by Håkan Nesser
Typical, Verlangen thought. Born a bastard, always a bastard. He didn’t even bother to look down and see if he might be pouring the coffee onto a passer-by.
He adjusted the back of his seat so that he could lean back in comfort, took out the sport section of the Allgemejne and checked his watch. A quarter to ten.
So there we are, then, he thought. Out working again.
When he had read even the obituaries for the second time and smoked about ten cigarettes, Verlangen began to regret his decision to have an alcohol-free day.
It was twenty minutes past eleven, and he reconsidered his position and adjusted his abstinence to the morning. Surely he could allow himself a couple of beers with his lunch – always assuming he had any lunch – after enduring these blue-grey hours keeping an eye on his suspect. It would be as boring as meditations in a Buddhist monastery. A good friend of Verlangen’s had gone off on one of those jaunts a few years ago. Tibet or Nepal, or some such bloody place . . .
Hennan was also more or less invisible. He had appeared once more in the window, but that was all. Stood motionless for a few seconds, staring up at the clouds as if he were thinking hard about something. Or perhaps just suffered a minor stroke. Then he had turned away and vanished from Verlangen’s horizon.
His prey. The object of his surveillance. The reason why Verlangen was sitting around here in his worn-out Japanese oven of a car frittering away his worn-out life for three hundred guilders a day. Carpe diem, my arse.
He returned to thinking about Hennan. The impressions he had registered of him – not very many, to be sure – during the preliminary investigation into his crimes a dozen years ago.
The actual process had been quite painless. Once a few underlings had been pressurized into starting talking, the proof of Jaan G. Hennan’s misdeeds had been overwhelming. Over a number of years he had bought and sold cannabis, heroin and amphetamines via couriers, built up an efficient network and had probably tucked away a million or two – especially in view of the fact that he seemed not to have been a drug user himself.
Not an especially remarkable story, in other words, but it was mainly thanks to the assiduous efforts of Verlangen and his colleague Müller that the case had been successfully concluded. That G had got what he deserved – two years and six months – and that as a result it was presumably highly unlikely that they – G and Verlangen – would ever exchange birthday or Christmas cards. Not even if they lived for another five hundred years.
He recalled Hennan’s ice-cold, almost personal contempt during the interrogations. His unreasonable refusal to ascribe any kind of moral aspects to his dirty work. ‘There’s no space inside G for morals,’ Müller had once suggested, and there was something in that. His self-confidence – and the desire for revenge that occasionally flared up in his dark, somewhat oscillating gaze – had been such that one simply could not sweep it aside.
And his comments. Like some forgotten B-film from the forties: ‘I’ll be back one of these days. You’d better look out then, you damned cretins!’
Or: ‘Don’t think I’ll forget you. You think you have won something, but this is only the beginning of a defeat for you. Believe you me, you bloody lackeys, clear off now and leave me in peace!’
Self-assured? Huh, that was not nearly a strong enough term for it. Thinking back now, Verlangen couldn’t recall anybody or anything more stubborn and egotistic during all the years he had served in the police force. Fourteen of them. There was something genuinely threatening about Jaan G. Hennan, wasn’t that the top and bottom of it? A sort of slowly smouldering hatred that simply could not be shrugged off. A bone-chilling promise of reprisals and retribution. Obviously, threats of various kinds were bread and butter as far as police officers were concerned; but in Hennan’s case they had seemed unusually real. Nothing less than a form of evil. If Hennan had been an illness rather than a person, he would have been a cancer, Verlangen thought: no doubt about it.
A malignant tumour in the brain.
He shook his head and sat up straight. He could feel pains coming on at the bottom of his spine, and decided that a short walk was called for. Just a little stroll to the square and back: that was no more than fifty metres or so, and he could do that without even letting his prey out of his sight.
In any case, if Hennan was really interested in shaking him off his trail, it would be the easiest thing in the world. All he would need to do was to nip out of the rear of the building and vanish. No problem.
But why would he want to do that? He didn’t even know he was being watched.
And the man keeping him under observation had no idea why he was doing so.
Good God, thought Maarten Verlangen as he closed the car door. Give me two reasons for staying sober in this world we live in.
At half past twelve Jaan G. Hennan went out for lunch. Verlangen left his car once again, and followed him over the square and to a restaurant called Cava del Popolo. Hennan chose a window table, while Verlangen sat down in a booth further back in the premises. There were not many customers, despite the fact that it was lunchtime. The shadow had a good view of the person he was shadowing, and optimistically ordered two beers to go with the pasta special of the day.
Hennan sat there for forty minutes, and all that happened was that he read a newspaper, ate some kind of fish soup and drank a small bottle of white wine. Verlangen also managed a coffee and a cognac, and it was with a pious hope of being able to sleep for an hour or even an hour-and-a-half that he walked back to his car.
And that is exactly what happened in fact. He woke up at about half past two when the sun finally forced its way through the clouds and found its way in through his dirty windscreen. It was like an oven inside the car, and he noticed that his intake of alcohol had begun to hammer nails into his skull. He checked that Hennan’s dark blue Saab was still parked where it had been before, then walked down to the kiosk in front of the town hall and bought a beer and a bottle of mineral water.
