Winter's End (22 page)

A few hours later, in the car driving through the night toward the capital, he is informed that they have picked up the little girl at her nursemaid’s, and they ask, “What do we do with the child?
”
He feels his stomach heaving again.
By now, no doubt, the dogs will have done their work. He wishes everyone would leave him alone. Would let him sleep. “What do we do with the child?
”
his colleague persists.

“An orphanage. At the other end of the country. As far away from here as possible,” he replies.

And he knows he has just made a mistake.

The sports hall at the Phalange headquarters was empty at this hour. Van Vlyck unlocked the door and strode along the echoing corridors. The entire locker room was full of the sharp odor of sweating bodies: the air, the leather, and wood all smelled of it. A jacket and pants hung from a hook. With satisfaction, he recognized them as the property of Two-and-a-Half. You always knew where to find him, and it wasn’t in the library.

He changed quickly and crossed the bodybuilding room in an old T-shirt and a well-worn pair of shorts. A regular creaking sound guided him to the opposite window, where a man with an undershot jaw and eyes deeply embedded in their sockets was doing weight-training exercises on a mat. The floorboards beneath the mat were groaning under him. Van Vlyck glanced at the number of disks on each side of the bar and couldn’t hide his astonishment. “You can lift that amount ten times running?”

“Fifteen times,” said the man impassively when he had put the barbell down.

Two-and-a-Half wasn’t as thickset as Van Vlyck and was probably forty-five pounds lighter, but no
one could equal him for sheer strength. He said no more than ten words a day, and he didn’t understand jokes. His body was tough and his mind even tougher. His nickname derived from the way he never reached “three” when he threatened someone. “I’ll count up to three,” he would warn, but he had hardly uttered the word “two” before the subject of his threat was dead, killed by a bullet, a knife, or his bare hands. If asked why he did it, why he didn’t at least give the person he was interrogating a chance, he would say, “Dunno. Guess I got no patience.”

Van Vlyck got on the machine next to him and began his own exercises. They carried on together for an hour or more without talking. The two men were different in every way. Van Vlyck grunted and groaned with effort. He seemed to hate the bars or dumbbells he was lifting. He swore at them. Sweat ran down his white skin, seeping into the red hair on his broad chest and massive forearms. He often stopped to drink water and rub himself down with a towel. Two-and-a-Half, on the other hand, worked coldly on. His body stayed dry. He didn’t drink anything. You could hardly hear him breathing, but the enormous weights were raised as regularly as if an indefatigable piston were lifting them.

Afterward they met in the deserted bar of the sports hall.

“A beer?” suggested Van Vlyck.

Two-and-a-Half blinked by way of assent. Van Vlyck went around behind the counter and took
the tops off the two bottles himself. They began drinking in silence. Two-and-a-Half examined the contents of his glass with the same vague expression that he directed at other people. Van Vlyck wondered what he was thinking about. He felt uneasy. Was Two-and-a-Half even thinking about anything at all?

“I might have a job for you.”

Two-and-a-Half didn’t move a muscle.

“Information to be pried out of someone who doesn’t like talking. The pay will be good.”

Two-and-a-Half nodded slightly to show that he would take the job.

The wind was sweeping over the dark riverbanks. A few pedestrians, out late, were hurrying home, avoiding the puddles of water. Down on the river itself, gusts of wind turned the rain to hail as it fell, as if throwing handfuls of gravel at it. Night was falling. Two-and-a-Half followed the paved path beside the river like someone out for a stroll. He knew he might be about to kill a man, but that didn’t bother him. Raindrops beat down hard on his umbrella. He crumpled the banknotes in his right-hand jacket pocket. Van Vlyck had given them to him as an advance: half the sum, the rest to be paid when he had extracted the information. It was as good as his already. He passed four bridges without crossing any of them, and stopped at the fifth.

A quick glance was enough to show him that the man he was after wasn’t there. No motorbike
chained to the guardrail meant no Mitten. That bike was really the common property of everyone who lived under the Wooden Bridge, but only Mitten was able to ride it. Never mind; he’d wait.

