Black Ice Read online

  And then he had gone up to the garage and put the bolts of the substitute planks away in the tin, and he had taken the wooden strips and the remains of the insulating tape into the house and thrown them on the fire. He had looked around once more, yes, nothing forgotten, everything in order, and then he had got into his car and driven to Grandmontagne’s. Erika was sitting there with her grog, he’d said he had to drive back to town for those files, and then he’d gone off and fixed his alibi.

  That bloody bastard. It really was a perfect alibi. Because next morning the sun would have shone full on the steps as soon as it rose over the eastern bank of the lake. And probably the last of the ice would have melted by midday. The planks might still be slightly dark from the moisture, but even that last trace would have faded by the afternoon.

  And if the plan hadn’t worked, if Erika hadn’t gone down the steps, even then he had nothing to fear. Because in that case too the ice would have melted, and the trap would probably never have been discovered.

  The bastard! An idea just waiting to be thought up. Black ice. Melting and leaving no trace.

  But he’d miscalculated. Jupp Scholten had found him out. Jupp Scholten had used his brain-box and found him out.

  Scholten abruptly reached for the bottle, put it to his lips, drank the entire contents, belched loudly. He stood up, stretched his arms. Then he took aim and flung the bottle far into the wood. He called, “You watch out, Wallmann! The game’s up!”

  He pushed up the garage door, put his bucket away and took down the shutters over the windows.

  He finished at six-thirty. He had washed and sandpapered the shutters, had filled in a few notches here and there. He could be finished by tomorrow afternoon. He’d even have time to do something about the weeds.

  He went into the house and took the chips out of the frozen food compartment of the fridge. Then he went into the garage.

  He put one of the old planks on the workbench and stuck the thick insulating tape around its edges. He took one of the wooden strips and cut four pieces off it with the circular saw, two of them measuring twenty-eight inches and the others measuring twelve.

  He nailed the strips to the edges of the plank. He let the shorter strips overlap on both sides, and he used four nails for each of the longer strips and two for each of the shorter ones. He made sure the nails went through the insulating tape.

  He nailed the strips in place so that they were about an inch above the upper surface of the plank, setting only one of the shorter strips rather lower. He bent down, so that his eyes were level with the workbench, and examined the basin he had made from the plank. It stood at a slight angle.

  He put the bolts in the holes in the plank and tightened the nuts. He placed the contents of the freezer in the two coolbags. Then he filled his little basin with water to a level of about three-quarters of an inch. He put it carefully in the freezer and closed the lid, setting it to fast-freeze.

  He closed the garage door, went to the bathroom and washed. Then he went into the kitchen. He washed the lettuce, dressed it, put the chips on to fry. He put the rump steak in the pan at seven-thirty.

  After his meal he took his beer bottle outside. Darkness was coming up from the woods. The birds had fallen silent. He walked round the house, gravel crunching under his shoes. The windows were bright, sharply outlined like the yellowish-red slits in a large black Chinese lantern. He went to the steps leading down to the steep bank and sat on the top step.

  The lake was calm. Now and then a ripple lapped against the boat, and the landing stage creaked slightly.

  Scholten said: “Just wait, Erika. He’s overplayed his hand! I promised you.” After a while he took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. He put the handkerchief away and stared at the landing on the steps, which could hardly be made out in the twilight.

  Scholten shivered. He rose and went indoors. He switched on the TV and sat in an armchair for a while, watching in silence, drinking his beer. Suddenly he picked up the phone book and looked for the name of the Widow Abels. Lisbeth. He ran his finger over the pages. Abels, Lisbeth, that must be her.

  He rubbed his chin. Then he dialled the number.

  No one answered.

  He hung up, went into the kitchen and took his bottle of wine out of the fridge.

  16

  Scholten spent all weekend wondering how best to inform the police about the murder. It wasn’t as simple as he had thought at first.

