by Håkan Nesser
I’m a conceited ass, he told himself grimly, going into the kitchenette to boil some water for coffee. They ought to be grateful that I resigned in good time.
‘Two,’ said Krause. ‘There are two possible alternatives regarding that phone call.’
‘Good,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I’m grateful that you took the time to look into it.’
‘Eh?’ said Krause.
‘I said I was grate— Never mind. Let’s hear it.’
‘Yes, well,’ said Krause, clearing his throat. ‘I’ve been through all the incoming calls between the twelfth and the eighteenth of April with fru Vargas . . . in accordance with the information I received from the telephone company. And there are two which she thinks are the most likely candidates. The only possibilities, in fact. We might be able to exclude one of them when we’ve spoken to her husband, but we haven’t been able to do that yet . . .’
‘I see,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What are the two places, then?’
‘Karpatz and Kaalbringen,’ said Krause. ‘On the fourteenth and the sixteenth respectively. I . . . er . . . I’m aware that Kaalbringen is on the 14.42 list.’
‘But Karpatz isn’t.’
‘No,’ said Krause. ‘So . . .’
‘So one could say that there is really only one alternative?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Krause. ‘If it fits in, yes.’
I knew it, thought Van Veeteren. Dammit all! Thanks to some worn out synapse in my shrivelled mind, I knew it. It’s incredible, it’s simply not possible to get round or go past certain patterns . . .
‘Hello?’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you still there, Chief Inspector? Oops, sorry, I—’
‘No problem. So, Kaalbringen it is . . . We’d better not invest too much hope in this lead, but if it’s now thought that it’s worth the trouble of searching for Maarten Verlangen, well, it’s an indication of the way the wind is blowing. Don’t you think?’
‘Definitely,’ said Krause. I must say that I—’
‘You and your colleagues will have to take account of your priorities, of course – I understand that completely. Many thanks for your efforts, maybe we shall have reason to discuss the matter further.’
Krause muttered something inaudible, Van Veeteren thanked him once more, and hung up.
He’s too young, he thought. He wasn’t involved in the Hennan case, and he wasn’t there in Kaalbringen.
But Intendent Münster was involved!
In both cases.
He flopped down on his chair.
Both cases? Linden and Kaalbringen? Van Veeteren shook his head. What an arbitrary connection . . .
Needless to say Jaan G. Hennan and the axe murderer in the little northern coastal town had nothing to do with each other: it was only in his own private version of history that the two phenomena were linked.
Kaalbringen and the G File.
But it was remarkable nevertheless. Patterns and conformity to law? he thought. Damn it all! He rolled a cigarette and lit it, wondering whether he should contact Münster straight away, or whether he should give himself a little more time to think things over and consider practicalities. He soon opted for the latter alternative – whatever conclusions and plans of action he decided on, there was no urgency involved. One thing was clear: Verlangen had been missing for at least three weeks, and even if his adventures and fate since leaving Maardam were hidden in mist and murky circumstances, it was likely that his daughter’s clear-eyed pessimism was well founded.
There was very little chance of him still being alive.
Van Veeteren sighed. Asked himself on what grounds he could justify that conclusion, but he couldn’t find any. He left the kitchenette and went to fetch the bottle of port instead.
Chief of Police Hiller was busy planting two dwarf acacias when Münster entered his office on the fourth floor.
Münster would have been quite unable to judge that the plants were acacias (although he might have guessed that they were a dwarf variant in view of the fact that they were tiny), but Hiller explained the details even before he had time to sit down.
It was almost like a formal introduction, Münster thought. Acacia, dwarf – Münster, Detective Intendent! Pleased to meet you. The chief of police had spread newspapers out over his desk, and was working in his shirt sleeves with his tie thrown back over his shoulder. He was filling terracotta-coloured pots with soil from a large plastic sack, and pressing it down carefully with his thumbs so that the plants were upright and steady.
‘This Verlangen business,’ he said without interrupting his work or even looking up.
‘Yes?’ said Münster.
‘I heard about it by accident. We mustn’t let ourselves be carried away by our imaginations.’
‘What exactly do you mean, sir?’ asked Münster.
‘What I say,’ said Hiller. ‘Verlangen is an old cheat who has gone missing, that’s all. He used to work for us at one time, and he was involved in an old investigation – but that’s all history now. History, Münster!’
‘History,’ said Münster.
‘It’s ninety-nine per cent certain that he fell into some canal or other in a drunken state – he’s had problems with his drinking habits. He’ll turn up again one of these days. This is not a matter we can waste our resources on . . . we’ve got our hands full as it is. What with that confounded business out at Bossingen and those accursed Holt brothers, and—’
‘I know what we’re busy with,’ said Münster, interrupting the flow. ‘No, I don’t think Reinhart intends to assign officers to chasing up Verlangen. But I’ll tell him what your views are as soon as I see him, I promise you that.’
‘Excellent,’ said Hiller. ‘Of course. Where is he, by the way?’
‘Who? Reinhart?’
‘Yes. Wasn’t he the person we were talking about?’
‘Yes, of course. I assume he’s interrogating racists down at number twenty-two. The ones who burnt that school down.’
