by Håkan Nesser
It’s only a question of time.
22
He waited for the first cool evening breeze before setting off. The sun was on its way down behind the rows of trees to the west, and he was lucky enough to be able to stay in the shade and relatively mild temperatures all the way.
Wolgershuus was located a few kilometres outside the little town, pleasantly secluded in the woods and some distance from the main road. It comprised extensive walled grounds with half a dozen separate buildings from the early twentieth century, all in the same soft, pale yellow limestone. Van Veeteren had read up on its genealogy: at the beginning a sanatorium and convalescent home for the well-heeled; later – during the war years – an educational institution for female health workers and other volunteers; and then – from the fifties onwards – a treatment centre and residential home for people with various mental and psychosomatic illnesses.
But all the time with an increasing emphasis on detaining potentially dangerous mentally ill patients, if he had read correctly between the lines.
Even from a long way away – just after he had left the main road and started to follow the narrow, meandering tarmacked path through the forest – he could hear a voice. A plaintive wail coming from inside the grounds further up the hill. A solitary, anonymous voice forcing its way out through an open window, presumably, and hovering over the trees and the summer evening like an expression of, not to say a reminder of, the natural place of suffering in the world.
The melancholy cry of a migratory bird, he thought. A migratory bird that had stayed behind. A languageless animal’s vain attempt to make contact with a cold and indifferent environment. It ceased at exactly the same moment as he came to a stop outside the locked gates. But nevertheless it seemed to linger like an unfilled silence under the trees, and he paused for a few moments until it died away.
The Wolgershuus Clinic
Secure Psychiatric Nursing Home it said on a blue-and-white enamel plaque, screwed directly onto the solid brick wall.
Dangerous lunatics! Van Veeteren thought. That’s what it would have said in another age – and that’s probably what ordinary people still say.
Although nowadays, of course, there is medicine to make them less dangerous.
He walked over to the window at the entrance and explained why he was there. The young porter, busy solving a crossword puzzle, pressed a button and he was allowed in through a barred gate. Then he had to consult another porter behind another window, and was given instructions about how to get to where he wanted to go, and a little white plastic card as authorization.
It was the same pass as he’d been given the previous time, when he had merely sat there and listened to Servinus and Suijderbeck trying in vain to squeeze a reply out of the Weird Sisters.
This time it was his turn, and he had no intention of returning empty-handed.
He walked straight ahead along the well-raked gravel path. There was another hour or so to go before dusk, and here and there he could see small groups of people. Carers and warders in white coats; dark green interns – wearing big, loose jackets and shapeless trousers that reminded him of the crappy get-up he’d occasionally been forced to wear during his National Service long ago, at the beginning of time.
And here and there among all the greenery an occasional recluse. A man sitting on a bench smoking, with an empty dog lead in his hand. Another lying stretched out on the lawn, apparently asleep. Under a tree a bit further away, a woman: she was leaning against the tree trunk with her forehead while carrying out slow, hesitant swimming movements with her arms.
Over everything – over the grounds, over the buildings, over the surrounding forest – stillness. A vague, almost oppressive stillness that seemed to embody not only the illusion of another land, but also another existence.
A dimension that was dangerously attractive, he was aware of that. An allure that in certain circumstances – with certain rudimentary defence mechanisms neutralized – he would find difficult to resist.
Deep down in his consciousness was a blurred image of his own father, and of a conversation between his father and his only brother. His father’s words, and the inexplicable way in which he distanced himself from his own brother. Resolute steps hurrying away over the gravel, and a heavy gate slamming shut.
His own four- or five-year-old legs first hesitating, and then having to run for dear life in order not to be shut up behind the walls. And having to stay there with Uncle Bern.
Incomprehensible then. Incomprehensible now – but even so, he had inherited a portion of that attitude to life.
His own private birthmark. One of them.
He turned off to the right before coming to the main building, followed the well-trodden path down into the hollow and came to the same low, oblong building under the elms as last time. Showed his pass to a bearded young man behind another window, and was allowed in.
Sergeant Matthorst was sitting in the coffee room, smoking and watching the television. He seemed to be somewhat embarrassed at having been caught in such trivial circumstances, and was keen to escort the chief inspector to a room in one of the corridors where Mathilde Ubrecht had been held for the last three and a half days. He unlocked the door, and Van Veeteren entered.
She was curled up on her bed, reading the Bible. The same pale, unbleached cotton individual as before. The same lank, colourless hair. The same introspectiveness. The chief inspector hesitated for a moment before turning the desk chair round and sitting down opposite her, less than a metre away.
He paused. Took a toothpick from his breast pocket and weighed it in the palm of his hand. Decided it was too light and put it back again. Looked out through the barred window. Most of the view was obscured by a dense and unpruned lilac hedge. He returned to observing the woman on the bed.
Waited. Listened to the silence and the very faint noise from some air-conditioning system. After about five minutes, she closed the Bible. Looked up, and met his gaze.
‘I suggest we go for a little walk in the grounds,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘It’s a lovely evening.’
