by Joël Dicker
The New Hampshire Division of State Police headquarters, where the criminal division—known as the Investigative Services Bureau—had its offices, was a large red-brick building: 33 Hazen Drive, in the center of Concord. It was almost 1 p.m.; I was told that Gahalowood had left for his lunch, and was asked to wait in a corridor, near a table where there were magazines and a coffee machine. When he arrived an hour later, he looked angry.
“You!” he exploded when he saw me. “They called me and they said, ‘Perry, hurry up—there’s a guy here who’s been waiting for you for an hour,’ and I interrupt my meal to come see what’s happening because it might be important, and what do I find? The writer!”
“Don’t be mad. I thought we got off on the wrong foot, and that maybe—”
“I hate you, writer. I’m warning you now. My wife read your book—she thought you were good-looking and intelligent. Your face, on the back cover, has been smiling out from her nightstand for weeks. You’ve been living in our bedroom! You’ve slept with us! You’ve had dinner with us! You’ve been on vacation with us! You’ve taken baths with my wife! You’ve made all her friends cluck like hens! You have ruined my life!”
“You’re married, Sergeant? That’s funny. You’re so disagreeable, I would have bet anything you didn’t have a family.”
He sank his face into his double chin. “In the name of God, what do you want?” he barked.
“To understand.”
“That’s pretty ambitious for a guy like you.”
“I know.”
“Let the police do their job, will you?”
“I need information, Sergeant. I have a pathological desire to know everything. I’m a control freak, you see—I have to control everything.”
“Really? Then control yourself!”
“Could we go to your office?”
“No.”
“Just tell me if Nola really did die at fifteen years old.”
“Yes. The bone scan confirmed it.”
“So she was abducted and killed at the same time?”
“Yes.”
“But that bag … why was she buried with that bag?”
“I have no idea.”
“And if she had a bag with her, couldn’t that lead us to think she was running away?”
“If you’re packing a bag to run away, you fill it with clothes, don’t you?”
“Exactly.”
“Because the only thing in her bag was that book.”
“One point for you,” I said. “Your insight blows me away. But that bag—”
He interrupted: “I should never have mentioned that bag the other day. I don’t know what got into me.”
“Me neither.”
“Pity, I guess. Yes, that’s it: You made me feel sorry for you, with your bewildered look and your muddy shoes.”
“Thank you. And just to continue: What could I learn from the autopsy? Actually, do you say autopsy when it’s just a skeleton?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would forensic examination be a more appropriate term?”
“I don’t give a damn about the exact term. What I can tell you is that she had her skull smashed! Smashed! Bang! Bang!”
As he accompanied these words with gestures, miming someone hitting with a bat, I asked him: “So it was done with a bat?”
“I don’t know, you son of a bitch!”
“A man? A woman?”
“What?”
“Couldn’t a woman have carried out the attack? Why is it necessarily a man?”
“Because the eyewitness, Deborah Cooper, expressly identified a man. Anyway, this conversation is over, writer. You’re getting on my nerves.”
“But what do you think of this case?”
He took a family photograph out of his wallet. “I have two daughters, writer. Fourteen and seventeen. I can’t imagine going through what Mr Kellergan has gone through. I want the truth. I want justice. Justice does not mean merely adding up the various facts; it is much more complex than that. So I am going to carry out my investigation. If I discover proof that Quebert is innocent, believe me, he will be freed. But if he’s guilty, you can be sure I will not let Roth grandstand the jury into acquitting a criminal. Because that is not justice either.”
Beneath his bull-like aggression, Gahalowood had a philosophy that I liked.
“You’re a good guy, Sergeant. How about I buy you a doughnut and we continue our little chat?”
“I don’t want a doughnut. I want you to get the hell out of here. I’ve got work to do.”
“But you have to explain to me how an investigation works. I don’t know how to do it.”
“Goodbye, writer. I’ve seen enough of you to last me the rest of the month. Maybe the rest of my life.”
