Intrigo

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘I see. Did you write it down?’

  ‘No, I intended to, but I couldn’t find a pen. And just at that moment Robert rang from London and I had other things to think about. But it was a number from abroad, I know that much. And it . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It would explain why he rang at that time of the night.’

  ‘A different time zone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Quite a distant imposter, in other words?’

  ‘Mm.’

  Judith found it hard to decide whether Maria Rosenberg was being sympathetic or mildly sarcastic. Or whether she had the capacity for both at the same time; a combination, if so, that was inherent in her increasing wisdom.

  ‘What did Robert think about the call? I assume you told him about it when he rang?’

  ‘No . . . no, I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He was in a rush. On his way to a meeting. He only rang to say good morning.’

  ‘I see.’

  Maria Rosenberg rose to her feet and took a turn around the room. This was one of her routines, something to do with the circulation in her legs. But it was also a way of achieving a break in the conversation. At least that was what Judith supposed. A kind of pause for breath and a subtle hint that it might be time to change tack. She waited until the therapist had resumed her seat in the armchair. Waited for the change of tack.

  ‘Do you want to carry on talking about this telephone call, or should we turn to life in general?’

  It was as close as you could get to a rhetorical question. For a moment Judith thought about the waves on the pebble beach again. Distance, the immense distance.

  ‘That’s enough, thanks.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yep. If he rings back, we can deal with it next time?’

  ‘Excellent. That’s decided. How’s the dog after its operation?’

  She didn’t mention the telephone call when Robert rang on Thursday evening. He sounded tired and breathless, and she wondered whether the illness was taking a greater toll on him than he was willing to admit.

  But she didn’t raise that subject either. It would only have irritated him, and after she had replaced the receiver she began to question whether he would actually survive until the seventieth birthday she had referred to in conversation with Maria Rosenberg. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. The thought of one day living in this beautiful house as a widow had been playing on her mind for some time, and it wasn’t an idea she found particularly disturbing. It would be too much to say she was looking forward to it, but solitude, relative solitude, was a condition that seemed to offer more appeal and satisfaction the older she became. Perhaps it was because she had no brothers and sisters and had grown up without the irksome intrusion of others, aside from her mother and almost perpetually absent father. Few friends, used to looking after herself, happy in her own company; these were certainly influencing factors. He who makes a friend of solitude is never disappointed, she had read somewhere, a truth she could unreservedly acknowledge.

  So it didn’t matter that Robert had been obliged to stay in London an extra day. It really didn’t. She slept well all night; she had naturally felt slightly apprehensive that the telephone would ring again in the hour of the wolf, but it kept as silent and uncommunicative as the rest of the house. Django lay on his bed under the bench in the kitchen as usual. As she had said to Maria Rosenberg, his operation had gone well, but he was eleven and obviously the days of this once splendid dog were numbered too. Judith knew that she would never remarry or indeed enter into any sort of relationship after Robert had gone, but she would certainly get a new dog. Probably a Rottweiler, like Django. Self-sufficiency had its limits, both in emotional and practical terms. A woman alone in a large house is quite different from a woman alone in the same house with a loyal guard dog.

  She walked Django after breakfast, through the sparse wood up to the water tower, then down and along by the river, over the old wooden bridge and back on the other side. Just short of an hour; in the past, with a young dog and a mistress who had not yet reached fifty, the same stretch would have taken half the time. The trees had started to yellow, but the leaves had not yet begun to fall; it was one of those beautiful, clear autumn days and she tried to keep Tom and the telephone call as far from her thoughts as possible.

  Which wasn’t easy once they had started to worry her. Images from that day twenty-two years ago came back to her too, as if someone – she herself, who else? – had discovered a forgotten photograph album and couldn’t help opening it and flicking through.

  But the pictures were moving, like something from an old film archive rather than an album. Herself. Tom. Then Robert.

  The apartment on Kantorsteeg in Aarlach.

  In the month of July.

  That last night.

  The violence. The panic. The deed.

  How could someone so young be so terribly damaged? So arrogant and so hateful to everything and everyone, and above all to his own parents.

  This was what she had asked herself then and still asked herself today.

  She remembered scenes from further back as well. When he bit Robert in the calf because he couldn’t have his own way – and wouldn’t let go, almost like a fighting dog whose jaws had locked. He was five years old and Robert had to hit him with a heavy book to get him off.

  The anger in him that was almost impossible to control. She remembered one of the psychologists at school had said that Tom, and boys of his sort – she had actually used the expression of his sort – usually quietened down at the onset of puberty. Where in the world did that kind of knowledge come from? In any event, this turned out to be the case, at least partially. Tom had changed when he turned thirteen, but not really for the better. He had become more introverted, distant and difficult. Although admittedly he had started to acquire some friends, they were the sort that would have terrified any parent. She remembers one of them in particular, a boy called Shark – that was the name he went by at any rate – who had a swastika tattooed on his forearm. More than three years older than Tom, and with a father and older brother in prison for murder and grievous bodily harm respectively. And Shark hadn’t been the only one.