‘Racists? Ugh, yes. I understand. Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. You can get back to your work.’
‘Thank you,’ said Münster.
How old is he now? he thought as he closed the door behind him and heard Hiller saying something encouraging to his acacias. Isn’t it about time he was pensioned off?
Mahler had set up the pieces and was scribbling away in a black notebook when Van Veeteren came down to their usual table at The Society on Saturday evening.
‘New poems?’ he asked.
‘New is an exaggeration,’ said Mahler. ‘Poems is an exaggeration. It’s modern abstractions concerning the black hole, rather. Unrhymed.’
‘That sounds like good fun,’ said Van Veeteren.
‘I know. I think that’s exactly what I shall call it, in fact. What do you reckon?’
‘Modern Abstractions Concerning the Black Hole?’
‘Yes.’
‘It sounds more like a summary of contents than a book title.
Mahler stroked his beard thoughtfully.
‘Maybe. Ah well, I suppose I’d better fill it out with some kind of content first. In any case, it’ll be my twelfth. I think that will be enough.’
‘Your twelfth? Congratulations! A full dozen! . . . How long have you been at it?’
‘It’s forty years since my debut. According to my calculations that works out at just over two words a day.’
‘Two words a day?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘That can’t be all that much of a burden, surely?’
‘Rubbish,’ said Mahler. ‘It’s the hardest grind in the world. You’re forgetting that each word is chosen from a range of twenty-five thousand: and every time you choose a new word, you have to start again at the very beginning.’
Van Veeteren gestured to the waiter that two more beers were required, and gave that some thought.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘You’re right, of course. I was a bit too presumptuous. Shall we play?’
‘It’s y
our turn for white,’ said Mahler, lighting a cigar.
‘That was due to a lack of concentration. You ought to have noticed that bishop on G6. Is something worrying you?’
Van Veeteren started setting up the pieces for the next game.
‘In a way,’ he said. ‘It’s an old story that seems to have come to life again.’
Mahler emptied his beer glass and dried out his beard.
‘Nothing can compete with an old, old story. Is it something I know about?’
Van Veeteren picked up one of the black knights and weighed it in his hand for a while before replying.
‘I’d have thought so,’ he said. ‘The G File.’
‘The G File!’ exclaimed Mahler. ‘The only blot in your copybook. Of course! What’s happened?’
There was a disgusting level of amusement and curiosity in the old poet’s tone of voice, Van Veeteren thought: but perhaps that was nothing to get upset about. Nor to worry about. If there was anybody – apart from Ulrike, of course – in whom he could confide his irresolution, it was Mahler. That was something he had learned over the years. As far as secrecy was concerned, talking to Mahler was like talking into a well. An unusually talented well, in which words and confidential comments sank down to the bottom and lay there in hermetically sealed silence for all eternity.
And from where a word or two – extremely carefully chosen words – came bouncing back.
He lit another cigarette, and started telling the tale.
‘Soup with unknown ingredients,’ was Mahler’s summary twenty minutes later. ‘And the police have no intention of intervening, I gather?’
‘No more than routine. They have plenty of other things on their plate, it seems – not least that damned Nazi business, for instance. I have to say that I understand their position. The Verlangen link is about as substantial as a strand of hair.’
Mahler said nothing for a while.
‘I don’t agree,’ he said eventually. ‘As far as I can judge, there must be something in this. Don’t ask me what and how – but surely it would be even more strange if Verlangen’s disappearance didn’t have anything to do with G? Don’t you think? After that note on the kitchen table and that telephone call.’
‘I know,’ muttered Van Veeteren. ‘I’m not senile yet. Not quite, at least.’
‘Same here,’ said Mahler, looking grim. ‘As clear in the head as a mountain stream and as morally aware as a thirteen-year-old. It would presumably be easier to live if one were not like that. What are you thinking of doing?’
Van Veeteren inhaled deeply and thought it over.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know?’
Mahler eyed him critically through the smoke. Van Veeteren said nothing.
‘You’re lying. You know only too bloody well what you’re going to do.’
Van Veeteren turned the chessboard round so that the white pieces were on Mahler’s side.
‘All right, I’m lying. I intend driving up to Kaalbringen, of course. One of these days. It’s your move, herr Poet.’
‘That’s what I thought you’d do,’ said Mahler, adjusting his glasses. ‘But hold your tongue now, you’re disturbing my concentration.’
30
Ulrike was sceptical.
‘I can understand that you are concerned,’ she said. ‘Of course I can. But I can’t understand what you think you can gain by driving up there.’
They had eaten a simple boeuf bourguignon, drunk a bottle of 1997 Barolo with it, and he had told her about the two cases.
Both G and the axe murderer in Kaalbringen. She knew quite a bit about them, but had no idea about his collisions with G when he was a child and a teenager.
Until now. It was good to get them off his chest, he thought, and it dawned on him that this was the first time he had ever spoken to anybody about Adam Bronstein.
This is ridiculous, he thought. Why should anybody hide away sources of agony like that for a whole lifetime? Why should anybody avoid talking about them? For Christ’s sake, it was over fifty years ago!
