Wim snorted. “Have you seen Franc?”

  “He’s staying in town, apparently. When did you arrive?”

  “A couple of hours ago. This is breakfast.” He held up the pizza. “I’m staying here.” He gestured at the hotel behind them, a black stone monolith sitting mysteriously behind a screen of trees, like an ancient temple.

  “What’s it like?”

  “Don’t know; I’ve only spent about ten minutes inside. Yours?”

  “Seems all right. It’s got a spa.”

  “This one too, according to the brochure in my room. They do that thing where someone pours oil on your head. A hundred and fifty euros for a treatment. Imagine coming all this way to pay somebody to pour oil on your head; you’d be better off staying at home with a bottle of Jumbo.”

  “There’s probably more to it than that,” Michael mused.

  Wim looked at the hotel and shook his head. “A hundred and fifty euros,” he said again. He took a bite from the slice of pizza.

  Michael looked around. “Why are there so many Germans here?”

  Wim shrugged. “It’s a nice place, the border’s not far, your euros will go a long way here if you give the hotel spa a miss. And it was Germany, once upon a time.” He watched the people passing by. “Some of the older ones are probably here for a look at the ancestral home. Some of the really old ones probably used to live here.”

  “That must feel weird.”

  “A lot of Europe’s like that. You wouldn’t understand; you Brits haven’t been invaded since 1066.”

  “1688.”

  Wim thought about it. “Oh yeah,” he said mildly. “I forgot about that. That wasn’t really an invasion; you invited us in.”

  “William brought twenty thousand men with him,” Michael pointed out. “It probably looked like an invasion."

  Wim grinned. “Hey, that was probably the last time anyone sane was running your country.”

  “Standards have certainly slipped recently,” Michael agreed. “When are you being questioned?”

  “No idea. You?”

  “Not till tomorrow afternoon. People are still arriving, apparently.”

  Wim snorted. “We could have done this on Zoom and got it over with, but nobody trusts the internet.”

  “How did you cope during the pandemic?”

  “Well, there wasn’t a lot of fieldwork. There might have been an Event near Zaragoza towards the end of 2020, but nobody could get there to investigate so we’re still not sure. Mostly we just kept our heads down, like everybody else.” Wim finished his pizza and folded the paper plate into quarters and looked around for a rubbish bin. “Anyway, I’m going to walk into town. Maybe I’ll bump into Franc; want to come along?”

  Michael shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a great idea, but you go ahead. Try not to get in any trouble. See you later?”

  Wim grinned. “Oh yeah. I can’t wait to see the look on Thijs’s face when I turn up.” He set off along the seafront, and Michael walked back to the hotel.

  Maybe he was wrong to characterise the essenceheads as conspiracists. Conspiracists protested at Davos, took to social media, ran podcasts, did their best to gather as many followers as they could. They wanted to be heard; it was impossible to miss them. The essenceheads, on the other hand, jealously protected their secret. Unlike the conspiracists, they had actual tangible proof of something extraordinary and, with a very few exceptions, they didn’t want to share it with anyone. They were more like an intelligence service or a secret society, the kind of thing conspiracists would have theories about, and he thought that was sort of remarkable and probably not sustainable for much longer. The world was becoming too febrile, changing too quickly. If the Essence did exist, and was winding itself up for some mega-Event or something, the secret would be out. Then you’d get Essence deniers and the whole sorry mess would just get worse.

  Jo was in the lobby when he got back. “You shouldn’t go off on your own, you know,” she told him.

  He was starting to get tired of being told what to do. “Wim’s here,” he said. “I just saw him.”

  She scowled. “Oh, that’s great,” she said. “Now I’ve got to worry about keeping him and Thijs apart too.”

  “He’s gone into town. I think he’s hoping he’ll see Brossard.”

  She sighed. “Maybe they’ll do us all a favour and punch each other senseless. What were you planning to do now?”

  “I was just going upstairs. Why?”

