by Jo Nesbo
‘Cup of coffee and something to eat?’ asked George.
‘Thanks, but I’d rather get going straight away.’
George nodded and stopped in front of a door. ‘Franz Schmid’s in there,’ he whispered.
‘OK,’ I said, lowering my voice but not whispering. ‘Has the word “lawyer” been mentioned yet?’
George shook his head. ‘We asked if he wanted to call the embassy or the German consul on Kos, but, as he put it, “What can they do to help find my brother?” ’
‘Does that mean you haven’t confronted him with your suspicions?’
‘I asked him about the fight, but that’s all. But he probably realises that we’ve asked him to wait here until you come for a reason.’
‘And who did you say I was?’
‘A specialist from Athens.’
‘Specialist in what? Finding missing persons? Or finding killers?’
‘I didn’t specify, and he didn’t ask.’
I nodded. George remained standing there for a couple of seconds before it dawned on him that I wasn’t going to enter until he had left.
The room I stepped into was about three metres by three. The only light came from two narrow windows high up on a wall. The person in the room was sitting at a small, square table on which stood a jug of water and a glass. There was a tall man man seated at it. Both forearms were resting on the blue-painted wooden tabletop, his elbows making ninety-degree angles. How tall? Maybe one ninety? He was slender, with a face aged beyond what his twenty-eight years might suggest, one that conveyed the spontaneous impression of a sensitive nature. Or maybe it was rather the fact that he seemed calm and content just to sit there, bolt upright, as though his head were so full of thoughts and feelings that he had no need of external stimuli. On his head he wore a cap with horizontal stripes in Rasta colours, with a discreet little skull on the rim. Dark curls protruded from beneath the cap, such as I once had. The eyes were so deep-set I couldn’t immediately fathom them. And at the same moment it dawned on me that there was something familiar here. It took a second for my brain to dig it up. The cover of a record Monique had at her room in Oxford. Townes van Zandt. He’s seated at a similar table, posed in almost the same way, and with a similarly expressionless face that still managed to seem sensitive, so naked and unprotected.
‘Kalimera,’ I said.
‘Kalimera,’ he replied.
‘Not bad, Mr…’ I glanced at the folder I had removed from my bag and placed in front of me on the table. ‘Franz Schmid. Does that mean you speak Greek?’ I asked in my very British English, and he gave the expected reply.
‘Unfortunately no.’
I hoped that with my question I had established our starting point. That I was tabula rasa, I knew nothing about him, I had no reason to have any preconceived notions about him and that he could – if he so wished – change his story for this new listener.
‘My name is Nikos Balli, I am an inspector from the Homicide Department in Athens. I am here hopefully to remove any suspicion that your brother has been the victim of criminal activity.’
‘Is that what you think has happened?’ The question was posed in a neutral and straightforward way. He struck me at once as a practical man who simply wanted to acquaint himself with the facts. Or wished to give that impression.
‘I have no idea what the local police think, I can only speak for myself, and at this moment in time I don’t believe anything. What I do know is that murders are rare occurrences. But any murder is so harmful to Greece as a holiday destination that when one does occur, it is our duty to show the rest of the world that this is something we take very seriously indeed. As in the case of plane crashes, we have to find the cause and solve the mystery, because we know that whole airlines have gone bankrupt over a single unexplained crash. I’m saying that to explain why I might be asking you about details which might seem irritatingly irrelevant, especially to someone who has recently lost his brother. And that it might sound as though I am convinced that you or others are responsible for killing him. But be aware that, as a homicide investigator, it is my task to test out the hypothesis that a murder may have been committed, and that it will be a mark of my success if I am able to dispense with any such hypothesis. And that, regardless of the outcome, we might be a step closer to finding your brother. All right?’
Franz Schmid gave a small smile that didn’t quite reach to his eyes. ‘Sounds like my grandfather.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Scientific approach. Programming of the object. He was one of the German scientists who fled Hitler and helped the USA develop the atom bomb. We…’ He stopped and wiped his hand across his face. ‘I’m sorry, I’m wasting your time, Inspector. Fire away.’
Franz Schmid’s gaze met mine. He seemed tired, but alert. I couldn’t tell just how far he had seen through me, but it was a keen gaze that – as far as I could judge – signalled intelligence. When he said ‘programming of the object’ he was clearly referring to the fact that I had formulated his motivation for helping me; that it might help us to find his brother. It was standard manipulation, no more than expected. But I suspected that Franz Schmid had also spotted the more obscure manipulation involved, part of the interrogator’s method of getting the person being interrogated to lower their guard. The reason I almost apologised in advance for the aggressive tone of the interrogation that was about to follow and laid the blame on the economic cynicism of the Greek authorities. It was to make me appear to be the decent, honest cop. Someone in whom Franz Schmid could safely confide.
‘Let’s begin with yesterday morning, when your brother disappeared.’
