Woman with Birthmark (2 page)

As agreed, the new tenant moved in on Sunday, January 14, the evening before she was due to begin a three-month course for finance managers at the Elizabeth Institute. She paid for six weeks in advance, and after receiving the necessary instructions (explained in a most friendly manner and lasting less than a minute), she took possession of the red room. Mrs. Klausner knew the importance of respecting her tenants' privacy: as long as she was not disturbed in her reading or during the night, and they didn't fly at each other's throats, she found no reason to interfere in whatever they got up to. Everything was based on unspoken mutual respect, and so far—after thirteen years in the business—she had not experienced any serious disappointments or setbacks.

People are good, she used to tell herself. They treat us as we treat them.

There was a mirror hanging over the little sink in the kitchen alcove, and when she had finished unpacking her bags she stood in front of it for a couple of minutes and contemplated her new face.

She had not changed much, but the effect was astounding.
With her hair cut short and dyed brown, with no makeup and wearing round, metal-framed spectacles, she suddenly looked like a librarian or a bored handicrafts teacher. Nobody would have recognized her, and just for a moment—as she stood there making faces and trying out angles—she had the distinct feeling that she was somebody else.

New features and a new name. A new town and a mission that only six months ago would have seemed to her like the ravings of a lunatic, or a bad joke.

But here she was. She tried one more time—the last one?—to see if she could find any trace of doubt or uncertainty, but no matter how deep the soundings she made into her soul, all she came up against was solid rock. Solid and unyielding ground, and it was clear to her that it was time to begin.

Begin in earnest. Her list was complete in every respect, and even if three months can be quite a long period, there was no reason to mark time in the early stages. On the contrary: every name required its own meticulous planning, its own specific treatment, and it was better to make full use of the early days and avoid being under stress toward the end. Once she had started on her mission, and people had caught on to what was happening, she would naturally need to be on the alert for problems. Everybody would be on the lookout—the general public, the police, her opponents.

That was the way it had to be. It was all dictated by the circumstances.

But she was already convinced that she would not have any worries. No insurmountable ones, at least, and as she lay on her bed that first night and examined her gun, she could feel that the scale of the challenge would doubtless make the allure that little bit stronger.

That little bit more exciting and more enjoyable.

I'm crazy, she thought. Completely and utterly mad.

But it was a daring and irresistible madness. And who could blame her, after all?

She looked at the list of names again. Studied them one by one. She had already decided who would be first, but even so, she pretended to reconsider it one more time.

Then she breathed a sigh of satisfaction and drew two thick red lines around his name. Lit a cigarette and started to think through how she would go about it.

It was not a part of Ryszard Malik's normal routine to drink two large whiskeys before dinner, but he had a good reason to do so today.

Two reasons, in fact. The contract he had long been negotiating with Winklers had collapsed, despite two hours of intensive telephone discussions during the afternoon, and when he finally left the office he discovered that a sudden cold snap had transformed the streets, soaking wet after all the rain, into an ice rink. If it had been exclusively up to him, there would, of course, have been no problem—not for nothing did he have thirty years of blameless driving behind him, and he had often driven on slippery roads. But he wasn't the only one out. The rush-hour traffic from the center of town to the residential districts and garden suburbs was still in evidence. It happened just before the roundabout in Hagmaar Allé: a white, Swiss-registered Mercedes going much too fast slid into the back of his Renault. He swore under his breath, unfastened his safety belt, and got out of the car to survey the damage and argue about what to do next. Right taillight smashed, rather a large dent in the fender, and two deep scratches in the paintwork. Various unlikely excuses, some forced politeness, an exchange of business cards and
insurance-company details—it all took a considerable time, and it was over forty minutes later when he was able to continue his journey home.

Malik didn't like coming home late. Admittedly his wife rarely had dinner ready before seven, but an hour, preferably an hour and a half, with the newspaper and a whiskey and water in his study was something he was reluctant to miss.

