The Book of Murder - By Guillermo Martinez & Sonia Soto Page 0,59
in the information gradually. He stood preoccupied for a moment, as if he were having trouble reconciling it with another train of thought. He laid the cue across the table and I thought I saw his hand shake slightly. He turned to me, his face sombre.
“How many dead?” he asked.
“They still don’t know,” I said. “They’ve found fourteen bodies so far. But it’s likely several more will die in hospital overnight.”
Kloster nodded. He bowed his head and placed his hand over his face like a visor, pressing his temples.
Slowly he paced up and down alongside the table, eyes hidden by his hand. Was he feigning this emotion? He seemed to be genuinely affected by the news, but in a way I couldn’t quite fathom. Eventually he looked up, his gaze distant so that he seemed to be talking to himself.
“A fire,” he said, still apparently struggling with his thoughts. “Fire. Of course. And I can see now why you came all the way here.” He suddenly flashed me a contemptuous look. “You think I left home a couple of hours ago with my swimming things, torched that care home, then came here to do my hundred lengths in perfect calm while the old folks burned to a crisp. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
I shrugged doubtfully. “Luciana saw you a couple of weeks ago, standing outside the home, staring up at the balconies. That’s why she got in touch with me: she thought you were planning something against her grandmother.”
Kloster eyed me, still slightly contemptuous, but now seeming exasperated as well.
“That’s possible. Quite possible. In my novel I had to plot a murder in an old people’s home. I went to several, in different parts of town. I looked at some from outside, making mental notes. But in a couple of them I pretended I needed to put a relative in a home and looked round inside. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to get into those places. I was looking for distinctive features for a particularly ingenious murder. But I was only ever thinking of one murder, one person. Destroying the whole place—such a simple, brutal solution never occurred to me. I have to say, I’m surprised myself every time by the method. Though if you think about it, fire was an obvious choice.”
There was something distracted in the way he spoke now, as if he were addressing a third person. He looked at me, but his eyes darted about, and he started pacing again, as if engaged in a furious inner struggle.
“All those dead—they’re innocent,” he said. “This wasn’t meant to happen. This definitely was not meant to happen. It’s time to stop him. But it’s too late. I wouldn’t know how to.”
He came very close and his expression had changed again: he seemed now to want to show me his naked face, at my mercy, to be judged.
“I’ll ask again: do you believe it was me? Do you believe it was me every time?”
I couldn’t help stepping back. There was something ravaged and terrifying in Kloster’s eyes. A much deeper, darker madness than Luciana’s seemed to burn there.
“No, I don’t,” I said. “I no longer know what to believe.”
“Well, you should believe it,” said Kloster darkly. “You should believe it, but for another reason. A few hours ago, before coming here, I started writing that very scene, the murder in the care home. I left a rough draft on my desk. And as you see, it’s happened again. Only the method changes. As if he wanted to stamp his seal. Or make fun of me. A correction of style. It’s happened every time. All I had to do was write. At first I tried to convince myself that they must be coincidences. Very strange coincidences, of course. Too precise. But the dictation…had already begun. I suppose you could say it’s a work in collaboration.”
“In collaboration? With whom?”
Kloster looked at me warily, as if he might have gone too far and was suddenly unsure whether he should go on. Perhaps it was the first time he’d told anyone.
“I hinted at it, the first time we spoke, when I admitted that I didn’t believe the deaths were occurring entirely by chance. But at the time I couldn’t put it into words. It was the only possible explanation but also the one nobody would believe. Not even I fully believed it, until now. Perhaps you still won’t. You may remember, I mentioned the preface to Henry James’s Notebooks.”