As he waited, he started over the bridge and walked along the wet sidewalk, keeping a tight hold on the umbrella, which threatened to blow away. He hadn’t gone fifty yards before the noisy motorbike, still without lights, appeared at the far end. From a distance its rider, wearing a woolen balaclava, with his shoulders hunched, looked like a large, lumbering insect. He was revving the engine, but the result was pitiful: it didn’t respond. Two-and-a-Half watched him coming closer, delighted. He couldn’t have hoped for better working conditions: darkness, no witnesses, the bridge . . .

He waited for Mitten to draw level with him and then gave him a vicious shove. Sent flying, the tramp cried out. The motorbike fell to the ground, went into a skid on the wet pavement, crossed the road, and crashed into the opposite curb. The hot exhaust pipe broke off, skidded on the pavement, and spat out vapor.

“What’s the big idea?” yelled Mitten. “I’ve smashed my kneecap!”

Two-and-a-Half didn’t even close his umbrella. He took the tramp by the front of his jacket with one hand, stood him on his feet, and held him close in a violent grip.

“I’ve smashed my kneecap!” wailed Mitten. “I’m in agony!”

Under the soaked balaclava, his emaciated, bearded face was twisting in pain.

“Let me go! What do you want?”

“Information. About a blond girl. Milena Bach.”

“Never heard of her. Buzz off!”

Two-and-a-Half was not the man to waste time in pointless chat. Most new arrivals in the city came down the river, and they stopped at the Wooden Bridge. Everyone knew that. He picked Mitten up and sat him on the metal parapet of the bridge.

“Know who I am?”

Their faces were almost touching. For the first time Mitten looked his assailant in the eye, and the pain in his knee instantly went away. He realized whose hard fingers were holding him there. If he refused to talk, he would have only a few seconds to live — just as long as it took him to fall. He would hit the icy water of the river flat on his back. His fellow down-and-outs under the bridge might hear the muted sound of his thin body as it went in. He was terrified.

“I . . . I can’t swim,” he stammered stupidly.

“Know who I am?” the other man repeated.

“Yeah.” Mitten wept, clutching his adversary’s cuffs.

“Then I’m going to count to three. One . . .”

“What was her name again?”

“Milena Bach. Two . . .”

It would be no use lying. He might gain a little time that way, but the result would be the same in the end, or even worse.

“At Jahn’s . . . She’s at Jahn’s Restaurant. . . .”

His heart was beating hard enough to break his ribs. He guessed that Two-and-a-Half was longing to throw him into the void even after getting the information he wanted. Several seconds passed, seeming like an eternity, and then he felt the killer putting him down on the sidewalk again. The next moment, he saw the man walking calmly away. All this time he hadn’t even folded his umbrella.

Mitten tried to stand the motorbike up in vain. All he did was make the pain in his knee worse. The rain was falling harder than ever. He picked up the steaming exhaust pipe and stuck it under his arm. Then he limped over to the steps and clambered down them with difficulty, holding tight to the rail.

Two-and-a-Half made three mistakes that evening. The first was not to throw Mitten into the river. It was extraordinarily tempting to do it, to watch the tramp gesticulating as he fell through the air, to hear his terrified cries and the sound of his body hitting the dark water. A little push in the chest would have done it. All that stopped him was the thought that the man might come in useful again.

Two-and-a-Half’s second mistake was not to go straight home. He told himself there was no hurry, since he wasn’t to meet Van Vlyck until tomorrow afternoon in the sports hall. And he liked hearing the gentle patter of the raindrops on his umbrella. He thought he would prolong that pleasure. Instead
of going straight to the Upper Town, where he lived, he followed the river, and even went down the first flight of steps he came to and walked along the bank. He didn’t see the three shadows going the same way, crouching low and keeping their distance. A wooden bench screwed to the paving stones offered him its half-rotten seat. He sat down, not bothering about getting his pants wet, and stayed there without moving, listening to the sound of the rain.

At that minute he didn’t have long left to live, but he was not aware of that.

