by Håkan Nesser
‘But holy shit!’ exclaimed Servinus, intruding upon his thoughts. ‘That means there could be another one!’
Van Veeteren opened his eyes. Servinus looked as if he were petrified. Suijderbeck was staring up at the ceiling. Kluuge was leaning back in his chair, apparently having concluded his summing-up of the circumstances thus far.
‘Exactly,’ said the chief inspector, clearing his throat. ‘There’s plenty to suggest that she’s in good company.’
‘Oh shit!’ said Suijderbeck.
‘And they’re still refusing to say anything, are they?’ asked Van Veeteren, snapping a toothpick.
Kluuge nodded.
‘Both the sisters and the youngsters. It’s presumably exactly as you said: they’ve had it drummed into them that this is some kind of test they’re being subjected to. In order to be accepted into the church, or into heaven, or wherever. They have to be strong and not cooperate with us, no matter what. Presumably they’ve been brainwashed good and proper, and they’ve been promised no end of rewards as long as they do as they’ve been told and say nothing.’
‘Eternal life, perhaps,’ suggested Servinus.
‘Us and them,’ said Suijderbeck.
Kluuge nodded again.
‘Something like that,’ said the chief inspector. ‘This is the crucial battle. The Pure Life versus the Other World.’
‘Eh?’ said Servinus.
Van Veeteren shrugged.
‘Well, they seem to live in the shadow of categories like that. The worst of their fads will fade away after a few days, I hope . . . Because there’s nothing to support them. But that’s only my assessment.’
‘So the chief inspector is suggesting that we should wait until they make a false move?’ wondered Kluuge.
Van Veeteren scratched his head and waited for a few seconds before answering.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘There might be the odd shit-stirrer among them. We can keep our eye on them and pick out the leader types. That Belle Moulder, for instance.’
Kluuge made a note. Servinus sighed deeply and rubbed his eyes.
‘Is it really such a good idea to keep them cooped up there?’ he asked. ‘Or even possible, come to that? The whole business will surely be in the newspapers this evening and tomorrow morning, so no doubt we’ll have the parents breathing down our necks before we know where we are . . . I gather there’s been something on the radio already?’
‘It is a problem,’ Kluuge admitted. ‘Although we’ve sorted out the practical side. So that they can stay there for a few more days at least. We’ve fixed food and that sort of thing.’
‘But they’re also a gang of wackos as well,’ said Servinus. ‘The parents, I mean.’
‘Wackos?’ Kluuge queried.
‘Sheep,’ Servinus explained. ‘They prefer bleating to thinking.’
‘For Christ’s sake, one of them has to start talking soon,’ said Suijderbeck, obviously annoyed. ‘They know that one of their friends has been murdered. Possibly two. Surely they’re bright enough to realize that . . . well . . .’
‘Well?’ the chief inspector prompted.
‘Oh shit,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘I’m so tired I’m beginning to see double. So you’re really saying that this Yellnek—’
‘Yellinek,’ said Kluuge.
‘That this Yellinek’s charisma is so damned strong that he can put a muzzle on his three mistresses and a dozen teenage girls while he slinks away from the crime scene, no problem at all, and scurries off out of harm’s way? Beyond belief, and that’s what I’ll think when I wake up as well!’
‘Hmm,’ said Kluuge. ‘I don’t know. But this seems to be a pretty peculiar sect, and we might just as well be clear about that before we go any further.’
‘All right,’ said Suijderbeck with a sigh. ‘Maybe you’re right. But what the hell should we do next?’
‘Hmm,’ said Kluuge again and checked his watch. ‘First of all we’d better cope with the press conference, and then I suppose we don’t have a lot of choice. Keep on questioning them until they crack, I guess. Both the girls and the ladies at Wolgershuus. Or till somebody cracks, in any case. What does the chief inspector think?’
Van Veeteren stood up and walked over to the window. Turned his back on the others and gazed out over the unsettled sky, swaying back and forth.
‘Well,’ he said eventually, ‘of course we should interrogate them while we’re waiting. But we mustn’t forget to ask ourselves what the hell has been going on out there. Or what we think has been going on, at least. I have my doubts, myself.’
‘What?’ said Kluuge. ‘What do you mean by that, Chief Inspector?’
But he didn’t receive a reply. The notorious detective inspector simply stood there, swaying back and forth on his heels, his hands clasped behind his back. Suijderbeck lit his fourth cigarette in the last half-hour, and Servinus had leaned back and fallen asleep with his mouth open wide.
Huh, Sergeant Kluuge thought. It’s not easy, being in charge of a murder investigation. It needs somebody who’s up to it, no doubt about that.
18
He had spent a lot of time and effort on his equipment, but evidently it wasn’t appropriate even so. Not in everybody’s eyes, that is.
‘Are you going to take all that stuff with you?’ asked the young man with a crew cut and sporting a buttercup-yellow tracksuit.
‘Naturally,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Is it a problem?’
‘No, of course not. But cushions and an umbrella . . . ?’
