by Håkan Nesser
‘No, of course not—’
‘So how can you defend the only people who could give us information about it all by choosing not to say anything? Go on, I’d like to have an answer to that question.’
She said nothing.
‘Do you know where Oscar Yellinek is?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Do you think it’s right to say nothing?’
‘I don’t want to talk about this. I think—’
‘The murderer is still free because the Pure Life refuses to cooperate with the police,’ the chief inspector persisted. ‘You are all hand in hand with criminals, killers, and . . . and with the devil himself. There are some people who believe that you are Satanists, did you know that?’
She didn’t respond this time either. Van Veeteren said nothing. Leaned back in his chair and observed her silent confusion for half a minute. Realized he had overstepped the mark, but it was far from easy to adapt to every single situation. He changed track.
‘Are you acquainted with the three women who were present at the camp? Ulriche Fischer, Madeleine Zander and Mathilde Ubrecht?’
She shrugged half-heartedly.
‘A bit.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘We all belong to the same family.’
‘In the Pure Life?’
‘Yes.’
‘But those three are not among your closest friends?’
‘I mix more with some of the others.’
‘Have you any friends who are not members of your church?’
She hesitated for a moment.
‘Not real friends, no.’
‘So you abandoned all your circle of acquaintances when you discovered Jesus two years ago, is that it?’
‘No, you don’t understand . . .’
Publicans and sinners, Van Veeteren thought.
‘Why is your church abandoned, can you tell me something about that? I went to see it yesterday. Don’t you have any meetings at all during the summer?’
‘We have . . . We have a period.’
‘A period?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of a period?’
‘Solitariness and heart-searching.’
‘Prayers, self-denial and purity that sort of thing?’
‘Yes, although those are the cornerstones. They apply all the time.’
‘So there are no services when the shepherd isn’t there?’
‘No. Why . . . ?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why are you so angry with me?’
Because I get nothing but heartburn all the time, the chief inspector thought.
‘I’m not angry. Can’t you try to explain why those women have chosen not to cooperate with the police?’ he tried once more. ‘If Yellinekis innocent.’
She shrugged again.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is it because Yellinek has told them not to?’
No reply.
‘Do you know if all three have a sexual relationship with him?’
She didn’t react as he’d expected.
She didn’t react at all. Simply sat there in the light blue armchair, with her teacup on her lap and her mouth like a razor blade.
‘Or does every woman in the congregation have a relationship with him?’
Perhaps as a sort of initiation rite, it occurred to him. But for God’s sake, there must be several hundred of them! And there were other men in the congregation, albeit not many of them. The woman’s eyes shifted several times between her teacup and the knot of his tie. Then she said:
‘I think I must ask you to leave me in peace now. I don’t think you are a good person.’
Van Veeteren cleared his throat.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I can assure you that nothing would please me more than to leave you now. But the fact is that I have a job to do. My task is to find a murderer, and if you prefer we could drive to the police station and continue our conversation there.’
She gave a start, and put down her teacup. Clasped her hands more tightly and closed her eyes. He ignored the gesture.
‘Just a few more questions,’ he said. ‘Do you have any children?’
She shook her head.
‘Have you been married?’
‘No.’
‘Do you think there’s anything you know that could be of use to us in this investigation? Anything at all.’
She shook her head once again. He stood up. Have you ever been in bed with a man? he wondered.
Not until he was in the hall did he fire off his final question.
‘Ewa Siguera, by the way. Who’s she?’
‘Siguera?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve no idea. Can’t you leave me in peace now? I need to be alone.’
He saw that she was starting to twitch. Little tics around her eyes and mouth, and he wondered if she suffered from some somatic illness or other, on top of everything else.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t disturb you any longer. Thank you for a very instructive conversation.’
He tried to open the door, but it was only when his hostess helped him with two of the locks that he was able to step out into the fresh air again. He listened to the bolts being shot, one after the other, and took two deep breaths.
For Christ’s sake, he thought. Is there a single member of the church who would pass a mental examination?
Or even a test to prove they were ready to start school?
Then he remembered that the woman who had just locked herself in was supposed to be a primary school teacher, according to the telephone directory. His mind went blank for a moment.
A teacher?
But perhaps one could entertain a pious hope that her teaching activities were restricted to the church’s own private academy. That would limit the damage somewhat.
Nevertheless, what about the children? He descended the stairs with long, almost desperately long strides. Irrespective of whether they live in the Light or in the Other World, what kind of birthmarks would be inflicted on anybody who had to endure a schooling of that kind? Ineradicable for ever and a day.
Give me strength! Van Veeteren thought as he hurried down the street. Oh shit!
He could feel not the slightest trace of that liberal religious tolerance he had flirted with a few days previously.
Red wine, he decided instead. It was only eleven in the morning, but not a minute too soon for a glass and a cigarette. For Christ’s sake.