  A time of evil: when she looked back, this was the phrase that often sprang to mind.

  She opened the gate and let Django into the garden. Enough of that, she thought, it’s all dead and buried. Whoever rang, it wasn’t Tom. If you’re going to rise again, you do it on the third day, not out of the blue after twenty-two years.

  She spent the whole of Friday afternoon working at her desk. Her major biography of Erasmus of Rotterdam was planned for next autumn and she had promised the publisher a first completed manuscript before Christmas. She had been working on the project for nearly four years, having originally estimated it would take three, but that was before she fully understood what a colossus Erasmus was and how much had been written about him. And by him. But the publisher was reasonable and solvent, and her name and her previous works were a guarantee of the quality they sought and for which they were renowned. Better a good book every five years than a mediocre one every two.

  Robert called again about seven. He sounded more upbeat than in the morning, all the meetings and bizarre problems that always beset every new film project had been resolved, at least temporarily, so she felt it was time to tell him. To avoid complications, she shifted the episode forward twenty-four hours; it couldn’t possibly make any difference.

  ‘Something happened last night. I wanted to tell you about it this morning, but I knew you had a demanding day ahead.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I received a telephone call.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Half past three in the morning. It was someone masquerading as Tom.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes. The telephone rang and I answered . . . without thinking. He claimed he was Tom and said he thought we should meet.’

  ‘Wh
at the hell?’

  ‘Exactly. I was utterly speechless. I’d had a strange dream immediately beforehand as well.’

  ‘What . . . what did he say?’

  ‘Hardly anything at all. Just that we should meet. Said he would ring back. Then he hung up. We can’t have been talking for more than a minute . . . or less.’

  There was silence on the line, but she could hear Robert’s breathing. It suddenly sounded laboured again, as it had that morning. I shouldn’t have said anything, she thought. Not mentioned it to him at all.

  ‘Where was he ringing from?’

  ‘Somewhere abroad. I don’t know where.’

  ‘Didn’t the caller display show the number?’

  ‘Yes. But it had disappeared by the time I checked.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘Maybe I pressed the wrong button. I don’t know, it wasn’t there anyway.’

  Because that was true. When she returned home after her visit to the therapist, she had looked for the number, but it had gone. In which case she must have mistakenly deleted it when she spoke to Robert.

  Unless . . .?

  But she dismissed the thought.

  ‘How did he sound?’

  ‘He sounded . . . well, there wasn’t anything in particular. Quite a normal man’s voice. Not especially deep, not especially high . . . slightly hoarse, maybe. We didn’t exchange many words.’

  ‘And he was going to ring back?’

  ‘So he said.’

  ‘You . . . you didn’t think you recognized his voice at all?’

  ‘Good Lord, Robert, of course not.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just come as a surprise. We’re obviously dealing with an imposter, someone impersonating Tom . . . But why? That’s the question.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been puzzling over all day, and I haven’t come up with an answer. He has to be after something . . . unless it was just a prankster.’

  ‘A prankster?’

  Robert suddenly suffered a coughing fit; she could hear him turn away from the telephone and ask someone for a glass of water.

  ‘Aren’t you alone?’

  He took a few gulps before answering.

  ‘I’m ringing from down in the hotel bar. Don’t worry, it’s not being tapped.’

  Tapped? Why would it be tapped?

  ‘I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon and we can talk about it then.’

  ‘Of course, that’s fine.’

  ‘But if he rings again, make sure you get the number. And call me at once, even if it’s the middle of the night. What time did you say you received the call?’

  ‘Half past three in the morning. A couple of minutes after.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Yes. But as you say, we can discuss it tomorrow. Maybe it was just a nutter who thinks this kind of thing is funny.’

  Breathing heavily, Robert gave this a moment’s thought.

  ‘Yes, let’s settle for that, at least for the time being. The world’s crawling with idiots.’

  ‘I can tell you have experience from the film business, dear.’

  It was a standing joke. He laughed and then hung up.

  She was reminded of one of the police officers too, one of the investigators working on Tom’s disappearance. He popped into her head just as she turned off the television after the nine o’clock news.

  He was quite a young detective inspector, who she seemed to remember was called deJong, or possibly deJung. Or maybe just Jung. He came to speak to them several times in the month after Tom disappeared, on one occasion with a female colleague and the other times alone. He had impressed her, and Robert too, with his measured, courteous tone. He had in fact been questioning them, but neither she nor Robert interpreted it as such: that his intention was to trip them up. Or at least satisfy himself that they weren’t involved in Tom’s disappearance in any way; they might have worked out the precariousness of the boy’s situation and consequently arranged safe haven for him in some gloomy place on a foreign continent, beyond reach of the long arm of the law. Or the long arm of the Maardam police, at any rate.

