by Håkan Nesser
He was fifty-two years old.
Didn’t quite make his son’s eighteenth birthday.
And now this high school teacher.
Reluctantly, he turned his mind toward work. To be honest, it wasn’t just another humdrum case. On the contrary. If it hadn’t been for all the rest of it, and the damned rain that never seemed to stop, he might have been forced to admit that there was a spark of excitement in it.
The fact is, he wasn’t sure.
Nine times out of ten, he was. Well, even more often, if the truth be told. Van Veeteren was generally able to decide if he was looking the culprit in the eye in nineteen cases out of twenty, if not more.
No point in hiding his light under a bushel. There was always a mass of tiny little signs pointing in one direction or another, and over the years he had learned to identify and interpret these signs. Not that he was able to detect all of them, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was that he could see the overall picture. The pattern.
He didn’t find this difficult, and didn’t need to overstretch himself.
Then, finding proof, and building up a case that might hold water in court-that was another matter. But the knowledge, the certainty, always crept up on him.
Whether he liked it or not. He interpreted the signals emitted by the suspect; sometimes he found it as easy to do as reading a book, like a musician can pick out a tune from a mass of notes in a score, or a mathematics teacher can spot an inaccurate calculation. It was nothing special; but of course, it was an art. Not something you could learn in the normal way, and not something it was possible to teach; just an ability that he had acquired after so many years on the force.
For Christ’s sake, it was a gift, and in no way something that could be regarded as just deserts for work done.
He didn’t even have the good sense to be duly grateful.
Of course he knew that he was the best interrogating officer in the district, possibly in the country; but he would have been delighted to abandon any such claim in return for being able to give Munster a sound thrashing at badminton.
Just once would be enough.
And needless to say, it was this ability of his that had motivated his promotion to detective chief inspector, despite the fact that there had been others much more interested in the post than he was, when old Mort retired.
And needless to say, that was why the chief of police kept tearing up his resignation letters and throwing them into the trash can.
Van Veeteren needed to be at his post.
He had eventually reconciled himself to his fate. Perhaps that was just as well: as the years passed he found it more and more difficult to imagine doing any other job in which he wouldn’t immediately make himself impossible to work with.
Why be a depressed master gardener or bus driver when you can be a depressed detective chief inspector, as Reinhart had said in one of his more enlightened moments.
But how were things now?
In nineteen cases out of twenty he was certain.
It was the twentieth where the doubts surfaced.
What about the twenty-first?
An old rhyme came into his head.
Nineteen sweet young ladies. .
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and tried to dig out the continuation from the dark recesses of his memory.
. . aspired to be his wife?
That sounded a bit odd, but never mind. What next, then?
Nineteen sweet young ladies aspired to be his wife, Number twenty spurned him. .
Spurned? Van Veeteren thought. Why not?
Number twenty spurned him,
The next one took his life!
What a lot of rubbish! He spat out the toothpick and pulled up outside the police station. As usual he was forced to steel himself before getting out of the car-there was no doubt that this building was one of the three ugliest in town.
The other two were Bunge High School, from which
establishment of learning he had once graduated and where Mitter was employed, and Klagenburg 4, the tenement building where Van Veeteren had been living for the past six years.
He opened the door and groped in the backseat for his umbrella, but then remembered that he’d left it to dry on the landing at home.
6
“Good afternoon.”
The door closed behind the chief inspector. Mitter looked away. If he excluded his former father-in-law and his colleague who taught chemistry and physics, Jean-Christophe Colmar, Van Veeteren must be the most unsympathetic person he had ever come across.
When the man sat down at the table and started chewing his ever-present toothpick, it struck Mitter that it might be an idea to admit to everything. Just to get rid of him.
Just to be left in peace.
But presumably it was not as easy as that. Van Veeteren wouldn’t be fooled. He sat with his bulky body crouched over the cassette recorder, looking like a threatening and malicious trough of low pressure. His face was crisscrossed by small blue veins, many of them burst, and his expression was reminiscent of a petrified bloodhound. The only thing that moved was the toothpick, which wandered slowly from one side of his mouth to the other. He could talk without moving his lips, read without moving his eyes, yawn without opening his mouth. He was much more of a mummy than a person made up of flesh and blood.
But beyond doubt a very efficient police officer.
It seemed not at all improbable that the chief inspector would know the extent of Mitter’s guilt long before Mitter himself did. Van Veeteren’s voice modulated between two quarter tones below low C. The higher one denoted a question, doubt, or scorn. The lower one stated facts.
“So, you have not achieved any more insight,” he stated.
“Would you kindly extinguish that cigarette! I have not come here to be poisoned.”
He switched on the cassette player. Mitter stubbed out his cigarette in the washbasin. Returned to his bed and stretched out on his back.
“My lawyer has advised me not to answer any of your questions.”
