The Inspector and Silence

by Håkan Nesser

  A mass of questions suddenly piled up inside Sergeant Kluuge’s brain, but before he could ask any of them, the caller had hung up.

  Oh hell! he thought. Hell and damnation!

  He thought for fifteen seconds, then dialled the number to Grimm’s Hotel. It rang twelve times before anybody in reception answered, and the only information he received was that Mr Van Veeteren had gone out several hours ago without leaving any indication of where he was going. Nor when he would be back.

  Kluuge hung up. Stared out through the open window. Darkness was slowly embracing the warmth of summer still dancing outside. Grasshoppers were chirruping away. The clock on the bedside table indicated 22.20.

  What the hell should I do now? he wondered. Somewhere deep down inside him he could hear a faint voice whispering that he should go back to the sofa. Simply return to Deborah and her warm tootsy-wootsies. The easy way out, of course, would be to simply forget the whole business and pretend that nobody had called. That he’d never heard a word about a dead little girl or a path or a boulder. But shame at the very suggestion that such a thought could ever have occurred to him soon took the upper hand. Grew bigger and redder.

  Never, he thought. No chance. I must take full responsibility now.

  He thought for a few more minutes, then called Grimm’s Hotel again and left a message for the chief inspector:

  Red-hot tip in the Waldingen case. Have gone there. Kluuge

  Five minutes later he had already kissed his wife goodnight and was on his way out into the night.

  So as not to stir up any unnecessary suspicions, he parked the car some way short of the summer camp. Switched off the lights and set off walking along the dirt road. A full moon had risen over the lake, and made it possible to overcome the darkness. He began walking slowly along the narrow road – extremely carefully, and on the very edge so that his footsteps were swallowed up by grass and soil.

  By the time he passed the main buildings, it was five past eleven and all the lights were out except for two. But he didn’t see a single person, nor could he hear any noises to suggest that somebody was around. Without pausing, he continued along the slight upward slope on the other side, counting his steps, and after about fifty metres he lit his torch and began looking for the path.

  He found it with no difficulty. Before turning into it, he switched off the torch. Stood stock-still in the darkness for a few seconds, and listened again. But all he could hear was the faint soughing from the tops of the trees, the unceasing scratching of the crickets and an occasional love-sick frog from the edge of the lake. Resolutely, he switched the torch on again, and strode out along the path.

  Fear took hold of him just as he was aiming the beam from his torch at the gigantic boulder. It suddenly occurred to him that the madwoman on the telephone maybe wasn’t quite as silly as he had presumed, and that it could be time now . . . Maybe it was only a matter of seconds before he was confronted by his first corpse. He could feel his mouth going dry almost instantaneously at that very thought, and his pulse pounding so relentlessly that he could hear his own blood.

  He raised his torch and shone it into the trees.

  There was no doubt. No doubt at all, to be honest; he raised the beam to shine into the crown of the tree, and could see with no shadow of a doubt that it was an aspen, a gigantic aspen growing just a few metres behind the boulder. Its whispering crown was hovering high above him in the darkness like a harbinger of evil deeds and God only knew what else. He shuddered, and shook his head. Imagination, he told himself. Nothing more than imagination. Fantasy, superstition and old wives’ tales. He walked around the rock and shone his torch onto the lower part of the trunk. Carefully shifted to one side with his foot several fallen leaves and twigs, and when he leaned forward to look more carefully he could see clearly – as clearly as possible – that the whitish object sticking out from the undergrowth was in fact a hand.

  A perfectly normal, quite thin and bloodless little girl’s hand – and he had just enough presence of mind to move swiftly several metres to one side before sicking up both Deborah’s broccoli pie and the eight chocolates he had managed to consume while watching the television.

  And it was clear to Sergeant Kluuge that at this very moment – this solitary, eternally long moment in the middle of the forest – he had been subjected to an experience which would cast its shadow over all other experiences for as long as he lived. Both negative and positive. Past and future.