  But the realization that this had been the aim, or at least partial aim, of the conversations didn’t dawn on them until afterwards, and she remembers them both shaking their heads at their naivety.

  On one occasion deJong/deJung/Jung had asked if it would surprise them if Tom had somehow got hold of a large amount of money and decided to use it to go on the run, change identity and stay away for the rest of his life.

  ‘Are you implying he might have robbed a bank?’ Robert had asked.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ the quiet detective had replied. ‘But since you’ve suggested it, what do you make of that theory?’

  ‘Highly implausible,’ Robert had said after a moment’s thought. ‘Tom is a drug addict and a small-time crook, not a criminal genius.’

  She had thought it wasn’t a particularly flattering verdict to pass on his own son, but deJong/deJung/Jung had just nodded and afforded himself a discreet smile.

  She wondered if he was still working on the force, this nice detective, and whether it would be possible to ask for him, in the event the imposter made good his promise to ring back.

  Absolutely not, she decided, draining the last drops from the glass of wine that had accompanied the television news. Under no circumstances should the police be involved.

  But he didn’t ring back.

  He didn’t ring on Saturday or Sunday, or any time the following week, or for the rest of the month. She and Robert discussed the matter more than once and she soon sensed he had reservations. Put differently, this meant she might have dreamt the whole thing, and there had never been a nocturnal telephone call. He didn’t push this argument very hard and she didn’t bother to refute it. But she recalled that Maria Rosenberg had suggested the same thing, and as the days passed and nothing happened, she too began to experience some doubt.

  A telephone call in the middle of the night, over in thirty seconds.

  From a person missing for twenty-two years.

  The number deleted from the caller display.

  What was there to suggest it didn’t all boil down to this? She had imagined it, she had dreamt it, it had seemed completely real, but it had never happened.

  She regretted telling her therapist about the call.

  She regretted talking to Robert.

  Time passed, the trees lost their leaves and she became more and more absorbed in the sixteenth century and Erasmus of Rotterdam.

  The second call came one week in November.

  On a grey, rainy Tuesday afternoon she was going through one of the most difficult chapters in the book – about the complex relationship between Erasmus and Martin Luther – and wasn’t going to answer at first. Normally she had the telephone switched off while she was working, but she had been talking to her publisher at lunchtime and had forgotten to press the button.

  Later, after she had hung up, she wondered whether she might have had a premonition, and, if so, whether it was the premonition that made her lift the receiver. But probably not, she thought, it was too easy to dream up warning signs and omens with the benefit of hindsight. Our need to see clearly in the rear-view mirror when the future looks increasingly uncertain; she remembered she and Robert had been talking about related phenomena not so long ago, about seeing patterns and so on, about simplistic solutions.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Judith Bendler?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Tom.’

  A sudden tremble passed through her body, from her toes upwards, just like seven weeks ago – an observation that surprised her – and for a second her field of vision shrank to a tunnel. A narrow tunnel, tinged with yellow, with walls that seemed to pulsate and move. But she recovered at once and even had the presence of mind to look at the caller display for the number.

  Unknown.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still here. What do you want?’

&n
bsp; He gave a short, rasping laugh.

  ‘What do I want? I want us to meet, naturally. As I explained last time.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Tom. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me.’

  ‘Which Tom?’

  ‘Tom, your son. You’re my mother. What are you trying to suggest?’

  ‘I . . . I’m not suggesting anything. But I find it hard to believe you’re telling the truth.’

  ‘And how do you reach that conclusion?’

  She thought about it for a moment. Now he sounded ironic, almost teasing, as though it amused him to be talking to her like this. She swallowed, finding the strength to continue.

  ‘My son Tom went missing more than twenty years ago. Both my husband and I are convinced he’s dead.’

  ‘I’m not dead.’

  ‘No, apparently not. But neither are you the Tom you’re masquerading as.’

  ‘Shame on you!’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said shame on you! Don’t you realize you should be ashamed to talk to me like that?’

  ‘No. Not if you’re an imposter.’

  ‘I’m not an imposter.’

  ‘How can I know that?’

  ‘By meeting me. That’s why I’m ringing. I promised to last time, have you forgotten?’

  She gave it another moment’s thought.

  ‘And why do you want to meet me?’

  ‘Is it strange for a son to want to see his mother?’

  ‘Yes, if he’s kept himself away for twenty-two years.’

  ‘He had his reasons, as you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know what reasons you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’ll explain everything when I see you.’

  ‘I might not have any desire to see you. Or any desire to continue this conversation.’

  For a few seconds there was silence. No breathing, no distant waves. Please, God, let him give up, she thought. Make him admit defeat and never get in touch again.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I think you’ll regret it if you don’t agree to meet me.’

  A threat? She couldn’t decide, but he had lowered his voice and spoken more slowly.

  ‘Where are you?’ she asked.