The Weeping Girl ivv-8

by Håkan Nesser

  She could sleep in tomorrow. Take a towel, saunter down to the beach. Lie down and lap up the sun all day. Have a good rest and let Mikael look after her, just as he’d said he would do.

  And an hour or two’s work the day after tomorrow wasn’t all that much of a problem, surely? In the afternoon — so it wouldn’t affect her lie-in.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Just a couple of hours. He wasn’t as cooperative as he said he was going to be, that scumbag Lampe-Leermann.’

  ‘Scumbag?’ said Mikael with a frown. ‘I take it the inspector is talking off the record.’

  Off the record? she thought as she shuffled around and tried to make herself comfortable on the sagging plush sofa. I suppose so — but for God’s sake, I’m on holiday after all! Mikael was lolling back at the other end of the outsize piece of furniture, and they had just about as much bodily contact as was compatible with a comfortable digestion process. He’d found a suitable fish, needless to say, just as he’d promised to do. Not just any old fish either: a sole that he’d cooked a la meuniere with a divine white wine sauce and crayfish tails. It was such a luxurious delight that she’d found it quite difficult to really enjoy it. The problem was striking a balance between gorging herself and doing justice to his culinary skills. Something to do with her ability to really let herself go, presumably. . But why should that be a problem?

  When she admitted as much, he’d simply burst out laughing and shrugged.

  ‘Just eat,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to talk blank verse.’

  She drank another slug of wine. Leaned her head back on the cushion and realized that she had a sort of idiot smile on her lips. It didn’t seem willing to go away.

  ‘Franz Lampe-Leermann is a scumbag,’ she declared. ‘Off or on the record, it makes no difference.’

  Mikael looked mildly sceptical.

  ‘But why does it have to be you, and nobody else? Surely anybody can interrogate a scumbag?’

  ‘Presumably for the same reason that I’m lolling back here,’ said Moreno. ‘He likes me. Or rather, he likes women more than he likes men.’

  ‘Really? And so he can dictate how he’s going to be treated, can he? Is this the police force’s new softly-softly approach?’

  ‘I suppose you could say that. In any case, he prefers me to the local chief of police, and I have to say that I understand him. Vrommel isn’t exactly a breath of fresh air. .’

  ‘Vrommel?’

  ‘That’s his name. A stiff sixty-year-old, stiff-collared, stiff-necked pain in the neck and everywhere else you can think of. .’

  She hesitated, surprised at how easily the words flowed over her lips. It must be that sauce, she thought. Summer, sun and Sauvignon blanc. .

  ‘I know who he is,’ said Mikael.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Vrommel, of course.’

  ‘You do? How can you know who Vrommel is?’

  Mikael flung out his arm and spilled a little wine.

  ‘The house,’ he explained. ‘This one. Don’t forget that I’ve lived here in the summer for the whole of my life. I know Port Hagen better than the back of my hand. Lejnice as well. . That’s the Big City in these parts.’

  Moreno thought for a moment.

  ‘I see. But the chief of police? I assume this means that you are involved in criminal activities. . You and your family, that is.’

  Mikael growled cryptically.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘Not exactly. I happen to remember Vrommel because he came here once. It must have been at the beginning of the eighties, when I was about fifteen or sixteen. One of my sisters had a friend who was mixed up in something. I can’t remember what. . Or didn’t know, to be more precise. Anyway, he came to interview Louise. . Or perhaps he interrogated her? Tall and red-haired, this Vrommel, right? A bit of a rough diamond.’

  ‘Bald as a coot nowadays,’ said Moreno. ‘But he’s certainly a rough diamond. . But why the hell are we lying here nattering on about bald policemen?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Mikael. ‘It seems daft when there are hairy cops at much closer quarters.’

  He took hold of her bare feet and started massaging them.

  Hairy cops? Moreno thought.

  Then she burst out laughing.

  ‘I think I need a walk along the beach,’ she said. ‘I’ve drunk too much. And gobbled too much sauce.’

  ‘Same here,’ said Mikael. ‘Shall we take a blanket? The moon’s shining.’

  ‘We can’t possibly manage without a blanket,’ said Moreno.

  They got back from the beach shortly before dawn, and on Sunday she slept in until noon.

