The Deceiver by Frederick Forsyth Page B

then she would believe how important his job was. Not that it mattered. She loved him anyway.
    He shopped in the center of town before driving out to Hahnwald—some good veal, fresh vegetables, a bottle of real French claret. He would make them a cozy supper at home; he enjoyed being in the kitchen. His final purchase was a large bunch of flowers.
    He parked his Opel Kadett round the corner from her street—he always did—and walked the rest of the way. He had not used the car phone to tell her he was coming. He would surprise her. With the flowers. She would like that. There was a lady coming out of the building as he approached the door, so he did not even have to ring the front bell and alert Renate. Better and better—a real surprise. He had his own key to her apartment door.
    He let himself in quietly to make the surprise even nicer. The hall was quiet. He opened his mouth to call “Renate, darling, it’s me,” when he heard a peal of her laughter. He smiled. She would be watching the cartoons on television. He peeked into the sitting room. It was empty. The laughter came again, from down the passage toward the bathroom. He realized with a start at his own foolishness that she might have a client. He had not called to check. Then he realized that with a client she would be in the “working” bedroom with the door closed, and that the door was soundproofed. He was about to call again when someone else laughed. It was a man. Morenz stepped from the hall into the passageway.
    The master bedroom door was open a few inches, the gap partly obscured by the fact that the big closet doors were also open, with overcoats strewn on the floor.
    “What an arsehole,” said the man’s voice. “He really thinks you’re going to marry him?”
    “Head over heels, besotted. Stupid bastard! Just look at him.” Her voice.
    Morenz put down the flowers and the groceries and moved down the passage to the bedroom door. He was puzzled. He eased the closet doors closed to get past them and nudged the bedroom door open with the tip of his shoe.
    Renate was sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed with the black sheets, smoking a joint. The air was redolent of cannabis. Lounging on the bed was a man Morenz had never seen before—lean, young, tough, in jeans and a leather motorcycle jacket. They both saw the movement of the door and jumped off the bed, the man in a single bound that brought him to his feet behind Renate. He had a mean face and dirty blond hair. In her private life Renate liked what is known as “rough trade,” and this one, her regular boyfriend, was as rough as they came.
    Morenz’s eyes were still fixed on the video flickering on the TV set beyond the end of the bed. No middle-aged man looks very dignified when making love, even less so when it is not happening for him. Morenz watched his own image on the TV with a growing sense of shame and despair. Renate was with him in the film, occasionally looking over his back to make gestures of disdain at the camera. That was apparently what had caused all the laughter.
    In front of him now, Renate was almost naked, but she recovered from her surprise quickly enough. Her face flushed with anger. When she spoke, it was not in the tones he knew, but the screech of a fishwife.
    “What the fuck are you doing here?”
    “I wanted to surprise you,” he mumbled.
    “Yeah, well you’ve fucking surprised me. Now bug off. Go home to your stupid potato sack in Porz.”
    Morenz took a deep breath.
    “What really hurts,” he said, “is that you could have told me. You didn’t need to let me make such a fool of myself. Because I really did love you.”
    Her face was quite contorted. She spat the words.
    “ Let you? You don’t need any help. You are a fool. A fat old fool. In bed and out. Now bug off.”
    That was when he hit her. Not a punch—an open-handed slap to the side of the face. Something snapped in him, and he hit her. It caught her off balance. He was a big man,