The Stranglers Honeymoon

by Håkan Nesser

  He had only got as far as thirty to thirty-five when he heard the dog barking in the distance.

  From somewhere in among the dunes – it was hard to say exactly where the sound was coming from, since the wind and the waves distorted everything. Perhaps also the pulsating in his temples caused by his physical efforts. He paused and stood up. The barking continued, and there was virtually no doubt that it was Thatcher. For a trained ear a dog’s bark is just as individual as a human voice, he used to explain to friends and acquaintances. That was an old and reliable fact.

  He turned his head and listened. Immediately he had a slightly better sense of its origin: somewhere diagonally in towards solid ground to the south-east. Muffled, persistent barking that didn’t seem to be moving. The dog was standing still, and barking to draw attention to itself – nothing could be more obvious. To draw its boss’s attention.

  He walked up over the crest of the hill and made his way through the dunes towards the origin of the sound. Glanced at his watch and was somewhat irritated by the delay: he wouldn’t get back home until after eight o’clock, and in order to get to work in time he needed to be in his car by a quarter to nine. A shower and breakfast would take at least half an hour: but if Thatcher was standing at bay, barking away at something, he didn’t have any choice, of course. He would have to find her, and find out what the hell was going on.

  Looking back – not while he was recounting what had happened that chilly morning to family and friends and the police, but when he was sitting alone at his desk in the evening, gazing out through the window and thinking things over – he couldn’t make up his mind whether he had seen the dog or the dead body first.

  It didn’t matter either way, of course: but as he found himself sitting there, thinking about it, maybe it did mean something after all. God only knows what.

  In any case, the dog was standing there in front of its find, completely still – in a sort of watchful, ready-to-attack posture he vaguely remembered from the training course he had attended at the kennel club several years ago: back bent, leaning forward over the widely spaced front paws. What could be seen of the female corpse – the back of her head, shoulders and her right arm – was partly concealed by sand and scraps of black plastic: but nevertheless it was clear enough for him to see in a flash how serious the situation was.

  Crystal clear.

  He took hold of the dog and began automatically calming it down, pressing it against his right leg and patting its neck. For a brief, confused moment he wondered if somebody else might turn up and calm him down in the same way. Then he stood up and looked round to see if he could see any sign of a house.

  A steep red-tiled roof was sticking up from behind the dunes a bit further inland, and when he came to the top of the next little grass-covered incline he realized that it was Willumsen’s house.

  Good, thought Henry. Thank God I know who lives there.

  ‘Out jogging as usual?’ asked Tom Willumsen, pulling a face. ‘Isn’t it too windy today? The wind’s veered to the north as well, I think.’

  ‘I know,’ said Henry. ‘But we can talk about the weather some other time? Thatcher has found a dead body out there.’

  ‘A dead body?’ said Willumsen.

  ‘A woman,’ said Henry. ‘Or rather, a girl. Looks horrendous. Ring the police and give me something to drink, please.’

  It was a few minutes past half past seven in the morning when Van Veeteren unlocked the door of the flat in Moerckstraat 16. Before doing so, he looked around carefully in all directions, but there was no sign of any curious heads. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  His first impression was the smell. Stuffy, dirty. He couldn’t make up his mind if there was also a trace of the characteristic sweet smell of rotting flesh as well, or whether that was merely his imagination and a sort of perverted expectation.

  He switched on the light in the cramped hall, and stepped into the kitchen on the left. Found the light switch and turned it on, but went over to the window and closed the Venetian blinds.

  There was no need to advertise his presence, he thought. No reason at all. Even if tenants had no interest in their neighbours, according to what Reinhart and Moreno had reported, Van Veeteren was keen to remain incognito. Undisturbed and invisible. That was how he had described his mission to Moreno when he asked her to produce a key, and he really hoped he could rely on her promise of keeping everything under the counter. There was nothing to be gained from the whole of the police station becoming aware of his being involved. From their knowing that the bookseller in Kupinskis gränd simply couldn’t keep out of police business any longer.

