The Mammoth Book Best International Crime

by Maxim Jakubowski

  She frowned, distracted. Mailman? Yesterday? “Did he leave a note that he’d delivered it here?”

  “No, but I was hoping. Well, never mind, Bea. It’ll probably get here next week.”

  “Sure.” She replaced the receiver and rested her head against the back of the chair. She was so tired! It seemed that, as the tension waned, her tiredness waxed. She was bone tired, and her headache was worse. There must be an aspirin somewhere. She needed time to work things out.

  Aart was gone. But how could she explain that? God, she needed time to think!

  She had to be careful to avoid even the smallest contradiction in her story. She needed an explanation she could stick to, one that wouldn’t entangle her in a web of lies and evasions.

  But she was so terribly tired! Her head felt stuffed full of cotton balls. Her ears buzzed, as if she’d been listening to loud music for hours, and her eyes burned with lack of sleep. Worst of all, she was famished and horribly thirsty.

  She gasped. She raced back to the foyer, where she’d dropped her shoulder bag at the foot of the coat-rack. A brick of cheese. Salted cashews. But no string beans. As if illuminated by a searchlight, she saw the pack of string beans wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, in a little plastic shopping bag on the floor of the car.

  She told herself to calm down. No one in his right mind would connect a package of string beans in a car in a canal with Aart’s disappearance.

  Coffee.

  She needed strong black coffee with lots of sugar. After that, she would find a piece of paper and write her story down, so that later on she could read through it carefully and commit every detail to memory.

  Bea breathed deeply as she stared at her neighbor, refusing to glance down at the dead-white feet sticking out from his blue striped pajamas. His hand gripped the belt of his old brown bathrobe tightly, as if he was afraid it might spontaneously fly open.

  “Rein, I’m sorry to bother you so early, but I just don’t know what to do!”

  His white feet shuffled slowly backwards. “Come in, Bea. Calm down and tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I – I feel so guilty.” Like an abandoned dog tied to a tree in a forest, she began to whimper pitifully.

  “What is it? Is something wrong with Aart?”

  “Yes! He’s – gone. Just disappeared.”

  “Nonsense. As if Aart would ever leave you.”

  For a moment it was silent, and each of them listened to the echo of those last words.

  “Something must have happened to him, Rein, but what? Last night, he said he felt dizzy and – he had a terrible headache, he was burning up. He went to bed early, really sick.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Aart.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I went up later and felt his head, and his fever had come down some. So I just went to bed myself, and this morning I woke up and–and—”

  “Don’t tell me he’s dead!”

  Bea shook her head quickly. Too quickly? “No, he was just – gone. I’m so afraid something’s happened to him, Rein. I don’t know why, but I think – well, he was dizzy, and he had such a headache – maybe he’s really ill, and he’s in a ditch somewhere. . . .”

  “Is he on foot?”

  “No, he took the car.”

  “Did you try his cell?”

  “I’ve been calling and calling, but I just get his voicemail.” She paused. “I can’t think what else to do, Rein. He was so – dazed. Maybe he’s forgotten who he is, where he lives.”

  “I think we’d better go to the police,” said Rein decisively. “Wait here. I’ll throw some clothes on, and then I’ll drive you to the station.”

  Through the pebbled glass of the front door, Bea made out two human shapes on the front stoop. She intuitively knew who they were. Police.

  A few days ago, the concerned Rein had taken her to the station to report Aart as missing. And now they had come to her house. What would they have to tell her?

  She wiped her clammy hands on her hips, fighting the impulse to flee out the back door.

  “Mrs Driehuis?”

  Her eyes slid searchingly across their earnest faces. A young officer with smooth cheeks, little more than a boy. The woman was older and bulkier, wearing an expression of professional friendliness.

  “I’m Brigadier Hilbrink. Are you Mrs Driehuis?” The woman held up an identification card. Bea barely had time to examine the photo, let alone read the name. A detective, not an ordinary police officer.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “May we come in?”