I was disappointed not to be taken seriously, but I didn’t insist. I held out my hand. He crushed my fingers in his powerful grip, and I left. But out in the parking lot, I heard him calling me: “Hey, writer!” I turned around and saw his hefty form jogging toward me.
“Writer,” he said breathlessly when he’d caught up with me. “Good cops don’t focus on the killer … they focus on the victim. You need to find out about the victim. And you have to start at the beginning, before the murder. Not at the end. You’re making a mistake by concentrating on the murder. You have to find out who the victim was. Find out who Nola Kellergan was …”
“And Deborah Cooper?”
“If you want my opinion, it’s all linked to Nola. Deborah Cooper was just a collateral victim. Find out who Nola was—you’ll discover her killer and Deborah Cooper’s at the same time.”
*
Who was Nola Kellergan? That was the question I intended to ask Harry when I saw him at the state prison. He didn’t look good. He seemed highly preoccupied by the contents of his gym locker.
“Did you find everything?” he asked, before he even greeted me.
“Yes.”
“And you burned it all?”
“Yes.”
“The manuscript too?”
“The manuscript too.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d done it? I was worried sick. And where have you been for the last two days?”
“I was carrying out my investigation. Harry, why was that box in a gym locker?”
“I know that seems weird to you. After your visit in March, I became afraid that someone else would find it. It seemed to me that anyone might discover it: an inconsiderate visitor, the cleaning lady. I decided it was prudent to hide my mementos somewhere else.”
“You hid them? But that makes you look guilty. And that manuscript … it was The Origin of Evil?”
“Yes. The very first draft.”
“I recognized the text. There was no title on the cover page …”
“The title came to me afterward.”
“After Nola’s disappearance, you mean?”
“Yes. But let’s not talk about that manuscript, Marcus. It was cursed. It brought only evil into my life. Now Nola is dead and I’m in prison.”
We looked at each other for a moment. I put a plastic bag on the table, inside of which were the contents of the package I had received.
“What is it?” Harry asked.
Without replying, I took out a minidisc player with a microphone connected to it. I set it up in front of Harry.
“Marcus, what the hell are you up to? Don’t tell me you kept that damn thing …”
“Of course, Harry. I took good care of it.”
“Put it away, please.”
“Don’t be like that, Harry.”
“What the hell do you plan to do with it?”
“I want you to tell me about Nola, about Somerset, about everything. About the summer of 1975, about your book. I need to know. And, Harry, I’d be grateful if you would tell me the truth.”
He smiled sadly. I pressed RECORD and let him talk. It was a nice scene: Here in this prison visiting room, where husbands were reunited with their wives, fathers with
their children, I was reunited with my old mentor, who told me his story.
*
I ate early that evening, on the way back to Somerset. Afterward, because I had no desire to go straight to Goose Cove, where I would be alone in that immense house, I drove along the coast for a while. The sun was setting, the ocean sparkling: It was all so beautiful. I passed the Sea Side Motel, the Side Creek forest, Side Creek Lane and Goose Cove; I went through Somerset and ended up at Grand Beach. I walked up to the water’s edge, then sat down on the shells to watch night fall. The distant lights of Somerset danced on the surface of the waves; the seagulls shrieked loudly, mockingbirds sang in the surrounding bushes, and I heard the lighthouse foghorns. I pressed PLAY on the recorder, and Harry’s voice rang out in the darkness:
You know Grand Beach, Marcus? It’s the first beach you see if you’re coming to Somerset from Massachusetts. I sometimes go there at dusk and look out at the town’s lights. And I think over everything that happened there thirty-three years ago. That beach is where I stopped on the day I first arrived in Somerset. It was May 20, 1975. I was thirty-four years old. I was coming from New York, where I’d made a decision to take responsibility for my own future. I had ditched everything: I’d quit my job as an English teacher, I’d gathered up my savings, and I’d decided to make a go of it as a writer. I was going to hole myself up in New England and write the novel of my dreams.
