Chapter 26 The Mystery of the Walk-In Fridge #2
“You’ve come after the battle,” he said, visibly exhausted. “Shame; the evening was a real success.”
“Grieg?” ventured Mitch.
“No, this was the first-year students’ concert.
And I lied, it was dreadful. But the parents pretended to enjoy it.
I suppose after Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, they’re no strangers to make-believe if it makes their little monsters happy.
Anyway, what brings you here at this late hour? ” Verner asked, his gaze fixed on Anna.
She knew how much it had cost Mitch to come here, and so she took the lead and explained the reason for their visit.
Verner listened carefully as she spoke. He didn’t interrupt once; not when she described what she’d found in Salinas’s notebook and what Mitch had discovered while digging through the court records, nor when she told him that Mitch had been betrayed and reported, and not even when she talked about Fahrenheit 451 being used as evidence to convict him.
But when she reached the part about the locked bookshop door and the alarm that hadn’t gone off, Verner drained his whiskey in one gulp and let the glass thump to the floor. Slowly he rose and turned to Mitch, full of guilt.
“It was me who robbed you.”
“But – why, Verner! What did I ever do to you?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I never planned on becoming a villain; it just happened. And before I joined your secret reading group in the cellar, I generally thought of myself as a half-decent fellow. Do you know how hard it is to grow old? Knowing you’re going to die soon is bad enough, but it gets worse.
Knowing you’ve lived like an idiot… well, it’s unbearable, believe me.
“Oh, I didn’t wait until I got this old to figure that out.
Even the arrogant ones see through their own mediocrity, deep down.
Hell, I’d argue they’re especially aware of it.
Now, imagine life finally giving you the opportunity to do something remarkable – or at least something people might actually notice.
A kind of… moral deviation, I suppose, that grants you privileges you’ve never had: recognition, importance.
“Thirty years of teaching music and still, every night I went home alone, just another grey coat on the metro. Thirty years, only to end up alone on a bench at the lake every Sunday, talking to the ducks. They gave me a medal, invited me to join the Academy, and”— he raised a finger, eyes lighting up with pride – “awarded me the title of honoris causa en música.”
“What does that mean?” Mitch asked.
“No bloody clue, but it must be highly prestigious, because after that I started getting invited to official receptions and fancy dinner parties where the speeches and the toasts never stop – no time left for small talk, which is the dream, honestly. I even had my own personal seat at the opera. Not to mention an honourable retirement.”
“Honourable?” Anna repeated sharply. “Really?”
“Let’s not nitpick. You want my apologies for all the pain I’ve caused you? Well, you have them, with the deepest sincerity.”
Anna stood up and walked towards him. She leaned in so close that Verner flinched, convinced for a moment that she was going to slap him. But she only looked deep into his eyes, studying him so intently that it felt like she was going to climb inside his soul.
Then she straightened up again and gave him a sly smile: a smile that, given the circumstances, Verner found disturbingly attractive.
“You’re lying, Verner. You never did any of that.”
He let out a long sigh. His shoulders sagged, and so did his ego.
“Okay. You’re right. I’d never have been brave enough for such cowardice.”
“Why the lie, then?” Mitch probed.
“To imagine, for just a moment, what my life could have been if I had any convictions. To slip into the skin of a man who wasn’t a fraud.
I still don’t know what I did to deserve those honours, and my own ignorance sickens me.
I thought maybe there’d been a mistake. I looked into it.
I thought perhaps there was another teacher with the same name.
But no, it was me. You can doubt me all you like, but everything I told you – about the medal, the Academy membership, the title – that did actually happen. Last year.”
“Didn’t it ever occur to you that maybe they were finally recognizing your actual work?” Mitch asked incredulously. “Wouldn’t that have been the most logical conclusion?”
“Don’t mock me. That’s just mean,” Verner muttered.
Now Anna stepped in. “Could Madame Ateltow have—”
The music teacher rounded on her, furious.
“Have you no shame? How dare you suggest that? After everything she’s done for Mitch. Not just helping him with those secret meetings, but everything she taught him when he was—”
“My dear Georges,” said a voice from behind them, calm and clipped, “you are a wonderful man. Probably the most chivalrous soul I know. But I don’t need you to fight my battles.”
Madame Ateltow, also wrapped in a dressing gown, stepped out from the conductor’s dressing room, where she had eavesdropped on the whole scene. She tidied her hair quickly and approached Mitch.
“No, I didn’t turn you in to the police, and it wounds me deeply that you would ever think I could have. The only thing I have ever lied to you about was that I knew you’d been arrested.
“Georges had no idea at all, believe me. I never told him. I never told anyone. I kept quiet, scared out of my mind that I’d be dragged into it too.
I was your accomplice, after all. My son…
he would never have forgiven me. He’s obsessed with his image: he values respectability above all.
To stay in his shareholders’ good books – most of them are in government, you see – he’d have claimed I was senile, that I’d lost it completely.
And then he’d have locked me away in a nursing home.
The only crime I’m guilty of is pretending not to know what had happened to you, but I had no choice. ”
Mitch shrugged. He wasn’t interested in judging anyone.
Not now. The blackmail Anna was facing was far bigger than anything else.
The corrupt detective had given her one night to think about his offer.
But Mitch had already done all the thinking he needed to do.
Tomorrow, he was going to put an end to it.