Sunstroke

by Madge Swindells

  ‘I hope to conduct some of the search by Internet. I intend to examine all documented weapons and mineral frauds, and search for Wolf’s modus operandi, places where there is a need to bust sanctions, for instance, or smuggle in forbidden supplies. Subterfuge is something Wolf needs for his operations. Eventually I’ll pre-guess a scam and catch him at it.’

  Father was sipping his chocolate. ‘And we can trace his loot on its convoluted trips around the globe, until we find out who and what he is and discover his lair.’

  We? Hope was added to my confusion. I tried to quell this foolish fancy, but it kept surging back.

  It was Father who finally broke the spell with what sounded like a rehearsed speech.

  ‘Since you are determined to go ahead,’ he began, in his brisk, clever voice with no trace of emotion, ‘then I offer you my full-time help, my experience and my considerable financial resources. For obvious reasons you’ll have to do the legwork. Of course, I still have my contacts in Intelligence. Some of them are getting a bit long in the tooth, but never mind.’ He stared gloomily at the files. ‘In view of my experience I’ll take charge of our search. We might still make a team. Drink your chocolate. It’s getting cold. We have a tough day ahead of us.

  ‘Here are two points to cheer you, Nina.’ Father’s voice was surprisingly gentle. ‘Wolf has two more weaknesses. He loved you and your son. I believe that he took the boy because he could not bear to be parted from him.’

  I almost choked. ‘He deprived me of my son and left me to face a prison sentence? Is that love?’

  ‘You’re alive, aren’t you? Yet Wolf knew that you would eventually become his biggest danger. That’s why he threatened you with Nicky’s life. I’m quite sure that he would never harm his son. You are probably the only person in the Western world who knows who and what Wolf is, although you don’t realize this yet.’

  ‘Why? How could I? Although sometimes…’ I broke off as I remembered Major Barnard telling me exactly that. ‘Yes. Of course…’

  Father’s hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. ‘Not now, Nina. We’ll do it professionally, in camera, with a tape-recorder. We don’t want to let anything slip through our fingers. Over the next few days, or weeks, we shall find out what it is that you know. In other words I’ll debrief you. Eventually we’ll piece together an image of the real man behind the smiling mask. After that we’ll have to create a new personality for you. And I think plastic surgery could do a lot for that scar. How did it happen, Nina?’

  I tried to tell him. ‘I’d been sentenced that afternoon. I was in shock. All I could think of were the terrible five years I had to endure before I could search for Nicky. I was driven to Pollsmoor Prison and taken to the showers and told to strip and shower. I didn’t look round until someone grabbed me. I fought… Jesus… I fought… This cut saved me. Blood everywhere. The wardress had to summon help. I’m sorry, Father. I never want to talk about prison again.’

  That wasn’t the whole truth. Here, in this cold, austere northern home, I could not imagine the existence of overheated prison showers, or the suffering, bestial women and their sick, distorted sexual desires. Or the wardress who enjoyed watching. It was just one of the impossible memories that I would never relate.

  ‘It’s one more of the many things you’ll have to put behind you. We’ll start tomorrow morning at six a.m. Oh, by the way, Nina, while we’re working together, I would appreciate punctuality. There’s an alarm clock in your room in case you should be tempted to oversleep.’

  At that moment, I longed to punch him and hug him with equal intensity. Both were out of the question.

  That night I spent hours awake, wondering how one old cripple and an emotionally involved amateur could succeed in finding Wolf, when the world’s experts had failed.

  Chapter 37

  While I was grateful for Father’s help, the coldness of his spirit wounded me, as it always had in my childhood after my mother left, while his assumption that I would botch whatever I attempted infuriated me. Hadn’t I spent my early years trying to prove him wrong? Had nothing changed?

  Father was waiting in his study, drumming his fingers on his desk. The well-known aroma of aftershave, smoke from the crackling fire, dusty papers and tobacco carried me back two decades. Father’s forbidding expression was equally familiar. Why? A quick glance at my watch assured me that I was a full two minutes late.

