The first thing I did on the other side of
Viennese customs was to stop at one of the airport’s currency exchange counters
and convert a chunk of my hong kong dollars into Euros. The next was to locate
one a free Internet terminal.
I
emailed Matt for the password to get back into Hiero’s blog, and looked up
directions to the address I had for Annika Krieder, Chalky. With a shiver, I
realized that Hiero was in this city, somewhere out there.
The
address wasn’t near a subway station, so too far to walk. Speed was of the
essence, and anyway, a thick snowfall was blanketing the city. The sight of it
made me spend precious minutes and precious Euros on the cheapest overcoat and
hat that Hugo Boss stocked. I shrugged the coat on as I stepped outside, but
the cold still took my breath away. I hailed a cab, a brown Mercedes, and gave
the driver the address.
The
apartment was in a tenement row beyond the ring road, in the new city which looker
older than the old. The kind of place where a couple had kept their daughter
locked in a basement for years. I asked the driver to wait (was thinking more
and more of accruing witnesses to my not
murdering) ran up the short flight of steps and into a cool lobby. I found a
buzzer for apartment 27 and pressed it.
There
was no reply, so I pressed it again.
When
I still got no reply, I ran a hand across the buzzers. Voices came through the
speaker like scattershot, and the door clunked open.
The
building had no elevator, being only three floors high. I raced up the stairs,
then along the corridor on the second floor till I came to apartment 27.
I
put my ear to the door and listened. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I heard
the muted throb of a television. I knocked long and loud.
At
last, I heard a shuffling tread approach the door, and heaved a sigh of relief.
The
door opened to reveal a short woman with greying hair caught up in curlers and
a vast bosom restrained by a faded floral nightgown.
“Was?” she said through a frown. Behind
her, German voices droned in the universal language of soap opera.
“I
wanted—do you speak English?” I said.
The
frown deepened. The door began to close.
“Wait,”
I said, and placed a palm firmly in its path. “I’m looking for Annika Krieder.
It’s very urgent.”
She
stopped pushing the door, and the frown eased.
“Annika?”
she said.
“Yes,
yes.”
The
old lady disappeared, leaving the door ajar. She returned and thrust a slip of
paper at me. I read it, and to my dismay realized it was a forwarding address.
The
cold on the street was bracing after the stuffy building. The taxi driver had
the engine running to keep warm, and a plume of exhaust was boiling from the
rear of the car.
I
slid onto the back seat and handed him the new address. He grunted, put away
the paper he was reading, and drove.
I
watched the cab fee readout rise, all the while thinking of my dwindling cash,
which had taken a hit already when I converted my Hong Kong dollars to Euros at
the airport.
The
new address was within the old city, and frustratingly close to where we had
passed not half an hour before. I again asked the driver to wait, and leapt
onto the pavement and hurried to the door of a slim townhouse of five stories.
Inside, I found the glass lobby door unlocked. I took the elevator to the
fourth floor, muscles tense, and was soon rapping on the door of apartment 4c.
The
door swung inward under the blows of its own accord. I ran my fingers along the
door jamb and felt the sharp pain of a splinter. Someone had forced the door.
Without
thinking, I shoved the door back onto its hinges and entered.
Another
quiet living room. Bars of muted winter light sheared the gloom in places, and
revealed a clutter of tall, reserved leather couches and armchairs. Standing
over them were pedestal lamps and dark bookcases, crammed together with barely enough
space to maneuver. Beyond them was a kitchenette beneath a large, curtained
window. Dark doorways gaped left and right—I thought of what I’d found in the
bedroom in Hong Kong.
But
to get to either, I would first have to wade through the wreckage strewn over
the floor. Every bookshelf had been emptied, its books flung down. Vases and
picture frames from a mantel had been swept into a heap, and I saw at least
three paintings or prints that had been torn from their hooks and smashed on
the coffee table.
I
was looking at a thorough ransacking.
Or
something meant to look like one.
I picked
my way through the debris, hearing something crunch and tinkle under my feet
more than once, and toward the left doorway. It led to a small bathroom. The
mirrored door of the vanity cabinet hung at an angle from one hinge, and its
contents had been smashed and spread across the tiles.
I
returned to the living room, and tiptoed to the other doorway. It led to the
bedroom, which had also been turned upside down, but was mercifully empty of
dead bodies.
Back
in the living room I swept a pile of magazines from the couch and sat.
Unconsciously I sucked on the finger that ached dully at the splinter site.
The
taxi was waiting. The fare rising by the minute, but I needed to sit and clear
my head.
“What
are the chances this break-in is a coincidence?” I said into the thin air.
And
was surprised when I voice like my own answered.
“Possible,
but you’d be a fool to believe it.”
