The Inspector and Silence

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Can you write it down for me?’

  He slid a notepad and pencil over the table. Marieke Bergson wrote down the details, her tongue in the corner of her mouth. When she’d finished she slid the pad back again. The chief inspector examined her round, school-girlish handwriting for a few seconds before continuing.

  ‘So, she’d done something silly, you said. Can you tell me any more about that?’

  Marieke Bergson hesitated and bit her lip.

  ‘She swore at Yellinek She had the devil in her body . . . I thought it was a bit odd, although I knew her; the others thought so as well. We were supposed to pretend she’d never been there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I suppose it was right. She’d been silly, she had the devil inside her, and it was best to forget her. I could hardly remember that she’d ever been at the camp until yesterday, when . . .’

  Her voice died away. The chief inspector waited, but she said nothing more.

  ‘Can you remember when exactly Katarina Schwartz disappeared?’

  Marieke seemed to be working it out.

  ‘Two weeks ago, I think. Maybe a bit less. You lose track – time doesn’t pass in the usual way when you’re at Waldingen.’

  Van Veeteren suddenly had the feeling that he’d like to continue cross-questioning this teenaged girl for several hours, but he realized he would have to resist the temptation to put her under too much pressure. He needed to prioritize, to take the most important matters first; then he could probably try to penetrate the shadowy side of the Pure Life later on, when there was time and opportunity.

  ‘Yellinek,’ he said instead. ‘Do you know where Oscar Yellinek is?’

  The girl shook her head.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When did he disappear?’

  ‘The day before yesterday.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. He wasn’t there on Monday morning. He’d been called away.’

  ‘Called away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘The Lord had called him, and he needed to be away from the camp for a few days.’

  She took a few more sips of Coca-Cola, and the chief inspector closed his eyes for a couple of seconds.

  ‘When on Monday?’

  ‘In the morning. He wasn’t there for morning prayers. Sister Ulriche took them instead. Then she told us that God had appeared to him during the night and given him a task. It was important that we should be firm in our faith, and remain pure and worthy in his absence.’

  ‘Pure and worthy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see . . .’ Van Veeteren searched for the right words. ‘And what exactly does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Marieke Bergson.

  ‘Nor do I,’ said the chief inspector. ‘What do you do in order to show that you are pure and worthy?’

  The psychologist raised a warning finger, and Marieke suddenly looked to be on the verge of tears. She wrung her hands and stared down at her shoes again. Van Veeteren hastily changed track.

  ‘When did you last see Yellinek?’

  ‘Sunday . . . Yes, Sunday evening.’

  ‘What were you doing then?’

  ‘It was evening prayers. Before we went to bed.’

  ‘And he didn’t say anything then, about having to go away?’

  Marieke looked up, then averted her gaze again.

  ‘No, it was late at night when he met God, as I’ve said already. But Clarissa wasn’t around. We wondered a bit, but he didn’t say anything about her. He just said that the final struggle was here, and that we should be strong and pure.’

  ‘The final struggle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he mean by that?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘So, it was on Monday morning you found out about Clarissa Heerenmacht and also about Yellinek’s task?’

  ‘Yes – although we knew about Clarissa already. That she was no longer around.’

  ‘Don’t you think it seemed a bit odd? That the two things happened at the same time, I mean?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I expect you talked about it?’

  ‘No, we had to . . .’

  ‘Had to what?’

  She suddenly lost control. Marieke Bergson slid off the chair and collapsed in a heap on the floor. Covered her face with her hands and drew her knees up to her chin in a sort of twisted foetus position. And slowly a low-pitched, plaintive sobbing emerged from her body, a whimpering – unarticulated despair that he realized must come from chasms deep down in her thirteen-year-old soul. Just for a moment he had the impression that she was play-acting, but he dismissed the thought.

  Poor kid, he thought. What have they done to you?

  The psychologist hastened to go to her assistance. Started caressing her arms, back and hair in long, gentle strokes. When the girl had recovered somewhat, but was still curled up and lost in her own personal hell, the woman looked up at Van Veeteren.

  ‘Well then,’ she said. ‘Are you satisfied now?’

  ‘No,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘How the hell could I be satisfied?’

  That evening he had dinner with Suijderbeck.

  Servinus had returned to Rembork to spend the night with his wife and four children, but Suijderbeck had no such ties and preferred to retain his room at the City Arms hotel, where he’d already stayed for one night.

  And it was in the dining room of the City Arms hotel that they sat down to eat. Right at the back in a smoke-filled corner of the packed, sepia-brown restaurant with tablecloths that had once been white and crystal chandeliers that had always been glass. Suijderbeck seemed to be even glummer than usual, and Van Veeteren began to feel a spiritual affinity.

  ‘How were things at the loony bin?’ he asked, when they’d finished ordering their meal.

  ‘Hilarious,’ said Suijderbeck, lighting a cigarette. ‘If it were up to me, I’d leave the harridans there for the rest of their lives. There’s no doubt that they’ve got the qualifications.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘They’re still not saying anything, I take it?’