  I’ve just grown up, he thought in surprise. Grown up. It felt like having been cast out into a foreign, desolate land; a harsh but inevitable reality that he knew he would never be able to push to one side, or behind him, or indeed ever to get away from.

  There was something else there as well: a sort of bitter satisfaction that was not to be denied, and that he couldn’t really come to terms with.

  But this was not the right time for such speculation. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, switched off the torch and hurried back to the car.

  15

  Reinhart always used to claim that there was really only one foolproof method of kick-starting an investigation that had come to a dead end: drink a pint of whisky and four beers, and when you’ve gone to bed it’s guaranteed that within twenty minutes the phone will ring and you’ll be saddled with another corpse.

  Perhaps it wasn’t quite as bad as that this warm evening in Sorbinowo, but when Van Veeteren read the two messages left by Kluuge, he decided he’d better take a long, cold shower before stepping out into the darkness.

  A summer night’s no time for sleep! – the memory came back to him. Perhaps certain thoughts ought to be punctured before they had a chance to float up to the surface, he thought as he stood in the shower, trying to rinse the Burgundy out of his face. They had such a damned awkward tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecies!

  But nevertheless his ability to concentrate was slowly coming back.

  What the hell had happened out there? Actually, Kluuge’s two messages had been as plain as a pikestaff. Especially the second one:

  Dead girl in Waldingen. Reinforcements on the way. Kluuge

  I wonder if the press is there already, Van Veeteren thought as he stepped out of the shower. The bright young girl in reception didn’t seem to have had any difficulty in understanding the sergeant’s bulletins, at least. The chief inspector wondered if he ought to call Przebuda, maybe he hadn’t yet gone to bed; but he decided not to. Better to have mercy on him and let him have a decent night’s sleep. In any case, his time as a front-line reporter must surely be over by now.

  When he climbed into the waiting taxi, it was a few minutes short of one o’clock. According to the receptionist Kluuge’s second message had arrived just before midnight, so there were grounds for assuming that both forensic and medical officers were already in Waldingen. Unless he was much mistaken, teams from Rembork would be closest at hand, but of course Kluuge would know all about that.

  ‘What the hell do you want to go out there for in the middle of the night?’ asked the podgy driver, and yawned so widely that the back of his neck was covered in creases.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Switch off the radio and cut the talk.’

  There were three other cars at the scene in addition to Kluuge’s. Sure enough two of them were from Rembork, and apart from the crime scene team they had also brought two detectives. Van Veeteren went over to the third car and peered inside: a young man with a beard and glasses was clutching a mobile phone. The chief inspector reached in through the open window and snatched the phone from his grasp.

  ‘What the hell . . . ?’

  Van Veeteren, Detective Chief Inspector. You are getting in the way of the investigation. Who do you work for?’

  ‘Allgemejne.’

  ‘All right. If you lie low for an hour, I promise to give you correct information instead.’

  The young reporter hesitated.

  ‘How do I know you’re not tricking me?’
>
  ‘I never trick anybody,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Ask your editor-in-chief, he knows me.’

  Kluuge appeared out of the darkness.

  ‘She’s lying up there,’ he explained, pointing along the road. ‘One of the Rembork boys is examining her. And the crime scene team is there as well, of course. She is . . . She’s been strangled and raped in any case, that’s very obvious.’

  ‘How long have they been here?’ asked the chief inspector.

  Kluuge checked his watch.

  ‘Half an hour or so. I found her at round about twenty past eleven.’

  Van Veeteren gestured towards the summer camp. There were lights in some of the windows in the main building, but the wings were in darkness.

  ‘What’s the state of play in there?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ said Kluuge. ‘The other detective is there, but I haven’t had time to check. Shall I go with you to . . . to where she is?’

  Van Veeteren lit a cigarette.

  ‘It’ll be better to let them work in peace for the time being,’ he said. ‘I think I’d like to investigate what’s going on with the church crowd first. If you stay in the car, you can show me the body later.’

