Black Ice (11 page)

He wondered whether to walk round the block thinking up a story and then tell Hilde he'd been kept late at work. No, that wouldn't do. She was probably standing at the window; she'd have seen him already.

Suddenly fury overcame him. He opened the front door and climbed the stairs. As he reached the first floor he said out loud: “Does this place always have to stink so bad?”

Hilde was already in the doorway of the apartment. She said: “Who was that you were talking to?”

“No one.”

“No one? You were talking so loud to no one?”

“That's right.”

She closed the door. “What's the matter with you?”

“Me? Why would anything be the matter with me? Maybe something's the matter with you.”

“Me? Well, there isn't.” Her voice was very thin.

He felt calmer. Obviously no one had called. He said: “Yes, well, never mind. I've had a busy day, I'm feeling a bit edgy.”

“Just edgy? Or aren't you feeling well?”

“No, no, I'm fine.”

“Then you go and sit down.” She hesitated and then said: “Maybe you'd like a beer?”

“Yes, indeed, a beer might do me good.” He went into the kitchen, sniffed. “What's for supper, then?”

“Curly kale and smoked sausage.”

“Delicious.”

The cat came and rubbed around his legs. He bent down and stroked the animal. “There now, good little Manny. So what have you been doing today? Come along and tell me.”

12

He did not manage to solve his problem over the weekend, although he thought about it in every free minute Hilde allowed him. It simply made no sense to take those five planks out, hammer nails in all round them and then remove the nails again and fit the planks back into the steps. Something was missing from the chain of events. But what? Perhaps he had missed seeing something. Or perhaps it was hidden in the house: a clue, the missing link that would fit everything together and make sense of it.

He had to get into the house as soon as possible and look around. But suppose the bastard didn't send him over there at all? Perhaps he'd found someone else for the odd jobs?

At midday on Monday Wallmann looked in at the filing room when he came back from the building sites. Rosa had gone out. Scholten was just in time to hide the copy of
Der Spiegel
that Rothgerber had lent him.

Wallmann said: “Herr Scholten, if this weather holds, maybe you could drive up to the house by the lake this week and paint the shutters.”

It was with difficulty that Scholten hid his glee. He looked out of the window, said, “Yes, fine,” and nodded.

“Or would you rather not?”

“What's that got to do with it? It's high time those shutters were painted. Didn't you want the deck of the boat done too?”

“I'll have to supervise the deck myself. But the mainsail will need cleaning. You could do that.”

“And something should be done about the weeds,” said Scholten. “But I can't do it all in a day.”

“I'm not asking you to. Why not drive up there on Thursday and stay overnight? And if you're not through with it by Friday evening you can finish the job on Saturday morning. I'll pay.”

“Well, yes, but that's difficult because of my wife. I mean, I can't leave her alone that long. And then I have to go shopping on Saturday.”

Wallmann hesitated briefly. Then he said: “Why not take your wife with you?”

Scholten shifted in his chair. “No, I couldn't do that,” he said. “It would get her too agitated. She can't take that kind of thing.”

“Well, I expect you know best.”

Scholten said: “But maybe I could drive up on Wednesday. Then I'd have until Friday evening to do the job. That's still two nights, of course . . .”

Wallmann said: “I'll pay.” He took out his wallet, removed two hundred-mark notes from it, added a fifty and put the money down on Scholten's desk.

“Yes, fine,” said Scholten. “Thanks very much.”

Wallmann said: “You can go and buy the paint and stuff this afternoon if you like. Or tomorrow morning. Come into my office afterwards, and we'll think what else you need.”

Scholten left the office at three and drove to the DIY store. He bought paint and turpentine substitute, a couple of paintbrushes and a scrubbing brush. He wheeled his laden trolley into the car park and stowed everything into the boot of his car. Then he looked around. He hid one of the two hundred-mark notes
that he had already put in his coat pocket under the mat inside the boot.