  ‘Pure autism,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘The worst of it is that they are so damned superior as well – they are martyrs, and nobody else is worth a toss. They all radiate contempt.’

  ‘The Lord’s chosen few?’

  ‘Something like that. They already know everything, don’t need to condescend. Even though they have no contact with one another, I’ll be damned if they don’t have some kind of telepathic communication. How are things with the girls?’

  ‘One has started talking.’

  ‘So I’d heard. Did you get anything useful out of her?’

  Van Veeteren shrugged.

  ‘More or less what we’d expected, you could say. The girl seems to have disappeared some time on Sunday afternoon. And Yellinek the same night, presumably. Then they muzzled the youngsters. The big question, of course, is what the hell happened, and we don’t know much more about that than we did before. But there seems to be another girl who’s gone missing, just as we thought.’

  ‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘What do you think yourself?’

  The waiter came with two beers.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the chief inspector. ‘I’ll be damned if I know. Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers,’ said Suijderbeck.

  When they had drunk, they sat in silence for a while. Then Suijderbeck sighed deeply and said:

  ‘There’s only one thing we can do, I suppose.’

  ‘What’s that?’ wondered Van Veeteren.

  ‘We’ll have to find out if he was screwing the girls as well.’

  The chief inspector wiped the cutlery with the table cloth.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose we’d better do that.’

  ‘Wha
t happened to your leg?’ he asked when they had begun tucking into their main course.

  Suijderbeck looked up.

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  Suijderbeck took a swig of beer.

  ‘Because people usually take it so badly.’

  ‘Really?’ said the chief inspector, and thought for a few seconds. ‘Yes, I want to know.’

  ‘If you insist,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘But we’ll leave it until we’ve finished eating.’

  ‘Well, I was a member of the drugs squad for a few years,’ Suijderbeck explained.

  ‘In Rembork?’

  ‘No, Aarlach. Anyway, I was hot on the scent of some really big names. One night I was in a parked car, keeping an eye on them, when it turned out that they were hot on the scent of me as well.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Van Veeteren.

  ‘Bloody silly, sitting in a car on your own, don’t you think?’

  Van Veeteren said nothing. Accepted a cigarette and allowed Suijderbeck to light it.

  ‘They took me to a place on the edge of town. They were going to teach me a lesson, they said. To keep my nose out of their business in future. That’s all they did say, in fact. Reticent types. Anyway, they tied me up and then started the circular saw.’

  He paused briefly.

  ‘It all went so damned quickly. No more than half a second, but that was the longest half-second of my life. And it keeps coming back.’

  He fell silent. Van Veeteren stared at the hand holding his cigarette. Felt something in his mind turn round and give up. He drew on his cigarette, then stubbed it out.

  ‘Shall we pay?’ he said.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Suijderbeck.

  Suijderbeck wanted to take a little walk before going to bed, and after they’d gone a couple of hundred metres the chief inspector asked:

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘Why did you stay in the police?’

  Suijderbeck couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘A fifty-year-old with a wooden leg,’ he said. ‘Have you ever heard of something called the job market?’

  20

  At about one o’clock on Thursday, when acting Chief of Police Kluuge got into his hot car out at Waldingen – in order to drive back to Sorbinowo and be contactable at the police station during the afternoon (and possibly snatch a half-hour lunch with Deborah) – at least he was able to reassure himself that things had started moving.

  Just a little bit. Following the example set by Marieke Bergson, a handful of girls had started to crack and speak about the last few days at the camp. Together with his colleagues from Haaldam – Lauremaa and Tolltse – Kluuge had spent a few hours that morning listening to their tear-soaked confessions. However, nothing specific nor of vital significance for the investigation had materialized. Not as far as they could tell, anyway. The girls had been ordered – more or less explicitly – to say nothing, and so they had said nothing.

  It seemed to be as simple as that.

  There was still a group of girls sticking to the party line and saying nothing, and there were grounds for suspecting that it was this group that had put the others – the ones whose faith was beginning to wobble – under pressure. Moreover, a trio of girls had emerged, probably led by Belle Moulder (that was Lauremaa’s contention at any rate), who had been the last to see Clarissa Heerenmacht alive.

  Excluding the murderer, that is. Round about five or half past five on the Sunday evening these girls, including Clarissa, had been down by ‘the rock’ – a smooth, warm and sunny flat piece of rock a few hundred metres to the west of the summer camp – swimming in the lake. It was still unclear how the four of them had become separated, but the bottom line was that they hadn’t returned to the camp together.

  Clarissa Heerenmacht hadn’t returned at all.

  Instead, Clarissa Heerenmacht had met her murderer. Unclear how. Unclear when and where.