Over the years it had become a habit, and a necessary one at that. A sort of buffer between work and a wife growing increasingly conscious of her importance.

Today there was time for only a quarter of an hour. And it was to go some way toward compensating for the loss—of both the precious minutes and his taillight—that he skipped the newspaper and devoted all his attention to the whiskey instead.

Well, not quite all. There were those telephone calls as well. What the devil was it all about? “The Rise and Fall of Flingel Bunt.” What the hell was the point of phoning somebody and then playing an old sixties hit? Over and over again.

Or once a day, at any rate. Ilse had answered twice, and he had taken one of the calls. It had started the day before yesterday. He hadn't mentioned to her that whoever it was had called again yesterday evening…. No need to worry her unnecessarily. No need to tell her that he recognized the tune, either.

Quite early in the sixties, if he remembered rightly. The Shadows. 'Sixty-four or 'sixty-five, presumably. Irrelevant anyway: the question was what the hell it signified, if it signified anything at all. And who was behind it? Perhaps it was just a loony. Some out-of-work screwball who had nothing better to do than to phone decent citizens and stir up a bit of trouble.

It was probably no more than that. Obviously, one could consider
bringing in the police if it continued, but so far at least it was no more than a minor irritation. Which was bad enough on a day like today.

A pain in the ass, as Wolff would have put it. A scratch in the paintwork or a shattered taillight.

There came his wife's call. The food was on the table, it seemed. He sighed. Downed the rest of the whiskey and left his study.

“It's nothing to get worked up about.”

“I'm not getting worked up.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“You always think I'm getting worked up. That's typical of the way you regard women.”

“All right. Let's talk about something else. This sauce is not bad at all. What have you put in it?”

“A
drop of Madeira. You've had it fifty times before. I listened for longer today.”

“Really?”

“A
minute, at least. There was nothing else.”

“What else did you expect there to be?”

“What else did I expect there to be? A voice, of course. Most people who make a phone call have something to say.”

“I expect there's a natural explanation.”

“Oh yes? What, for example? Why ring somebody and just play a piece of music?”

Malik took a large sip of wine and thought that one over.

“Well,” he said. “A new radio station, or something of the sort.”

“That's the silliest thing I've ever heard.”

He sighed.

“Are you sure it was the same song both times?”

She hesitated. Stroked her brow with her index finger, the way she did when a migraine attack was in the offing.

“I think so. The first time, I put the phone down after only a few seconds. Like I said.”

“Don't worry about it. It's bound to be just a mistake.”

“A mistake? How could that be a mistake?”

Hold your tongue, he thought. Stop nagging, or I'll throw this glass of wine in your face!

“I don't know,” he said. “Let's drop the subject. I had a little accident today.”

“An accident?”

“Nothing serious. Somebody skidded into me from behind.”

“Good Lord! Why didn't you say something?”

“It was a minor thing. Nothing to speak of.”

“Nothing to speak of? You always say that. What shall we speak about then? You tell me. We receive some mysterious telephone calls, but we should just ignore them. You have a car accident, and you don't think it's even worth mentioning to your wife. That's so typical. What you mean, of course, is that we should just sit here every evening without saying a word. That's the way you want it. Quiet and peaceful. I'm not even worth talking to anymore.”

“Rubbish. Don't be silly.”

“Maybe there's a connection.”

“Connection? What the hell do you mean?”

“The telephone calls and the car crash, of course. I hope you took his number?”

My God, Malik thought, and gulped down the rest of the
wine. There's something wrong with her. Pure paranoia. No wonder the hotel wanted to sack her.

“Have you heard anything from Jacob?” He tried to change the subject, but realized his error the moment the words left his mouth.

“Not for two weeks. He's too much like you, it would never occur to him to phone us. Unless he needed some money, of course.”

The hell he would, Malik thought, and hoped that his grim inner smile wouldn't shine through to the outside. He had spoken to their son a couple of times in the last few days, without having to shell out a single guilder. And although he would never admit it, he regarded his son's passive distancing of himself from his mother as a healthy development, and a perfectly natural one.

