Eleven
Sbodin was sitting behind a desk. He still wore his raincoat and his hat lay in front of him. When Berg was brought into the room, the investigator said nothing for some length of time. He pressed the tips of his fingers to his lips and stared at something on the desk. But apart from the hat Berg could see nothing, no object likely to hold Sbodin’s attention so completely. Minutes went past. Berg stood in the middle of the room and looked around. It wasn’t a large room. The walls were painted a regulation shade of brown and the weak electric light was reflected back palely. Apart from the desk and Sbodin’s chair there were no other items of furniture—unless you counted the waste-basket and the telephone.
And then Sbodin said, ‘What a pity you took the wrong turning, Berg. But it was a worthwhile attempt.’ He fidgeted with his hat as if nervous. ‘Now that we’ve fetched you back, I think my case is watertight, don’t you? If you were really innocent, you wouldn’t have run.’
Berg said, ‘I ran because I was innocent.’ He looked at Sbodin and wondered when he was going to mention the widow.
‘You ran because you were innocent,’ he said flatly. In the near-empty room his voice echoed a little. The last syllable of innocent came back like a pale whisper. He rose from the desk, lifting his hat.
Berg saw that beneath the hat lay a pistol. It gleamed: it was the gleam as much as anything that took Berg’s attention. He stared at it like a child attracted by a shining object. He had never before seen a pistol close to. The size of it impressed him and it looked heavy, much heavier than he would have imagined. An urge to touch it came over him and he made an imperceptible movement forward before he checked himself.
‘Do you like the gun, Berg?’
‘I wouldn’t say that I like it exactly——’
‘But it attracts you?’
Berg was silent. Sbodin began to move round the room, keeping close to the walls, and then he stopped immediately behind Berg. Berg realised then that he was nearer to the gun than he was to the investigator. If he were to move quickly—— But no; it was too obviously a trap. Probably it wasn’t even loaded, probably Sbodin wanted him to reach for it. Another of his devious plans. As soon as he picked it up Sbodin would no doubt pull another gun from his coat and fire. That was almost certainly the situation. He stood very still, hardly breathing. With a little insight it was possible to play Sbodin’s games and even win some of them.
‘The gun attracts you?’ Sbodin asked.
‘I’m not going to pick it up. I’ve never handled a gun before.’
‘Go on,’ Sbodin said. ‘Feel it.’
Berg said nothing. He listened to the investigator’s heavy breathing. A moment passed before Sbodin moved and made his way back to the desk.
‘Why did you run away?’
‘You know why. I wanted to prove my innocence.’
‘You keep talking about your innocence, Berg. If you were really innocent, would I want to see you punished? Would I? I’m not an unfair man, am I? This job is difficult enough—but I think I keep some sort of control. I think I manage to keep a balance, don’t you?’ He stared at Berg. His eyes were barely visible. ‘It’s very hard, but I manage.’
‘I’m not guilty,’ Berg said. When was Sbodin going to say something about the widow? He had a mental image of the widow at the bottom of the stairs: there was something obscene in the roundness of her eyes, in the glazed expression. But his memory was flawed. He knew intuitively that when he had looked at her she was not staring at him. He was positive that the eyes had been closed.
‘So you thought if you made a run for it everything would clear itself up, did you? Where were you trying to run to, Berg? I sat down and worked it out. You were going for the border, weren’t you? You thought you’d slip across the border and be safe over there. That was very naive of you. In the first place there are guards who ask—politely, mind you—to look at such formalities as identification papers and entrance visas. In the second place, even if you had slipped past them there are extradition arrangements. You’d have been picked up and brought back.’ The investigator looked at the gun for a moment. ‘You were heading for the border—isn’t it ironic that you ended up at the site?’
‘Ironic?’
Sbodin sat down. ‘You’re really in trouble now, Berg. Do you realise that?’
Shifting his feet, Berg had the feeling that he was about to be unjustly punished by a censorious adult, that he was a child again in a world where adult expressions and adult behaviour were beyond his comprehension. He stared at the light-bulb. It flickered bleakly, reminding him of something—even if he did not know what.
‘First the widow——’
‘The widow?’
Sbodin said, ‘Yes, the widow. That poor woman,’
‘What do you mean—that poor woman?’
The investigator picked up his gun, handled it. ‘She’s dead. I found her at the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t fall down—you wouldn’t try to tell me that, would you? She didn’t fall down a flight of stairs she must have climbed and descended thousands of times. You pushed her. When I saw her she was quite dead.’
‘No, I don’t believe that.’ Berg saw the round shadow of the gun’s barrel. ‘I didn’t push her. What actually happened was that she——’
‘Please, Berg. I’m not going to listen.’
Berg moved to the desk. There was a faint smell from the gun—of warm metal, cleaning fluid, and something else he did not recognise.
‘You killed the widow.’
Berg said, ‘Prove it.’
‘The circumstantial evidence is strong. Can you disprove it?’
Berg placed his hands on the edge of the desk. ‘I didn’t kill her. I’m quite incapable of killing.’
‘No more, Berg.’
‘At school I didn’t even play games. I didn’t want to take the chance of hurting someone. I can’t stand violence. I can’t stand pain. Ask anyone who knows me. They’ll tell you that I wouldn’t hurt a fly. And now you say that I killed the widow. It’s preposterous.’
Berg stared at Sbodin and tried to remember what had happened. He had gone through the skylight—the widow, the stupid bitch, had hung to his legs. And then, quite suddenly, she had slipped. He remembered it clearly. She had slipped and slipped and gone on slipping all the way down the stairs.
‘Her neck was broken,’ Sbodin said.
‘She slipped. I saw her slip.’
Sbodin stared down at the gun. ‘You’ll hang, of course. It’s really too bad.’
‘She slipped. I was there at the time. I saw what happened.’
Sbodin put the gun into his coat and stood up. Yawning, he stretched his arms. Berg watched him, as if waiting for his expression to change, as if in the thin hope that he might suddenly smile and say: Go home, run along, the whole thing—Monika, the widow—the whole thing’s been a bad joke. But Sbodin dropped his arms, sighed wearily, and asked:
‘Why did you strangle your mother?’