The Devil's Playground (47 page)

digression. No more time for music. No time for love or

memory. There is only time to write. There is only a small

number of blank pages left. There is the sound of marching

in the daytime. Rifle shots in the night. This room is getting

smaller. The light is so bad that I cannot see what it is I am

doing but I no longer have a choice.

I went back to the first page. The playbill. It was written by

another woman in another time on another world. It will not

do any more. I have no new paper to start over. I must write

in the spaces that are left. The only colour I still have is red.

Somehow that is fitting. I put it all together. It has weight.

A certain dignity in its heft and volume. This is a year of my

life. I will leave it at Ottilie’s house. There, maybe, it will be safe. I have only one thing left to do. The dedication.

The author

St Jean, August 1941/42

or between heaven

and earth beyond

our era in the year

1 of the

New Salvation

He dreamt of plane crashes when he finally got to bed that

morning. The beautiful obliteration of the shattered fuselage.

The rip and roar of metal, twisting in white-hot agony. The

screams of the falling.

The phone woke him with its insistent fusillade of rings.

‘Jon.’

It was her. He let the hotel’s answering machine pick up

the call.

‘Are you there? Jon? … I hate these things. God … I was

hoping that you’d come back last night… I’m at the seminar

now but I’ll be back home in an hour … call me, please.’

Jon waited for the beep, then got up. Checked the small

piece of paper that Nagatha had handed him the night before.

He looked back to the blinking red light, so insistent and

desperate. Some things would have to wait.

The rain was constant as a heartbeat. It soaked through his

clothes as he waited for the detective at the corner of Dam

Square.

He’d had to get out of his room. The walls were closing

in on him again. So he’d called Van Hijn, explained about

the Doctor’s address, said ‘Meet me there.’ The detective had

demurred, but Jon had told him that he was going anyway,

accompanied or not, knowing that Van Hijn would then not

have a choice, or rather wouldn’t allow himself the choice.

He watched the rain hit the streets like a shower of artillery,

saw how people took up certain shapes to insulate themselves

from it, unnatural angular modifications that they believed

would protect them. Everyone running, hurried, pissed off

and wet. Jon knew the feeling from London and how the

rain closed everybody off in their own shell.

‘Sorry, I’m late.’ The detective smiled, his hair was wet

and matted down and he looked as if he was drowning.

‘Can’t move too fast. Afraid I’ll split if I make any sudden

movements.’

‘Good to see you’re feeling better then. Hope I’m not

keeping you away from your animals.’ They shook hands,

oddly formal in the rain.

Van Hijn smiled, spat out his cigarette. ‘I’m sure they can

live without me for a few hours.’

They were buzzed in by the landlord of the building. He

inspected Van Hijn’s badge as if he were an archaeologist

staring at some new discovery, then nodded.

‘He went away a lot. Haven’t seen him for a couple of

weeks but that’s not so unusual.’

Wisitors?’ Van Hijn asked, a puddle forming around his

feet.

‘Not many, no. Unless you count whores. A few of those.’

Jon showed him the photo of Jake. The landlord nodded

again slowly. ‘Yes, him I’ve seen several times. Don’t know

if he was visiting the Doctor though. People get buzzed in,

I see them in the lobby but I don’t know who they’re visiting.’

‘Thank you,’ Van Hijn said, taking the master key.

They walked up the stairs, paint and carpet both peeling,

Jon remembering Jake’s description of the place, a chill

sweeping through him, walking again in the old man’s footsteps, trying to recover a ghost.

The Doctor’s flat was clean and neat and empty. There

was no sign that anyone had been there recently. No smell

of food, rumpled sheets, temporary litter, none of the small

accretions that coalesce around a life, the things you don’t

have time to deal with, that you leave for later. They walked

slowly through the two rooms, silent, each alone in their

thoughts and in what they expected from this.

In the main room, two faded, dust-soaked armchairs faced

each other and it was easy for Jon to imagine the two old

men sitting there, letting evenings ebb over a game of chess.

‘Here,’ Van Hijn called. Jon crossed the room and entered

the bedroom.

The detective was holding up a small cine camera. Wires.

A digital video camera. Jon felt his body shudder.

‘No tapes,’ Van Hijn said, throwing the devices back on

to the floor. ‘There’s no fucking tapes anywhere. Someone

got here before us.’

‘You don’t think he’s coming back?’ Jon asked.

Van Hijn shrugged. ‘He probably knew that as soon as we

found Jake this place would be compromised.’

‘Fuck.‘Jon expelled the word as if it had hooks.

Something snapped inside the detective’s head. ‘What did

you think, Jon? That he’d be here waiting for you with a

signed confession?’ Van Hijn kicked a small box of leads

across the room. He looked up, something softened in his

face. ‘Sorry. Guess I couldn’t help expecting something too.’

Van Hijn tried to smile but his face was grim.

Jon took the living room. He searched slowly through the

accumulations of a life. Books in German and English,

medical textbooks whose weight and gravity seemed to

belong to another time. Small ceramic medieval coats-of

arms that littered the mantelpiece, the bookshelves, almost

every flat surface. There were copies of old Dutch newspapers

and he put them aside for the detective. A large folder

containing drawings. There were so many clues here. Every

object was a clue. Everything that wasn’t here was a clue.

He got up, slowly stretching, thinking how this had been

another colossal waste of time and expectation, when the

window exploded.

The force of the blast and noise pushed him back and he

landed on the edge of a table, a sharp piercing thrust in his

spine, and then on the floor. Shards of glass scattered through

the room as the carpet began burning.

