A moment later, when the screwdriver slipped again and scratched the black plastic box, he lost his nerve and the next time he struck it with all his might. When the screwdriver squashed the tip of his ring finger and slit it open, he dropped everything, stuck his finger in his mouth and hopped up and down with pain. After a while he wrapped his handkerchief around his finger and gave it one last try. The two coins caught, and now, carefully, millimeter by millimeter, he hammered them in. Once there was a groaning sound as if the box were about to explode. But it held and, at last, the belt was blocked. Perlmann sat down and tried it out. The curves of the two coins remained visible. He couldn’t get them any further in. Otherwise they would slide in with the others. If Leskov looked carefully when he noticed that the belt was jammed, he could, with a shake of his head, say something about vandalism.
First he had borrowed the map, then rented the car, and now this. He was getting deeper and deeper into the realization of his plan. His actions were gradually becoming more deliberate, his reflections more ingenious, his traces clearer. And even so, he thought as he packed the tools away, it all felt like an inward-rotating spiral that was constricting itself around him all by itself and without his help, and would in the end strangle him with his own crime.
With his hand still on the lid of the trunk, he saw a woman on the other side of the crossing opening a grocer’s shop and turning on the light. He ran over and walked into the shop. The old woman’s white hair was so fine and sparse that she looked almost bald. Her in-turned lips and jutting chin reminded him of the toothless old woman at the window in Portofino.
‘Closed,’ she said, pushing her pointed chin even further forward.
‘Just one question,’ Perlmann said.
She looked at him suspiciously.
‘Do lots of trucks come along here?’
‘What?’
‘Lots of trucks. Is there a lot of traffic? Through the tunnel, I mean.’
‘Not today,’ she grinned, showing her single stump of tooth.
‘On working days, I mean.’
‘Well, sometimes more, sometimes less.’
‘What does it depend on?’ Perlmann put his hands in his pockets so that he could clench his fists.
‘I don’t know. There’s more going on in the summer.’
‘But are there trucks at this time of day?’
‘Of course there are. They make one hell of a noise. And they stink. But why do you want to know?’
‘We’re making a film, and it has to have trucks in it,’ Perlmann said. He had no idea where that came from, but the information came without hesitation.
‘A film? In our village?’ She gave a croaking laugh and pushed the rolled tip of her tongue between her lips.
‘And what about the time of day? When does the traffic ease off in the evening?’
‘You want to know very precisely, don’t you?’ she said and now made a curious face as if she were trying to believe the story about the film. ‘Nothing comes down from Piacenza after four. And from Chiávari through the tunnel – well, from half-past four there aren’t as many, c’è meno.’ And then, suddenly quite enraged, she added: ‘Knocking off – these days they knock off at five in the evening!’
‘So not many trucks come through after half-past four?’
‘That’s what I said.’
Perlmann was tempted to repeat the question, however pointless it was. But he didn’t dare.
‘A real film, eh?’ she said when he was saying goodbye.
He felt he was about to suffocate in there, and just nodded.
‘As if!’ she murmured.
She watched after him as he walked back to the car. He was glad it was now too dark for her to make out the details of the car. When he turned round and set off towards Genoa she was still standing in the doorway.
31
Customs control at Genoa Airport wasn’t much to worry about, he thought, and shifted down, having been an inch away from causing a collision on a tight bend. His calculation had been too generous. If the flight was on time, Leskov could be out by a quarter to three, and then they would arrive when there were still trucks on the road. If his estimate for tomorrow’s journey, which stretched into the rush hour, was remotely accurate, he would have to be careful that Leskov didn’t notice his haste and ask about it.
And, generally speaking, how was he going to explain to Leskov that they were taking neither the coast road nor the highway, but driving through this bleak, grey valley, in which there was absolutely nothing to see? Perlmann stopped when it struck him as boiling hot. But not a single excuse occurred to him that would have sounded even halfway plausible. No thoughts came at all. The last few hours had leached him out completely. His finger hurt. And how would the others explain the strange route? His colleagues? Kirsten? The police? He drove on. I’ve still got twenty-one hours, after all.
Even before he could begin to get his bearings, he reached an area at the harbor that was veiled in dense fog, cut through with beams of cold, rust-red light from the high harbor floodlights. It was impossible to see three feet ahead, and his own headlights made everything even worse. He got out of the car. Apart from the sound of the water it was completely silent. He had no idea how to find the parking lot, but in his exhaustion he was grateful for the fog, and went deeper and deeper into it.
Suddenly, a gap opened up, and between two swathes of fog he saw, a few hundred yards away, the row of trucks that he remembered from the ship. He turned up the collar of his jacket and stamped on, shivering. He only saw the bars when they appeared right in front of his face. They were part of a metal fence that ran on rails and clearly surrounded the whole truck lot. It must have been eight or nine feet high. For a while Perlmann stood there dejectedly and smoked. Then he threw away the fog-damped cigarette, which tasted horrible, and started climbing.
It was difficult. The meshes of the fence were tight and barely provided purchase for the tips of his feet, and his hands – he could only really use the right one – threatened to slip from the damp wire when he loosened his grip because it was so painful. At last he managed to grasp the top bar, and after a quick pause for breath, in which he hung from the fence like a sack, and felt the wetness penetrating his trousers, he managed to hoist himself up. When he drew up his second leg, his trousers caught on a screw. There was a long tear along his thigh. The sound of the tearing fabric seemed to echo across the whole of the harbor. When he reached the bottom Perlmann had the feeling of having done something completely senseless, and only his sore hands and a desperate defiance kept him from immediately climbing all the way back up again.
With his arms outstretched like a blind man, he walked slowly towards the trucks. The first thing he touched was a headlight. Then he felt for the bumper and ran his hand along it, from left to right and back again. He took off his fogged glasses and brought his eyes very close to it, felt the metal and the hard rubber covering, tested its height and compared it in his mind with the hood of the Lancia. He gripped the massive metal supports that held the whole thing together, and rattled them in a desperate awareness of how ridiculous he was being. Then he ran his hand along the length of the truck in search of the filler neck for the gas tank. He eventually found it on the other side, after half-creeping under the loading platform. The tank was in the middle, and there was a wide gap between the tank and the driver’s cab. Exhausted, he leaned on the bumper, looked at his hands, smeared with oil and damp rust, and removed the dirty handkerchief from the wound, in mute despair over the bitter thought that such solicitude towards himself had now become superfluous.