The Stranglers Honeymoon

by Håkan Nesser

  Good God, he thought. Let’s hope she doesn’t wake up. She could be damaged for life.

  He carefully manoeuvred the pram further in among the bookshelves, but realized that the space between them was too narrow to move it into the inner room, which would have made an excellent bedroom: the sheltered corner with maps and crime fiction would have to suffice. If any customers turned up and asked about crime novels, he could always tell them to go to hell. Or to come back on Monday. He fetched his cup of coffee and the Seneca. Sat down on the stair half a metre from the pram and looked at the clock. Five minutes had passed since Marlene had left. What had she said?

  Three-quarters of an hour? An hour? He noticed that he had palpitations.

  Calm down now, he told himself stoically. What’s the matter with me? It’s only a little baby.

  Ten minutes later he had read page thirty-seven of the Lucilian letters no less than four times, Andrea had sighed deeply twice, but nothing else had changed.

  The doorbell rang. He swore quietly to himself, and decided not to announce his presence in the shop. Why hadn’t he locked the door and pulled down the blind? And did people really have nothing better to do than to potter around in second-hand bookshops on a rainy afternoon like this one? If they really had to read, surely they could buy a new book or two rather than old ones?

  ‘Hello?’

  It took him half a second to identify the voice.

  Inspector Moreno.

  He thought briefly. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a woman around. In case anything critical happened. Ewa Moreno had no children of her own, that was true: but then, she was a biological creature, was she not?

  Very much biological, it struck him.

  ‘Yes.’

  Her dark-haired head peered round the corner from biographies and miscellaneous.

  ‘Is that the Chief Inspector?’

  He didn’t even bother to correct her.

  ‘It certainly is. Good morning, Inspector, but I think we need to talk rather more quietly. There’s somebody here trying to sleep.’

  Moreno came up and looked down into the pram.

  ‘Good Lord, I didn’t know . . . Who is it?’

  ‘Andrea,’ said Van Veeteren.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘My granddaughter. Eighteen months old. An absolute treasure.’

  Moreno smiled, then turned serious.

  ‘Granddaughter? How . . . I mean . . .’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Let’s move away a bit so that we don’t wake her up. Maybe I haven’t told you?’

  They moved further into the room overlooking the street.

  ‘No,’ said Moreno. ‘You haven’t mentioned it.’

  Van Veeteren took out his cigarette machine, but changed his mind. No doubt it was not good for Andrea to breathe in so much tobacco smoke at such a young age.

  ‘Yes, she’s Erich’s daughter,’ he said. ‘He managed to leave a trace of his presence on this earth before he died, despite everything. He never saw his daughter, unfortunately, but she’s the one lying over there. I’m babysitting, his mother will be coming to fetch her shortly . . .’

  Moreno sat down at the low counter.

  ‘Good Lord,’ she said. ‘I had no idea. Nor does anybody else, I suspect. It must feel . . . well, how does it feel, in fact?’

  Van Veeteren paused for a while before answering.

  ‘It’s a consolation,’ he said. ‘Of course it’s a consolation, curse it. Life is so damned strange, you don’t realize what’s important and what’s less important until long afterwards. If you’re unlucky, it’s too late when the penny drops, although . . .’

  He paused, but Moreno simply nodded and waited for him to continue.

  ‘Naturally it’s not only your own life that needs to make sense – it never does, of course, and you have to make do with a certain degree of meaningfulness . . . No, the important thing is the bigger perspective, and that little lady in the pram is a part of something much, much bigger than anything an ancient second-hand bookseller could ever dream of . . . Hmm, I’m going gaga.’

  Moreno looked at him, and he suddenly wished he was twenty-five years younger. Then he remembered Ulrike, and realized that being over sixty wasn’t such a bad thing either.

  ‘I’m touched,’ said Moreno. ‘Sorry to mention it, but it’s a fact.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘It suits you. But I have the impression you came here for some other purpose. Looking for some Saturday night reading, perhaps?’

  Moreno laughed.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘But maybe I can sort that out while I’m here anyway. No, it’s the same old story, in fact. The Kammerle–Gassel case, as we call it, although it makes it sound like a make of motorbike . . . Or some disease or other. Anyway, I thought you might still be interested.’

  ‘I am,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Very much so.’

  ‘You weren’t watching the telly last night by any chance, were you?’

  ‘The telly?’ said Van Veeteren, raising an eyebrow. ‘No. Why should I do that?’

  ‘Some people do,’ said Moreno.

  ‘I’m not much of a one for popular entertainment. And I think our set is broken anyway – Ulrike said something about that the other day . . . What programme did you have in mind?’

  ‘A crime magazine programme. They discussed our case. Hiller was on, and Reinhart as well . . .’

  ‘Reinhart?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The times are out of joint,’ said Van Veeteren.

  Moreno pulled a face.

  ‘For sure,’ she said. ‘They usually are. Anyway, we thought a bit of publicity might help our investigation. It’s been pretty hard going, as you probably know . . .’

  ‘I’ve suspected as much,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘You still have no idea about a possible murderer?’

