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Between locating the freezer and lugging the body down to it (plus time lost pausing to retch), it was 22:55 by the time Lieutenant Kim bid him goodnight. The Frittte was open until 23:00.
Harry’s heart was pounding and his hands shook as he tipped out loose coins on the counter. He smiled at the clerk, sweaty and apologetic. She remained transcendentally apathetic.
He gulped down half the bottle of Commodore Red on his walk back and forced down the rest of the cheap, sickly wine in his room. The warmth in his belly was almost enough to ignore the cold wind blowing through the broken window.
The sounds of Martinaise blew in with it. The foul-mouthed stream of those drugged-out delinquents round the back of the hotel. An argument breaking out between two truckers stuck in the endless jam. A grunt and tinkle of broken glass as someone went clattering down the steps.
And further away (much further than Harry could hear, yet conveyed to him through the shiver in his bones), Satellite-Officer Vicquemare’s head snapped up, thinking he heard a knock on his door. It was just the old latch, rattling in the wind.
And closer, right above Harry’s room, heels clicked on the rooftop. Klaasje was awake too.
An idea surfaced and stuck: knock on her door.
“Evening, Officer.” She leaned against the door frame, cigarette in her hand.
“Evening.”
“It’s late.”
“I had some — more questions.” He spoke in stops and starts, dragging each word from the swamp of his brain. “Thought — I’d ask them. Now.”
Her gaze drifted lazily to the room next-door.
“Now that your partner is asleep?”
“Yeah. That.”
She looked at him for a few, long seconds. Harry felt her eyes slide across his bloated face, his sagging skin, his wine-stained lips, before meeting his own.
(‘That’s not why you’re here, is it?’ said her eyes to his.)
(‘No.' his eyes replied.)
She shrugged. “Sure. Come in.”
“So,” she said, levering the cap off a bottle of Potent Pilsners, “do you usually party with suspects?”
Harry didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. But he didn’t want to say that. Instead he said the next thing that bubbled up:
“It’s my secret method.”
She gave him one of those sidelong looks.
“Is it secret if you tell me that?”
“Aha,” he replied, tapping his swollen nose, “that’s all part of it.”
“Of course,” she drawled.
They lapsed into silence, sat side-by-side on the bed. Klaasje’s knees were tucked up against her chest. His didn’t bend that far. Their backs were leaned against the wall. Some part of Harry had known that was important, that he mustn’t turn his back on the staircase, the window, the door. Some orphaned sense of self-preservation, lingering without memory to anchor it.
(Did Klaasje feel it too? Perhaps she just preferred not to face him, to look at him or smell his breath. But every so often, in the corner of his vision, he saw her eyes dart to the window and back.)
By habit, Harry turned her last few sentences over in his mind. Something in them piqued his interest.
“Are you?” he asked.
“Am I what?”
“A suspect.”
She laughed. Her laughter was soft, like the rain on the window.
“Well,” she drew the word out playfully, “I’m not a witness. And I already, uh,” she smiled wryly, “declined the role of victim. Much to Titus’ disappointment, I’m guessing?”
He nodded, lifting the bottle to his lips. She sighed.
“That’s the trouble with men like that. They always need you to be The Good Something.”
He frowned.
“What’s that?”
“Oh you know.” She dropped into a husky, false baritone, the same she’d used to imitate the murdered mercenary, “’You let me know there’s something good in this world.’”
Suddenly, Harry’s chest clenched. Though he was sitting down, he felt dizzy.
“You make it possible to live.”
The words left his lips before he’d thought them. They tasted familiar: cigarettes, apricots, and stomach acid. Like he’d said them a hundred times.
“Mmhm,” Klaasje nodded, “that kinda thing.”
He raised the bottle to his lips again, to try and wash the taste away. His hand was shaking.
“You don’t think they exist?” He took a shuddering breath, fighting the invisible vice crushing his ribs, “Good Somethings?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe. I don’t think they can be people, though.”
The room swam. A rush of blood filled his ears.
(Under it, a voice: ‘I’m a person, Harry! Can’t you see that?’)
The vice tightened a notch. He staggered to his feet and lurched over to the window, gasping for air. He pressed his forehead against the glass, like he was trying to force his way through and out and away from the cloud of smoke and perfume and shame engulfing him, filling his lungs.
“Officer?” Klaasje’s voice came from a hundred miles away. Cautious yet firm, like speaking to a frightened dog. “Is something wrong?”
He opened his mouth, trying to push his voice out.
“I—”
He swallowed and tried again.
“I… I need… I can’t—”
His eyes squeezed shut.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
And again, because he had nothing else to say:
“Sorry.”
And again, because it was the only word he could get out:
“Sorry.”
And again, because its bitter taste overpowered everything else:
“Sorry.”
He was taking another shaking breath when Klaasje’s hand reached through the smoke and squeezed his bicep, tight. Like being shaken from a nightmare, the touch pulled him out of himself.
They stood there, motionless except for his shaking hands. He opened his eyes a crack. His forehead still leaned on the window. The glass was misty and his vision blurred.
Part of him spoke, one of the helpful parts, the one that slipped past other people’s eyes and echoed their feelings back to him: This was a risk. She was gambling on you being the kind of man who’d get quiet, not nasty.
The tension left him in an instant. He allowed her to lead him away from the window.
The synthetic fabric of her jumpsuit was rough against his cheek, but beneath it her shoulder was warm. She smelled of coffee and menthol and grime, layered over with perfume.
(She hasn’t washed in days.)
Not that he could talk. He’d scrubbed his hands after moving the body, but he was still far from fit for human society. He should take a scalding hot shower. He should burn his sweat-stained shirt and nauseating blazer. He should remove his organs and scour them with a wire brush.
Yet despite his grotesque body, Klaasje’s arm was wrapped around his shoulders. She kneaded a small circle on his arm with the heel of her hand. When not holding a cigarette or a bottle, she’d bring her other hand up and stroke his limp, thinning hair.
He wondered when he’d last been held like this. Couldn’t have been recent, or it wouldn’t feel so alien. Maybe it had just been a long time since anyone this beautiful had touched him. Of course, the thought arose of how easily he could reach out and rest his hand on her knee. How soft her freckled cheek would be if he stroked it.
But he didn’t. He kept one hand clasped around a bottle and the other folded across his stomach. Every now and then the choking cloud would wash over him again, and he’d claw at his chest and bury his face in her shoulder and gulp down mouthfuls of cool air and Pilsners until the fire in his lungs and belly subsided.
They sat there until the first wisps of daylight appeared across the bay and the stubborn Revachol pigeons groaned their morning calls. A tower of cigarette butts teetered in the ashtray. The mattress clinked as they stood.
They tottered down the stairs, holding onto the walls and each other. When they reached the bottom, Klaasje paused.
“Hold on…”
She disappeared into the bathroom and emerged with a bright orange pill bottle.
“For later,” she said, tipping out a few PREPTIDE tablets and pressing them into his palm, “You’ve still got a case to solve, right?”
He mumbled a thanks and stuffed them in his jacket pocket.
“I didn’t do it,” she murmured as he staggered out the door, “I really didn’t.”
The next day, when his bloodshot eyes met hers, another silent exchange passed between them:
‘You don’t mention it if I don’t?’
‘Agreed.’