Woman of the Dead
Page 16
• • •
Blum is trembling. She remembers the mess that was Bertl Puch, his pulpy head, his blood, his shit, his urine. She must get up, she must drive away from here. She must limit the damage, turn back the clock as best she can, dispose of him in a grave. She must go to the children, hold them in her arms, tell them she loves them, kiss them, laugh with them, act as if everything is all right. At least one last time. She must hope that nothing will separate them. She’d give everything for that, do anything for it, tell lies, deny accusations, kill for it too. Blum will stand up now and get into her car. She will ignore the smell, drive back to Innsbruck, and take refuge in the preparation room. Bertl Puch will disappear. She will clean the casket and reset her life.
• • •
She emerges from her fainting fit and gets back into the hearse. She drives away from the rest stop and onto the highway, from Salzburg on to Innsbruck. Blum is hanging from strings but she is the puppet master. She forces herself to get up, raises her arm, puts her hand on the steering wheel, presses her foot on the accelerator. Then she taps a number into her phone.
• • •
“Where are you? What’s the matter?”
“I just wanted to hear your voice, Massimo.”
“Are you driving?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What’s the matter, Blum?”
“Suppose something happens to me. What would happen to the children?”
“What would happen to you?”
“I might die.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Mark’s dead. I might die too, and then the children would be on their own.”
“You mustn’t think like that.”
“But I do. And it frightens me.”
“Well, stop.”
“They’ll be put into a home.”
“Stop talking like that. Nothing’s going to happen to you, I’ll look after you. Trust me.”
“Do you remember the woman Mark was meeting?”
“Yes. Why?”
“She’s dead.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They pulled her out of the River Inn. I saw her in the forensics lab.”
“How do you know it was her? You don’t know the woman.”
“I saw a photo on Mark’s cell. I know what she looked like. And she’s dead, Massimo. Drowned. They say it was either accident or suicide.”
“Oh, Blum, you mustn’t let this weigh on your mind. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“It had something to do with Mark.”
“But Mark is dead. You must stop this, Blum. The woman was homeless. She probably got drunk and fell into the river. Or she was tired of life and just wanted to end it all.”
“I’m frightened, Massimo.”
“Please don’t worry, Blum. I’ll look into the case, I promise. I’ll find out how she died. But you must promise you’ll stop thinking the worst.”
“I promise.”
“It will get better, Blum.”
“It’s getting worse.”
“Can I come and see you when the children go to bed?”
“Yes.”
• • •
Blum ends the call. The thought of lying in his arms does make it better. The thought of telling him the truth is tempting. She would like to surrender herself, let him take control. Sure as she is that Massimo will never be more than a friend, she wishes he could be, wishes he could be like Mark to her. She wants to tell him everything about Dunya, Schönborn, Jaunig, and Puch. She doesn’t want to be alone with it anymore, lying in a rest stop. Massimo will come when the children are asleep. Or perhaps he will come sooner, if someone called the police, saying he saw Blum hit a man with a jack.
A child’s bike is under the apple tree. Nela is blowing bubbles. They float past Uma, who is asleep in her stroller. And here is Blum, parking the hearse behind the house and pushing the casket into the preparation room. It is late summer and the scene in the yard is so ordinary. Karl is pruning the black currant bushes, and Blum lifts Uma out of her stroller and kisses her awake. They run round the house, playing catch. Blum tries to forget the chef, to put off the inevitable. She’ll give herself two hours, then she’ll go back to the casket, to the body of Bertl Puch.
• • •
What follows is routine, and that helps. It is easier to touch a corpse than to watch someone else do it. Blum swathes herself in plastic: her hands, her arms, her legs, her shoes. She doesn’t want to touch his blood or his flesh, she doesn’t want to touch any part of him. Blum prepares the aspirator, saw, plastic bags, and formalin. She calculates she will have him apart in three hours; she’d like to dispose of him more quickly than she did Schönborn. She wants to go back to the yard, play catch with the children and pretend everything is okay. Blum lifts him with the crane and lowers him onto the preparation table. She cuts off the chef’s clothes, undresses him, rolls him onto his side, and pulls the fabric away. She throws it all in the bin. His naked body looks innocent, his skin gives nothing away. There is nothing to show that he is a murderer and a rapist. He could have been a respectable husband and father. If Blum hadn’t known better, if she hadn’t seen the videos and talked to him, she would think he was blameless and regret what she had done. But she knows she was right. She is doing what had to be done.
• • •
She turns up the music. She sprays disinfectant to cover up the smell of shit. She opens his rib cage and takes out his organs, just as she did with Schönborn. She creates as little mess as she can, channeling the blood down the drain and not letting it lie on the floor. She divides and packs up his organs, just as the butcher would do when Hagen bought game. Then Herta would divide the meat into portions and freeze it. Roe deer, red deer, sometimes a calf too, a pig. Blum saws off Bertl Puch’s arms, then his legs. He is only flesh and bone. His limbs drop around her; she lets them fall to the floor and goes on sawing. She divides up his torso and separates his head from his neck. Just as his head drops off the table, the door opens.
