He rewound it and watched the last minute in slow motion. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary. He listened to the four sentences. The second was the most intelligible. He thought he picked out three words: ‘Kaiser’, ‘wood’ and ‘finish’. Not very informative.
He watched the whole tape again from the beginning.
Nearly fifty minutes went by without incident. Then came the sequence that had puzzled him the first time.
It happened again.
For a fraction of a second, the Sleeper’s eye looked sharply into the camera. Without a trace of drowsiness. Then it shut.
Jonas scanned the sofa table for the remote. Didn’t see it. He was holding it in his hand. It was a while before his trembling thumb pressed the stop button.
He mustn’t drive himself crazy. If he wanted to, he was sure he could find some other disconcerting details on the tape. Just as he could hear imaginary noises on the audio tapes. If he wanted, he could find a dozen potential pointers to any number of things. Why had that bus driver eyed him so oddly on 1 July? What had Martina and their peculiar new colleague been whispering about at the office party? Why, on 3 July, had leaflets advertising a pizza delivery service been stuck to the door of every flat in the building except his? Why had it rained so seldom? Why, after ten hours’ sleep, did he sometimes feel as if he hadn’t slept a wink? Why did he think he was being watched?
He must cling at all costs to what existed. To what was definitely verifiable and beyond dispute.
He raised the blinds and opened the window. Made sure the door was locked and bolted. After checking all the rooms, he glanced into the wall cupboard.
With the shotgun beside him, he watched the whole tape again, frame by frame. When he reached the sequence that puzzled him he looked out of the window. Before coming to the muttered sentences he switched to normal play.
Those three words were all he could catch. He didn’t get the impression that the Sleeper had wanted to tell him something. Nevertheless, he felt he was watching something important.
He set up two cameras in the bedroom. One he positioned a couple of metres from the bed, the other so that only the head of the bed was in shot. Although there was a risk that he would roll out of shot while asleep, he was anxious to watch his face in close-up, if only for a few minutes.
He put in two three-hour tapes.
9
He awoke with a twitchy hand. His thumb was itching. He thumped the pillow, scratched the place with his forefinger. The itch wouldn’t go away.
He turned over on his side. Lying on the pillow beside him was one of Marie’s T-shirts. She hadn’t worn it, not even for one night. He’d changed the duvet covers after waving her taxi goodbye, but the smell of her lingered faintly.
He looked at her bathrobe hanging on a hook on the wall. At her chest of drawers, from which a pair of panties was peeping. At the stack of books on her bedside table.
*
On his way to the 5th District he ate an apple. He wasn’t particularly fond of apples, or of any kind of fruit with pips or stones. His mother had forced them on him. Jonas had argued with her until her death about what was and wasn’t healthy, what should and shouldn’t be eaten. He took the view that what was good for one person needn’t necessarily be good for another. She disputed this. In her world, everything had its allotted place. She used to ruin his summer holidays at Kanzelstein by roaming the garden with him daily and making him sample things: apples, pears, berries — even plants like sorrel. His father would shake his head at this but confined himself to sitting in his deckchair and reading a newspaper.
Just as Jonas turned into the Wienzeile he remembered that he hadn’t got hold of any cardboard packing boxes, nor did he know of any nearby shop that stocked them. He thumped the steering wheel with his fist and did a U-turn. For the second time that morning he drove past the church whose poster assured him he was loved by Jesus. He sounded his horn.
The automatic doors of the DIY store on the Lerchenfelder Gürtel hummed open with a jerk. Without so much as grazing anything, he drove the Spider along the aisles. The packing boxes were right at the back of the store. He couldn’t judge how many he needed, so he took a whole carload.
Before going into the flat he went for a walk down Rüdigergasse. He rang various doorbells but didn’t wait for an answer. He shot out some window panes in Schönbrunner Strasse.
There were statues everywhere. Statues and statuettes, human figures, decorative gargoyles.
It had never struck him before. Almost every building was adorned with stone carvings. None of them was looking at him, but all had faces. Jutting from the oriel moulding on one house was a winged dog, on another a fat boy silently playing the flute. One wall displayed a grimacing face, another a little, bearded old man preaching to an invisible congregation. He’d never noticed any of these things before.
He took aim at the old preacher, but his arm shook. With a threatening gesture, he lowered the gun.
Just as he turned into Wehrgasse he caught sight of a post office sign. It occurred to him that he’d never searched a post office. Although he’d posted some cards that had never landed in his letterbox, he’d never thought to take a closer look at a post office.
The automatic door didn’t open when he stepped in front of the sensor. He blasted it open. He gained access to the area behind the counter by doing the same to another door beyond it.
There wasn’t much money in the drawers, 10,000 euros at most. The bulk of the cash was probably in a strongroom at the rear, but money wasn’t his concern.
He sat down beside one of the big trolleys full of unsorted post. Picking up an envelope at random, he tore it open. A business letter demanding settlement of an unpaid bill for a consignment of materials.
The next letter was private. The shaky handwriting was that of an old woman writing to a girl named Hertha, who lived in Vienna. Hertha was urged to study hard, but not so hard that she let life pass her by. Love, Granny.
He examined the envelope. It was postmarked Hohenems.
He toured the premises. There was no indication that the staff had left in a hurry.
He felt in the pockets of a blue overall hanging on a hook in the back room. They contained some small change, matches, cigarettes, a packet of tissues, a ballpoint pen and a lottery ticket, filled in but not yet stamped.
In a woman’s jacket hanging alongside there was a packet of condoms.
In a briefcase he found nothing but an unappetising sausage sandwich.
Before leaving he took his marker pen and wrote his mobile number on the window of every counter position. He trod on an alarm button. Nothing happened.
*
He packed one box after another, but it was a longer job than he’d expected. Many of the objects that passed through his hands were fraught with associations. In some cases he could only vaguely recall the circumstances surrounding a particular book or shirt. He would stand there, stroking his chin and staring into space. It usually helped to sniff the object, because its smell was more evocative than its appearance.
Moreover, sorting and packing weren’t his forte. He chafed at having to wrap each china cup in newspaper, if only because he’d always disliked touching newsprint. The sound of sheets of paper rubbing together gave him goose-bumps, just as Marie had been allergic to the squeak of chalk on a blackboard or the clatter of cutlery. He could read a newspaper, but any other kind of rustling sound was anathema to him.
Late that afternoon he broke into a local pub. He found something to eat in the deep-freeze and drew himself a beer. It tasted stale. He left as soon as he’d finished eating. The return trip seemed longer. His legs felt heavy.