  He was absolutely sure that Wallmann had murdered Erika. His experiment had provided the final proof. For it had worked. When he had taken his rectangular basin out of the freezer early on Friday morning there was a smooth solid layer of ice on the plank. He had knocked away the strips, torn off the insulating tape, and burned it all in the fire on the hearth. He had placed the ice-covered plank out behind the garage in the morning sun. In the afternoon the layer of ice had disappeared from the plank, the water had trickled away into the gravel, the wood was beginning to dry out.

  There was no doubt about the method Wallmann had used to murder Erika.

  But how could he convince the police of it?

  At first he intended to go to the police station on Saturday morning, ask to see the head of the murder squad and tell him the whole story. But he very soon had misgivings about this idea.

  He didn’t know whether the head of the murder squad would be at work on Saturday. He tried to think whether he’d ever seen a crime film on TV where the superintendent or the featured detective had been in the office on a Saturday, but he really couldn’t remember. Of course, if a body was found somewhere they went out to the crime scene even on a Saturday or Sunday. This often happened to Felmy in the TV detective series, because he’d be with his ex-wife at weekends, trying to get together with her again.

  But Scholten did not think the head of the murder squad would be sitting in his office on a Saturday just in case he had visitors. High-ranking police officers wanted their weekends off too. And there was no point talking to just any stupid police constable. In fact it could be a big mistake. Because the police constable would at the very least want to know his name, and then they might call Hilde on Monday. Or they might call the works and ask for information. And then he’d be in trouble.

  No. He must go to the police station on a normal working day. Preferably in the morning when he’d be able to speak to the boss. At eight or nine, maybe. Not too early. They always have conferences first thing, he’d often seen them do that on TV.

  But even so it wasn’t easy. He’d have to find some kind of excuse to leave the works.

  Or to arrive late. It would take him at least an hour to explain everything to the superintendent. Call it two hours with the drive there and back. And if he went straight to the police station from home and was there by nine, he couldn’t be at the works before ten-thirty. So he’d be arriving a whole four hours late at the office.

  He couldn’t really say he had diarrhoea again.

  He put off the decision all week. On Friday morning he decided to think it over thoroughly again at the weekend. For by now he had realized that even a conversation with the head of the murder squad could be horribly risky.

  What evidence could he offer the police? Damned little. The nail-marks. The grease on the bolts. That was about it. And the new bolts that hadn’t been in the tin before. But how was he to prove how many bolts had been there in the first place? And how many strips of wood, and how much insulating tape?

  The wood had disappeared, gone up the chimney in smoke. So had the insulating tape. And as for the black ice, well, that was the point: the main piece of evidence had melted away the day after the murder, leaving no trace.

  And what would happen if they really did investigate: followed up his information and interrogated Wallmann? Wallmann would simply claim: “Scholten is crazy. He’s afraid I’ll sack him. And he’s right too, he’s useless. He wants to save his own bacon by pinning something on me. What he says is pure nonsense. No such thing happened.
Prove it.”

  And suppose the proof wasn’t strong enough? Or the police were too stupid to prosecute Wallmann? Then what?

  He could answer that question at once. Then he’d be out of his job in the office of Ferd. Köttgen, Civil Engineering Contractors. He’d be on the dole until he reached retirement age.

  And Wallmann would be finally off the hook. A dreadful prospect. It simply must not happen. Jupp Scholten wasn’t resigning himself to that. There had to be a way.

  He thought and thought, but he kept going round in circles.

  At some point in the following week, on his way home, he became engrossed in the idea of proving it to the police himself. He could show them how you made a rectangular basin like that, and how easy it was to cover the planks of the steps with black ice. Then they’d have to believe him.

  But as he was sitting in front of the TV screen he suddenly shook his head vigorously. You must have had too much to drink, Jupp Scholten! You’d only find yourself deeper in the shit.

