The G File

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Personally, I’m on rather good form,’ maintained Van Veeteren as he gave his defeated opponent a helping hand back to the changing room. ‘But perhaps I don’t need to mention that.’

  Münster was breathing hard, but did not respond. Van Veeteren spent a few seconds trying to think of something sympathetic to say, but failed and thought it was better to say nothing. They showered, got changed and sat down in the cafeteria to drink a beer in one case and ice-water in the other, and to talk about Maarten Verlangen.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ wondered Van Veeteren. ‘Might there be something in it, do you think?’

  Three days had passed since Belle Vargas turned up at the antiquarian book shop, and Verlangen was just as missing now as he had been then. Münster drank half a litre of icewater, and looked doubtful.

  ‘As I understand it, it’s not possible to think anything,’ he said. ‘We made a few inquiries about Hennan, just as you suggested, Chief . . . Or rather, we tried to make some inquiries.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘We didn’t discover anything at all, despite the fact that Krause hammered away at the keyboard until his fingers nearly dropped off. He’s not the type to have a website, that Hennan character.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ said Van Veeteren.

  ‘He seems to have left the country a few months after the trial – in 1987, that is. After having collected the insurance money, of course, and . . . well, since then there has been no trace of him. Buenos Aires or Calcutta or Oslo? He could be anywhere in the world, all we can do is guess.’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ muttered Van Veeteren. ‘Presumably he’s acquired several new wives as well . . . It’s been fifteen years, after all. And I assume you’ve also drawn a blank with Verlangen?’

  Münster poured some more water into his glass, and breathed heavily.

  ‘Indeed. But he’s certainly not in Calcutta. Krause checked that train time, or whatever it was . . .’

  ‘It was a train time,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Possibly a bus, but I don’t think that’s likely. Aeroplanes leave at times ending in five or ten. From Sechshafen, at least . . . Or rather, that’s when they are supposed to leave, which isn’t exactly the same thing . . . But never mind that, we’ll say it was a train time.’

  ‘That’s all right by me,’ said Münster. ‘But in any case, there is no train due to leave Maardam at 14.42. Nor one due in at that time, in fact. Not according to the timetable, at least.’

  He rummaged around in his inside pocket and produced an envelope.

  ‘But as we are equipped with computers nowadays, well . . .’

  He handed the envelope over to Van Veeteren.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘A compilation,’ said Münster. ‘As you reckoned it was a train time, we looked up train times. On one sheet of paper you have all the stations in the country at which a train was due to leave at eighteen minutes to three. On the other sheet, stations where trains were due in at that time.’

  Van Veeteren folded out the sheets of paper and eyed the columns with the names of the stations somewhat sceptically.

  ‘For Christ’s sake . . .’ he said. ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

  Münster flung out his hands.

  ‘Don’t ask me. It only took a minute to get it, according to Krause. Anyway, that’s as far as we’ve got so far.’

  ‘Drink up that bloody water, and let’s get out of here,’ said Van Veeteren.

  A few days later, a Tuesday morning right at the beginning of May – and after having struggled with dreams involving G in one way or another for three nights in a row – he had had enough. He telephoned Belle Vargas and asked to meet her again. There was no other possible solution.

  It transpired that she was working as a physiotherapist at a private clinic just a few blocks away from Kupinskis gränd, and her lunch hour was at twelve. Van Veeteren suggested one of the pavement cafes in Kejmer Plejn since it was such fine weather, and she thought that was a splendid idea.

  She sounded rather hopeful, he thought as he hung up. He hoped she didn’t think he would be able to give her some news about her father.

  Indeed, he hoped instead that she might have something to tell him.

  But that was not the case. Maarten Verlangen was still just as much missing without trace as he had been for over a month now – or about roughly half that time if one accepted the telephone call to his grandson Torben as the last sign of life.

