The Book of Murder - By Guillermo Martinez & Sonia Soto Page 0,58
slats. I rang the doorbell a couple of times, to no avail. Then I remembered what Luciana had once said about Kloster and his habit of swimming in the evening. I went into the café where she and I had sat two weeks earlier, and asked the waiter if there was a club nearby with a swimming pool. There was, just round the block. I hurried there. Marble steps led up to a revolving door with a brass plaque beside it. Inside I rang the bell at the reception desk and a tired-looking porter appeared. I asked for the swimming pool and he pointed to a sign showing the opening hours: it closed at midnight. I described Kloster and asked if he’d seen him. He nodded and indicated the staircase leading up to the bar and the pool tables. I went up the two flights and found myself in a large smoke-filled room. A crowd of poker players sat in silent concentration at round tables. They glanced up warily when I appeared at the top of the stairs, but soon went back to their cards. It was only then that I realised why the club was still open at midnight: it was a thinly disguised gambling den. At the bar a muted television was tuned to a sports channel. There was a ping-pong table, with the net already taken down, and, beyond it, a few pool tables. At the last one, next to a window looking on to the street, I saw Kloster, playing alone, a glass resting on the edge of the table. I walked over. His hair was swept back and still damp, as if he’d only just come out of the changing room, and his sharp features stood out in the lamplight. He was absorbed in calculating the trajectory of a ball, his chin resting on his cue, and it was only when he moved to a corner of the table and prepared to take his shot that he noticed me.
“What are you doing here? Some field work on games of chance? Or have you come for a game with the boys?”
He looked at me serenely with only mild interest as he applied chalk to the tip of his cue.
“Actually I was looking for you. I thought you’d be at the pool, but they told me you were here.”
“I always come up here after my swim. Especially since discovering this game. I rather looked down on it when I was young. I thought it a game for bar-room show-offs—you know what I mean. But it has interesting metaphors, and its own little philosophy. Have you ever tried to play it seriously?”
I shook my head.
“Essentially it’s geometry, of course. And the most classical kind: action and reaction. The kingdom of causality, you might say. Any spectator can see the obvious trajectory for a shot. That’s how beginners play: thinking only about sinking the next ball, they pick the most direct path. But as soon as you start to understand the game you realise that what really matters is controlling the trajectory of the white after impact. And that’s considerably more difficult. You have to anticipate all the possible ways the balls might strike one another, the chain reactions. Because the true object of the game, the trick, lies not in sinking the ball, but in sinking it and leaving the white free and positioned so that it can strike again. That’s why, of all possible trajectories, professionals sometimes choose the least direct, the most unexpected, because they’re always thinking one shot ahead. They want not just to strike the ball, but to strike and not stop until they’ve sunk them all. It’s geometry, yes, but of a fierce kind.” He moved to where he’d left his glass, took a sip, and looked at me, eyebrows slightly raised. “So what’s the question that was so urgent you came all the way here and couldn’t wait till morning?”
“You haven’t heard about the fire? You don’t know anything?” I scanned his face for any sign of pretence, but Kloster remained unperturbed, as if he really didn’t know what I was talking about.
“I heard there were some fires yesterday, something about furniture showrooms. But I don’t really keep up with the news,” he said.
“A couple of hours ago there was another one—an antique shop below a care home. The home Luciana’s grandmother lived in. They’re still bringing out the bodies. Luciana’s grandmother was one of the first pronounced dead.”