by Håkan Nesser
We must bear in mind that we are somewhat ironic creations of God.
And we must smile at that. It occurred to him that he was doing exactly that: sitting there, smiling.
There was a knock on the door, and fröken Keerenwert appeared in the doorway.
‘Anything else before I go home?’
He looked through the papers lying on the desk in front of him.
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s all in order. Have a nice evening. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then.’
‘It’s Saturday tomorrow.’
‘Good Lord, so it is! Have a good weekend!’
‘You too,’ she said, and vanished.
He remained seated, staring at the closed door with its timetable of the term’s various courses. Fröken Keerenwert’s appearance had brought him to his senses. No doubt about that. A rapid shift of focus from the right half of the brain to the left.
From the dark feminine and mystical side to the clear and analytical side – he could almost feel it like a purely physical movement inside his head. Perhaps it was a change for the better. What he needed at the moment was not deep thoughts and reflections, not the stifled, seductive truths, but uncluttered clarity. Distance and perspective.
Luck, he thought. I’ve had a hell of a lot of good luck.
That was undeniable. He had manoeuvred his way out of that triangular relationship with a minimum of planning. Killed three people, one after another, without leaving a single trace behind. Assuming he had interpreted what the newspapers wrote correctly, that is. Not a single clue for the police to follow up. They had been writing about Martina for over a week now; and about Monica as well from today. It must be pure chance and coincidence that the bodies were discovered with such a short gap between them, he thought. First a month of waiting, then they had both turned up within ten or twelve days. He spent a short time wondering whether it was to his advantage or disadvantage, the fact that there were now two of them: but he reached no conclusion. Presumably it didn’t make any difference. It might have been better if that confounded dog had never got a whiff of the girl, but of course that was not something one could realistically hope for – that the body would remain hidden for ever and a day. He had been short of time when he disposed of her: it had been a risky business, even by his standards; but looking back, there was nothing for him to reproach himself with.
He hadn’t noticed any suggestion that there might be a link with that damned priest – not in any of the many newspapers he had read. But why would anybody dream of making such a link?
No links to Kristine Kortsmaa either, of course. As far as he could understand, the police were working on the theory that Martina Kammerle and her daughter had both been killed by a man who was a friend of the mother, but there was no trace of a suggestion about what lay behind it all. Not the slightest hint of a possible motive.
For the simple reason that they didn’t know anything. That there wasn’t a motive that anybody could possibly understand. He smiled briefly again and looked at the clock: half past four. Time to start thinking about going home soon, there was probably hardly anybody left in the department, especially as it was Friday, as fröken Keerenwert had pointed out. She was usually one of the last to head for home.
Nobody knew, and nobody understood . . . Yes, it was as simple as that. The dark forces that compelled him to carry out these deeds were of course way beyond the comprehension of the police – way beyond . . . These profoundly enjoyable and necessary actions taken to eliminate these women, these trivial devils in the form of sexual beings who first received him gladly but then rejected him as something no longer desirable, just as you get rid of a household pet or throw away a worn-out toy. Who produced inside him this stifling, ever-increasing pressure in his chest, this pulsating rush of blood that needed to be expelled before he burst . . . No, it was impossible to expect an ordinary man to tolerate such things. Most certainly not. Such fundamental biological traits under the conventional veneer of what was regarded as civilization . . . They might have been tolerated in remote tribes living in remote corners of the world, in nomads and hunters thousands of years ago – but not now, not in people living in these perverted times. With the possible exception of the Taliban or the Fuegians.
It had taken him some time to reach these conclusions, to understand why it was necessary for him to dispose of these women: but after the whore in London and the whore in Wallburg the penny had dropped. He understood it now. A sort of unwavering certainty: he needed to take control over them at the same time as they humiliated him. As they robbed him of his dignity and he began to feel those choking sensations. When he started his relationship with Martina Kammerle he had known from the start what would happen – realized that one day he would reach that tipping point. That was why he had taken all those precautions. False name. No telephone number. Sporadic meetings in private . . . The fact that the daughter suddenly appeared and offered herself to him on a plate had been a big bonus for as long as it lasted. It had very nearly made him lose his stride – and the fact that her stab with the pair of scissors hadn’t hit some vulnerable organ or other was nothing short of miraculous.
A miracle indeed, and a hint from an ironic God that he had the powers on his side. Certain powers, at least.
But the powers only help those who help themselves, and he would never have got away with it if he hadn’t been careful to take precautions. A grand total of three visits to public places – two with the mother, one with the daughter. Three different restaurants that he never normally went anywhere near, and carefully chosen tables away from the limelight.
