The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘Victoria.’ The voice sounded out of breath. Like someone who has just rappelled down after an ascent and hurried to the rucksack where the phone is ringing.

‘Nikos Balli, I’m a detective with the police,’ I said as I swung the hire car carefully around a flock of goats that had taken up residence on the asphalt outside Emporio. ‘We spoke briefly on Julian Schmid’s phone. There are a few questions I’d like to ask you.’

‘Unfortunately I’m on the peak right now. Can it wait until—’

‘Which peak?’

‘It’s called Odysseus.’

‘I’ll come there if that’s OK.’

She explained the route to me. Between Arginonta and Massouri, a turn-off to the left just before the hairpin bend. Park at the end of the gravel track by the climbers’ mopeds. Follow the track — or the other climbers — up the mountainside, eight or ten minutes’ walk to the lower part of the face, I’ll see her and her climbing partner on a broad ledge five or six metres above the ground, the natural footholds in the mountain will lead me up there.

Twenty minutes later I stood on a track on a barren mountainside with a couple of thyme plants the only vegetation, wiped the sweat from my brow and looked up at a limestone rock face about a hundred metres wide and some forty to fifty metres high that cut diagonally across the hillside like a wall. Spread out along the base of the wall I saw at least twenty ropes that ran between the anchors on the ground and the climbers on the wall. This was a type of sport climbing that, put simply, goes something like this: before the team of two starts out, the one who’s climbing first attaches one end of the rope to his harness, which also holds the number of carabiners he’s going to need on the route, often around a dozen. At intervals across the route metal bolts have been fastened to the rock face. When the climber reaches one of these he fastens a carabiner to the bolt and then fastens the rope to the carabiner. The second member of the team, the anchor on the ground, has a rope lock fastened to his climbing harness and the rope runs through this rope lock, in much the same way as the seat belt in a car runs between rollers. The anchor carefully pays out the rope as the climber ascends, the way you have to pull out a car safety belt slowly so that it doesn’t lock. Should the climber fall, the rope is pulled so swiftly that the lock clamps over the rope, unless the anchor has disengaged it completely. So if the climber falls, then he won’t fall much beyond the last carabiner to which he fastened the rope and be stopped there by the lock and the body weight of the anchor. In other words, the most common form of sport climbing is relatively free from danger, by comparison with, for example, free soloing, which involves climbing without ropes or any other form of security. Unlike the sport climber, the free solo climber has a life expectation shorter than that of a heroin addict, which is incidentally a fairly apt comparison. All the same, as I stood there, I felt myself shaking. Because nothing is completely safe, and sooner or later whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Some people think that’s a joke along the lines of Murphy’s Law, but it isn’t. It’s a matter of simple mathematics and logic. Absolutely everything that can happen according to physical law will, sooner or later, happen. It’s just a question of when.

I walked the last few metres up to the wall and located the ledge where a woman stood holding a rope that ran up the wall to a climber ten metres above her. I scrambled up to her using hands and feet.

‘Victoria Hässel?’ I asked, panting.

‘Welcome aboard,’ she answered without taking her eyes off the climber.

‘Thanks for giving me a moment of your time.’ I held on tight to a deep crack in the wall, leaned out cautiously and peered down. Only six metres and yet I felt the pull.

‘Afraid of heights?’ asked Victoria Hässel, still without having looked at me as far as I could tell.

‘Isn’t everybody?’ I asked.

‘Some more than others.’

I looked up at her climbing partner. A boy who looked to be quite a bit younger than her. And — judging by his uncertain footwork and the firm grip she kept on the belay device and rope — he had rather more to learn from her about climbing than the other way round. It was hard to judge Victoria Hässel’s own age — anything from thirty-five to forty-five. She certainly looked strong. Almost skinny, long-limbed, but with a muscular back under the taut training top. Sinewy underarms, resin on her hands and wearing climbing breeches. She had given my suit and brown leather shoes a rather disapproving look. I could feel my hair being blown about in the wind. Her own was held under a knitted cap.

‘Lot of climbers,’ I said with a nod in the direction of the wall.

‘Usually more,’ said Victoria, and focused her gaze on her climber again. ‘But there’s too much wind today, a lot of people sitting in the cafes.’ She nodded in the direction of the white-whipped sea.