He nodded pensively. He had never met a man such as this in real life.
He found girls’ things in the adjoining rooms. The scent was different there. The objects that had been left in the daughter’s small, yellow-painted bedroom were most likely ones in which she had lost interest. The aquarium was dry, the birdcage empty, the drawing paraphernalia laid aside, the boy bands on the wall presumably superseded by new idols. By contrast, the mother’s room seemed more up-to-date, more representative of the person she had been and almost certainly still was. An array of books on shelves, a pile of handbags and summer hats stacked on top of the wardrobe. Boots of all kinds arranged neatly on the floor, and colorful scarves hanging from a hook next to the mirror.
Marco frowned and began to wonder. It almost seemed like the woman still lived here. But why the musty smell of absence? Why the congealed laundry detergent? Why the empty fridge, its door ajar?
And if the two of them really lived elsewhere, as was likely the case, why had the girl’s mother not taken her things with her? Didn’t she want them anymore? Or was she planning on moving in again? Marco had no idea, but then he had never been close to any female. Not even his mother.
Perhaps the woman believed William Stark was still alive and would show up someday. Perhaps all these things were just waiting to be put into use again. Perhaps life with Stark was simply on stand-by.
Marco stood quite still. It pained him to stand in that room knowing none of it would ever happen, that Stark was irrevocably dead. Maybe that was why he went back into the living room and began to study the few private photos there were. Right away he recognized the one the girl had used for her notice. Stark between the girl and her mother, smiling. She’d cropped it and blown it up, but it was the same image.
It was a family situation that would never be replicated.
Marco turned round, noticing for the first time the sharp incisions in the sofa and all its scatter cushions.
He stepped forward, sensing the desperate action to which the room had been witness. How else could he describe it? What did this act of vandalism indicate if not desperation? Was it Stark, who’d lost his mind? Was that why the woman’s boots and all her things were still in her room? Had she and her daughter simply taken to their heels? Was that it? Maybe they’d been really afraid of him. Marco knew the feeling.
He shook his head, unable to get a handle on the situation. Why would his stepdaughter then want Stark back? It didn’t make sense. There had to be some other explanation.
He began to poke at the slits in the cushions. They were dusty, suggesting it had been a while since it had happened. Clean, decisive incisions, probably made with a Stanley knife. Marco shook his head. He felt certain a man of Stark’s orderliness would never have done such a thing unless he’d simply lost his marbles.
Was it jealousy? Had the woman done something she oughtn’t? Had this man, whose life was arranged so neatly, gone berserk because his partner had been unfaithful? Had such a devastating event made him wrench away, from himself and those around him?
Or was it something else altogether?
Again, Marco studied the photo the girl had used. Here was William Stark wearing his African necklace-the one Marco himself now wore-beaming at the camera, the garden in the background in full bloom. So carefree they seemed, so happy. Even the girl, despite her sickly appearance, with dark shadows under her eyes and pale sunken cheeks.
No, Marco had never quite been able to grasp the fluctuations of ordinary people’s lives, and this instance was no exception. The slits in the sofa and the cushions, Stark’s disappearance, the woman’s clothes in her room. He didn’t get it.
Normally, he wouldn’t have cared, but this time was different. He needed to understand, it was why he was here. It was imperative for him to find out why Stark had to disappear, why his and Zola’s paths had crossed. Perhaps the answer lay somewhere here.
Looking around once more, it struck him that the cuts in the sofa could be Zola’s work. Had Stark possessed something Zola was looking for? Had he found it?
Marco turned to the largest of the chest of drawers, automatically doing what thieves do. Feeling all the surfaces, searching for anything that might be concealed, inserted in a secret place, affixed with tape somewhere inaccessible to view. Then he looked behind all the paintings, lifted the rugs and then the tattered mattresses on the beds. As though searching for wads of banknotes or precious jewelry, he worked his way systematically through the house, room by room, nook by nook, but found nothing.
He wondered about the open safe in the little office with the teakwood bookcases next to the front door. It was empty, but since all else had proved fruitless he got down on his knees and ran the nail of an index finger along all its joints. This too was without result, much as he had anticipated. It wasn’t the kind of safe with secret compartments and minute locking systems. It was the regular, old-fashioned sort, tall as a table, with one single interior and a dial lock on the front.
And yet, to make sure, he stuck his head completely inside the safe, examining for cracks, turning his gaze this way and that. Nothing. Not a thing. Until he twisted onto his back and lay outstretched on the carpet in front of the safe. Only then did he see the sequence of black letters and figures written in felt-tip on the red metal wall above the upper frame of the door. They read: A4C4C6F67.
He repeated the sequence out loud four or five times until he felt sure he could remember. It had to be significant. Why else would a person write such a thing there? The question now was when it was written, why it was written, and more specifically: what did it mean?
He pulled himself out of the safe and got to his feet. He took one of the folders marked TAX from the desk drawer, flicking through its contents at random, searching for the numbers four and seven. They weren’t hard to find, for the pages were covered in them, sums done by hand, and Marco saw it immediately: the same curling fours, the same angular sevens as those in the safe. If William Stark had written these figures in his tax files, then his was the hand that had written them in the safe.
Marco sat down on a chair and buried his face in his hands. A4C4C6F67. What could it mean?
The sequence was progressive, figures and letters alike. No leaping back and forth. Only ACCF and 44667, mixed together. But why wasn’t there a letter between the last 6 and 7? Was it because the two last figures were actually one: 67? Or was the correct interpretation rather F6 and F7? What was the system?
The Internet abounded with tests and puzzles claiming to yield a person’s IQ. Marco found exercises like these easy to solve, but this was harder. It could be a system for archiving data. It could be a code that might be rearranged in numerous combinations and deal with countless subjects. It could be a computer password, or something to do with secret societies. In fact, it could be anything at all, and to compound the problem the sequence might even be incomplete, written in random order, or perhaps simply in reverse.
Marco’s most immediate and logical thought was that it was a password, or the combination of some other safe in some other location. The question was whether the series of letters and numbers were still relevant. It could, of course, be old and outdated.
He stood up, went over to an old Hewlett-Packard computer and switched it on. The hard drive whirred and groaned for a minute or so until a gray-green image appeared on the bulky screen. No password. Nothing but old games for kids. He turned it off again.
Finding no other computers in the house, he tried to put the thought from his mind, descending again into the basement in the hope of uncovering clues that might give him something to go on.