Episodul 120 · Beneath the Bench

Inside, it was dry. Beside the pipes, on the stone clear of the joints, lay a small notebook.

Soles did not pick it up at once.

Dark cover, page edges bent from use. No place where he had seen it before came to mind. The blank stayed blank.

— Is that it? Maxim asked.

— I don’t know.

Soles took it out and opened it on the bench.

He recognized the handwriting.

He bent over the first page. Shifts, times, short notes written wherever there was room. His father pressed harder on numbers than on letters. Soles ran a finger along the edge of the paper without touching the ink.

— It’s Dad’s.

Maxim crouched beside him.

Soles turned the pages slowly. He found days when Kale had worked, days when he had swapped shifts, and one marked only “Off.” Beneath it was a note of several lines.

Varren, S.’s client, came looking for me at the port. Asked about shifts. I told him.

Soles read it again, then turned the notebook toward Maxim.

Maxim read it. He said nothing.

The pump stopped. Soles looked at the raised bench, the dry place beside the pipes, and the table where Varren had left the screw.

The notebook had been here.

While Soles searched, while he forgot what he was searching for, while Varren listened to him talk about the empty locker, the notebook had been here.

Maxim called Tesa and told her where they were.

— They’re close, he said when he hung up.

Soles closed the notebook and held it out.

— You keep it.

Maxim put it in the inside pocket of his coat. When he bent to lift the hatch cover, Soles caught his arm.

Something had changed in the wall beside the gate. Soles felt the pressure before he found it. Another weight was coming through the house.

— Leave the bench, he said.

Maxim straightened beside the open hatch. An engine sounded at the gate, then Krista’s voice.

— Don’t come in! Soles shouted.

The man came out of the wall before he finished. His coat was streaked with rust from the shed roof. He rushed Soles, going around Maxim without looking at him.

Soles stepped back. His heel touched the edge of the open hatch. He shifted his weight and took the blow on his arm, too close to the rib. The air went out of his chest. The man caught his coat, and Soles drew the blade.

The blade appeared between them. The Hunter changed his grip at once: he released the coat and seized Soles’s wrist.

Maxim hit him from the side. The man staggered but did not release Soles. The second came out of the house wall and struck Maxim behind the knee. Maxim fell beside the bench, his ankle twisting beneath him.

Tesa came through the gate and struck before the second man could turn. Her fist caught him beneath the ear. The man crashed into the table; the toolbox fell open.

Krista came in after her and pulled the gate wide.

— Maxim, toward me!

He tried to get up. His leg would not hold him. He crawled to the chair beneath the eaves and pulled himself upright by the backrest.

Beside the pool, Soles could feel his fingers being forced open one by one. He twisted the blade outward. The Hunter struck him in the cheek with his forehead. Soles kept the hilt in his palm and braced his free hand against the pool stone. Blood ran from his nose over his lips.

He could have pushed with all his strength. He could feel the pool beneath his free hand, the masonry, the weight of the water. One wrenching movement and the place he had built would have come apart with them inside it.

He did not push.

He lowered the blade, tucking his elbow against his body, and let the man think his arm was giving way. When the Hunter pulled, Soles stepped with him. He got under the shoulder and drove it into the upper arm.

The Hunter made a short sound. His grip loosened. Soles tore the blade free and retreated to the water’s edge.

A crack came from the table. Tesa had blocked a blow with the cast. The other man caught her by the collar and drove her toward the wall.

Krista picked up the toolbox from the ground.

The man saw the movement and turned toward her. Krista raised her eyes over his shoulder toward the gate.

— Now! she shouted.

His gaze flicked that way for a moment. His shoulder turned after it, while his front knee remained under all his weight. Krista tightened her grip on the box.

There.

The single word was clear and close. Krista saw the weight on the forward knee. She chose what to do with it. She swung the toolbox with both hands into the forward knee. Metal struck bone. The man folded, and Tesa tore his hand from her collar and hit him again with her good fist across the face.

Krista remained with the toolbox raised. Her arms were trembling. The lie had come out so naturally that, for a moment, it had pleased her.

The Hunter Soles had wounded withdrew toward the wall. The other tried to follow, but Maxim put the chair in his way. The man struck the backrest, broke it, and dropped to one knee.

Soles came toward him with the blade clenched in his fist.

The Hunter looked at the blade, then at the four of them. He pushed off on his good leg and reached the wall. The stone swallowed his shoulder, his head, the hand stretched behind him.

Soles stopped two steps from the empty place.

Tesa listened first, breathing in short breaths. Nothing else moved.

— We’re leaving, she said.

Maxim checked his coat pocket for the notebook. When he tried to put weight on his leg, his face went white.

— I’m not driving, he said.

Krista set the toolbox down.

— My car’s at the gate.

Soles still held the blade. He looked at the blood on it. Tesa handed him a rag from the table. He took it without meeting her eyes.

Maxim gave Krista the notebook, open at Varren’s name. Tesa read over her shoulder.

— It was under the bench, Maxim said.

Krista looked at the paler rectangle of dust on the dry stone where the notebook had lain.

— We take it to the investigator.

Out of habit, Soles bent toward the hatch cover, then stopped and straightened.

Tesa and Krista walked Maxim to the car between them, in short steps. Soles remained last in the yard.

The screw Varren had not managed to put back was still on the table.

Soles looked at it and remembered the bread from the night before. Varren had given him the end with the thicker crust without asking whether he wanted it. He knew.

Tesa called to him from the gate.

Soles turned his head. She was waiting with one cheek swollen and the cast cracked. Beyond her, Maxim was trying to get his leg into the car, while Krista held the notebook with both hands.

Soles walked toward them. He did not close the gate.