by Håkan Nesser
Something positive among all the negatives. A faint light in the eternal darkness. He recalled yet again Gortiakov’s walk through the pond carrying a candle in Nostalghia. He did that often. Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia . . . And now, as he sat there in that ancient cathedral, in front of his son’s coffin, with his eyes closed, with the vicar’s measured litany floating up to the Gothic arches above them, it was as if . . . as if he had achieved a sort of kinship. Perhaps that was too much to expect; but nevertheless a kinship with so many weighty things. With Erich; with his own incomprehensible father who had died long before Van Veeteren had the slightest chance of getting to understand and become reconciled with him; with suffering and with art and with creativity – all possible kinds of creativity – and eventually also with a belief in something beyond this world of ours, and in the visions and ambitions of those who had built the church in which they were sitting . . . With life and death, and the never-ending passage of time. With his daughter Jess, who was leaning heavily on him, and occasionally seemed to be convulsed by a shudder. Kinship.
It works, he thought. The ritual works. The forms overcome doubts. We have learned over the centuries to weave meaning around emptiness and pain. A meaning and a pattern. We have been practising that for a very long time.
The spell was not broken until he processed past the coffin with Jess clinging to his arm – not until he had turned his back on it all and started to leave the chancel. Then he was hit by an ice-cold stab of despair instead; he almost stumbled, and had to cling on to his daughter in order not to fall. He was supporting her, she was supporting him. It seemed a vast distance to Renate on Jess’s other side, and he wondered why he found it necessary to keep her so far away. Why?
And once they were outside the heavy church door, standing in the drizzle, his only thought was: Who killed him? I want to know who it was that killed my son.
Who blew out the flame.
‘I haven’t finished sorting stuff out yet,’ said Marlene Frey. ‘Separating his things from mine, that is. I don’t know what is the usual thing to do in these circumstances. Is there anything you’d like to have?’
Van Veeteren shook his head.
‘Of course not. You lived together. Erich’s things are yours now, naturally.’
They were sitting at a table in Adenaar’s. Marlene Frey was drinking tea, he had a glass of wine. She wasn’t even smoking. He didn’t know why that surprised him, but it did. Erich had started smoking when he was fifteen . . . probably earlier than that, but it was on his fifteenth birthday that he’d caught him at it.
‘Please feel free to come and have a look a couple of days from now, in any case,’ she said. ‘There might be something you’d like as a souvenir.’
‘Photographs?’ it occurred to him. ‘Do you have any photos? I don’t think I have a single one of Erich from the last ten years.’
She smiled fleetingly.
‘Of course. There are some. A few, at least.’
He nodded, and eyed her guiltily.
‘I apologize for not having called round to see you yet. I have . . . There’s been so much to do.’
‘It’s never too late,’ she said. ‘Call in when you have time, and I’ll give you a few pictures. I’m at home in the evenings. Usually, that is – maybe it would be an idea to ring first. We don’t need to make a big thing of it.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘We don’t.’
She took a drink of her tea, and he sipped his wine as a sort of half-hearted gesture of agreement. Stole a glance at her and decided that she was good-looking. Pale and tired, of course, but with clean-cut features and eyes that met his without deviating as much as a centimetre. He wondered what she had been through in her life. Had she had the same kind of experiences as Erich? It didn’t seem so: the tribulations always seemed to leave deeper traces on women. She’d been through her fair share, of course, he could see that: but there was nothing in her demeanour that suggested a lack of strength.
Strength to see her through life. Yes, he could see that she had that.
It’s disgraceful, he thought. Disgraceful that I haven’t met her until now. In circumstances like these. Obviously, I ought . . .
But then the Erich-is-dead constellation took possession of him with such force that he almost fainted. He gulped down his wine and took out his cigarette-rolling machine.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
She smiled briefly again.
‘Erich smoked.’
They sat in silence while he rolled, then lit up.
‘I ought to give it up,’ he said. ‘Using this thing helps to cut down at least.’
Why the hell am I sitting here, he thought, going on about smoking? What difference does it make if the father of a dead son smokes too much?
She suddenly placed her hand on his arm. His heart missed a beat and he almost choked on his cigarette. She observed his reaction, no doubt, but did nothing to pretend it was an accident. Nothing to gloss over it. Simply left her hand where it was while looking hard at him with probing, slightly quivering eyes.
‘I think I could get to like you,’ she said. ‘It’s a pity things turned out as they did.’
Turned out as they did? he thought. A pity? Talk about understatement . . .
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t have more contact with Erich. Naturally, it ought to—’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said, interrupting him. ‘He was a bit . . . Well, how should one describe it?’ She shrugged. ‘But I loved him. We had good times together, it was as if being together made us grow up, as it were. And then of course there was that special thing.’
He had forgotten all about that.
‘Er, yes,’ he said. ‘What special thing?’
She let go of his arm and gazed down at her cup for a few seconds. Stirred it slowly with her spoon.
