by Håkan Nesser
When they had finished dinner, and Marlene and Andrea had left, he picked up the telephone and dialled deFraan’s home number.
No reply.
Perhaps that was just as well, he thought. He wasn’t sure what he would have said if deFraan had answered.
After washing up and watching the television news, he wandered around the flat for a while like a lost soul. Then explained to Ulrike that he needed to go for a walk to clear his head, took his raincoat and went out. It’s better for her to be rid of me for a while, he thought.
He started with a tour of the cemetery and lit a candle on Erich’s grave; and since it was quite close by – and it was quite a mild evening – he walked to the professor’s address in Kloisterstraat.
Without any real purpose and without any expectations. It was a few minutes past eight when he entered the enclosed courtyard of the big Art Nouveau complex. He couldn’t remember ever having set foot in it before. Not a single time in all the years he had lived in Maardam – a fact that surprised him somewhat, although perhaps it shouldn’t have done. There were plenty of addresses in the town that he had never had any reason to visit. Naturally, criminality was not rife, despite everything. Not really.
The courtyard was surrounded by dark buildings on all four sides. A bare chestnut tree on a small raised rotunda with two benches. A cycle shed with a corrugated iron roof. A low wooden shed for rubbish and refuse.
He counted five entrances with locked doors and entry-phones. Five storeys high on two sides, four on the other two. Steeply sloping black tin roofs and tall, old-fashioned windows, about a third of them lit up, and a third with blue flickering lights indicating that people were watching the television. Nobody out of doors. He sat down on one of the benches and lit a cigarette.
Is there a murderer lying low somewhere up there? he wondered. A brilliant and over-talented university professor with five lives on his conscience?
Do you know that I’m down here, waiting for you?
If so, what are you thinking of doing about it? Surely you’re not simply going to sit there with your arms folded, waiting for me to come and fetch you?
It was that last thought that was the cause of his unease, he knew that. The deepest cause, in any case. Time certainly had sat still since Friday afternoon, but that only applied to his own time. The private hours. Just because he – the bookseller and former chief inspector and farcical bloodhound – was in a quandary and hadn’t a single damned chess move to fall back on didn’t mean that his intelligent prey was also sitting at home, biding his time. Like an injured bird or an ordinary blockhead.
Or had he not caught on, despite everything? Did he not suspect anything?
Or – a horrible thought – was he in fact completely innocent? Had he fenced in the wrong person?
That wouldn’t be too much of a surprise, he thought gloomily. No matter how you looked at it, the so-called chain of circumstantial evidence linking deFraan to the murders was so thin and drawn-out that any prosecutor worth his salt would laugh to scorn the poor officer in charge of the investigation who presented it. No doubt about that. A few abstruse literary characters, a lapel badge dropped in a shoe, a gang of harmless academic freemasons . . . And all of it drowning in an abundance of wild guesswork and speculation!
Firm proof ? Don’t make me laugh! Just the sort of dry, cold laughter that five dead people might be able to produce.
Oh hell, Van Veeteren thought for the hundred-and-tenth time since Friday evening. Let’s hope to goodness those damned fingerprints do exist in that book, otherwise I might as well throw in the towel.
Take the king off the board and acknowledge defeat.
He stared up at the dark façades.
I don’t even know where you live, he thought with a sigh of resignation. I don’t know if you’re at home or not. You didn’t answer the telephone, but there’s no law that forces you to pick up the receiver, even if you hear the phone ringing.
He threw the cigarette butt onto the gravel and trampled on it. Went back out of the entrance gates and into the street. Just had time to see the person sitting in the car parked on the other side of the road.
A woman behind the wheel. A streetlamp shone a certain amount of light onto the side window and he could see the hijab over her head quite clearly. He saw nothing of her hair, and only a glimpse of her face.
But he did meet her gaze for a brief moment before she started the car and drove off.
He never saw the registration number.
But he felt his heart pounding like the kick of a horse in his chest.
In the end, Monday finally came. When he met Winnifred Lynch in the morning, it felt as if a month had passed since he saw her last.
‘Well?’ he said, and thought that if he had a God he would have said a silent prayer at this very moment.
A prayer hoping that something at least had fallen into place. That not all the baited lines he had thrown into the waters would come up without even a nibble. Winnifred cleared her throat and took a sheet of paper out of her shoulder bag.
‘I wrote it down,’ she said with an apologetic smile. ‘Although that wasn’t necessary, of course.’
He clasped his hands. He had heard worse introductions than that.
‘Fire away,’ he urged her.
She studied what she had written for a few seconds.
‘I think things are starting to shape up,’ she said. ‘But I suppose you are the one who should judge that.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Everything is witnessed and vouched for.’
‘Come to the point now, never mind the preliminaries.’
‘All right. In the first place, that Wallburg business seems to fit in. DeFraan took part in a symposium there lasting four days in June 1999, so he could very well have met that woman.’
‘Excellent,’ said Van Veeteren, fiddling with his cigarette machine. He could feel his pulse beating significantly more strongly.