  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered. I wondered what time he rose, for he had lit the fire, made a Thermos of coffee and carried in a tin of biscuits from the kitchen. No mean feat for him.

  ‘Switch on that spotlight,’ he said. ‘And the camera, and the tape. Now sit there.’ He pointed to the chair facing the spotlight. ‘Begin at the beginning. How and when did you meet Wolf?’

  I had to force myself to recall the events that I had so painstakingly banished. At first I thought I’d never make it. My voice rose and fell with my degree of hurt, but once I began, my first stammers turned into a flood.

  I remembered Joy’s dinner party, and the victims strewn across the road, the eyes of the mugger boring into me as he pinched my breast, and Wolf’s timely arrival. Then there was the river, and the lion pride that had been too near for comfort. What was it Wolf had said: ‘They fear Homo stupido as much as Homo sapiens.’ I had loved his foreigner’s humour. Agonizingly, I relived the first time we made love in the game park. And later in Namaqualand. I could smell the sea, feel the rough sand against my back, hear the waves pounding nearby. It had been good sex. I could smell Wolf, too. Feel him, hear his voice, taste him. It was so real.

  ‘You’re still in love with that bounder.’

  ‘Once I loved him so very deeply. He seemed genuine, while everyone else seemed so foreign, so brash, so… well, so brittle and artificial. Remembering hurts. That’s all. Knowing what he is… what he did… I can only hate him. Once he told me that I was lucky, I hadn’t learned to hate. Well, now I have—’ I broke off, unwilling to reveal my intense desire for revenge.

  It was a long morning, and I was grateful for the coffee and toasted sandwiches Mrs Peters brought in. My back ached, my eyes stung, my throat was getting sore.

  *

  ‘I’m not a political prisoner, Father. And I’m not a spy. I’m your own flesh and blood. Why the spotlights? Aren’t you indulging your passion for the past just a little?’

  Father’s remote, unresponsive gaze locked in on me just as before.

  ‘You don’t even know when you’re hurt or bewildered, or when you’ve picked up something that puzzles you. But it shows, Nina, perhaps in a flicker of doubt, or of pain. I shall replay the tapes each night. This way I’ll get a better sense of your feelings. I might pick up something we missed. Bear with me. Now, let’s get on.

  ‘Living with Wolf, getting to know him, what surprised you most about him?’

  Once again, I had to bludgeon myself into the past. We had been so happy. Other people weren’t happy as we were. Perhaps that in itself was suspect.

  ‘We were nearly always on cloud nine. I took happiness for granted. There weren’t many hurts, hardly any fights. A bit unnatural, now you come to think of it. But occasionally when something really annoyed Wolf he switched off. I’m not explaining very well.’

  ‘Try harder.’

  ‘Well… Wolf’s eyes were remarkable. They used to glow with love and tenderness, and all the things I wanted to see there. The sun came out when he was around. But he could switch off the love. There was something unreal about the way he could do this. Like touching a light switch. As fast and effective. Only coldness was left in his eyes and this was hurtful.’ I had to think this one out. ‘To be more concise, it was the fact that he could do this at will that hurt me, not the fact that he did it.’

  ‘And he did this often?’

  ‘No, not often, but he seemed to use it to wound and control.’

  ‘And what sort of things annoyed him?’

  ‘Funny, silly things. Not the sort of things you’d imagin
e. For instance, I remember once in Namibia, I slipped and dropped a truly valuable diamond into the sea. He laughed off the loss. That was Wolf for you. Yet trifles could enrage him for hours or days. I tried not to show how hurt I was when he ignored me. Sometimes he locked himself in his office and played his favourite music, shutting me out.’

  ‘Can you think of a specific example?’

  ‘The first time was when we were at the game park having dinner in the boma. There was an unfortunate incident. David had to shoot a maimed baboon because the black staff thought it was a tokoloshe. When David explained that witch-doctors used to create a tokoloshe by inflicting the utmost deprivation and cruelty on young children in order to make them evil, Wolf was terribly put out. He seemed to take it personally, but I couldn’t think why.’

