Mr. Miller Read online

  Cautiously I unlocked the doors. The latches slid slowly back, and in a few seconds I pushed the door open a crack. The bathrooms were on the other side of the hall in one of the corridors on the left. Maybe fifteen metres from the canteen, no more than that. I stood with my hand on the door and listened.

  All was silent, and here, too, it was dark except for the emergency exit. I heard no one and saw no one. The need to go became more intense. Quickly I slipped into the hall and shot across to the other side. Covering the floor with great strides, I rushed around the corner when suddenly my feet got caught up in something, first the right and then the left, and I fell headlong, flat on my face. Shocked and surprised, I looked around, almost laughing at my own stupidity for not seeing whatever was lying there, a bag or a … what was it? I crept closer on my hands and knees, and my hand pushed against something that felt suspiciously like an arm. I pinched it. No reaction. Coming even closer I suddenly found myself looking into the blank, staring face of a woman.

  She didn’t respond. She was lying there on the floor in the middle of the night. I had no business being there, but she far less than I—certainly not like this. I pushed her shoulder again very gently.

  ‘Hey,’ I said.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Hey!’ I said again with a bit more conviction, and I pushed harder. She rolled over from her side to her back, and her eyes kept looking at me with a bewildered and reproachful gaze. She didn’t see anything. She didn’t even blink.

  I withdrew my hand warily and leaned back on my haunches, my eyes fixed on the woman. On the body of a woman. A woman I didn’t know was lying here dead in the corridor. I stood up, dizziness spinning through my head and tugging at my stomach. It lasted no more than twenty seconds in all, maybe a bit longer. The shock of the past few days, the excessive amount of alcohol I had polished off, the confrontation with Van Waayen, and my dismissal. And now this.

  Who was this woman? And why was she lying here? Did she just collapse on her way home after a night of work, her bag over her shoulder? Even before she could reach the elevator? Or did she sprain her ankle, topple over and hit her head against the wall? One of her shoes had come loose and lay a little further down the corridor. It was possible. Except there was no sign of it anywhere. She was lying straight across the corridor, her head at least a metre from the wall. So how did it happen? If it wasn’t just some kind of crazy accident, or cardiac arrest, what was it then? Had she been murdered? And if so, by whom? There was no one here. I held my breath and listened, trying to distinguish different sounds, but all I could hear was the building. Indeterminate ticks and clicks, a gentle hum and murmur of the climate control and the other systems tucked away behind the ceiling and walls, mechanical sounds produced without human intervention. Quite normal under any other circumstances, but not now.

  How long had she been lying here? When was the last time I had heard sounds in the corridor? Before I fell asleep. Way before. It had grown quiet after about ten o’clock, at least on this floor.

  I looked at the woman again. I walked around her, dropped to my knees, picked up her bag and zipped it open. Bending forward awkwardly in the semi-darkness, I tried to see what was inside. It was a big bag with long, rigid handles that kept getting in the way. I saw a wallet, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and all sorts of other little things. I rummaged through the contents, took out a set of house keys and was about to continue searching when I noticed a waving light approaching from one of the side corridors. The beam swerved back and forth from left to right, and almost immediately I heard the sounds of subdued whispers. Two, maybe three different voices. My breath caught in my throat, and in a flash I realized that being here was not a good idea. Not at all. These men were not from security. They were walking through a dark office building with flashlights. People who belonged here would simply turn on the lights and speak at normal volume. Suddenly I laid my hand on something, a flat plastic card. I pulled it out. It was her company pass, and in a split second I read her last name. Radekker. That was it. That’s all I had time for. The men had almost reached the corner of the corridor. I put the other things back in the bag and was about to lay it down, but my hair had gotten tangled in one of the strange raised handles. With a single fierce tug I pulled the bag loose and could just barely suppress a scream. In four quick paces I was out of the corridor. I let the door of the canteen close gently behind me. Panting, and with a pounding heart, I leaned against the wall behind the door. I felt the place where I had pulled the hair out of my head and waited, listening to thumping and lugging sounds, to remarks that I could only half understand at best.

