, and the address is only a kilometre or so from the office. She’ll get there before the slut leaves for work, she thinks to herself. A little surprise.
She plays Eric Clapton at top volume while rolling towards her target. It calms her. She only listens to Clapton when she is alone in the car; no one else in the family likes the music. Heather Ashford, she thinks: sounds like a stripper. She knows exactly what she is going to say to that woman. She is going to make her realise that the gates of hell will open wide for her if she continues seeing Fredrik. To give herself strength, she sings along to the words of ‘Cocaine’, loudly and not altogether clearly.
But her positive fighting mood deflates when she ends up in all the roadworks going on in the city centre. Sitting in an incomprehensibly static queue of traffic on Chaussée de Wavre, she realises there is a risk she will be late.
She pulls the car up onto the pavement and parks it sloppily at a jaunty angle, gets out and begins to jog towards the address. She doesn’t want to be sweaty or out of breath – she wants to meet her opponent in a calm and dignified manner, but nevertheless she is running.
It is an idyllic street with small borders of flowers and generously proportioned main doors. A neighbourhood for the bourgeois city dweller. It is half past eight when she presses the buzzer.
No one answers. She swears silently; perhaps the woman has already left for work. She had hoped to hear the woman confess and to enjoy frightening her, but standing outside the door she tells herself that this will have to be a different kind of visit. She buzzes a number of other apartments and someone eventually makes the mistake of letting her in. She sneaks in and ambles up the echoing staircase.
The door is of the classic kind – tall French double doors – found in all turn-of-the-century buildings. She presses the doorbell and hears an angry noise from within. She waits but hears no steps on the other side of the door, rings the bell again and waits another minute. No one is home.
The door is old but the lock is eye-catchingly new. She looks up at the ceiling but can’t see any surveillance – no cameras or sensors.
She gets out her pick gun.
It is risky and illegal, but it doesn’t matter now. If she can’t meet her enemy, then she at least wants to know how she lives.
The picklock slips into the lock, discerning the patterns of the cylinder and creating the right notches and teeth. Then, with a heavy clicking sound, the lock releases. The door opens when she tries the handle. She quickly steps inside and closes the door behind her.
A long, dark hall. She listens for noise from inside the rooms. No alarm, no camera.
It occurs to her that Heather might be sleeping.
‘Hello?’ she calls out.
No, the flat is empty. The hall opens out onto two large rooms.
She passes through a galley kitchen. The fridge is empty apart from a bottle of wine and a jar of olives.
The bathroom is also clean and tidy – there are a multitude of small bottles and soaps. In a little basket next to the sleek cast-iron bath tub are two bottles of shampoo and shower gel that distinguish themselves from the others. She recognises them – they have the same products at home. It’s the brand Fredrik likes.
Naturally, he has known what would give him away. He has been careful not to take the woman’s scent away with him, instead showering after their liaisons and using the same shampoo and shower gel as he would at home. She has to sit down for a moment. A headache is bursting through her forehead.
She goes into the living room, where there is a large sofa, partly wilted flowers in a vase, lots of books. So this is the kind of woman he wants, she thinks – a reading Heather. She tries to imagine who she is. A lover who reads Tolstoy; how wonderful. She looks around for photographs, pictures that might give her more information, but there is nothing like that – just ugly photography and watercolours. There are also no folders containing papers, bills, anything that might say more about the person living here. She pulls the drawers of a bureau open, searches the shelves in the living room, but finds nothing that tells her more about her enemy.
Two tall windows face the street. It is a beautiful view. How exciting it must have been for Fredrik to come here to visit a young woman with good taste living in a period apartment. Like in a film. A fantasy.
A wide bed sits in state in the bedroom. It is so perfectly made – the covers are stretched and folded. Pale, colour-coordinated pillows are positioned at the head. Cool tones characterise everything in the room. There are some fashion magazines and a vase of immortelles. Like in a hotel. Or a place of refuge. She doesn’t want to think about what has happened here, but she can’t avoid the thought because it gives her a dark and forceful energy.
Next to the bed is a candelabra. It has been used – a solidified dribble of wax is still on the brass. She can imagine the soft glow of the candlelight on the bed and walls, Fredrik walking naked across the broad floorboards, and she feels the fury vibra
te within her.
Candles to fuck by.
She is blinded with rage. She grabs hold of the candelabra and slings it across the room with all her strength.
Even as it leaves her hand, she realises her mistake. It was a violent impulse – she couldn’t stop it – but of course she hadn’t stopped to think. She sees the candelabra travelling across the bed like a peculiar trident and, even before it hits the wardrobe on the far wall, she has already come to regret it bitterly. The candelabra strikes the wood with an impact that makes the tall piece of furniture wobble and bounce before settling back on the floor.
She is there in a flash, but it is too late. She swears loudly. There is a clear gash in the wardrobe door – two or three centimetres – next to the handle. The smooth white surface has cracked, exposing the wood. The candelabra is in one piece, but the candle has broken off and one arm is slightly bent. The floor is covered in flakes and crumbs, and there is an ugly scratch on the parquet.
For a while she stands there completely perplexed by the damage and her own stupidity. This will be visible, she thinks with a loud groan. She quickly goes into the kitchen and finds a dustpan and brush. Then she crawls around by the bed and sweeps up the pieces of wax, down to the tiniest flake of their romantic light, until the floor is completely clean. She rubs the mark on the floor for a while with her jacket and is relieved to find that it disappears.
The candelabra is made of brass. Having to stand there trying to bend back one of its arms is difficult, and very degrading – her face reddens from exertion. Finally, it looks like it did before.
But what should she do about the wardrobe? Perhaps she can leave it, she thinks, perhaps the woman fucking her husband doesn’t take much notice of what her wardrobe doors look like. To be on the safe side, she carefully opens the wardrobe to check that nothing inside has been disturbed.
The Silent War Page 15