It was the cold that woke Ante Valdemar Roos.
He was lying in the front seat of the car, it was pitch black outside and a tree branch was scraping persistently against the windscreen. The rain had stopped, but a fierce wind came in strong gusts, intermittently rocking the car.
Or perhaps it was just his imagination. Perhaps it was his own internal movements that somehow corresponded to the whining rise and fall of the night’s sounds. He did not know where they were and recalled only that he had turned off into a parking area after almost falling asleep at the wheel. Some time around midnight, just after twelve it must have been. Before surrendering to sleep he had got out of the car and buried the plastic bag with the jack in it. Deep in a ditch, he hadn’t been able to see a thing, it had been as dark then as it was now and he had dug with his bare hands. It had been mostly twigs and leaf mould, but he thought he had buried it well enough. Who would go rooting around in a ditch behind a car park?
If we get another puncture we won’t have a jack, he had thought just before he dozed off. And the thought came back to him now, which was rather odd, but perhaps it had followed him into his sleep.
On the other hand, they had no spare tyre either, he had gone on to think, and he remembered it had made him laugh.
It was a good sign that he could still laugh.
Anna was asleep, lying across the back seat, and he reached out a hand to feel her pulse. It was faint but seemed normal, he thought. Neither too fast nor too slow. Her wrist was so thin, almost like a young child’s. He gave a shiver and pulled himself more upright in his seat. He could feel his lower back aching. Of course it damn well aches, he thought, sixty-year-old backs aren’t meant to sleep all scrunched up in the front seat of a car.
He started the engine to create a little warmth. He left it running while he went out to pee against a tree. Like a dog, he noted. Here I am peeing against a tree like a dog without a master.
He got back into the car and scrabbled around for the map. Sometime during the night they had come to a motorway junction and he had turned without even knowing which point of the compass he was heading in. Then he had driven for a further two hours until exhaustion suddenly caught up with him. An image of a road sign came into his mind, presumably from just before he turned into this parking area:
AARLACH 49
He had never heard of the place and he couldn’t find it on the map. Oh well, that didn’t mean anything. There were lots of places in Europe he had never heard of.
He looked at his watch. It was half past four. Nearly morning then, he told himself, rubbing his eyes. Time to get to grips with a new day.
He was aware of his own smell. A persistent odour of stale sweat and dirty clothes; he hadn’t changed for two days now. Nor had Anna, so she probably didn’t smell as fresh as a daisy either, lying there in the back seat rolled up in blankets, towels and other stuff. All in an attempt to keep her warm; as for him, all he had was his flannel shirt and thin windcheater to rely on, so it was no wonder he was freezing.
He angled the rear-view mirror so he could see his face for a moment. Good grief, he thought. That bloke there looks like a tramp. A real down-and-out. His hands are dirty, too, from his nocturnal excavations in the ditch. He sniffed them, and they smelt of earth and decay.
He moved the mirror back into its normal position so he wouldn’t have to look at himself. He sat there, still and silent with his hands on the steering wheel, as he felt the warmth slowly start to seep into his body. After a while he started looking for some chewing gum to get the nasty taste out of his mouth, but he couldn’t find any. There must be a packet somewhere, he knew, because he had bought it at that petrol station last night.
He had bought a newspaper at the same time and read about that policeman who had been bludgeoned at another petrol station. His condition was critical, evidently. Klaus Meyer, wife and two children, there was a picture of him too, but he didn’t really recognize him. There was a warrant out for the perpetrator and there was a full-scale police operation in progress across the country. Der Täter; that meant perpetrator, didn’t it?
Me? he had asked himself when he read it. Can it be me, Ante Valdemar Roos, tied up in all that?
Der Täter.
There must be some mistake. That wasn’t how it happened, he thought, not at all, and if only he hadn’t been so bloody nosy, that Klaus Meyer, it wouldn’t have had to happen. If you had a wife and two children you ought to be a bit careful, anyway, but there was such . . . such an injustice to it all, decided Valdemar Roos angrily, some goddamned kind of injustice that he couldn’t quite put into words. But expressed in words or not, it was still crucial. He had Anna’s life and future fate in his hands, that was the crux of it all, and that Klaus Meyer had tried to get in his way. He’d had no right to come and interfere . . . bloody idiot.
Valdemar shook his head and his hands clenched round the steering wheel. Banish these pictures from my head, he thought. Along with the doubts and trivial annoyances, the main thing now . . . the main thing now was to look forward. What was top priority at this moment?
To get indoors, he thought. Of course.
Find a hotel room where they could have a shower, change their clothes and have a decent sleep in a proper bed. Admittedly neither of them had any clean clothes to change into; they had been able to do some washing at that boarding house in Denmark, but a long time had passed since then. He’d lost track of quite how long.
But if he could only get her into a bed, he could have a hot shower and then go out and buy a few things, whatever they needed. And then . . . then he would wake her, she could have a shower . . . or a bath, a bath would be even better, he could buy some scented bath foam, something nice and feminine, while he was out getting supplies . . . they could eat a proper breakfast . . . or lunch, or anything . . . and while they were sitting over their second cup of coffee afterwards, replete and content . . . he with his pipe, she with her cigarette . . . they could decide how they were going to continue their journey. Yes, that was exactly how they would do it.
Italy maybe? France?
Satisfied with this simple bit of planning – and with this simple scenario in his mind’s eye – he put on his seatbelt and drove out of the car park.
The dawn light brought some kind of insight.
