Clark Animal Self

Moses Hoffman Trilogy Vol 2.
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-3-7504-7353-9
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten

Animal Self is the second volume of the Moses Hoffman Trilogy and opens in Venice, where Mo has settled to rebuild his life and is compelled to begin drawing once more, making pictures that will rekindle the interest of his old friends and partners in Berlin crime.

John Clark, born 1954 in Scunthorpe, UK, has lived in Berlin for many years. Working in film and television internationally, as producer, director and writer, his recent novels include 'Gaming with Attitudes' and 'Urban Weather' alongside the Moses Hoffman Trilogy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Clark, John

Leseproben

CHAPTER 1

End of not exactly romantic story, says Mo to himself and turns the page in case there is more.

Not far from my old place, Mo recalls.

He enjoys the small pleasure of reading about familiar places, even though these versions hardly resemble the dank and crumbling city-scape he can remember, oh so well.

Moses Hoffman laughs as he sets the novel aside.

These female characters were unlikely to suffer more than mild career damage from their huntress like revenge. Aside from hurt pride, he doubts whether they ever really had souls to wound.

Three years have passed since Mo convincingly faked his own premature death, ‘while celebrating his fortieth birthday at the age of 53’, as his self-penned little death notice in the TagesSpiegel had intriguingly affirmed. That illusion had been created under the grey green trees of a North-German forest, but now he is living his life in the sun.

The terrifying six months he had spent sweating in Colombia netted enough cash to keep him afloat for the rest of his life.

There's nary a crunch, if you don't need credit.

As things stand, he can’t even manage to spend the interest that is accumulating in half a dozen diverse currencies. The numbers in his bank accounts just go on getting bigger all the time. For the first time in his life, Mo takes pride in paying his taxes on time.

The paramilitary had done him a massive favour by sending a helicopter gunship to wipe out the only three members of the cocaine smuggling cartel who knew his real identity, simultaneously slaughtering the two Miami Cubans who had paid for the 232 kilos of cocaine he had delivered in souvenir cocoa tins, each with a rather nice embossed picture of two boys playing cricket on the side. They'd thought they were being clever by paying him in Colombian Pesos, but with the incredible shrinking dollar’s fall from grace, Mo had cause to be truly thankful and left on the first plane out via San José with a trunk-full of convertible currency that was welcomed with affection by a Bank on Grand Cayman.

No-one knows his whereabouts.

Tracks and traces have been erased.

The haze of dope has faded to bring days of hope.

Even his worst enemy and closest friend, Hagen, still firmly believes he is hiding in South America. Werner had told him that and Hagen knows that Werner knows Colombia.

There is nothing so simple, Mo is discovering, than the life of a loafer with slightly more money than he’ll ever reasonably need. Lying under the logo emblazoned sunshade, he lets his eyes blur in the bright dazzle of afternoon wavelets.

The clear polluted waters of the Adriatic make no surf. A sloppy flotilla of plastic bottles float glinting and bobbing a few metres offshore. Listening to the modest splashes against the beach, he admits to himself that he is slightly bored and the sun is dependably warm. He decides to doze, inviting a dream about the moment of inspiration he had experienced early that morning.

A hundred and four grains of sand lodge themselves between the seven hundred pages of the paperback novel he has put on one side.

Since his arrival on the Venetian Lido, Mo has assumed the status of long-term resident at the Hotel Miraplex. The smallest suite with a view over the sea has a neat pair of rooms that are almost as big as the apartment he used to share with his girlfriend in Berlin. He enjoys room service, letting himself become accustomed to the daily attentions of chamber maids and messengers. This cosseted life at the hotel has become routine and he is pleasantly surprised how much he likes this latest version of everyday life.

The team of concierges have long since concluded that Herr Hoffman is harmless, neither pilfering thief, nor golddigger, merely a man of featureless provenance, but dependable means. His credit cards are black and he tips well.

Once a week, he takes the Hotel's teak and white leather upholstered water taxi to San Marco and does some shopping at the designer stores in Venice’s crowded alleys, but every morning he tries to be awake at first light and catches the slow public ferry across the lagoon. Even in high summer, the Venetian day starts late. The shops open only once the tourist hordes have finished their breakfasts.

So, for three, or four hours after summertime daybreak, the canal-sides and alleys are deserted apart from rubbish collectors, insomniacs and a regular trickle of hotel workers scurrying from the railway station to their jobs.

Mo begins work the moment he leaves the hotel, strolling past the massive Excelsior Hotel along the highway that brings him to the ferry. A twenty minute walk. He is looking, making a careful assessment of the light. He tries to anticipate the level of humidity to determine when the morning mists will clear and the direction he should take to make the best of sun and haze. How soft will the light become? The conditions he prefers are milky smooth. Or will the sunshine harden into bright outline highlight and gloomy shade? Will there be wind to riffle the water.

Two, or three choices are to be made, the alternatives all pleasant. Whether to go to the main island, hop across to the Giudecca, or continue to one of the smaller islands like Murano? Once there, where-ever there turns out to be, he can choose between open stretches of water, or the narrow canals, select an ensemble of buildings then find a niche to detail highlights and shadow, the windows, roofs and doors. The light he relishes above all else is reflected from the canals to glow beneath the sills and cornices, filling the pale stone shadows of buildings already lit by setting sun.

Mo works with small sketch-books and pans of colour, with a bottle of chalk laden, probably French, perhaps Dolomitic mineral water to minimise the acid he'll carry onto the paper.

He draws in pencil, then adds a wash of colour, before detailing the sketches in ink, more or less as Turner and a hundred thousand imitators have done so before. Mo has no thoughts of rivalling the prolific old man, whose sketch-books he had admired on a visit to Manchester in the north of England. The skinny scouse museum director and her staff...