There was complete silence in the room. Some of those seated around the table exchanged glances, but most directed their attention at Clara.
'I didn't exactly dismiss either revenge or power,' Clara began, for the first time with a harsh undertone to her voice. 'I simply said it would be exceedingly doubtful that any ofus would be driven by such a motive. In our opinion, this has to do with someone wanting to prevent the Society from reuniting. Someone who has something to lose, either in the form of power or prestige. The timing isn't coincidental. Only now, after twenty years of separation, did the attacks start up again because the prospect of reconciliation seems possible.' She took a deep breath. 'I wouldn't be surprised if the person or persons behind them also started the attacks twenty years ago. Someone who gained a certain status back then, and now is afraid of losing it.'
Jon fixed his eyes on Clara's. The woman who had earlier appeared so jovial didn't smile, just stared across the table at him without wavering. Those sitting around them studied first her, then Jon, as if they were betting on who would blink first.
'You mean Kortmann? That's a serious accusation,' Jon said at last.
'It's a serious situation. We're being threatened, and our very lives may be at stake.'
'So far it's the transmitters who have suffered the biggest losses,' Jon pointed out. 'Lee died last night. The police say it was suicide, but Kortmann thinks otherwise.'
Clara nodded, as if she already knew about it, but many of the members began whispering and casting looks of astonishment at others in the room.
'I'm sure he does,' she said. 'Even though we didn't know Lee very well, we're sorry about what happened, but that doesn't change our suspicions. Lee wasn't old enough to have taken part in the events back then, and that alone could present a risk for those involved. Maybe he got in the way.'
'Maybe he just took his own life,' Jon insisted. 'The police found a suicide note with his signature.'
'The question isn't really whether he committed suicide or not,' said Clara. 'Though it's very likely that he did. Kortmann is not the only one who has connections to the police.' She smiled. 'The real question is, what drove him to do it?'
'He didn't seem like the type who would allow himself to be pressured into something so drastic,' Jon emphasized.
'All the more reason to be sceptical,' said Clara and then she abruptly fell silent, even though her lips had been about to shape her next words.
Jon sensed there was something he had overlooked. Clara stared at him with an expectant, almost inquisitive expression, as if she'd given him the first part of a sentence that he needed to complete himself.
'You're forgetting that the man you're accusing was the one who initiated this meeting.'
'Not at all,' replied Clara, smiling wryly. 'What would suit him better than to get someone who doesn't belong to the Society to carry out the investigation, someone who isn't aware of his powers, someone he thinks he can influence?'
Jon was about to object when Clara stopped him by raising her hand slightly.
'But I think he's miscalculated, Jon. It may well turn out that he made exactly the right decision, but for all the wrong reasons. Your demand to have Katherina participate in the investigation has convinced us that you're the right person for the job.' She smiled, this time in a friendly and accommodating way, as if exonerating him.
'Thanks for your trust,' said Jon. 'But I've never been accused of being a puppet before. I think you're mistaken about Kortmann. It seems to me that he wants to get to the bottom of this, and that he'd like to see the Bibliophile Society reunited.'
'I hope you're right,' said Clara.
'It's possible that he did campaign for a split back then,' Jon went on. 'But I sense that today he regrets it, or at least he has come to doubt it was the right solution.' He shrugged. 'Maybe he has just become more mellow over the years.'
'Which brings us back to the starting point,' said Clara. 'What's happening now is damaging to all of us, so how can we help you, Jon? What are you going to do?'
No one said a word, and Jon felt as if a blinding spotlight had been directed at him, ready to show his slightest movement. He noticed that his palms grew warm, and he suppressed an urge to shift position in his chair.
'Weare going to start by studying the individual incidents,' Katherina broke in. 'It's important to find out for sure whether what's been happening was planned or just coincidence. If there's a connection, we have to ask: who might gain by doing this? And in that case, what would they get out of it?'
Jon nodded, sending her a grateful smile.
'I agree completely,' he said and then paused. 'I'm convinced that there's a connection between the events of today and what happened twenty years ago. That fact alone – a gap of twenty years – limits who might be involved.'
After the meeting Jon drove Katherina to her flat in the Nordvest district. They said very little during the drive. Jon was going over the meeting in his mind, but he had a hard time coming to any conclusion. In reality he ought to have been insulted to be called Kortmann's lapdog, yet he felt they did support him, even though he had come to Kortmann's defence. He sensed that the receivers expected even more from him than the transmitters did. They had hopes for what he might do – at the same time they had secrets they wouldn't voluntarily disclose, which he was going to have to dig up on his own.
'This is it,' said Katherina, pointing to a dull yellow building with green aluminium balconies. The exhaust from the traffic had turned the yellow brick almost grey in patches. Holes in the asphalt and the broken pavement bore witness to years of poor maintenance.
Katherina opened the car door but hesitated before getting out.
'I'm going to visit Iversen tomorrow,' she said. 'Would you like to come along?'
Jon nodded, prompting a warm smile to appear on her face.
'See you,' she said, putting her hand on top of his and giving it a squeeze. 'You did good today.'
She got out and closed the door behind her.
15
If time hadn't been on Katherina's side that day, they would have arrived too late to save Iversen.
It wasn't often that Katherina felt that time was particularly kind to her. She had often pondered what her life would have been like if circumstances had delayed her enough that certain events never took place or had turned out differently. If she'd been a little faster getting dressed on that morning when she went out with her parents in the car, or if she had insisted on changing clothes one more time, the accident never would have happened. The truck would have passed them by, either before or after that hill where her father was overtaking the tractor in front of them, and it would have left them uninjured and unaware of the family's alternative fate.
On those occasions when chance and timing coincided to her advantage, she didn't always recognize it as such. Yet she had given a lot of thought to what might have happened if she hadn't gone past Libri di Luca at just the right moment on that day when Luca was reading aloud fromThe Stranger. Katherina was convinced that if she had walked past either before or after Luca gave the reading, she never would have met Luca or Iversen or the receivers, and as a freelance she might have even gone insane or taken her own life.
That was why, afterwards, she appreciated the fact that Jon picked her up when he did, and not ten minutes later.
They met at the bookshop, where the glazier had just finished installing the new windows. After having so little daylight inside the shop, everything seemed transformed when the afternoon sun found its way through the new panes of glass. Columns of illuminated dust motes fell across the floor, and the letters of the shop's sign cast sharply delineated shadows on the exposed floorboards.
It was mid-afternoon, and Jon told her he'd decided to take a couple of days off, which had not been well received at the office. Even though the lawyers were entitled to do so, it was apparently frowned upon if they took time off in lieu of overtime pay. Extra hours were not regarded as time they could actually draw on; rather they were considered a status symbol, useful only for bragging rights or to substantiate their martyrdom.