The Return

by Håkan Nesser

  “No idea,” said Münster.

  “That she had to get back home to the boyfriend. He’d come to visit her and was waiting for her at the hostel she was staying at. Or so she said.”

  “Hard cheese,” said Münster.

  “A real cock-up,” said Rooth. “No, I think I’m getting too old to go running after women. Maybe I ought to try putting an ad in the newspapers instead. Kurmann in Missing Persons has found himself a very nice bit of stuff that way…. But you have to have the luck of the devil, of course.”

  He concentrated on overtaking a blue removal van before finding himself nose to nose with a No. 12 streetcar. Münster closed his eyes, and on opening them again was able to establish that they had made it.

  “What about you?” asked Rooth. “Still no snags with the most beautiful policeman’s wife in the world?”

  “Pure paradise,” said Münster; and when he came to think about it, that wasn’t so far from the truth. But Synn was Synn. The only thing that worried him now and again was what a woman like her could see in him—a badly paid detective ten years older than she was, who worked so hard that he hardly ever had time for her or the children. It was easy to convince himself that he had something more than he deserved. That sooner or later he would be punished for it.

  But why worry? He was happily married, had two children; perhaps he should just be grateful and accept whatever came his way, for once. In any case, that was not something he had any desire to discuss with Detective Inspector Rooth.

  “You should get rid of that beard,” he said instead. “If I were a woman, I’d run a mile from that fuzz.”

  Rooth ran his hand over his chin and examined his face in the rearview mirror.

  “I don’t know, damn it all,” he said. “Doesn’t look all that bad, I reckon. I’m not sure you understand the way women think.”

  “OK,” said Münster. “You do what you like. How are we going to deal with Meusse?”

  “I suppose we’d better buy him a drink, as usual,” said Rooth as he pulled up outside the forensic clinic. “Or what do you say?”

  “Yep, no doubt that will be the simplest way,” said Münster.

  Meusse was not yet finished with today’s quota of dead bodies, and rather than interrupt him, Münster and Rooth decided to wait for him in his office.

  He turned up twenty minutes late, and Münster could see that he’d had a rough day. His thin, birdlike body seemed skinnier than ever, his face was ashen and behind his thick glasses his eyes seemed to have sunk deep into their sockets—after having seen enough, and no doubt more than enough, of the evil and perversity this world has to offer, one could safely assume. As far as Münster was concerned, looking at the butchered body for five seconds would have been enough, or ten seconds examining the photographs. He guessed that the forensic specialist must have been poking around in the rotten flesh for at least ten or twelve hours.

  Meusse nodded a greeting without saying a word and hung his stained white coat on a hook next to the door. Washed his hands and wriggled his way into the jacket that had been lying on his desk. Stroked his completely bald head a few times and sighed.

  “Well, what can I do for you gentlemen?”

  “Maybe we’d find it a bit easier to talk over a glass of something tasty in the bar?” Rooth suggested.

  The Fix bar was just over the road from the forensic laboratories—if you left by the back door, that is, and there seemed to be no reason to take any other exit but the usual one today either.

  Meusse led the way, hands in pockets and shoulders hunched, and it wasn’t until he had a double gin and a beer chaser on the table in front of him that he seemed up to discussing his findings. Both Münster and Rooth had been through this many times before and knew there was no point in trying to speed him up—or in interrupting him once he’d got going, come to that. He would answer any questions when he’d said what he had to say; it was as simple as that.

  “Well, gentlemen,” he began. “I note that Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is conspicuous by his absence on this occasion. Can’t say I’m surprised. This body you’ve come across is a pretty nasty object. If a mere pathologist might be allowed to express a wish, it would be that you would make an effort to dig them out a bit sooner in future. We are not exactly inspired by dead bodies that have been rotting away for an age…. Three months, four at most, that’s where the limit ought to be set. The fact is that one of my assistants couldn’t cope and let me down this afternoon. Hmm.”

  “How old is this one, then?” asked Rooth, trying to put his oar in while Meusse was busy exploring the depths of his beer glass.

  “As I said,” he went on, “it’s an unusually unsavory body.”

  Unsavory? Münster thought, and recalled how Meusse had once told him how his life had been changed and made more miserable by his less-than-uplifting profession. How he had been impotent by the age of thirty, how his wife had left him when he was thirty-five, how he’d turned vegetarian at forty, and how he’d more or less stopped eating solid food by the time he was fifty…. His own body and its functions had become more and more repulsive as the years went by. Something he could only feel disgust and aversion for, he had confessed to Münster and Van Veeteren one afternoon when, for whatever reason, the drinks had become more numerous than usual.

  Perhaps that was nothing to be surprised by, Münster thought. Merely a natural development?