  ‘… doing this? Do we take the elevator?’

  ‘No, idiot!’

  Laughter. More thumping.

  ‘Yeah, the other side!’

  ‘… get the stuff?’

  Mumbling.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What I think is what I’m asking. Otherwise I’d ask something else.’

  There was a sound of dragging, sighing and groaning.

  ‘Jesus, bitch is heavy.’

  A dull smack.

  ‘Hey, watch what you’re doing!’

  My head was a jumble of thoughts. I knew too little, and what I did know did not appeal to me. It was threatening. Overlooking the city from an office tower of glass, steel, stone and concrete, I was literally too far removed from everything. In a neighbourhood without houses and without shops, where people in suits travelled to make plans, attend meetings, write reports and do other abstract things, all high above the ground, the only manual work had to do with operating computers and telephones, keyboards and buttons. Everything else was verbalization. A communication consultant has no idea what manual work is. I was not the right person to run into dead people. Not on the street, not in the train and certainly not in this office building. Yet I did want to know what had happened in the hall, what those men were doing there. And I had to call security. Two things at the same time.

  Call first.

  Preferably as soon as possible. The only way I could do anything was by contacting someone else. I ran into the kitchen, found a wall phone next to the swinging doors and snatched the receiver from the hook. The number! I looked on the inside of the receiver and on the phone itself, but there was no list of internal numbers. Security had its own number that everyone was supposed to know in case of emergency. Except there never were any emergencies, so I had no idea.

  Nine?

  I pressed the key and listened. Nothing happened.

  One?

  Again nothing.

  Zero?

  Outside line.

  I slammed down the receiver with a curse and ran back to the canteen entrance. Then I warily pushed one of the doors open a crack and looked out. And listened.

  Silence.

  No sound. No movement. Hesitantly I left the canteen. The corridor was empty. The woman was gone, her bag was gone, the shoe was gone and the men were gone. There was nothing to indicate anything to anyone. Still uncertain, I walked further down the corridor, toward the elevators. The doors were shut and the little lights next to the buttons were dark. The elevators had stopped running and were standing still somewhere, anywhere. I began racking my brains. The office was built in the shape of a wedge, with a central column and two curved wings. The elevator shafts were in the middle section and the emergency exits were at the far ends of both wings. Both exits were about equally far from where I was standing, except the men had come from the left wing. So logically, it seemed to me, they would follow the same route back.

  Every choice counted, and no choice meant doing nothing. I ran into the corridor, not at full speed but at a strange, slow-motion pace. Inhibited by caution. By fear. I wanted to hurry, but at the same time I didn’t want to make any noise. As a result I succeeded in neither. I didn’t hurry and I made more noise than I had to. At the last turn in the corridor I stopped, leaned against the wall and peered cautiously around the corner. No one.
The emergency exit sign was shining forlornly between the dividing walls. Now I ran to the doors at the end of the corridor and pushed one open. Behind the door was a bare concrete stairwell, where every sound reverberated and boomed as if it were being produced by a cheap amplifier. I didn’t hear a thing. Not a single sound. With great caution I stepped into the open space and tried to look over the railing and into the stairwell, but it was too far away. If I were to let go of the door, it would close and lock behind me and I wouldn’t be able to get back in. All my things were still in the canteen so I had to go back, no matter what happened. I kicked off one of my shoes, placed it at an angle in the door frame, and let the door close on it. The powerful door-closer squeezed the soft leather all out of shape, and with faint, unexpected pain I stood there watching the compression of three hundred euros worth of footwear.

  Taking two steps at a time, I stormed down the stairs to the exit on the ground floor three floors below, and soon I was standing in the parking garage beneath the building. I had jammed my second shoe into the heavy steel door leading to the garage, and it was even flatter than the first. No one was there. In that whole immense, bare, concrete parking level there were only three cars, and one of them was mine. Outside in the street I heard the sound of a passing motorcycle. A siren wailed in the far distance. Just for a moment. Then silence. There was nothing to see, nothing to detect.