To begin with, I had thought about renting a house in Maine, but a Boston real estate agent persuaded me to choose Somerset. He’d told me about a house that corresponded exactly to what I was looking for—it was Goose Cove. The moment I saw it, I fell in love with it. It was exactly the place I needed: a calm, rustic retreat, but not altogether isolated, because Somerset was not many miles away. I liked the town a lot too. Life seemed gentle there: Children played in the streets; crime was nonexistent. It was like a picture-postcard town. The house at Goose Cove was well beyond my means, but the real estate agent allowed me to pay the rent in installments, and I calculated that if I didn’t spend too much money, I could just about make ends meet. And I had a feeling that I was making a good choice. I was right too, because that decision changed my life: The book I wrote that summer would make me rich and famous.
I think what I liked so much about Somerset was the status I soon began to enjoy there. In New York, I was just a high school teacher who moonlighted as a writer, but in Somerset I was Harry Quebert, a writer who had come from New York to write his next novel. You know, Marcus, that thing with your being Marcus the Magnificent in high school, when you contented yourself with distorting the way you appeared to others in order to shine? That’s exactly what happened to me when I came here. I was young, self-confident, good-looking, athletic, and cultivated, and not only that, but I lived in the beautiful Goose Cove house. The people in the town, even if they’d never heard of me before, assumed I was successful because of the way I acted and the place where I lived. That was all it took for the locals to imagine that I was a big celebrity in New York. So, overnight, I became someone. The respected writer I couldn’t be in New York, I was in Somerset. I had provided the local library with a few copies of my first book, and guess what? That pathetic pile of pages, cold-shouldered by New York, provoked great excitement here in Somerset. It was 1975 in a small New Hampshire town that was looking for a raison d’être, long before the Internet and all that, and in me it found the local star it had always dreamed of having.
It was about 11 p.m. when I got back to Goose Cove. As I drove down the narrow gravel driveway, my headlights illuminated a masked figure, who instantly fled into the woods. I hit the brakes and leaped out of the car, yelling, ready to pursue the intruder. That was when my eye was caught by a bright glow: Something was burning near the house. I ran over to see what was happening. Harry’s Corvette was on fire. The flames had already taken hold, and a plume of acrid smoke was rising toward the sky. I called for help, but there was nobody to hear me. All that surrounded me was the woods. The Corvette’s windows exploded in the heat, the car itself began to melt, and the flames grew higher, licking the garage walls. There was nothing I could do. It was all going to burn.
26
N-O-L-A
(Somerset, New Hampshire, Saturday, June 14, 1975)
“The reason writers are such fragile beings, Marcus, is that they suffer from two sorts of emotional pain, which is twice as much as a normal human being: the heartache of love and the heartache of books. Writing a book is like loving someone. It can be very painful.”
STAFF MEMO
You will have noticed that Harry Quebert has come to eat lunch in our restaurant every day for the past week. Mr Quebert is a famous New York writer and we should pay him special attention. His needs must be met with the greatest discretion. No-one should bother him.
Table 17 is reserved for him until further notice. It must always be free in case he arrives.
Tamara Quinn
The tray was unbalanced by the weight of the maple syrup bottle. As soon as she placed it there, it tipped over; in attempting to catch it, she lost her balance and, with a mighty crash, she and the tray both fell to the ground.
Harry leaned over the counter.
“Nola? Are you alright?”
She got to her feet, a little dazed.
“Yes, yes, I …”
The two of them assessed the damage for a moment, before bursting into laughter.
“You shouldn’t laugh, Harry,” Nola gently reprimanded him. “If Mrs Quinn finds out I’ve dropped another plate, I’ll lose my job.”
He went behind the counter and crouched down to help her pick up the pieces of broken glass that lay in a sticky mass of mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, maple syrup, butter, sugar, and salt and pepper.
