by Håkan Nesser
‘What a fascinating story,’ she said in the end. ‘The girl’s missing and her father’s missing. Can you tell me what the hell is going on?’
‘Hmm,’ said Vegesack. ‘I haven’t really got round to thinking about it all that much. I’ve been too busy trying to sort out that business of the bloke buried in the sand. Tim Van Rippe.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Moreno. ‘Where have you got to with him?’
‘The only thing we’re sure about is that we aren’t sure about anything,’ said Vegesack, draining his glass of beer.
‘Hmm,’ muttered Moreno. ‘As far as I remember, that is the basis of all knowledge.’
29
Aaron Wicker, editor of the Lejnice local newspaper Westerblatt, was not exactly enamoured of the town’s chief of police.
He probably wouldn’t have been, no matter what the circumstances; but as things stood, he thought he had unusually good reasons. Ever since Vrommel had succeeded in raiding the newspaper offices on false pretences at the beginning of the nineties, Wicker felt such a deep and genuine hatred for the main local upholder of law and order that he never bothered to try to hide it. Or to analyse it.
Shit is shit, he used to think. And you don’t always reap what you sow.
The ostensible reason for searching the premises was that the police had received an anonymous bomb threat aimed at the newspaper. No bomb was found, but Wicker had known from the start that there had been no threat either. The real reason for the raid was an attempt to find the names of some of Wicker’s informants for an article about financial irregularities in the town council. So that was that, and ever since, relations between two of the town’s powerful institutions had been irreparable. As long as the chief of police was called Vrommel, at least.
No names had been found during the operation, since Wicker had had time to erase them; but the mere thought that the forces of law and order could ignore such fundamental matters as freedom of the press in this way was enough to send shivers of impotent fury down Wicker’s spine. Still.
And now he was expected to submit once again.
‘We know who the victim is, of course,’ said the chief of police.
‘Bravo,’ said Wicker.
‘But unfortunately I can’t give you his name.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we haven’t been in touch with his next of kin yet.’
‘The mass media can be pretty effective in getting through to people,’ said Wicker. ‘If your telephones are out of order, for instance. And we are pretty good judges.’
‘That may be,’ said Vrommel. ‘But there is nothing wrong with our means of communication. I’m speaking on the telephone just now, for instance, even though I ought to be devoting myself to more important things. But that aside, you’re not going to get the victim’s name.’
‘I shall find out what it is even so.’
‘If you do, I forbid you to publish it.’
‘Forbid? Since when have we had official censorship in this town? Not that it would surprise me if we did, but it must have escaped my notice.’
‘It’s not the only thing that escapes your notice,’ said the chief of police. ‘The way things are nowadays we don’t need to keep an eye simply on compliance with the law. As the press can’t be trusted to obey its own ethical rules, we have to ensure that they do. I’m rather busy at the moment – is there anything else you’d like to raise?’
I would quite like to raise my right fist and give you a punch on the nose, Wicker thought, but he made do with slamming down the receiver and decided to put Selma Perhovens on the case.
Selma Perhovens was Wicker’s only colleague on the newspaper: only part-time, it’s true, but if there were two people in Lejnice – or in the whole of Europe come to that – who knew the identity of the dead man on the beach, Selma was just the person to discover his name in no more than a few hours. Unless he misjudged her.
The first murder here in sixteen years, and the local newspaper didn’t know the name of the victim? Bloody hell!
He took two tablets to lower his blood pressure, and started looking for her mobile number.
Moreno had dinner at a restaurant called Chez Vladimir, and promised herself that this would be not only the first time, but also the last. She assumed the same would apply to the evening’s other three diners. The minced meat pie with salad she had ordered – and was served after a long wait, and tried to eat – was not something that inspired a desire to set foot inside the place again.
Nor did the wine, despite the fact that it matched rather accurately the roughness and sourness of the waitress. Moreno thanked her lucky stars that she had only ordered one glass.
Whether or not the following day would be her last one in Lejnice was a more open question.
Or perhaps it wasn’t so open after all. Go home now? she thought as she forced down the last of the gall. With two people missing and an unsolved murder on the beach? Is it really Detective Inspector Moreno asking herself that question? The first liberated woman in the history of the world?
She couldn’t help but smile at the implausibility.
I’ll make up my mind tomorrow, she thought. A pot of hot coffee in my room tonight, then I’ll massage my temples until either I make a hole or reach a conclusion. It would be quite nice to settle down in my own bed one of these nights.
She started off by writing down the names of those involved on a blank page in her notebook.
Winnie Maas
Arnold Maager
Mikaela Lijphart
It looked neat. She thought for a while before adding another name.
Tim Van Rippe
Not because he seemed to have anything to do with it, but he had been murdered after all. And then two more.
Sigrid Maas
Vera Sauger
She gave free rein to her thoughts for a few minutes while she wrote question marks after Mikaela Lijphart and Arnold Maager, and a cross after Tim Van Rippe. But she wrote nothing after the last two names.
