Strindberg's Star (27 page)

A red and white canopy hung droopily over the hotel’s outdoor seating, and it took a long time for the night receptionist to come down and open up. He just waved tiredly at them when Don tried to explain why they didn’t have passports and identification.

In return for a cash payment up front, the old man unhooked a key from the cabinet behind the reception desk. Then without further questions, he limped ahead of them up a steep staircase to the fourth floor of the hotel. There he opened a run-down room that had wallpaper in a large pattern and whose barred windows looked out at the facade of Cloth Hall.

When the night receptionist had disappeared, they lay down side by side on the bedspread of the double bed, to rest a bit more before
morning came. But it wasn’t long before they had both fallen asleep, exhausted by the long train trip.

W
hen Don woke up around nine and caught sight of himself in the hotel room’s mirror, he realized that they really should take Hex’s advice. The arms of his jacket were ripped from his climb out of the cellar window on Djurgården, and brown traces of dirt ran along his corduroy legs.

Eva didn’t look particularly elegant either, sitting there in a chair in her wrinkled clothes. One lower leg was still wrapped in a bandage, and red flecks of blood were visible on her left shoe.

Don suggested that they try to get new clothes even before breakfast. When Eva nodded, he helped her up, and out in the hall he kindly offered his arm as support. But then Eva said a bit irritably that she could make it down the steep stairs on her own. And as they walked across the large square in the September sun, he noticed that she wasn’t limping at all now.

D
on had imagined that the matter would be quickly taken care of, but an hour or so later they were still walking around the lanes near Grote Markt looking for the right kind of clothes for the attorney. For his part, he had grabbed a salt-and-pepper suit in the first good store, and he had changed in the fitting room.

The old corduroy jacket with the postcard was now dangling in a yellow plastic bag in his hand, and Don was doing his utmost not to start complaining. The attorney turned out to have very particular taste and would not tolerate any objections. Not until they were on a back street far from the main street, Rijselsestraat, did they finally find a boutique of a sufficiently conservative type.

Because a group of older women were elbowing their way forth among the piles of clothes in there, Don stationed himself outside the boutique and waited until he saw Eva waving at him through the glass of the display window.

Up by the cash register, she had already put on the clothes she had picked out. The attorney seemed to have gotten stuck in some sort of 1940s style: wide trousers with creases, a white satin blouse, and a moss-green trench coat with a silk scarf.

The dirty two-piece suit lay in a pile on the counter, and Eva explained to the shop assistant in French that those old rags could be burned for all she cared. The assistant answered pointedly that
French
was not spoken in
Ieper
or the rest of West Flanders and that it was better to try English or, even better,
Flemish,
if one wished to get an answer. Then a girdle and some salmon-pink silk stockings disappeared down into a small package, which the assistant handed over, and the cash register jingled.

Fortunately, the attorney found a shoe store that turned out to be good enough a few doors down. And after Don had paid for a pair of tall, shiny boots of Italian leather with the euro bills that Hex had sent along, Eva was finally satisfied.

T
hey slowly walked back over Grote Markt and sat down at the hotel’s outdoor seating, in the shadow of the canopy. The continental breakfast was still spread on the table, along with a colorful tourist brochure that Don had picked up in the hotel.

On the front it said “Ypres—city of peace,” and in the middle of the brochure, there was a map of the central parts of the city.

As Don looked out across the square and saw the busloads of tourists pouring out in the direction of Cloth Hall and the war monument, it struck him that he and Eva probably looked like a middle-aged couple on the run from a tour group. But because the idea had been to travel as anonymously as possible, that wasn’t really a problem.

“‘A more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world,’” Don read aloud from the tourist brochure, to perfect the illusion.

Eva looked up from her breakfast and used her napkin to wipe her mouth.

“That’s what Sir Winston Churchill said about Ypres.”

He pointed down at the quote, which was blown up in large letters above a cemetery of white crosses.

“Ieper,”
said Eva. “That’s what Churchill said about
Ieper.
”

“The city is called Ypres in French, and that’s what it was called by the French and English during the First World War,” said Don. “And the cathedral here”—he flipped back to the map in the middle of the brochure and pointed to a small color picture—“its French name, as far as I understand, is Saint Martin d’Ypres.”

“And I am certain that those who live here want to call it Sint Maarten,” Eva said drily. “But if you were thinking about devoting yourself to sightseeing, I think that’s a bad idea. It’s probably better to assume that the Belgian police already have access to photographs of us.” When she saw that Don was skeptical, Eva continued: “One of the partners at Afzelius hinted that the National Police sent out an international alert yesterday. I got hold of him from the hotel while you were sleeping.”

Don looked out over the square as he slowly stirred his spoon in his coffee cup.

“I see,” Don said at last. “Did the guy at Afzelius say anything else?”

“He asked questions about where we were, which I assume he had been requested to do if I were to make contact.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“What happened. That we had left the country in a private freight car and that now we’re in a small city somewhere in the northwestern part of the European continent.”

Eva pushed her plate away.

“No, I hung up, of course. If you like, I can check with some of my old criminal lawyer colleagues in Stockholm, whether they want to help, but …”

She sighed.

“But I really don’t know, Don.”

He looked down at the traces of coffee grounds. Then they sat in
silence for a while, until Don made up his mind: “I actually think that’s Saint Martin’s Cathedral that you can see over there.”

He pointed at a Gothic spire that rose up just behind the enormous Cloth Hall. Eva compared it to the picture on the map, and then she nodded curtly.

“As I was trying to say …” she began.

“But that’s not what the cathedral looked like
before
the war,” said Don.

He stuck in his hand and pulled his old, dirty corduroy coat out of the yellow plastic bag, laid it across his lap, and felt along the inside of the lining to find the stiff contour of cardboard. He fished up the postcard with the aged photograph turned toward Eva.