Perhaps that was the true task of dawn light? he thought. That was the why it existed, for better or worse, and the worse in this case consisted of the idea of arriving in a new town, parking somewhere, finding a hotel, going to the front desk and . . .
In this state? he thought, taking a mouthful of tepid water from his plastic bottle. Looking like this? I just can’t, we’d never get away with it. If Anna was a bit livelier and on her feet then maybe, but having to drag her across a lobby, explain that she was his daughter and they needed a room for one or two nights, that they had unfortunately had their passports stolen, that they wanted to pay in cash . . . their smell, their grimy appearance and their . . . no, it was impossible.
On the other hand, they simply had to get out of the car. They had to find some kind of lodging; that bed and shower and clean clothes stuff was an absolute necessity. An imminent necessity, thought Ante Valdemar Roos. Could you say that? Could necessities be imminent? Or were they by definition always imminent?
Another question to sit there brooding about. Why couldn’t he just . . .?
‘Valdemar?’
He gave a start and the car veered onto the rumble strip along the side of the road.
‘What’s that noise?’
It was the first thing she had said for twelve hours or more. Her voice was as thin as rice paper.
‘Anna?’ he said, steering the car back on course and slowing down. ‘How are you?’
‘Where are we? Will we be there soon?’
‘Yes, we will,’ he said. ‘Before long. How are you feeling? Do you want something to drink?’
She was breathing heavily and trying to pull herself a little more upright. ‘I feel so funny, Valdemar. I’m all kind of . . . numb.’
He reached back and patted her on the arm. ‘We’ll stop soon,’ he said. ‘We’ll get ourselves somewhere so you can have a proper bed and a proper rest.’
‘Rest?’ she said. ‘But I’ve . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Valdemar, I’ve done nothing but rest.’
‘You’ll be better soon,’ he said. ‘You ought to eat something as well. Aren’t you hungry?’
Her answer took a while to come, as if she was really considering how she felt.
‘No, Valdemar,’ she said. ‘I’m not hungry . . . not a bit.’
‘We’ve got to take care of you Anna,’ he said. ‘Is it hurting anywhere?’
She considered again.
‘No, not hurting . . . there’s no feeling at all.’
‘No feeling?’
‘No.’
‘I see. Do you need to stop for a pee?’
‘I don’t think so. How much longer will it be?’
‘Only an hour,’ he said. ‘You go back to sleep and I’ll wake you when we get there.’
‘All right,’ she said.
She curled up again with her back to him and pulled the blanket over her head. He sighed and turned his attention to the road ahead. Another sign came into view at the roadside.
MAARDAM 129
Excellent, thought Ante Valdemar Roos. That’s what I was counting on. Plan B.
The woman at the desk had something wrong with one of her eyes. The eyelid drooped, covering half her eye, and he assumed she was blind on that side.
She would have been pretty nice looking otherwise, he thought. Forty-five perhaps, dark-haired, maybe a little too dolled up, but if you worked at reception in a motorway hotel, maybe you were expected to look like that?
‘You speak English?’ he asked.
She said she did. Some, at least. Her voice bore witness to whisky and a forty-a-day smoking habit. Over many years.
Good, he thought, here’s a woman who won’t ask unnecessary questions.
‘Been driving all night,’ he explained. ‘We wanted to get on, but my daughter is feeling car sick, so . . .’
‘You can’t check-in until two o’clock,’ said the woman.
‘I could pay a bit extra,’ said Valdemar.
‘Let me see what I can do,’ said the woman. ‘One night, yes?’
‘One night,’ said Valdemar.
She leafed through a folder.
‘You can have number twelve,’ she said. ‘An extra fifty for early check-in.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Valdemar.
‘Payment in advance. You can park the car just outside here.’
‘Thank you,’ said Valdemar. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said the woman.
He was just paying when he remembered something else.
‘How far is it to Maardam from here?’
‘Fifty-five kilometres,’ said the woman.
‘Is there anywhere closer?’ he asked.
‘There’s Kerran,’ said the woman.
‘How far is that?
‘Six or seven kilometres. You’ll see the sign for it in about five hundred metres.’
She pointed along the road. He nodded and finished paying.
He thanked the woman again, she repeated that he was welcome, and he went out to the car.
Once he had tucked her up he sat on the edge of the bed for a while, stroking her cheek with the back of his hand. She was not really asleep but she didn’t seem entirely awake either. She muttered things now and then, but he could never work out what she was trying to say.
Perhaps it wasn’t anything important and she was just talking to herself. He found himself thinking of a baby bird he tried to save when he was a child. It had a broken wing and other injuries and he kept it under his bed in a shoebox filled with cotton wool, grass and a few other things. It was somehow like Anna and he remembered the tenderness he’d felt as he gently touched it with his fingers. Just like now.
But one afternoon when he got home from school the baby bird was dead, so it wasn’t really the same.
‘I’m popping out for a while,’ he said. ‘Going in the car to get us a few little treats. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’
She did not answer.
‘Anna, do you understand what I’m saying?’
She mumbled something that he interpreted as a yes. An indication that she thought it was a good idea.
‘Three hours at most. There’s water and cola and stuff here on the table. No need to worry about anything.’
She sighed and turned on her side. Great, that’s great, he thought, she’ll sleep for a couple of hours now, and she can have a shower when I get back.
‘I’ll get you some cigarettes, too. And some clean undies. Do you want any particular size? Or colour?’
No reply. He stood up, felt another stab of discomfort in his lower back and crept quietly out of the room.