Brilliant, my dear Holmes, she thought, and then tried to regain control of her thoughts. Took a sip of the coffee her hostess had prepared for her, reluctantly and extremely expensively. Press on!
What do I know? Are these names connected at all? All of them? Some of them? How?
Vera Sauger clearly didn’t have so much to do with the others – those dead or missing persons – she was just a link. A presumed supplier of information, not a mystery. She would have to be handled especially carefully.
She suddenly realized why she thought the name had sounded familiar. Surely it had been mentioned in one of the interrogation records she had been provided with by Constable Vegesack.
Yes, no doubt about it. She couldn’t remember in what connection, but Vera Sauger had been there, she was convinced of that, despite the fact that her temples had barely been massaged at all.
It wasn’t all that remarkable, in fact. Sigrid Maas had told Mikaela Lijphart to contact Vera Sauger, and if the latter girl had been interrogated in connection with the events of 1983, it merely confirmed the fact that she was someone who was closely linked with Winnie in one way or another.
And that Sigrid Maas was telling the truth – in this respect, at least.
She went back to the first trio. One dead, two missing.
What had happened to Mikaela Lijphart was just as incomprehensible as ever. Before beginning to think about her and speculating, she turned her attention to her father. What were the possible scenarios as far as he was concerned?
There were only two, as far as she could see.
Either Maager had run away from the Sidonis home of his own free will – the little of that he might still possess. Or there were other motives behind his disappearance. Somebody wanted him out of the way.
Why? Why on earth should anybody feel threatened by the existence of Arnold Maager?
There was only one answer, of course. It had to do with that business in the past. Maager mig
ht have information about what had really happened sixteen years ago, and such information could be dangerous for somebody who . . . well, somebody who – what?
Somebody who had a finger in the pie, and more than that, most likely.
Stop, Moreno thought. I’m going too quickly. It’s pure speculation. Wasn’t the most likely scenario by far – let’s face it – that Maager had run away under his own steam? He’d packed a bag, for instance. The reason why he would want to run away was just as obscure as all the rest of it, but it seemed obvious that it must have to do with his daughter. There were no other stimuli in his life that could set things moving in this way.
Rubbish, she then thought. What do I know about Arnold Maager’s inner landscape? And other people’s motives? Nothing at all.
But then again? She had the feeling that it could be the explanation. That he had simply run away, perhaps in a state of pure desperation to look for his daughter . . . Like an aged and crazy King Lear looking for Cordelia. Surely that must be a possibility? She drank half a cup of coffee and rubbed her temples. It made the roots of her hair hurt, but of course didn’t do them any harm.
When no more sensible thoughts occurred to her, she turned over the page in her notebook instead and began writing down her conclusions in order. It took quite a while, and perhaps it was over the top to call them conclusions. It was more like therapy. Brain gymnastics for a mentally retarded detective inspector, she thought. While she was doing this she heard the first heavy raindrops hitting against the window, and in the next-door room the young couple started making love.
She sat there listening for a while, to both the rain and the lovemaking. There’s a time for everything, she thought with a sigh. She switched on the radio to distract herself and poured some more coffee. When she had finished she read through what she had written, and established that the problems remained.
What had happened to Mikaela Lijphart? What had happened to her father?
And the dead man on the beach? Had he anything to do with this other business?
I’ll talk to Vera Sauger tomorrow evening, Moreno thought. That should help me to make progress.
But what if Mikaela never actually visited her? she thought. What would that indicate? What do I do then?
And what should she spend tomorrow doing? Sunbathing and swimming?
In the rain? It was coming down quite heavily now. In any case, it was obvious that she couldn’t carry on pestering poor Vegesack any more than she had already done. Especially as she hadn’t been able to make a single contribution to the case herself, despite all her efforts. There were limits, after all . . . Mind you, one might also ask oneself what on earth the police did in these parts.
So, what should she do? Perhaps dig a bit into the past instead? Go back to 1983 again?
But where, in that case? Dig where? Who should she interrogate this time?
She suddenly felt exhaustion threatening to overwhelm her, but gulped down another half cup of coffee and kept it at arm’s length. Well? she thought. Who? Who should she turn to? Needless to say, everybody who was around when it all happened sixteen years ago would be able to supply a certain amount of information, some more than others; but it would be helpful to acquire a better overall view.
It didn’t take her long to hit upon an alternative that seemed promising.
The press, of course. The local daily newspaper. Westerblatt: she knew what it was called and where its office was, since she had passed it several times on her way down to the beach.
Satisfied with this decision, she poured the rest of the coffee down the sink and went to bed. It was a quarter past midnight, and it occurred to her that Mikael Bau hadn’t tried to contact her one single time during the evening.
Good, she thought as she switched off the light. But she realized that it was not a wholly satisfactory conclusion.