  She took a step back. “Yes, of course – I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t ask them why they were there. It was obvious that they must have news about Aart, and the fact that it was not good news was written on their serious faces. In the living room, she indicated the colorful sofa and politely offered them coffee or tea.

  “No, thank you. Ah, the news isn’t good, ma’am.”

  So they’d found him. And now they were here to arrest her. Perhaps it was for the best. The suspense that had been keeping her awake through the long nights was practically unbearable.

  She sat on the edge of a chair and folded her hands in her lap.

  The woman detective looked around the room. “Are you alone, Mrs Driehuis?”

  “Yes. My neighbor will be back later. He had some errands to run, and he’s picking up some bread and cold cuts for me. It’s strange, but life goes on, you know? Aart’s gone, but I still have to eat.”

  She watched the woman frown slightly. Why was she rattling on so foolishly? What did these police people care that Rein was off doing her shopping for her? She lowered her gaze to the carpet and added, more calmly, “Are you sure I can’t make you some coffee or tea?”

  “There’s no need to trouble yourself.” Her visitors exchanged a quick look. “A few days ago, you reported the disappearance of your husband, correct?”

  She swallowed with difficulty. “Yes.”

  “We’ve found someone who seems to fit the description you gave us.”

  At a barely discernible signal from the woman, the young man took a photograph from his jacket pocket. He laid it on the table, facing her. “Is this your husband, Mrs Driehuis?”

  She didn’t look at it. Not yet.

  “Is he dead?”

  “I’m afraid so, ma’am. Would you take a good look at the picture and tell us if it’s your husband?”

  She couldn’t bring herself to pick it up. “I gave you a photo of him when I reported him missing.”

  Again the detectives glanced at each other. “Yes, I know. But it was several years old, you said, and the condition of the body is . . . well . . . it’s not very nice.”

  Bea understood that she couldn’t put it off any longer. She could feel them watching her. Were they simply concerned for her, or was there suspicion in their experienced police eyes?

  “Take your time,” the woman said sympathetically. “We know this is difficult for you.”

  Her colleague flipped open a thin black notebook. “The man we found was between forty and fifty years old. Dark hair, blue-grey eyes. No other distinguishing characteristics.”

  Illogically, Bea suddenly realized that she wasn’t wearing any shoes. She leaned forward and felt under her chair, as she slowly thought that she must be reacting badly. She hadn’t asked what had happened to her husband. Where he’d been found. How. When. What. Why. As she slipped her feet into her shoes, she watched their serious faces.

  “Would you rather wait until your neighbor gets here, Mrs Driehuis?”

  Bea clasped her hands together. “No. I’m fine.”

  With trembling fingers, she reached for the photograph, but at the last moment she changed her mind and didn’t touch the glossy rectangle. “I – what happened to him?”

  “We think it was a hit and run, ma’am.” The young man seemed unsurprised by her delayed question.

  “Where was he found?”

  “Just outside the city. Near the
Nauerna dike. We think someone ran him down and then just kept driving. He was found in a ditch by the side of the road.”

  That made no sense. Aart dead in a ditch? At the bottom of a dike? How in God’s name could that be possible?

  “But he’s been missing for days,” she said, almost accusingly. “How can you just have found him now?”

  “He was lying in the weeds, ma’am, almost impossible to spot him from a passing car. A man on a bicycle had a flat tire and stopped by the side of the ditch and happened to see him.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sometimes it’s better to know for sure,” said the woman sympathetically.

  Bea swallowed. For some reason it bothered her that all of her reactions and movements were being followed by the watchful eyes of the two detectives. Could she ask them to leave her alone with the photo?

  Again she reached her trembling hand towards it. She stared at the blank face with short dark hair. She examined the unnatural features, the pale cheeks, the dark beard stubble, the stubby nose and small, rather pointy ears. She saw the dark eyebrows, the greying temples, and studied the crinkles at the corners of the eyes and the deeply etched lines that ran from the outsides of his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. But mostly she focused on the terrible damage that had been done to the face, the strangely misshapen jaw, as if the bottom half of the head had been cruelly wrenched out of alignment.