• • •
The music was too loud. She didn’t hear him coming, she’d forgotten to bolt the door. No one should have seen this; no one should have witnessed the crime. Blum has made her next mistake; she has lost control again. She can’t forgive herself. Suppose it had been Nela standing in the doorway? Blum hadn’t been paying attention and now he is staring at her. It is a bloodbath, a disaster, a crime. Bertl Puch’s arms and legs and head are scattered on the floor. Blum would like the ground to swallow her up, she has no words, she just stands there, looking at him. Reza is taking in the scene, his eyes are circling the room, trying to make sense of it. Stepping forward, he closes the door and turns the key in the lock. Then he wraps himself in plastic without uttering a word. He dons an apron and a pair of gloves. Reza is getting ready for work. He ignores the obvious fact that Blum would like to shut him out, he just carries on where she left off. He takes the saw out of her hand and finishes carving Bertl Puch’s torso.
• • •
“What are you doing, Reza?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”
“Go on, then, ask.”
“No.”
“It’s complicated, Reza.”
“It looks complicated. But we’ll get it done. You were going to pack these things up, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And then bury them?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll have to put some of them in storage. There’s only one casket here, it won’t all fit.”
“No.”
“Do you understand what I mean, Blum?”
“Yes.”
“Last time the caskets were too heavy.”
“What?”
“You overloaded them. The bearers noticed. I told them we were using a new model. A bigger casket, more wood.”
“You knew?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Did you open the caskets?”
“No, I told you, they were too heavy.”
“But you didn’t say a thing?”
“No.”
“It’s all messed up. Something’s . . . gotten out of control.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
“I think I do.”
“I’m sure you had your reasons.”
“I did.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me.”
“Reza, leave and forget everything you’ve seen.”
“No, we have to clean up now.”
“I can explain it all.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Mark’s death. It wasn’t an accident.”
“What do you mean?”
“They killed him, Reza.”
“Who did?”
“This man. And four others. They ran him over, they took him away from us. They blew out the candle on the cake, just like that.”
• • •
Reza says nothing. He takes Bertl Puch’s right arm, puts it into a plastic bag, pours in some formalin, and wraps it tightly. He fastens the little package with sticky tape. Bertl Puch’s arm is almost vacuum-packed. Reza packs up his body piece by piece while Blum starts at the very beginning. With the recorded conversations, with Dunya in the supermarket, Schönborn in the forest, Jaunig on the boat, Dunya in the forensics lab, the actor singing on the video, the man in the rest stop. She tells him the horror story, the nightmare from which she can’t awake. Now Reza is diving into the empty pool, hand in hand with her, to a count of three. She had no alternative. I’m here for you, he says, without pausing to think. There is no emotion on his face as he calmly wraps up the chef’s head. He is not afraid. He just gets on with it. He raises his hand, then hurls the head into the corner to join the other packed-and-sealed parts of Bertl Puch.
• • •
“We’ll get through this, Blum.”
“I’m so sorry, Reza. I really didn’t want to involve you in all this.”
“Never mind that, Blum. I’m here.”
“I’ve killed three people.”
“I’ve killed ten.”
“You don’t judge me?”
“No, Blum. We’ll get this one underground, then we’ll see about that actor.”
“We?”
“Yes, you and I.”
“Thank you, Reza. You’re wonderful.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But, Reza, I feel so much better now I’ve told you. And it’s great that you want to help me, although you’re crazy to want to. If I were you, I’d run a million miles.”
“I’d never let anything happen to you.”
“But what about the man in the rest stop? He must have called the police.”
“Everything’s going to be okay.”
• • •
Reza says so. He is standing in front of her. He removes his gloves, touching her face affectionately. The sensation of his palms on her cheeks is almost imperceptible. Reza gives her courage, he tries to rouse her from her nightmare. He tells her that life will go on, that Uma and Nela won’t lose their mother, they are going to get through this. The remainder of Puch’s dismembered torso is still on the table. She feels Reza’s sudden closeness. The chef has come apart, and Reza’s help does her good. They stand still and look at each other. Two murderers, with not a word to waste.
