by Håkan Nesser
His holiday.
The forthcoming holiday and the trip with Maureen and Sophie. That’s the root of the matter! he thought vaguely. Something he’d read, presumably.
Maureen. Apart from a few short breaks, they had been together for four years now, but during all that time they had never decided to live together – properly as it were. Naturally everything depended on a series of different factors and circumstances, but above all – there could be virtually no doubt at all about this – it was due to his own cowardice and the ambivalence he displayed.
Always assuming you could display an ambivalence?
If so, I’d be the one to do it, Jung thought.
But there wasn’t long to go now, he knew that. Making a decision, that is. There comes a point when you have to either push ahead with things, or walk away; even a newly promoted detective inspector knew that. And this joint holiday – three weeks touring England and Scotland by car with Maureen and her fifteen-year-old daughter – well, this was one of those points. No doubt about it, none at all. Needless to say it was as unspoken as many other things in their relationship, but nevertheless it was as clear as… crystal. Yes, it was crystal clear.
He sighed and took a sip of the juice he’d just been served by a blonde nurse.
He liked them, of course. Both of them. Perhaps he was even in love with Maureen, sometimes at least, and probably he would never – never ever – feel stronger emotions for any other human being. He didn’t think so, anyway. So why hesitate? Why?
But even if he’d been able to grasp why he hesitated, would that have made things any easier?
Perhaps not, he thought. And when he tried to imagine a future – as middle age approached – without Maureen or Sophie, the images he could conjure up in his bachelor mind’s eye were not especially cheerful.
Football. Beer. One-night stands, as Rooth used to call them. Lonely evenings in front of the television, and depressing piles of dirty laundry he could never bring himself to wash. And annoying telephone calls from his senile mother, wondering why she never had any grandchildren to knit scarves for at Christmas.
Get knitting, he used to tell her. It won’t be long now. (She never remembered anything they’d said.)
The same kind of images he used to conjure up before he met Maureen, in other words. Just slightly older and greyer in tone.
So why hesitate?
Maureen’s strength? Her calm determination? Would that be a threat? Sophie’s dissatisfaction with school, and her periods of unreasonable moping?
The fear of being dominated?
None of them were good reasons.
Giving up something although he no longer knew what it was? Was that what it was all about?
Disappearing? Your life is a footprint in the water, Rein-hart used to say. So why did anything matter?
Oh bugger it! Jung thought and emptied his glass of juice. I can toss a coin. Or maybe ask her and rely on her judgement being better than mine. Yes, that would be a neat solution.
It would be just as well to sort it out before we go away, he decided just as Matthorst came out to announce that Ulriche Fischer was ready to receive him.
So, now it would be good if he could concentrate for a while. What had Reinhart said? Reinhart, who was even going to become a father.. .
Diffidence?
Let’s go, then.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, dropping his notebook on the floor. ‘I’m sorry if I’m intruding on you, but the others have sent me here.’
She didn’t respond. It’s possible that the two wrinkles between the sides of her nose and the sides of her mouth narrowed slightly, but that was a highly doubtful observation.
‘I have a few questions, but, obviously, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.’
He held his pen sideways in his mouth while leafing through his notebook.
‘I used to be a member of a church when I was younger, but then my mother forbade me to go there any more.’
‘Forbade you?’
‘Yes. My name’s Jung, by the way.’
She stared doubtfully at him, but then her eyes glazed over again.
The first verse, Jung thought. How the hell can she look so pale in weather like this?
‘What I liked most about it was the feeling of liberation,’ he explained. ‘I was only about fifteen or sixteen at the time, so I didn’t really understand the essence of the faith, but I liked the atmosphere. The light, as it were. But that’s not what we’re supposed to be talking about…’
‘Are you winding me up?’ said Ulriche Fischer.
Jung blushed. That was a trick he had developed over the years, and now he could produce one in less than a second.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t the intention. I’ll ask you my questions now.’
Ulriche Fischer muttered something he couldn’t make out.
‘They’re probably the same questions as you’ve been asked before, I’m afraid. Some of them, at least. I’ve only just been put on this case – but I know quite a bit about it, of course. It’s awful, absolutely awful; I really do hope we can catch whoever did it before he strikes again. You don’t have any children yourself, do you, Miss Fisch? I mean Fischer.’
She started to answer, but it got no further than her throat.
‘Nor do I,’ said Jung. ‘But it would be fun to have some eventually. What they want to know this time is when – exactly when – during that Sunday night your priest went missing. Or was it on Monday morning?’
She swallowed again. And raised her eyes slightly.
‘And if he told you what his plan was.’
‘…’
‘For the moment they’re inclined to think that you don’t know where he is. That he somehow kept it secret in order to protect you. That would be quite a noble thing to do, in a way.’
‘…’
‘Let’s face it, it’s not all that odd for him to hide away. Maybe they’d be willing to give him some sort of amnesty…’
‘What’s that?’ asked Ulriche Fischer.