‘I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but the fact is that I’m expecting a child. I’m pregnant, in the third month. Well, that’s how things stand.’
‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, and now the smoke really did spark off a coughing fit.
Early on Tuesday morning he drove Jess out to Sechshafen. He had told both her and Renate about the conversation with Marlene Frey: Jess had phoned her on the Monday evening and arranged to meet her the next time she came to Maardam. With a bit of luck around New Year.
The intention had been that Renate should also accompany them to the airport, but apparently she had woken up with a temperature and what seemed to be tonsillitis. Van Veeteren thanked God for the bacilli, and suspected that Jess didn’t have anything against them either.
She held his hand that morning as well as they crawled through the fog enveloping Landsmoor and Weill: it was a warm hand, and occasionally gave his a hard squeeze. He was aware that the squeezes were indications of daughterly love, and the familiar old anxiety that goes with parting. Stronger than ever on a day like this, of course. Separation from her roots in this flat, north European landscape. From Erich. Perhaps also from him.
‘It’s hard to say goodbye,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s hard.’
‘You never get used to it. But I suppose there’s a point to that as well.’
Parting is a little death, he almost added, but he managed to keep that thought to himself.
‘I don’t like airports,’ she said. ‘I’m always a bit frightened when I’m going to travel somewhere. Erich was the same.’
He nodded. He hadn’t known that, in fact. He wondered how much there was he didn’t know about his children. How much he had missed over the years, and how much could still be repaired or discovered.
‘But I didn’t know him all that well,’ she said after a while. ‘I hope I’ll grow to like Marlene – it feels as if through her he’s left traces of himself behind. I hope to goodness all goes well. It would be awful if . . .’
She didn’t complete the sentence. After a while he noticed that she had started crying, and
he gave her hand a long squeeze.
‘It feels better now, at least,’ she said when it had passed. ‘Better than when I came. I’ll never get used to it, but I occasionally feel almost calm now. Or maybe one just feels numb after all the crying. What do you think?’
He muttered something in response. No, he thought. Nothing goes away, it all just gets worse as time passes. Worse every day as you grow older.
As they began to approach the airport she let go of his hand. Took out a paper handkerchief and dried her eyes.
‘Why did you really pack up being a police officer?’
The question came out of the blue, and for a moment he felt on the spot.
‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘I’d just had enough . . . I suppose that’s the simplest explanation. I felt that quite clearly, I didn’t have to think deeply about it.’
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I suppose there’s quite a lot one doesn’t need to think deeply about.’
She paused, but he could hear that she had more on her mind. Had a good idea of what it was as well – and after a minute she started again.
‘It’s odd, but I’ve started to think about something I didn’t think at first would worry me at all . . . In the beginning, when I first heard that Erich was dead.’
‘What exactly?’ he asked.
‘The murderer,’ she said. ‘The one who did it. I want to know who it was, and why he did it. I want to know that more and more. Do you think that’s odd? I mean, Erich’s gone, no matter what . . .’
He turned his head to look at her.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s odd at all. I think it’s one of the most natural reactions you could possibly imagine. There’s a reason why I packed up being a police officer, but there was a reason why I started as well.’
She looked at him and nodded slowly.
‘I think I understand. And you still think that?’
‘Yes, I still think that.’
She paused before her next question.
‘How’s it going? For the police, I mean. Do you know anything? Are they in touch with you?’
He shrugged.
‘I don’t know much. I’ve asked about it, but I don’t want to poke my nose in too far. When they get anywhere they’ll let me know, of course. Perhaps I’ll give Reinhart a ring and ask how they’re getting on.’
They arrived. He turned into the multi-storey car park, up the narrow ramp, and pulled up in front of a grey concrete wall.
‘Do that,’ she said. ‘Find out how far they’ve got. I want to know who killed my brother.’
He nodded, and they got out of the car. Twenty minutes later he watched her walk off between two uniformed airline staff and disappear into the security-check area.
Yes indeed, he thought. When all’s said and done, that’s the big question that still needs to be answered.
Who?
14
He found it incomprehensible to start with.
His first reaction – the first attempt to explain it – was that he had survived.
That the man in the car park had somehow or other come back to life after being struck down. Crawled out of the bushes and into the restaurant, and been taken to hospital. Pulled through.
With a broken parietal bone and smashed cervical vertebrae?
Then he remembered the facts. That there had been articles in all the newspapers. That there had been reports on the radio and television. There was no doubt about it, of course. That lanky young man he had killed at the golf course was dead. Finally and irrevocably dead.
Ergo? he thought. Ergo I’ve killed the wrong person. That had to be the explanation. Was there any alternative?
Not as far as he could see. It must be the case that . . . that yet again he had killed somebody by mistake.
That didn’t make it any less incomprehensible.
It had been asking too much, far too much, for him to sleep that Monday night, and after a few fruitless hours he got up. It was two a.m. He drank a cup of tea with a drop of rum in the kitchen, then took the car and drove out to the sea. Sat for an hour and a half by himself with the windows open in a lay-by between Behrensee and Lejnice and tried to think things through while listening to the mighty waves breaking on the shore. The wind was blowing hard from the south-west, and he could hear that the rollers must be several metres high.