  It was far too risky to tell the police he’d tried it out and it worked. That might put other ideas into their heads. “Tell us, Herr Scholten, could you perhaps have been planning a little accident yourself? Intended for your own wife, maybe? Herr Wallmann offered to let you take your wife to his weekend retreat with you, isn’t that right? Could it be that now you’ve taken fright and thought better of it, and you’ve thought of pinning something on your boss? You don’t get on too well with Herr Wallmann, do you, Herr Scholten? Hasn’t he already threatened to sack you?”

  The mere idea made him feel hot under the collar. He shifted restlessly in his armchair. He realized they could simply say he himself was responsible for the nail-holes in the planks. And the grease. They could say he’d been rehearsing the whole thing, not with just one of the substitute planks but with the five from the steps.

  Hilde said: “Can’t you sit still? How can I concentrate on the film? I wish I knew why you have to keep shifting about.”

  He said in a very loud voice: “Because I want to!” and then stood up and went into the kitchen. As he was opening the bottle of beer she appeared in the doorway. She said in a penetrating whisper: “Do you have to shout like that? What’s the matter with you?”

  He raised the bottle to his lips and drank.

  “You act in such a common way!” she whispered.

  He put the bottle down, belched and said: “I am common.”

  Her voice turning reedy, she said: “Yes, I knew that from the start. I should never have married you. I’d have saved myself a lot of grief. If I hadn’t married you I might still be healthy. But of course it didn’t matter to you whether I was strong enough to have children.”

  He belched again copiously.

  She sobbed and went away.

  Until the next weekend, he kept wondering whether he could do it anonymously. It couldn’t be done over the phone. That was much too complicated: he could never explain what it was all about in two or three sentences. If he did it anonymously he would have to write a letter.

  He knew from the first that a letter was even more dangerous than a phone call. They would get on his trail; they investigate such letters. But he thought up dozens of ways of writing that letter. He realized how difficult it was to describe the trap, but he kept trying. He did not actually put anything down on paper: too risky. Someone might have come along and asked what he was writing. And he kept finding himself assailed by a torrent of fragmentary ideas that he couldn’t control.

  He spent the weekend brooding.

  On Monday afternoon the door of the filing room was suddenly flung open. Wallmann marched in, shouting: “How much longer do I have to wait for those bank statements? I said I needed them at once!”

  Scholten, who had started in surprise, realized that Wallmann was addressing not him but Rosa Thelen. Rosie instantly burst into tears. You could hardly make anything of the shrill broken sounds she uttered between her sobs. “But – but you wanted – you wanted – the statements from the – the job centre – you wanted them at once – too – ”

  Wallmann roared: “Yes? So what? Is that too much to ask? I thought you were supposed to be a bookkeeper?”

  “But – but I can – ”

  “I know just what you can do. You can sit on your fat arse and twiddle your thumbs. And make coffee. You can’t do anything else. I’m sick of it. Things are going to change around here, you bet your life they are!”

  Rosie was weeping bitterly. Wallmann went out, slamming the door. Scholten, who had been looking at some papers with his head bowed, looked up and said: “The bastard. I’ll pay him back, I promise you I will. Stop crying, Rosie. He can’t do anything to you.”

  Rosa Thelen went on crying and looking through the bank statements at top speed, meanwhile wiping the corners of her eyes with her wrist.

  On the way home Scholten turned into a side street. After driving round a couple of corners he found a phone box in a fairly quiet street. He got out of the car, gritting his teeth, went into the phone box, found the number of the police station in the phone book. He took out his handkerchief, as if to blow his nose, raised the receiver to his ear with his other hand. Just as he realized that he hadn’t looked round outside the phone box, a woman’s voice answered. “Police here.”

  He almost dropped the handkerchief and with trembling fingers tried to drape part of it over the receiver without removing it from his nose.

  “Hello? Police here.”