When he had finished drinking them it was ten minutes past three. The sun had continued to dominate the afternoon, and his clothes were clinging stickily to his body. Hennan had appeared in the window again for a few seconds with a telephone receiver apparently glued to his ear, and a traffic warden had been snooping around in the hope of being able to allocate a ticket. But that was all.
Verlangen took off his socks and put them in the glove compartment. Living felt slightly easier, but not a lot. He lit his twenty-fifth cigarette of the day, and wondered if he could think of something to do.
After number twenty-six, the building had still not exploded and it had not become any cooler. Verlangen walked as far as the telephone kiosk outside the butcher’s and phoned his employer. She answered after one-and-a-half rings.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘It’s good that you’ve rung. How’s it going?’
‘Excellent,’ said Verlangen. ‘Like a dance. I didn’t think there was much point in ringing the first morning. He’s in his office, and he’s been there all day, in fact.’
‘I know,’ said Barbara Hennan. ‘I’ve just spoken to him on the telephone. He’s coming home in an hour.’
‘You don’t say?’ said Verlangen.
‘Yes I do. That’s what he said, at least.’
I see, thought Verlangen. So why the hell should I hang around here, waiting for death to knock on my door?
‘I think you can pack it in for today,’ said fru Hennan. ‘We’ll be together all evening, so it will be okay if you start keeping an eye on him again tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Tomorrow afternoon?’
‘Yes. If you are in place after lunch tomorrow, and keep an eye on what he gets up to during the afternoon and the evening . . . especially in the evening . . . Well, it’s especially important for me that you don’t let him out of your sight then.’
Verlangen thought that over for two seconds.
‘I’m with you,’ he said. ‘Your wish is my command. I’ll give you another report
the day after tomorrow, will that be okay?’
‘That will be fine,’ said Barbara Hennan, and hung up.
He stayed for a moment or two in the stuffy telephone kiosk, then noticed that the female traffic warden’s funereal grey uniform was approaching, and he hurried off to his car.
Life, where is thy sting? he thought, switched on the engine and drove off.
Although he had more time than was available in the forecourt of Hell, Verlangen chose not to drive back to Maardam. The alternative of clean sheets was too tempting, and at a quarter to five he checked in at the Belveder, a simple but clean hotel in Lofterstraat, behind the town hall.
Between seven and eight he had dinner in the sepia-brown dining room together with a swimming club from Warsaw. Some sort of ragout that reminded him vaguely of his former mother-in-law. Perhaps not so much of her as of the Sunday dinners she used to prepare, and it was a memory he could have done without. He bought two dark beers to take up to his room, managed to overcome an increasing desire to telephone his daughter, then fell asleep in the middle of an American police series some time between eleven and half past.
The sheets were cool and newly ironed, and even if the day ended up being somewhat less alcohol-free than originally envisaged, at least he was not quite up to the limit of ten beers a day.
Quite some way short of that, in fact.
4
The restaurant was called Columbine, and after two swigs of beer it looked like any other restaurant in any country of the world.
It was evening at last. The old Maasleitner clock hanging over the bottles of whisky at the bar showed twenty-five to eight. On this completely cloud-free Thursday Hennan had stayed on at the office until seven o’clock, for some damned reason or other. Verlangen had been feeling worn out since about four.
But he was used to exhaustion. It had been his constant companion for the last four years, and sometimes it felt as if it was time – nothing else – that got on top of him. A sort of old, smelly item of clothing that he couldn’t wait to cast off. To sleep off the hangover, wake up to something different and at long last put on a new era. In which the seconds and minutes actually tasted of something.
But there was never a new era the following morning. Just the same old unwashed garment that clung stickily to his skin, day after day, year after year. There was nothing he could do about it, and the few evenings he dared to go to bed in a sober state it was always impossible to get a wink of sleep.
He drained his glass and looked over towards Hennan. There were only two tables between them, but sitting at one of them was an unusually loud and exuberant group: four chubby young men aged around twenty-eight, each with a moustache, who repeatedly broke out into roars of laughter, leaning back on their chairs and slamming their fists down on the table. Judging by their broad accents Verlangen concluded that they came from somewhere down among the southern provinces. Groenstadt, most probably. Or Balderslacht, somewhere of that sort.
There were quite a lot of other customers, so a certain degree of concentration was needed in order to keep a close eye on the object of his surveillance. Despite everything. But on the other hand, it seemed fairly obvious that Hennan intended to have a meal and stay put for quite some time. He had hung his jacket over the back of his chair, and was working his way through the menu while sipping away at a colourless drink – presumably a gin and tonic – and seemed to be in no hurry at all. Perhaps he was waiting for somebody: the seat opposite him at his table for two was empty. Maybe a woman, Verlangen thought. That would be the most likely possibility, after all. And that was the outcome he had predicted from the start.
Anyway, all he could do was remain where he was, and see what happened. Verlangen decided to have a meal as well. He attracted a waiter’s attention, ordered another beer and asked for a menu. The way things looked, he might well be sitting there for quite some time.