No unnecessary walks through town. Contact lenses instead of spectacles, which he always wore in normal circumstances. Haircuts and the removal of his beard when it was all over. Discretion, one hell of a lot of discretion; but nevertheless he was well aware that he was taking risks – and that knowledge was in itself a stimulus. A challenge which made the whole enterprise that much more satisfactory, that much more exciting.
But he must be stricter with himself in future, that was also a requirement. The next time. He suddenly found himself in a situation in which he had killed six people. Half a dozen, and he knew that there would be more. Kefalonia had been the starting point, the rest had been a sort of consequence, and in a way an irrelevance. A modus vivendi which was taking up more time and demanding more and more attention.
Another time. And another one after that. If he hadn’t realized that inevitability after Kortsmaa, he certainly knew it now. After the mother and the daughter and the priest. He would meet women again and make love to them. Have sex with them and keep them satisfied until they reached the point when they began to waver: and then it would be time to allow himself the greatest satisfaction of all. He would place his strong hands around their thin necks and squeeze hard. Squeeze the life out of them, then stroke his hand over their still warm pussies.
That’s the way things looked, there was no other solution to the equation of life. But he must raise his guard. As yet there were no indications in the newspapers suggesting a link between that whore in Wallburg and these latest victims: but the next time, when they found another woman strangled in that deeply biologically – I’m repeating myself, he thought in annoyance – that same deeply biologically necessary way . . . My mum, my mother, she would have understood why these women had to die – nobody else but her. They are asking for it, they actually yearn for this escape route deep down inside themselves, and my role is simply to do them a favour . . . There is a part of every human being that, without ever recognizing the fact in deed or thought, is identical with decline and extermination . . .
He suddenly felt the opposite. An intoxicating wave of happiness and inspiration surged up like a rainbow from the balls of his feet to the crown of his head, and the erection that accompanied it was flushed with an almost electric heat. He was obliged to rush out into the corridor and into the bathroom, and to deal with it in the only way possible.
Afterwards, he sat on the lavatory seat with a feeling of somehow being protected, and bathed in the light of an all-powerful star.
Nothing has any meaning, he thought. That is precisely why every little insignificant detail means everything. I am the world, and the world is manifest inside me. No, the world is a woman. A woman’s identity and the centre of her power is her body. The useless navel of the world is a woman’s body, and nobody must deny the existence of another world. Especially not the woman herself. It’s as simple as that, so damned simple, and dying is no more difficult than looking at one’s image in a mirror.
Somebody started up the photocopier in the corridor outside, and the noise reverted his attention to the left-hand side of his brain. Obviously he was not yet the only person in the building. And yet again he felt the physical movement inside his brain. The other reality. Left–Right.
He flushed the lavatory. Stood up and once again, as usual, felt a stab of pain from where the scissors had entered his body. A stab of pain and a reminder.
I must lie low for a while, he thought. I really must.
But that intention was not without its complications. Something had happened to his murky urges after the episode involving the Kammerle women. They were closer to the surface now. He had crossed a borderline, or passed over the crown of a hill. The intervals would have to be shorter from now on; he couldn’t cope with not having a woman’s skin under his fingertips for an unlimited length of time.
And presumably, he thought as he sat down again at his desk, presumably it was precisely those unusual words and images, the unadorned description of reality that started him worrying again.
Worry and unrest.
Dusk was approaching out there in the park, he thought. The red background provided by the observatory was shrouded in darkness.
I liked the girl’s armholes, he thought. I wish it had been possible to preserve one.
He sighed, and decided it was time to go home.
MAARDAM
DECEMBER 2000
24
When it came to men, Anna Kristeva liked to ring the changes.
After an early, childless and painful marriage – plus two or three so-called serious relationships – she had come round to the view that ringing the changes was the best solution.
The solution to a problem that unfortunately existed, no matter how much she might have wished that it didn’t. Men were necessary, that’s all there was to it. First one, then another. Occasionally, but not in too large doses, and not all the time.
And above all: it was not something that needed to be taken too seriously. She tried not to become too deeply involved, or to stir up too many far-reaching emotions – that was what had scarred her when she was in her twenties.
Now she was thirty-five: a free woman with control over her own life and an income sufficient to ensure that she would never have to depend on a man in order to keep her head above water. Or on anybody else, come to that. For just over two years she had been a partner in the firm of solicitors she had been working for ever since she passed her law exams, and which had also borne her name ever since the 1930s: Booms, Booms & Kristev. Actual ownership had passed out of the family’s hands for a while – her grandfather, Anton Kristev, had been a founder of the firm together with the Booms brothers: but her father, the next generation, had unfortunately been a child of the times. He became too involved with the lost souls of the 1940s, and at the beginning of the seventies had sold his share in the firm in order to finance his drug habit. Needless to say his daughter felt a certain satisfaction a quarter of a century later when she had been able to put things right again. Even if by then Henrik Kristev had passed away in a thin, blue cloud of hash smoke and remained ignorant of the restoration.