She didn’t respond. Continued looking at him while leafing through the Bible and breathing through her half-open mouth. He wondered if she might suffer from asthma or some kind of allergy – it looked like it. After a while she nodded vaguely, and stood up. Matthorst, who had evidently been waiting outside the door, accompanied them along the corridor; as they passed the television room, the chief inspector gave him a nod as an indication that he could go back to watching his programme.
Or to more high-minded pursuits, always assuming he had any.
The sun had set by the time they went outside, and the groups of green and white people had gone indoors for the night. Van Veeteren let Mathilde Ubrecht choose the route, and they set off slowly in the direction of the pond at the other end of the grounds. North-west, unless he was mistaken. The evening breeze, the gentle whispering he had heard in the forest as he made his way up to Wolgershuus, had now died away altogether; the only noise remaining was their steps on the gravel, and Mathilde Ubrecht’s slightly strained breathing. There was a faint aura of tension over her movements, and he was careful to keep a half-metre behind her so as not to influence her route and possible decisions.
Nor did he say a word until they came to the artificial pond with water lilies and softly murmuring water trickling out of a mythological bronze statue. They sat down on one of the brown-coloured benches and Van Veeteren lit a cigarette.
‘I have three questions,’ he said. ‘Your silence is protecting a murderer. I take it for granted that you will give me honest answers.’
Mathilde Ubrecht didn’t react. Didn’t even indicate in any way that she had heard what he’d said. He inhaled deeply on his cigarette and braced himself.
‘Question number one,’ he said. ‘Do you know who murdered Clarissa Heerenmacht?’
Silence. He contemplated the dark forest over the top of the high wall. She’s not going to answer, he thought.
‘No,’ she said.
Van Veeteren nodded. Allowed a minute to pass. Stubbed out his cigarette.
‘Number two,’ he said. ‘Do you know what happened to Katarina Schwartz?’
Another wait. Then she took a deep breath; he could hear the irregular wheezing in her bronchial tubes.
‘No.’
‘Thank you,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Oscar Yellinek Do you know where he is?’
She paused longer this time, but when the answer eventually came it sounded just as definite as the previous ones.
‘No.’
He sat for a while, mulling things over.
‘Is there anything else you want to tell me?’
Instead of answering she stood up and made a gesture indicating that she wanted to go back indoors. He nodded, and they started to walk back through the increasingly blue silence.
Matthorst was waiting for them at the entrance, and Van Veeteren realized he must have been watching them through the window.
He didn’t go inside with her, merely handed her over to a carer. But nevertheless he had a moment’s eye contact with her before she vanished through the door, and it was that farewell look that accompanied him all the way back.
Through the hospital grounds. Through the dark forest. Along the sparsely lit road back to the little town.
He had received three negative replies to his three questions. But also a look that said… Well, what did it say?
Intuitively – before he had begun to analyse and weigh everything up – he had no doubt about the answer:
I’ve told you the truth. Believe me.
But then it went off the rails. Did he dare to trust her? Did he really dare to believe that this mad priestess – or whatever epithet one chose to hang around her neck – really didn’t have any information worth telling him?
Be it about the murder, or the girl who had disappeared, or the shepherd who had done the same thing?
He knew that everything depended on his judgement of these matters. And of course it wasn’t out of the question that she had given him a mixed bag of answers – served him up two truths and one lie, or vice versa, and as he strolled slowly back to the little town, he had the impression that his journey was not unlike the usual tightrope walk – along the blurred and tarnished borderline between true and false.
How far could he trust her? How far could he trust her three negative replies? How much was his intuition worth on this occasion?
And when shortly afterwards he sat down in the dining room at Grimm’s Hotel, he still didn’t know. But nevertheless, he had made a few decisions.
For after all, somebody needed to make interpretations and solve doubts. Mene tekel.
Mene mene tekel.
23
Suijderbeck ignored the warning notice, instead flung the gate open wide so that the whole fence shuddered. Sure enough, half a second later two fifty-kilogram German shepherds came racing round the corner of the house.
Suijderbeck stopped.
‘Sit!’ he roared when the beasts were only two metres away and the adrenaline swirled like a cloud of steam around their jowls.
It had the same effect as usual. The dogs were transformed instantly into two phlegmatic black sheep whose only ambition seemed to be to sink down into the earth at the feet of their newly acquired master.
‘Shit-scared cowards,’ muttered Suijderbeck and continued along the gravel path.
A woman in cut-off jeans and a checked man’s shirt came out onto the patio, fists clenched by her sides. Suijderbeck paused and looked her up and down. Realized that a single barked command wouldn’t work in her case.
Although it would have been fun to try. No doubt about that.
‘Mrs Kuijpers?’ he asked instead.
‘And who the devil are you?’
‘Suijderbeck. Police,’ said Suijderbeck, walking up the steps with his hand outstretched politely to greet her.
‘ID,’ said the woman, instead of shaking hands.
Suijderbeck fished it out of his inside pocket. When he held it up ten centimetres in front of the woman’s face, he could smell the strong drink on her breath. He decided to remove his silk gloves.
‘I have a few questions to ask you,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come with me in the car, or can we sort it out here?’
