The Elephant Keepers' Children (11 page)

The perfect situation would be if only I could see through the windscreen, because on that account Tilte was too optimistic. But then you can't have it all, and so I comfort myself with the thought of how often I've heard Mother say that driving a car is a matter of intuition rather than vision, and I can see the sky and part of the wall surrounding the rectory perfectly well.

The key is in the ignition. I start the engine and roll carefully along the lane and around the corner.

I have every reason to believe that the coast will be clear as I make the turn and that Alexander Flounderblood has long since gone. So imagine my surprise when the top of his head suddenly appears in my field of vision.

I manage to avoid him and Baroness, but though I am driving at a snail's pace they must surely be startled, because they leap aside as though their lives depended on it, and in a way I'm thankful there's no time for me to return the glaring looks they undoubtedly send in my direction.

The reason there's no time is that when I swerve to avoid them I catch a glimpse of Karl Marauder Lander through the side window, which means that since I've straightened my course again he must now be directly in front of me. So my only option is to press hard on the horn in order to alert him.

A lot of good things have been said about Mercedes cars. Now I feel able to add to the list that the horn ranks right up there alongside the foghorn of the Finø ferry. Moreover, the sound it makes is amplified as it reverberates against the garden walls along the lane. So now Karl appears again because he has once more felt compelled to leap into the air, providing further evidence of his exceptional powers of vertical propulsion.

I stop the car and get out.

Neither Karl nor Baroness nor Alexander has yet found their feet. This is one of those situations that clearly demand some reassuring gesture, so I wave to them as though to demonstrate that things are under control, and then I lock the car remotely, in part because the most sensible policy when Karl Marauder's around is to lock everything that isn't bolted to the floor, and in part to demonstrate that I am also in complete charge of the vehicle. And after that I jump over the wall into the garden of the rectory.

When I land on the lawn
I see three things that cannot easily be explained.

The first of these is that the long ladder has been taken from the outhouse and leaned against the gable end of the rectory. On its own, this would seem reasonable enough, as the rectory's cellar is so deep that the ground floor is actually almost a first floor, and the window of Tilte's room, at which the ladder has been placed, corresponds in terms of height to what normally would be considered the second floor.

Rather more difficult to comprehend is the fact that four people are on their way up the ladder. Uppermost and at the window is Professor Thorlacius, then comes his wife, in turn followed by the bishop of Grenå, and finally, almost halfway up, Vera the Secretary, who is making a cautious ascent.

The sight of all this prompts the immediate thought that none of the four has climbed a ladder in a good many years, if at all, and for that reason they are under the impression that a ladder is a sort of stairway capable of accommodating several individuals at a time.

The third thing I see is the most difficult with which to reconcile myself. Crouched behind the big rhododendron in front
of me are Tilte and Basker, and beside them, in a little huddle, are Finø Town's policeman, Finn Metro Poltrop, affectionately known as Finn Flatfoot, and his police dog Titmouse.

Experts claim that dogs resemble their owners, or perhaps vice versa, that dog owners resemble their dogs, and it does seem to be rather a neat theory. For instance, I find that Basker in many ways resembles everyone in our family, including Great-Grandma. Flounderblood and Baroness are definitely a case in point. They could even be man and wife. And the theory fits Finn Flatfoot and Titmouse just as well, because Titmouse isn't your everyday police dog in terms of breed. His more specific origins would be a matter for genealogical research, but like Finn he has hair falling down into its eyes, wears a beard, and is rather corpulent, and like Finn he loves all kinds of food, but especially my father's. Finn Flatfoot weighs in at one hundred and fourteen kilos and says he's proud of it, and to keep his weight up he frequently stays for dinner at our house.

Like Finn, Titmouse is a friendly creature whose forceful impression derives mostly from his appearance. Both are unkempt and chronically unshaven, and look like something that stepped out of Borneo's jungle, but behind the frightening exteriors beat two hearts of gold.