  Slowly I walked back upstairs to the canteen. I had seen something, but I had absolutely no proof that anything had taken place. None. If I were to call security, the man would want to know what I was doing in the building at the very least. And in the canteen at that. My place of work was six floors higher, so what was I doing there? What was I doing here? Calling the police would produce the same results, the only difference being that the police probably wouldn’t even show up. No body, no people, nothing. All I had were my own thoughts, my ideas, and my trust in them was minimal. I was thinking things that paralyzed me, things that kept me from seeing who I was, or who I thought I was. As if you had always loved chocolate and suddenly, from one minute to the next, the smell alone made you sick, made you break out in hives. As if you had become allergic to the one thing you loved the most. Like that, only worse.

  It was all because of Kurt, that was clear. Kurt had turned me inside out. My whole body had risen up in protest against my mind. A war was being fought inside me on the molecular level, and on that battlefield my self-confidence was the first casualty.

  In one of the refrigerators in the kitchen I found a bottle of wine, and before I knew it I had polished off more than half. I was totally oblivious to the flavour. The alcohol found the remains of its able-bodied comrades with convincing ease.

  Maybe half an hour had passed since I had first left the canteen to go to the bathroom, and I still hadn’t been there. High time. I took off my jacket and hung it over the back of the chair, putting my hands in the pockets to take out my cigarettes. Pack, lighter—and there was something else in the right-hand jacket pocket. The woman’s keys. And her pass. I looked at the pass and read the name: I. Radekker. Reading her name brought back the image of her dead body. Alone, dumped in the corridor, lifeless on the indestructible office carpeting.

  I put the keys in my pocket, walked to the bathroom and retreated into one of the cubicles.

  Goose bumps on my arms.

  9 Bellilog 06.17.04

  Adrenalin dreams, fingers on the computer keys, tools for making symbols, contact with the contact points, no one to reach, signals to myself … slept very badly.

  10 First look, then think

  Daylight came. Finally. I had been waiting almost three hours. Awake, restless, uncertain as I was, it took much longer for the time to pass than I was used to. I made coffee, and in the kitchen I listened to the little radio that was always there. Music. Talk shows. News. Reports that flitted by: emigrating farmers, protesting health care workers, financial setbacks. I heard it, but the details had no impact on me. Except for that one item.

  … at the mosque yesterday, Dutch youths came to blows with youths of foreign origin after the windows of the mosque had been smashed in. The police managed to separate the two groups. Seven people were wounded and taken to the hospital. Things remained tense until long after midnight …

  The reports you don’t want to hear always sound the loudest. Every day provided new reasons for harsher decisions to be made at the upcoming European summit. I was haunted by images of escalating conflict, thoughts I had no room for. My own situation had priority.

  The first employees began arriving at six-thirty, the consultants well before the office staff and before the clients could start calling. Often the early morning was the only part of the day you could work in peace without being disturbed by the phone, by ad hoc discussions, by colleagues popping in or by meetings that got out of hand. I packed my things and waited in the corridor until someone below got into the elevator going up. Only when the elevator began moving did I press the button, so no one below would notice that I was still in the building.

  The elevator stopped and almost noiselessly the doors opened. Two men were inside, young consultants who, like me, had to find their hours where others left them. Frans Stutman and Thomas Ridden. Showered and shaved, they both looked at me, their eyes still heavy with sleep.

  Frans was the first to speak. ‘Hey, Michael, another all-nighter?’

  ‘Can you see it?’

  ‘And smell it,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘De nada.’ Frans opened his briefcase, took out a designer bottle, aimed the atomizer at my jacket and pressed down. A cloud of fresh male scent descended on me. Thomas waved his hand back and forth and coughed.

  ‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘What kind of garbage is that?’ He grabbed the bottle from Frans’s hands. ‘Three litres for ten euros? Or did Shell make this? Aerosol unleaded? I can’t release this product any more. Public health comes first.’

