Read Online The Gloaming by Melanie Finn - Free Book Online Page A

mercenaries in Africa. Twenty-five years now. Whatever you can imagine, whatever hell, your worst nightmare, I’ve seen it and I’ve certainly smelled it. And you know what I’ve come to realize, after all of it?’
    He pauses now. He knows I’m listening, I can’t help myself. His North Sea eyes never shift, never even blink.
    I look at him, and wish I hadn’t. ‘What? What have you come to realize, Martin?’
    â€˜There’re always more of them.’ He smiles at his revelation and affects amazement, almost perplexity: ‘No matter how many die or how they die. Burning, screaming, guts falling out, whatever. There’re always more of them.’
    I wait for a moment. ‘Are you done?’
    He laughs again, a belly laugh, as if I’m very, very funny. ‘You’re offended,’ he says. ‘Poor princess.’ He reaches over and clinks his bottle on mine. And then he leans in, like a lover about to kiss, and whispers in my ear. ‘Very easy to be offended by a little pea. But so very difficult to make anything better in this world of shit.’
    I’m careful not to move.
    Finally, he smiles, lingers, just so I know he’s in complete control. Then he taps the book. ‘I know this one. It doesn’t have a happy ending.’
    That night Martin Martins hires a hooker.
    At least, I assume she’s a hooker.
    I listen to them, it’s impossible not to.
    Every detail of their fucking.
    And when they’re done, and when she’s left, I hear him smoke his cigarette, smell the tang of it.
    Finally, I hear his breathing downshift into sleep. And I listen to him sleep, for hours, his soft, baby breaths, he doesn’t even move. I remember Tom saying that when he first started working in Rwanda he couldn’t sleep. Stories and images, voices, sobbing, screaming—he couldn’t clear them from his head. He told me that very few perpetrators had trouble sleeping; the same psychological mechanism that allowed them to commit terrible crimes allowed them to justify their crimes completely.
    Guilt, he said, is seldom felt by the guilty.
    Â 
Arnau, March 17
    I found an empty cup in the kitchen sink. I had not put it there. It seemed oddly emboldened. Proud cup looking up at me with its remnant puddle of coffee. Black, no sugar. I placed the cup on the table. I supposed I should be frightened. Someone had been here.
    Down the stairs, I knocked on the Gassners’ door. Mrs Gassner opened it a fraction, keeping the chain on the latch as if to suggest she feared for her life. ‘
Kindermörderin
,’ she hissed and slammed it shut. The word was everywhere, now, whispered like a mantra in the grocery store, the chemist, as I walked down the street. I was no longer sure if it was being uttered or if I was simply hearing it in expectation.
    Kindermörderin
.
    â€˜Mrs Gassner,’ I said through the door. ‘Do you know who has been in my apartment?’
    There was no answer.
    I knocked again, even louder, and tried my bad German. ‘I know someone was there.
Haben Sie die reingelassen?’
Just in case I’d said it wrong, I added, ‘Did you give them a key? That’s against the law.’
    She responded only by turning up the volume on the TV.
    I raised my voice. ‘I’m going to call the police.’
    This was an empty threat. Because of course the phone was disconnected. And I had taken no measure toward its reconnection. There was no one to use it. The unpaid bill was still in my handbag.
MAHNUNG
!
    I walked down the road to a phone box. In Switzerland, public phones still exist and they always work. I called Tom’s mobile. Elise answered.
    â€˜How are you?’ she asked. ‘Poor thing. We’ve been so worried.’
    We. That stubborn burr of a word. I contained myself, ‘Is Tom there?’
    â€˜Oh honey bunny,’ she murmured to a small squeal in the background.