  ‘I don’t remember his exact words.’ I laughed shakily. ‘That night I dreamed of a tokoloshe with Wolf’s eyes. Terrifying!’ And so was the bird’s nest falling on me, but I wasn’t going to bore Father with that experience. Strangely, he pursued the dream at great length.

  ‘Nina, it’s possible that your subconscious was trying to warn you that Wolf was maimed, that evil had been grafted on to him in his early days. But you weren’t listening, were you?’

  ‘I guess not.’ Forgetting his own advice, Father chatted on. I learned that he had been studying psychology since his accident. He was full of surprises.

  ‘We’re getting off the subject.’ He pulled us up smartly. ‘So when was the next time he switched off?’

  ‘This is important.’ I snapped my fingers in triumph and set about reliving an incident in Botswana. ‘We were driving through a barren area. There was no game to be seen and it was so hot, with not a breath of wind. We were both suffering and rather bad-tempered. Then a flock of large birds swooped around us, snapping at midges. Wolf cheered up and told me that he had watched these same kestrels as a child. They used to catch mice and small birds, he said. He pointed out their red feet. Of course, I had to argue. I pointed out that the book said they had migrated from Siberia, not Germany, and therefore he must be mistaken. Wolf sulked for hours and accused me of spying on him. Later he apologized—’ I broke off as a rush of similar instances came to mind.

  ‘So, Nina, looking back, do you now realize that you were being taught not to spy on him? Never to question what he told you. Never to put two and two together or else you would be rejected, which, as we both know, is your Achilles’ heel. Right? Wolf’s facade was sacrosanct. His alias must never be violated. You learned to play this game with him because of the fear of losing his love.’

  ‘Something like that. Yes. I hid my doubts. After a while, when something puzzled me I kept it to myself. How could I have been such a fool?’

  ‘Rats get programmed with cheese. You were programmed with love and its withdrawal.

  ‘Perhaps at this stage we could make our first tentative assumption,’ Father said. ‘Which is that Wolf was orphaned, taken away from his home and cruelly treated, probably in Siberia. It is possible – no, let’s say probable – that Wolf was raised in one of the many Siberian re-educational military cadet camps. Later he was trained to commit acts he believed to be evil. It’s a familiar story in post-war Europe. We are approaching the real man, Nina.’

  Father’s smile was like moonlight on the surface of a dark lake.

  ‘All of us, even the most evil murderers, have goodness at our inner core. Our souls are a font of goodness and integrity and we will come to hate ourselves, and others even more, if we feel that we have lost touch with all that is pure within us.’

  I glanced at him in surprise. A stranger lurked behind those shutters. A friendless, uncomplaining philosopher with ideas and beliefs that I had never before heard him voice. I had the strangest feeling that I was entering Father’s world for the first time, and that I might find the real man there. Tread softly, Nina, I cautioned myself.

  *

  It was lunch-time when Father switched off the spotlights. I blinked and stretched. I couldn’t see a damn thing.

  ‘This is awful. I’m blinded by those lights, and stiff with sitting still so long. I feel exhausted and emotionally drained. Remembering! Ugh! It hurts. It’s been so real. And we don’t seem to be getting far.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, we won’t discuss it during our break,’ he said, glancing at his watch.

  Father saw the mutiny in my eyes. One eyebrow shot up, while those still-young eyes appraised my mood and found me lacking. ‘D’you want to give it a break until tomorrow? Perhaps we should.’

  I scowled at him. ‘No! Have we made any monumental discoveries yet?’

  ‘Maybe. We’ll see. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’ He made his way to his private bathroom, which had been installed next to his study. The door slammed shut.

  Chapter 38

  It was like an archaeological dig. We were unearthing fragments of Wolf’s past and building a vivid picture of him. Two weeks had passed since we began our debriefing, but it seemed more like two years. I was physically exhausted from days and nights of questions and deep introspection. Reliving the past had brought the trauma of Wolf’s cruelty back into sharp focus and Nicky back into my arms, but in some way it was also healing.

  Now it was time to take a break for a few days. Father had persuaded me to find the best plastic surgeon available to improve my scarred arm. ‘You’ll thank me later, Nina, when you get over this self-hatred of yours.’