28
The bar was called Plato’s Cave, and as he sat there among the shadows he devoted his thoughts mainly to the topic that had cropped up during his latest conversation with Andrej Przebuda.
The premise that assaulting children – subjecting them to some kind of abuse, and in one way or another robbing them of their childhood – was in fact the only crime, the only deed, that could never be forgiven.
With the possible exception of accusing somebody – wrongly – of having done so.
What a balance, he thought. What an incredibly delicate balance! In one pan of the scales all the children that had been the victims of incest without the culprit being punished.
And in the other all those who had been punished, despite the fact that they were innocent.
For there certainly had been witch-hunts. Lots of them.
It was not a new problem, but the lopsided paradox that kept nagging inside him, and also haunted this case, seemed to him more and more repulsive with nearly every hour that passed.
With every hour and every pointless interrogation.
It would be nice to be a mere shadow, he thought as he looked around at the walls.
Or sitting under a plane tree in Spili.
During the afternoon he talked to two more people who had seen the light. A man and a woman, in that order. Both were aged about thirty-five, both were single, and they had been members of the church for five and six years res
pectively. The man – a certain Alexander Fitze – gave the impression of having remained in childhood, slow-cooking, until he was well turned twenty, Van Veeteren thought. He picked his words extremely carefully, as if the letters were made of bone china, but even so managed to give the impression of being strained and nervous. He reminded the chief inspector of an old language teacher he’d had as a young teenager: he had behaved in roughly the same way for a few months before he broke down and hanged himself in the attic.
The woman’s name was Marlene Kochel and she was more phlegmatic, built like a seal and with a lisping, laid-back tone of voice. But as far as their evidence was concerned, what the chief inspector was obliged to listen to that increasingly hot afternoon was strikingly similar.
The same almost clinical lack of solid information when it came to the actual teachings and beliefs behind the Pure Life.
The same putative phrases about light, purity and the sublime life.
The same devoted outpourings with regard to Oscar Yellinek, his divine gifts and his unadulterated nobility.
The same pious drivel. Time after time Van Veeteren found himself thinking about something else while the tirades followed one after the other before biting their own tail. Or sitting and observing – studying – his interviewees from an entirely different point of view from that usual in such circumstances. Or what ought to be usual.
A distrait and exhausted listener who, instead of listening to and trying to form an opinion about what was being said (and assessing its credibility), devoted himself mainly to wondering what kind of a strange creature was sitting in the chair opposite, babbling (or lisping) away. Churning out these pointless harangues without the slightest basis in either the real world or any kind of logical structure. Words, words, words. In a language he didn’t understand.
Almost a different species. Something fundamentally incomprehensible.
But then again – a thought that was never far away from his mind – he could be the caged animal. The object of study. Lonely and abandoned, staring out through the bars at a whole world of . . . yes, that was the point: incomprehensibility. Folie à deux, he thought. There is no such thing as objective reality.
‘What are your views on the theodicy problem?’ he asked at one point.
‘What did you say his name was?’ asked Mr Fitze with a nervous smile.
In matters of a more tangible nature – nudity, exorcism, confirmation classes and suchlike – the conversations did manage to throw light on a few places, but by no means all. Of course there were gatherings in the nude. One of Yellinek’s central ideas was evidently meeting your God in the same unencumbered and unconstrained state as when you came into the world. And as for driving out sins, or even devils, it was naturally a big advantage if the sinner was wearing as few clothes as possible. It made the process more effective – surely even a secularized detective chief inspector could see that?
Declared Marlene Kochel with a sly smile.
Another fact that was embraced without hesitation as a matter of course was that angels and God the Father Himself were in the habit of striding naked through heavenly pastures – so why not start getting used to it on this side of the border, especially if you happened to be one of the chosen few? Children and adults alike.
Yes, why not?
But carnality? No. Eroticism and licentious behaviour and uncontrolled screwing (the chief inspector’s term, which he kept to himself)? Certainly not. This was denied firmly and with such promptitude and lisping frenzy that he realized he wasn’t going to get any further along this track – but on the other hand it made him suspect that things were not as above board as was being maintained.
Neither Alexander Fitze nor Marlene Kochel had any comment to make on the prophet and his stable of fancy women at the camp. It seemed to be a matter way beyond the comprehension of a detective chief inspector; a spiritual state of such significance that one could only feel giddy at the very thought. Feel giddy and shut your trap.
To put it in plain English.
And so, on the whole, Van Veeteren did not feel much wiser when he finally emerged into the bustling street after the last of the conversations. But then, not much more stupid either; and what needed to be done first was to place the whole afternoon in parenthesis and add it to the case notes. One of several.
Especially as he had received no help regarding Ewa Siguera on this occasion either.
Ah well, the chief inspector thought with the insight that experience brings. I’ve grown a bit older again with a degree of dignity intact.