  “I thought I’d introduce you around, meet some of the others.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know; I was kind of hoping to keep a low profile.”

  “Once people work out who you are they’re going to start pestering you anyway,” she said. “I was hoping we could get ahead of that.”

  Most of the essenceheads, it turned out, seemed perfectly ordinary, friendly and polite but perhaps with an edge of shyness, and they didn’t ask any unanswerable questions. A few, though, seemed as exotic as tropical birds. One tall, white-haired woman wearing a black ballet tutu, biker boots, and a leather jacket, was introduced to him as Maxi Zimmermann.

  “We should be thanking you,” she told him with a smile. “We haven’t had one of these gatherings in years.”

  “I gather someone was shot last time,” he said.

  She widened her eyes at the memory. “Yes! That was a wonderful weekend.” She patted him on the cheek. “Don’t worry; everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Maxi and Brossard don’t get on,” Jo said as they walked on. “They were married for a bit.”

  Michael glanced over his shoulder. Maxi was striding across the lobby towards the dining room. “I keep expecting someone to run a geiger counter over me or something,” he said.

  “Some of the crazier ones would probably do that,” Jo told him. “But they’d ask permission first. Most of them, anyway. But you see? There’s nothing to be afraid of, they’re not going to mob you wanting an autograph.”

  He was starting to suspect that he was actually something of a sideshow. A lot of the essenceheads seemed to have brought their families and were treating the whole thing as a holiday, a chance to catch up with old friends and discuss matters Essencey. He’d already seen them, sitting in little groups in the café on the first floor and the big lounge beside the restaurant, various documents and papers on the table in front of them, deep in earnest conversation, which seemed a little at odds with Jo’s description of them as some of the most paranoid people in the world. Maybe they felt more comfortable here, among friends. It would, he thought, be mildly diverting to study the group dynamics of these people, but he was hoping he wouldn’t be here long enough.

  Back in his room, he discovered that if he opened one of the windows and leaned out over the railing outside and turned his head to the left, he could just see a narrow wedge of sea over the band of trees and scrubby bushes that separated this hotel from the next one.

  He used the room’s little kettle and made himself a cup of tea and sat down with the script of The Unknown Man, but he felt strange about reading it now that he knew its source. He found himself thinking about Mad Jack Hallam returning to the Netherlands in the hope of unravelling the mystery of his wartime survival. The circumstances of the writing of The Heart of the Maze would probably remain unknown for ever – why would a former RAF bomber pilot write a detective novel set in 1930s Los Angeles? – and he doubted anyone would ever discover how the self-published book had found its way into the hands of Hans Ehlers and Lorenz Bohrer in East Germany. What did seem likely was that, after Hallam’s death, Ehlers and Bohrer had decided to go ahead with the film anyway and simply leave his name off the finished work, passing it off as their own. Which was definitely naughty, but after all this time, who would care? Had they contrived to have Hallam killed so they didn’t have to share the profits with him? That seemed absurd. The film was never going to make anyone rich, and surely Bohrer and Ehlers were bright enough to realise that.

  Nobody would ever know; it was sixty years ago and even if anyone involved with the film were still alive, memories grew misty and uncertain at that distance. The families of the lost film crew still thought they’d died in a crash somewhere out in the Polish countryside on the way back to Berlin.

  He paged forward through the script and found the beach scene near the end. EXT. BEACH. HAMBURG. DAY. It was only a page long.

  Marthe Braun was saying, “I had to get away. He would have killed us all. He still might.”

  “How did you dispose of the body?” Joe asked.

  “I have friends in State Security.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Michael thought of Matthias Weber and Hannelore Huber walking along the beach, delivering their lines. He thought of Weber’s hat blowing off and bowling along the sand and Huber putting a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh as he ran to rescue it. He thought of the town with its church tower in the distance, and that curl of bright kaleidoscope light coming after the two actors faster than any predator. He sat back and frowned across the room, trying to picture the church tower.

