The Inspector and Silence ivv-5

by Håkan Nesser

  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 respectively. 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 a 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 vent
uring 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, yawning. ‘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?’

  ‘Well,’ said Reinhart, ‘I suppose all that’s left for me is the young ladies of a more tender age.’

  ‘Good hunting,’ said Jung, standing up.

  ‘Many thanks,’ said Reinhart. ‘See you later this afternoon.’

  Belle Moulder looked sullen and scared. And as insignificant as they come, Reinhart thought, especially as he’d spent over two hours on the phone and in the car in order to get to her.

  After the dramatic break-up of the camp at Waldingen, the girl had evidently spent a couple of days at home in Stamberg before being despatched to an aunt in Aarbegen with similar religious convictions. She was expected to spend the rest of the summer holiday there saying her prayers, bathing in the river and undertaking long, invigorating bicycle rides supervised by two corpulent cousins – in order to lick her wounds and recover from the traumatic days in the Sorbinowo forests, one assumed.

  But that was no criticism of the Pure Life. God forbid.

  Edwina Moulder welcomed him in shorts and on a yellow garden hammock, and it soon became obvious that she had no intention of leaving her niece alone with the police officer.

  Not for a second, Reinhart decided on the basis of the determined expression on her face. He spent a couple of moments considering the circumstances and his subsequent strategy, then he fell into line and sat down on the garden chair designated for him, under the parasol.

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ he began, ‘but we have to find the madman who’s committed these murders.’

  ‘We understand that,’ said Edwina Moulder.

  ‘Good,’ said Reinhart, glancing at the girl. ‘I had intended to take Belle with me to the police station – but naturally it would be better if we could sort things out here instead.’

  ‘Belle really has told you everything she knows, and besides-’

  Reinhart raised a warning finger.

  ‘Steady on now. Your niece was one of those who obstructed the police more than anybody else at the beginning of our investigation, so everything depends on whether or not she is prepared to cooperate.’

  ‘What…?’

  ‘As long as you don’t interrupt, you are welcome to sit in on our conversation,’ Reinhart explained. ‘But I must insist that you don’t say anything. Is that clear?’

  ‘What? You come here and-’

  ‘Is that clear?’ Reinhart said again.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Edwina Moulder.

  Reinhart took a sip of the watery coffee. Adjusted his chair so that he didn’t need to look at the very suntanned aunt, and could concentrate on the girl instead.

  ‘Belle Moulder?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to the police several times already about these most unpleasant goings-on…’

  The girl nodded at him, without looking him in the eye.

  ‘And to start with, you behaved very badly – is that right?’

  Belle Moulder examined her thumbnails.

  ‘But let’s not worry about that now. I take it for granted that you are telling the truth, and helping me as much as you can. If I notice that you are making things up or refusing to answer, I’ll have to drive you into town and interrogate you at the police station. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘Excellent. What I’m most i
nterested in is what happened that Sunday evening when Clarissa Heerenmacht went missing. I take it you remember that pretty clearly?’

  ‘Fairly.’

  The girl shrugged, and tried to look nonchalant. Reinhart couldn’t help thinking about Winnifred and the child they were expecting.

  Surely it wasn’t going to be one like this?

  He cleared his throat and tried to banish the thought.

  ‘Why did you leave Clarissa alone down there at the bathing rock?’

  ‘She wanted to be on her own.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Had you quarrelled?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was Clarissa upset when you left her alone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘She was the same as always.’

  ‘What was she like when she was the same as always?’

  ‘Er, like she always was.’

  Reinhart took another sip of coffee. It hadn’t become any better.

  ‘And then you spoke to Yellinek.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You had a conversation with Yellinek later that evening. When was that?’

  ‘Er, it… it was after evening prayers.’

  ‘What time would that be?’

  ‘Half past nine… A quarter to ten, maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been asked about that before. We don’t… didn’t… keep all that close a check on time at Waldingen. We didn’t need to, we were always called up when necessary… But it was round about then.’

  ‘Between half past nine and a quarter to ten?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Clarissa.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’d gone missing, of course.’

  ‘You knew that she’d gone missing?’

  ‘Of course. She wasn’t there for dinner. Not there for PT, nor for prayers.’

  ‘What did Yellinek want to know?’

  Belle Moulder hesitated for a second.

  ‘If I knew anything. I mean, nobody had seen her since we were down by the rock – I suppose I was the last person to see her.’