  So no real reason for optimism, thought Van Veeteren: but at least it was lovely weather. A warm breeze and twenty degrees or more in the shade. They found a table just underneath the statue of Alexander; and when they had settled down and ordered their food, he could see that she had given up.

  It was as simple as that. Belle Vargas had decided that her father was no longer alive. And that decision had given her a sort of strength – it was paradoxical, of course; but he recognized the phenomenon from his time as a detective chief inspector.

  For sorrow is easier to bear than uncertainty.

  In the long run, at least. There is no attitude you can adopt to cope with uncertainty. No method for handling it, he thought. But death is surrounded by rituals.

  ‘I know he’s dead,’ she said, as if to confirm his unstated suspicions.

  ‘Perhaps it’s best to assume that, yes.’

  She looked at him with an expression of mild surprise. He realized that she had expected him to suggest that he wasn’t.

  ‘I want . . . I mean, it seems to be important that we find him.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We spoke about this the other day, my husband and I . . . He had read somewhere that the burial ceremony is the oldest symbol of . . . well, of some kind of civilization. That we take care of our dead, and all that.’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Besides, it’s the only time in life that content and form coincide absolutely. It most certainly is important.’

  He could see that she didn’t really understand what he had said, but didn’t bother to spell it out.

  ‘I have a little request,’ he said instead.

  ‘A request?’

  ‘Yes. If you still want me to do what I can in connection with this case. Don’t expect anything, though. I’m an old man and out of practice – five years in a dusty old antiquarian bookshop doesn’t exactly spruce up your abilities, you must have no illusions about that.’

  She smiled.

  ‘I have the impression that you have a few mental faculties that are still working. What do you want me to help you with?’

  ‘I’d like to take a look at his flat.’

  She nodded.

  ‘The police have already been there.’

  ‘I know. I’m not assuming of course that I shall find anything they’ve missed, but it wouldn’t do any harm for me to take a look.’

  She hesitated for a moment.

  ‘It’s . . . It’s not a pretty sight.’

  ‘I don’t suspect for a moment that it is. But you have a key, I take it?’

  ‘I certainly do. And of course . . . Of course you are welcome to go and take a look if you can be bothered. I think I might even have the key with me now.’

  She rummaged around in her handbag, produced a bunch of keys inside a leather holder, and unhooked one of them.

  ‘I hope you don’t want me to be present when you go to the flat?’

  ‘Not if you will trust me to be there on my own.’

  ‘Of course I do. When . . . when had you thought of going there?’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘This evening. If I could take a look this evening, then . . .’

  ‘Then I shall call in at your bookshop tomorrow afternoon and collect the key,’ she said. ‘I’m most grateful for you taking time to look into this business. I shall pay you, of course, somehow or other. If you can—’

  ‘Nonsense!’ he said, interrupting her. ‘I don’t want any reward at
all. I’ve been involved with this old Hennan case for over fifteen years now. If there’s the slightest chance of casting new light on it, I’m only too grateful.’

  She looked at him with sudden interest.

  ‘I see. You mean it’s been haunting you as well? Not just my father?’

  Haunting? he thought. That was putting it a bit strongly, perhaps.

  ‘I haven’t been able to forget all about it, that’s for sure,’ he admitted.

  The moment he entered the flat in Heerbanerstraat and closed the door behind him, he was ready to agree with Belle Vargas’s judgement.

  Maarten Verlangen’s home was not a pretty sight.

  The hall was two square metres and furnished with a few daily newspapers spread out over the floor, a three-legged mahogany bureau and a cracked mirror. The kitchen was immediately off to the right, and the furniture there was classically simple: a kitchen table with a laminated top but without a cloth, two Windsor-style chairs and about two hundred empty bottles. The latter were all over the place – in crates on the floor, on the table, on the draining board, on top of the lopsided and buzzing refrigerator – he made up his mind not to open it in any circumstances.

  The bedroom was to the left. The Venetian blinds were down, but a dirty, dusky light filtered in even so since some of the laths were broken: he could make out an unmade bed and a bedside table, a stone-dead potted plant on a pedestal and a heap of unfolded clothes that presumably concealed some kind of chair.

