The Gloaming (23 page)

‘And now?' Strebel pressed.

‘He must be dead,' she whispered. ‘What could he have to live for?'

Caspary sat her down.

‘Am I in trouble?' she said.

‘No,' Strebel assured her. ‘But anything you might recall about Mr Koppler—even if it seems unimportant, might help us find him.'

‘Someone told me she'd been a teacher back in her country. His wife. Hamida. She died, too. Last year. You know that of course.'

Strebel nodded.

‘One of those “Stans.” Kurdistan. Uzbekistan. There are so many. I wondered if I should talk to her about it. What she'd taught. Being a teacher myself. But standards are so different there. And there just wasn't the opportunity, you know, we weren't drinking tea together over the fence. Even when she had cancer, we didn't know until she started wearing a scarf. And even that—we thought she was Muslim. So it wasn't really until she died.'

‘And that was difficult for Mr Koppler.'

She nodded. ‘It wasn't so much that he was alone with Sophie, but Hamida's family kicked up a fuss. They had moved away to be with other family in Germany. Stuttgart, I think. They wanted to take Sophie with them. That was the only argument I ever heard. The grandmother—Hamida's mother—came one day. But Mr Koppler wouldn't let Sophie go, and the law was on his side. And anyway she didn't want to go. She loved her father.'

‘How was Mr Koppler after Sophie's death?' Caspary asked.

‘He didn't go to the shop, I know because I went to get some school supplies and it was all closed up. But he did go out on foot, sometimes at odd hours. I don't know where.'

‘What day was that, when you went by the shop?'

‘Last Tuesday.'

‘Twenty-first of May?'

‘I had lunch with my sister.'

‘When was the last time you definitely saw him, Mr Koppler?'

‘I just can't be certain. Please understand. He'd been such a regular person. Even after Hamida. Well, he had Sophie, and children need routine. But since the accident. How could anyone be the same?' She gazed out the window for a moment. ‘He was standing in the road. Only a few days ago. Three days ago. Looking around him. He was there for quite a long time. I thought to go out to him. But you know. What can you do?'

Outside, Caspary offered, ‘Suicide seems likely, sir.'

If only he'd taken her to the office, Strebel was thinking. She'd have been no trouble, no trouble at all.

‘We're also looking for the car,' Caspary said.

They walked next door to Koppler's. Inside it looked exactly as it had when he'd been there—the quiet, patient mess of toys and books. In the garage, flies were eagerly breeding in half a steak. He knew enough about flies: the steak, the rubbish had been there for weeks. The house was filthy.

‘And we found this,' a patrol officer said, holding up an empty box of rat poison.

‘Is there any evidence of rats?' Caspary wanted to know.

‘Not that we can see.'

Was that how he'd killed himself, then?

Strebel wandered through the house. Beyond the bathroom, Mr Koppler had a small office where he'd done his accounts. He'd been a meticulous man, but chaos smothered earlier order: unpaid bills, junk mail, sympathy cards.

Yet, placed to the side, a letter: the lower left corner of the envelope carefully aligned with the corner of the desk. Strebel picked it up. Inside he found a small note paper-clipped to another envelope. This second envelope, folded in thirds to fit the first, was addressed to Mrs Gassner. The stamp had been circled in pen: a bright, pretty picture of a giraffe. The postal imprint was smeared but he could make out the letters T-A-N-G-A. Or was the ‘G' a ‘Z' and he was reading part of the whole? ‘Tanzania.'

He opened it.

May 21

Dear Mrs Gassner
,

As you know I left the phone bill unpaid. Please find enclosed my check for fifty-six francs to cover the outstanding charge plus the reconnection fee for your next tenant. I apologize for this inconvenience
.

Yours
,

Pilgrim Jones
.

The name, the actuality of her, was like a punch in the gut. He shut his eyes, the better to see the glow of her skin, the curve of her breast. He lifted the paper to his nose, imagining the almond smell. He heard Caspary coming up the hall, and shoved it in his pocket.

‘As strong as it gets.' She held up a bottle of children's aspirin.

‘I have to make a phone call,' he said, and went outside, far enough away that he could not be heard. He turned his back to the house, and pressed the phone to his ear. He stood like this for a long time. He thought about the moment Mr Koppler said goodbye to Sophie. Had he kissed her? Something eerily like a prayer formed in Strebel's mind: please, please let him have kissed her.