He said nothing about it to Hilde that evening. When he came home on Tuesday evening he was already muttering to himself on the stairs. As he hung his coat and jacket on the coat-rack he cleared his throat loudly several times.

Hilde asked: “Is anything wrong?”

He grunted, went into the bedroom and put his slippers on. She followed him. “What's the matter?”

He shook his head. “Oh, just feeling annoyed. I don't want to do it, but I have to go up to the house by the lake again this week.”

“Herr Wallmann's weekend house?”

“Yes, where else? The shutters need painting.”

“And you have to go up just for that? You're not a painter at Herr Wallmann's beck and call! Why don't you tell him no?”

“Tell him no? Just like that? And how about the money? We just say no to the money, do we?”

“Why are you always going on about money? We can manage. There's no need to have everything.” Her voice turned not thin but sharp. “How much is he paying you?”

“A hundred and fifty marks. He's given it to me in advance.”

“That's ridiculous. He'd have to pay twice or three times that for a painter.”

“Go on, you don't believe that yourself. It's just for two days. And I'm getting my salary at the same time.”

“What did you say? Two days? You mean you're going to stay overnight?”

He went into the kitchen, with Hilde on his heels. He took a bottle of beer out of the fridge. “I'm driving over tomorrow evening straight from the office. So
that I can get things ready and make an early start on Thursday. I won't get it done in the time otherwise. I'll be back on Friday.”

“You're going away tomorrow evening? That's two nights!”

“Yes, I said so. I tell you, I won't get it done in the time otherwise.”

“This is unbelievable! You're doing it just so you can go to Grandmontagne's bar tomorrow evening. And on Thursday too.”

“Oh, rubbish. Anyway, Granmontansch's is closed on Thursdays.”

“Don't say Granmontansch. Why don't you ever listen to what I tell you? It's pronounced Graamontanya.”

“Yes, yes, I know you passed your school-leaving exams. But everyone in the village says Granmontansch, and they should know. I mean, he's not a Belgian.”

She said: “That's got nothing to do with it.”

He drank his beer while she cast about for a new approach. He asked: “What's for supper?”

“Smoked pork loin and sauerkraut.”

“Delicious.” But he knew they hadn't exhausted the subject yet. He sat down at the kitchen table in front of the plate she had already put out for him. Sitting opposite, cutting her pork into small pieces, she said: “I know you like going up there.”

“Are you starting on about that again?”

“Who knows what you do there?”

“Oh, sure, I have all the village women come up to the house.”

“Don't be so crude.”

“Me? It was you thinking something crude, that's what.”

“No, I was not. That's a dreadful thing to say.”

“What were you thinking, then?”

She toyed with her sauerkraut. Then she said: “You want to go up there because then you can be away from me for two days and two nights.” Her face twisted. “I'd be better off dead.”

“Oh, for God's sake!”

“Don't swear!”

He flung his fork down on the plate. “Shall I tell you something? I have to take what I can get, understand? Frau Wallmann isn't there now. And that fellow is unpredictable, see? Last week I had diarrhoea, and Fräulein Faust told him I ought to go home. You should have heard how he carried on.”

“When did you have diarrhoea?”

He went on eating. “Oh, never mind. I'm just telling you, that man's unpredictable. He could easily sack me. And then what? At fifty-eight I'll be on the dole. I won't find another job, not like the one I've got now.”

She was still toying with her sauerkraut. She said: “I've told you often enough, you ought to have looked around for a good profession. And a good training.”

He waved his fork in the air. “So how? Just how?”

“I told you so in 1947 when you were back from POW camp. I even said so in 1943 when we met. But I expect you've forgotten.”

“Yes, I know, everything was different in Breslau and much better. People in Breslau took their school-leaving exams.”

“You could have taken them too.”