And he wondered about that ‘anybody’. Was it a euphemism for ‘I’ or for ‘men’? One of those didn’t exclude the other, of course – but perhaps there was some sort of general tendency? Being a woman and a thinking being, Ulrike found it difficult to understand the point of this type of agonizing stricture, and wondered if he had any more skeletons in the cupboard of his soul.
‘A whole cemetery,’ he assured her. ‘But driving up to Kaalbringen is a way of confronting them. One of them, at least.’
But she didn’t buy that without any objections.
‘I think your soul is shallower than that,’ she said with a sudden smile.
‘Really?’
‘You want to meet that Bausen character again, that’s what it boils down to.’
‘But I would never—’
‘Spend a few evenings playing chess and drinking wine. Come on, own up – you hypocrite! You surely don’t really think you’re going to find Verlangen up there?’
‘I have no intention of answering that question,’ said Van Veeteren.
As he sat in his car, driving through the sun-drenched, flat countryside, he thought about her views and objections – and decided that he couldn’t have expressed them any better himself.
Did he really imagine that he would be able to achieve anything?
Was he convinced it would be possible to find out what had happened to this drunken ex-private detective? This former cheat of a police officer? Did he really seriously believe that Verlangen actually was/had been in Kaalbringen?
Wasn’t this journey rather a sort of . . . symbolic exercise? A wishy-washy gesture?
Kaalbringen. This sleepy little coastal town where he had spent six late summer weeks ten – no, nine – years ago together with Münster, while they were investigating one of the most remarkable cases he had come across during all his years as a detective chief inspector.
Was there any real possibility, then? That Verlangen had come here of all places?
Wasn’t it in fact just as Ulrike had suspected – that he longed to see Bausen again? To sit over a chessboard with an old, well-kept wine in his overgrown garden, theorizing over this and that, and re-experiencing a mood and a sort of affinity that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, or express in words?
But which had existed even so. To the highest degree. Surely one didn’t need to put absolutely everything into words, for God’s sake?
He gazed out over the rolling fields, and noticed that he was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Was that unease or expectation? Hard to say. And difficult to lay bare motives and private reasons, as always. But it was a remarkable coincidence, that couldn’t be denied. The fact that the G File should open up again in this way after fifteen years, and lead him back to Kaalbringen of all places. A coincidence that was so unlikely, one couldn’t avoid looking into it in more detail. Trying to look into it, at least.
A sign? A key point in the pattern?
It occurred to him that perhaps it was in fact a penitential journey. To make up for the fact that he hadn’t saved the life of that Jewish boy fifty years ago. The fact that he had allowed Jaan G. Hennan to go free on that and subsequent occasions.
And the fact that he had not kept in touch with Chief Inspector Bausen as he ought to have done . . . And for Erich’s sake?
And now suddenly a door had opened up slightly and given him an opportunity to put things right. Could it be justifiable to see things in that light?
Bullshit, he thought. What could Erich possibly have to do with all this?
It was the same old story. The statistician’s presumptuous attempt to understand a set of circumstances about which he didn’t have a clue. Five seconds at the scene, and he thinks he can detect the whiff of eternity!
He searched through the CDs and decided on Schnittke. Piercing strings and persistent rhythms that ought to sharpen up his thoughts.
G. Thi
s was all about the G File, nothing else, he decided. No vague personal motives, no circumlocutions, just the one familiar question that had been dogging him for fifteen years.
Who killed Barbara Clarissa Hennan?
Or rather, how had Jaan G. Hennan managed her death?
He recalled that somebody had used the term ‘classic’ during the course of the investigation in 1987. Münster or Reinhart, most likely. Or was it Verlangen himself? In any case, it was not difficult to agree with that judgement – the business of the dead American woman in the empty swimming pool in Linden was so clinically simple that it almost lacked substance. No complicating circumstances. No confusing leads heading off in different directions. No distorted motives or unclear testimonies.
Just a dead woman and one point two million guilders. And G.
And that Verlangen.
Yes, he had to admit that in fact Verlangen had disturbed the classical set-up. The down-at-heel private detective’s role had been perplexing even at the time, and of course it was no less perplexing now.
And what if he was now playing some sort of role again? Was that plausible?
Could it in fact be that Verlangen had discovered a clue implicating G? How? How could that possibly have happened? The most likely circumstance would have to be that he had simply stumbled upon something – especially in view of the state he was in.
And those words on the phone to his grandson.
Now I know how he did it!
Was it true? Was it possible? How the hell had this wretched ex-detective managed to discover the answer to a question that Van Veeteren himself had been struggling with for fifteen years?
Preposterous, he thought, increasing his speed. Absolutely preposterous.
Nevertheless, it was just as difficult to see any other possible solution.
He stopped for lunch at a roadside cafe not far from Ulming. He telephoned Bausen and told him he would be arriving in about two hours. Bausen sounded more energetic than ever. Van Veeteren had trouble in believing that he was turned seventy, but that was the fact of the matter. Perhaps the years he had spent in prison had done him good in some paradoxical way: he had seemed to imply that in the previous day’s telephone conversation, and maybe it was not so surprising.