  Any longer? Rubbish, he thought as he continued into the living room. There was no question of time, nor of his reverting to police duties: it was just that confounded priest whom he couldn’t get out of his mind. The man of God he had turned away with catastrophic consequences, and whom he dreamt about at night. That was all. Nothing more. Was that so odd?

  And in any case, why was he wandering around making excuses for himself ? What was the point of that? He muttered away in irritation, and took out his cigarette machine. As I’m here, I must look round about me rather than into myself. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, for Christ’s sake!

  He looked around the room. It looked dreary. The furniture seemed to have been collected by pure chance: the sofa and armchairs were covered in typical light-coloured nineties material, but several large wine stains (as far as he could judge – and let’s face it, he was not exactly unacquainted with such phenomena) tended to undermine the impression of newness. There were large clumps of dust under the table, and the wallpaper pattern seemed to be more suitable for underpants than anything else. The bookcase along one wall contained more ornaments than books, and the black plastic audiovisual set-up opposite – television, video recorder plus a Korean hi-fi device he thought he recalled having seen on sale at a rock-bottom price in a petrol station – all of it could well have been a part of the flat’s basic equipment, just like the blinds, the linoleum floor-covering, the cooker, refrigerator and kitchen sink.

  What am I doing here? he thought, lighting his cigarette. What am I looking for, and with what justification am I trampling around through all this hopeless gloom?

  Good questions. He moved on into the daughter’s room. Monica? he thought. Monica Kammerle, who were you? Or who are you? The girl might still be alive, after all. Stranger things have happened.

  The room was small and narrow. No more than four by two-and-a-half metres, or thereabouts. A bed with a worn, red bedspread. A basic desk and chair. A bookcase and a freestanding wardrobe in a corner. Two posters on the wall, one black-and-white featuring two hands reaching towards one another without quite meeting, the other a face he thought he recognized. A singer, he thought. Died a year or so ago after an overdose, he thought. A small noticeboard with a calendar, a school timetable and a few black-and-white drawings of horses.

  The desk was full of the usual things – notepads, pen-and-pencil stand, lamp, diary, a red clock-radio that had stopped working, a framed photograph of a man and a girl aged about ten: he guessed that was Monica herself and her father, who had died in a road accident.

  Father, mother, daughter, he thought. And now they were all dead – he had difficulty in believing that Monica was still alive, but of course, you could never tell. He went over to the bookcase and began examining the books. There were quite a lot. The girl had been quite a reader, it seemed. And it was not rubbish. He found Camus and Hemingway and Virginia Woolf. How old was she? Sixteen? Pretty advanced literary tastes, there was no denying that. He hadn’t read Camus when he was sixteen.

  And Blake!

  He took the book out and began leafing through it. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. With illustrations and all – it was a handsome little edition, leather-bound, and must have been very expensive. He wondered if it had been a present, but there was nothing on the flyleaf, not even her name. He thumbed thro
ugh to the end of the book, and read what he found there:

  Cruelty has a Human Heart

  And Jealousy a Human Face

  Terror, the Human Form Divine

  And Secrecy, the Human Dress

  My dear little girl, he thought, replacing the book on its shelf. What did you get out of that?

  And what had he got out of this visit?

  Absolutely nothing, in all probability. He moved on into Martina Kammerle’s bedroom, which was just as small as her daughter’s. But even more messy and with an unmistakable touch of resignation. The walls were bare except for a couple of wall lamps. The curtain rails had come apart at the edges. Plastic carrier bags all over the floor, and a pile of dusty magazines on the window ledge. A dead pot plant. The bed was still unmade, and occupied about half the floor area. He bent down and looked underneath it – that was where she had been lying. For a whole month. The stench suddenly hit him: he stood up and took a deep breath.

  For Christ’s sake, he thought. I can’t cope with thinking about this sort of thing.