  “It is difficult to be specific about the time,” said Meusse, lighting a cigarillo. “I would guess about eight months, but I could easily be wrong by a month or two in either direction. We’ll have the lab report in a week or so. Cause of death will be just as hard to pin down, I fear. The only thing that’s obvious, of course, is that he died some considerable time earlier…. Before he was dumped in the ditch, that is. At least twelve hours, no doubt about that. Maybe as much as twenty-four hours. There is no blood on the carpet, and not much in the body either, come to that. The decapitation and mutilation took place at an earlier stage. The blood had drained away, to put it in simple terms.”

  “How did the butchery take place?” Münster asked.

  “In an amateurish way,” said Meusse. “An axe, presumably. It doesn’t seem to have been all that sharp, so it probably took quite a while.”

  He emptied his glass. Rooth went to get him a refill.

  “What I can say about the cause of death is that it was in his head.”

  “In his head?” said Rooth.

  “In his head, yes,” said Meusse, pointing at his own bald pate to make his meaning clearer. “He might have been shot through the head or killed by that axe, or something else. But the cause of death was a blow to the head. Apart from the mutilations and natural decay, the body is uninjured. Well, I’m ignoring certain secondary effects caused by hungry foxes and crows who managed to get at it in a few places, but even they haven’t caused all that much damage. The carpet and the water in the ditch have had a certain amount of embalming effect. Or delayed the onset of decay at least.”

  Münster had picked up his beer glass, but put it back down on the scratched table.

  “As for age and distinctive features,” said Meusse, who was unstoppable once he was in his stride, “we can assume he was between fifty-five and sixty, or thereabouts. He would have been five foot nine or five foot ten, slimly built. Well proportioned, I think I can say. No broken arms or legs, no surgical scars. There might have been some other superficial scars, but they have either rotted away or stuck to the carpet. Things were made a bit more difficult by what you might call a symbiosis of death between the body and the carpet. They have sort of fused together here and there, or do you say fused into each other?”

  “Holy shit!” said Rooth.

  “Precisely,” said Meusse. “Any questions?”

  “Are there any distinctive features at all?” Münster asked.

  Meusse smiled. His thin lips parted and revealed two rows of unexpectedly white and healthy teeth.

  �
�There is one,” he said, and it was obvious that he was enjoying this. The pleasure of being able to keep them on tenterhooks at least for a second or two. Satisfying his professional honor, Münster thought.

  “If the murderer was in fact trying to remove things that would make identification possible,” said Meusse, “he missed one.”

  “What was that, then?” wondered Rooth.

  “A testicle.”

  “Eh?” said Münster.

  “He had only one testicle,” explained Meusse.

  “Einstein?” said Rooth, looking foolish.

  “Hmm,” said Münster. “That will need following up, of course.”

  He realized immediately that he had offended the little pathologist by his irony. He coughed and raised his glass, but it was too late.

  “As far as the carpet is concerned,” said Meusse curtly, “you’ll have to speak to Van Impe tomorrow. I think I’ll have to go now. Obviously, you will have a written report on your well-polished desks tomorrow morning.”

  He emptied his glass and stood up.

  “Thank you,” said Rooth.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” said Meusse. “It would be appreciated if you didn’t call in with another old torso during the next few days.”

  He paused in the doorway.

  “But if you come across the remaining parts of the one we already have, we shall naturally help you to match them up. We’re always pleased to be of assistance.”

  Münster and Rooth stayed put for a few more minutes and finished their beer.

  “Why has he only one testicle?” asked Rooth.

  “No idea,” said Münster. “Mind you, one’s enough when all’s said and done. I suppose he must have injured the other one. An operation, maybe?”

  “Could some animal or other have eaten it? While the body was in the ditch, I mean.”

  Münster shrugged.

  “Search me. But if Meusse maintains it was missing from the start, no doubt it was.”

  Rooth nodded.

  “A damned good clue,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Münster. “It’s the kind of thing that’s bound to be in all the databases. NB, only has one ball! Do you still think we’ll clear this up inside a week?”

  “No,” said Rooth. “Inside a year maybe. Let’s be off.”

  They didn’t speak much during the drive back to the police station. One thing was obvious, however: The third man on the list of possible candidates, Piit Choulenz from Hagmerlaan, was presumably on the young side. According to the information they had, he had not yet reached fifty, and even if Meusse was careful to say that he was only guessing, Rooth and Münster both knew that he was rarely wrong. Not even when he was only speculating.

  But both Claus Menhevern and Pierre Kohler were possibilities, it seemed. And naturally, they would take one each. They didn’t even need to discuss that.

  “Which one would you like?” asked Rooth.

  Münster looked at the names.

  “Pierre Kohler,” he said. “I suppose we might as well get that sorted out this evening?”

  Rooth looked at his watch.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “It’s only just turning seven. No self-respecting cop should turn up at home before nine.”

  6

  When he got there, they were busy packing stuff into the patrol wagons.

  “Good evening, Chief Inspector,” said Inspector le Houde. “Is there anything special you want?”

  Van Veeteren shook his head.

  “I just thought I’d take a look. Have you abandoned the fingertip search now?”

  “Yes,” said le Houde. “We had orders to that effect. Seems fair enough. Not much hope of anything turning up, I don’t suppose.”

