The Stranglers Honeymoon

by Håkan Nesser

  He spent the rest of the afternoon in the inner room of the antiquarian bookshop, working. Answered eleven requests from bookshops and libraries – eight of them negative, three positive. Listed and annotated a collection of maps that Krantze had found in a cellar in the Prague old town (how on earth had he managed to make such a journey and also go down into a cellar, afflicted as he was by rheumatism, sciatica, vascular spasms and chronic bronchitis?). Began sorting out four bags of odds and ends brought in that same morning by the heirs of a recently deceased man, and bought for a song. He allowed the few customers who came into the shop to wander around freely, and the only transaction was the sale of half a dozen old crime novels for rather a good price to a German tourist. At a quarter past five Ulrike rang to ask what time he would be coming home. He told her about the olive stone and the tooth filling, and thought that she found it more amusing than she ought to have done. They agreed to meet at Adenaar’s at about seven – or as soon after that as possible, depending on when he had been allowed to leave the dentist’s chair. Neither of them had any great desire to cook a meal the evening before a journey; and in any case it was by no means certain that he would be able to chew anything so soon after being fitted with new false teeth, Ulrike thought.

  ‘It’s not a matter of new false teeth,’ Van Veeteren pointed out. ‘It’s just a filling.’

  ‘They usually have pretty good soup at Adenaar’s,’ Ulrike reminded him.

  ‘Their beer is usually drinkable,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I know nothing about their soup.’

  When they had hung up he remained sitting there with his hands clasped behind his head for a while. He suddenly noticed that something warm was stirring inside him, and wondered what on earth that could be. An unobtrusive, barely noticeable emotion, perhaps, but even so . . .

  Happiness?

  The word burst as a result of its own presumptuousness, and soon various other thoughts had occurred to him. No, not happiness, he thought. Good God, no! But it could have been worse. And there were other lives that had been even more of a failure than his.

  Then he started thinking about relativism. About whether other people’s unhappiness actually made his own unhappiness greater or less – whether the world really was constituted in such a penny-pinching and cheese-paring way that this relativism was the only basis on which good and evil could be judged: but then something seemed to be intent on distracting him . . .

  A few fake coughs and a cautious ‘hello’ penetrated his consciousness from the other room. He wondered briefly if he should respond or not. But then he stood up and acknowledged his presence.

  Six months later he was still not sure if that had been the right thing to do.

  The man was in his thirties. Tall and thin, and with a face that did its best to remain unseen behind a long fringe, a dark beard and dark glasses. He seemed to be enveloped by an aura of nervous unease, rather like BO, and Van Veeteren couldn’t help thinking about similarities with a suspect trying to pull himself together before a crucial interrogation.

  ‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘Can I help you with anything?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said the man, holding out his hand. ‘Assuming you are Van Veeteren, that is. My name is Gassel. Tomas Gassel.’

  Van Veeteren shook his hand, and confirmed that he was who he was.

  ‘Please forgive me for contacting you like this. What I have to say is a bit on the delicate side. Do you have a moment?’

  Van Veeteren checked his watch.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I have an appointment at the dentist’s half an hour from now. I was just about to shut up shop for the day, in fact.’

  ‘I understand. Perhaps tomorrow would suit you better?’

  Van Veeteren shook his head.

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’m going away on holiday tomorrow. What is it you want?’

  Gassel hesitated.

  ‘I need to talk to you. But a couple of minutes won’t be enough. The fact is that I find myself in a situation that I can’t cope with. Not professionally, nor as a private person.’

  ‘What do you mean by “professionally”?’

  Gassel looked at him in surprise for a moment. Then he stretched his neck and brushed his beard to one side. Van Veeteren saw the man’s dog collar.

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Please excuse me. I forget that my status isn’t obvious. I’m a curate in the parish of Leimaar here in Maardam.’

  ‘I see,’ said Van Veeteren, waiting for what came next.

  Gassel adjusted his beard and cleared his throat.

  ‘The fact is that I need somebody to talk to. To consult, if you prefer. I find myself in a situation in which . . . in which my vow of silence is in conflict with what my moral conscience tells me I ought to do. To put it in simple terms. Time has passed, and I’m afraid that something very unpleasant might happen if I don’t do something about it. Something very nasty and . . . criminal.’

  Van Veeteren searched around for a toothpick in his breast pocket, but then remembered that he’d given them up eighteen months ago.

  ‘But why are you turning to me? Surely you must have a vicar in Leimaar who must be better placed to help you than somebody like me?’

  Gassel shook his head.

  ‘You might think so. But we’re not exactly on the same wavelength on matters like this, Pastor Brunner and I. Unfortunately. Obviously, I’ve thought about it a lot, and . . . No, it’s not possible to handle it in that way. You’ve got to believe me.’