‘Get up!’ The detective was pulling jon’s arm. He’d blacked

out. The window was smashed. Black smoke was filling the

room. The curtains roared with flames. A broken bottle

trailing a rag lay in the middle of the carpet, flames licking

the air around it.

Jon came to. His mouth dry and hot, tasting bitter, his

arm and back screaming in pain, the detective’s voice far

away and muffled. All around him the light danced and

crackled.

‘Quick. The whole place is going up.’ Van Hijn grabbed

Jon’s arm and draped it across his shoulder. He thought

about his wounds. Would they split open? There was only

one way to find out.

Jon began to feel his legs again slowly coming to life,

taking his weight. The detective pushed him through the

hall, the fire quickly gaining behind them. Jon got to the door

first. Turned the handle. Nothing. Did it again. The same

result.

Locked.

He began to scream.

Van Hijn pushed him out of the way. Pulled out his gun

and blew the lock. The sound was terrible. Jon’s eardrums

felt as if they had been pierced. He was dizzy again and it

took all his concentration to stay upright while the detective

kicked at the door, once, twice, until finally it sheared away,

spilling in light and oxygen.

Downstairs the landlord lay face-down on his table. He

wasn’t moving. Van Hijn lifted his head and it nearly came

off His throat cut ear to ear, the classic Colombian necktie.

‘Shit, they certainly knew what they were doing,’ the detective

said breathlessly. Blood was pooling around the body and

had already made its way to the edge of the table where it

dribbled down on to the floor. A strange chemical smell in

the air. Burning cocaine.

Jon watched as Van Hijn called the police and fire crews.

He could feel it coming. A warm liquid onrush of fear and

spent adrenalin. He leaned down and vomited on the hotel

steps. He stood there shaking as he tried to light a cigarette

to get the taste out of his mouth. Every time he blinked he

could see the landlord’s head and the slowly growing halo of

blood surrounding it like some obscene replica of a Giotto

saint. He spat out the cigarette, shaking still, knowing that

there must have been something of value in the flat, something

that had necessitated the destruction of everything to

make it obscure.

He was behind him again. It was the same man he’d seen

before. Jon began to walk faster, feeling the sweat prickly on

his back, turning round every now and then to see his pursuer

stop to light a cigarette or read a concert poster. He regretted

now that he’d left the detective at the Doctor’s building.

Perhaps the man was just finishing the job. Jon fingered the

canister that still lay in his pocket, a small but necessary

comfort.

He began walking outwards, away from the clutch of the

canals, from the dense squirm of people that made pursuit

so easy. He got on a tram at Rokin and watched with relief

as the man stood there, breathless at the station, getting

smaller until he was gone.

Jon got off the tram when he thought he was far enough

away. He walked past the stately buildings thinking about

Suze, the brittle touches and smiles they’d exchanged the

previous night. He continued to walk, under grey scudded

clouds waiting to burst. He tried not to think about the

places they’d visited. Tried not to think about the dead

landlord or the fire in the flat. Thinking only made things

worse.

He stopped to light a cigarette and recognized the street

name. Coincidence or had his footsteps carried him here

knowingly? It didn’t matter. He walked up the street until he

found her house.

He stood between the two stone lions, finished his cigarette

and rang the bell.

‘Mr Reed, how nice to see you,’ she said as she opened

the door, trying to disguise the smile that had appeared,

spontaneous like a flower burst, on her face.

‘Hello, Mrs De Roedel,’ he said, explaining how he found

himself on her street.

‘No need for excuses. Come in, I’ll make some tea. I also

have some lovely pastries that were not meant to be eaten

alone.’

He followed her down the empty hall.

Everything was gone.

The ornamental decorations, Empire plunder, paintings

and adornments. All gone. The hall was bare. She led him to

the front room and disappeared into the kitchen before he

could say anything. He stared at the walls, previously splashed

with painted ancestors, now vacant apart from the discoloration

where the frames had hung, leaving only ghostly traces

of what had been. Around the room were many white

removal boxes. Taped and filled. There was something

creepy about a room of this size being so empty.

‘Lots of sugar, I remember,’ she said as she slowly poured

the tea into Jon’s cup, making sure not to splash or spatter

the liquid.

‘Thank you.’ Jon took the cup, cradled it in his hand,

feeling the pleasing heat make its way through his bones.

‘Looks like I just caught you in time,’ he said.

Mrs De Roedel looked at him blankly for a second,

then understood and smiled gently. ‘Oh no, Mr Reed. I

think I’ll be here a long time yet.’ She sat down, graceful as

a china cat. “I just thought it was time for a clean-up. Though

it’s not spring, I know. Time to redecorate, don’t you

think?’

Jon nodded, wondering how she could seem so resilient

when he knew her heart was smashed. ‘What about all that

stuff?’ he said, pointing to the boxes, lined like tired soldiers

across the perimeter of the room.

She shrugged, sipped her tea soundlessly. ‘Most of it’s

going to the museum.’ She put her cup down. It rattled and

spilled on the table. ‘Who else am I going to give it to?’ Her

hand went to cover her mouth. Jon looked down while the

old lady made some choking sounds. ‘It was her inheritance,

all this. Stuff my family and my husband’s had collected over

the years. I guess we thought it was history. Maybe we were

wrong. Maybe it’s better in a museum. I’m beginning to think

we shouldn’t clutter up our life with things.’ There was a

silence in which the walls seemed to sag and then she looked

up and asked him about Jake and he told her about the video

that the old man had left him. How Jake had befriended

a Holocaust survivor, a prisoner-doctor, and recorded his

testimony. He mentioned his own reservations, the fact that