When the Devil Holds the Candle (23 page)

"No, we didn't have..."

He checked himself. The words had come pouring out of him.
I don't remember, I don't remember.
He was floating away like a scrap of paper on the rushing stream that was this man.

"You didn't have what?"

"He met someone." The words just popped out.

"Ah! He met someone?"

Zipp didn't look up, but if he had, he would have seen Sejer's wry smile.

"Who, Zipp?"

"I didn't know them."

He stifled a silent curse. Who the hell had put that reply into his mouth? Now he would be asked why he hadn't told this to the other officer when he came to his house. Okay, so he'd forgotten about it. That wasn't so bad. This man would have to prove he, Zipp, was lying even though the air was thick with lies.

"Excellent that you remembered that," Sejer said with satisfaction. "That's what I always say. Things come back to you more clearly over time. And you're in a difficult situation, after all. Your best friend is missing, and you're worried about him."

Zipp pictured Andreas trapped somewhere, alone in the dark. That white house. He didn't understand it. A lump was forming in his throat and tears came to his eyes. But maybe that was to his advantage, showing how worried he was.

"Two guys," he said, with his eyes lowered. "They came over to us in the square."

"Two men?"

"Yes."

"Young men?"

"Older than us. Thirty, maybe."

"Had you ever seen them before?"

"No."

"But Andreas knew them?"

"It looked like it."

A long pause. Way too long. Either Sejer was thinking over this information, this utter lie, this wild fantasy, or he was amused by it. What if Andreas showed up and told his own version?
Am I assuming that he's never going to show up? Have I written him off? No, I'm a good friend!

"All right. Tell me more."

"Tell you what?"

He was on thin ice now, suspended precariously over the cold deep. Images flew past his eyes: Andreas's burning cheeks, the baby with the toothless gums.

"We sat on a bench. They were standing near the fountain. Andreas said he had to take off. And then they left. I don't know where they went. I was actually a bit pissed off."

Then Zipp shut up. His coffee cup was still untouched. He would have taken a sip, but he didn't trust his hands. Sejer had no such problem. He took sip after sip, without making a sound. Zipp's last words hung in the room: "I was actually a bit pissed off." He had made it up, but there was truth in the lie. If that had really happened, if they had been sitting on the bench and Andreas had suddenly taken off, he really would have been irritated. He reached this conclusion with a certain pride.

"But Andreas—didn't he spend all his time with you?"

Zipp squirmed. "I thought so."

"Thornegata," said Sejer suddenly.

Zipp glanced up.

"You mentioned to Andreas's mother when she called that you said good-bye to each other on Thornegata."

"I don't remember," he said quickly.

"I mention it because there must be some reason why you thought of that particular street. You remembered wrongly, of course, we've already ascertained that, but for some reason your brain still made that choice. Maybe you were in the vicinity of Thornegata sometime that evening?"

Zipp felt bewildered.

"It just slipped out. A short circuit," he said.

"It happens," Sejer conceded.

He got up and opened the window. The September air swept in.

"What do you think has happened?" Sejer said. He was sitting down again.

"Shit. I have no idea."

"But you must have some thoughts about it."

"Yes."

"Could you tell me?"

Zipp thought hard. It occurred to him that what had started as "just a conversation" now felt very much like an interrogation.

"I've thought of everything!" he said with a sudden, fierce sincerity. "That he went off and hanged himself. Anything at all."

"Is that something he might do?"

"No. Or rather, I don't know." He thought about the cemetery. "I don't know," he repeated.

"Was there something bothering him?"

"He never said so."

"Did he talk much about himself?"

"Never."

Sejer went over to a green filing cabinet, took out some papers and leafed through them. Zipp craned his neck, but he was sitting too far away to see. Sejer took something from a folder and pushed it across the desk.

"What do you say, Zipp?" he said solemnly. His eyes were piercing. "Is he still alive?"

Zipp stared at the photograph of Andreas. "I just don't know!" he stammered.

"Is there any reason to assume that he might be dead?"