  ‘But why should I be able to handle it any better? As far as I recall we’ve never met before.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Gassel, somewhat awkwardly. ‘I’d better explain how it is that I know about you. I know that you’ve resigned from the police force – that’s the key fact. I’ve given her a sacrosanct promise not to go to the police with the information I have at my disposal. If I hadn’t promised her that, I’d never have found out anything about what was going on – even, of course, if I’d been able to work out that something very nasty was afoot. Very nasty indeed. I got your name from Sister Marianne in Groenstadt – I don’t know if you remember her. She’s only met you once, but she remembers you very well and recommended that I should try to talk to you . . . Marianne is an aunt of mine. My mother’s elder sister.’

  Van Veeteren frowned. Transported himself rapidly back six years in time, and suddenly saw in his mind’s eye the spartan whitewashed room where he had sat for an hour, talking to the old woman. Sister Marianne . . . The Roman Catholic Sister of Mercy and the newly operated-on Detective Chief Inspector who between them, very slowly – and filled with deep, mutual respect – resolved the final unanswered questions in the Leopold Verhaven case. The double murderer who wasn’t in fact a double murderer. An innocent man who had been in prison for twenty-four years – oh yes, he certainly remembered Sister Marianne.

  And he also recalled the final act in the Verhaven case. No matter how much he would have preferred to forget it.

  I knew it would come back to haunt me, he thought. I knew it would turn up again one of these days.

  But in this way? Was he really going to have to pay his debts via this worried young priest?

  That’s absurd, he thought. Preposterous. I’m pulling on too many strings. There’s such a thing as coincidence as well, it’s not only a matter of these confounded patterns all the time.

  ‘Do you remember her?’ Gassel wondered.

  Van Veeteren sighed and looked at the clock.

  ‘Oh yes, of course I do. I remember your aunt very well. An impressive lady, no doubt about that. But I’m afraid that time is running out. And I’m far from convinced that I can be of any help to you. For many years my capacity has been somewhat overestimated.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ said Gassel.

  ‘Huh,’ muttered Van Veeteren. ‘Be that as it may. But in any case, I simply don’t have the time today, and tomorrow I’m off to Rome for three weeks. But if you are prepared to wai
t that long, of course I can listen to what you have to say when I get back to Maardam. But don’t be under the illusion that I shall be able to help you.’

  Gassel contemplated the bookshelves while he seemed to be thinking that over. Then he shrugged and looked unhappy.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I can’t see any alternative. When exactly will you be back?’

  ‘On the seventh of October,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘That’s a Saturday.’

  Gassel took a little notebook out of his inside pocket and wrote that down.

  ‘Thank you for listening to what I had to say, in any case,’ he said. ‘I just hope nothing awful happens between now and then.’

  Then he shook hands once more and left the shop. Van Veeteren watched the tall, stooping man walk past the window and out into the alley.

  A young priest in a quandary, he thought. Seeking help from an agnostic ex-detective chief inspector. God moves in a mysterious way.

  Then he went out, locked the shop door and hurried off to the dentist’s in Meijkstraat.

  5

  Monica Kammerle sat waiting outside the school welfare officer’s office.

  While she was waiting, she wondered why she was in fact sitting there. To be honest there were two reasons, but they weren’t really connected. Not directly, at least.

  In the first place she had promised that priest to go to the school welfare officer and talk to her about her situation. He had both nagged at her and appealed to her, and in the end she had agreed to go along with it. Not that she was going to tell the welfare officer everything – that was what Pastor Gassel had intended, of course, but she was not going to go quite that far. If she had really wanted to do that, there would have been no need to call in at the church – he ought to have realized that. And there was professional secrecy and there was professional secrecy, that was something she had gathered long ago.

  The whole business had disturbed him deeply, that was obvious. She had tried to explain that quite a lot might look worse from the outside than it did from the inside, but he had dismissed any such thought.

  ‘Look here, my girl! You simply cannot go on like this, you must surely see that!’ he had said when she met him for the second time. ‘What you have confided in me goes against all ethical and moral values, and will end in disaster. You are too young to escape unscathed from anything like that. You won’t be able to cope with it!’

  And you are too inexperienced to understand, she had thought.

  Anyway, in the end she had promised to talk to the welfare officer: but before making an appointment she made sure she had thought up a rather more seemly reason. It hadn’t been all that difficult: her relationship with her schoolmates was sufficiently poor for it to merit a meeting, anybody could see that. As long as she was able to describe it convincingly.

  When she had come that far, she had decided to take matters a step further.

  A change of school. It was a good idea to have a specific proposal to make. She intended to explain to this washed-out fifty-year-old woman – who called herself a welfare officer, but hadn’t made a very convincing impression when she was introduced to the pupils at a special assembly in the hall soon after her appointment – to explain certain carefully selected parts of her situation as comprehensively as possible, and make her understand that a school transfer was the only plausible solution for a pupil with Monica Kammerle’s problem profile.

  As it was called. She had been there before.

  The Joannis Grammar School out at Löhr, for instance.