‘In the second place, I’ve arranged for some fingerprints. I took a few things from his desk – a few books, a tea mug, a few plastic files. I handed them over at the police station a few hours ago.’
She must get paid for this, Van Veeteren thought. If this bears fruit I shall personally squeeze a thousand out of Hiller. Two.
‘And thirdly, my poor husband told me something that very nearly made my heart stop.’
‘Reinhart?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What do you mean?’
Winnifred took a deep breath before continuing.
‘I went to visit him yesterday evening – incidentally, he’s going to be discharged tomorrow or the day after . . . Anyway, he told me had a dream – or perhaps had begun to remember – about what happened when he was run over. He thinks somebody pushed him in front of that bus.’
Van Veeteren suddenly felt something short-circuiting inside him. A blinding white light flashed inside his skull, and he was forced to close his eyes for a second in order to control himself.
‘What the hell . . . ?’ he snorted, and noted that his temples were pounding like a steam hammer. ‘Do you mean to say that somebody . . . ?’
She nodded solemnly.
‘Yes. That’s what he says.’
‘He says that?’
‘Yes. He lay there thinking about it for two days before mentioning it to me, so he must be pretty sure about it.’
He felt for words, but couldn’t find any. Then he pounded on the table with his fist and stood up.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ he groaned. ‘What a damned . . . Good Lord, thank goodness he survived.’
‘That’s what I think as well.’
‘A priest in front of a train, and a detective officer in front of a bus. Yes, by Jove, things really are starting to shape up, you’re absolutely right!’
Winnifred bit her lower lip, and he suddenly became aware of how scared she was. He sat down on his chair again, and stroked her arm somewhat clumsily.
‘Calm down now,’ he
urged her. ‘We shall sort this out. The danger is over.’
She tried to smile, but it came over as a grimace.
‘There’s one more thing,’ she said. ‘He’s cancelled all his lectures for this week.’
‘What? Cancelled?’
‘DeFraan. He sent a fax to the office on Saturday. Very brief. It just said he was going to be away, and the students should be informed.’
Four thousand thoughts exploded inside Van Veeteren’s head, but the only one that came out of his mouth was an obscenity.
‘Fucking hell!’
Spring arrived on Tuesday morning. Mild south-westerly winds swept the sky clear of clouds, and as he walked through Wollerimsparken on his way to the police station, he could feel the ground swelling under his feet. Small birds were hopping around busily in the bushes. The old ladies on the benches were hatless, and had unbuttoned their coats. He was passed by a jogger wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
So I’ve survived another winter, he thought with a sudden flush of surprise.
That was combined with a certain degree of willpower impelling him into the Maardam police station, especially on a day like this: but it was too late to do anything about it now. Intendent Münster had suggested this venue for a meeting to discuss developments, and he hadn’t raised any objections. For whatever reasons. As he approached the shadowy entrance with the sun shining diagonally from behind him, he felt a bit like Dante approaching the gates of hell.
That’s enough of literary allusions! he told himself. There have been more than enough of those in this case.
He marched in through the door and took the lift up to the third floor without looking round.
Münster received him with coffee and a wry smile.
‘Wipe that grin off your face,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘This is just a lightning visit.’
‘I know,’ said Münster. ‘But it’s cool to see you here anyway.’
‘Cool?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Have you gone out of your tiny mind? Let’s get going. Athens, did you say?’
Münster nodded and became serious.
‘Yes. A plane from Sechshafen last Sunday morning. Due to land about noon. What do you think?’
‘Think? That he’s done a runner, of course. How’s it going with the fingerprints?
‘It’ll take a bit more time,’ said Münster. ‘They’ve only just started on that book.’
‘Blake?’
‘William Blake, yes. But Mulder says there are several fingerprints they can use. The ones from deFraan’s office are ready, of course. But how the hell could you know that he’d had that book in his hands? He wiped the whole of the flat clean.’
Van Veeteren shrugged.
‘I’ve also thumbed through Blake,’ he said drily. ‘Let’s wait with the acclamations until we know whose fingers they find.’
‘All right,’ said Münster. ‘They say they’ll be ready by this afternoon in any case. But surely he’s the one – we don’t need to doubt that any more, do we?’
Van Veeteren sighed.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we do. I’d bet quite a large beer on him having murdered all of them – and tried to kill Reinhart as well. But proof! What proof have we got, for God’s sake? If we can’t match those fingerprints, or if he doesn’t give up and confess – well, we’re in a bit of a mess, aren’t we?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Münster, looking out at the sunshine. ‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about that as well. And it’s not all cut and dried even if they do find his fingerprints on the book. We have to prove it beyond any reasonable doubt . . .’
‘I know,’ grunted Van Veeteren. ‘Perhaps I haven’t mentioned it, but I was also a police officer in the distant past.’
Münster produced a sheet of paper.
‘We’ve started looking into his background. We haven’t got much yet, but there will be more – Krause and Moreno are dealing with that.’
Van Veeteren took the sheet of paper and read it without speaking. When he had finished he dropped it on the table and muttered to himself for a while. Took out his cigarette machine and started filling it with tobacco.
‘What shall we do?’ wondered Münster after half a minute.