As I listened to Franz Schmid’s story I observed his body language. He seemed patient, didn’t lean forward and talk rapidly and loudly, the way people do when they unconsciously feel that their explanation is the key to the solution of a case they would like to see solved, or to prove their own innocence. But the opposite wasn’t the case either. He didn’t tiptoe around as though he were navigating a minefield, didn’t hesitate. His explanation came in a calm, steady stream. Maybe it was because he had been able to rehearse it in conversation with others. In any case that didn’t tell me much; the performance of the guilty is often more precise and convincing than that of the innocent. The reason might be that the guilty come well prepared and have a story ready, whereas the innocent tell the story as it comes to them then and there. So even though I observed and analysed, body language was a secondary issue for me. Stories are my field, my speciality.
Even though I concentrated on his story, my brain also drew conclusions based on other observations. Such as that Franz Schmid, in spite of being clean-shaven, seemed to be a certain type of hipster, the type that wears a cap and a thick flannel shirt indoors even when it’s hot. A jacket hung on the hook behind him, and to judge by the size it was his. The sleeves of the flannel shirt were rolled up and the bare forearms seemed disproportionately muscular when compared to the rest of his body. As he spoke he now and then scrutinised his fingertips and carefully squeezed the joints of his fingers, which seemed thicker than average. The watch on his left wrist was a Tissot T-touch which I knew had a barometer and an altimeter. In other words, Franz Schmid was a climber.
According to the case notes both Franz and Julian Schmid were American citizens, resident in San Francisco, unmarried, with Franz working as a programmer for an IT firm and Julian in marketing for a well-known producer of climbing equipment. As I listened to him I thought how his American English had taken over the world. How my fourteen-year-old niece sounded like something out of an American teens’ film when she talked to her foreign friends at the International School in Athens.
Franz Schmid told me he had woken at six in the morning in the room he and his brother Julian had rented in a house right by the beach in Massouri, a town about a fifteen-minute drive from Pothia. Julian was already up and about to go out
, that was what had woken Franz. As usual, Julian intended to swim the eight hundred metres to the neighbouring island of Telendos, something he did every morning, there and back. The reason he did this so early was, in the first place, because it gave the brothers enough time to climb the best rock faces before the sun hit them from midday onwards. Secondly, Julian liked to swim naked, and it didn’t begin to get light until around six thirty. Thirdly, Julian felt that the dangerous undercurrents in the sound were less strong before sunrise and before the wind got up. Usually Julian would be back and ready for breakfast by seven, but on this particular day he simply never showed up again.
Franz made his way down the steps to the small, crumbling stone jetty that lay in a little bay directly below the house. The large towel his brother usually took with him lay at the end of the jetty, a stone on top of it to stop it blowing away. Franz felt it with his hand. It was dry. He scanned the water, called to a fishing boat that was chugging up the sound, but no one on board seems to have heard him. Then he ran back up to the house and got the landlord to ring the police in Pothia.
First on the scene were the mountain rescue team, a group of men in orange shirts who, mixing professional seriousness with a friendly, bantering tone, at once got two boats out on the water and commenced the search. Next came the divers. And finally the police. The police got Franz to check that none of Julian’s clothes were missing and satisfied themselves that Julian could not have gone to his room unseen by Franz – who was eating breakfast in the basement – dressed, and left the house.
After scouring the beach on the Kalymnos side, Franz and some of his climbing friends rented a boat and crossed over to Telendos. The police searched from the boat along the shoreline, where the waves broke against jagged rocks, while Franz and his friends visited the houses scattered across the mountainside, asking if anyone had seen a naked swimmer come ashore.
After returning from the failed search Franz spent the rest of the evening calling family and friends to explain the situation. He was contacted on the phone by journalists, some of them German, and spoke briefly to them about what had happened. That they were still hopeful, and so on. He hardly slept that night and at daybreak the police telephoned and asked if he could come to the station to assist them. Naturally he had done so and that was now – Franz Schmid looked at his Tissot watch – eight and a half hours ago.
‘The fight,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the fighting the night before.’
Franz shook his head. ‘It was just a stupid quarrel. We were in a bar at the Hemisphere and playing billiards. We were all a bit drunk. Julian started shooting his mouth off, I had a go back at him, and next thing I know I’ve thrown a billiard ball at him and hit him on the head. Down he went, and when he came to he was nauseous and throwing up. I thought concussion, so I got him in the car to drive him to the hospital in Pothia.
‘Do you often fight?’
‘When we were kids yeah. Now, no.’ He rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘But we don’t always take our drink that well.’
‘I see. Well, that was brotherly of you to take him to the hospital.’
Franz snorted briefly. ‘Sheer egoism. I wanted to get him checked so we would know if we could go ahead with the long multi-pitch we planned to climb the next day.’
‘So you drove to the hospital.’
‘Yes. Or actually, no.’
‘No?’
‘We were some distance out of Massouri, and Julian insisted he was feeling better and that we should turn round. I said it would do no harm to check, but he said that in Pothia we risked being stopped by the police and they’d suspect me of driving under the influence, I’d end up in a cell and he wouldn’t have anyone to climb with. It was hard to argue against that, so we turned round and drove back to our place in Massouri.’
‘Did anyone see you come back?’