“Really? Do whatever you like, I shall unmask you anyway.
Six hours or twenty minutes, it makes no difference to me. I have plenty of time.”
He fell silent. Mitter listened to the ventilation system and waited. Van Veeteren did not move a muscle.
“Do you miss your wife?” he asked after several minutes.
“Of course.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I couldn’t care less what you think.”
“You’re lying again. If you don’t care what I think, why are you telling me such idiotic lies? Use your brains, for God’s sake!”
Mitter made no reply. Van Veeteren reverted to the lower quarter tone.
“You know I’m right. You want to talk me into believing that you miss your wife. But you don’t, and you know I know you don’t. If you tell the truth, at least you don’t have to be ashamed of yourself.”
It was not a criticism. Merely a statement of fact. Mitter said nothing. Stared up at the ceiling. Closed his eyes. Perhaps it would be as well to follow his lawyer’s advice to the letter. If he didn’t say a word and avoided all eye contact, no doubt it would. .
But behind closed eyelids something different became clear.
Something different came instead and pinned him against the wall. There was always something.
Wasn’t Van Veeteren right after all?
The question nagged at him.
You don’t miss her, do you?
He was damned if he knew. She had entered his life.
Smashed down an open door, charged forward like a dark princess, and taken him into her power. Completely, totally.
Taken him, held on to him. . and then gone away.
Is that how it was?
No doubt it could be described like that, and once he’d started putting things into words, there was no going back.
Eva Ringmar turned up in the fourteenth chapter of his life.
Between pages 275 and 300, roughly. She played the role that overshadowed all others; the priestess of love, the goddess of passion. . And then she went away, would probably continue for a while to live a sort of life between the lines, but soon she would be forgotten. It had all been so intense that it was preor-dained to come to an end. An episode to add to the plot? A sonnet? A will-o’-the-wisp?
Finished. Dead, but not mourned.
End of valediction. End of contradiction.
The chief inspector’s chair scraped. Mitter gave a start. No doubt this was. . no doubt this must be the paralysis, the state of shock that was driving his thoughts into such chan-nels. That had crushed and demolished everything, made it impossible for him to grasp what had happened. To grasp what was happening to him. .?
“I’m right, am I not?”
Van Veeteren spat out a toothpick and took a new one from his breast pocket.
“Yes, of course. I grew tired of her and drowned her in the bath. Why should I miss her?”
“Good. Exactly what I thought. Now we’ll move on to something else. She had rather a beautiful body, did she not?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“I shall ask whatever questions I like. Was she strong?”
“Strong?”
“Was she strong? Will it be easier for you if I ask each question several times?”
“Why do you want to know if she was strong?”
“In order to exclude the possibility of her having been drowned by a child or an invalid.”
“She was not especially strong.”
“How do you know? Did you fight?”
“Only when we were bored.”
“Do you have a tendency to be violent, Mr. Mitter?”
“No, you don’t need to be afraid.”
“Can you give me six candidates?”
“Eh?”
“Six candidates who might have murdered her, if it wasn’t you who did it.”
“I’ve already named several possibilities.”
“I want to know if you remember the persons you mentioned.”
“I don’t understand why.”
“That’s irrelevant. I have no exaggerated ideas about your intelligence.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Now I’ll explain. Tell me if I’m going too fast for you. In seven out of ten cases it’s the husband who m i n d ’ s e y e
kills his wife. In two out of ten it’s somebody else in the circle of acquaintances.”
“And in the tenth?”
“It’s an outsider. A madman or some kind of sex killer.”
“So you don’t regard sex murderers as madmen?”
“Not necessarily. Well?”
“Our mutual enemies, you mean?”
“Or hers.”
“We didn’t have much of a social life. I’ve already talked about this.”
“I know. You stopped meeting most of your so-called friends when you got together. Well? If you give me six names, you can have a cigarette! Isn’t that how you do things at school?”
“Marcus Greijer.”
“Your former brother-in-law?”
“Yes.”
“Whom you hate. Go on!”
“Joanna Kemp and Gert Weiss.”
“Colleagues. Languages and. . social studies?”
“Klaus Bendiksen.”
“Status?”
“Close friend. Andreas Berger.”
“Who’s he?”
“Her former husband. One more?”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“Uwe Borgmann.”
“Your neighbor?”
“Yes.”
“Greijer, Kemp, Weiss. . Bendiksen, Berger, and. .
Borgmann. Five men and a woman. Why these particular people?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yesterday you gave me a list of ”-he picked up a sheet of paper and added up rapidly-“twenty-eight names. Andreas Berger is not on that list, but all the rest are. Why did you pick out this particular six?”
“Because you asked me to.”
Mitter lit a cigarette. The chief inspector’s advantage was not as great now, that could be felt clearly, although he might have slackened off a little in the hope that Mitter would give something away.