Caspary was coming out the door. He pretended to hang up. He pretended to be himself. ‘Nothing,' she said. ‘I guess we wait for the body. A hiker in the woods. Kids playing where they're not supposed to.'

* * *

It took Mrs Gassner a matter of seconds to answer the door, as if her
hausfrau
exterior belied the body of an Olympic sprinter. ‘Inspector,' she said, looking at him with a spark of curiosity. ‘Please come in.'

He demurred. ‘This will only take a minute.' He brought out Pilgrim's letter. ‘We have just found this at Mr Ernst Koppler's house. I wondered if you might know how it got there.'

‘No.'

‘There's no criminal intention here, Mrs Gassner, but I feel your help—your honesty—is important. Mr Koppler has gone missing.' He handed her the letter. She took it, regarded it with great mystery. ‘It's addressed to you,' he said. ‘How did it come to be in Mr Koppler's house?'

For a long minute she debated with herself. Could she concoct an adequate lie? Or might she apportion the truth? Strebel could almost hear her rifling through her options.

At last Mrs Gassner decided: ‘I didn't know him, only in passing, at the market, the apothecary. I knew he married that Turkish woman.' Strebel thought to correct her but let it go. ‘She trapped him into marriage. These immigrants are all the same and he was a fool. But the little girl, he didn't deserve that.'

Strebel was attentive, neutral, and she glanced up, almost imploring: ‘I was doing the right thing, no matter what the law says.'

‘Please, just tell me.'

She nodded. ‘He came, a few days after the accident. At first I didn't recognize him. He was dirty, unwashed. He said he needed to go upstairs to Mrs Lankester's apartment. He didn't want to steal anything or make a mess, he just needed to see where she lived. Myself, I don't understand what it was about but I didn't see the harm.'

‘So you gave him the key?'

‘Several times.'

‘And he was here that morning I came by?'

The very faintest movement of her head, just one nod. Strebel felt a surge of protective anger—almost jealousy. He wondered if Pilgrim had known of the violation, and had decided not to tell him. What had Mr Koppler done in there? What had he wanted?

‘And the letter?'

‘After the inquest—you know, it was a travesty to find no fault. Someone, even that Mrs Berger with the dog, should be held to account. This country is becoming too liberal. It started when they gave women the vote.'

Strebel remained impassive. ‘And Miss Jones left without paying the phone bill?'

‘Incredible! I found an envelope under the door with payment for the months remaining on the lease and her key. I went up. The place was empty. I found most of her things in the rubbish in the basement. Bags of clothes. Books, shoes, things like that. She didn't have much. It was a furnished apartment, you see.'

‘And yet she forgot to pay the phone bill,' Strebel said, tapping Pilgrim's letter thoughtfully on his hand.

‘That's the kind of person she was. Careless.'

‘But she sent you the money.'

Mrs Gassner attempted to sidestep, ‘I notice she has begun calling herself Jones. She must be on the lookout for a new man.'

‘And then you gave this letter to Mr Koppler. Why?'

Now she was silent. And he felt she wasn't searching for a lie but for the truth—an explanation that made sense, that she could extract from the tangle of her justifications. ‘I saw him,' she said. ‘He looked terrible, he was suffering. We passed each other on the pavement by the cemetery. I suppose he was visiting his wife, his daughter. Can you imagine? Both in one year? He asked me if I knew where she was. I didn't see the harm.'

The harm, no one ever saw the harm.

‘When was this?'

‘A few days ago,' she said, and then, gesturing to the letter, ‘Why were you at Mr Koppler's house? Has he…? Is he…?'

‘What day?'

‘Three days ago.'

‘Monday?'

‘Yes. Has he… has he—'

‘Gone,' Strebel finished for her.

‘Gone?'

‘It appears so at this time.'

‘He asked me where she was, that's all, that's all,' Mrs Gassner blurted. ‘Africa. She's in Africa. On a photographic safari, I'm sure of it. Having fun.'

* * *

On his way back to the precinct Caspary phoned: she'd traced Mr Koppler's car to Zurich airport. Two days ago he took a Swissair flight to Dar es Salaam.

Strebel took a deep breath.

 

‘Everything all right, sir?' the pilot asked, even though he was already pulling up the steps.

‘Fine,' Strebel nodded. ‘Yes, yes, not to worry.'