For a few hours, everything is okay. Blum entertains the hope that they have weathered the worst of the storm. She and Reza sit on Blum’s sofa in the living room, having finished dinner and opened a bottle of wine. The children are asleep. Karl is finishing off in the garden. A gentle sense of security has crept back into her mind. It makes her cling to Reza; she doesn’t want to let him go. After a while Reza puts his head back and closes his eyes. He is still awake when Blum nestles close to him, as her head comes to rest on his chest, as her hand gently holds his. He is a friend and he is there for her, he catches her, he plucks her out of the air and stops her thudding onto the bottom of the empty pool. His hands don’t wander, he simply receives her. And she is grateful. Reza’s chest rises and falls. Blum just lies there, sensing his presence, and it feels good. She wants to stay awake. She feels the link between them, the proximity, his restraint. Everything is both familiar and strange. She has known him for years as a faithful soul, a colleague, a friend. It would never have entered her head to touch him, to lie in his arms. Reza is shy, like a wild creature hiding in the forest, sparing with his words. He is like a shadow, a shadow in which she hides.
• • •
Outside she hears Karl mowing the lawn. It is getting dark, and there is nothing more to be done. For the moment there is only Blum and Reza. But now Massimo is quietly coming upstairs, so quietly that she can barely hear him. Karl must have let him into the house. Blum has entirely forgotten that he was going to come, was offering her a shoulder to cry on. She hears his footsteps, closes her eyes, and pretends to be asleep. Her eyelids are open just a tiny crack. She sees him standing in the doorway, staring at the sofa, wondering what to do, what to say, whether to wake them. Massimo’s eyes are wide. His face wears the expression of a beaten dog. Blum can see his disappointment, the pain she is inflicting by lying in another man’s arms. Massimo stares. He sees two people sleeping; he doesn’t know that Blum is awake and ashamed. He doesn’t know that she feels sorry for him and would have liked to have spared him this.
• • •
Massimo stares at them for a long time. He has a bottle of wine in his left hand. He was going to drink it with Blum, he is here to console her, not to arrest her or question her. He doesn’t know what happened in the rest stop. Whoever saw her hasn’t gone to the police, or the uniformed men would have been here long ago to take her away. They’d have arrested her in the preparation room. There would have been no bottle in Massimo’s hand.
• • •
He watches them sleep for a couple of minutes, and then he goes away without making a sound. As he steals downstairs and disappears, Blum opens her eyes. She wishes she had spared him. She hears the door close, and Karl turns off the lawn mower to ask why he’s leaving so soon. Blum will explain, she will tell him that she was tired and lonely, it didn’t mean a thing. But Massimo won’t believe her, he will maintain he saw Blum and Reza’s intimacy with his own eyes. He saw her head on his chest and her hand in his. Blum lies where she is, she doesn’t want to get to her feet and run after him, she wants to stay with Reza.
• • •
That night she sleeps fitfully, plagued by bad dreams. Every time she wakes she is glad that he is still there, holding her. She keeps moving away, turning over, moving back towards him, and falling back asleep. Then a time comes when she opens her eyes and the day has begun. Uma is standing there, smiling and saying, Mama, cocoa please. Blum sits up with a start. She turns left and right, looking for Reza, but Reza isn’t there. He didn’t want the children to see him lying on the sofa so close to their mother. Only Uma is here, smiling and asking for cocoa.
• • •
Breakfast is served in the garden. It is Saturday, and the children have nowhere to be. Blum is sitting at the little table under the cherry tree, reading the newspaper and drinking coffee, watching them play. Everything feels contained. No one suspects her, no one is hunting her down. The only thing weighing on her mind is Massimo. She will phone him, tell him a white lie, and hope he believes her.
• • •
The morning sun is dazzling. Blum will sit here for a little while longer and then pack the girls’ swimming things. She has promised to take them to the lake and spend the day with them there, in the water, on the meadow beside the banks of the lake, with books. There will be no work and no dead people. It’s not a day to spend in front of the computer; that will have to wait until evening. She and Reza will search together for the name that goes with the grinning face. And now a Mercedes turns into the drive.
• • •
• • •
“You’re in deep shit.”
“No, I’m sitting under a cherry tree. It’s perfectly pleasant.”
“You have real problems, young lady.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. So it would be better if you talked.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to tell me where my son is. Or I’m taking these pictures to the police.”
“What pictures?”
“These photographs, here, look.”
• • •
Blum takes the envelope. It contains photos of a woman with a jack in her hand. They show a car with an open trunk, a casket, and the woman hitting it. There are thirty or forty pictures documenting her fury, every last detail of the murder of Bertl Puch. Blum sits under the cherry tree with the pictures in front of her and Johannes Schönborn opposite. Blum doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know how this man came by them. Did he take the photographs himself, or did he send one of his henchmen, a private detective even? Has someone been watching her, following her every move? Did that person see her leaving Bertl Puch’s apartment, luring him into the underground garage, and losing control? Blum has no words to express the turmoil she is in, she can hardly breathe. The children are still playing, running around the yard. Schönborn leans towards her. Blum tries to regain her self-control, react, think of something. She has risen to her feet and she is swaying. She almost falls over but summons all her strength and stands upright.