  The door opened on the eighth floor. Thomas sprinted out with Frans right behind him, into the corridor, out of sight. With them went the fun of the job, the passionate desire to have an opinion about everything, to add an insight or throw in your two cents. One floor higher I got out, walked into the right wing of the building and headed for the large work area where the hot desks were. A consultant’s place is with his client and not at the office behind a desk. Desk work is a waste of time, which is why an advanced form of musical chairs had been introduced. We had ten work stations for fifteen people. Ten desks that belonged to everyone, and therefore to no one. There was nothing on the desks: no plants, no photos, no postcards. Nothing. Ten virginal working surfaces that gave the impression of an unused office. Everyone had his or her own cart, a kind of glorified shopping trolley made of fashionable brushed aluminum and high-quality plastic with a place for files and folders and a small lockable compartment at the bottom. It was as if you had arrived at the ward for terminal patients and you were allowed to keep a few personal things next to your bed. Not too many, because before too long all your junk would have to be cleared away anyway.

  At the door I grabbed my cart, walked with it to the farthest work station, next to the window and plugged in my laptop. While the computer was starting up I took out my cell phone. It was still off. I had been unreachable since the previous afternoon. The HC&P office had almost no land lines. Even the secretaries walked through the building with cells. Everyone was always available. Everywhere. Unless you turned your phone off, but that was only permitted during conferences with clients or higher-ups. The first was company policy, the second was an unspoken rule.

  As soon as the phone found the network it began peeping and the voicemail symbol appeared in the display. I called, and the computerized voice from the phone company told me I had seven messages. Three were from Dries van Waayen—personal, no less.

  ‘Bellicher,’ the manicured voice said. ‘On second thought, maybe we ought to work on reaching a point of clarity for both parties. Let
’s do it soon. I understand you’re on the road, meeting with a client, and that’s great, but once you start something it’s a good idea to grab the bull by the horns. That’s what we advise our clients and it’s what we do ourselves. Call me,’ he said.

  End of message.

  In the next one he elaborated his idea. ‘Now we have to be careful that we don’t turn our attention to the wrong things, that we don’t lose sight of the difference between effectiveness and efficiency. Focus is the goal. That’s important. That’s what it’s all about. I know it and you know it. So I think it would be good if we could come back to this as soon as possible. Call me. I’m available.’

  End of message.

  The third voicemail was less nuanced. The cultivated smooth edge of his voice was gone. I wasn’t with a client at all, and now he knew it, too. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to know what IN GOD’S NAME you’re up to! Whatever possessed you to make such a stupid decision, especially now? Not only is it at odds with the interest of the client, but it also jeopardizes the good name of HC&P. I expect to see you tomorrow morning at ten-fifteen in my office.’

  A play in three acts. Announcement of the idea, confrontation with the principle and the immediate execution. All my own fault. Of course. Management doesn’t make mistakes, and certainly not the management of an international consultancy.

  That’s why he was so eager to get rid of me. As soon as possible, before my behaviour could have any negative consequences. On that point he was merciless. You could make mistakes in your analysis, you could miss things in your research, you could forget to ask the right question. All signs of stupidity, of course, but it was permitted. People make mistakes. It happens. The seniors and partners made sure you knew what you had done wrong. All fine—in moderation, of course. But leaving a client in the lurch—a client—that was not done. That was cardinal sin number one. Even illness was hardly an excuse. As long as you could walk, sit and be present, you dragged yourself to the appointment. You might not utter a word all afternoon, but even that was better than not showing up. The only acceptable reason for cancelling an appointment with a client was to make room for an appointment with a more important client. A wholesale office supply company, for example, could be pushed aside for a ministry, but even then it would have to be absolutely unavoidable. But standing the client up, just like that, without offering any reasons and without even calling, was unthinkable. And that is exactly what I had done. For Dries van Waayen I had become intolerable.