by Håkan Nesser
‘About a hundred and fifty kilometres.’
Moreno nodded.
‘So we just need to wait, then. By the way, to change the subject, can you recommend a decent garage in Lejnice?’
‘Garage?’
‘Yes. A repair workshop. Not too expensive. It’s about mending a Trabant.’
‘A Trabant? Surely you don’t drive around in a Trabant?’
‘Did,’ said Moreno. ‘Well?’
‘Er . . . Let’s see . . . Yes, Kluiverts, they are reliable.’
She made a note of the number, and another one of a guest house that Vegesack thought charged reasonable rates. He pointed out that he had never actually stayed in a B&B establishment in Lejnice, and that of course it was the summer season now.
Naturally, Moreno could have used the police station telephone to make the two calls, but something told her that it was high time she started restoring that old dividing line between work and her private life.
Start sketching it in at least, she thought with grim self-irony as she shook Vegesack’s hand and thanked him for his help.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ she said as she stood in the doorway. ‘What had happened down on the beach? You said that Vrommel had been called out.’
Vegesack frowned again.
‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘But they’ve evidently found a body.’
‘A body?’
‘Yes. Some little kids were playing around in the sand and dug it up, I think.’
‘And?’
‘That’s all I know,’ said Vegesack apologetically, looking at the clock. ‘We heard about it just over an hour ago. Vrommel took charge of it. Apparently there are officers there from Wallburg as well – scene-of-crime boys and technicians: we don’t have resources like that, and . . .’
He fell silent. Stood there with his hands half raised, as if he had been going to start massaging his temples again, but didn’t need to as a thought had struck him.
‘Good Lord! Surely you don’t think . . . ?’
‘I don’t think anything at all,’ said Moreno. ‘Man or woman?’
‘No idea. He just said a body, that’s all the Skunk said. A dead body.’
The Skunk? Moreno thought and hesitated for a moment with her hand on the door handle.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ she said eventually, and went out into the sunshine.
26
She came to Florian’s Taverna – a somewhat shabby-looking establishment that according to Mikael had looked exactly the same ever since the fifties, and presumably made a point of maintaining that profile – at five minutes past two, and suddenly realized that she had eaten nothing at all since that morning’s wretched cheese sandwich. She had drunk quite a lot, of course – juice and water and coffee and more water – but her stomach was rumbling and it dawned on her that it was time she started using her teeth for something other than grinding and gritting. Especially as she had thirty-two of them. Or was it only twenty-eight?
She didn’t get round to counting them, but sat down at a table on the terrace under a parasol instead. She ordered some garlic bread, a shellfish salad and a telephone directory. The latter was to enable her check that all the local garages were not shut due to holidays and the local guest houses were not full up, thanks to the lovely weather.
They were not, thank goodness. Neither type of establishment. A gruff-voiced woman at Dombrowski’s guest house promised to hold a room for her until nine o’clock – for three nights: they didn’t let rooms for a shorter time than that during the holiday season. No balcony and not much of a view, but the price was not unreasonable. By no means. So there was no reason not to thank the woman and confirm the booking.
She thanked the woman and confirmed the booking. Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, she thought. I’ll go back home on Thursday. That suited her down to the ground: by then no doubt things would have become sufficiently clear for Vrommel (the Skunk?) and Vegesack to handle everything without assistance.
Egon Kluivert, of Kluivert, Kluivert and Sons, claimed he was up to his ears in work; but after a bit of bargaining (despite the fact that he couldn’t understand for the life of him why a sweet girl like Moreno – yes, you could tell that from her voice if you had ears to hear and were a man of the world – why such a sweet girl should be driving around in a bloody sardine tin like a Trabant) he promised both to fix the ignition and arrange for the sardine tin to be transported to Tschandala in Port Hagen. No problem, he knew where the house was situated. If not this evening, then tomorrow morning at the latest – where should he send the bill to?
She explained that she would call in and pay it before Wednesday.
He wondered if she needed a new car. It so happened that he had a few peaches standing in his forecourt. Ridiculously cheap prices, and just nicely run in.
No, she didn’t need a new car at the moment, she told him. But she promised to be in touch as soon as she did.
The food arrived, and she ate with the vague feeling that things were going to turn out okay, despite the fact that she had no right to believe that they would. Never mind to demand that they should.
She ordered a small calvados with her coffee, to remind herself that she was still on holiday, and then she made another call. This time to her old friend and confidante Clara Mietens.
She got through to an answering machine. In thirty-five seconds Moreno gave her a summary of the situation, explained that she would probably be returning to Maardam towards the end of the week, and asked if the planned project of a several-day bicycle tour around the Sorbinowo region was still on the cards. Next week, perhaps?
She left her mobile number, and urged Clara to respond as soon as she had checked her messages and thought it over.
I need to get some exercise, Moreno thought. My head will coagulate if I don’t.
Then she paid her bill and headed for the sea.
The beach was just as full as it had been during the hot days of the previous week, but she saw the red-and-white police tape the moment she passed over the brow of the hill and started walking down towards the sands.