He waited for the rain to die down, and it soon did. The machine-gun patter of the drops above his head gradually faded, leaving only an increasingly faint rustling. Finally there was only the muted rushing of the river and the murmur of the wind. Then Two-and-a-Half made his third mistake. He lowered his umbrella to close it.

The sky exploded. Flashes of dazzling lightning blinded him, and he collapsed on the bench.

“Hit him again!” a voice breathed. “He’s a tough nut to crack, he is!”

The sky exploded for the second time. He felt himself falling into a black abyss and lost consciousness.

Standing behind the bench, Mitten was brandishing his exhaust pipe.

“Do I go on, lads?”

“Not worth it,” one of his companions said. “He’s had it. We better get a move on now. If we
get spotted from up there, we’re done for. Give me a hand.”

They went around to the front of the bench and dragged Two-and-a-Half to the edge of the water by his feet.

“You do the honors, Mitten!”

Mitten didn’t have the strength to lift the killer. He knelt down beside him and pushed with both hands. As the man’s body was about to go into the water, he hesitated. Then he thought of Milena, of Helen, of all the others taking refuge at Jahn’s Restaurant who must be protected.

“One, two . . . and three,” he muttered. “Bound to happen to you too someday, right?”

And he rolled Two-and-a-Half over into the indifferent and icy waters of the great river.

A
jay was perching on the windowsill. It had slipped past the bars and was looking into the bedroom with round eyes. Enraptured, Milos Ferenzy looked at the big bird’s bright colors, its bluish wings, the comical black mustache on both sides of its beak. He wanted to call to it by making little chirping sounds, as you do when you’re trying to entice an animal, but he couldn’t manage it. His mouth was too dry. Not that it bothered him. He felt completely well, as if he were in an immaterial body free of all pain, living in a state of suspended animation.

A pale ray of sunlight traced a slanting line on the whitewashed wall opposite. The room seemed to contain no furniture. A lightbulb with a metal shade hung from the ceiling. Milos noticed that he was wearing a coarse nightshirt with short sleeves. He turned his head to the left and saw the dressing on
his arm. A flexible tube emerged from it, linked to a drip gradually dispensing its contents.

There was another bed parallel to his. Its occupant, a lean, muscular man of about thirty, was moaning faintly with his mouth half open. Thick bandaging surrounded his chest, but the most shocking thing about him was his devastated face, covered in terrible scars like furrows rimmed with pink flesh. His long, dirty feet stuck out from under the covers. Did they never wash people in this hospital? The pleasant sensation of wellbeing faded slightly

Hospital? What was he doing in a hospital? Oh yes, the mountain refuge. His leg. The knife in it. He gently pushed back the sheet, hitched up the nightshirt, and saw that his right thigh was painted with iodine. In the middle of the stain, his injury, stitched with black thread, looked quite small.
I’m no doctor,
he thought,
but I seem to have been quite well looked after.
At the same moment, the sheet slipped off entirely and fell to the floor. Then he saw that there was an iron ring around his left ankle, and the ring was chained to the bar at the foot of the bed. He let out a groan. The jay, no doubt hearing him, flew away with its wings rushing.

During the next hour, Milos lay completely still, worrying that he might set off some terrible pain if he made the slightest movement. Where was he? And why had he been given medical attention if he was to be kept prisoner? To take revenge on him for the dog-handler’s death? The ray of sunlight had disappeared now, and twilight was slowly filling
the room. The man in the next bed had stopped moaning, but he was sleeping restlessly, his breathing irregular.

Milos wondered how Helen had felt when she came back to find the refuge empty. Had she thought that he’d set off into the mountains on his own? That he didn’t trust her? This worried him. He would have stayed; he’d promised to stay! But they had arrived first and taken him away on their sleigh, half unconscious. He remembered being in a sort of waking dream at the time, feeling the jolts, the cold, the sensation of being roughly manipulated, like a dead beast thrown into the slaughterman’s barrow. Then he had fainted right away, and now he was lying in this room, a quiet yet disturbing place, beside another injured man.