Franz carried on scratching his jaw. ‘Someone’s bound to have. It was late at night, but we parked on the main road, where all the restaurants are, and there are always people there.’
‘Good. Did you meet anyone you think can help us so we can get independent confirmation of this?’
Franz took his hand away from his chin. I don’t know whether it was because he realised the rubbing might be interpreted as nerves or because it simply wasn’t itching any more. ‘We didn’t meet anyone we know, I don’t think. And when I think about it, it was actually fairly quiet. The bar at the Hemisphere was possibly still open, but all the restaurants were probably closed for the evening. Now in the autumn it’s mostly climbers in Massouri, and climbers go to bed early.’
‘So no one saw you.’
Franz sat up straight in his chair. ‘I’m sure you know what you’re doing, Inspector, but can you tell me what this has to do with my brother’s disappearance?’ His voice was still calm and controlled, but for the first time I saw something that might have been tension in the look on his face.
‘Yes I can,’ I said. ‘But I’m pretty sure you can work it out for yourself.’ I nodded towards the folder on the table in front of me. ‘It says in there that the landlord says he was woken by the sound of one or several loud voices coming from your room, and that he heard chairs being dragged about. Were you still quarrelling?’
I saw a slight twitch pass across Franz Schmid’s face. Was it because I reminded him that the last words that had passed between the brothers had been hard?
‘As I told you, we weren’t exactly sober,’ he said quietly. ‘But we were friends by the time we fell asleep.’
‘What were you quarrelling about?’
‘Just some nonsense.’
‘Tell me.’
He took hold of the glass of water in front of him as though it were a lifebelt. Drank. A postponement that gave him time to work out how much he should tell me, and what he should leave out. I folded my arms and waited. I knew of course what he was thinking, but he seemed sharp enough to know that if I didn’t get the information from him then I would get it from witnesses to the quarrel. What he didn’t know was that George Kostopoulos already had this from the one of the witnesses. That this was what caused George to ring the Homicide Department in Athens. And why it had ended up on my desk. The Jealousy Man’s desk.
‘A dame,’ said Franz.
I tried to work out the significance – if any – the use of this word had for him. In British English dame was an honorary form of address, an aristocratic title. But in America, dame was Chandleresque slang, as in a chick, a broad, a bird, not exactly derogatory, but then not a hundred per cent respectful either. Meaning someone a guy could have, or someone he better watch out for. But in Franz’s native language dame had an entirely neutral ring, like the way I interpret it in Heinrich Böll’s Gruppenbild mit Dame.
‘Whose dame?’ I asked to get to the heart of the thing as quickly as possible.
Again that slight smile, a flicker and then gone. ‘That’s exactly what the discussion was about.’
‘I understand, Franz. Can you give me the details there too?’
Franz looked at me. Hesitated. I had already used his forename, which is an obvious and yet surprisingly efficient way of creating intimacy with someone you’re interrogating. And now I gave him the look and the body language that gets murder suspects to open their hearts to the Jealousy Man, Phthonus.
The murder rate in Greece is low. So low that a lot of people wonder how it’s possible in a crisis-ridden country with high unemployment, corruption and social unrest. The smart answer is that rather than kill someone they hate, Greeks allow the victim to go on living in Greece. Another that we don’t have organised crime because we’re incapable of the organisation required. But of course we have blood that is capable of boiling. We have crime passionnel. And I’m the man they call in when there’s a suggestion that jealousy is the motive behind a murder. They say I can smell jealousy. That’s not true of course. Jealousy has no
distinct smell, colour or sound. But it has a story. And it’s listening to this story, what is told as well as what is left out, that enables me to know whether I am sitting in the presence of a desperate, wounded animal. I listen and know. Know because it is me, Nikos Balli, I am listening for. Know, because I am myself a wounded animal.
And Franz told me his story. He told it because this – this bit of the truth – is always good to tell. To get it out, to air the unjust defeat and the hate that are the story’s natural consequences. For there is, of course, nothing perverse in wanting to kill whatever might stand in the way of our primary function as biological creations; to mate, in order to propagate our unique genes. It is the opposite that is perverse; to allow ourselves to be hindered in this by a morality that we have been indoctrinated to believe is natural or divine in origin but which is, in the final analysis, merely a matter of practical rules dictated by what are, at any given time, the needs of the community at large.
On one of their rest days from climbing Franz had rented a moped and ridden to the northern side of Kalymnos. In the country village of Emporio he met Helena, who waited tables in her father’s restaurant. He fell hard for her, overcame his natural shyness and got her phone number. Three dates and six days later they became lovers in the cloister ruins of Palechora. Because she was under strict instructions from home not to get involved with guests, and foreign tourists in particular, Helena insisted their meetings be kept secret and involve just the two of them, because on the northern side of Kalymnos everyone knew her father. So they were discreet; but of course, Franz kept his brother informed of events from the moment of that first meeting at the restaurant; every word they exchanged, every look, every touch, the first kiss. Franz showed Julian pictures of her, a video of her sitting on the castle wall and looking down at the sunset.