The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Mine too,’ said Tallin. ‘Damn it, I’ve been in this field of work for more than thirty years and I can’t remember anything like this, I have to say.’

  ‘That bit about the grandma’s accent,’ said Barbarotti after a few moments of oppressive silence. ‘ . . . and the girl’s too, at one point . . . it doesn’t bear thinking about really, but if they came from some other country, that would throw the whole thing wide open.’

  ‘I know,’ sighed Tallin. ‘No, I agree with you. Let’s leave that alternative out of it for the time being.’

  ‘How are they getting on with the identikit picture back home?’ asked Morelius. ‘Has any new information come in?’

  ‘Over five hundred calls,’ said Tallin. ‘But we’re not talking identikits here, remember. This is an actual genuine photo.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Morelius.

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Tallin. ‘But anyway, all the tip-offs are being checked and prioritized. One, two or three. In the first group, the most plausible leads, they’d got forty-five when I checked this morning. They’re starting the interviews after lunch today. So with any luck, that’s where we could see our breakthrough. Regardless of what this trip to France yields, I mean.’

  ‘It wouldn’t take much to come up with an alibi though, would it?’ Inspector Morelius put in.

  ‘The same thought had occurred to me,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Apart from the summer of 2002, you’d have to have been at four different murder scenes all over Sweden in the past month. That includes being aboard a ferry to Denmark on the relevant night . . . well, if we find some poor devil without an alibi for that lot, things aren’t going to look very good for him at all.’

  ‘Especially if he happens to look like the guy in the picture?’

  ‘That too, of course.’

  ‘But glamour boy Masson seemed credible enough, anyway?’ said Morelius with a smile.

  ‘Yes, I got that impression,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Not that he had that many to choose between, of course. We should probably have handled it a bit better when we showed him the photo.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ asked Tallin irritably. ‘You reckon he’s going to be our star witness at the trial, or what?’

  What’s the matter with Tallin, wondered Barbarotti. He’s starting to lose his touch.

  ‘I just need to make a couple of calls,’ he lied. ‘See you down in reception in an hour, then?’

  ‘So do I,’ announced Inspector Morelius, and they left Tallin’s room together.

  ‘He seems in a bit of a grump,’ she said when they were out in the corridor. ‘Your friend the chief inspector, I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But I don’t really know him. He’s come from the National CID.’

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ said Carina Morelius, and lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. ‘But I know him. We were in a relationship a few years ago, in fact.’

  ‘What on earth . . . ?’ said Barbarotti, and stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Yeah, but it was only for a few weeks. Relationship’s the wrong word, really. Fling would be better, we had a fling.’

  ‘He must be at least fifteen years older than you?’

  ‘Thirteen,’ said Morelius. ‘But age wasn’t what it hinged on.’

  ‘So you mean he . . . he had certain expectations of this trip?’

  ‘That’s your interpretation,’ said Morelius, and slipped into her room.

  Well well, thought Inspector Barbarotti. We learn something new every day.

  ‘Every year, around sixty thousand people are reported missing in this country,’ explained Commissaire Leblanc. ‘Six zero zero zero zero.’

  Barbarotti jotted this down.

  ‘It’s a huge number, of course, but it’s still only a tiny percentage of the population. The vast majority don’t disappear. To put it simply, we could say one person in every thousand goes missing. And to continue with the statistics, this means that in round numbers we have around five thousand disappearances every month.’

  ‘The statistics for this are quite high in our country, too,’ Tallin pointed out. ‘I read in an article not long ago that the percentage per capita is pretty similar in most countries across western Europe.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ confirmed Leblanc. ‘But what we have to remember is that, of these five thousand missing persons a month, only a fraction are still missing a year later. Around fifteen per cent in fact. People turn up, come back home or are found dead. Crime is only involved in about ten per cent of cases, and the figure for those still missing after five years is about the same – barely ten per cent. What I’m trying to say is that around six thousand individuals vanish into thin air every year. It’s generally assumed that roughly half of them have died, and of the remaining three thousand, there’s little doubt that only around a hundred are still in the country. People do a runner, basically, and they do it for any number of reasons. Unpaid taxes are probably the most common one.’

  Barbarotti turned the page of his pad and decided to stop taking notes. ‘How many went missing in July 2002?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what I’m coming to,’ said Leblanc with a quick smile. ‘Excuse the statistical exercise, but I wanted to give you the background.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Tallin.

  ‘If I’ve understood you correctly, the girl Troaë and her grandmother are thought to have died at the start of July, so to be on the safe side I looked at the two months between 5 July and 4 September that year, by which time school would have started again in most places, and in that period 12,682 reports of missing people were filed – across the whole country. Statistically average, in other words. More people tend to disappear over the summer, but that year the figure only rose marginally.’

  He paused briefly, polished his glasses and consulted his papers.

  ‘Of those individuals, one thousand and thirty-five are currently still unaccounted for.’

  ‘Still missing, you mean?’ asked Barbarotti.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Leblanc. ‘And of that thousand or so, no two were reported by the same person.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Barbarotti. ‘So you’re telling me no one reported the girl and her grandmother missing together?’

