Black Ice (10 page)

He went to the road and looked right and left. Then he crossed it, searched around for a dry place, jumped the ditch and slipped, saved himself from falling with both hands. His right hand met mud. He wiped it off on the grass. Take it easy, Jupp Scholten.

He crossed the wood at an angle. Dead twigs broke under his shoes. Twice he didn't bend down far enough, and his hat was almost swept off his head; he straightened it again. He was feeling warm in his coat. As he reached the path along the banks he felt sweat break out between his shoulder blades.

He unbuttoned the coat, took a deep breath. Ducks
were quacking among the reeds by the bank. The lake lay broad and calm. Only occasionally did a little wave run towards the bank, break and flow back. The blue western sky stood above the tall trees on the little promontory to his left. A faint mist enveloped the black humpbacked wooded land on the far side of the lake.

Scholten turned right. He followed the winding path along the bank. He took his hat off, wiped his forehead and neck with his handkerchief. A light wind blew over the reeds. When Scholten reached the end of the path he stopped, got behind a tree and looked out over the little sandy bay. No one in sight. The concert of birdsong continued, interrupted only by tiny pauses at irregular intervals.

The boat was rocking on the water by the landing stage. Scholten saw the bottom of the steps on the opposite side of the sandy bay. The morning sun shone down on their grey planks. His lips moving silently, he counted the bottom steps up to the landing, where the flight disappeared from view behind the steep bank. Fourteen planks.

Scholten breathed in deeply. Right, here we go. He walked down to the sandy bay, looked around him once more then took his coat off as he walked on. He hung it over a projecting rock on the bank, with his jacket over it and his hat on top of them. He wondered whether to take his pullover off too. No, the wind was freshening, as it always did at this time of day.

Scholten went up the steps, one hand on the birch tree trunk that did duty as a handrail. On the landing he was about to kneel down but then shook his head. “Come on, take it easy, Jupp Scholten. Take a look at the house first.” He went up the last five steps and, looking all round him, went to the space behind the
garage. “Some bloody fool with no business here could be poking around. Or some nosy old woman. Go carefully, Jupp Scholten. You have to be a hundred per cent sure with this kind of thing.”

The gravel crunched underfoot. Scholten bent down and pulled out a few of the green shoots coming up between the little stones. “He should have sent me up here last week. But it's all the same to him. He has more important things to do.”

He looked round the corner of the garage at the forecourt in front of it. He walked once round the house, shaking a shutter here and there, pulling out a weed now and then. He stopped in front of one of the shutters, scratched the paint with a fingernail. “About time too.” He put both hands on his hips and looked at the thin flakes of colour coming away.

A jay screeched, very close. Scholten jumped. “Stupid bird.”

Slowly he went down the five steps to the landing, took a deep breath. “Here we go, then. And you watch out, Wallmann.” He kneeled down, passed his hand over the stringboards of the steps. He thrust his head forward, narrowed his eyes.

Nothing to be seen.

He straightened up, thought. Of course, Wallmann would have been crazy just to take the cords away and leave the nails in the wood. Naturally he took the nails out too. It wouldn't have taken him long.

Scholten peered closely at the left-hand stringboard of the steps, inspecting it bit by bit. He couldn't find any nail-marks level with the last step before the landing, or above the next plank either. He felt sweat gathering above his eyebrows.

Straightening up again, he groaned and passed the back of his hand over his brow. He ought to have
brought a magnifying glass. No, that was nonsense. Wallmann couldn't have tied the cords to drawing pins; Erika would simply have pulled those out. They must have been good strong nails.

Scholten bent down again. He found a nail-mark in the stringboard above the second plank from the top. He immediately looked at the stringboard on the opposite side, but he found nothing there. He took a deep breath.

The nail didn't have to have been exactly level with the one opposite. He searched the cracked wood of the stringboard from top to bottom, bit by bit. But he found nothing.