‘I don’t really know,’ said Jung. ‘I’m just trying to interpret the mood. Nobody’s said that straight out.’
He waited. Avoided looking at her while he scratched his wrists a little nervously. She’s not going to say a word, he thought. Why the hell should she decide to talk to me when she’s been sitting here and saying nothing for… how long is it now?
A week?
No, more. It must be about ten days by now.
Waste of time. He sighed.
‘It was in the evening,’ she said suddenly.
He gave a start and didn’t dare to say anything else. Five seconds passed.
‘It was in the evening,’ she repeated. ‘We didn’t see him after that.’
‘Really?’ said Jung.
‘He’s got nothing to do with the death of the girls,’ she said after a further pause that lasted so long Jung thought she had already put the lid on any continuation.
‘Nothing at all?’ he asked.
‘No.’
Silence again. He wondered if he ought to drop his notebook once more, have a coughing fit, or merely repeat his blush; but none of those possibilities seemed adequate, and his repertoire was somewhat limited after all.
‘About what time was it?’ he asked in the end. ‘When you last saw him, I mean.’
She made a strange gesture with her arms. Or rather her shoulders. As if she were rustling her wings, Jung thought, and almost smiled. Practising to be an angel.
‘About half past nine.’
‘But how can you be sure that the other two sisters didn’t meet him later than that?’
‘Because we are one spirit and one flesh.’
‘Eh?’ said Jung.
She’s mad, he thought. How the hell could I forget that she’s mad?
‘I think I understand,’ he said. ‘You’re referring to the Trinity.’
Her mouth suddenly formed a smile, and he respon
ded with a blush of the first order.
‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand all this. It’s so long since I was a member of that church.’
The smile withered and died.
‘But Good Lord,’ he said. ‘That means that nobody has a clue about where he is? Or have you heard from him at all?’
It was clear that she had said all she was going to say. That reference to the spirit and the flesh was intended to be the punchline, he guessed. The smile she had produced was clearly no more than an expression of lunacy in general.
He thought for a moment, then gave up and began to reel off the questions in his notebook – all eighteen of them – but none of them received an answer.
Not a single answer, and not even a puckered brow.
Presumably she was feeling sorry for herself. Regretting having opened her mouth at all.
All the time he maintained the same irreproachable care and correctness, even though he was thoroughly fed up by the end. As a counter to her silence, every time she ignored one of his questions he drew a clear and very audible line in his notebook, and there was something in these short, sharp sounds – repeated over and over again and as inexorable as a razor blade – that he found very attractive.
Like the cuts made by a surgeon, he thought.
Ten minutes later he left Wolgershuus. The whole visit, including his private thoughts under the chestnut tree, had taken less than an hour, and it was hard to predict how much the fragments of information he had squeezed out of Ulriche Fischer were actually worth.
But of course there were others better qualified than himself to judge that.
Thought Inspector Jung with his usual becoming modesty, and began to walk back through the forest. There was a smell of warm resin among the pine trees, and before he had even caught a glimpse of the town of Sorbinowo, he could feel his shirt clinging to his back and his fluid balance declining.
If Reinhart hasn’t come back yet, I’ll go for a swim in the lake, he decided.
And I’ll have a beer.
32
After the conversation with Uri Zander, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren drove back to town and had lunch at the Stamberger Hof. It was nearly half past one when he started eating, and as he decided he needed at least three courses – pate, sole and figs in cognac – it was turned three by the time he’d finished.
After some hesitation (but the casting vote was dictated by considerations of the digestive process), he returned to his car and left Stamberg again. Drove in an easterly direction for fifteen minutes and then found, without a lot of effort, an attractive and shady slope covered in beech trees down to the River Czarna. With the aid of a blanket and a pillow he made a rudimentary bed, took off his shoes and lay down for a postprandial nap.
Once again he dreamed of a peaceful little antiquarian bookshop, a chestnut-haired woman and a sparkling blue sea, and when he woke up forty minutes later he recalled that he actually had a ticket for a flight due to leave Maardam in less than two days’ time. He sat up.
It was all very promising, both the dream and the future prospects. Especially in view of the fact that right now he was sitting by an unfamiliar sluggish river, watching a herd of similarly unfamiliar and sluggish cows gaping at him from the high grass on the other side.
What the hell am I doing? he asked himself, well aware that this was a very old and frequently asked question. Still unanswered.
Over a hundred kilometres away were an investigation team and a hundred reporters waiting for the outline of a double murderer to become clearer.
Or perhaps they were waiting for him – the notorious Chief Inspector Van Veeteren with only one unsolved case to his name – to winkle him out.
Or her?
He moved a couple of metres to one side, leaned against a beech trunk and suddenly remembered one of Mahler’s favourite quotations: To live your life is not as simple as to cross afield.
Probably Russian, he thought. It had that sort of ring about it.
Then he lit a cigarette and tried to sort out his thoughts.
Two girls.
Aged twelve and thirteen. Raped and murdered.