30
21 July 1999
The Westerblatt editorial offices in Lejnice comprised two cramped rooms, one in front of the other, in Zeestraat. The inner room was the place where most of the work was done, and two-thirds of the floor space was occupied by two large desks, pushed up against each other and laden with computers, printers, fax machines, telephones, coffee machines and a higgledy-piggledy mass of papers, pens, notebooks and various other things that journalists claim to need. Sagging bookshelves with files, books and old newspapers covered all the walls from floor to ceiling, and hanging above everything was an American ceiling fan that had ceased to work in the summer of 1997.
The front room looked out on the street and had a counter where Joe Public could submit the copy for adverts and notices, pay subscriptions or complain about things that had appeared in the paper.
Or that hadn’t appeared in the paper.
When Moreno stepped in out of the light drizzle in Zeestraat it was twenty minutes past ten in the morning. A dark-haired woman of about her own age and with an energetic appearance was standing behind the counter, telling somebody off on the telephone, gripping the receiver between her cheek and shoulder while making notes on a pad and leafing through a newspaper.
That’s what I call multi-tasking, Moreno thought. The woman nodded to her, and she sat down on one of the two plastic chairs and waited for the call to come to an end.
Which it did after about half a minute, and judging from the unconstrained wording with which she closed down the call, Moreno gathered that the woman was not unduly worried by having been overheard.
‘Bloody idiot!’ she said as she replaced the receiver. ‘Pardon my French. How can I help you?’
Moreno hadn’t managed to make up her mind what tactics to use, but something in the woman’s bright eyes and sharp tongue told her that it was probably best to put all her cards on the table. Besides, it was difficult to lie to somebody of the same sex and age as oneself: that was a phenomenon she had thought about before. This woman did not seem to be somebody who would believe any old thing you told her, and if you put a foot wrong at the beginning it would probably be difficult to repair the damage.
‘Ewa Moreno, detective inspector,’ she said. ‘My errand’s a bit special. I’d like to speak to somebody on the newspaper who knows about the Winnie Maas business from 1983 . . . and who has a few minutes to spare.’
The woman raised an eyebrow and sucked in her cheeks, suggesting she was rapidly thinking things over.
‘You’ve come to the right person,’ she said. ‘Selma Perhovens. Pleased to meet you.’
She stretched her hand out over the counter, and Moreno shook it.
‘Police officer, you said?’
‘On holiday,’ said Moreno. ‘Not on duty.’
‘Cryptic,’ said Perhovens. ‘Actually, I could do with a bit of police information myself, in fact. If you can supply me with it, maybe we could call it a fair exchange?’
‘Why not?’ said Moreno. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Well, my boss has instructed me to find out the name of a body that was found buried on the beach last Monday. Do you know the answer?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Moreno.
Perhovens dropped her jaw for a moment, but picked it up again.
‘Well I’ll be . . .’
‘I know his name,’ said Moreno. ‘I’m here in Lejnice incognito, but I know a bit about this and that.’
‘Well I never!’ said Perhovens, hurrying out from behind the counter. ‘I think we’d better close the office for a while.’
She pulled down the curtain over the milk-coloured glass door, and locked it. Took hold of Moreno’s arm and steered her into the back room.
‘Please take a seat.’
Moreno removed a pile of newspapers, an empty Coca-Cola can and a half-full bag of sweets from the chair indicated, and sat down. Perhovens sat down opposite her and rested her chin on her knuckles.
‘How do I know you’re not just a loony pretending to be a police officer?’
Moreno produced her ID.
‘All right.
Please forgive my scepticism directed at fellow human beings. It goes with my job. I ought to place more trust in my intuitive judgements.’
She smiled. Moreno smiled back.
‘Gullibility is not a virtue these days,’ she said. ‘If I can explain what I’m after first, I can give you the name afterwards. Okay?’
‘Fair deal,’ said Perhovens. ‘Coffee?’
‘Yes please,’ said Moreno.
She started from the beginning. From as far back as the train journey and her meeting with the weeping Mikaela Lijphart until the previous night’s somewhat dodgy attempts to analyse the situation in her guest-house room. But she omitted Franz Lampe-Lehmann and Mikael Bau, since they didn’t really have any connection with the matter – and even less connection with each other – and the whole recapitulation took barely more than a quarter of an hour. Perhovens didn’t interrupt once, but managed to drink two-and-a-half cups of coffee, and fill four pages in her notebook.
‘That’s a real bugger,’ she said when Moreno had finished. ‘Anyway, I think you’ve come to the right person, as I said. I was just finishing my apprenticeship year when the Maager trial was taking place – I was only nineteen, but I attended it all week and followed what happened closely. I wasn’t allowed to write the newspaper reports, of course: Wicker wrote those himself, but he made me produce basic texts every day, the slave-driver. So I remember it quite well. A nasty business.’
‘So I’ve gathered,’ said Moreno.
‘Besides . . .’ said Perhovens, and seemed to be unsure of what to say next. ‘Besides, I had my doubts about the whole proceedings, I suppose you could say; but everything went like clockwork, and I was much more of a wide-eyed innocent in those days.’
Moreno felt something click inside her.
‘Doubts? What kind of doubts?’