“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.
Ajay 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.
Firm footsteps could be heard out in the corridor. The door suddenly opened, and a thickset man pressed the switch beside it, flooding the room with glaring light.