  How in the name of God was this possible? How had he wound up in a ditch by the dike?

  She swallowed several times in a row and wiped her eyes. She didn’t notice the tears that had spotted her dress.

  “Ma’am, is there someone we can call, so we don’t have to leave you here alone?”

  “No, I’m all right. I’ll be fine.” She wiped her hand across her eyes again. “I can go next door to Rein’s. The neighbor.”

  A solemn nod, and then the formal question: “Mrs Driehuis, is this your husband?”

  “Yes.” Suddenly, she raised her head and looked straight at the policewoman. “Yes, it’s him,” she mumbled hoarsely.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Sorry.” Her voice sounded strange and high-pitched, but it wasn’t shaking any more. “Yes,” she said firmly, “that’s my husband, Aart Driehuis.”

  “Thank you. That’s all we need for now.”

  “Do – do I need to fill in any paperwork? I don’t—”

  “The formalities can wait a while,” answered the woman gently.

  Bea hoped they wouldn’t offer to stay until Rein got back. She wanted to be alone. She needed time and quiet, she had to think, and she had to write down everything she’d said as soon as possible.

  Funny, she’d never before realized that it was harder not to lie than to lie.

  “Bea speaking.”

  Silence on the other end of the line.

  “This is Bea,” she said again.

  “I have to talk to you.”

  She gasped. “What?”

  “You heard me, Bea. We need to talk.”

  “This – you – this isn’t possible.”

  “Of course it’s possible. I’ve been—”

  She slammed down the receiver, cutting him off. She couldn’t catch her breath, and all around her she saw black spots and blinding flashes of light. That voice! It was exactly as she remembered it, maybe just a tone deeper.

  But it wasn’t possible. He was dead. It had to be someone else. Someone who knew what she had done.

  The phone rang.

  She wouldn’t speak to him. Never, never again.

  But Rein was in the kitchen, making coffee, and of course he would want to know why she hadn’t answered the phone. She had to regain her composure before he came out of the kitchen.

  Rein, who had so unexpectedly turned out to be a true friend, a source of comfort. He’d been so wonderful throughout the two weeks since she’d laid Aart in his final resting place.

  She reached out a trembling hand and lifted the receiver.

  “Yes?”

  Her voice sounded very weak.

  “Bea? Bea, is that you?”

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk.”

  “There’s nothing left to say!”

  “I think there is. You can’t just—”

  “You’re dead, Aart,” she said slowly and calmly. “We buried you two weeks ago.”

  “I was on vacation, Bea. With Ellie. Ellie and I were in Greece, you knew that, I told you before we left.” He paused for a moment. “Bea, what have you done?”

  “What have I done?” Her laugh was high, hysterical. “You’re the one who did something, Aart. You moved in with her, didn’t you? With that whore, in Doetinchem?”

  “Ellie’s not a whore. She’s my girlfriend. I love her, Bea.”

  “What’s your address?”

  “I gave it to you the last time. Why?”

  “I want to send you a card. Your own funeral card, Aart.”

  She heard him draw a breath, but also heard Rein’s footsteps approaching, stepping carefully so as not to spill their coffee.

  “Hello?” Her voice was suddenly different. “Would you please stop pestering me?”

  “Don’t hang up, Bea, I have to—”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you!”

  “I’ll call back another time, Bea. I can’t just—”

  But she had already cradled the receiver. Her face was as cold as ice, and droplets of perspiration pearled her upper lip. A muscle twitched in her right cheek.

  “Who was that? Crank call?” asked Rein, concerned.

  She looked up with a start. Worry traced itself across his face. How lucky she was to have such a wonderful neighbor, such a dear friend. He was so different from Aart, who had run her whole life for her. Who was still trying to run her life.