It was my voice.
No,
it was my daughter’s voice. It was Tracey’s.
It
was both. My voice in the still air of that wrecked apartment; and hers in the
vault of my mind.
It
seemed my novel wanted out in any way it could. If that meant hijacking real
life, then so be it.
It
had taken Jean and Tracey to leave my life for me to realize how much I talked
to myself. My next thought was that perhaps I was finally going mad. The concoction
of drugs I’d tried over the years to heal my idio-pathetic heart had finally congealed into a mutant mess and was eating
me away from the inside.
Then
I remembered that a young girl’s life was hanging by a thread.
I
decided to play along.
“This
has to be Hiero’s doing,” I replied.
“But
why?” said Tracey with my voice. “He didn’t trash Li Min’s apartment. He
just...”
I
looked the room over, still rooted to the spot. It was every person’s
nightmare, wasn’t it? To return home to find that strange men had been in your
house, in your space—the space where you lived so much of your life. Had
touched your things with their fingers. Leered at your photos. Tracked mud over
your memories.
Break-ins.
Police statistics listed them in the category Crime Against Property. They
should be listed under Crime Against Person, Grievous Bodily Harm.
“He
wanted to scare Annika,” I said.
An
image of Tracey leapt from my mind and into that room. She turned her green
eyes toward me. She had freckles again. (Why did I give her childhood freckles?)
She
shook her head. “It’s wrong,” she said. “Hiero doesn’t scare. He charms.”
“Then
maybe there is something here he wanted.”
I
carefully retraced my steps through the wreckage, while in my mind’s eye,
Tracey probed among the wreckage. Strangely, I felt glad for the company.
I lingered,
looking for a pattern, something at odds with the chaos of destruction.
But
nothing jarred. If it had hung, it had been torn down; if it could be moved, it
had been flung. The only exceptions were the largest breakables, vases, a
mirror, a porcelain lion. They had not been smashed.
I
touched a large vase of modern design.
“Why
isn’t this on the floor in pieces?”
“Noise?”
suggested Tracey.
I
glanced at the bookshelf where a sleek silver stereo had also avoided
destruction.
Its
speakers were putting out a faint hum and I turned the volume a notch down to
prompt an electronic readout. It was set very high.
I
winked at Tracey. “Clever girl,” I said, and wondered if that was a kind of
arrogance.
Annika
Krieder was home fresh from university. It was reasonable to guess she hadn’t
found a job yet and slipped into a daytime routine. Had Hiero expected to find
her here, and flown into a rage when he found the apartment empty?
No.
The destruction was too controlled.
On
the wall a great, glass-fronted clock chimed the hour—ten chimes then fell
silent. But the second hand kept winding around. Tick, tick... all the way to
the heat death of the Universe, and the end of all clocks.
How
many murders before we got there? ... one less if I got my backside into gear.
I
traced the telephone by its wire to where it lay smothered in books.
“You
sure you want to do that?” said Tracey. Her heart-shaped face held a wry grin.
I decided I would handle it alone from here. She disappeared and I was alone.
I
shook my head a moment, then scooped the phone from the floor and tapped the
hook till I got a dial tone. Then I called international, to Australia, and the
directory by heart. I asked for Price, suburb of Subiaco. The female voice said
she had found the number, and would I like to be put through.
I
said yes, and waited.
It
was the middle of the night in Perth, Australia. Matt had probably only just
made it to bed. Too bad for him.
While
I waited I thought about the long shot I was trying. It had taken Hiero less
than a day to write up the murder of Li Min, judging by the timestamp in his
blog entry. What if he was even now blogging his actions? If I could find Hiero
before he got to Annika, and forestall him, I wouldn’t even need to find her.
A
voice came on the line, male. I began to speak, then realized it was not Matt’s
voice. It was his father’s. And this was an answering machine.
I
waited for the beep, and said, “Matt, it’s me, Jack. I need you to get me the
password to that blog again. The one you gave me stopped working. Please hurry.
This is urgent.” I paused. “Deadly urgent.”
I
hung up and, with a last glance at the wrecked apartment, left.
I
emerged from the townhouse into the heart of Vienna to discover the taxi was
gone, lured away by a better fare.
It
was cold, Sunlight glittered on the snow swept off the sidewalk. I jammed my
hands in my pockets and hunched my shoulders and walked just to be moving. I
passed shops, which vented warm air as customers came or went. Each burst full
of the aromas of perfume, or pastries, or frying meat. I turned a corner, and
then another, and a great plaza opened out in front of me. At its center,
standing massive and solid, was a building looking like an oversized fairytale
keep. It was in fact a church, the Cathedral of Saint Stephen, which had stood
on that spot for 900 years—battered by the passions of war, and the steady
gnawing of the elements, but erect still. Knots of tourists were scattered
across the plaza, taking photos, or craning necks to take in the cathedral’s
vast roof.