  The families were another problem. Kluuge switched on the air conditioning and turned into the main road. Yesterday’s evening papers – not to mention the television and radio – had devoted a lot of space to the case (Kluuge sincerely hoped that Malijsen really was as isolated as he had said he would be: if the real chief of police were to appear on the stage without warning, his arrival would hardly have a positive effect on the work they were doing – everybody involved agreed about that, even if nobody was prepared to say so), and most of the parents had been in touch. Shortly before Kluuge left Waldingen that roasting-hot afternoon, four of the girls had been collected by worried mums and dads – obviously after spending quite a while with Lauremaa and the psychologists. Two of the girls turned out to be sisters, a detail that hadn’t been clear before.

  Anyway, there were six left. Three who still hadn’t said a word, two who seemed to be about to do so, and one who had made a clean breast of it and was waiting to be picked up.

  Plus Marieke Bergson, of course. She was still at the police station, under the wing of Miss Miller and a Roman Catholic Sister of Mercy (the latter had turned up out of the blue the previous evening and offered her services – for professional and ethical reasons, not to mention pressure from her trade union, the psychologist had fled the scene long ago). Her name was Vera Saarpe, and she had let the girl stay at her place overnight.

  It was only this morning, early on, that they had managed to contact Marieke’s parents, and apparently they would be arriving during the course of the afternoon to take care of their daughter. Kluuge had spoken on the telephone to the mother, and established that the apple hadn’t fallen very far away from the tree in this case either.

  He sighed deeply. It was far from easy to keep tabs on everything, he thought.

  Far from easy.

  Then he sighed even more deeply – when he began to think about Katarina Schwartz, the girl who seemed to have gone missing from the camp some ten to twelve days ago. Marieke Bergson’s claim regarding her sudden disappearance had been backed up by all the others who had spoken up so far, and it seemed reasonable to assume that it was this Katarina who had been referred to in the first two telephone calls from the anonymous woman.

  To crown it all, they hadn’t succeeded in making contact with her parents. They were evidently on holiday, touring France by car. But if in fact Katarina had simply run away from the camp, it was quite possible that she was sitting in the same car as her mother and father. Or in a rented cottage, or in a deckchair. In Brest or Marseilles or wherever the hell they happened to be. Why not Lourdes, come to that?

  Servinus had been in touch with the French police, who had promised to send out SOS messages to track down the couple and their car; but Servinus had dealt with his French colleagues before, and wasn’t especially optimistic.

  In any case, there were indications to suggest that the girl might have had good reason to run away; but just how strong they were was something Kluuge hadn’t yet established. Nor had anybody else, come to that. The probability was that this scenario was no more than wishful thinking – neighbours, friends and relations of the Schwartz family had seemed to be quite certain that Katarina had not been in the car that set off on the journey south-west the previous week.

  But the timing did fit in, as Kluuge had noted when he thought the matter over. If the daughter had suddenly turned up unexpectedly the evening before they set off – well, it wasn’t out of the question that she might have travelled with them the next morning without anybody else knowing.

  In which case they had only one murder to solve.

  Which was bad enough, of course.

  It also occurred to him – as he sat in the car sweating and driving far too fast on the zigzagging road – that all these interrogations, all these telephone calls and all the various measures they were taking seemed to be irrelevant. They were simply taking up an enormous amount of time and energy and resources, without actually leading anywhere.

  Apart from in circ
les. What little they found out was what they had already worked out for themselves.

  When – and how – he would find the time and energy to sit down and think about the actual murder and how to solve it, well, he found that very hard to see just at the moment.

  Is this the way it always was? he wondered at the back of his mind. In all the cases I’ve been involved in?

  Merwin Kluuge sighed yet again, and checked his watch.

  A quarter to two.

  That meant a window of twenty minutes for Deborah. Half an hour at most.

  I must buy her some flowers on Friday, he thought. No time for that today, that’s for sure.

  At about the same time as Merwin Kluuge gently – but perhaps not quite as gently as was his wont – stroked his wife’s stomach and his as yet unborn son, Van Veeteren left Elizabeth Heerenmacht to allow her to say farewell to her murdered niece down in the cold-storage room at Sorbinowo hospital, to which the battered body had just been moved after two and a half days at the forensic clinic in Rembork.

  Elizabeth Heerenmacht was not a member of the Pure Life church – although after spending half an hour in her company the chief inspector found it hard to understand why not. She seemed to have all the qualifications, to put it mildly: that was the harsh conclusion he had drawn, unfortunately.

  But perhaps that was a bit unfair, given the nature of this grim and roasting-hot day. It was difficult not to be prejudiced when the sweat was flowing freely, then froze to ice down in the mortuary before starting to pour off him again when he emerged once more into the sun.

  Earlier in the morning he had devoted quite a lot of time to another woman – the mysterious Ewa Siguera. At least, he wanted to convince himself that she was mysterious, that there was just as much mystery about her in reality as there was about her name and her smile in the photograph Przebuda had taken of her the previous summer.

  Rubbish, he then thought in a moment of pungent self-criticism. That kind of thinking would be more appropriate in a novel.

  But what the hell was one supposed to do? he thought. The less contact you had with the opposite sex, the more fond you grew of it – or of certain examples of it, anyway. Nothing new about that.