The Return

by Håkan Nesser

  Ten minutes later Detective Inspector Rooth marched into Inspector Münster’s office without knocking and announced with ill-concealed excitement:

  “I think we’ve got him.”

  10

  Sleep, he thought. That’s all I want.

  The hours before he had been admitted were not the orgy of solitude he had imagined, and perhaps it was those telephone calls just as much as What Is In Store that were hounding him and keeping him awake long into the early hours.

  Not that they had phoned to bid him farewell—or at least, it hadn’t sounded like that. But if something unexpected were to happen, they would naturally feel better, having spoken to him that final evening.

  Renate was first. Beating about the bush as usual: talking about the holiday cottage they had once owned; about books she hadn’t read, but had seen; about her brother and sister-in-law (that awful brother of hers: For some unknown reason he got on rather well with the sister-in-law—in the old days, that is); and it was not until after a quarter of an hour or more that she came around to mentioning the operation.

  Was he worried?

  Worried? Of course not. No, needless to say she hadn’t expected him to be. Perhaps he could give her a ring when it was all over, in any case?

  He had half promised. Anything to prevent her from going on about how they ought to get together again. They had been living apart for almost three years now, and if there was one thing in this life that he didn’t regret, it was the separation from Renate.

  Maybe that was sufficient reason to claim that their marriage hadn’t been such a bad thing after all, it suddenly struck him. As a means to an end, that is.

  Depressive people should be wary of one another, Reinhart had announced on some occasion or other. The sum often becomes greater than the parts. Much greater.

  Then there was Mahler. No sooner had he put the phone down after the first call than he had the old poet on the line.

  He must have let slip something about what was in store for him at the club, of course. Presumably while playing chess last Saturday, or the Saturday before. In any case, it was a surprise. Mahler was not exactly a close friend—whatever that means—but it could be that there was more to their companionship in the smoke-filled vaults than he had imagined. Or dared to imagine. He hadn’t thought very deeply about it, needless to say, but the call was a genuine surprise.

  “I suppose you’ll have to miss a few matches,” he said. Mahler, that is.

  “I’ll soon be back,” Van Veeteren had countered. “Nothing boosts your potency better than a few weeks’ abstinence.”

  And Mahler had laughed in that deep voice of his and wished him the best of luck.

  Last of all, Jess, of course.

  She gave him a big daughterly hug over the miles, but promised to visit him in a few days with grapes, chocolate and grandchildren.

  “Not on your life,” he protested. “Drag the kids a couple of hundred miles to gape at a doddery old bastard? I’d frighten the life out of them!”

  “Balderdash,” said Jess. “I’ll treat them to an ice cream afterward and they’ll get over it. I know you’re frightened to death of this operation even if you flatly deny it when anybody says so.”

  “I flatly deny it,” said Van Veeteren.

  She laughed, just like Mahler had done, and then he’d spoken to two three-year-olds in his schoolboy French, and they also threatened to come and gape at him shortly. If he’d understood them rightly. And they seemed to know all about it, he had to admit.

  “You’ll get an injection; then you’ll fall asleep,” said one of them.

  “They put the dead bodies in the basement,” added the other.

  When he had survived that call, it was high time to set off. He left a key with Mrs. Grambowska, two floors down, as usual, and tonight even this white-haired, faithful old servant seemed to exude a strange sort of glow full of sympathy and reconciliation. She took his hand and stroked it tenderly, a gesture the likes of which he had never seen from her in all the years he had known her.

  “Good-bye,” she said. “Take care.”

  I’ll disappoint them all if I pull through this, he thought as he got into the taxi. Not a bad tip to send him on his way, in fact. Take care! When he was lying on the table, drugged and carved up, he should avoid getting carried away and doing something silly. He must remember that.

  He was aware that the only one who hadn’t been in touch was Erich, but of course it was possible that he’d tried earlier in the afternoon. The match with Münster and the visit to Adenaar’s had taken a lot of time, and he’d been at home for only a couple of hours or so. No doubt there were restrictions even on such things as telephone calls when you were in prison.

  There were two beds in the pale yellow room that the nurse ushered him into, but the other one was empty and so he was able to lie alone and think his thoughts without distraction.

  And they were many and varied. And sufficiently urgent to keep sleep at bay. He used the phone calls to grope his way back through time: It was not a mapped out journey, but his thoughts dragged him along in their wake and before long he had started to remember all the pains and delights his life had afforded him, and he tried to understand what had made him what he had become, and what he was…. If he could be excused such an infantile way of putting it. But in any case, the time seemed to be ripe for reflection; like writing his own epitaph, it struck him—his own obituary, written in advance, with authentic facts. Or questions.

  From memory, not in.

  Ex memoriam.

  Who am I? Who have I been?

  Needless to say, no answers came to him, apart from a realization that quite a lot seemed to have followed a pattern. Piloted him in the same inexorable direction in some mysterious way.