  ‘Correct,’ said Leblanc.

  ‘But that must mean nobody reported their disappearance at all, mustn’t it? Why would two different people have told the police they were missing?’

  ‘We would certainly expect just one person to have reported both, if we really are dealing with a grandmother and granddaughter,’ agreed Leblanc, referring to another sheet of paper. ‘But if we assume for a minute that we’re talking about two separate reports, and if we cast our net wide as regards their ages . . . let’s say the girl is between ten and fifteen, and the grandmother between fifty and eighty . . . well, do you agree that builds in enough of a safety margin?’

  ‘Definitely,’ sighed Tallin. ‘So how many does that leave us with?’

  Leblanc cleared his throat. ‘In the whole of France, I stress the whole of France, for that two-month period of July to August 2002, we have sixteen women still missing in the older age range and eleven girls in the younger one.’

  ‘And we’ve got all their names?’ asked Barbarotti.

  ‘Naturally,’ said Leblanc. ‘But we have no family links between any of them, and none of the girls is called Troaë.’

  There was silence for five seconds. Chief Inspector Tallin leant back in his chair and glared at the ceiling. Barbarotti realized he was biting the inside of his cheek so hard that it hurt.

  ‘One question,’ he said. ‘Does this include people discovered missing by an institution of some kind . . . like a school, say, or a tax office?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leblanc, ‘it includes them as well.’

  ‘But in principle,’ said Barbarotti, ‘there’s nothing to rule out the girl and her grandmother being amongst these . . . how many was it . . . ?’

  ‘Twenty-seven,’ said Le
blanc.

  ‘Amongst these twenty-seven people?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ said Leblanc. ‘I’ve asked for the details of all these cases, and I’ll send the material up to you in Sweden as soon as I get it. Early next week, I hope.’

  ‘Merci,’ said Tallin. ‘Merci beaucoup.’

  ‘Just one more thing,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I assume there are a lot of people in your country without residence permits. The sort the authorities have no information about?’

  ‘Probably about a million and a half,’ said Leblanc. ‘The vast majority from Africa.’

  ‘And if a couple of those . . . ?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Leblanc. ‘They fall outside all the statistics. But they were white, weren’t they, the girl and her grandmother?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barbarotti. ‘There’s nothing to indicate not, at any rate.’

  ‘Arabs,’ said Tallin, pulling a face. ‘Why not? The girl had dark hair, it says so several times in the notes.’

  More silence. Leblanc took off his glasses and started to polish them. Barbarotti glanced out of the window and saw that it was still raining.

  ‘Well then,’ said Tallin in Swedish. ‘I guess we’ve got all we can out of this.’

  He was still of the same opinion six hours later, after they had dined at a restaurant called Kerven Mer. This was a stone’s throw from the hotel and it was just him and Barbarotti – Inspector Morelius had asked for the evening off to visit an old friend of hers in Brest – and they had drunk two bottles of Burgundy. It was a delicious, full-bodied wine, but one bottle would have been enough.

  ‘If you can tell me how the hell all this fits together, I’ll make sure you’re a chief inspector come January the first,’ said Tallin. ‘By God I will.’

  Barbarotti was well aware that this sort of advancement scarcely lay within Tallin’s gift, but he didn’t quibble.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he opted to say. ‘Well, I suppose it isn’t really that complicated. Either the girl and her grandmother will be in the paperwork we get next week . . . to put it simply. Or . . . er, or they were tourists in a caravan.’

  ‘What?’ said Tallin.

  ‘Or gypsies with no residence permits,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Or Arabs, why not? The girl was dark-haired and so was the granny. Even if they weren’t dark-skinned.’

  Tallin pondered this. ‘Are they the two alternatives you can think of?’

  Barbarotti also pondered for a moment. ‘There is a third, of course,’ he said. ‘That he’s lying.’

  ‘Lying?’ said Tallin.

  ‘Yes, that he invented the whole story. If the girl and the old lady ever existed at all, then they didn’t die.’

  Tallin raised his glass and set it down again without drinking.

  ‘What the heck do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘It’s not out of the question, is it?’ said Barbarotti. ‘He made up the whole story . . . well, not the part about the Swedes, obviously, but about the girl and her grandmother . . .’

  ‘And what conceivable reason can you think of for him making up a story like that?’ said Tallin, suddenly seeming entirely unaffected by the amount of wine he had consumed.

  ‘None at all,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I take it back. I set more store by my two other ideas.’

  But Tallin wouldn’t leave it at that. ‘So he could have killed these five people for some other reason?’ he said. ‘A reason he wanted to conceal for purposes unknown. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘No,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I don’t mean anything. It sounds insane.’

  ‘But he must have realized we would check up on all this,’ Tallin went on doggedly.

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t make any difference to him whether we do or not,’ suggested Barbarotti.

  Tallin scratched his head. ‘Do you think that makes all this any more intelligible? What would be the point of coming up with a story that he knows we’re going to see through?’

