Woman of the Dead (20 page)

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 puts on 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 up 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 coffin here, it won’t all fit.’

‘No.’

‘Do you understand what I mean, Blum?’

‘Yes.’

‘Last time the coffins were too heavy.’

‘What?’

‘You overloaded them. The bearers noticed. I told them we were using a new model. A bigger coffin, more wood.’

‘You knew?’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Did you open the coffins?’

‘No, I told you, they were too heavy.’

‘But you didn’t say a thing?’

‘No.’

‘It’s all messed up. Something’s … got 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, go away 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 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 lay-by. She tells him the horror story, the nightmare from which she can’t wake. 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 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 lay-by? He must have called the police.’

‘Everything’s going to be OK.’

Reza says so. He is standing in front of her 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. 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 OK. 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 hands gently hold 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 on to 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 spare 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 lay-by. 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 lawnmower 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.

They eat breakfast 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 on 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.

Schönborn gets out. On this sunny Saturday morning, under the cherry tree, she sees his angry face. He is holding an envelope and sits down with her, just as Blum sat down with him two weeks ago. He lays the envelope in front of her. Then he leans back and raises his face to the sun.

‘You’re in the shit.’

‘No, I’m sitting under a cherry tree. It’s perfectly pleasant.’

‘You have real problems, young lady.’

‘Do I now?’

‘Yes, you do. 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 boot, a coffin 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 garden. 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.

‘You will tell me where my son is.’

‘Leave me alone.’

‘No one knows where he is, no one has seen him. It’s as if the earth swallowed him up.’

‘Get lost.’

‘I’ve reported him missing, but even the police don’t have a clue. There’s nothing they can do; his passport has gone, so they say he’s probably abroad, but he isn’t. I know he isn’t.’

‘I couldn’t care less where your son has gone.’

‘I know you have something to do with it. You’d better pray that he’s safe and well.’

‘You had me watched.’

‘I did, and it seems that was a very good move. My nose has never yet let me down.’

‘Get out. Take your bloody pictures and fuck off. I don’t want you here. Not in my garden and not near my children.’

‘I’m not going to leave until you tell me where my son is.’

‘Go away. Now.’

‘If I go anywhere now it will be straight to the police. Is that what you want?’

‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘Not according to these pictures. According to these pictures, you’re a murderer.’

‘All anyone can see in these pictures is a woman with a jack from a wheel-changing kit.’

‘You were hitting out.’

‘I was furious; I had a flat tyre, changing it was tricky.’

‘You killed him.’

‘Who?’

‘Bertl Puch.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘He was in the coffin.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says the man who took the photos.’

‘Well, he’s lying.’

‘He saw Bertl Puch disappear into an underground garage. You had just driven into the garage.’

‘That’s a coincidence. I don’t know any Bertl Puch.’

‘He was a friend of my son. That’s no coincidence. Jaunig is dead. Puch is dead. I want to know what you’ve done to my son.’

‘Why don’t you just go to the police? Let them help you. You’re on the wrong track. I have nothing to do with these people.’

‘You were in Puch’s apartment.’

‘Was I?’

‘I have photos showing you entering the building where he lives.’

‘That must be another coincidence.’

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘Who’s dead?’

‘My son.’

‘Whatever you say.’

‘I’m going to destroy you. I’ll take all you have. This house, your children, your life. You will pay.’

‘I beg to differ. And do you know why? Because you’re a greedy, power-hungry old man. You’re not going to let a scandal get in your way. I know you want to run this province. You’re not about to take risks. And I know what a filthy bastard your son is.’

‘So he’s still alive?’

‘I’ve no idea, but I’d like to show you something. Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.’

Blum gets up, goes into the garage and digs out the photos of the cellar. She has hidden them among the old cross-shaped gravestones, in a crate on the floor. She comes back with the folder and, without another word, hands him the pictures.

‘What is this?’

‘Art.’

‘That’s my son’s watermark.’

‘Correct. The whole project was thought up by your precious offspring.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Look more closely. Look into the eyes of those women. And the boy. What do you see?’