The Return

by Håkan Nesser

  Despite Van Veeteren’s unfathomability. And it was only in the early stages.

  “No,” he said. “Van Veeteren is Van Veeteren.” He glanced over at the grand piano. Why hadn’t anybody appeared? Reinhart had guessed it would be one o’clock, but it was twenty past by now.

  “I don’t know,” said Jung. “Anyway, here comes our sole. Yum-yum!”

  Forty-five minutes later, Edward Masseck paid his bill and left. He had been all alone from start to finish. Jung had just ordered a second helping of candied walnuts, but they decided to pay and report to their colleagues.

  “Hell’s bells!” said Reinhart when he heard that his prey had escaped. “How much did the meals cost?”

  “It’s all yours,” said Münster, handing him the bill.

  Reinhart stared at the pale blue scrap of paper.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” he said. “Stauff and I have been sitting in the car for two hours with half a packet of peanuts between us.”

  “It was an excellent meal,” said Jung from the backseat. “Maybe it would be a good idea to try again tomorrow?”

  37

  Dvořák’s New World Symphony had enveloped him during the last fifty miles or so, and that had been the right choice of music. Over the years he had begun to get a feeling for this kind of thing—the relationship between the task he was involved with, the weather and time of year and music. There were rising and falling movements that needed to be followed, not resisted. Flows and analogies that worked together, harmonized and illuminated one another…. Or however you might like to express it. It was difficult to put such things into words and explain them. Much easier to feel them.

  Ah well, everything gets easier as the years go by. But as the years passed he had also become more wary of words. That wasn’t exactly surprising—bearing in mind his usual working environment, in which it was more of the exception than the rule when anybody stuck to the truth.

  Language is lying, as somebody said.

  Anyway, the New World. And as the skies cleared and the afternoon sun started to dry out the persistent rain that had fallen during the night and morning, he approached his goal. His fears about dizzy spells and lack of judgment in traffic had proven to be unfounded. He had also made frequent stops; sat with coffee and cake in depressing concrete-and-glass roadside cafés, gone for short walks, stretched his legs again and again and even performed gymnastic exercises as recommended in the postoperative program he’d had thrust into his hand on being released from hospital.

  He had also been careful to refrain from alcohol and tobacco. He had to get back home again. Preferably, in any case.

  His stock of toothpicks had been exhausted long before the Dvořák.

  He parked in a little square called Cazarros Plats, and as he looked around for a suitable place to eat, he wondered who Cazarro might have been. He sounded more like a conquistador than a north European statesman, that was for sure.

  Wedged between a department store and an undistinguished 1950s local government building was a little Italian restaurant specializing in pizzas and pasta dishes. He decided to give it a try. His meeting with Sister Marianne was at five o’clock, and he didn’t have all the time in the world.

  But the food wasn’t the main point anyway. That was a glass of red wine and that longed-for cigarette.

  And also the need to concentrate before what was in store. He had made an unnecessary fuss regarding preparations many times in the past, but there was something special about this occasion that had been clear to him from the moment he set off from home. Something he wasn’t able to handle and that he’d given up trying to control a long time ago.

  A game in which he was much more of a chip than a punter.

  It was not a new sensation, just an example of or a variation on that old deterministic principle, presumably: the unavoidable business of patterns and preordained order in the environment. Of increasing or decreasing entropy.

  No, those thoughts about the arbitrary nature of life that he had flirted with the other day were something he now felt no enthusiasm for.

  If there really was a creator or a force—or at the very least an all-seeing eye—it must be able to look down from its elevated position and make out the lines, the veins and arteries in time and space. The structures that seem so incomprehensible from our usual worm’s-eye view.

  And the mutual connections and consequences of actions. Was there any other possibility? This must be what constituted the categories of a god.

  These patterns.

  But if there was no higher force—did it really make much difference?

  What about Anselm and the proof of God’s existence? Hadn’t he always had trouble in seeing the point of it?

  He fumbled in his breast pocket for a toothpick, then remembered the state of affairs and lit a cigarette instead.

  Wouldn’t the pattern exist even so, in the same way as DNA spirals and the crystals making up snowflakes have always existed, irrespective of whether there has been anyone or anything to observe them?

  What does a fractal care about a camera? he asked himself.

  Good questions. Recurring questions. He put down his cigarette, poked listlessly at his fettuccine and took a sip of wine. It was hard to feel really hungry these days, for whatever reason. Whether it was due to the missing piece of bowel or something else.

  Justice was another aspect.

  Simpler and easier to deal with, he had always thought, even if he had never really needed to put it to the ultimate test. Despite more than thirty years in the force.

  The tool of justice. That was how he needed to regard himself, after all, if he was to be really serious about it. It sounded a little high-flown, even a little pathetic; but it wasn’t something he went on about. It was merely an attitude he adopted in order to motivate himself, but it was a damned important one.