He waved his fork again. “Didn't I tell you, my father took me out of secondary school because he couldn't pay the fees? He was just a postal worker, it was hard for him to find twenty marks a month.” Scholten felt his eyes watering. “He didn't want to take me out of
school, believe me. He wanted me to do well in life. But he had no alternative.”

She looked at her plate. She said: “No, because you had to stay down a year.”

He looked at her, eyes still watering. Then he abruptly put a forkful of sauerkraut in his mouth and chewed it in silence.

She took a piece of pork and masticated, keeping her eyes fixed on her plate. She said: “That was it, wasn't it? If you'd worked harder you could have got a scholarship. I got a scholarship. So did my brother. But you had no ambition.” He looked at her. She chewed and said nothing. Two tears welled out of his eyes. He wiped them away.

She didn't look at him. She took another piece of pork and said: “You've never in your life had any ambition. That's why you have to let Herr Wallmann order you about at the age of fifty-eight.”

He scraped his plate clean, put the fork in his mouth, replaced it on the plate. He rose and went out. He went to the bathroom, where he bolted the door, took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He looked in the mirror and wiped his eyes, but more tears kept coming.

He sat down on the lavatory and wept. He pressed his handkerchief to his mouth to muffle the sound of his sobs. After a while, amidst tears, he said into his handkerchief: “One of these days I'll murder you yet.”

13

The weather was still warm and sunny. When Scholten got out of his car outside Wallmann's weekend house on Wednesday evening he stretched, reached his arms out, took a deep breath. The first hint of twilight was descending over the trees, but the birds were still awake. Scholten drank in the smell of the conifers, bushes and grasses. He imitated a bird's voice and then called into the woods, “Go on, you can sing a little more! I like to hear you, birds!”

He cleared the boot of the car, took the cans of paint into the garage. After making up the guestroom bed with clean sheets he stood in the hall for a moment, undecided. He would have liked to begin his investigations straight away. He looked in at the living room, opened a drawer.

“Nonsense. We have two whole days, Jupp Scholten.”

He got into his car and drove down to the village.

Grandmontagne was sitting at the regulars' table with the corner seat, in the company of the Widow Abels, Palm the grocer and his son Karl-Heinz who worked on the railway, the farmers Quademichels and Laudenberg, and Käthchen Hückelhoven, the baker's wife. Grandmontagne's wife was behind the bar.

When Scholten came in Grandmontagne cried: “Hey, look at this, then. Old Jupp's back!” Scholten shook hands, sat down between Palm and the Widow Abels, and ordered a plate of sliced cold meat and
sauerkraut from Frau Grandmontagne. “With plenty of onion!”

“It's all right for him, he sleeps alone!” Käthchen Hückelhoven commented.

Grandmontagne said: “That's what you think. Well, we don't none of us know what goes on in that house. Old Jupp knows his way around.”

Scholten bought a round to celebrate being back in the village. They wanted to know what Herr Wallmann was doing these days and how the business was going without Frau Wallmann and what the funeral had been like. Karl-Heinz Palm and Laudenberg, who were both in the volunteer fire brigade, told him about the search for the body and how they found it.

Grandmontagne examined the stem of his beer glass, smiled, moved the glass back and forth. “You got no idea what really happened.”

Laudenberg became heated. “What d'you mean? You wasn't there. You was watching Alemannia play that Sunday. We was freezing our arses off down by the lake while you was sitting in the stands with your hipflask.”

Grandmontagne leaned over the table. “So who did the cops come to see? The CID? You or me?” He leaned back again. “There you are.”

Scholten put a piece of sausage in his mouth and said: “You don't say. You mean the CID came to see you?”

“On the Tuesday, that was. But it really began Saturday, with Kreutzer.”

Scholten masticated. “Kreutzer, that's the village copper?”

Hückelhoven the baker, who had come in and sat down in the meantime, said: “Call Kreutzer a copper, and he'll smash your face in. Officer Kreutzer, that's him.”

Quademichels puffed his pipe. “Officer Kreutzer? He's too dopey for a cop.”