  Scholten said: “Frau Erika Wallmann, of the civil engineering firm of Ferdinand Köttgen, she didn’t die in an accident. She was murdered. By her husband. You should investigate . . .” Then he broke off, hesitated, hung the receiver up in a moment of sudden panic. He pushed open the door of the phone box, almost colliding with an old lady walking down the road with her shopping bag. He turned his face away, got into his car, drove off with the engine roaring. He thought that, in the rear-view mirror, he saw the old lady looking after him.

  17

  When he got home it occurred to him that he hadn’t tried to disguise his voice. He stood beside his car, briefcase in hand, both arms dangling. “Oh, shit,” he said.

  Nothing happened for the next few days. The following week passed without any incident too. Scholten began to feel calmer. If they had recorded his voice on tape they’d have turned up at the works some time or other. After all, he had given the name of the firm. They’d have come and played everyone the tape and asked: “Do you know this voice?”

  Perhaps they might yet turn up?

  For they should at least have come to question Wallmann. This was a murder case when all was said and done.

  Perhaps they’d summoned Wallmann to the police station? Or perhaps they had gone to his apartment. In the evening. Two of them. They’d stood outside the front door, and when he opened it they’d shown their ID and said: “CID. May we speak to you for a moment, Herr Wallmann?” They had gone into the living room with him and stood there in their raincoats, looking around them.

  It gave Scholten a fright to think that they might have played Wallmann their tape. “What do you have to say about this, Herr Wallmann? You’ll understand that we have to investigate the matter. Have you any idea who the man could be?”

  It took him some time to calm down again. No, surely that was out of the question. If they’d played Wallmann the tape, the wheels would have started going round by now.

  No, there was only one possibility: they were quietly investigating for themselves. They were doing the only right thing. They weren’t interested in the man who made the call. They were interested in the murderer. Perhaps they were already closing in on Wallmann. Some time or other they’d be coming to take him away.

  Scholten nurtured this hope all through June, and he was still living on it when July came. Sometimes it gave him a pang to see the murderer walking around, still a free man. And whenever Wallmann raised his voice in anger at the works Scholten clenched his fist in the pocket of his overall and
said to himself: “You wait, you bastard! I’m sick of this! You’re for the chop!”

  But when his initial alarm and his anger had worn off, he always found himself back exactly where he had been before. What could he do?

  He’d already done everything he could. It was up to the police now. They knew what had happened, damn it! Why were they taking so long about it? Why didn’t they do anything?

  In August Scholten went on holiday with Hilde for three weeks. They spent the first two weeks in a little boarding house not far from the Baltic coast, as they did every year. Scholten went fishing. Hilde lay in a lounger on the balcony recovering from the stress of the journey.

  She had few objections to fishing. Many years ago she had decided that fishing was a healthy sport, unlike the bowling that Scholten had previously said was the kind of sport that suited him and kept him fit. Hilde liked to eat fish too because of its high protein content. Protein is good for the nerves.

  Hilde spent her days in the second week recovering from the noise young people on holiday made in the street at night. Scholten didn’t hear them. He didn’t wake up at night except when Hilde nudged him and asked if he couldn’t hear all that noise.

  In the middle of the second week Hilde said Scholten was overdoing his fishing. Overdoing anything was always a bad idea, even overdoing an activity that was healthy in itself. Couldn’t he take an interest in something else? He might read a book for once.

  So Scholten stayed at the boarding house for a day, leafing through the biography of Pope John Paul II that Hilde had brought with her. In the afternoon he went down to the tobacconist and bought a thriller, Hubert Steinbecker’s Deadly Bait. The book disappointed him. It had nothing at all to do with fishing. Hilde had disapproved of its purchase anyway.

  And as they did every year, they spent the third week visiting Angelika in Kiel. Scholten taught his grandson to play skat. The boy was a quick learner, and after Scholten had taught him the rules they played every day. Hilde tried to stop the games, but Scholten said they would help the boy to learn to multiply in his head and do it fast. Angelika said that would certainly be good for her son. Scholten’s son-in-law, a pharmacist by profession, had no objection. He knew nothing about card games. Hilde was not at all happy.