The Truth and Other Lies: A Novel by Arango Sascha

Author:Arango, Sascha [Arango, Sascha]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2015-06-22T16:00:00+00:00

11

He decided to go and have a look. At the five-mile marker he turned off toward the cliffs—instead of driving home, which would have been a lot more sensible. As every amateur knows, murderers often return to the scene of their crime, only to be arrested when they get there. They go because they are sentimental, or because they are curious, just like everyone else. Some go out of vanity, and others, listening to the voice of conscience, go out of regret; they return because they can’t believe they were really capable of such an act. Henry, for his part, after his visit to forensics, had arrived at the conclusion that the police believed it was an accident. That meant there was no reason not to visit the place where his wife was and see how things had been going for her in the interim. Martha would have expected it, in Henry’s opinion.

Even from a long way off he could see flashing danger signs. As he rounded the fatal bend where that poor twit had simply kept straight on and driven into the concrete barrier, the tow truck came the other way with the car on its bed. It was a write-off—a miracle that anyone had survived in it. Now Henry remembered that their eyes had met just before the car had crashed. Instead of watching the road, the driver had looked at him, as if in surprise, as if he’d recognized him. Well, a lot of people on the road recognized me, Henry thought, and who cares—the lucky devil survived the crash thanks to me.

On the forest track Henry parked the car in the usual place and walked over the perforated concrete slabs toward the cliffs, whistling. Here and there little white clouds scudded across the sky; the scent of fresh pine needles filled the warm air. Ought to go for more walks, he thought; it does one good.

On the cliffs, just where the Subaru had been parked, there was now a camper van. If license plates are to be trusted, an English family with children was vacationing there amid an impressive amount of camping equipment, which lay spread about the ground in a kind of organized chaos. A treasure trove for the forensic team. The whole area was sprinkled with saliva and sweat, not to mention excrement, hair, dandruff, and goodness knows what else. God bless this family, Henry exulted. Even the best forensic scientists in the world would be kept busy here for a thousand years.

He hid in a clump of bushes and watched in delight as a naked woman in wooden sandals threw laundry over a line strung up between two trees. This late Neolithic Venus must be the mother. Her palely gleaming breasts with their neat areolae hung down, heavy but shapely; her waist had been noticeably thickened by the birth of her three children, who were throwing pinecones at one another not far from the camper van. Henry’s expert eye did not miss the cesarean scar that ran horizontally above her pudenda—very nicely healed and not at all ugly.

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