The wrong person? He had killed the wrong man. It wasn’t the blackmailer who had emerged from the Trattoria Commedia that evening with the Boodwick carrier bag dangling from his hand. It was somebody else.
Somebody who had gone to the gents and happened to discover the bag in the rubbish bin? Could it be as simple as that?
A coincidence? Somebody who had found it by sheer bad luck before the blackmailer? Could that be what happened?
He excluded that possibility more or less straight away. It was too improbable. Too far-fetched. No, the truth was different, quite different. It didn’t take him long to find the solution.
There was an assistant. Had been. That was who he’d killed. The anonymous letter-writer had chosen to send an assistant to collect the spoils, instead of doing it himself. So as not to run any unnecessary risks. Good thinking, no doubt about it, and not really surprising in the circumstances. He ought to have anticipated that. Ought to have made allowances for that.
In fact it was an inexcusable blunder: the more he thought about it, the more obvious it was. A terrible blunder. While he had been thinking sarcastically about the amateurish conduct of his opponent out there at Dikken, in fact he was up against an exceptionally prudent person. Somebody who had acted with much more caution and precision than he had.
And who had now made his next move. Two hundred thousand, he was demanding. Two hundred grand!
Oh, hell! He swore out loud and hammered his hands on the steering wheel. Fucking hell!
In the wake of his anger came fear. Fear with regard to what he had done, and for the future. The future? he thought. What future? In so far as his life hadn’t already been compromised by what had happened in the last few weeks, it would be in the next few. The next one. It was blindingly obvious. A matter of days, there was no other way of assessing the situation.
Another crucial encounter was in store.
He opened the door and got out of the car. Offered himself up to the mercy of the wind, and started walking along the road. Waves crashed on the beach.
Am I still me? he suddenly asked himself. Am I still the same person as I was before? Am I still a person, in fact?
A billiard ball rolling towards an inevitable fate? Two cannons, two changes of direction . . . And then what?
Images of the boy in the ditch and of the young man as he raised his eyebrows in surprise a second before the first blow kept recurring increasingly rapidly in his mind’s eye. Intertwining, merging, over and over again, leaving no room for anything else. He tried to think about Vera Miller instead, the laughing, lively, red-haired Vera: but without success.
As he walked, leaning forward into the darkness – and in the hour of the wolf, he reminded himself with feelings of weary resignation – hunched up to protect himself from the cold and the salt-laden wind, he felt over and over again the urge to simply give up. Powerful urges to deliver himself into the lap of the sea or the hands of the police, and put an end to it all.
To follow the faint whispering of what must of course be the voice of his conscience – which in some remarkable way seemed to both harmonize with and drown out the thunder of the waves. Very impressive, he thought. They blend in together like the soundtrack of a film. Extremely impressive. The thundering and the whispering.
But in the end it was Vera Miller who won. In the end it was her laughing face with those glittering green eyes, and her warm, wet pussy welcoming his stiff penis, that brushed aside the fear and hopelessness, and choked the whispering. The inexorable power of her love. Of their love.
And the future.
I can’t give up, he th
ought. Not now. I must take Vera into consideration as well.
It was five minutes to five in the morning by the time he came home. He had calmed down to some extent during the return journey – although it could simply be that he was tired out. What’s done is over and done with, he thought. No point crying over spilt milk. It was the future that was important. The immediate future to start with, and then the next stage – life with Vera.
Mind you, if he didn’t manage to sort out ‘A friend’, there wouldn’t be any future with Vera, of course. The future would be a week at most, no more, that was beyond all doubt. He would have to devise a strategy. A defence, a counter-move. What should he do?
Yes indeed, what? If he simply decided to pay the 200,000 requested, that would mean that all his resources had been used up. His savings and his house – and it still wouldn’t be enough. He would have to negotiate a loan for another 50,000 at least. And what then?
And then? Even if he bankrupted himself in this way, what guarantees would he have? The blackmailer would still have the knowledge, and would doubtless not forget it. And anyway, was there anything to suggest that he’d be satisfied with what he’d been paid?
No, nothing, was the answer to his rhetorical question. Nothing at all.
And how would he be able to explain it away to Vera, if he was suddenly bankrupt? How?
Ergo?
There was only one possibility.
Kill him.
Kill the right person this time. Although for a few moments, as he wound his way through the narrow suburban streets of Boorkhejm, it occurred to him that perhaps he had killed the right person after all. Despite everything
The right one in a way, at least. Because there could have been two of them. Could have been. There was virtually no doubt that the letters he’d received so far must have been written by the same person; but of course it was just possible that it could be . . . could be the handwriting of a wife, for instance. He couldn’t exclude that possibility, he told himself. The wife of a dead blackmailer who had now taken over on her own account.