Two hours later Jaan G. Hennan was still alone at his table. Verlangen had passed close by him twice on the way to the gents, and established that his quarry seemed to have indulged in a substantial meal. At least three courses and two different wines, and just now he was puffing away at a thin, black cigar, gazing out through the window and somewhat absent-mindedly twirling around a brandy glass. As far as Verlangen had seen he hadn’t exchanged words with a single person all evening, apart from the waiter. He had been to the toilet once, but what the hell was buzzing around inside his head – or why he was hanging around here instead of spending the time at home with his lovely wife – well, goodness only knew.
At least it didn’t look as if he was waiting – or had been waiting – for somebody. He had checked his watch now and then, true enough, but apart from that there had been no indication that a companion had failed to turn up: no calls from the telephone in the lobby, no delays before placing an order, no apologetic explanations to the waiter. Nothing at all.
Nor had he spent time reading a book or a newspaper. Neither had Verlangen, come to that, but then he was there on business, as it were. For a few minutes he toyed with the idea of walking past Hennan and spilling beer over the back of his neck. Or trying to bribe somebody else to do that. There was no shortage of slightly drunk young people sitting around, and no doubt it would have been possible to persuade one of them.
Simply in order to make something happen. Verlangen’s feeling of being worn out had caught up with him again. He had eaten something that was alleged to have been veal – but in that case it must have been from the world’s oldest calf.
He had washed it down with four or five beers, and in the end given way to temptation and followed Jaan G. Hennan’s example. Coffee and cognac.
He lit another cigarette, despite the fact that his previous one was still glowing away in the ashtray.
Looked at the clock: ten minutes to ten.
Bugger this for a lark, he thought as he turned away yet another customer who wondered if the seat opposite him was taken. Drink up your damned cognac and pay your bill! And get the hell out of here!
It was just as he looked up after thinking these pious thoughts that he saw Hennan was on his way to his table.
Eh, what’s all this? he had time to think.
‘May I join you?’
‘Please do.’
‘Hennan. Jaan G. Hennan.’
‘Verlangen.’
Hennan pulled out the chair and sat down.
‘Verlangen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not Maarten Verlangen, surely?’
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘I thought so.’
‘What do you mean? I’m not at all sure . . .’
‘Sure about what?’
‘That I know who you are.’
Hennan put his cigar down on the ashtray, and leaned forward with both elbows on the table.
‘Come off it, Maarten Verlangen. I know all too bloody well who you are, and you know just as well who I am. Why are you sitting here?’
Verlangen took a sip of cognac and thought for a moment.
‘That’s a very good question.’
‘You think so? But you’re welcome to answer it, in any case.’
‘Why I’m sitting here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because I’ve had dinner, of course.’
‘Really? And is that the only reason?’
Verlangen suddenly felt anger boiling up inside him.
‘How about you telling me what the hell you’re after? I haven’t the faintest idea who you are, nor what you’re getting at. If you don’t have a satisfactory explanation, might I suggest that you clear off before I ask the staff to throw you out!’
Hennan sat there without saying a word, just screwing up his eyes slightly. No trace of a smile. Something told Verlangen that there ought to have been one. He noticed that he had instinctively clenched his fists and pushed his chair back a couple of centimetres.
So that he could stand up quickly and defend himself if necessary.
Do
n’t be stupid, he thought when he realized what his imagination was pushing him into. He can’t start fighting inside here, for God’s sake. That would be pure . . .
‘Fuzz. You are still the fuzz, I take it?’
Verlangen hesitated for a tenth of a second, then shook his head.
‘What about you?’
‘Eh?’
‘What about you? What do you do? What did you say your name was, by the way?’
Hennan made no reply, simply twisted his lips into a contemptuous grimace. Verlangen looked away. Leaned back and stared up at the ceiling instead. There followed a few moments of silence.
‘Why are you no longer a copper? Did you get the sack?’
Verlangen shrugged.
‘I packed it in.’
‘Voluntarily?’
‘Of course. Explain what the hell it is you want, or go back to your own table. I’ve no desire to sit here any longer and be . . .’
He hesitated as he searched for the right word.
‘Be what?’
‘Bullied.’
He clenched his fists and prepared to defend himself again.
‘You were a real touchy bastard, always keen to claim you were being harassed by me,’ said Hennan, and suddenly his face broke out into a beaming smile. ‘But in fact I’m the one who should be feeling pissed off with you. Not the other way round.’
Verlangen lit a cigarette.
‘Pissed off? Why?’
‘Jaan G. Hennan. Do you still claim that you don’t remember?’
Verlangen shook his head. A little too fiercely – he could feel the room shaking. Damn and blast, he thought. I’m too drunk.
‘I’ve no bloody idea.’
Hennan rested his chin on his hand and seemed to be thinking things over.
‘Shall we go and sit in the bar instead? Then we can sort this out. Let me buy you a whisky.’
Verlangen hesitated briefly, then nodded cautiously and stood up.
‘You can have ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Not a damned second more.’
