The Snowman (5 page)

“Come along, darling, let's have another!”

Blum freed himself for the second time, left the woman and went off with Larry towards the City Gate. The dentist's wife was shouting after him.

“I'll take you to Gozo,” said Larry. “You'll be safe from your girlfriend there.”

“Gozo?” Blum stopped. “What would I do on Gozo? Grow tomatoes?”

“Only trying to be helpful, mate. After all, I got you into this shit with Rossi.”

“Come off it, Larry. I've never had any trouble getting myself into the shit.”

They had reached the City Gate, where the stalls were closing down for the night. The Australian stared at Blum, whose eyes showed nothing.

“What're you going to do now, then?”

Blum compressed his lips. What he was going to do was no business of anyone else, not even an Australian who wanted to help him.

“See you some time.”

“Blum, wait!”

But Blum had already turned the corner.

After the taxi had rattled through Munich for half an eternity, Blum tapped the driver on the shoulder.

“This your first day on the job, is it?”

“Here we are, boss,” said the driver, stepping on the brake. Blum got out. It was perishing cold, but at least it wasn't snowing. The hotel was called the Metropol. He saw one wing of Munich Central Station opposite. The cab driver gave him change of 70 marks from a 100-mark note. Now he had just 170 marks, 25 dirham and 5 Maltese pounds. A porter offered to take his bag, but Blum waved him away. Then he had an idea.

“There's something waiting for me in left luggage. Could you fetch it? I've been flying for sixteen hours. I'm done in.”

“Of course, sir. At your service.”

Blum gave the porter the left-luggage receipt. During the flight from Frankfurt he had unfolded it and smoothed it out. The porter disappeared into the night with it. Blum went to the reception desk and asked about rooms. There was one vacant, DM 106 with bath and breakfast. He registered. In the box against “Profession” he wrote “Manager”. Then he looked around him. The lobby was spacious. A flight of steps led up to the restaurant in the gallery, which had a glass roof over it. Thick carpets, lots of crystal chandeliers, genuine fifties décor. He could hear the enticing clink of glasses from the bar at the far end of the lobby, and the
hoarse voice of an intoxicated woman, but Blum felt nervous and knew it would show. Either the Mafia would storm into the hotel next minute, or the porter was lying on the floor of the left-luggage office clutching his hands to a hole in his belly.

The clerk at reception had never taken his eyes off Blum. Now he cleared his throat and asked, “Where did you say you've just come from?”

Blum had said nothing about it at all. Now he replied, without thinking, “Rio.”

“I thought as much,” said the clerk. “I recognize the symptoms.”

“What symptoms?”

“Jetlag, effects of the climate change. It makes people all overwrought. I recommend a warm bath, not too hot because of the metabolism. It's still winter here, you know.”

Blum tried to smile, nodded, and lit a cigarette. Winter,
porca Madonna
. It had been snowing in Frankfurt, and when he spent twenty minutes standing in the spotlight in front of the security machine because his bag had been picked out for checking he felt like turning straight back. But not to return to Malta. The two hours he had to spend in the Luqa airport restaurant, because of course there were delays on Air Malta, were among those experiences he could happily have done without and would never forget. Sweating with terror, hands trembling, heart failure threatening every time someone looking even remotely Italian came into the restaurant . . . Blum had realized that almost all the Maltese could look Italian.

How much longer was the porter going to take? Blum fought down his stomach cramps. The clerk was still loafing about behind the reception desk, and now the telephonist was watching him too, so he withdrew
to the back of the lobby and finally ended up in the bar. Two Arabs in made-to-measure suits were sitting in a corner seat, conversing in low tones. The hoarse-voiced woman had the bar to herself.

“I won,” she told the barkeeper triumphantly. “He came in.”

The barkeeper looked at Blum, shrugging his shoulders. “What'll it be?”

“You mean me?”

The woman laughed. She was wearing a canary-yellow trouser suit which made her blonde hair look pale. She was perhaps no more than thirty-five, but the drink had already ravaged her face, and there was nothing make-up could do for it now. But her voice was so sexy that Blum felt a tug between his thighs.

“We had a bet,” she told him. “I saw you out in the lobby, and I told Tito here, I bet he'll be here in the bar in three minutes' time ordering a schnapps, am I right, Tito?”

“Don't call me Tito,” said the Yugoslavian. Then he looked impatiently at Blum. “A beer, maybe?”

“A cognac,” said Blum.

“Okay, this round's on Tito,” said the woman. She took a cigarette out of a case and leaned towards Blum for a light, holding his wrist. She wore expensive-looking jewellery. The varnish was flaking off her fingernails, and her perfume smelled a little stale too.

“So how did you know I'd come into the bar?”

“I know the symptoms, darling.”

Blum almost choked on his cognac. Maybe the Germans had gone out of their minds while he was away and now spent their time sitting in hotel lobbies, pinpointing other people's symptoms.

“You really did need that cognac, see?”

“True,” said Blum. “I'm just back from the Amazon. I've had nothing to drink there for a year but liana wine.”

She liked that. She looked at Blum as if ready to fall into his arms any minute. Blum moved slightly away.

“So what were you doing there? Teaching the Indians how to speculate on the stock market? My last husband did that so well they're letting him give courses on it in Stadelheim. You know what Stadelheim is?”

Blum nodded, and glanced at the time. He'd give the porter three more minutes.

“Yes, he was a good con man, my Fritzi, but he conned me best of all. Do they have con men in Amazonia?”

“Of course. The con trick rules the world.”

“You say that so – so casually. Well, how do you like Germany these days?”

“It's overwhelming. In every way,” said Blum.

“Doing anything this evening?”

Her glance was so desperate that Blum felt fear. This really was one fear too many.

“Yes, I have to meet some business colleagues.”

