Half an hour later, Dominic Elder rang the doorbell. She was dressed for travel, and knew she looked flustered and angry. Still, she opened the door to him. He was beaming. She swallowed before speaking.
“Dominic, I tried ringing you but you’d already left. Sorry, I’ve got to call off tonight.”
“What?” She stood at the door, holding the door itself by its edge. There was to be no invitation in.
“I know, I know. Somewhere I’ve got to be cropped up less than half an hour ago. I really am sorry.”
He looked pitiable. His shoulders had collapsed forwards. He stared at the doorbell as though trying to make sense of the conversation. “But... where? What’s so important it can’t —”
She raised her free hand. “I know, believe me. But this can’t wait. A car’s picking me up in ten minutes and I haven’t finished packing.”
“Packing?”
“Just overnight.” A pause. “It’s Barclay.”
“What’s happened to him?”
“Nothing, he’s just...” Her eyes narrowed. “Tell me this is nothing to do with you.” He stood there, saying nothing. “Well, thanks for the vote of confidence.” She pulled the door open wide. “Get in here and tell me. Tell me everything.”
The schnapps before bed was probably not necessary... Barclay would have slept on a street of broken glass, never mind between the clean white sheets provided by the Gasthof Hirschen. It had been a hell of a drive. Dominique was of the let’s-press-on school of travel, so that stops were few and far between, and what stops they made were perfunctory. Then a tire went on the 2CV and the spare turned out to be in a distressed condition. And when a new tire had been found and fitted, at what seemed to both of them major expense (whether converted into francs or sterling), a small red light had come on on the dashboard, and wouldn’t go off, despite Dominique’s attempts at tapping it into submission with her finger.
“What is it?”
“Just a warning light,” said Dominique.
“What’s it warning us of?”
“I don’t know. The owner’s manual is under your seat.”
Barclay flicked through it, but his French wasn’t up to the task. So Dominique pulled over and snatched the book from him.
“You’re welcome,” Barclay muttered, but she ignored the gibe. He was dying for a cup of tea, and for the simple pleasures of Saturday in London: shopping for clothes and new classical CDs, reading a book or the newspaper with the CD playing on the hi-fi, preparing for a dinner party or drinks...
“Oil,” Dominique said.
“Let’s take a look, then,” said Barclay, getting out of the car. But the bonnet was almost impossible to open and he had to wait for Dominique, who was in no hurry to assist, to come and unhook the thing for him. There was less to the motor than he’d imagined.
“Do you have a rag or something?”
She shook her head.
“Fine.” He tugged a handkerchief from his pocket, pulled out the dipstick; wiped it, pushed it back into place again, and lifted it out again. Dominique consulted the owner’s manual.
“Yes,” she said. “The oil level is low.”
“Practically nonexistent.” Barclay’s voice was furiously calm. “And do we have a can of oil with us?”
She looked at him as if he were mad even to ask.
“Fine,” he said again.
They were parked by the side of the autobahn. The road itself looked, to Barclay, like some old airstrip, short, pitted concrete sections with joins every few yards. The sound of the 2CV rumbling over each join had become monotonous and infuriating, but even that was preferable to this.
Then it started to rain.
They sat together in the front of the car, not even bothering with the windscreen wipers. Drops of rain thudded down on the vinyl roof, trickling in at a few places where the vinyl had either perished or been breached. Inside the damp car, not a word was exchanged for several minutes.
“Well?” Barclay said at last. “Maybe we could make it to the next petrol station.”
“The last sign was a couple of kilometers back. The next station is sixty kilometers away. We wouldn’t make it, the engine would seize.”
Barclay did not want the engine to seize. “So what do you suggest?”
Dominique did not reply. A car was slowing to a stop behind them. A man hurried out and started urinating onto the verge. Dominique watched in her side mirror and, when he was finished, dashed out and ran towards him, asking in German whether the man by chance had any spare oil.
“Ja, natürlich,” Barclay heard the man reply. He opened the boot of his car and brought out a large can and a plastic funnel. And even though this man was their savior, Barclay saw why it was that some people disliked the Germans. Their efficiency in the face of one’s own shortcomings merely intensified those shortcomings. And nobody liked to be shown up like that. Nobody.
“What a nice man,” said Dominique, cheered by the encounter. She turned the ignition. The red light came on but then went off again. She signaled out into the autobahn and drove off, sounding her horn at the man still parked by the side of the road. She was chatty after that, and eventually succeeded in talking Barclay out of his sullenness. The rain stopped, the clouds cracked open, and there was the sun, where it had been hiding all the time. They rolled back the vinyl roof and, only thirty or forty kilometers farther on, stopped in a town for a good hour, grabbing a bite at a café and then simply walking around.
The men stared at Dominique. During the drive, she had become ugly to him, but now Barclay saw her again, petite and full of life, the sort of woman who got noticed even when there were taller, more elegant or more glamorous women around: not that there were many of those in the town. Refreshed, he found the rest of the drive a bit easier on the nerves, if not on the body. The Gasthof Hirschen, when they’d stumbled upon it, looked just the place to Barclay, more than adequate for an overnight stop. Dominique wasn’t so sure. She’d thought maybe they could press on a little farther... But Barclay had insisted. They were only fifty kilometers, if that, from Burgwede. Fifty kilometers from Wolf Bandorff. It was close enough for Barclay. The manager had asked if they would want just the one room. No, they wanted two. And dinner? Oh yes, they definitely wanted dinner.
But first Barclay had taken a bath, lying in it until Dominique had come thumping at his door, trying the door handle.
“I’m starving!” she called. So Barclay got dressed and met her in the restaurant. After half a bottle of wine, his eyes had started to feel heavy. Then he’d decided to take a schnapps to his room. He’d telephoned Dominic Elder’s London hotel, knowing Elder expected to be back there sometime today. But he wasn’t around, so Barclay left a message and his telephone number. Then he’d fallen asleep...
The first thing he was aware of was a weight on him. The sheets were tight around him, constricting him. He tried to tug them free, but weight was holding them down. What? Someone sitting on the edge of the bed, halfway down. He tried to sit up, but the weight held him fast. He struggled for the lamp, switched it on. It was Dominique. She was wearing only a long pink T-shirt. It fell, seated as she was, to just above her knees.
“What is it?” he said. He was thinking. That door was locked. She’s brought her lock pick’s tools with her. Then he looked at his watch. It was one-fifteen.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. She rose from the bed, padded barefoot to the room’s only chair, and sat down quite primly, knees together and the T-shirt clamped between them. “I thought maybe we could talk about Bandorff.”