Читать книгу Sorry - Shaun Whiteside - Страница 19

IT WAS HALF A day before they managed to track down Julia Lambert.

The job center plays its cards close to the vest, so Kris tries to find her new workplace indirectly. Frauke helps him with that. It takes them fifteen minutes to log on to the employment agency.

“How illegal have you just been?” Kris wondered.

Frauke held her thumb and index finger a millimeter apart.

Julia Lambert has been with the company for a week. The office with a view of the parking lot is like a waiting room. Cardboard boxes in the corner, electric cables temporarily installed, a dusty plant by the window. Probably Julia Lambert isn’t entirely sure whether it’s worth making this workplace entirely her own. Her hesitation is like the one of the four prints on the wall that hangs at an angle.

“You must have heard that we’ve split up.”

Kris nods, Hessmann’s secretary told him everything. The boss himself didn’t want to say anything on the subject.

“I was amazed you didn’t lodge a complaint,” says Kris.

Julia laughs briefly.

“How do you take action against someone like Hessmann? He has more lawyers than employees. And who would believe me? What proof do I have? For a while I thought about burning down the office building, but can you imagine where that would have got me?”

In jail, Kris thinks, and agrees, she did the right thing.

“I’m here to apologize to you,” he says.

“You?”

“Me.”

“Why you?”

“My agency represents Hessmann. Since we took on the commission, it’s a personal thing for me if my client makes mistakes. I’m something like his conscience. And you can bet that someone like Hessmann wants to have a clean conscience.”

She doesn’t react, she looks at the card.

“Hence Sorry?”

“Because we apologize.”

“For other people?”

“For other people, yes. Do you want to tell me what happened in your own words?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?”

Julia Lambert nods and clasps her hands. The card is in front of her on the table. Kris shouldn’t force it now. Her gestures are unambiguous. But it’s a good sign that she set the visiting card down on the table faceup. Kris can see the logo, he’s very pleased with the logo. They look at one another. Kris will keep his mouth shut until Julia Lambert speaks first. She needs time to think about his words.

Her history is typical. Since Sorry took on its first commission, there have been several such cases. Her boss had an affair with her and fired her when he craved fresh meat. You could call that the end of a career. The secretary, of course, put it differently.

Julia Lambert is someone who learns from her mistakes. Kris can see that she will get back on her own two feet all by herself. But he also sees that she’s still preoccupied by her humiliation. Not being able to defend herself, being totally subject to the word of someone who was first her boss, then her lover, and finally her boss again.

Where the emotions are concerned, we all cave in sooner or later, Kris thinks, and is glad to keep the thought to himself.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Julia Lambert says after a minute.

“No one said anything about having to,” Kris replies. “Hessmann knows he made a mistake. And you know that he would never personally admit it to you. People like Hessmann make things easy for themselves. He changes his women as often as he changes his tie.”

Her eyebrows contract, Kris could bite his tongue. How can I be such an idiot? What is this? A chat over a glass of beer? He has universalized Julia Lambert, and made a crude mistake.

“I’m sorry. The image was inappropriate.”

“Keep talking.”

“I’m not here to offer you money,” says Kris, although that’s exactly why he’s here. “Money is comfortable, and I think you’re concerned about more than comfort.”

Bull’s-eye. She doesn’t nod, she doesn’t shake her head, her right hand has found the business card again, and is turning it around in her fingers. She waits for more.

“As you know, Hessmann has contacts. The business listens to him. And when I see where the job center has sent you …”

Kris sums up her office with a wave of his hand.

“… then I think you deserve better.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“I like it here.”

“No, you don’t.”

She stops turning the business card around. She doesn’t contradict him.

Thank God.

“Where do you want to go?” Kris asks.

“Simple as that?” she asks back.

“Simple as that. I’ll find you a better position in a different company, in return you accept Hessmann’s apology and leave the fury and hurt behind you; that’s my offer.”

Kris knows it’s never that easy to leave fury and hurt behind. But he thinks Julia Lambert ought to hear that the possibility exists, and that a better job than the last one represents a good kind of revenge.

The phone rings. Julia Lambert lets it ring and presses two buttons so that they can have some peace. The phone falls silent.

“From when?” she asks.

“Hessmann gave me carte blanche where you’re concerned. That is to say, whenever you like. No one wants to live with guilt. Not even Hessmann.”

Julia Lambert laughs for the second time since Kris has been with her. It’s a restrained laugh, but it’s still a laugh that comes from deep down.

Good.

“He’s been able to live with it pretty well for the last six months,” she says. “I doubt he had any sleepless nights.”