About a week between them. First Katarina Schwartz. Then Clarissa Heerenmacht. But found in reverse order.
Both residents of Stamberg. Both members of the obscure sect the Pure Life and attending the sect’s summer camp at Sorbinowo.
Pretty, slightly wild Sorbinowo.
And then the priest.
Shortly before the discovery of the younger girl’s dead body the alleged man of God, the church’s spiritual leader, Oscar Yellinek, goes up in smoke. The rest of those involved, the sect that is, seal their lips. The younger generation – about a dozen girls around the age of puberty – slowly start to thaw out, but what they have to say is not of much relevance to the murder mysteries.
Or is it? Van Veeteren wondered, watching one of the cows that had just turned its back on him and demonstrated how remarkably efficiently its digestive processes were functioning.
And she probably hasn’t even had figs in cognac for lunch, the chief inspector assumed before returning to his train of thought.
Had they missed something crucial in the tearful outpourings of the girls? Was there something more – something more deeply hidden – in all these testimonies about purity and self-deprivation and nudity? Apart from their dubious nature per se, that is?
He didn’t know. The images of the girls’ stylized behaviour as they bathed at the water’s edge that first day came back to his mind’s eye, and he wondered if there were images like that in the murderer’s baggage as well.
In the actual motive. In so far as it was meaningful to talk about a motive in a case like this. Perhaps, perhaps not; in any case, it was hardly something that could be developed usefully.
What about the women? The priestesses who kept an eye on everything, and presumably had a lot of information they could share but had chosen to remain silent. Was it possible that one of them was the killer? It was a possibility he had been keeping in reserve from the very beginning. Oh yes. A blank card hidden up his sleeve. A woman murderess?
Could one assume that it was one of them who had contacted the police and tipped them off?
Perhaps.
But in any case, surely to God it was obvious that they shared in the guilt?
Most probably, he decided.
The only question was: what? Guilty of what?
‘Oh hell!’ muttered Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. ‘I’m getting nowhere!’
For one bitter self-critical moment he realized that the cows on the other side of the river were probably not only a symbol of inaccessible wisdom – demiurges and all that sort of thing – but also a symbol of his own unrelieved inertia.
He lit a cigarette and changed track.
What about Figuera? he wondered.
Ewa Figuera? Hmm, he would have to track her down and find out why she was with the other three women in Przebuda’s photograph. What had she been doing in Waldingen the previous summer?
In view of the fact that he had solved the problem caused by the misspelling of her name – and the fact that he had obeyed his celebrated intuition and come to Stamberg – his efforts so far certainly hadn’t come to much.
Or was there a grain of gold dust hidden away inside the last couple of days’ conversations as well? Had these confused members of the congregation contributed something after all that he wasn’t in a position to notice?
Oh hell, Van Veeteren thought again. What a brilliant analyst I am! First I say A, then I say A can’t be right. All the time.
He sighed. For the moment he was unable to think about anything other than this dialectic, and the dark river that separated him from the cows.
Ergo? he thought gloomily. Could there be a clearer indication of the fact that it was time to hand in his police ID? Hardly.
He stood up and decided to go for a half-hour drive accompanied by Faure rather than this fruitless vegetating.
Then he would have to search through the telephone directory.
Okay. All in good time.
The half-hour became a whole one, and Faure received some assistance from Pergolesi. When the chief inspector parked behind Glossman’s it was seven o’clock already and the worst of the day’s heat was over. There was a fax waiting for him in reception, from Reinhart, but it only contained a bad joke along the lines that members of the investigation team who didn’t have a wooden leg seemed to have a wooden head instead. Van Veeteren threw it into the waste bin and asked for a telephone directory he could take up to his room. Plus the two obligatory beers.
‘You’ll find a directory in the desk drawer,’ explained the receptionist, who was as sleepy as ever. ‘In every room. Light or dark?’
‘The usual,’ said Van Veeteren, and was given one of each.
When he got to his room he lay down on the bed with the first bottle, the light one, and the local telephone directory – sure enough, he had found it in the desk drawer, underneath the Bible and some sheets of writing paper with the hotel’s logo.
He took a swig and started searching. It was not a thick directory. Stamberg probably had a population of about – what? Fifty thousand inhabitants? – and he found what he was looking for almost immediately. Evidently he still knew the alphabet.
As he scanned the rows of names, it came to him.
Nothing more than a tiny nudge, in fact. A brief little twitch in some lugubrious corner of his old, tired brain: but enough to tell him that something was falling into place at last.
Or rather, being set in motion.
And about time, for Christ’s sake, he thought.
He stared at the information for a few seconds. Then closed his eyes and leaned back against the pillows, trying to clear the junk and rubbish from his brain. Cows, priests and things like that. Lay there for quite a while without thinking a single thought.
And then they emerged from the slough of forgetfulness – two random comments he had heard one afternoon getting on for two weeks earlier.
Or was it in fact two different afternoons?