The pilot gave him a mock salute and shut the door. Strebel backed away from the plane and aimed for a lone tree on the edge of the runway. The propellers revved, bits of dried grass and dust blew up from the blast, and then the plane bumped off to the far end of the runway. Strebel watched it take off. The sound faded and was overtaken by the violent zzzeeeeee of cicadas.

He squinted. His pupils were pinpricks, terrorized by the sun. He was completely alone. Initially, this pleased him. He felt adventurous, a white man in the African bush. And the beauty of the flight from Dar es Salaam was still with him: the blue of the Indian Ocean, the fringe of turquoise suggesting shallows closer to shore, a ruffle of surf along the fringing reef, and the land eclipsed by wild green.

But the heat was absurd.

It hung on him like a great hairy animal, so that he could barely breathe, barely move. He was soaked with sweat—amazed at the speed with which this had happened. He'd been out of the Cessna's air-conditioned comfort for less than three minutes and he was sweating in places he had completely forgotten about. The sweat collected behind his knees, behind his ears, at his throat. It trickled between his buttocks and into his groin, causing his thighs to rub. He was sure his eyebrows were sweating.

Blanched light, hot and white and unrelenting as a strobe, shot through the tree above him, creating not shade but a patchwork of lighter and darker. It fell messy and uneven on the dry soil at his feet. Where there were ants. A dozen or so, delicately meandering through the leaf litter, fully occupied with their ant tasks.

Christ, even his feet were sweating. He shifted his gaze from the ants to his feet in his sandals, the horny toenails and hair that leapt excited in little tufts from his toes. The feet of a middle-aged man were horrible.

Strebel switched his black leather bag to the other shoulder. A Christmas present from Ingrid. He would have preferred brown leather. He considered that she knew this very well, his penchant for brown leather, his clearly—adamantly!—stated dislike of black leather. She always bought him black leather: gloves, wallet, belt.

The wounds were never mortal.

Never too much to bear.

Peering down to the end of the runway where the short, cut grass yielded to long yellow grass and then to a copse of rough trees, he thought he could discern a white car in the shade. But his distance vision was increasingly bad. Anything past a hundred metres was a blur. He began to walk.

It was miles—ten, twenty, perhaps fifty; the longest airstrip in the world. Was this how it had been for Livingston? His thighs chafing? A stream of sweat down the side of his nose that dripped off his chin and onto his shirt collar? As Strebel neared the trees, he was certain the white blob was indeed a car; but closer still, he felt less assured by the Toyota Corolla, for it was mottled in equal measure by white paint and rust. One wheel was obviously a spare, several sizes too small. In a remote Swiss village, sheep would have been living in this car. But here was the driver—he had the seat tilted all the way back and was fast asleep.

‘Excuse me,' Strebel said, tapping lightly on the door. The driver made a low moan and opened his mouth. Then his eyes. He stared at the ceiling of the Toyota for a long moment, so long that Strebel's eyes were also drawn to the spot. But there was nothing there. In a series of movements—was it possible to be so slow and still considered moving?—the driver sat up, yawned, adjusted the seat, sniffed, scratched his neck, lifted his hands so they floated slowly, slowly down onto the steering wheel.

‘Are you a taxi?' Strebel ventured.

‘Taxi, yes,' the driver replied, scratching his crotch. ‘You want hoteli?'

‘Yes.'

‘Twenty dollar.'

Strebel got in the back. It looked as if a wild animal had attacked the seat in a fit of pique. Nowhere did the seat retain its integrity, and Strebel was forced to straddle a crevasse in the foam that could swallow a child whole. But what were his options? He glanced out of the window into the white furnace, the grass wavering in the oily heat. What was he doing here? Tanga.
Tanga?

The driver started the car and they crept away from the airstrip. Ingrid's arthritic grandmother could have outpaced them.

* * *

‘This best hoteli.' It didn't look like much: a six-floor cement block with obtruding balconies. Strebel handed over the twenty dollars and got out. The driver came after him, talking excitedly. He was a large, bald man with hands the size of Christmas hams. He was shouting now, something in Swahili, and waving the money. Gauging the distance from the taxi to the hotel entrance at about ten feet, Strebel smiled a calm, traffic-stop smile; and, as if on smooth wheels, moved quickly to the door. Inside, he did not look back.