The sarcasm is clearly audible. Kris is still not on safe terrain. It’s the way Julia Lambert sits there. Tense, suspicious.

The whole thing could be one big joke.

“Here’s my suggestion,” Kris says and gets to his feet. “I invite you out to dinner now, and while we’re eating, you tell me which companies you’re interested in, what position you think you could do or would like to have, and what an appropriate wage might be.”

Kris stretches out his hands so that she can see he isn’t hiding anything, that he’s on her side. No tricks.

“What do you think?”

Her nostrils flare, her mouth has opened a crack, not a word comes out. Enough sarcasm. She’s excited, she’s understood. Kris can see that Julia Lambert likes his offer. It has happened. She belongs to him.

“You did what?” Wolf asks in the evening when they’re sitting in the villa’s conservatory.

“I had dinner with her.”

“No, no, no, I mean that carte blanche …”

Wolf leans forward and taps his brother twice on the forehead.

“… what kind of an idea is that?”

“I thought it would be appropriate.”

“And what did Hessmann say?”

“What do you think he said?”

“You did what?”

Hessmann’s voice was shrill, then there was a faint crackle on the line and Kris knew that someone was listening in. Ten minutes before, Kris had said goodbye to Julia Lambert and promised to call the next day. Then he had phoned Hessmann from his car.

“How do you think that’s going to work?”

Kris heard the panic in Hessmann’s voice. Panic isn’t good. Panic can lead to short-circuited reactions. Kris was relieved that he wasn’t talking to Hessmann alone. Whoever else was listening at the other end, it meant that Hessmann had to restrain himself. Kris cleared his throat and said how he imagined the solution to the problem:

“You get Miss Lambert a job at one of the two companies she named. You know you can do that. Then you and Miss Lambert will be quits. Peace.”

Again there was that faint crackle on the line; Kris listened into the silence that followed. For a few seconds he was sure that the connection had been broken, then he heard a loud intake of breath and Hessmann said his thank-you, and that it had been a pleasure working with the agency.

“How could you be so sure it would work?” Wolf wants to know. “Guys like Hessmann eat you for breakfast, what were you thinking of?”

Kris is surprised by Wolf’s reaction.

“I had nothing to lose,” he replies. “And I think it’s a good thing for him to bleed a bit.”

Wolf lets that idea run through his head for a moment.

“I have the feeling that all this apologizing is turning into something personal for you.”

“A bit personal can’t hurt,” Kris admits. “Be honest, it isn’t just a question of apologizing. It’s about understanding. What’s the point of apologizing if the other person doesn’t sense that you’re serious about it?”

“You say understanding, Kris, but you mean empathy.”

“No, with empathy you’re private, while we stay detached. We can’t afford empathy, which is why Tamara’s unsuited for the job. You fit in much better. You have a superficiality about you that’s emotionally cool, relatively speaking.”

“Hey, how convenient.”

“You know what I mean.”

Wolf nods. Kris can get away with saying things like that.

“So you’re sticking with understanding?”

“Understanding with a hint of sympathy.”

Wolf rubs his neck.

“It’s still a hard job for me. I’m pursued by ghosts. Before and after each commission. Often for hours.”

Kris thinks about how it is for him. He doesn’t see ghosts, and if he’s perfectly honest, the commission ends there and then. But he doesn’t want to rub it in.

“No one said it would be easy to apologize on other people’s behalf. If it was easy, someone would have thought of it ages ago. I reckon we’ll soon be condemned by the church. We deliver absolution and bring light to dark souls.”

“And we’re more expensive.”

“Yes, we’re more expensive, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to fall on their knees and thank us in the evening. And think about how many people we’ve brought happiness to already. On both sides. Perpetrators and victims. We’re the good guys. Look at our commissions. If we weren’t the good guys, we wouldn’t be booked up for months in advance. Guilt seeps from people’s pores. Wolf, we’re the new forgiveness. Forget religion. We mediate between guilt and remorse. You can bet your ass that we’re the good guys.”

Four days after the Hessmann commission, Julia Lambert gets the job and sends Kris a thank-you card. A week later there’s a check from Hessmann in the mailbox. He’s added a bonus to the fee. Wolf kisses the check over and over again, until Frauke tells him to stop or the bank won’t accept it.

And at this point we leave Wolf and Frauke briefly. We leave Tamara, reading on the sofa, and Kris, in the shower a floor above. It’s time for you to enter this story. Through a back door. Like a ghost rising out of the floor and taking the stage.

Welcome.