And yet I would never personally venture to tease either Titmouse or Finn Flatfoot, just as I would never stick my head into a hive of bumblebees, because even the fluffiest exterior may conceal a sting that could have you howling with pain.
Although Finø is a quiet place in the winter, members of the fishing community have nonetheless been known to take it into their heads to clear the Nincompoop's cellar bar of all inventory, and in such cases Finn and Titmouse have been on the scene within minutes. I have witnessed them step forward to face twenty-five fishermen who have just trashed the place leaving only powder behind, and after a moment the fishermen have paid for the damage and offered their apologies and sloped off into the night with their tails between their legs.

So now, as ever, I'm glad to see Finn Flatfoot, though I've no idea why he might be here, or why he and Tilte, and Titmouse and Basker, might be hiding in the bushes, and so I join them.

Finn gives me a pat on the back. His hand is like one of those spades they use for digging ditches.

“Have you seen them before?” he whispers.

“They're from Big Hill,” Tilte whispers back.

“They're older than the usual crowd,” Finn whispers again.

“One said she was a bishop. And another said he was a professor,” Tilte whispers back again.

Finn watches intently.

“The brain goes out when the weed goes in,” he says.

And now I see what the world looks like through Finn Flatfoot's eyes. Whereas before I saw four pillars of society on their way up a ladder on important business, I now see what Finn Flatfoot and Titmouse must see, which is four criminal substance abusers about their shadowy deeds in the darkness.
I begin to pick out the awe-inspiring contours of Tilte's strategy. My thoughts drift to our religious studies, from which we have learned that all the great spiritual figures point out that to a very great extent the world is made of words.

“Shouldn't they be stopped?” Tilte whispers.

Finn shakes his head.

“We're waiting for two things. Firstly, for them to break open a window. That makes it burglary and caught red-handed, section 276. And secondly, we're waiting for John, because I've just called him. This lot are the violent sort.”

John the Savior is with us a moment later, like a shadow in the night, but a shadow of the kind cast by a brewer's dray, because that's about the size he is. Ordinarily, he's in charge of Finø's rescue services, which is to say the lifeboats and the fire station and the ambulance service, as well as the Finø Security Corps, and if I were to describe him in brief I would say he was a friend of the family and a man you would want by your side in any situation other than the Annual Spring Ball for the benefit of Finø FC, because no one has ever seen him wear anything other than overalls and ambulance-colored safety boots size 52 with steel toe caps.

Meanwhile, Professor Thorlacius has managed to open Tilte's window and has half his corpus inside her room, thereby now technically guilty of breaking and entering, even though Tilte and I know that her window is only ever pulled to and never locked. Now Finn Flatfoot and John the Savior and Titmouse step forward out of the bushes and give the ladder a gentle shake.

Whoever has stood on a ladder with someone shaking it from below will know that keeping a cool head in that situation requires at the very least an ice pack, something that is on hand only rarely whenever you're up a ladder. The four individuals on this one roar in unison. And Vera the Secretary is the first to come tumbling down.

I'm not sure how a bishop's secretary is used to being received, but I think in the fading light I glimpse a slight sense of surprise on her face as John and Finn whirl her around and snap on a pair of handcuffs.

“Release that woman immediately!”

Anaflabia Borderrud has raised her voice, and it is a voice of such authority as would prompt army battalions to lie down on their backs and wave their arms and legs in the air.

But Finn Flatfoot and John the Savior are men who have stood face-to-face with hurricanes without it affecting them in the slightest, so the only thing that happens is that the bishop of Grenå, too, suddenly and perhaps for the first time in her life is placed in handcuffs.

Now John and Finn shake the ladder again as one would shake a pear tree, and they make ready to catch Minna Thorlacius-Claptrap in their arms as though she were ripened fruit falling from that very tree.

“Thorkild! Help!”

Her cries bring the professor to the window of Tilte's room and back down the ladder again with all the assurance of a man used to putting things in their place and making sure they stay there.