  His father: that deeply tragic figure (but children are blind to great tragedies, of course), who had such a significant influence on him. Unswervingly and inexorably he had inculcated into his son a certainty that we can never expect the least favor from life. Nothing is permanent; all is transient, arbitrary, coincidental and obscure.

  Well, something like that, if he’d understood his father rightly.

  His marriage: twenty-five years with Renate. To be sure, it had produced two children and that was the important outcome. One of them was in prison and likely to continue along that path; but there again, Jess and the grandchildren were an unexpectedly healthy branch on the old, sickly tree. There was no denying that.

  They put the dead bodies in the basement!

  His job: If nothing else had pointed in that direction, thirty-five years of Sisyphean labor in the shady side of life and society must have presented him with the occasional indication that something positive can be achieved.

  Yes, there was after all a trace of a pattern.

  He thrust his hand down under the stiff blanket and fingered his stomach. There…Somewhere around there is where it was, to the right of his navel, if he had understood it rightly. That was where they were going to cut into him.

  He squeezed tentatively. Suddenly felt hungry, as if he had been pressing a button. He had been forbidden to eat anything after six p.m., and it struck him that in fact he hadn’t eaten since twelve. At this very moment his intestine was doubtless locked in a vain struggle to suck the last drop of nutrition from the beer he had drunk at Adenaar’s…. He tried to conjure up the process in his mind’s eye, but the images that shimmered into view were blurred and abstract, way beyond the limits of comprehension.

  It must have been at some point in this flickering sequence of incomprehensible images that he lost consciousness. No doubt the dim film show emanating from his intestines lasted for a while longer, but soon things started to become clearer. All at once the images sharpened. The stage was well lit and crystal clear. The operating theater peopled with mysterious figures in green, flitting around without a sound, their concentration hypnotic in its intensity. Only the faint, shrill clang of sharp instruments being whetted o
r dropped into metal dishes occasionally disturbed the dense, conspiratorial silence.

  He lay there, naked and exposed on the cold marble table, and it struck him that it was all over. This wasn’t an operation. This was taking place in the familiar and rather chilly autopsy theater at the Forensic Institute where he’d watched Meusse and his colleagues at work many a time.

  He approached the table and the group of enthusiastically cutting and carving figures, and it occurred to him that he couldn’t be the one lying there, that it must be some other poor, unfortunate and totally unknown soul. But there again, maybe not so unknown…There was something familiar about that headless body. It didn’t seem to have any hands either, and no feet, and when he finally managed to force his way past Meusse and that pale, fat assistant whose name he could never remember, it dawned on him that it wasn’t a table they were working at, but a piece of very ordinary woodland, a ditch in fact; and what they were busy with was not an operation or an autopsy—they had just rolled up the body in a big, dirty piece of carpet and were hurrying to force it down into the overgrown ditch where it belonged. Where everything belonged. Now and forevermore.

  And then he was the one rolled up inside the carpet, after all. He couldn’t make a sound, could hardly breathe, but he could hear their excited whispers even so. This is a good place to put him! Nobody will ever find him here. He’s a totally unnecessary person. Why should we worry about anybody like that?

  And he yelled at them, to bear in mind their moral responsibilities. Yes, that is exactly what he yelled, but of course it didn’t do much good, the carpet was too thick and they were already leaving, and it was extremely difficult to make yourself heard when you didn’t have a head.

  The woman shook his arm. He opened his eyes and was just going to yell once more that they should bear in mind their moral responsibilities when he realized that he had woken up.

  She said something, and he had the impression that her eyes were full of sympathy. Or something like that, at least.

  Am I dead? Van Veeteren wondered. She looked quite angelic, in fact. It was not an impossibility.

  But she was holding a telephone receiver. Everything seemed to be bordering on the profane, and then the penny dropped: He hadn’t even been operated on yet. It was morning, and everything was still in store.

  “Telephone,” she said again. “A call for the chief inspector.”

  She handed him the receiver and walked away. He cleared his throat and tried to sit up.

  “Hello?”

  “DCI Van Veeteren?”

  It was Münster.

  “Speaking.”

  “Please excuse me for troubling you at the hospital, but you did say that the operation wasn’t until eleven….”

  “What time is it now, then?” He searched for a clock on the empty walls, but couldn’t see one.

  “Twenty past ten.”

  “Oh.”

  “I thought I ought to tell you that we know who it is…. You did seem to be a bit interested.”

  “You mean the body in the carpet?”

  For a fraction of a second he thought he was dreaming again.

  “Yes. We’re all quite sure it must be Leopold Verhaven.”

  “What?”

  For a couple of seconds Van Veeteren’s mind was a blank. A minute expanse of stainless steel from which everything bounced off and had no chance of penetrating.

  “What the hell was that you said?”

  “Yes, Leopold Verhaven. He’s the one. I take it that you remember him?”

  Three seconds passed. The steel melted and allowed the information to penetrate.

  “Do nothing!” said Van Veeteren. “I’m on my way.”