  ‘No,’ said Moreno with a shrug. ‘That would be putting it too strongly. But we did get a few reactions to yesterday’s programme – you had a bit to do with that business of the priest, didn’t you?’

  Van Veeteren placed a thoughtful hand under his chin and frowned.

  ‘Well, we’ve found out why he was at the Central Station at that time, for instance. He was going to meet a lover who was due on a train. You recall that Gassel was gay?’

  ‘I was the one who established that,’ said Van Veeteren modestly.

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. In any case, this lover turned up at the police station and gave us a detailed confession – that he was on the train, and why, that is.’

  ‘Really?’ said Van Veeteren, and thought for a moment. ‘And where does that get us?’

  ‘Not very far, I’m afraid,’ said Moreno. ‘But it’s another piece to add to the puzzle in any case. He had nothing new to tell us about Pastor Gassel. They hardly knew one another, he claimed. They used to meet and, you know, a few times a year, that’s all. It seems that some people are like that.’

  ‘Evidently,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Did anything else float up to the surface after the police force’s venture into the bottomless pit known as popular entertainment?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Moreno. ‘But not a lot. One witness claimed to have seen a man running over the tracks at the Central Station that evening. Very helpful to have kept quiet about that for two-and-a-half months, of course . . .’

  ‘Is he reliable?’

  ‘She,’ said Moreno. ‘It’s a she. A young woman. At least, that’s what both Reinhart and Krause say, I haven’t spoken to her myself. According to her, this man left the station area and ran off in a northerly direction, towards Zwille in other words; it’s quite easy to get away in that direction. The witness had just left the station building and only saw his back. From twenty metres away, probably more.’

  ‘In the dark?’ asked Van Veeteren.

  ‘Semi-dark, at least. There was a certain amount of light there. Not a lot to go on, of course; but I reckon that if anybody still doubted that Gassel was
in fact murdered, they can forget that now.’

  Van Veeteren contemplated his cigarette machine and scratched himself under his chin.

  ‘I’ve never doubted that,’ he said. ‘Anyway, a bit of new evidence is better than nothing. I’d better have a word with Ulrike about having the television set repaired. Is Reinhart thinking of doing any repeat performances?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Moreno. ‘To be honest. But we had another interesting tip.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A waiter out at Czerpinski’s Mill. He says he served a meal to Monica Kammerle and an elderly man some time around the beginning of September.’

  ‘Monica Kammerle?’

  ‘Yes. The daughter, not her mother. When he says “elderly man” he means that he was significantly older than the girl. About forty, perhaps. He assumed at the time that it was a father and his daughter.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. He can’t remember details. He’s not a hundred per cent sure it was Monica Kammerle either – unfortunately he was on holiday when the papers wrote about it that first time.’

  ‘Typical,’ said Van Veeteren.

  ‘Yes,’ said Moreno. ‘Absolutely typical. Anyway, this was the latest news. You can hardly call it a breakthrough, but needless to say we are following everything up as best we can. Something will turn up sooner or later.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘As long as it’s not another victim.’

  Moreno sat in silence for a moment, contemplating that possibility as her eyes wandered over the row upon row of books.

  ‘Do you think that’s what’s going to happen?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘To be honest, that’s what I expect to happen next. Not least if it is in fact linked with that business at Wallburg. I was playing badminton with Münster last week, and he claimed that it wasn’t out of the question that the same killer was involved.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Moreno. ‘That seems likely. But if nothing else, that television programme ought to have put women on their guard.’

  ‘Let’s hope that’s the case as well,’ said Van Veeteren.

  Moreno stood up.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll bother about my literary education today,’ she said with an apologetic smile. ‘But perhaps I could take another peep at Andrea before I rush off ?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Van Veeteren.

  They crept along the gap between the shelves again. Moreno bent down over the pram, and Van Veeteren stood behind her, feeling a sort of diffuse pride bubbling up inside him.

  ‘She’s sweet,’ said Moreno. ‘Incredibly sweet.’ Van Veeteren cleared his throat.

  ‘Of course she’s bloody sweet. She’s my grandchild after all.’

  When Inspector Moreno had left, he sat down again on the stair and also took a look inside the pram.

  Then he checked the time. It was fifty minutes since Marlene had hurried off for her interview.

  Time’s running out, he thought, giving the pram a shake. It would be a pity if poor Andrea had to spend a whole hour with her grandad without actually seeing him.

  He gave the pram another shake, a bit harder this time.

  29

  On the night of 8 December, Anna Kristeva dreamed that she was going to die.

  Or that she had already died. Among the chaotic, feverish images that had come cascading down over her were some depicting the actual burial – she recalled those clearly when she woke up at about eight in the morning, soaked in sweat and wrapped in foul-smelling sheets. She opened her eyes, stared up at the ceiling and noticed that the room was spinning round. For a brief moment she thought that she hadn’t been dreaming after all, but that it was real. That she really was dead. Then she closed her eyes again and remembered that she was ill. Before falling asleep for the night at about eleven the previous evening she had managed to get her temperature down as far as 38.1: it hadn’t been possible to get it any lower than that, so no wonder she had been afflicted by unpleasant dreams.