"I don't know!" he stammered again. He had a horrible feeling that he had fallen into a trap. "Do you think he's dead?" he asked flatly.

Sejer propped the picture up against the coffeepot.

"Zipp. Why are you lying?" he said.

There it was at last! He'd known it would come, sooner or later. He was fully prepared for it! The question hit him like a rubber ball and bounced back. There wasn't a mark on him.

"I don't know anything," he intoned.

"Those guys at the square. Can we drop them?"

"I don't know where they were going," Zipp said.

"Were they really there at all?"

"I only saw them from a distance."

"How many were there?"

What had he said before? Two? Or three?

"Two or three. I don't remember."

"Are you worried about your best friend?"

"Of course!" Zipp gave him a hurt look. At the same time, he tried to work out what the man wanted.

"Then why won't you help me?"

"I am helping. But I don't remember!" He was losing control—he was totally out of it. "I've told you everything I know. Can I go now?"

"No"

"I'm not under arrest, am I?"

"You can't go yet."

"Why not?"

"I haven't finished with you."

Zipp felt as if he were slowly falling. The truth began to look like an easier solution. He understood everything, why people confessed, even to things they hadn't done—anything
to escape interrogation. He swayed on his chair. Danger was threatening from every direction, blowing in through the window, crawling up his legs. A ghastly future that he didn't want. Prosecution and sentencing, the baby's mother in the front row, staring at him as he stood in the witness box. A judge, clad in black robes, crashing a huge gavel against Zipp's chest, knocking his heart off of its rhythm, so it faltered, so he couldn't breathe. Years alone in a space two yards by three. He felt faint. A rushing and a sinking in his head at the same time. He wanted to hide. He reached for the coffee cup, saw his own hand come into view to pick it up, but he missed and it fell. Coffee splashed over the desk, dripped onto his thighs, and burned through his clothes.

***

I told Andreas that Zipp had called. I thought he would shout at me, but he didn't have the strength. He didn't look as if he even cared. I didn't understand it. Perhaps he was using the time to reconcile himself with the worst possibility, that he might die down there in the cellar. Alone, among the potatoes and spiders and mice. We human beings are amazing. We can handle most situations, given time. He didn't want to talk; he shut me out. I didn't let it upset me, just stood there for a while, fiddling with the buttons on my jacket, tormenting him with my presence. Then I went back upstairs and started rummaging in the drawers and cupboards. I was particular about what would be left behind. I'd collected a lot of papers and the majority of my clothes in sacks. I didn't have much time. Andreas was worn out. I'd liked him better when he'd whimpered and pleaded, but now he didn't want anything. He closed his eyes when I stood on the stairs. I slammed doors and stomped on the floor. I was the only one he had! He said he wasn't in any pain, but I didn't believe him. He didn't want to give me the satisfaction of knowing that
he suffered. Maybe he didn't want to go on, in any case, didn't want to leave the cellar and go to a hospital, or be rolled along in a wheelchair with all those memories. Some lives are too difficult to endure. Maybe that's what he was thinking. I couldn't comfort him. He didn't deserve any comfort. He shouldn't have come here.

Waves of despair seized hold of me, unpredictable attacks of panic. I could hardly recognize myself. None of us deserved this, none of us wanted this. Andreas had been a bolt from the blue and I was the one he had struck. I started laughing. These past few days, everything that had happened, it was all incomprehensible. Unreal. A young boy on the cellar floor in the house of an old woman? What a story! I pulled myself away and went to the window. Sometime I would have to eat something. I hadn't eaten in ages. I saw an end to my despair, a sudden clarity, and let go of everything I was holding. Things couldn't get any worse than this: it was important to put an end to this ridiculous performance once and for all. He had suffered enough. He had learned his lesson. I stood up, opened the trapdoor, and yelled down the stairs. "I'm going to the police station. They're going to come and get you soon!"

He probably didn't believe me. I was very tired. The police could do what they liked with me, I didn't care. Andreas could explain. He was the one who had started it all.

***

"Do you feel sick, Zipp? You look pale."