  Leaving the script on the bed, he went downstairs, walking across the lobby, out of the main door and across to the beach. He stood there, looking west along the coast. He trudged through the sand towards the water’s edge, stopped and looked along the coast again, seeing the buildings of Kołobrzeg town and its lighthouse in the distance. The sounds of the holidaymakers all around him seemed to fade away and he felt a shiver go through him.

  He’d only glimpsed the buildings in the footage for a moment, and he’d thought it was a church tower, but it hadn’t been. It had been a lighthouse. It was that lighthouse, in the distance. He looked back towards the seafront and remembered it being an unbroken line of trees in the film Wim had shown him; the hotels hadn’t been there in 1965, but this was the same beach. Not only the same beach, it was the same spot. This was where Bohrer and the film crew had set up their camera. Huber and Weber had been right over there when they were erased from existence, and then the Essence had come for the rest of the crew. Right where he was standing.

  “I can’t believe nobody told you,” Jo said that evening at dinner.

  Michael sat staring at her.

  She’d decided to try the roast pork and apple sauce with dumplings and a salad of pickled red cabbage, and she carried on eating for a few moments before she realised he hadn’t said anything. She looked up from her meal.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just assumed somebody would have said something. I should have mentioned it.”

  “It was here,” he said.

  “Oh yes.” She went back to her meal. “The Kołobrzeg Event, the biggest documented Event in Europe, until Zandvoort. Of course, we were never able to investigate it properly; for years and years all we had were rumours. The Poles tried, but they hardly had any equipment and they had to be careful about attracting the attention of the secret police, and by the time the Wall came down and we could travel here freely there was no point, it had been over for almost thirty years. The footage didn’t even surface until 2001 or 2002.”

  He looked down at his own meal, beef goulash on a big potato rösti with a dollop of pickled cabbage on the side. “And it doesn’t strike you as weird in any way to have your conference here?”

  She looked at him. “I told you, this is neutral territory. Nobody’s going to try anything here; the rest of us wouldn’t stand for it. It’d be disrespectful. Like taking a dump on somebody’s grave.”

  It was also, he suspected, a place of pilgrimage, like the Germans coming here to see where their families had lived before the War. He looked around the dining room, wondering how many essenceheads were here because of the conference and how many had just taken the opportunity to come and have a look at the site of the Event. The room was almost full, and he still couldn’t tell most of the essenceheads from the ordinary guests.

  He said, “You know, every time I think I’ve got my head round what’s happening, you go and do something like this.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Have you any idea how weird this is?” he asked, loudly enough for people to look over at their table.

  “There’s no need to shout,” Jo said.

  Michael looked past her and saw Thijs making his way between the tables towards them. “You’re lucky I haven’t been shouting ever since this started,” he said.

  Thijs reached their table and stood at Jo’s shoulder looking around the dining room. “Everything okay?” he asked, nodding and waving hello to someone at another table.

  “Everything’s great,” Jo said. Whatever Thijs had said to her after their day out in Zandvoort, it must have hurt, because she was still barely talking to him.

  “Well, everyone seems to have arrived,” he told them. “Everyone who’s coming, anyway. We’ll be starting in the morning. They want to see you first.” He looked down at Jo.

  “Fine,” she said, although the look on her face suggested it was anything but.

  A disruption in the colour balance of the room announced the arrival of Wim, wearing yet another eye-wrenchingly awful Hawaiian shirt. He stood by the door for a moment, looking around; then he spotted Thijs standing by their table and a big grin crinkled his beard as he set off towards them. Michael sighed and went back to his dinner.

  “Hey,” Wim said, still grinning, when he reached the table.

  “Hey,” Jo said.

  “Willem,” said Thijs without quite looking at him.

  “I was sorry to hear about Anneke,” Wim said. “How is she?”

  Thijs looked slightly uncomfortable. “Thank you,” he said. “She’s doing as well as she can. Sofi’s sister’s keeping an eye on her while I’m here.” Michael realised he still hadn’t told the rest of the essenceheads about the presumed Event at the hospital and his daughter’s miraculous recovery. He wondered how much longer Thijs would be able to keep it quiet.