Half-lying, he propped himself on the steps, looking straight ahead. As he searched for his handkerchief he heard a distant cry. He jumped in alarm, looked around. A yacht came sailing along the lake, tacking in the wind. The mainsail hid the crew.

Panic-stricken, Scholten thought of going up to the house, but then he remembered his coat. He hurried down the steps, looking over his shoulder, snatched up his hat, coat and jacket and ran over the sand of the bay, bending low.

When he was behind the trees the yacht turned and began running before the wind. A woman in a yellow jacket was sitting at the tiller; a man was crouching in the boat. They were both looking straight ahead.

Scholten mopped the sweat from his brow. He stood there for a good ten minutes until the yacht, now very far away, had disappeared around the next promontory. Slowly he went back.

There was no real point in it any more. The idea of the cords couldn't be right. The nails would have left marks in the stringboards of the steps.

He stood there in the bay, his hat on his head, his
coat and jacket over his arm. He gritted his teeth. Bastard. Oh, you bloody bastard.

After a while he moved towards the steps. He turned, put his coat and jacket down behind a tree. Then he climbed the steps one by one, very slowly. He stopped on the landing. He stared at the steps above it. He rubbed his brow and shook his head.

Suddenly he bent down. He ran his thumb over the front edge of the first plank above the landing. Then he kneeled down, but finding that he couldn't get his eyes close enough to the plank in that position he lay flat on the landing of the flight of steps. He put his eyes very close to the front edge of the plank, rubbed his thumb over the wood again.

Hope stirred in him.

11

There was no doubt about it. Those were fresh nail-marks. The nails had been knocked into the front of the plank forming the tread of the step, four of them side by side at intervals of about six inches, almost exactly in the middle of the wood. They had been good strong nails.

Scholten sat down on the landing, rubbed both hands over his face. He looked at the steps to his left. Then he found the same marks in the second plank above the landing. Four fresh nail-holes at roughly the same distance from each other.

He became extremely excited, moving so impulsively that he caught his trousers on a splinter on the landing and pulled a thread out. He took no notice, got down on all fours and crawled up the steps, plank by plank.

Nothing else came to light. There were no marks on the top three planks. The nails had been only in the two directly above the landing, four nails in each of them.

Scholten sat on the top step. He looked out at the lake, but he did not see the blue water, the calm and shallow waves that the wind blew before it, he did not see the glittering reflections of the sun or the mist blurring the outline of the opposite bank.

He was certain that he was on Wallmann's trail now. But he still couldn't make sense of his discovery.

Nails in the fronts of the steps; you couldn't fix
anything in those to make a really effective mantrap. You could, of course, stretch cords up and down, from plank to plank. And perhaps someone might catch a foot in them. But if the death-trap was to function at all reliably, if someone was to stumble over them and fall, then the cords would have to be stretched lengthways. And above the planks, not along their front edges.

Scholten struck the palm of his left hand with his clenched right fist again and again. The bastard, the goddamned bloody bastard! It must be possible to find out what he'd been up to somehow!

He rose ponderously, stood there for a moment and then went slowly down the steps. He turned on the second step and climbed down backwards, very slowly, running his eyes over the planks one by one. He counted the eight nail-holes, but he found nothing else.

He did not stay on the landing but went on climbing backwards down the steps. His eyes were already inspecting the next step when he froze. He leaned well forward.

Yes. The outside plank of the landing had nail-holes in it too. Four of them again, below the edge of the plank at intervals of about six inches from each other.

He straightened up and examined the landing. It consisted of three planks fitted side by side. They were set at an angle to the five upper planks, the steps leading up to the space behind the garage. The planks of the landing were fitted in the same direction as the fourteen steps below it that went down to the sandy bay.

Scholten ran his hand under the outside plank. He could feel the nut of the bolt fixing the plank to the angle-iron. The nut was very smooth. He withdrew his
hand and looked at it. There were traces of grease on his fingertips.