Sejer was wiping up the coffee on the desk, using paper towels from a holder by the sink. Zipp was busy holding on to the edge of the desk and didn't answer. His body had betrayed him. It didn't matter: the policeman was a genuine enemy, no longer pretending to be friendly. Now he would use other methods, strike harder, maybe even threaten him. It was a relief, in a way:
now Zipp knew where he stood and could no longer be seduced or duped. He ground his teeth. Sejer, watching him, recognized the signs, he'd seen them all, in hundreds of other conversations. It was a relief for him too: they had reached a new phase. He knew the pattern, the gestures, the body language. The tension in the room was still rising, with a hint of anger, but underneath there was fear. What could those two have done on that fateful night? He looked at Zipp, genuinely curious.

"I hope, both for God's and Andreas's sake, that you have good reasons for keeping quiet," he said sharply.

Zipp didn't let himself be provoked. He was a solid wall with no openings, not so much as a crack. The truth felt heavy, but secure inside him. He was impregnable.

"Is Andreas alive?"

Zipp took his time. He was not in a hurry.

"I don't know."

That was true. It was too easy. He almost had to hold back a smile.

"What did you fight about?"

"We didn't fight"

Sejer folded his arms. "This isn't just about you. He has a mother who's scared and a father who's worried. You know something that might help us. If we have to carry him home in a bag, you're going to blame yourself for the rest of your life."

That was harsh, but Zipp had to admit that it was true.

"None of this is my fault," he said.

"What do you mean by 'this'?"

"I don't know."

He put on the brakes again. It surprised him how difficult it actually was not to say anything at all. The gray eyes were so intense, demanding something from him, drawing him out.

"Have you ever seen a dead man?"

He hadn't. He hadn't wanted to see his father, back then, a long time ago. He didn't answer.

"The first time is always overwhelming. It takes your breath away. The realization that we're all going to die."

Zipp was listening. He was scared by this seriousness, by how much he didn't know. He felt a fool. Then he pushed the feeling aside. He wasn't a fool, just very unlucky.

"If the dead person is someone you knew well, the feeling is doubly strong. He's lying there, but he's not lying there. A wall has fallen away."

Sejer paused. His mother's dead face appeared in his mind's eye. "The two of you shared so much, the way best friends do. How are you getting along without him?"

Zipp pursed his lips. His throat felt tight, his eyes stung, but he didn't blink. He just hoped that the water filling his eyes wouldn't spill over the lids and become tears. Although that might look good. He was in despair, God damn it. But the inspector had more up his sleeve; he could hear it in his voice. This was only the beginning.

"How would you feel if you were indirectly the cause of someone's death?"

The question almost made him burst out laughing, but he controlled himself. They might never find out who had been responsible for the business with that baby. Maybe it would be best if Andreas were dead. The thought crossed his mind, sudden and unasked, yet pragmatic. That scared him. Did he wish Andreas dead? No, of course he didn't, but if Andreas did turn up, wouldn't everything come out? Who they were, what they had done? He'd rather be alone for the rest of his life than have to take the blame for that baby. He had to fix his eyes on something. Study every little detail, describe it accurately and exactly in his mind, the way prisoners did when they sat in their cells. The man's tie: gray-blue, embroidered with tiny cherries.

"Zipp. There's something I have to tell you."

Now it was coming! He knew it! His hairline: straight and even, his thick hair the color of steel.

"You've wrapped yourself up in a great feeling of calm. That's no art. Anyone can do that. I can't reach you. But what you're doing demands deep concentration."

Some speech! He must have learned it on a course. His hands: big, the fingers long, the nails clean and white. Fucking meticulous, this man. His lapel: there was a pin in it, shaped like an umbrella.

"The problem is that deep concentration takes so much energy. You can hold on to it for a while, but then it slips away from you. Tell me what you know. What you are doing is just a delay. And a delay wastes time—time we could be using to find Andreas. We could call his mother and say, 'We've found him, Mrs. Winther. And he's all right.'" He leaned across the desk. "'Thanks to Zipp, who came to his senses.'"

I'm not coming to my senses, it's as simple as that. I don't care, I just don't give a damn.