A bit to the north and quite a long way up from the waterline (it was almost low tide, and the shiny ridges of the sandbanks were becoming visible) an area about half the size of a football pitch had been cordoned off. The tape formed a rectangle all the way round, and was fluttering peacefully in the gentle sea breeze. It occurred to Moreno that it was a long time since she had seen anything so surrealistically bizarre.
To both the north and the south – more or less as far as the eye could see – people were romping around merrily, swimming, sunbathing, playing beach tennis and football, and throwing frisbees: free and easy in both mood and dress. But things were different inside the grim rectangle of death. There uniformed scene-of-crime officers were crawling around sweatily in their hunt for clues, and three dog-handlers patrolled the cordoned-off area to make sure curious spectators kept their distance while fine-grained sand slowly but surely filled their regulation low black shoes.
The spot where the body had been found, roughly in the middle of the half football pitch, was marked by another square of police tape, but this area had obviously been searched already. The scene-of-crime crawlers – she counted five of them plus a senior officer standing upright – were currently in a concentric circle a good ten metres away from the hole.
It was indeed a hole. And she knew the score: the team started in the middle and worked outwards, of course. Picked up everything they could find in the sand that seemed to have come from a human hand, and put each item into a plastic bag which was then sealed. Cigarette butts. Bits of paper. Chewing gum. Capsules. Condoms and spent matches.
All with the aim of finding a clue. Preferably a murder weapon. Even before she started walking down towards the warm, powdery sand, she knew that this was a murder investigation. Everything pointed to murder. And of course it was this insight that gave rise to the feeling of surrealism. Of bizarre r
eality.
Inspector Moreno had been there before, and knew the significance of what her eyes were telling her.
One of the three armed dog-handlers had blue eyes, and she chose him.
His name was Struntze, it turned out. She allowed him to take his time over studying her ID, then explained that she had just been allocated to the case, and had come to get a clear picture of what was happening. Where was Chief Inspector Vrommel? She had expected to find him here.
Strunze said that he had left only a quarter of an hour ago, but would be coming back.
Moreno said it didn’t matter as she would meet him later in any case. Meanwhile, could Struntze please explain what had happened.
Constable Struntze was more than willing to put her in the picture, and did so in a series of well-judged stage whispers.
Murder. Everything pointed to murder.
The body was that of a man between thirty and forty, according to the doctor’s preliminary conclusions. It had been lying there, buried in the sand, for about a week – give or take a day or two, it was difficult to be precise at this early stage.
He had been killed by a stab from a sharp instrument straight into his eye. His left eye. He must have died on the spot. Or within a few seconds, at least. Presumably quite close to the place where he had been buried. And where he had been found. By a couple of small boys – wasn’t that awful?
Moreno agreed that it certainly was.
Struntze thought it would leave them marked for life.
Moreno pointed out that they would see a hundred and twenty murders every week on the telly. And time heals the occasional wound. But who was he? The dead man.
They didn’t know yet, Struntze explained. He’d been dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved cotton shirt, but he had no identification papers on him. No money or anything else in his pockets. About a hundred and seventy-five centimetres tall. Dark brown hair. Quite sturdily built. Thirty-five, plus or minus five, as he’d said already.
What about the weapon, Moreno wondered.
No idea. Something pointed. It had passed right through his eye and into the brain. They hadn’t found it, of course. Somebody had suggested that it might have been a tent peg. Or a pair of scissors.
A tent peg? Moreno wondered. In that case it hardly seemed like a premeditated murder.
‘Do you know if they’ve found anything?’ she asked by way of conclusion, pointing at the crawling scene-of-crime officers.
Struntze stroked his dog and permitted himself a grim smile.
‘Sand,’ he said. ‘A hell of a lot of sand.’
It was a few minutes past four when Moreno left Constable Strunze and his King in peace. After a few moments’ thought she decided to go back to Port Hagen on foot along the beach. It was at least a seven- or eight-kilometre walk and would take a couple of hours, but as she had already established, she needed some exercise. She might as well take this opportunity.
She also needed to think. To work out exactly where she stood with regard to Mikael Bau, and all the other things. Her voluntary involvement in the Lijphart–Maager problem, for instance. Always assuming it was a problem . . . In any case, few things were more appropriate when it came to disentangling a mish-mash of thoughts than a long walk by the sea.
That’s what Van Veeteren always used to say.
If you don’t have a car in which to drive around and think, you can always try the sea. If it happens to be handy.
Perhaps it was a bit on the warm side for such a walk today, but never mind. She walked out to the waterline, put her sandals into her rucksack and started walking barefoot on the firm, wet sand that felt pleasantly smooth and cool. Less than an hour ago it had been the bottom of the sea. If she wanted to cool down the rest of her body as well, she only needed to walk a bit further out – a little salt water on her thin, faded cotton dress she’d been wearing for ten years or more was nothing to complain about. Nothing at all.
