Blood on Snow

I opened my eyes.

I said her name. No answer.

“Corina?”

I sat up in bed. My thigh was throbbing and aching. Laboriously I lowered my foot over the edge of the bed and switched on the light. Jumped up. My thigh had swollen so much it was almost creepy. It looked like it had just carried on bleeding, but all the blood had built up inside the skin and bandage.

In the moonlight I could see her case in the middle of the living-room floor. But her coat was gone from the chair. I got to my feet and limped over to the kitchen. I opened the drawer and lifted out the cutlery tray.

The sheets of paper were still there in their envelope, untouched.

I took the envelope over to the window. The thermometer on the outside of the glass showed that the temperature was still dropping.

I looked down.

There she was. She’d just gone out for a bit.

She was standing hunched in the phone box, with her shoulders facing the street, the receiver pressed to her ear.

I waved, even though I knew she couldn’t see me.

Christ, my thigh hurt!

Then she hung up. I took a step back from the window so I wasn’t standing in the light. She came out of the phone box and I saw her look up towards me. I stood completely still, and she did the same. A few snowflakes hung in the air. Then she started walking. Putting her feet down with her ankles straight, placing one foot close to the other. Like a tightrope-walker. She crossed the street back towards me. I could see footprints in the snow. Cat footprints. Rear feet in the same prints as the front ones. The thin light from the street lamps meant that the edge of each print cast a small shadow. No more than that. Just that...

When she crept back inside the flat I was in bed with my eyes closed.

She took her coat off. I had been hoping she might take the rest off as well and get into bed with me. Hold me for a while. Nothing else. Loose change counts as money. Because now I knew that she wouldn’t come and carry me through the sewers. She wasn’t going to rescue me. And we weren’t going to Paris.

Instead of getting onto the bed, she sat on the chair in the dark.

She was watching. Waiting.

“Will it take him long to get here?” I asked.

I saw her jerk in the chair. “You’re awake.”

I repeated the question.

“Who, Olav?”

“The Fisherman.”

“You’re feverish, Olav. Try to get some sleep.”

“That’s who you were calling from the phone box just now.”

“Olav...”

“I just want to know how long I’ve got.”

She was sitting with her head bowed, so her face was in shadow. When she spoke again it was with a different, new voice. A harder voice. But even to my ears the notes sounded purer. “Twenty minutes, maybe.”

“Okay.”

“How did you know...?”

“Ammonia. Skate.”

“What?”

“The smell of ammonia, it sits in your skin after you’ve been in contact with skate, particularly before the fish has been prepared. I read somewhere that it’s because skates store uric acid in their flesh, like sharks do. But what do I know?”

Corina looked at me with a distant smile. “I see.”

Another pause.

“Olav?”

“Yes.”

“It’s nothing...”

“Personal?”

“Exactly.”

I felt the stitches tear. A stench of inflammation and pus belched out. I put my hand on my thigh. The gauze bandage was soaked. And it was still stretched tight — there was loads more to come out.

“So what is it, then?” I asked.

She sighed. “Does it matter?”

“I like stories,” I said. “I’ve got twenty minutes.”

“This isn’t about you. It’s about me.”

“And what are you about, then?”

“Yes. What am I about?”

“Daniel Hoffmann was dying. You knew that, didn’t you? And that Benjamin Hoffmann would be taking over?”

She shrugged. “You’ve pretty much got me there.”

“Someone who deceives the people she needs to deceive without a guilty conscience in order to follow the money and power?”

Corina stood up abruptly and went over to the window. Looked down at the street. Lit a cigarette.

“Apart from the bit about the guilty conscience, that’s more or less right,” she said.

I listened. It was quiet. I realised that it was past midnight, that it was now Christmas Eve.

“You just gave him a call?” I asked.

“I went to his shop.”

“And he agreed to see you?”

I could see the silhouette of her pout against the window as she exhaled the smoke. “He’s a man. Just like all other men.”

I thought about the shadows behind the frosted glass. The bruise on her neck. It was fresh. How blind can you be? The beatings. The submission. The humiliation. That was how she wanted it.