  When it came to justifying his own existence and the work he did, he sometimes needed to dig deep, that was something he had learned. Deeper and deeper, perhaps—as if with every year that passed the very foundations became coated with a new and thicker layer of mud and dirt stirred up by the underworld in which he spent every working day.

  Something like that anyway.

  He still hadn’t found an answer to the key question. He had formulated it several years ago in connection with the G file, and it wasn’t especially complicated: Am I prepared to take things into my own hands when the law and the institutions fail?

  If he was standing beside a murderer or some other violent criminal, and knew for certain—with 100 percent certainty—that the person was guilty, would it be morally more correct to let him go because of lack of proof rather than ensuring that justice was done?

  He inhaled on his cigarette.

  There were endless special cases, of course, and it was impossible to oversee the consequences. He had been through it all many times in theory, and perhaps he ought to be grateful that he hadn’t needed to put the theory to the test.

  It had been a close thing at times, though. Especially then, seven years ago, in Linden.

  And there was nothing to indicate that it would become relevant on this occasion, either.

  Or was there?

  He looked at his watch and saw that it was high time he paid and set off for her apartment, if he didn’t want the nun to have to wait for him.

  The apartment was painted white and tastefully appointed. There was a minimum of furniture; in the living room, which is where she took him, there was only a low couch, two floor cushions and a table, with a bookcase and a prayer bench in a corner. On the walls were a crucifix and two candles in brass holders. And a picture of a church window, probably Chartres Cathedral. That was all.

  No television, no armchairs, no knickknacks. The floor was covered by a large dark-colored carpet.

  Good, thought Van Veeteren, sitting down on the couch. Nothing but essentials. The essence.

  She served tea from an earthernware teapot. Simple cups, with
out handles. Thin cookies. No sugar, no milk. She didn’t even ask if he wanted any, but he didn’t, in any case.

  She was old, at least fifteen years older than Van Veeteren, but she radiated vitality and alertness like an aura. It was clear that he was facing a person who inspired and demanded respect beyond the norm. The familiar feeling of deference came creeping up on him, the kind he sometimes felt when confronted by deeply religious and serene individuals—people who had worked out the answer to questions he himself had barely been able to formulate. A deference that was just as naturally complemented by its opposite, contempt and loathing, when he met the opposite type: submissive and loudly braying sheep, dominated by the herd instinct, the sanctimonious fellow travelers of hypocrisy.

  He had sensed her qualities the moment they shook hands; she was a slim, erect woman with serious-looking brown eyes and a high forehead. She sat down opposite him, sinking onto one of the cushions with a graceful movement reminiscent of a curtsy. It struck him that as she squatted there with her legs hidden underneath her in the Asian manner, she could almost have been a twenty-five-year-old Buddhist woman. But in fact she was a Roman Catholic nun, three times as old as that.

  “Help yourself,” she said.

  He sipped the aromatic tea, groping for the folder he had placed on the floor beside him.

  “I think I must ask you to clarify your intentions once more.”

  He nodded. It was obvious that to produce the folder and the form would be an insult. Klimke’s razor, that he had justifiably thrown into the face of the chief of police only the other day, now threatened to bring shame upon himself, and nobody else.

  “I must apologize,” he said. “My name is indeed Van Veeteren, but I am not who I said I was. I am a detective chief inspector, stationed in Maardam. My visit has to do with a case that I would prefer not to go into in detail. Will you be satisfied with my assurance that I have the best of intentions, but am dealing with a matter wallowing in evil?”

  She smiled.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s to do with Anna, if I understood you rightly?”

  Van Veeteren nodded.

  “She lived here with you for a few years before she died, I think. From 1987 to 1992, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You cared for her and looked after her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that is my vocation. That’s the way we work in our order. It’s a way of creating meaning. And love between people. Anna got in touch with us; there are about twenty of us sisters, and I was free at the time.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “I take it that you became…quite close to her?”

  “We meant a lot to each other.”

  “Confided in each other?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you tell me about her illness?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Was she confined to bed all the time, for instance?”

  It was clear to him that she already knew and had considered in advance what the conversation would be about, but perhaps that didn’t matter.

  “She improved.”

  “Improved?”

  She suddenly became more serious.

  “Yes, Chief Inspector. She improved. You are doubtless aware that her wounds were not confined to her hips. There is such a thing as a soul as well.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said Van Veeteren with unintentional irony. “What on earth are you hinting at?”

  She drew a deep breath and straightened her back.

  “Irrespective whether or not you are a believer,” she said, “perhaps you can agree that many physical phenomena also have a psychological side. A spiritual dimension.”

  She spoke very slowly, as if she had prepared the words in advance and wanted to be certain that none of them escaped his attention.

  “Can you explain in a little more detail,” he said.

  “Preferably not. It is a matter of trust as well. Not spelled out, but just as binding. I’m sure you understand what I mean.”