Then he realized that it was almost six o’clock and he hadn’t much more than an hour to spare, if he was going to be able to listen to what his body was telling him about an evening meal.
The meeting with Uri Zander was arranged for half past seven, and as he understood it, the address was somewhere in the suburbs.
So, food! And no shilly-shallying over the menu.
It took him less than five minutes to find a seat and order a substantial portion of meat in one of the restaurants opposite the railway station.
That’s enough of ethereal exploration and ecstatic experience to be going on with, he thought, selecting a toothpick while he was waiting to be served. My spiritual needs have been satisfied for the next two years.
Despite all the good intentions, his second evening in Stamberg turned out rather differently.
Nothing wrong with the beef steak, but it joined forces with the dark red wine and his own feelings of inertia with the result that instead of venturing out into the unfamiliar suburbs, he called Mr Zander from the telephone in the entrance and postponed the meeting until the following day. Then he stayed put for another hour with a cheese board and a couple of scandal-mongering evening papers before returning to his hotel as dusk fell.
Two beers, the ten o’clock news on the television (this evening with the events at Sorbinowo crammed into a mere minute and a half) plus four chapters of Klimke’s Observations took him past midnight, and he fell asleep with a vague but very familiar guilty conscience, without having brushed his teeth.
A sign of decadence, no doubt about that, and during the whole day he had barely devoted a thought to Ulrike Fremdli or Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop. However, as soon as he entered the land of dreams, it was these two major matters that demanded his attention. But perhaps, as a tiny pulse of emotion that still hadn’t dozed off suggested, that was precisely what everything boiled down to.
Dreams.
29
Reinhart emptied his glass of lemon-flavoured mineral water, and gestured to the waiter for another.
After having been exposed to ten hours of more or less continuous information (with breaks for a couple of hours’ sleep and individual lavatory visits), he and Jung had withdrawn to a quiet and comparatively cool corner of the Grimm’s Hotel dining room. It was eleven in the morning, but as yet the lunch guests had not started arriving. A few television reporters were gathered around a window table, drinking a few morning Pilsners, but it was clear that they weren’t on the ball yet.
‘Well,’ said Reinhart, ‘what do you think?’
‘Not a very nice story,’ said Jung.
‘It certainly isn’t,’ said Reinhart. ‘Not even judged by our standards.’
‘No,’ said Jung. ‘What do you think?’
Reinhart shrugged.
‘I don’t know. But if VV has gone to Stamberg, it’s not impossible that the answer is there somewhere. He usually manages to stumble into something crucial when he’s out and about.’
Jung nodded.
‘Or maybe he’s just got sunstroke,’ suggested Reinhart as he was served with another bottle of lemon-flavoured mineral water.
‘Or washed his hands of it all.’
Reinhart took out his pipe and tobacco.
‘Hmm,’ he muttered. ‘It wouldn’t be like him to walk away from something like this; but there are rumours in circulation.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Jung, yawn
ing. ‘Well, what do you reckon we ought to be doing? I don’t think that Kluuge went out of his way to issue instructions. He seemed to be hoping that we’d be able to solve it all for him . . . Us or VV, that is. Or that other lot, although I doubt if they’re up to it, to be honest.’
‘Pious hopes,’ said Reinhart. ‘In any case, I think we ought to get going. Like the acting chief of police, I have a pregnant wife and I’m damned if I want to be away for a minute longer than is necessary.’
‘I didn’t know about that,’ said Jung. ‘May I congratulate you?’
‘Of course you may,’ said Reinhart. ‘Anyway, where do you want to start?’
Jung pondered.
‘Finding Yellinek would be a good idea.’
‘You’re a genius. Where are you thinking of looking?’
‘Good question,’ said Jung. ‘Mind you, a Wanted message has been issued, so perhaps that problem might be solved without my help. I have the impression his fizzog turns up on every single television programme just now. Maybe all we need to do is wait for him to turn up.’
‘Or for something else to turn up,’ said Reinhart, contemplating his pipe. ‘But by Christ, I have to say that this shitty mess turns my stomach over . . . Still, if you’re not going ferreting around after false prophets, what else do you have on your wish list?’
Jung drank a pint of mineral water before answering.
‘That loony bin,’ he said eventually. ‘Wolgershuus, or whatever it’s called. If nothing else, it could be interesting to take a look at those women.’
‘And listen to the silence?’ Reinhart suggested.
‘Why not?’ said Jung. ‘Silence has a lot to say for itself.’
As if to emphasize the wisdom of that remark, Reinhart said nothing for half a minute while gazing out at the sunshine and scraping around inside the bowl of his pipe with a lace table napkin.
‘Hot again today,’ he commented thoughtfully. ‘All right, you can lean on the priestesses. Give them a taste of your usual unassuming style, and let’s see what happens. I don’t think our colleagues have got anywhere using their approach.’
‘Okay,’ said Jung. ‘It’s important to make the best of your talents. And what are you intending to do?’