‘Parasol,’ insisted the chief inspector. ‘Protection from the sun. As you may have noticed, it looks like being another hot day. The cushions are for my back and my head – I happen to know how uncomfortable it is, sitting in a canoe, and I intend being away all day. Well, are you going to rent one to me, or aren’t you?’
‘Of course,’ said the youth, a becoming shade of red appearing to contrast with the buttercup yellow. ‘I beg your pardon. So, which one would you like? It’s thirty guilders per day, plus a hundred-guilder deposit.’
Van Veeteren took out his wallet and paid.
‘That one,’ he said, pointing at one of the red Canadian canoes lined up neatly beside the boathouse. ‘The wider it is, the better.’
The young man carried the canoe to the water without needing any assistance, then held on to it while the chief inspector loaded on board the cushions, his briefcase and the parasol. And then himself. For a nerve-racking second, before he flopped down onto the bottom of the boat, he thought it would capsize; but once he had settled down and adjusted the cushions behind his back, he smiled and nodded to the young man, who gave him a good push, sending the canoe gliding over the mirror-like water.
Not bad, he thought as he began paddling cautiously alongside the bank lined with alders. Not bad at all.
Heading east, that’s how he had planned it. Upstream out, downstream back. Mind you, in this early morning stillness the canoe was gliding along so effortlessly that he doubted if there was any current at all. Ah well, no doubt it would make itself felt when he came to some narrower stretches.
He paddled for a hundred strokes before checking his watch. A quarter to nine. Carpe diem! he thought. Dipped his hand into the cool water and rinsed his face. Took off his shirt and shoes, and set off again. Calmly and rhythmically. The temperature was still only about twenty degrees, at a guess; but there was no doubt – as he had explained to the buttercup-yellow youth – that it was going to be a hot day. Another one. But it would be hard to think of a more acceptable way of spending it, surely?
Poor Kluuge, he thought, in a moment of generosity and sympathy.
But if you are only a consultant, you may as well act like one.
In his briefcase he had – apart from newspapers and toothpicks – two bottles of mineral water, a bag of newly baked buns (from the bakery next door to Grimm’s) and a few tomatoes. That was all. No beer, no cigarettes.
It was intended to be that sort of day. One of tho
se days when you get things done, and even so feel younger when you go to bed in the evening than you did when you got up in the morning. As somebody or other – presumably not Reinhart – had once put it.
It was also meant to be a day when, in peace and quiet – one might even say in splendid isolation – he would have an opportunity to put what had happened back there in Waldingen under the microscope.
Mainly that sort of day.
Weigh up the pros and cons, whatever they may be, and listen to the voice of his intuition – it hadn’t been very audible thus far, but then, if he counted Monday – when they had discovered Clarissa Heerenmacht’s dead body – as day number one, this was only the morning of day three. There again, if he started with his arrival in Sorbinowo, he would have to admit that nearly a week had passed by already.
So the chances of his coming up with something or other during his day on the dark waters should be rather more than mere pious hope. Might he be able to find a foothold, and clear his mind of irrelevant junk and prejudices?
Those were the thoughts passing through the chief inspector’s head as he paddled along the river. Left, right, left, right. He had to keep adjusting his course – he was finding it a bit hard to stick to the rhythm he’d learned many moons ago, but what the hell? This wasn’t a display.
It was only when he’d progressed quite a long way up the river, and was beginning to feel the strength of the current, that he felt able to divert the whole of his attention to the thoughts building up in his mind. To the case.
Clarissa Heerenmacht. Waldingen.
The Pure Life. The anonymous woman.
The murderer?
He slowed down; contented himself with just an occasional stroke of the paddle to prevent himself from drifting backwards between the wooded banks. This was countryside, not an urban area. Nothing but coniferous forest teeming with brushwood, and a scent of alder and aspen. The trees leaned over the water: roots and branches reached out across the narrow river, bridges were few and far between. After no more than an hour, he found himself in the midst of what could almost be termed a wilderness – and he understood even more clearly the attraction the Sorbinowo region must have for all categories of outdoor types.
But enough of forest air and bucolic romanticism! The case. Concentration.
He started with the previous day. Forced his thoughts back to the press conference, which he had to admit Kluuge had conducted admirably. The connection between the murder and the Pure Life had been toned down to a minimum – Clarissa Heerenmacht was one of the girls who had been staying at the camp, she had left the site in unknown circumstances, and then been found dead in the forest. That was all.
No tracks. No clues. Not a word about anonymous telephone calls.
And no indications or theories to follow up. So far. But all available officers had been put on the case, and they were doing whatever could be done. No doubt the gentlemen of the press would understand that the police had to be careful about what they made public in these early stages? Excuse me, and the ladies of the press as well, of course.
And so on. It had lasted for over twenty-five minutes, and the chief inspector had only needed to speak on two occasions. Another good mark for Kluuge, no doubt about it, especially as both Servinus and Suijderbeck had been too tired even to open their mouths. Except when they needed to yawn.