  She smiled tightly. “Some insurance salesman.”

  He set the local newspaper on the table. “Sometimes I pity these people,” he said casually, waving a hand at the paper.

  She stared at him, perplexed. What was he talking about?

  “These Russians,” he explained.“They keep trying to emigrate to the West. They must think things are so much better here. Otherwise, why would they go through so much hardship to get here?” He picked up the paper and unfolded it, looking for the article that had attracted his attention. He showed her a page with two photographs on it. “Little while back, these two tried it. They hid themselves in the cargo hold of an airplane that was flying from Moscow to Amsterdam. Only they didn’t realize how cold it gets at 30,000 feet.”

  “How awful.” She tried with all her might to focus her mind on what he was saying.

  “Yeah. Did you see the headline? ‘Russian lands in Russian Town.’ What a coincidence, eh? Look, the pilot let down his landing gear, and this Russian who was hiding in the cargo hold and had already frozen to death – well, of course he couldn’t hold on any more, so he fell out of the plane. He landed on the roof of an old shed in Russian Town in Zaandam, bounced off, and rolled into the gutter. What a coincidence! A Russian fell, out of the blue, into Russian Town.”

  He folded back the page and handed it to her. “Put your glasses on, Bea, so you can see it.”

  Annoyed by his bossy tone, she ignored his comment about her glasses and stared at the two photos without them. Her eyes were good enough to make out the features of the two men’s faces.

  She would have recognized those pointy little ears anywhere.

  She cleared her throat with some difficulty. “Did they both land in Russian Town?”

  “No, of course not – that would have been too much of a coincidence! They haven’t found the other one yet.”

  “How do they know there were two of them?”

  “They found a duffel bag in the cargo hold. With two passports.”

  The ringing of the telephone sounded very far away.

  Bea stared at Rein, who smiled back at her with the innocent look of someone who’d just robbed a bank and
had stashed the money somewhere safe.

  She couldn’t move.

  She realized that Rein hadn’t brought up the Russians randomly, that he hadn’t shoved the newspaper with those passport photos under her nose for no reason.

  He must have heard them that Friday evening when Aart had announced he was leaving her to move in with Ellie, with the woman who had been his mistress for more than ten years, the mother of his eight-year-old daughter. Rein must have heard her screams of anguish, her bitter rage.

  Her dull eyes silently watched him as he slowly lowered himself into Aart’s chair.

  “If that man calls again, trying to sell you insurance – or bother you with anything else – you just pass him over to me, dear Bea,” he said calmly. “I’ll take care of him for you.”

  He smiled possessively. “From now on, I’ll take care of everything for you.”

  Translation by Josh Pachter

  Wedding in Voerde

  Gunter Gerlach

  1

  The noise of the motor is suddenly different.

  I sit up, startled. “Where are we?”

  Something’s scratching and scraping under the hood. An animal, trying to get out.

  “The coolant’s overheated,” says Ulrich. He’s sweating behind the wheel. His plaid suit’s gotten too small for him over the last four years. The pants are too short. His stomach rubs against the steering wheel. And the shirt buttons are about to pop. There’s a red light blinking on the dashboard.

  Ulrich turns on the warning flasher and begins to look for a parking lot.

  “Dinslaken,” he says. “We’ve almost made it.”

  He opens yet another button on his light-blue shirt. Then he guides the car into an empty parking space and turns off the motor. I unfold the street map.

  “That’s the road to Voerde,” says Ulrich. “That’s it all right.” He wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Why didn’t you take the autobahn?” I ask.

  “Because the coolant’s overheating.”

  “How long?”

  “Since Bochum.”

  I take a deep breath. Ulrich pats the air in a soothing gesture, palms toward me.

  “Calm down. It’s my car. And I want to get to that money just as fast as you do.” He gets a rag from underneath the driver’s seat. We get out. Ulrich takes off his jacket and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, then opens the hood.