Needless to say it was an undeniable advantage to have a real, flesh-and-blood Kristev in such a reputable firm as Booms, Booms & Kristev – especially as she happened to be a woman, still young, still attractive.
A Kristeva. Jacob Booms, the third generation of Booms in the post of chairman – and with the biggest office in the premises in Zuyderstraat with two genuine Van Dermen oil paintings and a Persian Javel carpet – had suggested that they should change the name of the firm by adding that little feminine ending of ‘-a’, now that joint ownership of the enterprise had reverted to its original state: but Anna had declined the offer.
She knew that she was a woman no matter what. There was no need for a little extra letter on the moiré-patterned glass doorpanel leading into her office. Or in the classic Garamond letter-heading that had been used by the firm since the very beginning.
All that was needed to satisfy this hackneyed PC obeisance to sex roles was a man now and then. Just for a week or two. Nothing serious.
‘The most important difference between men and bananas,’ her friend Ester Peerenkaas had remarked on one occasion, ‘as far as we are concerned at least, is that men don’t grow on trees.’
That was, of course, a perfectly correct observation. Even if they were only interested in satisfying an occasional need, it was naturally an advantage if the fruit was tasty. The men available in restaurants and bars and other slightly dodgy plantations were easy to pick; but the outcome, the satisfaction provided by the arrangement, was seldom all that great. Both Anna and Ester had reached that conclusion after a few years of half-hearted indulgence. The aftertaste was generally much more sour than the sweetness of the fruit itself: it was hardly ever a matter of more than just a rather anxious one-night stand, and neither of them was very interested in continuing to plough that furrow.
‘Sleazy,’ Ester had commented. ‘It’s so bloody sleazy. He came after only twenty seconds, then lay there crying for two hours. We really must find some other way of going about it.’
Ester was even more hardened than Anna when it came to men. Or so she used to claim, at least, and it was difficult not to agree with her.
At the end of the eighties Ester Peerenkaas had met an Egyptian man, as handsome as a young god, at a conference on international economics in Geneva. She was twenty-five years of age, had just completed her studies, and had been appointed to work on a project in the Ministry of Finance: her life lay before her like a sun-kissed dawn. She fell in love, they married and had a daughter – all within the space of a year. They settled down in Paris, where he had a job at the Egyptian embassy. After three years she found her young god in bed with one of their French female friends. They were divorced within two months. Ester was granted custody of their daughter and moved back home to Maardam; but as her former husband had certain rights of access, she eventually allowed Nadal to spend a month with him one summer. The girl was five at the time, and since then Ester had never clapped eyes on her again. There was no longer a secretary by the name of Abdul Isrami at the embassy in Paris, and Egypt is a big country.
So Anna didn’t use to protest when her friend occasionally seemed to be somewhat cynical with regard to their sex lives.
So what other way did they find of going about it? Of making sure that they could occasionally enjoy a little of the sweetness that a damaged fruit still had to offer? How? It was Ester who came up with the answer.
Advertise.
At first it was not much more than a joke; but even jokes can become serious with the passage of time. It didn’t cost anything to try, and one warm, promising Friday in May 1997 they placed their first advert in the Contacts section of Allgemejne. The love market was considerably bigger and broader in Neuwe Blatt, but that was all the more reason for plumping for Allgemejne: in so far as there might be a promise of a little sophistication and class in this as yet untried area, it was of course important to explore those possibilities. Worth having a go.
Written responses required. Age, brief biography and photograph. Preferences with regard to art, music and literature. There was no need to make do with conceited idiots or introverted stay-at-homes. On the contrary, this was all about intellectual, cultivated and stimulating experiences.
The first advert produced sixteen responses: they spent an extremely stimulating evening at Anna’s with cheese and wine, allocation of marks, eliminations, and drawing of lots – a process which eventually resulted in five meetings (three for Anna, two for Ester), and on the whole a very enjoyable summer. With no especially unpleasant aftertastes in the mouths of any of those involved, males or females – with the possible exception of an excessively possessive doctor’s wife who was apparently incapable of understanding details of the conditions.
So the method worked. Or at least, it was more satisfactory than many others: and when Anna Kristeva called in at the Allgemejne’s office in Rejmer Plejn that Friday afternoon at the beginning of December 2000, and collected a bundle of responses from hopeful candidates, it was the fifth time of asking.
In other words, a little jubilee. They had agreed to celebrate in style at Ester’s place with a lobster and a bottle of Chablis.