  I was astonished by his words.

  Early in June, I entered a private clinic for two days. I travelled back from Edinburgh with my arm in a sling. Although it was past eight p.m., Father had not yet emerged from his study, so I sat alone in our austere dining room while Mrs Peters hung around grumbling about the roast spoiling on the warmer. Father was replaying our tapes. How could he bear it?

  I was startled by the sound of a blackbird singing in the elm tree outside the window. Looking out, I noticed that the leaves had sprung from the branches of the trees and the mountain slopes were brilliant with yellow wort, buttercups, cowslips and celandines. Around the loch were patches of pink and purple from thistles, ragged robin and water mint.

  ‘Mrs Peters,’ I called into the kitchen, ‘please tell Father I’ve gone for a walk. I’m feeling jaded.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised, lass. You should be in bed…’ Her voice faded as the back door closed.

  Outside, there was a crisp tang to the air and a sense of happiness all around. Summer had come late this year, but at last it was warm and the garden vibrated with birdsong. I walked down to the water’s edge and sat on a fallen log to watch the sun set over the mountain peaks. A deep sense of melancholy touched me softly. Did Wolf ever think of me? Did Nicky ever ask about his mother and was he happy? Where were they at this moment? Nostalgia fled as my fury burned.

  Quietly grieving, I became aware of two deer moving through the grass around the edge of the forest. Stately and ethereal, they glided to the water’s edge in single file, like a visitation from some other more peaceful dimension. Their burnished silver bodies glistened as their limpid eyes searched for danger and found none. Slowly they bent their magnificent heads down, supplicants to nature’s communion, breaking the still surface of the water, which rippled out in ever-widening circles.

  Watching them, I had such a strange sense of deja vu, until I remembered the dog. She had been tall, stately and silver-grey and she had crept like a living skeleton into our garden to drink thirstily from the pool. I had flung a few lamb chops her way, all I could lay my hands on in a hurry. The dog had wolfed them down and fled to the shelter of the hedge.

  Days of patient feeding had brought about a transformation, and when the dog sneaked into the kitchen to stay I was overjoyed, but my triumph was spoiled by Wolf’s annoyance. ‘Take it to the pound,’ he had commanded imperiously.

  ‘I most certainly will not.’

  ‘Shall not.’

  I had laughed. ‘I object to a foreigner teaching me
English.’

  He would not smile back.

  ‘I shall find her a home when the time is ripe. That’s if I don’t keep her.’ I was pregnant at the time and my natural affinity with dogs was bolstered by my burgeoning maternal spirit.

  Wolf had calmed down eventually and resorted to pleading. ‘You can’t help your hormonal urges any more than I can help my instinctive distrust of all mongrels. Be they human or not, I trust only pedigrees. Give it away, my pet. It offends me.’

  ‘Maybe. But first it must grow strong.’

  Joy had a friend whose dog had been run over, so the long, lank, skinny creature found a good home the next week, but by then Brigit, a six-week-old Great Dane, had joined our household, a gift from Wolf. Her pedigree was so long it might have stretched back to the Vikings, for all I knew or cared.

  *

  Dusk was falling. As I stood up the deer vanished and I hurried back to the house. Father was at the dining-room table, waiting to eat. ‘It’s so lovely outside. I forgot the time. Sorry.’

  ‘No matter, Nina. You could do with some fresh air. How do you feel?’

  ‘It’s a bit sore, not painful. And you? How do you feel?’

  ‘Oh, me. I’m always fine.’ He brushed aside my inquiry.

  Lately Father had been forgetting his obsession with time and discipline. He was more relaxed and his legs seemed to be strengthening.

  ‘I thought of something else and it might be important, Father. For some reason I felt it was deliberately brought to my mind. Does that sound silly to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was watching the deer. Funny, but they looked like reindeer.’

  ‘They are reindeer. Once, they were native to Scotland. A large herd has been released near Aviemore. They’re running free on the Cairngorm mountains. They come this way sometimes. So, what is it?’ He picked up the water jug and filled my glass.