“Here you are, sir,” said the porter at this moment, putting a carton down on the bar stool next to Blum. The carton had a red and white label on it saying “Old Spice Shaving Foam”.

“Oh, so
that's
your line of business,” said the blonde, looking away, suddenly bored. Blum paid the porter, picked up the carton and carried it to the lift, his face red, and in the lift he wondered what line of business she meant – sales rep, pharmacist or simply a poor sap? His face in the lift mirror showed nothing but bafflement. Probably a combination of all three, he thought. A poor sap who works as sales rep for a pharmacist.

When he reached room 316 he put the carton down on the bed, took off his jacket, turned up the central heating, glanced out of the window and drew the curtain.

Shaving foam.

Old Spice shaving foam.

A carton full of Old Spice shaving foam in the leftluggage office of Munich Central. The receipt stuck inside the wig of an Italian allegedly called Rossi, last seen on 13 March in the Villa Aurora, St Paul's Bay, Malta. Malta, an island state in the Mediterranean, halfway between Sicily and Africa, form of government “democratic republic”, faith Roman Catholic, right, Inspector? Population 320,000, exports early spring vegetables, Mediterranean fruits, immigrant workers, cleaning ladies. And no art treasures. A smuggler's boat, Larry had said. To smuggle Old Spice shaving foam? Where to? Jeddah? Mr Faq might have considered even that good business. Sorry, Mr
Haq
. Hassan Abdul Haq.
Madonna salvani
. He opened the carton.

Old Spice shaving foam. Not a doubt about it. Twenty jumbo cans of Old Spice shaving foam, 10 fl oz net, from the firm of Shulton, New York – London – Paris. He read the printed wording: “CAUTION: Pressurized cans. Do not heat above 122°F (keep out of direct sunlight). After use do not force open or burn. Do not spray on naked flames or heated bodies.” That sounded
ominous. What did they mean, heated bodies? His own body was feeling heated now, for instance. And it didn't sound safe to move around with this stuff in the desert. No Old Spice for Jeddah, Mr Haq.

Why would an Italian, resident in Malta, hide a leftluggage receipt for twenty jumbo spray cans of shaving cream inside his wig? Because he stole it. The wop goes about looking like a total twat with his blow-dried ringlets, but they're just acting as a hiding place. He stole it, of course, and now I've got it. You steal my porn mags, I'll steal your left-luggage receipt. But what are twenty cans of shaving foam worth? Well, not $550, anyway. Unless . . .

Blum took off his shirt and then his boots too, his Spanish ankleboots. The sweat was running down him, in spite of the cold temperature of this small room with its man-made fibre carpet and plastic furniture, and the tarty pink lamp over the creaking single bed. He picked up a can, blew the wood-wool packing off it, and shook it. It weighed rather heavy in his hand, and something inside moved. Then he took off the white plastic cap and carefully pressed the dispenser. Hm. Not much pressure there. A little air, then a squiggle of white foam on his thumb. He smelled it. Again, no doubt: that was the “fresh, masculine fragrance of Old Spice” as promised on the can. Astringent whipped cream.

Blum went into the bathroom and sprayed another squiggle of shaving foam into the tub. Then the can uttered a sigh, and no more came out. Not a generous amount of foam for a 10-ounce can. Definitely a lot of wastage. But the can was still heavy. It must weigh half a pound, probably more. And all the others, he discovered, were equally heavy. Blum felt a tingling under his scalp. Keep out of this, my friend, a voice warned
him, but it was not a particularly loud voice. It made little headway against the other voices he was hearing, and none at all against the tingling.

He sat down on the floor with the can and his pen-knife, and removed the plastic dispenser. Two cigarette lengths down in the can, he found a cellophane bag of white power and fished it out. Then he opened the cellophane bag, touched a damp finger to the powder, and tasted it.

“For someone who's spent a year in the Med you don't look good,” said the man, who himself looked white as a sheet and did not move from his leather sofa.

“I haven't had much sleep recently,” said Blum, stirring the sugar in his coffee cup. “And life everywhere is just as hectic as here.”

“Right again. No one really needs to set foot out of the door these days.”

Blum looked at the view. Old snow lay on the rooftops. The sky was like a dirty asphalt lid above them, and that was about all you could see from up in this penthouse. The northern parts of Munich were not a particularly attractive sight on a Sunday in March.

“Great view, right?”

“At least you've solved the suicide problem here, Hermes.”

Hermes smiled and lit his Gauloise with a gold lighter. He was a thin man of about average height and uncertain age, and always wore black. The penthouse was sparsely furnished, but the sparse furnishings themselves were top quality, and they were drinking Jamaican coffee. A large pot stood on a hotplate. The girl on the double bed was top quality too, Eurasian and aged seventeen at the most. She was reading Camus,
L'Homme révolté
. Blum took an HB out of its crumpled packet and lit it with his disposable lighter.

“But you didn't crawl out of bed or some stand-up bar this fine day, and take a plane to Munich, just to discuss my suicide problems, am I right?”

Hermes's voice gave no clue to his origins. With his black hair combed back and his aquiline nose, he could have been Levantine, but Blum happened to know that he had come to Berlin in 1965 from a small town in Lower Saxony, and since then had been in the drugs trade without ever having trouble with the police. Maybe he had a couple of irons in the fire at this very moment. The Eurasian girl turned a page and chewed her thumbnail. Hermes gave an Oriental kind of smile.

“No,” said Blum at last.

“Good,” said Hermes, with that smile. “So what's it all about?”

“Cocaine,” said Blum.

The Eurasian girl cast him a fleeting glance – the first since he had entered the penthouse – and ran her hand through the silky hair that fell to her knees. Hermes frowned.

“You want some cocaine from me?”

“No, I have some.”

“Well, Blum, I must say you surprise me.”