The Snowman (9 page)

“That way you're one tenth of a second faster, friend.”

In his hotel room, Blum packed the cans into the case. It neatly took twenty, and indeed would have taken twenty-one, but he wasn't greedy. He stowed one tablet tube full of the powder and the can it came from in his trouser pockets. You had to have something at the ready. At the reception desk he asked about the blonde. The clerk acted as if he knew nothing about her. A busload of Swedish women surged through the revolving doors into the hotel. Blondes, drunk; they came cheaper by the dozen. They were not to Blum's taste. He left no tip.

Another light beer in the rail station buffet, the sample case on a chair beside him. Around here Munich was still the capital of junk-shops and cattle dealers, North Africans and Hopfperle beer. Bullnecked men from the Allgäu, looking over the top of the
Memminger Boten
newspaper, watched the Macedonian pickpockets
miming intimate relations with the big-bosomed waitresses, and itinerant quack doctors from Bohemia were recruiting assistants from among the unemployed sons of the Anatolian garbage men. The finishing touch was put to Blum's mid-day contentment by the appearance of the Salvation Army. Six plump-cheeked girls sang, “Hallelujah, God be with you”, and a martial gentleman who must hold the rank of field marshal at least distributed a tract from which Blum learned that Bob Dylan the protest singer had been born again. It seemed a suitable conclusion to the 1970s, just as the cocaine in Blum's sample case promised a good beginning to the 1980s. Blum rewarded the Salvation Army with a five-mark piece and went to catch his Intercity 624, departing 13.16 hours (Würzburg – Frankfurt am Main – Cologne – Wuppertal – Dortmund).

Of course they could be anywhere, he thought, looking at the man in the blue maxi-coat standing by the sausage stall and immersed in the
Corriere della Sera
– Rossi, or the people he had pinched the stuff from or meant to pinch it from, or friend Hermes, Madame Renée, and of course the police, the Federal German CID, the Federal Intelligence Agency, Interpol, the CIA, how's things, Mr Hackensack – and that's just what they'll assume, they'll assume you're going to crack up, give in, surrender, take the coke back to counter 1 at the left-luggage office for safekeeping and send the receipt to the Phoenicia. Paranoia, that's the word. Persecution mania. Those pangs at the heart, this ache in the kidneys, the tingling up your backbone, the itch under your scalp, all just persecution mania. Keep cool. You've made up your mind to see this thing through, so do that, go to the dining car with the depressed look of a traveller in thermal underwear, no business deal done all last week, these chemicals
will finish us off, the wife's got the curse, Hertha Football Club has lost again, and a long week in Wuppertal is staring you in your beer-fuddled face.

“A Pils, waiter, nice and cold.”

That was the right kind of tone. Now just a little more distaste in the voice.

“And a Pichelsteiner stew, that's about all that's worth eating in this dump.”

“Just what I always say,” commented a man, sitting down with Blum, although there were several empty tables. Blum pressed his legs against the sample case under the seat and looked at his travelling companion. Roundish face, neat parting, steel-rimmed glasses, grey suit, tie and waistcoat. Could be about thirty-five, but one of those faces that never age, they just die some time or other. He placed a large book in a brown paper cover beside his cutlery and put a Lord Extra in his mouth.

“Do you travel by train often?” asked Blum.

The man nodded deliberately. Perhaps a little too much the stolid citizen to be a possible member of Rossi's syndicate. Looked more like a cop. Which meant he probably was in the syndicate after all. Blum felt himself breaking out in a sweat. And the train had only reached the suburb of Pasing.

“Far too often,” said the man, “but it's all in the day's work, so you have to accept it.”

The steward brought Blum an ice-cold Pils. At least he'd hit the right note with the man. His neighbour at table ordered an Apollinaris and a Mozart Toast, a fillet steak dish.

“But not well done, medium rare,” he said almost pleadingly. The steward muttered something and moved away. “Doesn't taste so good well done,” added the man, as if he had to justify himself.

“Why not have the Pichelsteiner?”

“I had a Pichelsteiner only on Friday,” said the man, opening his book. Not until they had eaten – the Mozart Toast was overdone, of course, and the Pichelsteiner delicious – did they fall into conversation again. Blum would have talked to anyone, even a deaf mute. Anything was better than constantly looking at the door through which a man with a machine gun might appear any moment – but that was just in the movies. In real life the syndicate was sitting there at the table, pushing away his plate with the remains of the steak. He took a Lord Extra out of its packet and said, “I wonder if you'd mind doing me a favour.”

Here we go, thought Blum.

“It's like this, you see – I didn't quite meet my quota yesterday evening.”

What was all this? The confessions of an overworked killer? The man lit his cigarette and rubbed his thumb over the spine of the book. “Reptiles. I had a pet slow-worm as a boy, maybe that's what made me think of it as a subject.”

Blum relaxed. At the worst this character might be with Intelligence. He was quite red in the face now.

“Do you have an exam ahead?”

“No, no, I'm a vacuum cleaner engineer. But these days I specialize in quiz shows. Repairing vacuum cleaners all your life – well, that's kind of monotonous. Haven't you seen me on TV?”

“I get to see relatively little TV,” said Blum. “What do you do on television?”

“Oh, I appear on quiz shows. Maybe you've seen me after all – I mean, people don't always watch very closely.
The After Nine Quiz Show
,
Who's the Brainbox
?,
The Big Question
? No? We get high ratings, though. I made my debut in
Movie Buffs
. But you can only win the top
prize on a show once, so if you're a pro you have to be versatile.”

Blum agreed. He leaned back. “Do you do it full time?”

“What's the alternative? Learning by heart is a fulltime job. Of course my good memory comes in useful. History was my strong point at school – I could remember all the dates. Try me out – ask me a question!”