And a sandy beach all the way. Never-changing sea, never-changing sand dunes up to the edge of the shoreline. Sky, sea and land. Why haven’t I been for a walk here before? she wondered. I ought to have done.
Then she switched on her thoughts. Started with the problem that entered her mind first: Mikael Bau.
Why had it turned out like this? she asked herself, determined to be broad-minded about it. It had started so well. He had claimed that he loved her, and she had almost been prepared to move in with him only a few days ago. So why?
There was no satisfactory answer, she soon realized. No clear and unambiguous answer, in any case; but if she was going to walk along at the water’s edge for the next two hours, she might as well spend a little time thinking about it.
Had she grown tired of him? Could it be that simple? When it came down to the nitty gritty, was the answer as mundane as that?
Was she ready to share her life with somebody else in any circumstances, no matter who he might be? she asked herself, in the best girl’s magazine fashion. Or woman’s magazine fashion come to that – it was a long time since she’d read either.
Well, was she? Nothing crucial had happened between her and Mikael Bau, for God’s sake. Nothing at all to justify a hasty break-up like the one that had happened. He hadn’t hit her, even if she thought he might do for one brief, dizzying moment.
He hadn’t played the male chauvinist pig. Hadn’t done anything stupid. Hadn’t displayed any hitherto hidden obnoxious sides to his character.
No skeletons in the cupboard. No sudden yawning gaps in his character. Just an old Trabant.
Had she simply grown tired of him? Would that be enough?
There hadn’t been anything wrong with their relationship, nothing disturbing had happened in their daily existence together – nothing she could put her finger on, at least: but perhaps that was the best that could be said about it. That there was nothing wrong.
There’s nothing wrong with my old refrigerator either, she thought, but I wouldn’t want to have a child with it.
Perhaps something more was needed. Not simply the absence of negatives.
It was a stroke of luck that I had to leave that wretched old banger at Sidonis, she thought. So that things were brought to a head at last.
The Trabant syndrome?
She found it hard not to burst out laughing at that thought. Bitch? she then asked herself. Am I really becoming a bitch? For several years Clara Mietens had claimed to be one with regard to the opposite sex, but Moreno hadn’t bothered to try to understand or to analyse that relationship. And she didn’t need to do so now, she decided. She found it hard to imagine a whole life without a man; but as for the rest of her holiday – there were less than three weeks to go – well, that was another matter.
Nothing to worry about. Being together with Mikael had been no problem at all in that respect – and there was no need to analyse it, she decided. Why should women always feel obliged to hum and haw about their putative emotional lives? To put everything into words? (An example of a permanently bad conscience, perhaps?) Surely it was enough simply to feel things. In a way women were much more guilty of intellectualizing emotions than men were – of making them tangible, as Clara used to say – it wasn’t the first time this had occurred to her. Men just kept quiet, and made the most of the feelings instead.
Well, the former at least.
In any case, she hadn’t given him any promises or commitments. None at all. So what?
No matter how you look at it, I’m a free woman. The first one in the history of the world. Ah well, hallelujah.
I hope he’s not sitting there waiting for me when I go back, she thought in horror. With a bottle of wine and some new delicacy or other. I couldn’t cope with any emotional outbursts and dramatic farewells today.
The sun went behind a cloud. She pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head, and her thoughts about Mikael to one side.
She noticed that she slowed down the moment she stopped thinking about him. As if she had shaken off an irritatio
n that had increased her speed unnecessarily.
As if item number two – Mikaela Lijphart and her broken family – somehow needed more copious and more thorough attention. Perhaps that wasn’t all that odd.
The weeping girl on the train. The worried mother. The father who had been hidden away and forgotten for so long. And the disgusting business of him and the schoolgirl Winnie Maas.
An epilogue sixteen years later? she thought. Was that possible?
But on the other hand, what other explanation could there be?
How else was it possible to explain that Mikaela Lijphart and her father went up in smoke within only a few days? After having met for the first time in sixteen years. Having met for the first time ever in a way, since Mikaela was only two years old when Arnold Maager was shut up in an institution. She could hardly have any memories of him at all.
So the question was: could these two disappearances be totally unconnected?
Not on your life, Moreno decided. Even a seven-year-old could grasp that they must be connected.
But how?
She changed direction by thirty degrees and found herself knee-deep in the water. Cool and pleasant, but it didn’t help. The question was still unanswered. How were they connected? What was the slender thread between 1983 and 1999?
And what ought she to do in order to disentangle it?
The more she thought about it, the more obvious at least one thing seemed to be. Maager must have said something crucial while they were walking through the grounds at Sidonis last Saturday. Absolutely crucial.
Something to do with the Winnie Maas business.
Something new?
Question mark, question mark. But Mikaela Lijphart had never heard the old version of what had happened when she met her father, so for her ears everything – every single painful admission and every single degrading disclosure – must have been completely new and fresh, irrespective of how far it fitted in with the old established picture of what had happened.
And so it wasn’t possible to be sure about anything, Moreno concluded. It wasn’t possible to speculate about whether Maager had come up with some clarification or other. That couldn’t be helped.