  Kluuge nodded and opened the car door. The chief inspector was about to leave, but paused.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

  ‘Not so good,’ said Kluuge.

  ‘I understand. Sit in the car and keep warm. I’ll see if I can fix some coffee.’

  He left the sergeant and the cars and set off for the buildings. Stumbled a couple of times over hidden roots and very nearly fell over, but managed to get as far as the terrace in one piece. Knocked on one of the illuminated windows, and was let in by Sister Madeleine, sullen as ever, wearing a large shapeless dressing gown made of the same unbleached cotton as usual. She deigned neither to look at nor speak to him, merely escorted him, silently and bare-footed, into a little room that appeared to be used as an office. Papers, a few files and a pile of Bibles were strewn over a desk. The other sisters, each in identical dressing gowns, sat on chairs, and standing by the window was the second of the police officers from Rembork. It was obvious that he was in the middle of interrogating the three women.

  And it was equally obvious that he was getting nowhere.

  Van Veeteren looked round the poky room. Then he asked his colleague for a private conversation, and they both went into the corridor.

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Servinus. Detective inspector.’

  ‘Van Veeteren,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Let’s keep our voices down so that they don’t catch on to our strategies.’

  He gestured towards the closed door. Servinus nodded.

  ‘How long have you been grilling them?’

  Servinus looked at his watch.

  ‘Grilling and grilling,’ he said. ‘Five minutes at most. They’d been fast asleep, so it took some time . . . But I think we have a bit of a problem.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What kind of a problem?’

  ‘They don’t say anything.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Servinus scratched the back of his head in irritation.

  ‘Well, it looks as if they’ve decided not to cooperate.’

  ‘What the hell . . . ?’

  ‘Exactly. They just don’t answer questions, as simple as that. Do you have any idea of what kind of a place this is, in fact? They seem to be a bit, er, how shall I put it—’

  ‘I know what they’re like,’ said the chief inspector. ‘We can go into that some other time. Where’s Yellinek? That’s the most important thing just now.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oscar Yellinek. Where’s he hiding himself away?’

  Servinus shuffled uncomfortably and started to look worried.

  ‘Who’s this Yellinek? I’ve only just arrived.’

  Van Veeteren felt something ominously cold starting to creep up his spine. It can’t be true, he thought.

  ‘You mean you haven’t met Yellinek?’

  Servinus shook his head.

  ‘And they haven’t mentioned him?’

  ‘Not a word. But then, they barely open their damned mouths.’

  The chief inspector clenched his fists and muttered something dripping with venom.

  ‘Come on,’ he said eventually. ‘I must see this with my own eyes.’

  He marched back to the room. Flung open the door, burst in and stood straddle-legged in the middle of the floor.

  ‘Okay,’ he growled. ‘Where’s your blue-eyed boy?’

  The sisters huddled closer together on their chairs and stared at their naked feet. The chief inspector waited for five seconds, grinding his teeth loudly. Then he went to the desk and slammed his fist hard down on it.

  ‘Where is Oscar Yellinek?’ he roared. ‘Answer when you’re damned well spoken to! There’s a girl lying dead in the woods, murdered. Raped and strangled, and you can count on your bloody sect being disbanded from this very moment! Well?’

  Madeleine Zander raised her head slowly and looked him in the eye.

  ‘Be careful what you say, Chief Inspector,’ she said in a low voice. ‘We are innocent, and you have no right to make these groundless accusations. We have decided not to cooperate with you.’

  ‘We are not going to answer your questions,’ added Ulriche Fischer.

  ‘Where is he?’ bellowed Van Veeteren. ‘You have three seconds in which to come up with an answer!’

  Madeleine Zander cleared her throat and clasped her hands on her knee. The other two sisters did the same. Lowered their gaze and seemed to be lost in thought. No doubt they’re praying to their dodgy Lord, the chief inspector thought. Bollocks to that!