“You can see here,” said Don, pointing at the yellowed picture. “Before the war, Saint Martin d’Ypres had a much shorter square tower, and the rose window was much smaller.”

Eva looked at the picture for a long time without saying anything. Then she put down her wineglass and took the postcard out of his hand. She turned it over carefully and sighed as she caught sight of the short lines on the back.

“And this … ?” she asked, without lifting her gaze.

“I found it in Erik Hall’s bedroom,” said Don. “During our last conversation, he mentioned something about another object he had found down in the mine, besides the ankh. Some kind of document that was difficult to decipher. I guess this is what he was referring to.”

“You guess?”

“It was the only item in his room that was about a hundred years old and didn’t reek of porn.”

“So, you
did
do some snooping around at Erik Hall’s house then,” she said. “What else is there that you haven’t told me about what happened?”

“That I was the one who hit him in the head with that bottle.”

The attorney looked inquiringly at Don, without smiling. Then she
turned her attention to the postcard:
“Les suprêmes adieux,”
she said. “The final farewells.”

Eva placed it between them on the table, with the lines of blue ink facing up. She seemed to disappear in her thoughts for a while before she said, “La Cathédrale Saint Martin d’Ypres, you were saying.”

Don showed her the printed letters in the upper corner of the postcard.

“A photograph taken a few years before the war,” he continued. “No stamp, no address, just that short verse.”

“And he’s the one who wrote it,” said the attorney.

“Erik Hall?”

“No,” she mumbled, a bit absentmindedly, “no, not Erik Hall, it must be the man in the mine who wrote it, I assume.”

“Yes, we could probably assume that,” said Don.

“But why didn’t you show this to Eberlein?”

He considered this but couldn’t come up with a good answer.

Eva let the matter rest, drank the last drops of wine, and moved the postcard a bit closer. Then she read the words aloud, one by one, as they had once been written down over the shape of a red mouth.

“
La bouche de mon amour Camille Malraux
… This is my beloved Camille Malraux’s mouth … or lips, I suppose?” Eva said, touching the faded lipstick.

“Cherchez la femme,”
said Don.

“So that’s why we’re here?”

“Well, we had to have some destination.”

Eva mumbled the woman’s name to herself again, and then she continued to read: “
L’homme vindicatif
… the vindictive man,
l’immensité de son désir
… his tremendous desire, and
les suprêmes adieux
… the final farewells. Written on the twenty-second of April …”

“Nineteen thirteen. One year before World War One broke out.”

Eva slowly leaned back in her chair, and then she said with a crooked smile: “And this was what was so important to keep hidden from Eberlein and the Germans? A kiss and a few lines of poetry, written to a beloved woman almost a hundred years ago?”

Don shrugged. Then he took the postcard from the table and put it in his shoulder bag. He signaled to the waiter for the check.

“So what’s your plan?” asked Eva as she stood up. “To try to find this Camille Malraux? Why would she still be in Ypres?”

“Can you think of a better place to start looking?”

She looked at him hesitantly.

“Do you really think this will improve your case? An old postcard?”

“There could be some kind of connection, right?” said Don. “The murder of Erik Hall, Eberlein’s story, Strindberg’s navigational instrument, and these few words directed a long time ago to a woman. If we found out more about her, maybe we could find some clue that could help explain the mystery behind the man in the mine, and Erik Hall’s death. Besides, I really have a problem with walking away from dark hidden secrets. My experience is that they are better off being exposed to the light.”

“It could be worth a try, I guess,” said Eva slowly. “Right now we really don’t have anything to lose.”

“So you’ll help me then?” Don made an effort to sound casual, as he took the roll of euros out of his pocket and unrolled a few bills.

“Well, why not?” said Eva. Then she smiled, noticing his surprise. “The client is always right, as they say. And after what happened at Villa Lindarne, I need to find out the truth behind this as much as
you do. You’ve got me wanted for aiding escape and for battery on an officer, remember?”

She started to put on her trench coat.

“So where do we begin?”

“Maybe there’s someone here in Ypres who knew this Camille Malraux,” said Don, rising up from the table. “She must have died a long time ago, of course. She could have left behind papers that explain …”

He became quiet when he realized how far-fetched that sounded.

“You’re awfully negative sometimes, you know,” Eva said, as she took hold of his arm. “She might have good genes, Camille. Who knows, maybe she’s still alive.”

A
t first, the stiffly smiling information officer in the overcrowded tourist center inside Cloth Hall didn’t even try to understand Don’s question. But then, probably mostly to get the line moving once again, the woman behind the counter suggested that they begin by searching for historical documents at the Ypres city archive. All the registers of births and deaths, marriages, immigration, and emigration were there. And not only those from the city of Ypres, but from all of Westhoek, the district of West Flanders.

The city archive was the starting point that most people chose for their genealogical research, the information officer said. In some cases, she had heard, such personal details as copies of wills, courtroom proceedings, and sometimes even personal letters could be found there. And Camille Malraux really was quite an unusual name, of course, at least in the Flemish part of Belgium.

Then the information officer depressed an angry red button on a small box, there was a beep, and a new queue number flashed up on the digital screen above her head.

D
on convinced Eva to take a taxi with him out of the historical district, past the medieval walls. When they had passed a stone-paved
bridge over a canal, the aspect of the city suddenly changed and became modern and lacking in character. It was as though the money for rebuilding hadn’t been enough to include this area.

The city archive and city library shared an entrance in a box-shaped structure of red brick and glass on Weverijstraat. On the way into the entrance, there were signs in five languages advertising that there was more than 425,000 feet of shelves full of precious documents preserved here.