‘What the hell?’ said the woman. ‘Coming here and-’
‘It’s about the murder at the summer camp,’ snapped Suijderbeck, interrupting her and gesturing with his hand towards the forest and the road he’d just come driving along. ‘I assume you’ve heard what’s happened.’
‘Of course.’ She immediately seemed rather more tractable, he noticed. ‘Er, please sit down.’
She sat down on one of the plastic chairs on the patio, and Suijderbeck sat down opposite her.
‘But we haven’t done anything,’ she said without being prompted. ‘I mean, Henry came out last spring, and since then we’ve lived like angels out here.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Suijderbeck.
‘Who the hell is it?’ a gruff-sounding man’s voice enquired from inside the house.
‘The police!’ shouted the woman in a tone pitched somewhere between hope and despair.
The man appeared in the doorway. A copy of his wife, in fact, Suijderbeck noted. Big, powerful, the worse for wear. Approaching fifty it seemed.
Mind you, only the woman sported bleached hair and a nose ring.
‘Kuijpers,’ said the man, extending a hairy hand. ‘I’m as innocent as a newly wed virgin.’
The wheezing splutter was presumably laughter. Suijderbeck lit a cigarette. What a pair of idiots, he thought. If I just hold my tongue, they’ll have confessed to illicit distilling and receiving stolen goods within a quarter of an hour.
‘Anyway,’ said Kuijpers. ‘I gather it’s about that poor girl.’
‘Yes,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘Do you know anything about it?’
They both shook their heads. The woman hiccuped and put her hand over her mouth.
‘What a bloody mess,’ said Kuijpers. ‘No, we’ve had no contact with them. As for that creeping Jesus on the run… No, I’m at a loss for words.’
‘There was another police officer here a few days ago,’ said the woman.
‘I know,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘I just want to check a few things.’
‘Well?’ said the man, scratching at his crotch.
Suijderbeck took out his notebook and thumbed through a few pages.
‘We know nothing about it,’ said the woman nervously.
‘Don’t harp on about it,’ said the man.
‘Hmm,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘So you haven’t spoken to any of them? Not to the girls nor to the leaders? Not at all during the summer? The camp is less than two kilometres away from here.’
The man shook his head again.
‘A little group of them came here once or twice,’ said the woman. ‘Picking blueberries or something, but the dogs kept most of them away, you could say.’
She nodded her head at where the German shepherds were prowling around restlessly.
‘Most of them,’ she said again, to be on the safe side.
‘All we’ve done is drive past the summer camp on our way to town,’ said the man. ‘As for talking to ’em? No thank you… I can’t say I’m surprised at what’s happened, hell no. Randy old buggers like that fucking priest – there’s no saying what they can get up to.’
Suijderbeck began to draw a fat priest in his notebook.
‘What were you doing last Sunday night?’ he asked. ‘I’m referring to Sunday last week, the night the girl was murdered.’
‘What?’ said the man. ‘All night? I was at home of course. As usual.’
‘You didn’t have any visitors?’
Kuijpers shook his head, and looked enquiringly at his wife.
‘No,’ said the woman. ‘We were on our own here.’
‘Do you remember hearing anybody drive past during th
e night?’
‘No,’ said the man. ‘That other cop asked that as well, but we didn’t hear a thing. Mind you, we were asleep.’
‘I don’t suppose many cars come past your house?’ Suijderbeck asked, looking for somewhere to stub out his cigarette. He eventually hit upon a shrivelled pot plant standing next to his wooden leg.
‘Two or three a week,’ said the man, flashing his teeth. Presumably it was a smile.
‘But you don’t remember anything from that night?’
‘Not a bloody thing,’ said the man.
‘Do you have any children?’
‘Eh?’ said the man.
‘We have a daughter,’ said the woman. ‘Her name’s Ewa, and she moved out, er, how long ago is it now?’
‘Four years ago,’ said the man. ‘She’s twenty-four now. She was twenty when she buggered off.’
‘With a foreigner,’ added his wife.
‘I’m not her real father,’ said Kuijpers.
Suijderbeck noted it all down.
‘I see,’ he said, and thought for a while. ‘And there’s nothing else you could tell us that you think might be of use to us?’
Kuijpers frowned and his wife pulled anxiously at her nose ring.
‘No… No, I can’t think of anything at all.’
‘What do you do for a living?’
‘I’m off sick,’ said the man, holding his back.
‘Ceramics,’ said the woman. ‘He has a little pottery. And he paints a bit as well.’
Suijderbeck nodded and put away his notebook. Squinted up at the sky.
‘It’s hot,’ he said. ‘It must be an advantage to live so close to the lake. I suppose you have a boat, do you?’
‘Of course,’ said the man. ‘We do a bit of fishing as well, but that used to be better than it is now. What with all the effluents and the rest of the bloody shit…’
‘Yes,’ said Suijderbeck, ‘there’s a lot of shit around nowadays. No, I mustn’t impose upon you any longer.’
He stood up.
‘Anyway, many thanks,’ he said. ‘What were you inside for, by the way?’