Standing on the lower rungs of the ladder he seems to realize that he now must attempt to talk sense to the broader population.

“I am Professor Thorkild Thorlacius-Claptrap of Århus New Regional Hospital,” he announces.

“A pleasure indeed,” says Finn Flatfoot. “And I am the metropolitan of the island of Finø.”

Finn Flatfoot is a clever man, but his cleverness is more the shrewd kind than the sort of thing you learn at school. My guess is that he would not know what a metropolitan was if it weren't for Tilte, who gave him the nickname because it's so close to his real name, Metro Poltrop, and because Tilte says he has the looks and aura of a metropolitan, which is a kind of priest with authority in the Eastern Orthodox Church. And Finn is fond of Tilte and fond of the new word, so that's at least part of the reason why it suddenly crops up here.

“I can explain the entire matter,” says Thorkild. “We are conducting a psychiatric and theological appraisal of the rectory.”

“Beginning by entering second-floor windows,” adds Finn.

It is a detail the professor chooses to ignore.

“I can explain everything,” he says. “And I can provide you with the necessary identification. My car is parked over there.”

The professor steps out into the throng. Finn and John remain at his side. He makes a sweeping gesture with his hand in the direction of where his Mercedes is supposed to be and where only the wicker basket remains.

The professor is flummoxed to discover that his car is gone. But the great scientists are never defeated, they seek new avenues.

“We have transported the girl,” he says, “Dilde here. She has been visiting her brother, a substance abuser and criminal serving a term of mandatory treatment up there.”

He points toward where he thinks Big Hill lies but has seemingly lost all sense of direction, so what he points toward is actually the cooperative supermarket and behind it the old people's home. Finn and John consider him intently.

“We have transported the girl and the reptile,” the professor continues. “The Finø monitor lizard.”

He indicates the basket and, as though to provide final, impenetrable evidence, lifts the lid. He and Finn and John peer into the emptiness inside.

And now Thorkild notices me.

“The boy!” he exclaims. “The addict, passing himself off as a lizard!”

John the Savior and Finn Flatfoot exchange glances.

“There's alcohol involved here, too,” says Finn Flatfoot. “Drugs and alcohol together. I've seen it before. It's like injecting air into the brain.”

The professor's face changes color and becomes what technically would be referred to as purple. Finn Flatfoot grips his arm with one hand and reaches into his pocket for a pair of handcuffs with the other.

Now again something happens that must prompt us all to revise our opinion of the Academical Boxing Club and revert to our initial theory that what goes on behind its doors must be at the highest level of competitive sport. Because Professor Thorlacius now delivers a punch to the stomach of Finn
Flatfoot that no one could ever dig out and dust off unless in possession of some considerable years of training.

Finn carries a lot of upholstery in his one hundred and fourteen kilos. But one hundred and twenty would have stood him in better stead given that the wind is now knocked right out of his lungs, forcing him down onto his knees.

Then John the Savior is upon the professor. From the dire fate of Finn Flatfoot he has learned a valuable lesson and covers his more vulnerable parts accordingly, whereupon the professor is cuffed.

“Always watch your back,” says Tilte.

She says so because John has now straightened himself up as though after a successful rescue operation, but he has forgotten all about Minna Thorlacius-Claptrap, who now lends further weight to my experience that married couples are often so tightly knitted together as to comprise a commando unit, and now Minna strikes John from behind like a missile while expelling what sounds to me like a battle cry originating in some Japanese martial art.

The last thing I see is that the bishop and Vera begin to run, cuffed hands behind backs, away from the scene of the crime. Hardly a wise strategy, but one can understand them. When the feeling arises that the world is going to the wall, all of us are bound to feel the impulse to leg it.

And then Tilte's hand touches my arm.

“They'll be put into custody in the new detention house,” she says. “That's what Finn does with drunks. We've got twenty-four hours.”

There's something scary
about how quickly life can seep away from a house once it's been abandoned.