  He walked around the room one more time, then switched off the light. Checked that there were no curious faces around outside before slinking out of the door and locking it behind him. He hurried down the steps and to his car, parked in the street outside.

  Checked his watch. A quarter of an hour, that was all the time he’d been inside the flat.

  I changed my job in the nick of time, he thought.

  Both Inspector le Houde’s team and the medical officers were on the spot when Reinhart and Rooth arrived at Behrensee. The rain that had started falling an hour ago was now pouring down, and le Houde looked as if he had been lying down and rolling about in the soaking wet sand for quite some time. But he was dressed in waterproofs from head to toe, so Reinhart assumed that was nothing to talk about.

  Besides, he could hardly have been forced to miss a football match this time round.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Is it her?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ said le Houde. ‘It’s a girl of about the right age, and she’s been strangled. That’s all I can say at the moment.’

  ‘Who found her?’ asked Rooth.

  Le Houde gestured over his right shoulder.

  ‘A bloke called Ewerts. He’s standing over there . . . It was his dog, in fact. She was digging after a rabbit, and she found this instead.’

  ‘How long has she been lying here?’ asked Reinhart.

  Le Houde shrugged.

  ‘Don’t ask me. But Meusse has just arrived. He can usually give you the family tree of a cow-pat.’

  Reinhart nodded, and they walked over to the place where the body was found. A canopy of thin plastic had been erected, and three of the team were crawling around underneath it. The pathologist himself, Meusse, was standing close by under an umbrella, smoking. When he caught sight of Rooth and Reinhart, he greeted them curtly.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Reinhart. ‘Have you had a look at her?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Meusse. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Reinhart. ‘But we shall do. What do you have to tell us?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ said Meusse.

  ‘I see,’ said Rooth. ‘I suppose the awful weather doesn’t help.’

  Meusse made no comment.

  ‘What we are wondering is whether the body might possibly be that of Monica Kammerle,’ said Reinhart. ‘The daughter of that woman who—’

  ‘I know,’ interrupted Meusse, flipping his cigarette butt over his shoulder. ‘I’m not senile. Yes, it could be her. The time’s about right, she’s been lying here for quite a while. And she was strangled.’

  ‘Really?’ said Rooth, for want of anything better to say.

  Meusse glared at him, grinding his teeth for a while.

  ‘Anything else before we go and take a look?’ asked Reinhart.

  Meusse produced a handkerchief and mopped his bald head.

  ‘Maybe I should mention that her lower legs are missing,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Reinhart.

  ‘Her legs have been cut off at the knee. Both of them – but I don’t suppose even you could avoid noticing that.’

  ‘Cut off ?’ said Rooth. ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Meusse. ‘Ask whoever did it. Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen . . .’

  He went back to the canopy, crouched down and started giving out orders. Rooth looked at Reinhart.

  ‘Shall we . . . ?’ he said.

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to,’ said Reinhart. ‘That’s a bonus that goes with the territory in our job. Legs cut off . . . Bloody hell!’

  ‘Maybe he did it after he’d killed her,’ said Rooth. ‘Let’s hope so.’

  When Van Veeteren entered the antiquarian bookshop, he had been thoroughly soaked by the rain, and he had the feeling that his soul was dangling inside his body like the corpse of a sacrificed animal broken on the wheel. In an attempt to counteract all the misery he drew the curtains and locked himself in. Poured himself a beaker of port wine and flopped down in the wing chair in the inside room.

  Stood up again after a minute and looked for Blake in the bookshelves: there were three volumes, and he sat over them for the rest of the morning. The rain came and went, pattering onto the pavement outside and against the windows, but not a single customer tried the door.

  Perhaps it’s just Blake and the rain and the port wine, he thought when the clock was showing half past eleven and his thoughts were starting to turn to lunch, but I’m beginning to get a sense of something particularly black and horrific at the heart of all this business.