  ‘I’m a bit drunk,’ said Barbarotti. ‘And I’m telling you, as I said, that Germans in a caravan seem a much likelier explanation to me. They told their friends and family they were going up to the North Cape, and then tricked them all by going to Brittany instead. And then they fell into the hands of our Swedes. When was it you said I’d be a chief inspector?’

  ‘I think I’ll treat myself to a coffee and a cognac,’ said Tallin.

  ‘Is that strictly necessary?’ said Gunnar Barbarotti.

  They had just checked in at Quimper airport on Friday morning when Barbarotti’s phone rang. It was Dr Olltman.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

  He cast about for another pig metaphor but failed to find one. ‘Oh, fine,’ he declared. ‘I’m down in France at the moment. I left you a voicemail message about last Friday, I hope you got it?’

  ‘Yes I did,’ Olltman assured him. ‘But I’m ringing to arrange an alternative date.’

  ‘Things have changed a bit,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘For the better, I hope?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But it’s all been pretty hectic.’

  ‘I do still read the newspapers,’ Olltman informed him. ‘Ring me when you can find the time. I think it would be a good thing for us to have another session or two.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I’ll be in touch next week, once things calm down a bit. I’ve just got to go through security now.’

  ‘Have a good trip home then,’ said Olltman.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Barbarotti.

  Calm down a bit? He considered this once he had switched off his mobile and started fishing all the metal out of his pockets. Well, he could always dream. But I’m the kind who won’t get any rest until I’m in my grave, if then, he thought.

  As he followed Tallin and Morelius to the gate a minute later, he remembered he’d got to make time for the duty free shop at Charles de Gaulle and find a nice wine.

  Friday had come round, in spite of everything.

  37

  It took two hours to prepare the lobster and four hours to consume it.

  The unusually protracted eating period was the result of the break they took in the middle to make love. They sort of just couldn’t stop themselves.

  There was a lot more they couldn’t stop, either.

  ‘I’ve decided,’ said Marianne. ‘I want to live with you.’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti.

  Marianne laughed. ‘I shall always remember those words,’ she said. ‘That’s settled then. When we’re walking hand in hand along a beach at sunset, forty years from now, I’ll remind you of them.’

  ‘I’ll be eighty-seven by then,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti, ‘and probably in need of reminders about quite a lot of things. But you think we ought to have a proper wedding and all that stuff?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Barbarotti assured her. ‘Of course. Do you want a bit more wine?’

  They had reached the dessert. Just ice cream with warm cloudberries, but the lobster had taken so long that he hadn’t had time to do anything more complicated. Still, as it happened, in Gunnar Barbarotti’s world there was no nicer dessert than vanilla ice cream with warm berries. Not even that crème brûlée in Quimper.

  ‘No need,’ said Marianne. ‘I’m drunk on love.’

  ‘I shall remind you of that when we’re on that beach,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘Good,’ said Marianne. ‘But you’re sure you’d be happy with a church wedding and so on?’

  ‘Well, a small church would be big enough for me,’ Barbarotti suggested. ‘Not five hundred guests and tons of confetti.’

  ‘Just you and me, then?’ said Marianne.

  ‘Well, maybe a vicar, too?’

  ‘OK, a little one. What do you think about our children?’

  Barbarotti considered the matter. He hadn’t told her about the latest manoeuvre from Copenhagen, and he didn’t really know why. Perhaps because he wasn’
t entirely sure things would turn out as intended, when it came to it. Not sure he would be looking after Lars and Martin. He had been through this sort of thing before. But perhaps it was because he didn’t want to talk to Marianne about Helena. For whatever reason.

  ‘We’ll have to tell them, I assume,’ he said. ‘Maybe we can say they’re welcome to come if they want?’

  She looked serious for a moment. ‘You realize you’re going to be a dad of teenagers?’ she said, her green eyes fixed on him. ‘Johan and Jenny live with me and that’s the way it’s going to be in future, too.’

  ‘Of course I realize,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I shall teach them everything I can.’

  She laughed again. ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘The best thing about you is that I can laugh with you. I never laughed with Tommy.’

  ‘Never? Surely you must have larked about together sometimes?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, we never had a laugh together, not towards the end anyway. He would laugh at me, but that’s not really the same thing. The depressing thing is, I think he laughs at his new wife as well.’

  ‘Do you ever meet her?’

  ‘Only when I drop the kids off and collect them again. But she doesn’t look very happy. They’ve got two of their own, as well.’

  ‘You’re not thinking that we . . . ?’

  ‘Not on your life,’ exclaimed Marianna, administering a punch to his belly. ‘You’ve got three, I’ve got two, and if you want any more you’ll have to pick someone else.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘We’re entirely in agreement.’

  ‘Though there is one other thing,’ said Marianne after a spoonful of ice cream.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, you’ve got to stop getting into fights with reporters. Johan’s actually thought about becoming a journalist. He writes really well and it would be a shame if he thought . . .’

  ‘I’ll sit down and talk it all through with him next time I see him,’ said Barbarotti. ‘If he’s going for that as a career, I actually think I could be of some use to him.’