  “Have you found anything?”

  Le Houde gave a laugh. Took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.

  “Quite a lot,” he said, pointing at a collection of black plastic sacks in the patrol wagon with the back doors open. “Six of those. We’ve collected everything that didn’t ought to be in a forest…from an area equal to about twenty soccer fields. It’ll be fun going through it all.”

  “Hmm,” said Van Veeteren.

  “We’ll be sending a bill to Behren’s Public Cleansing Department. It’s their job after all.”

  “Do that,” said Van Veeteren. “Anyway, I’ll have a scout come around.”

  “Good luck,” said le Houde, closing the doors. “We’ll be in touch.”

  He followed the path. That was where the group from the day nursery had walked, if he understood it rightly. It wasn’t much of a path, mind you, not more than a couple of feet wide, full of roots and sharp stones and all kinds of bumps and potholes. The local police were doubtless right: The murderer had come from a different direction. The probability was that he’d parked on the bridle path on the other side of the little ridge that ran right through the woods—then he must have carried, or dragged, his load fifty or sixty yards through the undergrowth, uphill. The woods were not very well maintained, it was fair to say—so it was quite a task. Unless there had been more than one person involved, the murderer must have been pretty big and strong. Hardly a woman, nor an elderly man: Surely that was a reasonable conclusion to draw?

  He reached the spot. The red and white tape still cordoned off the relevant stretch of ditch, but there were no longer any guards on duty. He stopped three or four yards short of the tape and spent half a minute studying the grim plot, wishing he had a cigarette.

  Then he stepped over the ditch and made his way toward the bridle path. The murderer’s route, in all probability. It took him seven or eight minutes and resulted in several scratches on his face and hands.

  If we’d found him right away, he thought, we could have followed his route inch by inch.

  That was impossible now, of course.

  Impossible, and not of much interest either, presumably. If they ever did get to the bottom of this, a few broken twigs weren’t going to make any difference. There was no doubt at all that as things stood now, this crime and its perpetrator were far, far away from their grasp. In both time and space.

  Not to mention the victim.

  He started walking toward the village again.

  It suddenly struck him: What if nobody misses him? What if nobody has noticed that he’s disappeared?

  Nobody at all.

  The thought stayed with him. And if that little fat girl hadn’t happened to see him, years could have passed by without anybody missing him. Or finding him. It could have been an eternity. And meanwhile the process of decay and all the rest of it would have wiped out all trace of him. Why not?

  Apart from the odd bone, of course. And a grinning skull. Yorick, where are those hanging lips…. No, come to think of it, there was no head.

  And nobody would have needed to lift a finger.

  A totally unnoticed death.

  It was not a pleasant thought. He tried to dismiss it, but the only thing that replaced it was the clinically lit operating table and a limp, anesthetized body—his own.

  And the stranger dressed in green, brandishing razor-sharp knives over his stomach.

  He quickened his pace. Darkness had started to fall, and twenty minutes later as he stood outside the railroad station buying a pack of cigarettes, he also felt the first drop of rain on his hand.

  7

  After some deliberation Rooth decided to phone rather than call round in person. It was more than ten miles to Blochberg and it was nearly half past seven.

  Afterward, when he replaced the receiver, he was relieved to think that at least the woman at the other end of the line didn’t know what he looked like. With a bit of luck, she wouldn’t be sure of his name either: He hoped that he had managed to mumble it so indistinctly that she hadn’t picked it up.

  It had not been a successful telephone call.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Menhevern?”

  “Marie-Louise Menhevern, yes.”

  The voice was shr
ill and discouraging.

  “My name is Rooth, from the Maardam police. I’m calling in connection with a missing person. You telephoned us last June to inform us that, unfortunately, your husband seemed to have vanished, is that right?”

  “No. I never said anything about it being unfortunate. I merely said he’d disappeared.”

  “In June 1993?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Has he come back home?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t had any sign of life from him?”

  “No. If I had, I’d have informed the police, of course.”

  “And you have no idea what’s become of him?”

  “Well, I assume he’s run off with another woman and is hidden away somewhere. That’s the type he is.”

  “Really? Where might he be, do you think?”

  “How the hell should I know? I’m sitting here watching the telly, constable. Are you sure you’re from the police, come to that?”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you want, then? Have you found him?”

  “That depends,” said Rooth. “How many testicles did he have?”

  “What the hell was that you said?”

  “Er, well, I mean, most men have two, obviously…. He hasn’t had an operation and lost one, or something like that?”

  “Hang on, I’m going to have this call traced.”

  “But Mrs. Menhevern, please, it’s not what you think….”

  “You are the worst sort, do you know that? You don’t even dare to come and look me in the eye. Telephone pig! If I could lay my hands on you I’d…”

  Rooth terminated the call in horror. Sat there for half a minute without moving. As if the slightest careless move might give him away. Stared out of the window as darkness began to fall over the town.

  No, he thought, I’m no good with women. That’s all there is to it.