  The thought of something black and horrific reminded him of that fateful sandwich again. The olive.

  And the broken filling.

  The visit to the dentist’s and the priest’s beard and Stravinsky with the dead swallow in its jaws. There’s no doubt that this case is a brew made up of remarkable ingredients.

  And swimming around in the midst of the brew is a murderer. Feeling very sure of himself, it seemed. The police hadn’t even begun fishing for him. Perhaps they hadn’t yet found the right box of hooks to attach to the lines.

  Van Veeteren heaved himself out of his chair and poured himself another glass. My range of vocabulary wouldn’t even be adequate for a nightmare, he thought. Today is one of those days.

  But the idea of the murderer wandering around in a state of total freedom was annoying. Extremely annoying.

  23

  He pushed the pile of newspapers to one side and leaned back on his chair. Gazed out of the window at the sick elm trees in the park, and the old observatory, whose blood-red-tiled façade formed a sort of backcloth behind all the branches and greenery.

  Words, he thought. It’s only when we put things into words that we begin to get a grasp of reality.

  And images. The image of reality which is more important than reality itself, because all we see of it is the images. Even when it is a question of the reality of ourselves – it is always somebody else who paints a portrait of us. Somebody else putting us under the spotlight.

  These were no new conclusions. On the contrary. He had wandered along these phenomenological paths many times before: but he had never felt it as distinctly as now. Action per se – actions per se – had hardly affected him at all after they had been carried out . . . Those women, and that unknown black-coated priest who had poked his nose in and got what he deserved: having killed a priest gave him far more satisfaction than he could ever have imagined, and he wondered why . . . And now, when he read about these people in the newspapers, or watched the television reporters leaning over backwards to be careful what they said, the whole business acquired an aura which struck him as strong and very much alive. Especially with regard to the girl and her mother, of course. It had taken over a month for things to become matters of immediate relevance. The priest had been headline news immediately after the incident in the Central Station: but it was decided that it was an
accident, and not many lines had been devoted to him.

  An accident, nothing more.

  But all these weeks, all these days and nights that passed between that September night and the early Tuesday morning when he read about it at last in Allgemejne – all that time somehow endowed the actual events with sharper outlines . . . Portrayed them as reality, when they eventually presented themselves to him after all the lethargy and indifference. The clarity of it all seemed to be almost an obscene revelation, spotlighted after so much silence: it felt as if he had been stabbed in the chest, and for a brief moment he was afraid he had lost his footing, was staggering on the edge of a gaping abyss. Over a grave.

  But there was also a strong and bitter taste of sweat and blood. Of life.

  This is it, he thought. This is where my fires are burning. My life is just as derisively pointless as all other life. It came to an end on that damned Greek island, and since then death has been meaningless. It is no more than an irresistible force.

  That same day he read about himself in six different newspapers, all the ones he could find; and each new headline and bold print introduction seemed to increase the pressure he felt on all sides. Enveloped him and raised him into some sort of extraordinarily significant context – an environment that gave (or seemed to give) him all the legitimacy that ought to be the incontestable right of every life. Every pointless individual life.

  Justice and obligations. I am empowered, he thought. For the first time in my adult life I am empowered. People have seen me as I really am. Once again he tried to conjure up his mother’s tired but irresistible look as she lay there in her sickbed, but she remained aloof. Was ousted by a mass of later images, more recent women, more recent naked bodies and faces and eyes that averted their gaze from him.

  And this was the all-powerful force, these looks that avoided eye contact. They are dominating everything I do, he thought. My powers and my love. What do they think they are doing? I am completely justified in killing every one of them, all those who sooner or later reject me. Justified in blowing out the weak, flickering flames still burning in those disgusting lumps of flesh, growing colder by the minute. Nobody will ever understand me: there is a private and unique abyss inside every human being, and nobody else has one that can match up to mine. Nobody. A human being is a very hungry and very lonely animal: but we all have the same fundamental rights.