“My God,” he said, “can someone explain to me why for the past week every time I order something, my server brings me all these condiments at the same time?”
“It’s because of the memo,” Nola replied.
“The memo?”
She pointed at a piece of paper stuck behind the counter. Harry stood up and reached for it.
“Harry, no! What are you doing? If Mrs Quinn finds out—”
“Don’t worry—there’s nobody here.”
It was 7 a.m., and Clark’s was still empty.
“What is this about?”
“Mrs Quinn gave us orders.”
Some customers came in, interrupting their conversation. Instantly Harry returned to his table and Nola rushed back to her station.
“I’ll bring you some more toast right away, Mr Quebert,” she solemnly declared, before disappearing into the kitchen.
Behind the swinging doors, she hesitated dreamily for a moment, smiling to herself. She loved him. She had loved him since their first meeting, two weeks earlier on the beach; since that glorious rainy day when, by chance, she had gone walking near Goose Cove. She was sure of it. It was an unmistakable feeling; there was nothing else like it. She felt different, happier; the days seemed more splendid. And most of all, whenever he was there, she felt her heart beat faster.
He had begun coming to Clark’s every day to write, causing Tamara Quinn, the restaurant’s owner, to call an urgent meeting of all her “girls,” as she called her waitresses. It was on this occasion that she had showed them her memo. “You will have noticed, girls,” Tamara said to her employees, who were lined up in military fashion, “that for the past week, the famous New York writer Harry Quebert has been coming here every day, which shows that he finds in our restaurant the standards of refinement and quality found in the very best establishments on the East Coast. Clark’s is a restaurant of high standing: We must show we can meet the expectations of our most demanding customers. As some of you have brains that are smaller than peas, I have written a memo to remind you of how Mr Quebert must be treated. You must read it, reread it, and learn it by heart! I will be conducting random tests. It will be displayed in the kitchen and behind the counter.” Tamara had then reit
erated her orders: Do not disturb Mr Quebert, because he needs calm and concentration. Work to ensure that he feels at home here. His previous visits to Clark’s indicate that he always orders black coffee. Serve him coffee when he arrives, and nothing else. If he wants anything else—if Mr Quebert is hungry—he will ask for it himself. Do not bother him by suggesting he order food, as you must do for all our other customers. If he orders food, bring him all the condiments and extras we have, so he doesn’t have to ask for them: mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, pepper, salt, butter, sugar, and maple syrup. Famous writers should not have to ask for what they want; their minds must be free so that they can create in peace. Maybe what he is writing—the notes he is taking while he sits in the same place, for hours on end—is the beginning of a great masterpiece, and one day soon Clark’s will be known all over the country.
And Tamara Quinn dreamed that with the money she would earn thanks to the book she would open a second branch in Concord, then one in Boston, and New York, and all the major cities on the East Coast, all the way down to Florida.
“But Mrs Quinn,” Mindy, one of the waitresses, asked. “How can we be sure that Mr Quebert only wants black coffee?”
“Because I know it. Period. In the best restaurants, important customers do not have to order: The staff knows their habits. Is this one of the best restaurants?”
“Yes, Mrs Quinn,” the waitresses replied. “Yes, Mom,” bellowed Jenny, because she was Mrs Quinn’s daughter.
“Don’t call me Mom here,” Tamara ordered. “This is not some country inn.”
“What should I call you then?” Jenny asked.
“Don’t call me anything. You listen to my orders and you obey them. There’s no need to speak at all. Understood?”
Jenny nodded.
“Have you understood or not?” her mother repeated.
“Well, yeah, I have understood, Mom. I was nodding, I—”
“Very good, darling. You see how quickly you learn. Alright then, girls, I want to see you all acting servile … Good! And now, nod. Yes, just like that … from the top to the bottom … Excellent. Anyone would think they were at the Chateau Marmont.”