Before setting out he had glanced through the two newspapers he had with him in his briefcase. Naturally space was given to the murder – the link between summer and murder and a young girl had an obvious appeal for headline writers, but even so there was considerable restraint. They were holding back, simple as that. No doubt the evening tabloids would make a meal of it, but Van Veeteren didn’t think he could have made a better job of the press conference than Kluuge had managed.
And most important of all, presumably: not a word about the disappearance of Yellinek, the women who refused to speak and the silent confirmands – for the simple reason that Kluuge hadn’t mentioned any of that. Obviously it was only a matter of time before these details became known; but the important thing was to make use of as many hours – preferably days – as possible before that happened.
And best of all: to break through the silence before the newspapers realized that it existed.
When he came to think about it, he noted that he wasn’t at all sure why those thoughts were so important – this business of shielding that damned prophet and his silent congregation from the eyes of the world.
Why?
No reasonably plausible answer occurred to him. Only an intuitively demanding call of duty which of course wasn’t remotely like what he really thought should happen to that damned circus, but nevertheless he recognized its existence.
A sort of tipping point probably, he thought. Not unlike the dilemma the police found themselves in whenever it came to protecting Nazi thugs from counter-demonstrators. It was obviously not a good advertisement for the police if the skinheads were manhandled and perhaps even killed while the police hid round a corner, cleaning their nails.
Or?
Anyway, he didn’t like thinking about the Pure Life. The moment he began to reflect on that self-denial and purity lark, and the innocent young girls, he was filled with disgust, and only wanted to forget about it all. Didn’t want to know.
So why not let the press pack loose on them? Why not put the sanctimonious prats in the pillory?
All right, he thought. It must be my motherly instinct being triumphant once again.
Or was it simply a certainty that if the general public and the media started poking around in this religious backwater, things would become intolerable? From both a moral point of view, and that of investigating the case. Perhaps that was a more likely explanation after all.
After these humanistic musings – and feeling empowered by the almost clinical systematic he had employed so far – he decided to concentrate his attention on the main problem.
Who had murdered Clarissa Heerenmacht? And why?
The image of her dead body suddenly loomed in his mind’s eye. The spotlight in the dark forest. Her pale skin. The marbling and the blood. He recalled that she hadn’t even made it to her thirteenth birthday, and he could sense the feeling of impotence coming on once more.
Oh shit! he thought, rinsing his face with clear, cold water. I shouldn’t have bothered to look at her. I should have refused. My quota of suffering – other people’s suffering – is already filled.
Perhaps it’s time to lie low for a while, he decided, in order to dispel the gloom. I don’t need to enter the heart of darkness.
After a few problems he managed to tether his Canadian canoe by wedging it underneath a projecting root. It swayed a little in the current, but seemed to be comparatively secure even so. He opened his umbrella to shield him from the worst of the sun. Drank half a bottle of mineral water and ate a bun. Adjusted the cushions and settled down. Then waited for a minute or so until a fairly precise and developable premise occurred to him, but the only thing in his mind was the same old question:
What the hell is all this about?
Not especially precise, he was the first to admit that.
Let’s take it in chronological order, anyway:
First: An unknown woman calls and reports a missing person. When she thinks the police reaction has not been good enough, she calls again.
Question: Who is she?
Another question: Why does she call?
He lay still for quite a while without moving so much as a finger, allowing these questions to wander back and forth in his mind. Especially the second one – what the devil was her motive for telephoning the police? But in the end he gave up. No trace of an answer occurred to him, and no unexpected reflections cropped up.
Secondly: Four days later the same woman calls again. Gives detailed instructions as to where to find a murdered girl. Sergeant Kluuge follows the directions and discovers poor Clarissa Heerenmacht, not quite thirteen years old, taking pa
rt in the Waldingen camp . . . Raped, strangled, dead. (But still alive as recently as the previous day – on the Sunday afternoon – when he himself had questioned her about goings-on in the sect, the Pure Life.)
Conclusion one: If the unknown woman had been telling the truth on the first two occasions, she couldn’t have been referring to Clarissa Heerenmacht.
Conclusion two: It seemed not totally improbable that there could be another dead girl in the forest around Waldingen.
Oh hell! the chief inspector thought and took a tomato. He must keep all this at arm’s length. Next?
Let’s see . . . Thirdly: Oscar Yellinek – prophet and spiritual shepherd of the infernal Pure Life sect – goes up in smoke in connection with the death of Clarissa Heerenmacht, having first instructed the whole of his flock – ewes as well as lambs – to remain silent. Conclusion?
Conclusion? Van Veeteren thought. Yes, what the hell can one conclude?
He closed his eyes and tried once again to open his mind to any thoughts that might occur; but the only thing to arrive was a question mark.
But eventually two – ridiculously simplified – alternatives.
Number one: Oscar Yellinek had raped and murdered Clarissa Heerenmacht (and perhaps also another or others of his young confirmands), and then done a runner in order to escape justice and the day of reckoning.
Number two: Yellinek had nothing to do with the girl’s death, but had chosen to go to earth rather than expose himself to all the cross-examinations and harassment he knew would be the inevitable consequence of the situation.
Commentary on number two: Yellinek was a cowardly bastard. That corresponded with earlier observations.
