12

The husband had been past every noticeboard in the English Department. In a blind spot on the wall between two offices, he had found another note half hidden behind a list of exam results. It was exactly the same as the one in his hand. Our ‘respected’ Translation Studies Lecturer screws around. She is in no way like her beloved Emily Dickinson: she is a heartless Bitch. He realised that the same message must have hung on a lot of boards. He walked to her office. It was very quiet in the long, narrow corridors of the university building. On the door, under his wife’s name and the name of a colleague he had heard of, there was a new plastic plate with a man’s name and the title: Lecturer, Translation Studies. He hesitated, finding it hard to imagine they’d already cleared away all her stuff. Computer, books, notes – surely they’d still be here? As far as he knew she was no longer employed as a lecturer, but maybe they still let her work on her thesis in the office. He went in; there was no one there. Shortly afterwards he came back out into the corridor and started shouting. Two men put out the fire with a hose on a reel, managing to contain it to this one office. When the fire brigade arrived ten minutes later, there was nothing for them to do. The husband waited calmly for the police to show up.

The note was lying on the table in the interview room of the nearest police station. He had already admitted arson and had pulled the note out of his back pocket halfway through questioning. ‘I’ll break his neck,’ he said.

‘That’s not allowed,’ said the policeman who was taking his statement.

‘Then I’ll cut his dick off.’

‘That’s definitely not allowed.’ The policeman asked him where his wife was at that moment.

‘I don’t know. She’s gone. That’s all. In her car, and the trailer’s not in the shed any more either.’

Did that leave him without transport?

‘No. We had two cars.’

Had he tried to contact her?

‘What do you think? Of course I have! Her mobile phone just gives the engaged signal the whole time.’

Were things missing from the house?

‘All her clothes and a coffee table, a hideous thing actually, I’m glad to be rid of it. A mattress, duvets. Lamps! And all kinds of odds and ends. Books, quite a bit of bedding, a portrait of Emily Dickinson –’

‘Who?’

‘She’s an American poet. She was writing about her, doing a PhD thesis. Bit late, if you ask me, but she obviously had something to prove. Christ almighty.’

Did they have kids?

That was the only time the husband looked down.

What was the state of their relationship?

‘What’s it to you? What am I doing here anyway?’

The policeman reminded him that he had committed an act of arson in a university building.

‘So what! Just do your job and keep out of my private life.’

The policeman ended up by asking him whether he wanted to register his absent wife as a missing person.

The husband raised his head. ‘No,’ he said after a long pause for thought. ‘No, let’s not do that.’

Would he like some coffee?

He looked at the policeman. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ While he was drinking the coffee, the policeman waited patiently, a friendly expression on his face. Then the husband said, ‘A single.’

‘What?’

‘The mattress she took was a single.’