  The living room contained some decent furniture. A lopsided glass-fronted bookcase, a table, a corduroy sofa and an armchair. A television set and a hi-fi system, both of them so covered in dust that they looked almost mouldy. A modern desk made of white-painted wood with an office chair on castors. On two of the walls were some rather shabby Van Gogh reproductions. The third was covered by a gigantic and somewhat blurred green beer poster, and the fourth comprised a dirty and milky window and a dirty and milky glass door leading out onto a tiny balcony overlooking a multistorey car park. Newspapers and magazines and advertising leaflets were lying everywhere – only on the desk was there some sign of order among the chaos. If you were trying hard to be kind, that is. Also on it were a telephone, a small, grey metal set of shelves with narrow horizontal pigeon-holes for invoices and other important documents that clutter life’s thorny path – and a spiral-bound writing pad (the one from which that page with the train time and the line about G had been torn out, Van Veeteren assumed). A few lottery tickets covered in scribbles suggested that even Maarten Verlangen had hopes for the future. Or had had, at least.

  But the flat was certainly not a pretty sight.

  Nor did the atmosphere appeal to one’s sense of smell, alas. There was a quite distinctive odour, Van Veeteren noted. A sweet-sour smell of old food left-overs, old unwashed clothes, filthy old floors, and old man.

  And that was all. Apart from a mouldy-smelling bathroom that he only peeped inside and established that the light wasn’t working.

  He stood in the living room, trying to make up his mind. Dammit all, he thought. I ought to, but I haven’t got the strength. What the hell am I doing here?

  Had he really thought he would be able to root around in this repulsive midden?

  If two CID officers had spent six hours rummaging around and not found anything that could be regarded as a clue, how many hours would a half-petrified bookseller need in order to find anything?

  He shook his head. Lit a cigarette and made one more tour of the flat.

  Then he gave up and drove home.

  Once upon a time I used to be a detective chief inspector, he thought. But that was then . . .

  That evening he went to the cinema with Ulrike. They saw two of Kieślowski’s Dekalog films, and wondered all the time how the hell it had been possible to create something so artistically brilliant with such minimal resources. Absolutely miraculous! he insisted as he and Ulrike walked slowly back home alongside Langgraacht, and she agreed. If only we could see life through a Kieślowski camera, she maintained, then one of these days we might even begin to understand what it’s all about.

  Later on, some time after midnight, when that miracle of a woman had fallen asleep, he noticed that images of the lugubrious housing estate in Warsaw were still nagging away in his brain, and in some mysterious way were beginning to merge with the images he had registered that afternoon in Verlangen’s flat.

  He remained lying in bed for a while, trying to fall asleep with that remarkable mixture in his mind’s eye; but it soon became obvious that it was impossible. He sneaked out and set up a Preisner CD in the living room instead. He switched on the lamp by the sofa and took out the list he had received from Münster the previous week.

  All the places from which a train had left for somewhere or other at 14.42.

  And all the places where a train was due to arrive from somewhere or other at that same time.

  He remained sitting there for a while with a list in each hand: then he put the list of departures to one side. If one assumed, he thought, or if one dared to assume that Verlangen had set off from Maardam, from where no trains were due to leave at that time, the note must surely refer to an arrival time.

  But why would anybody want to bother to note down an arrival time – unless perhaps somebody was going to meet him? Was that perhaps the answer?

  Twenty-six. There were twenty-six places in the whole country where a train was due to arrive at 14.42. At seventeen of them every day of the week. Four only on weekdays, three on Sundays and holidays, and two only on Saturdays.

  According to Inspector Krause’s computer, at least.

  He lay down on the sofa. Had Maarten Verlangen travelled to one of these places? Had he been sitting at his filthy kitchen table or perhaps at his desk and noted down those four figures after telephoning the information office at Maardam Central Station?