  ‘You’re hiding him.’

  No reaction.

  Van Veeteren gritted his teeth and thought for a moment. Looked at the clock. It was ten minutes to two.

  ‘I thought you took it in turns to go to bed with him. Whose turn was it this evening?’

  Madeleine Zander looked up and snorted indignantly.

  ‘Or do you usually have a foursome?’

  He glanced at Inspector Servinus, who was looking more and more baffled. He could feel the warmth from the Burgundy returning to his cheeks. Or was it merely his anger and his blood pressure?

  ‘Are you suggesting that he’s disappeared?’ he asked.

  None of the women answered. Van Veeteren snapped a toothpick and threw it onto the floor.

  ‘Now listen here! One of your girls is lying in the woods out there, murdered. Your goddamned high priest is on the run. I couldn’t care less what pious conclusions you draw, but I know what I think. Servinus!’

  The inspector gave a start.

  ‘Stay here and keep an eye on the Three Graces. We’ll lock them up in a police van as soon as one arrives. The poor girls can carry on sleeping for now. Do you know if any female police officers are on their way here?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Servinus. ‘That Kluuge guy had sent for some.’

  ‘Good,’ said the chief inspector.

  He paused briefly. Tried to look out into the pitch darkness, and took three or four deep breaths in an attempt to cool down. Then he turned back to face the three women.

  ‘It’s my duty to inform you that you will be arrested on suspicion of no end of disgusting things that I’d rather not go on about now. Murder, assisting murder, protecting a criminal, to name but a few.’

  ‘You have no right—’ began Madeleine Zander.

  ‘I thought you had vowed to remain silent,’ said Van Veeteren, interrupting her. ‘May I suggest that you stick to your word. And shut your trap!’

  Servinus coughed discreetly. The chief inspector took another deep breath, then turned on his heel and left the room.

  For Christ’s sake, he thought when he had gone out into the darkness again. It feels like a film. A really awful B-movie with tenth-rate cutting and unsynchronized sound. An unadulterated turk
ey!

  Perhaps it had something to do with the wine, but although it was past two by now, he didn’t feel tired in the slightest. On the contrary. He felt full of energy. Raring to go.

  Then he remembered what this was all about.

  Time to take a look at the bottom of the barrel. No alternative, of course.

  As usual.

  The Allgemejne reporter seemed intent on accompanying them, but the chief inspector shoved him back into his car. Instead it was Kluuge who led the way with his torch. The chief inspector recalled having said something about coffee, but with any luck the mere mention of it and the implication that he cared would suffice. The sergeant had been a bit shocked by his experiences, that had been obvious. No wonder.

  The forensic officers – two young men in green overalls – had cordoned off the crime scene with red-and-white police tape, and installed a couple of floodlights to illuminate the site. Van Veeteren stopped a few metres short, so that he didn’t need to see too much. A balding man in his fifties approached and introduced himself as Suijderbeck, detective inspector from Rembork.

  ‘Van Veeteren. How does it look?’

  Suijderbeck shrugged.

  ‘Pretty awful. Girl aged thirteen or fourteen. Raped. Crushed larynx, I think. She was lucky in that it happened in reverse order.’

  ‘What do the forensic guys say?’

  ‘Dragged here, presumably,’ said Suijderbeck ‘There’s nothing to suggest that the violence actually took place here. But it’s early days yet.’

  ‘Sperm?’

  Suijderbeck shook his head.

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘But raped nevertheless?’

  ‘Penetrated, in any case,’ said Suijderbeck with a sigh. ‘With something. And maltreated here and there.’

  Van Veeteren shuddered. An elderly, hunch-backed man appeared behind the inspector. He introduced himself as Dr Monsen, and seemed to ring a bell, the chief inspector thought. Rightly, as it turned out.

  ‘Van Veeteren?’ exclaimed the newcomer when he realized who it was he was talking to. ‘What the hell are you doing here? Moved you on, have they?’