  “Did you find Brossard?” Jo asked.

  “Franc?” Wim shook his head. “Nah. He’s probably in a room somewhere trying to decide what he’s going to wear tomorrow.”

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t make any more trouble,” Thijs said.

  “Oh, you’d prefer it? Okay. Got that.” Wim looked around him. “Nice hotel. The old man paying for everything, is he?”

  Thijs didn’t answer.

  “I’ve had to pay my own way,” Wim went on. “So this had better be good.”

  Thijs cleared his throat. “I still have some calls to make.” He looked at Jo. “Tomorrow, ten o’clock. Try not to be late; you know what they’re like.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”

  Wim watched Thijs leave the dining room, then he said, “That went well.”

  “How long is it since you last spoke to each other?” Michael asked.

  Wim thought about it. “A couple of years.”

  “I swear to God, I’m going to take the two of you into a corner and have a quiet word,” Jo said wearily.

  “Oh, hey,” he said, looking across the room. “Constanza’s here. I haven’t seen her in years. Back in a minute.” And he set off between the tables.

  “It’s like dealing with five-year-olds,” Jo said.

  Michael watched Wim being greeted enthusiastically by a table full of people he’d earlier tentatively tagged as civilians. He dropped his napkin beside his plate and stood up. “I’m going to turn in,” he said.

  Jo looked at his plate. “Something wrong with the food?”

  “I’m not all that hungry,” he told her.

  Fourteen

  He didn’t see Jo the next morning; presumably she’d already inhaled a couple of mugs of coffee and was preparing for her testimony. The breakfast room was about half full, and people he’d never seen before kept nodding hello to him while he waited for his bread to make its way through the toaster. He found himself a table in a corner, surrounded by people he thought were tourists. At least, they didn’t pay him any attention, which he would settle for. Through the big windows, it looked as if the weather was on the turn; the sky was grey and cloudy, although there were still a lot of cyclists and pedestrians going by outside. At one point Thijs came to the door and stood there as if he was looking for someone, but he turned and left again.

  After breakfast, he went outside and stood on the beach again, looking towards the town. There was a chilly wind, and the sea was choppy. To the north, in the general direction of Sweden, a lid of dark cloud had settled on the horizon, but the tourists were still staking out their places on the sand, setting up their windbreaks and chairs and picnic coolers, completely unaware that they were sitting in the spot where something terrifying and inexplicable had happened decades before. Others, standing solemnly having their photographs taken, were obviously essenceheads, people who’d seen the footage and knew exactly what had happened here. He found himself wanting to run across the sand waving his arms and shouting to drive them all away. Instead, he walked along the beach in the direction of Kołobrzeg.

  He hadn’t planned on walking very far, but an hour or so later he found himself standing at the base of the red-brick lighthouse, looking out over the twin breakwaters that angled Kołobrzeg’s river out into the Baltic. Down below in the seafront plaza in front of the lighthouse, there were boards advertising a catamaran service to Bornholm, and he thought very hard about that. If he wanted to, he could buy a ticket and just walk aboard, and a few hours later he’d be in Denmark. From Bornholm he could go pretty much anywhere as long as his money lasted, which wouldn’t be long. If he wanted to.

  He walked along the quayside into the Old Port part of the town. He stopped at a Kantor and exchanged half his euros for a satisfyingly large wad of złotys, and wandered on until he found himself in the middle of what appeared to be a busy farmers’ market in front of the Brick Gothic fortress of the Town Hall. A little further along, he spotted a café and he went in, bought himself a coffee and a chicken salad sandwich, and sat at a table near the window. They were the first things he’d bought, under his own steam and with his own money, since the bar in Amsterdam, and he thought about what Jo had said – centuries ago, it seemed – about him having agency. He found it hard to remember ever having agency; it felt as if he’d been swept along like a drowning man in a flooded river for so long that he barely even noticed any more.