  She lay there in bed for a while before daring to test whether her legs would support her. It turned out that they did, albeit only just: she had to cling on to the walls in order to stagger as far as the bathroom, and when she had finished peeing she remained sitting on the toilet for five minutes, without a single rational thought entering her head. It was a non-stop procession of images of her death from her dreams. Lying there naked on the bedroom floor, unable to breathe. Tossing and turning convulsively back and forth, trying to grab hold of something – an illusory and elusive object that evidently didn’t exist. Hovering there in mid air, something only she could see and evaluate, nobody else. Whatever it could possibly have been.

  Then she was lying in a white coffin in Keymerkyrkan as her friends and relatives filed past, gazing at her with sorrowful, sometimes tearful eyes. Her mother. Didrik, her brother. Jacob Brooms. Leonard, her ex-husband and his new wife, whose name she could never remember. And Ester Peerenkaas, who unlike the others didn’t seem to take it all too seriously. She smiled encouragingly at her instead, winking conspiratorially at her: for some inexplicable reason she was wearing a red tie round her neck.

  At that point the dream sequence came to a sudden end. Anna remembered the conversation with her friend on Thursday evening, flushed the toilet and managed to stand up. Clung on to the washbasin and stared sceptically at her reflection in the mirror before splashing a few handfuls of cold water forcefully into her face. Almost immediately she had a headache, and started shivering like a dog.

  Out into the kitchen. Aspirin, juice, vitamin C and a drop or two of Kan Jang – she had trouble in swallowing it, her throat seemed to have dried up during the night, but she managed it in the end. She staggered back into the bedroom and tumbled back into bed. Wrapped herself up in all the blankets and covers and pillows she could lay hands on, and went back to sleep.

  She just had time to think: I really must ring Ester if I ever wake up again.

  It was just turned half past ten when she did, and she couldn’t remember if she had been dreaming again. But she did remember that she should ring her friend, and as she wasn’t quite as feverish and sweaty as when she first woke up that morning, she picked up the telephone and dialled Ester’s number without further ado.

  But Ester wasn’t at home. She wondered if she ought to leave a message on the answering machine, but decided not to – she couldn’t think of anything to say, and she could always ring again a bit later on.

  Happy with her efforts and decision, she emptied the glass of water – which she must have put on her bedside table the previous evening, it tasted somewhat stale – turned her pillow over and went back to sleep.

  The next time she failed to get through to Ester it was a quarter past three. She had taken a shower and got dressed: admittedly only a T-shirt and a pair of baggy jogging trousers, but still . . . She left no message this time either, but instead telephoned that neighbour of hers who was always willing to run errands for her, and told him she had the flu. She asked if he could possibly nip down to the corner shop and buy her a couple of litres of juice; and if he had any spare aspirins, could he please let her have one or two as her own stock was dwindling.

  Herr Dorff, the engineer, produced the goods within half an hour. He seemed quite worried and looked just as lovelorn as usual when he handed them over, and asked if there really wasn’t anything else he could do to help.

  Anna assured him that there wasn’t, she had everything she needed now and it was just a matter of lying down in bed and getting some rest.

  Dorff told her he would be at home all evening, and all she needed to do was to give him a call if she wanted anything. She thanked him, and ushered him swiftly out through the door, explaining that she didn’t want to pass on the germs: in those circumstances there was nothing he could do but withdraw gracefully.

  By way of variation she parked herself on the sofa and tried to read, but the plot and the series of
harrowing events in Diza Murkland’s latest crime novel, which had shot up to the top of the bestseller list over the last couple of weeks, soon sapped the life out of her and she fell asleep again.

  It was not until getting on for nine o’clock that evening that she left a message on Ester’s answering machine, and it was only then that she started to feel a bit worried.

  What the hell was she up to? Why did she never come home and answer her telephone?

  Needless to say there was no end of perfectly natural answers to those questions. She might be out shopping, for instance. Visiting a friend. At the cinema (although she had evidently been there yesterday, surely?), or out enjoying herself in some way or other. It was Saturday, after all. There was no reason why she should sit at home, wasting time she could be spending on celebrating her youth. Always assuming she wasn’t ill and feeling miserable as well, of course.

  And miserable was exactly how Anna felt at the moment. She had had her evening shower and drunk as much fluid as would have satisfied a camel before a desert safari, but she still had a temperature and felt completely washed out.

  Shit, shit, shit, she thought. I must ask Dorff to get me some more juice tomorrow.

  He’ll be only too pleased to do that for me.

  Sunday began a little better, but not all that much. Instead of asking Dorff to run the errand, she managed to get to the corner shop under her own steam: but by the time she was back in her flat she almost fainted. She went back to bed, rested for an hour then read the Sunday paper for another two. She drank some more juice and water, eventually succeeded in getting down her a sandwich and a banana, and checked her temperature.

  Exactly thirty-eight, what else? . . .

  That afternoon she telephoned her mother and felt sorry for herself, and also rang Ester Peerenkaas: still no reply.

  She didn’t leave a message, but the unwarranted and somewhat surprising feeling of unease started nagging at her again. Only for a moment, but it was there and she had to ask herself why.