Van Veeteren looked up. Closed the lid of his machine and put it in his pocket.
‘I want all the information about him that you can find,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow morning. We’ll wait until then, and I’ll make a plan. You can tell Heller that I shall be working full time from now on, in the highest salary bracket.’
‘That you—’
‘You heard.’
Münster tried another wry smile.
‘But I have no intention of sitting here while I’m doing it.’
‘I thought not,’ said Münster. ‘It’s pretty good weather out there.’
Van Veeteren stood up and looked out of the window.
‘It’s even better in Athens,’ he said, and left the room.
ATHENS, KEFALONIA, MAARDAM
MARCH 2001
48
The hotel was called Ormos and was in an alley leading out into Syntagma Square.
Only a stone’s throw from the Grande Bretagne, where he had stayed once in the distant past. So many years had passed since then, so much water and life and pain had flowed under the dark bridges. There wasn’t much left now.
Not much at all.
He had started telephoning Vasilis before he left Maardam, without receiving an answer, and he continued doing so all the first afternoon and evening.
In the end, shortly after ten o’clock, the phone was answered by a woman called Dea – presumably his new wife. As far as he could understand, that is – she spoke only Greek, so he restricted himself to basic information. Vasilis was in Thessaloniki and wasn’t expected back for another three or four days. No, it wasn’t a conference: his mother was ill. But it wasn’t all that bad – she wasn’t on her deathbed.
Yes, he had said, Wednesday or Thursday.
He asked for his telephone number and was given two: one to his mobile, and the other to his mother’s house, where he was staying. The mobile was apparently dodgy, she hadn’t got through to it earlier in the day, despite several attempts. Dea.
Or Thea.
He thanked her and hung up. He suddenly remembered that Vasilis had said she had red hair. Could Greeks have red hair? Odd, he thought. Damned odd. He smiled at the thought, and began rubbing the wound on his throat. It wasn’t irritating him any longer, but rubbing it had become a habit. He still had the sticking plaster on his hand – he could probably do without it now, but it could stay where it was. He didn’t fancy the idea of having to stare at a wound every time he looked at his hands.
He smoked a few cigarettes after the phone call. Sat on the wicker chair on the tiny balcony and breathed in petrol fumes from the road below together with the tobacco smoke. He recalled the smell from the first time he was here, in July twenty years ago, a few years before the stay at the Grande Bretagne. It had been hard, almost impossible to breathe during the unbearably hot afternoons.
It was rather better now. The temperature was probably around twelve to fifteen degrees: his lungs would no doubt adjust to the atmosphere, and he wouldn’t even notice the fumes. Everything becomes a habit sooner or later, he thought.
Everything.
Anyway, he was going to have to stay in Athens for a week. More or less. That was an unforeseen snag, but he had no desire to change his plans on that account. Everything would have to go ahead as he had planned, and as soon as he made contact with Vasilis he was bound receive the assistance he needed: they had that sort of relationship, and there was no reason to doubt that.
He went indoors and tried the mobile number. Despite what Dea had said, he had an answer after only three rings. Vasilis’s husky voice, restaurant noises in the background, somebody playing a bouzouki.
‘My friend! A voice from the past! Where are you?’
‘In Athens, and in deep shit. I need help with
something.’
‘No problem, my friend! What do you want?’
‘A gun.’
Silence at the other end. Only the background noise of the restaurant and the bouzouki for five seconds.
‘A gun? What the fuck happened, my friend?’
‘We can talk about that when you come back home. When?’
More silence.
‘Wednesday. I promise you Wednesday, my friend! But what the hell . . . ?’
He gave Vasilis his own mobile number, but not that of the hotel.
‘Take care!’
‘I will.’
Now his throat really was itching.
To be on the safe side, he changed his hotel on the Monday. You never knew. That damned bookseller and that woman. He moved into a third-class boarding house out at Lykabettos, paid in advance and didn’t need to show his passport. Lay on his bed for hours, thinking about Mersault in Camus’s The Outsider. Felt neither hungry nor thirsty.
He had no desire to get up and sit by the window, looking at passing girls. Like Mersault. Even if there had been any in the narrow alley. Even if it had been overflowing with pussy.
He thought about his mother instead.
Thought about a Greek saying. A Greek man loves himself and his mother all his life. His wife for six months.
Anger had begun to boil up inside him; and disgust. He kept it hidden, but it bubbled away inexorably and made the room rotate slowly whenever he closed his eyes. The noise from the street and the rest of the building was also distorted when his eyes were closed, sounds became oppressive and insistent, seemed to join forces with the movement of the room and forced themselves inside him. Even so, he found it difficult not to keep his eyes closed. It was somehow alluring.
A sort of battle. A wrestling match with his mother, his anger and his disgust. Eyes closed. It was a blind struggle, with the noise and the rotation of the room its way of expressing itself. His mobile was switched off. At one point as darkness began to fall with incredible speed, he went out to the bathroom in the corridor and tried to be sick. But he failed. He lay on the bed again, ripped the sticking plaster off the back of his hand and contemplated the ravaged skin.