  “You consider that you are bound by professional secrecy?”

  “To some extent, yes.”

  He nodded.

  “But when the wounds in the soul had healed, her handicap also became less severe, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much better did she become? Could she move around? With the aid of a rolling walker or walking sticks, for instance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she go out?”

  “I took her out in a wheelchair every day.”

  “But she never went out on her own?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  He looked past her and out the window.

  “Can you tell me what you were doing on June fifth, 1992?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you know what Anna was doing that day?”

  She didn’t reply. Looked at him with those calm, brown eyes of hers without an ounce of worry or embarrassment.

  “How far is it from here to Ulmentahl?”

  “Eighteen miles,” she said with no hesitation.

  He drank the rest of his tea and allowed the silence to settle on the low table. It’s remarkable how information can be passed on via silence, he thought. He could have asked important questions now; that would have been the normal procedure, no doubt about that. He would have received no answers, but he was used to reading the nuances in unspoken words. But this was different. There was an infinitely wide gap between this almost stylized situation and the usual unspoken exchanges. For a moment he could feel a dizzy spell coming on again. Possibly not the kind of dizziness due to his operation, but nevertheless a feeling of weakness, a loss of strength and a feeling that he was losing his foothold…Or that there was something about which he was the only person to have total knowledge. And hence the total and unavoidable responsibility.

  “Those wounds in her soul…,” he said eventually. “Have you any idea about what caused them?”

  “She never told me about it.”

  “I have gathered that. But I asked you if you had any idea about it.”

  She smiled faintly once more.

  “I can’t go into this, Chief Inspector. It doesn’t belong to me anymore.”

  He paused for a few seconds.

  “Do you believe in divine justice?” he asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “And earthly justice?”

  “That too. I am sorry that I am inhibited with regard to what I can tell you, but I think you already know what you need to know. It is not up to me to break my confidence and to speculate. If she had wanted me to have a complete knowledge of everything, she would have told me everything, of course. But she didn’t. If it had been the intention that I should take the matter further, I would have known. But that is not the case.”

  “So Nemesis is my role?”

  “Perhaps. A profession is also a calling, is that not the case?”

  He sighed.

  “May I ask you a personal question that has nothing to do with this?”

  “Of course. Please do.”

  “Do you believe in a God who intervenes?”

  She clasped her hands over her knee.

  “Certainly,” she said. “I believe that to the greatest possible degree.”

  “How does He intervene?”

  “In many ways. Through people.”

  “And you believe that He is careful when He selects His agents?”

  “Why should He not be?”

  “It was just a thought,” said Van Veeteren.

  Suspicions! he thought as he sat down in the first of his stopping places on the way home. Suspicions and thin air.

  He sighed. Ferrati, the prosecutor, would kill himself laughing if Van Veeteren approached him with stuff like this.

  Without really thinking what he was doing, he started to draw a series of circles in the margin of the evening paper on the tabl
e in front of him. He contemplated the pattern that was emerging and at the same time tried to summarize the situation:

  If Verhaven really was innocent, it could be that the real murderer was the person he suspected. Furthermore, it was not impossible that the invalid Anna, who had died six months before the murder, suspected this. In any case, he had the feeling that Sister Marianne presumed that Anna was the one who had visited Verhaven in prison…. In which case, of course, it was possible that she had told him what she thought!

  My God, Van Veeteren thought. What a deduction!

  In schematic form, along the edge of the crumpled newspaper, the chain of thought looked even more dodgy, if that was possible. A series of clumsily drawn circles joined by feeble lines the size of a spider’s thread. Damn it all! Solid proof, Heller had gone on about. If he saw this, he would probably accept my resignation without further ado, Van Veeteren thought.

  But even so, he knew that he was right. This is how it had happened. The murderer was surrounded. Van Veeteren had no doubt. It was obvious.

  He could picture Leopold Verhaven as a young man—the successful athlete. Fast, strong and vital; on his way to entering the record books…In the middle of the naïve, optimistic 1950s. The decade of the Cold War, but also of optimism in many respects. Wasn’t that the case?

  And then?

  How had things turned out?

  What a complete and permanent change of fortune!

  Wasn’t the bottom line that Verhaven’s fate was symbolic? What kind of a bizarre sequence of events was this, spread out over almost half a century, that had led to the man’s death, and that Van Veeteren was sitting here now trying to conjure up in his mind’s eye? What was the significance of his probing into forgotten deaths from the past? That had taken place during that failed, worn-out life?

  Was this really just a straightforward part of Van Veeteren’s job?

  As he sat there gazing out into the dusk that was descending over the edge of the forest and the featureless section of freeway, it struck him that, in fact, everything had come to an end a long time ago. That he was the last, forgotten soldier, or actor, in a play, or war, that everybody else had left years ago, and that nobody could care less about his efforts and undertakings. No matter if they were fellow actors, opponents or spectators.