Dark, not black. He noticed that now. The tape had wound on, but blindly. Having seen the screen go dark, he’d automatically dismissed the possibility that recording had continued.
The first cry rang out ten minutes after the camera fell over. No sounds of any kind could be heard before that. No footsteps. No knocking. No strange voices.
Then, after ten minutes, that first cry. The scream of someone being skewered with an iron spike. It was a sudden cry, more of terror than of pain.
Jonas dashed into the bedroom and stripped off his bathrobe. He turned in front of the mirror, contorted his body, lifted his feet and inspected the soles. His joints creaked. He couldn’t see a thing. No cuts, no stitches, no burns. Not even a bruise.
He went right up to the glass and stuck out his tongue. It wasn’t furred. No visible injuries. He pulled his lower lids down. His eyes were bloodshot.
*
He sat down on the sofa and treated himself to a few minutes of the Love Parade’s silent cavortings. He ate some ice cream. Poured himself a whisky. Only a small one, though. He had to remain sober, clear-headed.
He got the camera ready for the night. In his agitation he’d forgotten how to set the timer. He was too tired to reread the instructions. He contented himself with a normal three-hour recording.
He tried the front door. It was locked.
11
The camera was in its place.
He looked around. Nothing seemed to have changed.
He threw off the duvet. No injuries.
He went over to the mirror. His face, too, looked unmarked.
*
Jonas was already well-acquainted with the DIY store in Adalbert-Stifter-Strasse. He drove the Spider down the aisle until it became too narrow, then went looking on foot. He found a torch and some industrial gloves right away. The furniture trolley took longer. He strode briskly round the silent store. It was half an hour before he thought of looking in the stock room. There were dozens of trolleys in there. He loaded one into the boot.
He drove back and forth across the 20th District, steered the car along the narrow streets of the Karmeliter quarter in the 2nd, crossed over to the 3rd, performed a U-turn in Landstrasse and combed the 2nd again. That, he figured, was where he was likeliest to find what he was looking for.
He could generally tell, without getting out of the car, whether a machine beside the kerb was unsuitable. A Vespa wouldn’t do, nor would a Maxi or even a Honda Goldwing. He wanted a 1960s Puch DS, 50 cc, top speed forty k.p.h.
He spotted one in Nestroygasse, but the key was missing. Another was parked in Franz-Hochedlinger-Gasse. Again no key. Someone in Lilienbrunngasse had also been a fan of ancient mopeds. No key.
He called in at Hollandstrasse and looked round the flat. Nothing had changed. He looked into the backyard through the bedroom window. It was like a rubbish dump.
He suddenly remembered what he had dreamt of last night.
The dream had consisted of a single image. A bound skeleton lay on its back on the ground. Both feet in a single oversized leather boot. It was being slowly dragged across a field by a lasso tied to the saddle of a horse whose head could not be seen. Only the rider’s legs were visible.
The image stood before him quite distinctly. A skeleton with a stout rope wrapped around its ribcage, the horse dragging it along. The feet in the boot. The skeleton’s slow progress across the grass.
*
He was driving along Obere Augartenstrasse when he spotted another one. Exactly what he was looking for. A DS 50 with the key in it. Pale blue, like the one he himself had owned. He estimated its date of manufacture at 1968 or 1969.
He turned on the fuel tap, climbed aboard and trod on the kick-starter. At first he gave too little throttle, then too much. The engine sprang to life at the third attempt, sounding far louder than he’d expected. Although he wobbled for the first few yards, he had the moped under control by the time he drove through the gates into the Augarten.
It was a peculiar sensation, riding along the park’s dusty paths on a DS. At sixteen he’d worn a visored crash helmet and had never felt the wind on his face, or not to this extent. Nor had the sound of the engine ever punctured such a silence.
On the long, tree-lined straight that ran past the park café he opened the throttle as far as it would go. The speedometer read forty k.p.h., but the moped was doing at least sixty-five. Its owner had been more skilful at souping up an engine than Jonas had been in his day. His one good idea had been to remove the exhaust mufflers, which had had no appreciable effect on the moped’s speed but had made it sound much louder.
After circling the anti-aircraft tower he left the paths and veered off across the grass. He avoided the areas with tall hedges. Jonas didn’t care for hedges. Particularly when they were trimmed with excessive care. And it was still clear that these had been. Trees, shrubs, hedges — all had been neatly pruned and clipped.
*
I’m just overhead — only a few kilometres above you.
*
Jonas made his way into the café. After he’d checked the rather small premises, he brewed himself a coffee and took it out into the garden.
Although the Augarten had never appealed to him much, he’d sat here several times. With Marie, whom he’d had to accompany to a series of al fresco film shows on summer evenings. Shuffling around on his chair and yawning furtively, he had gone there for Marie’s sake, drunk beer or tea, eaten at the multicultural buffet and been plagued by mosquitoes. They seldom bit him, but the sound of them had more than once driven him to distraction.
He had waited for Marie here at the café, 100 yards from the cinema and the buffet, which operated only during the film season. He’d watched cheeky sparrows land on tables and peck at titbits. Shooed away wasps and scowled at old ladies’ yapping poodles. But he hadn’t been really annoyed because he knew that, any moment now, Marie would prop her bike against one of the chestnut trees, sit down beside him with a smile and tell him about her days on the beach at Antalya.
He rode the moped to the Brigittenauer embankment. The cars in the area had no ignition keys in them, he knew. He fetched Marie’s bicycle from the cellar and pedalled back to the Spider within five minutes. He was in pretty good shape. Then, nagged by the feeling that he’d been wasting time, he drove off to work in Hollandstrasse.
He lunched at a pub in Pressgasse noted for its 150-year-old bar. He rubbed out the food and drink prices on the blackboard and wrote Jonas, 24 July on it in chalk.
*
Taking the torch and shotgun with him, Jonas made his way down into the cellar. He turned on the torch and the cellar light in quick succession.
‘Anyone there?’ he called in a deep voice.
The tap gurgled.
Warily, he approached his father’s compartment with the gun held out in front of him and the torch clamped against the barrel. The biting smell of oil and insulating stuff filled his nostrils as before. He might be mistaken, but the smell seemed to have intensified in the last twenty-four hours.
Why was the compartment door open? Had he forgotten to shut it?
He remembered that the cellar light had gone out, and that he’d groped his way to the stairs without a second thought. So the open door was probably all right.
He hung the torch on a hook at head height so that it would light up the whole compartment when the time-switch’s fifteen minutes were up. Before putting the shotgun in a corner he glanced over his shoulder.
‘Hello?’
The tap went ‘ping’, the cellar light flickered. The skeins of dust and cobwebs around the bulb trembled in a draught.