Will, стр. 80

Afterwards she says, ‘What got into you? It was like you’d gone mad…’

And again she’s not smiling. This time she’s serious.

She wants to wheel the bikes home, even though it really is getting dark by now.

We carry on in silence until she finally says, ‘You and that fisherman. He got very scared all of a sudden.’

‘Look at this…’

Meanbeard slides two identity cards over to me. One is for a man I don’t know, merchant by trade and so on and so forth. The other makes my heart pound. I keep my quivering hands under the table. The photo shows Chaim Lizke. It’s fairly recent. Suspicious and proud, he stares up at me. Surname: Goetschalckx. Christian names: Florimond Jozef. Profession: insurer. Below the photo is his height: 1.60 metres. In the box for ‘Successive addresses’ it says 22 Lange Leem Straat. Signed by ‘the Registrar (or his representative)’. In the top right-hand corner a splash of something brown, not yet fully dried.

‘Forged, of course,’ Meanbeard sneers.

‘Really?’

‘I’d bet my right arm they’re Yids. What do you reckon? Look at those eyes and those thick lower lips.’

We’re sitting in a small office on the ground floor of a fancy house on Elisabeth Laan, the new headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst. The tall windows look out on a somewhat overgrown garden. Blackbirds are singing. One lands on the wrought-iron railing of the terrace, turns its head to look in, turns away again and flies over to one of the chestnuts along the side of the building. To our right is a small bower with arches and columns, ready for a trip back in time, afternoon tea on a scorching day in the nineteenth century, with staff to bring out the cake and pour the tea from a silver pot.

‘Still here, Wilfried?’

‘Forged, but well made,’ I say a little too nervously. ‘Or else they just nicked blank cards and filled them in themselves. That’s possible too.’

‘It does happen. We’ve known that for quite a while now. It does happen and, most importantly, it happens at your station in Vesting Straat. Do you follow my drift?’

‘How did you get these?’

‘The same way we get everything, jeune homme. A city that is sick, a city that, how shall I put it, tolerated far too many foreign germs for years because the ruling plutocracy of yesteryear constantly protected those alien elements… A city like that takes vengeance. That’s unavoidable. It’s a law of nature. As soon as the people see an opportunity to really have a say, there’s no stopping them. That’s how a city purges itself.’

‘Snitching, you mean?’

‘Come now, what a word. You disappoint me. With your degree of intellectual development I thought you would have at least outgrown the playground.’

‘We get those letters too. Half of them seem to have been written by someone who’s escaped from the loony bin or wants revenge because the next-door neighbour can’t keep his hands off his wife.’

‘And the other half are people who want to help their city recover by getting rid of Jews and terrorists who haven’t realized their ancien régime is over. One of them gave us an address in Lange Leem Straat. “Strange men holding regular meetings at a late hour…” We kept watch for a while. And what did we discover?…’

Keep breathing. My hands are clawing my trouser legs. Here it comes. Here comes the accusation, the spit in my face, the hand on my shoulder, the cell, the end. My mind shoots around this new circuit like a racing car. Will I have to accelerate in a second, denying everything and laughing it off? Or will I need to judge the corner that’s coming up and apply the brakes, admitting half of it and twisting the rest?

‘Mainly it all came down to one man. We finally picked him up in a building near België Lei. That’s where we found these documents, together with the usual flyers and ammunition. Not much, but enough. Concentrating on him was a gamble, but it paid off. Or better put, it’s paying off, because the investigation is far from complete.’

‘What’s it got to do with me?’

Meanbeard looks out of the window at the garden. It has started drizzling. ‘Did you know the Germans are so disciplined that not only does a volunteer like me have to put in an official application for a special interrogation, but that almost every employee has to too, regardless of rank or position?’

‘No, I didn’t know that.’

‘Gregor is not fond of all this bureaucracy. And I admit, it’s tedious, even ridiculous, but on the other hand you can only admire their having so much self-control in times of war. We’re not animals. But sometimes it’s a beast you need. And yet that self-control, the paperwork… Strange. Anyway, our request was approved fairly quickly. We have good news. Our suspect has confessed that someone from the police is involved in his group. Someone from your station.’

‘Who?’

Meanbeard rubs his hands. ‘That’s why I had you come here, Wilfried. This is a moment you don’t want to miss. Omer’s working on him. If you ask me, we’ll know everything there is to know in less than an hour.’

The door swings open and we hear a man screaming as we go down the stairs. The cellar is divided into cells where shadows sit behind bars in total silence. I only hear one woman mumbling the Our Father. Meanbeard opens a metal door. Fear and filth waft out to meet me. The professor is hanging by the wrists, manacled and chained to an iron bar, naked and bleeding. Someone in glasses is leaning against a table to roll a cigarette. It looks like that little arsehole from the Hulstkamp who came over to tell me he’s a translator for the SD. Now he looks at me contemptuously, licks the paper and lights his cigarette.

‘Perhaps you know Joris…’

‘We’ve met,’ I nod.

Omer turns towards me. He’s rolled up his sleeves and wipes his bloody hands clean.