But
from the corner of my eye, I spied an internet cafe. I hurried toward it, with
the rueful acknowledgement that the internet was fast becoming my chief vice.
But I had been surrounded by strangers now for 72 hours straight (barring hallucinations)
and was hankering for friends. Hell, acquaintances would do.
Inside
the warm cafe, I had begun drafting an email to Jean—an argument really, for my
sanity—when a message arrived in my inbox.
It
was from Matt Price.
I
stuck the message for Jean into the drafts folder and brought up Matt’s.
Had
he got my voice message already?
He
made no mention of it. It appeared we had crossed wires. He said,
Jack.
You’re
right, the password has been changed.
I
checked back on the server to see if there was any evidence my own hack had
been spotted. That looks okay, but I realize that the password I gave you would
have expired an hour at most after I gave it to you. Whoever set up that server
is some tight ass. He’s set it up so the passwords are randomly cycled every
hour and SMS’d to a phone number. It would be a great system, IF he’d locked
the server down properly. >-)
I’ve
set up my own silent service to copy the password to your email account, so you
can login to the blog any time. Hope that’s okay.
Later,
Matt.
No
sooner had I closed Matt’s message, than another appeared. I opened it and read
a single alphanumeric word. The latest password p3QUod4u.
I
called up Hiero’s blog and entered the password, hunt and peck on the keyboard.
The
screen filled with the latest entry. I was in.
More
than that. My long shot had hit.
Then
I read the title properly and my heart sank, suddenly a deadweight in my chest.
The
topmost entry was titled: The human body, such a fragile organism.
Cathartic.
That’s the word. It was tremendously cathartic
to rip Chalky’s apartment to shreds. To grasp every item—no matter the item—and
hurl it down. She was such a prissy person. Perhaps I should have let her live
long enough to see the mess. She might have died at the sight of it.
Ah
well, can’t unwind the past. The person formally known as Annika Krieder is now
just a piece of meat. An amazing transformation, from life and warmth and
voice, to inertness, a cluster of organs, food for microbes. And the alchemy
that turns this gold of life into the lead of death? A simple shove.
But
it has to be the right shove at the
right time.
And
how had I, the magician, learned the secret of invoking this correct shove?
From the train timetables I found in Chalky’s apartment.
Train timetables? I thought. Of course.
Hiero had broken into Annika’s apartment to learn everything he could about her
movements. He’d ransacked the place to cover his purpose. Heavy with
foreboding, I read on.
Yes,
Chalky is prissy. And very orderly, bordering on Obsessive Compulsive. I found
her stash of timetables, and no doubt she carried another copy with her. The
ones I found were neatly marked with her travel plans, colour-coded. From them
I learned which train line and station she would be using today.
However,
I don’t think she intended to catch
the train in the manner she actually did. Her flight through the air was
reminiscent of Piggy’s in Lord of the Flies. Even to the shattered spectacles. So
too was the way her body crumpled on impact.
And
here, suddenly, I read something that confused me.
Hiero
had just described how he murdered Annika.
The
very next line, he did it again. Only it was a different murder.
She
paused to survey the platform below, which was thick with moiling passengers.
Her train had already arrived, and she hurried toward the stair, her handbag
jouncing against her hip.
I’m
a helpful guy, so I gave her a hand reaching the platform. Straight over the
edge of the railing, and thirty death-dealing feet to the concrete. Her flight
through the air was reminiscent of Piggy’s...[PASTE]
But
when understanding came, my heart flared with hope.
I
sat back and frantically tried to corral my thoughts. Hiero’s latest blog entry
described him murdering Annika—twice.
First by shoving her in front of a train. And then again by pushing her over
the edge of a concourse. Both “blunt-force trauma.”
Two
murders. But only one could be true.
Or
neither.
If
Hiero’s blog was describing two ways Hiero might
murder Annika, two contingencies, it would mean she still lived. For the
moment.
I
gathered my things and leapt out of my chair. I’d only used a fraction of my
credit.
On
the street I collared an elderly man in a long coat.
“Vienna
Hauptbahnhof. Do you know it?”
“But,
of course,” he said and pointed at his feet.
I
doubted very much I was standing on the rail hub of a major European city, and
my skepticism must have shown.
“Fifty
meters down,” he said, “and then five minutes by U-Bahn.”
I
tore off in the direction indicated. If I had to pitch a tent and stake out the
station for the rest of the week, I would. I only hoped I wouldn’t arrive to
find an ambulance, and police, and chalk...
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