The Albanian cast a glance at what was left of Ahrens and then nodded to his side. ‘Didn’t you forget something?’
Perhaps he’d have let her go, but I wasn’t sure of it. And since she could hardly have played a greater part in the whole business than that of Ahrens’s latest safari partner, I said as convincingly as I could just now, ‘I didn’t have time.’
‘Didn’t have time. So you preferred to take him?’ He pointed to the floor, looking at me with a touch of contempt.
‘Oh, leave me alone. It’s the wrong woman, OK? But she’s only some tart, she won’t have anything to do with all this.’
‘Right.’ He let go of the woman, took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and wiped his hands. ‘All things considered,’ he said, putting the handkerchief away again and nodding to me, ‘thank you.’ Then he turned and went out.
I looked at the open door and listened to his footsteps. At some point a shadow flitted by, but only when I rose and moved slowly to the corridor did it strike me in passing that it must have been the woman.
‘… What did you mean when you said your mother had been gone since last Sunday? Sunday as in Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or the last time it was a sunny day?’
‘Last time it was sunny day.’
‘OK…’ I kept perfectly calm. It was only my eyesight that was changing. I was beginning to see only the things I was thinking of at any given moment, and I was thinking of nothing but things. The phone receiver, the cradle. Everything around them blurred, went grey or simply disappeared. ‘I’ll call you back.’
‘What about my mother?’
‘I didn’t find her. It’s all rather complicated. I must go. See you later.’
‘See you later.’
Telephone receiver, cradle, car. I crossed the street. Key, ignition, gear change. It was just before eight. I filtered into the Saturday night traffic, people out to enjoy themselves. Lights, car in front of me, green light, accelerator, indicator, bend. When I left Frankfurt behind, all I saw was the grey ribbon of tarmac moving faster and faster towards the Taunus. Then the forest began. Headlights, woodland paths… the woodland path. I turned off the road and parked the car. Tree, root, earth compacted after the rain of the last few days — hands, claws, shovelling. It was dark in the forest. Cigarette lighter, stains on plastic bin liner, a few more clods of earth, a head. I didn’t hesitate for a second, to do that I’d have had to think about more than things, there was only one thing in my mind, and next moment I had the wig in my hand. Long black hair fell over the face disfigured by a week of lying in the earth of the forest floor. Unstrapping the bulletproof vest was purely mechanical after that. A bra.
I can’t remember how I got home and exactly what I did then. The vague outline of the greengrocer came to meet me in the hall of our building, and I think I told him he could sleep easy, there was no threat from the Mafia any more. Only later in the evening, with a bottle in my hand, did I realise that I must speak to Leila as soon as possible. I couldn’t let her sit around hoping any longer. I looked at the time. Ten-thirty. I rang Slibulsky and asked him to stick around. I was going to drop in and see Leila. Half an hour later we were sitting at the kitchen table, and I told her that after her meeting with the Zagreb industrialist, her mother was in a car accident on the way back to Frankfurt and had been fatally injured. That seemed to me the least painful explanation for Leila. After I had held her in my arms for a while she said she wanted to be alone, and disappeared into the living-room. Slibulsky promised to look after Leila, and tried to persuade me to stay the night, but I wanted to go home.
He went to the door with me. ‘It was her?’
‘I think so.’
‘And it was an accident?’
‘At least it wasn’t done on purpose.’
July 1998
Chapter 20
Two months later Romario opened his new bar, Rommy’s Irish Pub. We had met by chance on the underground just as I came back from four weeks in Corsica.
‘Why an Irish pub?’ I asked, baffled.
‘Because there isn’t one around here yet, and people like pubs. Guinness, whiskey, Irish music — goes down great.’ Romario was wearing a new, slightly shiny suit with big leather buttons, coloured trainers with about four layers of sole, he had blow-dried the hair above his forehead into a surfer’s-paradise wave that enclosed a large hole full of air in its tall curve, and was beaming as if embarking on the project of his life.
‘I got the money from the insurance, see?’
‘What will there be to eat?’
‘In the pub? Did you ever eat anything in a pub?’
‘No, but I’ve only ever been in one two or three times, and then only because I had to. The beer’s like gnat’s piss, but you still drink it to help you put up with the music.’
‘Oh, you…!’ He laughed, and brushed his finger-tips on my shoulder.
‘And now I’m naturalised I had no trouble at all with a licence and rental agreements. Honest, Kemal, you’ve no idea how grateful I am to you. It all went so well with Hottges: fast and friendly, no trouble at all. We even went out for a drink together a few times, and he’d have come to the opening, but now he’s had himself transferred to Braunschweig.’
‘Oh yes?’
Romario waved it away. ‘Family business of some kind. A pity, eh? The two of you could have met again. I still haven’t quite worked out how it is you know each other, but I can give him news of you if you like. We sometimes talk on the phone.’
‘You talk to one another on the phone?’
‘It’s just that, among Frankfurters,’ he said, winking at me, ‘and I’m a Frankfurter now, I’ve got it all in black and white. Well, anyway, he misses the city a lot.’
‘Tell me, Romario, is it that I’ve been away so long, or is there something different about you?’
‘What…? Oh, I must get out here. Right, I’m counting on you and Slibulsky. You’ll get written invitations. See you.’ He got out of the underground train and set off, waving.
The party was a typical Romario occasion. The invitation card was adorned with a shamrock leaf which had eyes and a smiling mouth, and said: Rommy’s Irish Pub, Guaranteed Good Company and a Happy Atmosphere. The card added, with an exclamation mark, that you had to show it to get in. Either he had really imagined something like bouncers on the door, massive men who had to stay on watch outside, and a pub full to bursting with the rich, beautiful and famous, or else possession of a German passport had given him a taste for border checks of every kind. In fact he could think himself lucky if a few curious passers by came in from the street during the afternoon to join our small party and not let the atmosphere bother them. I’ve no idea if the place was really anything like an Irish pub. But it did resemble the kind of bar that you seldom remember next day, because you went into it only at the end of an evening’s boozing when everywhere else was closed. Halfway sober, hardly anyone would choose to sit in a tunnel twenty metres long, with only one window, beige woodchip wallpaper and dark brown, wiry wall-to-wall carpeting. Little blue globes like nightlights with yellow shades stood on the tables, providing minimum lighting and making it feel as if the committee of the local euthanasia group normally met here. In addition, at least to start with, the music was that typical Irish hoppety-hop fiddling and yodelling that always made me wonder whether the Irish listen to it themselves or just produce it for export as part of their successful folklore myth, advertising the fact that there may be nothing to eat in the pub but it’s cheerful.