  He started to climb out of bed, but at that very moment the doors opened and in marched an unexpectedly large squad of personnel dressed in green.

  The receiver was left dangling.

  “Hello?” said Münster. “Are you still there?”

  The nurse picked it up.

  “Mr. Van Veeteren has just left for the operating theater,” she explained and replaced the receiver.

  III

  August 24, 1993

  11

  There were two good vantage points and two possible trains.

  The first wasn’t due until 12:37, but even so he had taken up his position at about 11:00. It was important that he should get the right seat: at one of the window tables on the veranda. He had scouted it out a few days beforehand: The view over the square in front of the station was excellent, especially the area between the taxi rank and the newsstand. It was at the center of his field of vision, and all newly arrived passengers were bound to end up there sooner or later.

  Unless they took the prohibited route over the railroad tracks, of course; but why would he do that? His house was in this direction; there was no reason for him to head northward; so if he intended to come straight home, he would pass by here. Sooner or later, as already stated. Most likely round about a quarter to one.

  An hour and a half from now.

  What he would do next was an open question; but the probability was that he would take a cab for the remaining ten miles or so. That was of minor significance. The main thing was that he came.

  Then everything would work out, no doubt. Somehow or other.

  He ordered lunch—cold cuts with salad; bread, butter and cheese. But he hardly touched the food during the two hours he sat there. Instead he smoked about fifteen cigarettes, occasionally turning the pages of the book he had propped up to the right of his plate—without reading more than the occasional line here and there and without having the slightest idea of the content. If this was camouflage, it was a poor effort. Anybody taking a closer look at him would doubtless have noticed that something fishy was going on. He was well aware of that, but there was no risk.

  Who on earth would want to take a closer look at him?

  Nobody, he had decided; and that was, of course, a perfectly correct conclusion to reach. Between eleven and two, some 200 to 250 customers would have lunch at the railroad restaurant. Most of them were regulars; but there would be a large number of chance diners, making it highly unlikely that anybody would pay any attention to this ordinary-looking man in corduroy trousers and grayish green pullover by the window, minding his own business.

  Especially if you bore the time factor in mind. He couldn’t help smiling to himself at the thought. If everything went to plan, an awful lot of time would pass. Months. With any luck, years. Masses of time. Ideally what was going to happen would never be discovered.

  Needless to say, that would be the optimal solution—nothing ever seeing the light of day—but he realized that it would be stupid to bank on that. It was better and smarter to be prepared for all eventualities. Better to sit here quietly and do nothing to draw attention to himself. An unknown diner among a lot of unknown diners. Noticed by nobody, forgotten by everybody.

  At about twelve, when the place was at its busiest, some of the customers tried to take the seat opposite him at the little table, but he turned them away. Explained politely that unfortunately it was reserved, he was waiting for a friend.

  Later, during the critical moments around a quarter to one, he became tense. That was inevitable. When he saw the first of the newly alighted passengers, he moved his chair closer to the window and ignored everything else. It was essential to concentrate hard: Identifying him might well be the weakest link in the whole chain. A long time had passed, and who could tell how much he might have changed during all those years? Obviously, in no circumstances must he miss him.

  He must not let him pass unnoticed.

  When he did eventually see him, he was emerging from the café on the other side of the square an hour and a half later. It was obvious there was no need to have worried.

  Of course, it was him. That was immediately clear when he was still thirty yards away—the same energetic, wiry little figure; slightly hunched, perhaps, but not much. His hair thinner and paler in col
or. Receding at the temples. Movements a bit stiffer.

  A bit grayer, a bit older.

  But definitely him.

  He left his table and went out into the street. The man was standing at the taxi rank. Just as expected. Number three in the line, searching for something in his pockets. Cigarettes, money, could be anything.

  Nothing to do but wait, then. Wait, go and sit in the car, then follow him. There was no hurry. He knew where the cab would take him.

  Knew that everything was going to happen according to plan.

  For one brief moment he felt slightly dizzy as blood rushed to his head, but he soon regained control of himself.

  The taxi pulled away. Drove round the square, and as it passed him outside the café, he could see the familiar profile through the back window less than six feet away, and he knew at that moment that there would be no problem.

  No problem at all.

  IV

  May 5–10, 1994

  12

  “What do you think?” Rooth asked.

  Münster shrugged.

  “I don’t know. But he’s probably our man. We’ll have to wait and see what the forensic officers say.”

  “It’s not exactly a cheerful place.”

  “No. That’s certainly what strikes you, somehow. Shall we take a walk to the village? We’re not doing any good here. We’ll have to talk to the neighbors sooner or later anyway.”

  Rooth nodded and they set off in silence down the winding path through the woods. After a few hundred yards the countryside opened up, with low farmhouses on each side, and only a stone’s throw farther on was the village of Kaustin. They continued as far as the church and the main road.

  “How many souls live in this place, do you know?” asked Rooth.

  Münster glanced at the churchyard, but assumed the question referred to those who had not yet been laid to rest.