I was on the phone, my father's ill.'
'Have you seen my husband here today?'
Blanca shook her head.
'Are you absolutely sure?'
'He's not been, and he's not left.'
'He's got the keys. We must have misunderstood each other.'
'I can open up for you. You just need to slam the door when you leave.'
It occurred to Louise that she ought to ask Blanca why she was not telling the truth. But something got in the way. Her main task for the moment was to find out where Aron was.
Blanca opened the door to Henrik's flat, then vanished down the stairs. Louise stood still in the semi-darkness, listening. Then she switched on the lights, one after the other, and walked round the flat.
All of a sudden, it seemed to her that several of the wayward pieces had just found their places in the puzzle, and that an unexpected pattern was emerging.
Somebody wanted Aron out of the way. It was something to do with Henrik, something to do with Kennedy's brain, with Henrik's journeys, his illness and his death. Aron was the pathfinder. He was the most dangerous person, the one who had to be disposed of first, so that the path would not be discovered.
Louise turned cold with fear. She edged cautiously closer to the window, and looked down at the street.
Though there was nobody there, she had the impression that somebody had just left.
CHAPTER 11
Louise Cantor was plagued by insomnia when she returned to the hotel. She reminded herself of what it had been like when things were at their worst. When Aron had left her. When he started sending his tearful, drunken letters from various drinking dens all over the world. Now he had vanished again. And she was waiting, on guard. In an attempt to appeal to whatever forces were keeping him away, she went to his room and snuggled down in the bed he had never used. But still she was unable to sleep. Her thoughts went into free fall: she had to catch them before they crashed into the ground. What had happened? Could she have misread the situation after all? Had he run away, abandoned her and Henrik yet again? Simply sneaked off, for the second time? Could he really have been so brutal that he had pretended to be in mourning and going to a church to light a candle for his dead son when in fact he had already made up his mind to disappear?
She got up and took some miniatures from the minibar. She paid no attention to what she was drinking. She poured into herself a mixture of vodka, Tia Maria and cognac. The spirits induced in her a sort of calm, but needless to say, it was deceptive. She went back to bed, and could hear Aron's voice:
No human being can paint a wave. A person's movements, a smile, a wink can be captured on canvas by a skilful artist. So can pain, Angst, as in the case of Goya, his man stretching out his arms in desperation to the firing squad. All these things can be depicted, I've seen all of them reproduced in a convincing way. But never a wave. The sea is always elusive, waves will elude anybody who tries to capture them.
She remembered the trip to Normandy. It was the first one they had made together. Aron was due to lecture on his view of future developments in telephony and computers. She had taken study leave from her lecturing post at Uppsala University, and accompanied him. They had spent a night in a Paris hotel where the sound of oriental music penetrated the walls of their room.
Early the next morning they had taken a train to Caen. Their passion had been intense. They had made love in the cramped toilet: never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined anything so blissful.
They had spent several hours in the beautiful cathedral in Caen. She had observed Aron from a distance and thought: there stands the man with whom I shall spend the rest of my life.
That same evening, after he had delivered his lecture and received a standing ovation, she told him about her thoughts in the cathedral. He had looked at her, embraced her and said that he had thought exactly the same thing. Their destiny was to live together for the rest of time.
The next day, very early, in pouring rain, they had hired a car and driven to the beaches where the invasion took place in June 1944.