“What about?”

“A historical event!”

“What kind of historical event?”

“Oh, come on, you must know a historical event!”

The man was getting annoyed. The classic agent type, decided Blum. Didn't seem to be interested in coke, but mad keen on the past.

“Or just tell me your phone number and I'll tell you what happened in the year matching it. That's it, give me your phone number!”

Hm. Only a beginner could be that obvious. “Okay. 44 34 59.”

The man leaned back, frowning. “That's really your phone number? Rather a tricky one.”

“I thought you said you could come up with a historical event for
any
set of figures.”

“I can. Right, here we go: forty-four, of course, we have 44 BC, assassination of Caesar. Thirty-four . . . that's trickier. Oh, I know: the murder of Wallenstein, 1634. And fifty-nine, let's say 1759, battle of Kunersdorf.”

“Oh yes? And what happened then?”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“In this battle – what was it about?”

“Oh, that's not interesting. But you do see I can't go on repairing vacuum cleaners, not with a memory like that, can I?”

“Yes, I see. So now?”

“I need to go over the crocodiles again. Page 128.”

The large tome was Volume 6 of Grzimek's
Animal Encyclopedia
. Blum opened it. A crocodile blinked out at him. Not really, of course, but that was what it looked like. The crocodile was lying in the sun by a river, its jaws were wide open, and it seemed to be very much at ease.

“Go on, then,” said Blum, lighting an HB.

“The crocodile is a member of the subclass of large saurians. We distinguish between three families that are still extant, the alligator family, the true crocodile family, and the gavial family. Among alligators, we distinguish between the alligator genus, the spectacled caiman genus . . .”

The man had learned his quota all right. Blum wondered what this farce was in aid of. Of course, human life would be intolerable without such fooling around. Crocodiles had lived on earth 18 million years longer than mankind, and there was a pretty good chance they would still be around when humanity's fooling around had finished it off.

By the time they reached Würzburg they were through with the work quota. The quiz expert rewarded himself with a third Apollinaris, and Blum ordered his seventh Pils. The pressure on his bladder was frightful, but he didn't move from the spot. This man was capable of anything.

“So how long have you been doing quizzes?”

“Almost four years. Of course it takes a while before you feel happy on TV. Stage fright, you know. I can tell you, when there's 20 million people out there waiting for you to have no idea of the date of the battle of Aboukir, or the name of the film where Marlon Brando played a Japanese, or the number of genuses of pythons
in existence – well, you may be good, but you suddenly get the feeling you're sitting in the middle of space with nothing underneath you, know what I mean?”

“I'm not unfamiliar with the feeling,” said Blum.

“And what's your line, if I may ask?”

“I'm in the construction industry.”

“Ah, well, of course that's quite something. With the economic fluctuations . . .”

“You can say that again. And again,” said Blum, and told him tales of the building industry. He had once worked on a building site in the summer holidays, and it still came in useful. At Aschaffenburg the TV quiz man rose, took his large tome and said goodbye.

“I'm going to have a bit of a lie-down before we reach Wiesbaden. Watch the show on April the fifth! No, no, don't get up – and thanks a lot!”

Blum asked for his bill. He felt a pressing need to shut himself in the toilet or pull the emergency brake, but he stayed where he was, drank another coffee, and watched as the train rolled on into the chemicals-producing area, where the sky was green as grass.

No one met Blum, no one had laid on a stormy reception for him, no one took any interest in him at all except for a foreign gentleman in a turban and a voluminous white robe who held a city street map under his nose, and was greatly disappointed when Blum told him, “I'm a stranger here myself.” And Frankfurt was indeed strange to him, although he had once known the city very well. At eye level there were still places he remembered, but everything over ten feet high seemed to be new. Banks, boutiques, brothels, and two pharmacies on every corner – anyone who didn't make money here, thought Blum, didn't need it.

He left his sample case and travelling bag in a left-luggage locker on level B under the central police station. It was now five-thirty. He didn't look for a hotel – if all went smoothly he might be able to spend the night at the airport and catch the first flight to Miami in the morning. Or to Maracaibo. Or Macao. He went to the toilet and hid the key to the left-luggage locker in his left boot (luckily he usually bought his footwear half a size too large), and then he called the dealer. It took him some time to find a working phone, and the fuggy atmosphere was beginning to get to him by the time he finally reached the man on the other end of the line. He sounded nervous and suspicious, and wouldn't let Blum say anything.

“Know your way around Frankfurt?”

“Of course.”

“Then we'll meet at the Iron Bridge in half an hour.”

The gulls were screaming above the river Main. Pleasure boats bobbed up and down by the bank. The river was high, and oily water slapped against the planks of their hulls. Old women stood in the public gardens and on the bridge feeding pigeons and gulls, and Turkish children were playing counting-out games or Ayatollah. Blum admired the skyline. Say what you like, they knew what they were doing in Frankfurt, and even if the scene in general made you want to puke, at least they showed you how to puke profitably here.

At 18.06 hours precisely Blum heard someone cough behind him: the man who was big in the trade was a tall, thin youth of twenty-two at the most, who obviously shaved only twice a week. He had carefully styled fairish hair and an arrogant set to his mouth. His eyes were constantly moving, and he took his hands out of the pockets of his white raincoat only if he absolutely had to. He wore an unobtrusively expensive cashmere scarf around his neck. He examined Blum for a moment, then nodded gloomily and jerked his head in the direction of the bridge.

“We can talk better up there.”

Up on the bridge an unpleasantly cold wind was blowing through the rust-corroded iron arches. The dealer kept his hands in his raincoat pockets, and watched Blum freezing in his silk shirt and blazer with the elegant cravat.