  It was not impossible. By no means impossible. He yawned. Noticed that he was feeling cold and covered himself with the blanket.

  When all was said and done, was it here – in one of these twenty-six places – that Verlangen came face to face with the hereafter, this depraved detective?

  Face to face with the hereafter? thought Van Veeteren. Depraved? What are these words that come bubbling up from the swampy backwaters of my brain? Where is my imagination leading me? It’s time to switch off now. Very definitely time.

  He switched off the light and fell asleep.

  And in that transparent moment between waking and sleeping it dawned on him how it would be possible to proceed.

  It was obvious. Like adding one plus one.

  29

  ‘What?’ said Inspector Krause. ‘I’m not quite with you.’

  ‘All right,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I’ll say it again. I take it you remember that you pressed a button on your enormous computer last week and produced a list of names of places connected with a specific time in a railway timetable . . . 14.42? It must have been last Wednesday or Thursday, I’d—’

  ‘Of course,’ said Krause indignantly. ‘That wasn’t what I was wondering about. I just thought the Chief Inspector—’

  ‘Hang on!’ interrupted Van Veeteren. ‘I have not been associated with those words for five years now – that ought to have been long enough for you to grasp the fact.’

  ‘I apologize,’ said Krause. ‘Don’t take it personally. But what was that business about the telephone?’

  ‘Do you know that Verlangen rang and spoke to his grandson about three weeks ago?’

  ‘I’d heard about it, yes . . .’

  ‘What I want to know is where he rang from.’

  ‘Really? And how . . .?’

  ‘It shouldn’t be all that difficult, nowadays.’

  ‘But if he rang from his mobile, you can’t just—’

  ‘Mobile?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not everybody has a mobile phone, despite what some people seem to think. Maarten Verlangen didn’t have one, for instance.
’

  ‘Really? Well, I didn’t think—’

  ‘That means he must have rung from a land line. Perhaps from a card- or coin-operated phone, and so it shouldn’t be all that difficult for a bright detective inspector to track down where he rang from.’

  ‘I see,’ said Krause. ‘I’m with you.’

  ‘Good. A telephone call to the Vargas family in Palitzerstraat. Their number is 213 32 35. At some point between the twelfth and eighteenth of April, let’s say, to be generous. And then it would be interesting to compare—’

  ‘To compare that with the list of train times,’ said Krause. ‘I’m with you now – and I’m sorry that we didn’t catch on to this earlier. I’ll deal with it straight away. Where can I contact the Chief . . . Where can I get in touch with you when I’m ready?’

  ‘Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I’ll be sitting here, waiting. I assume you have my number?’

  Krause confirmed that he did, and asked if there was anything else.

  There wasn’t – not for the moment, at least, Van Veeteren assured him, and hung up. Leaned back in his armchair and picked up Nooteboom again.

  One plus one, as already said.

  Couldn’t they have worked this out themselves? he wondered while he was waiting. Why had they failed to put two and two together?

  A telephone call from an unknown place, and a train journey to an unknown place.

  Those were the only two leads they had, but even so they hadn’t managed to link them together. How useless can you get?

  But on the other hand, perhaps it wasn’t all that odd. No doubt Verlangen’s disappearance was not very high up among the priorities at the Maardam police station. Perhaps it wasn’t even on their agenda at all? Most probably it was just one item among hundreds of others reported to the police – maybe it was more realistic to congratulate Münster on noticing the link with the G File?

  The possible link. He suddenly began to feel highly sceptical about the whole business, and regretted having sounded so arrogant when talking to Krause. How big were the odds on the two lines of investigation actually crossing? Was it even going to be possible to establish where Verlangen had telephoned from on that day in April? What if there were a dozen calls during the time he had specified, all coming from places on the list? Saaren or Malbork, for instance. What if Belle Vargas’s husband’s ancient and ailing parents lived somewhere up there, and they were in the habit of ringing every day to discuss this and that, and report on their bowel movements?