  As far as she had been able to discover there were eleven grammar schools in the Maardam area, and if there was one which might be able to give her the opportunity of a new start, it must surely be Joannis. If there was a school where she stood a chance of being completely unknown to her new unprejudiced schoolmates, this was the one. No pupil from Deijkstraa had ever attended a school in Löhr – one lunchtime she had checked through all local school record books for the last four years in the library, where they were kept in large black files. Yes, she felt confident that she would be able to convince the welfare officer that taking this step would be reasonable and necessary. The business of bus passes and choice of subjects and other practical and technical details – well, if she really was a welfare officer she should be able to sort out such matters.

  Monica laughed when she thought about this and her own sudden ability to act positively. Perhaps it was the young priest who had inspired her to such decisiveness, despite everything; but something had also happened after that latest embrace with Benjamin. Just happened, apparently of its own accord.

  Embrace? She didn’t really know what to call it, but after having come to terms with the feelings of disgust and the almost shocking re-evaluation of their relationship, some sort of inner strength seemed to have germinated inside her. She had noticed it even before she went to confession for the first time: obviously it was far from certain that it would last – she had been through periods of depression before, and there were those who maintained that manic depression was a hereditary illness. But why not take this opportunity of doing something positive if she was on a high for once?

  Why not, indeed? She looked at the clock and established that the welfare officer was running ten minutes late. Or that her current client was going on at length. The little lamp over her door shone red and insistently. In a way Monica felt comforted to discover that there seemed to be other pupils with problems. That she wasn’t the only one. That there was evidently some other confused and lonely teenager in there, who didn’t know what he should do next. Or she.

  Or was the old witch just sitting there, gossiping on the phone and drinking coffee?

  Monica sighed, sat up straight and began thinking about Benjamin Kerran instead.

  Nine days had passed, and he hadn’t been in touch.

  She couldn’t make up her mind if this surprised her or not. She didn’t know if her mother had been seeing him: in any case, they hadn’t been seen together at home in Moerckstraat, she was quite sure of that.

  But she had been talking about him, she certainly had. In a way and in such words that Monica suspected her mother was becoming rather dependent on him. On having a relationship with him. And that she probably hoped it would develop into something more serious.

  There wasn’t much doubt about it – her mother was not the type to hide her feelings and her thoughts. Not from her daughter. And she never bothered even to try to do so, even if that might have been best at times.

  No, it seemed her mother wanted to carry on seeing Benjamin Kerran. Monica had begun to notice the first signs that her stability was starting to waver, but the more she was able to hold that Sunday morning experience at arm’s length, the more convinced she became that it might be possible to sort things out somehow or other.

  That her mother and Benjamin might be able to have a perfectly normal relationship, and that this shameful triangular affair in the early days might gradually fade away and be forgotten.

  Why not? she thought again, and wondered if perhaps this was how it felt when you weren’t seeing problems from a slightly manic point of view.

  Mind you, how she would react when she met Benjamin the next time was something she was not at all sure about.

  And she had no desire to think about it, either. Que sera sera, as they say. And how would he react?

  She noticed that sitting there on the chair was becoming uncomfortable, and that she was becoming impatient.

  Turn green now, you little bastard! she thought in irritation as she gazed at the lamp over the welfare officer’s door – and as if as a result of a telepathic miracle, it suddenly did just that.

  ‘Wow!’ Monica whispered to herself. She stood up and opened the door.

  It went more easily than she had imagined.

  Much more. The welfare officer listened to her account of the situation at school, and to her proposed solution. Nodded encouragingly and promised to make contact with Joannis that ver
y afternoon and see if there might be a place for her there. If Monica called in at the same time tomorrow, she would find out what decision had been made.

  It was almost as if she wanted to get rid of me, Monica thought as she walked back to her classroom; but she dismissed the thought.

  And when she found herself sitting once more on the comfortable green sofa in the welfare officer’s room the next morning, she was informed that everything was done and dusted. There was no reason why Monica couldn’t start at the Joannis Grammar School this coming Friday: there was a biology class with only twenty-three pupils, and if she found that she would be happy in it, she could transfer straight away.

  She was given the name of another welfare officer at the new school who would help her on Friday, then she could spend the weekend thinking things over, and make up her mind.

  So easy, Monica thought. But perhaps these matters weren’t so difficult after all, provided you applied yourself to getting to grips with things.

  And she hadn’t said a word about Benjamin Karren.

  That same evening, Thursday 21 September, she noticed definite signs that her mother was on the way down again.

  When she came home from school her mother was in bed, half asleep. Monica woke her up and explained that she was thinking about changing schools and would be travelling out to Löhr the next day: but her mother only nodded and muttered something about that no doubt being a good idea.

  She had a sore throat, she claimed, and had skipped today’s course – but it was a crappy course anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

  She hadn’t done any shopping, so if Monica wanted a meal that evening she would either have to go to the shops or see what was available in the freezer. She wasn’t hungry.

  There was virtually no money in the housekeeping kitty, so Monica made an omelette and a sandwich. She had just finished eating and washing up when the phone rang. She expected her mother to answer, but gathered she had probably pulled the plug out in the bedroom. Monica hurried into the living room and took the call.