But what?
Van Veeteren glared sullenly at the cigarette and switched off the cassette recorder.
“I shall tell you how things stand. I have received the final medical report today, and it is completely out of the question that she could have killed herself. That leaves three possibilities. One: you killed her. Two: one of the people on your list did it, either one of the six whose names you have just given me, or one of the others. Three: she was the victim of an unknown murderer.”
He paused briefly, took the toothpick out of his mouth, and contemplated it. Evidently it was not quite completely chewed up, so he put it back between his front teeth.
“Personally, I think it was you who did it, but I admit that I’m not quite certain.”
“Thank you very much.”
“On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that the court will find you guilty. I want you to be aware of that, and when it comes to verdicts passed in court I am hardly ever wrong.”
He stood up. Put the cassette recorder into his briefcase and rang for the warder.
“If this lawyer of yours tries to fool you into thinking anything different, it’s only because he’s trying to do his job.
You shouldn’t be under any illusion. I don’t intend to disturb you any more. I’ll see you in court.”
For a moment Mitter thought Van Veeteren was going to shake hands, but of course, that would not have been possible.
Instead the chief inspector turned his back on Mitter, and although it was nearly two minutes before the warder appeared, he remained motionless, staring at the door.
As if he were in an elevator. Or as if Mitter had ceased to exist the moment the conversation was over.
7
Elmer Suurna wiped an imaginary speck of dust from his desk with the sleeve of his jacket. Glanced out the window as he did so and wished it were the summer vacation.
Or at least the Christmas vacation.
But it was October. He sighed. Ever since taking up his post as headmaster of Bunge High School fifteen years ago, he had cherished an ambition. One only.
To keep his handsome red-oak desktop clean and shiny.
In his younger days, when he had been a temporary
teacher, his aim had been different: No matter what they do, they will not disturb my equanimity! It was after being forced to admit that this credo was being shaken to the core day after day, hour after hour, that Suurna decided to set his sights on a career as a school administrator instead. To become a headmaster, in fact.
It had taken its toll: a few friends, some invitations, several years, but by the time he celebrated his fortieth birthday he had achieved his aim. He sat down at his desk and looked forward to a quarter of a century of undisturbed equanimity.
Should there be any matters that needed dealing with-
student demonstrations, budget deficits, or timetables that needed adjusting-there would always be a deputy head to whom the problems could be delegated. He would be too busy taking care of the red oak.
And then, after fifteen years of devoted polishing, this damned business had come about.
Days had passed. Evenings. Even nights, but there seemed to be no end to it. Just now a sniveling lawyer was sitting slumped on the visitor’s chair, reminding him uncannily of a starving vulture he had once seen while on summer vacation in the Serengeti.
The only person I would allow him to defend, Suurna thought, is my mother-in-law.
“You must understand, Mr. Rutter-”
“Ruger.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Ruger. You must understand that this has been a difficult time for us all, difficult and exhausting. One teacher is dead, another is in prison. The polic
e are running around here every day. Surely you can see that our school has to be spared any further stress.”
“Of course. You don’t need to worry.”
“Perhaps it’s not necessary for me to point out that our pupils have been affected in most undesirable ways, Mr. Ruger.
They are young people, and easily thrust into a state of confusion. What we now need to do as a matter of urgency is pull ourselves together and move on. I bear the ultimate pedagogi-cal responsibility, and can’t just stand by and watch. .”
The door opened tentatively and a woman with mauve-
colored hair and mauve-colored spectacles put her head around it.
“Would you like me to serve coffee now, Mr. Suurna?”
Her voice was soft and meticulously articulated.
As if her words were made of bone china, Ruger thought.
It seemed clear that she was a former primary school teacher.
“Of course, Miss Bellevue. Bring it right in.”
Ruger was quick to make the most of his opportunity.
“Of course I understand your difficulties. I have a son who graduated from this school ten years ago.”
“Really? I didn’t think. .”
“Ruger, his name was. Edwin Ruger. Obviously, I can see that this must have been a particularly difficult time for you, but even so, Mr. Suurna, we must ensure that justice takes its course, don’t you agree?”
“Of course, Mr. Ruger. Surely you don’t think for a moment that I would want anything different?”
He glanced after Miss Bellevue, who was just leaving the room, and Ruger wondered if there really was an ounce of unrest in the man, or if he was just imagining it.
“Not for a moment, no. You merely want a degree of. .
discretion. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Precisely. But if you’ll allow me to say so, that hasn’t exactly been the strongest side of our police authorities. Or perhaps I should say, let’s hope they have stronger sides.”
He peered over his spectacles and tried to smile, as if to suggest they were singing from the same hymn sheet. Ruger blew his nose.
“However, you represent. .?” wondered Suurna, dropping three lumps of sugar into his plastic mug.