“Ah well,” he said, wiping his lips with a napkin. “That's the way young people are nowadays. Is there anything worth watching on the box tonight?”

When the fifth call came, he was lucky enough to be able to answer it himself. Ilse was still watching the Hungarian feature movie on Channel 4, and when he answered it on the bedroom extension he was able to tell the anonymous disturber of the peace to go to hell in no uncertain terms, without a risk of her hearing him and guessing what it was about. First he established that it really was “The Rise and Fall of Flingel Bunt;” then he listened to it for half a minute before delivering a series of threats that could hardly be misunderstood before replacing the receiver.

However, he had no way of knowing if there really was somebody listening at the other end.

Maybe there was somebody there. Maybe there wasn't.

But that tune? he thought. Was there something? … But it was just a faint shadow of a suspicion, and no clear memories at all cropped up in his somewhat overexcited brain.

“Who was that?” asked his wife as he settled down again on the sofa in the television room.

“Jacob,” he lied. “He said to say hello to you, and didn't want to borrow a single nickel.”

On Friday he made a detour past Willie's garage to discuss repairs to his car. Having been guaranteed absolutely that it would be ready for collection by that evening, he left it there and went the rest of the way to his office on foot. He arrived fifteen minutes late, and Wolff had already gone out—to negotiate a contract with a newly opened hamburger restaurant, he gathered. He sat down at his desk and began to work his way through the day's mail, which had just been brought in by Miss deWiijs. As usual, most of it was complaints about one thing or another, and confirmation of contracts and agreements that had already been fixed on the telephone or by fax, and after ten minutes he realized that he was sitting there humming that confounded tune.

He broke off in annoyance. Went out to fetch some coffee from Miss deWiijs's office instead, and became involved in a conversation about the weather, which soon came around to focus on four-footed friends. Cats in general, and Miss deWiijs's Siamese, Melisande de laCroix, in particular. Despite the regular ingestion of contraceptive pills and despite the fact that the frail creature hardly ever dared to stick her nose outside the door, for
the last couple of weeks she had been displaying more and more obvious signs of being pregnant.

There was only one other cat in the whole of the block where Miss deWiijs lived—a thin, arthritic old tom that as far as she knew was being taken care of by a family of Kurdish immigrants, although he preferred to spend the waking hours of day and night outdoors. At least when the weather was decent. How he had managed to get wind of the shy little Madame Melisande de laCroix was a mystery, to say the least.

A mystery and an absurdity. To be sure, Miss deWiijs had not yet been to the vet's and had the pregnancy confirmed. But all the signs pointed very clearly in that direction. As already indicated, and unfortunately.

Malik liked cats. Once upon a time they had owned two, but Ilse hadn't really been able to put up with them, especially the female, and when they discovered that Jacob was apparently allergic to furry animals, they had disposed of them by means of two rational and guaranteed painless injections.

He liked Miss deWiijs as well. She radiated a sort of languid feminine warmth that he had learned to prize highly over the years. The only thing that never ceased to surprise him was that men had left her unmarried and untouched. Or rather, there was nothing to suggest that this was not the case; and the indications were that she would stay that way. She would be celebrating her fortieth birthday next May, and Malik and Wolff had already begun discussing how best that occasion should be celebrated. Needless to say, it was not a day that could be allowed to pass unnoticed. Miss deWiijs had been working for them for more than ten years, and both Malik and Wolff knew that she was probably more vital to the survival of the firm than they were.

“What are you thinking of doing if you're right about the state of your cat?” he asked.

Miss deWiijs shrugged, setting her heavy breasts a-bobbing under her sweater.

“Doing?” she said. “There's not much else one can do but let nature take its course. And hope there won't be too many of them. Besides, Siamese cats are easy to find homes for, even if they are only half-breeds.”