He felt for the bolt on the opposite side. Its shank and the nut were smooth too.

Scholten inspected his fingertips. Suddenly he lay flat on the landing again. His hat fell off; he caught it and put it down on a step. He felt for the bolts under the two planks above the landing, putting his head as close as possible to get a clearer view of the nuts and the shanks of the bolts.

There was no doubt about it: those bolts had been greased not long ago too.

Scholten propped one arm on the landing. He was breathing heavily. He looked over his shoulder at the lake. The triangular sails of two yachts were moving past the opposite bank. A few white clouds stood above the hilly outline of the woods, very far away.

He took a couple of deep breaths and then lowered himself again. He tried undoing the nuts with his fingers. It was difficult; they were quite tightly screwed on. He thought of going back to the car for his monkey wrench, but he was too impatient.

He managed without a tool. His thumb and forefinger were left sore and bleeding, but after a good half hour he had taken out the two planks above the landing and the three planks of the landing itself. There was now a large hole yawning in the flight of steps. He had carried the planks down the steps one by one and put them on the landing stage.

After carrying the last plank down he sat on the landing stage and dangled his legs. He wiped his thumb and forefinger with his handkerchief, licked the wounds. He rubbed his forehead and neck dry. Then he stood up and examined the planks again, one by one.

When he took the planks out he had discovered something that couldn't be coincidence, couldn't be mere chance: each of the five had nail-marks not just in front but all the way round the edges. There had been four nails on each of the long sides and two on each of the narrow sides. And all the marks were still fresh.

And the bolts holding those planks to the angle-irons on the left and the right of the stringboards had all recently been greased. The grease was still pale and soft.

There was only one explanation: Wallmann had done it. He had taken the five planks out, knocked the nails into their sides and greased the nuts and bolts.

But why? Scholten looked up at the hole in the steps. Yes, if Erika had gone down to it she'd have lost her footing. That had been his first idea: Wallmann had simply removed the five planks and Erika fell through the hole.

But he immediately had reservations about that explanation.

The risk to Wallmann would have been too great. Such a huge hole in the steps was too conspicuous. Anyway, the nails didn't fit a plan like that. Why would Wallmann have knocked the nails in if he were only going to remove the planks? It made no sense.

Yes. Why had he knocked those nails in? In all, twelve of them around each plank.

Scholten stared up at the hole in the flight of steps. Suddenly he felt hot. For God's sake, if someone came along now hiding would be no use at all. That hole could be seen even from the water.

He glanced quickly at the lake. A yacht was tacking against the wind not very far away. He took the first plank and ran up the steps.

Twenty minutes later he had reassembled the five planks. He had tightened the nuts as well as he could with his sore fingers, swearing out loud now and then.

He sat on the landing of the steps and stretched his legs. The yacht had turned away. He dabbed at his injuries and licked them. They hurt like hell. He looked at his watch. Oh, Christ, past twelve already.

Just before one, Scholten stopped at a village pub. A very fat young woman came out of the kitchen. He asked if he could have lunch there. The fat woman said she could do him a schnitzel and fried potatoes. He ordered a side salad too, drank three beers and a cup of coffee. He selected a black cigar.

Around three-thirty Scholten reached the motorway ring road round the city. He threw the stub of the cigar that he had been chewing out of the window and started to sing. A snatch from the
St Matthew Passion
, but he didn't know how it went on. He changed to a cheerful dialect song, and then he chanted: “Wallmann, Wallmann, just you wait . . .”

He drove to the brothel. The woman he chose after a short inspection did her job very well. She was friendly too. When he was lying on top of her she even smiled at him.

Soon after four-thirty Scholten parked outside the front door of his building. As he got out of the car a heavy weight seemed to descend on him; what was he going to say if Rosa Thelen or Inge Faust had called to ask how he was?

He'd meant to think something up, but he had entirely forgotten.