  So did Mikael, and after breakfast, which consisted mainly of juice and coffee, they went out and lay back in a couple of deckchairs in the garden with more juice and mineral water within easy reach. Now that she’d had time to think about it, Moreno began to realize what a marvellous house she had come to stay in. A big and somewhat ramshackle wooden building with a veranda all the way round it and balconies on the upper floor. Creaking staircases and lopsided nooks and passages that were bound to make an indelible impression on any young child’s mind. Bay windows with dried flowers, old-fashioned scratchy window panes, and furniture from four or five generations and in ten times as many styles.

  How the Bau family had come to own a place like this — its name was Tschandala, for some unknown reason — was hidden in the mists of time: nobody in the family had ever been known to have more money than was needed to buy their daily bread, Mikael insisted; but according to the most persistent theory of how the house had been acquired, it had been won by a certain Sinister Bau at a strange and notorious poker party at the beginning of the 1920s. It was also rumoured that the same evening he had lost his young fiancee to a Ukrainian gypsy king, so the family reckoned that honours were even and they had every right to own Tschandala.

  Mikael Bau told her all this and more besides while they lay back naked in their deckchairs. The thicket of scraggy dwarf pine trees and Aviolis bushes was rampant and formed an effective screen so that they couldn’t be overlooked. Moreno kept asking herself if he were just making it all up on the spur of the moment.

  But then, perhaps the whole situation was some kind of illusion? The house and the weather and the naked man who had just stretched out his hand and placed it over her left breast — surely it couldn’t all be real? It was more likely to be something she had dreamt up at home while lying in bed and waiting for the alarm clock to announce the arrival of yet another rainy Tuesday in November — that seemed to be far more likely, dammit.

  She eventually decided that it didn’t matter in any case. She recalled that the Chief Inspector — Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, that is, who had weighed anchor and left the police station some years ago, and now spent his days in Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop in Kupinskis Grand — had once talked about that very thing. The fact that it didn’t matter two hoots if everything turned out to be no more than a film or a book. Or if it was real. The conditions were the same — even if it was by no means clear what they were, they were the same anyway.

  So she stretched out her hand and let it stay where it ended up.

  At about four they went down to the beach for a swim. There were lots of people around, of course. Summer, sunny and Sunday; mums, dads, children and dogs; frisbees, fluttering kites, dripping ice creams and bouncing balls. For a few black seconds while they were towelling themselves down after their dip, she felt a sudden rush of envy as she watched all these family clusters. These extrovert, happy people, enjoying themselves in these simple, healthy and natural surroundings.

  But it passed. She shook her head at the thought of such a naive, tuppenny-ha’penny analysis, and contemplated Mikael Bau, stretched out on his back in the sand.

  If she really wanted to find herself in that kind of company, there was nothing to stop her, she thought. Nothing to prevent her from taking that step.

  Superficially nothing, that is. Only herself. He had sai
d that he loved her, after all. Several times. She lay down close to him. Closed her eyes and began thinking about her own family.

  About her mother and father, to whom she spoke once a month on the telephone. And met once a year.

  Her bisexual brother in Rome.

  Her lost sister.

  Maud. Lost in the backyards of Europe. In the red-light districts of large cities, and in the filthy hopelessness of junkie apartments. In pimps’ beds. Sliding further and further down a long, sleazy spiral. She no longer knew where Maud was.

  There were no more postcards. No address, no sign of life. Perhaps her sister was no longer in the land of the living?

  A family? she thought. Can you really start living in a family when you’re over thirty and have never had one? Or did all families resemble her own, more or less, when you started to investigate them more closely?

  Good questions, as they say. She had asked them lots of times before.

  Asked and asked, but always refrained from answering. It was so easy to blame everything on her parents as well. To polish the chip on her shoulder. Much too easy.

  ‘What did you say his name was?’

  Mikael stroked his hand over her stomach.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The scumbag.’

  How clever of him to drag her back into the real world.

  ‘Lampe-Leermann. Franz Lampe-Leermann. Why do you ask?’

  He began slowly filling her navel with sand. A thin trickle of warm, white sand tumbling down from his clenched fist.

  ‘I don’t really know. Jealousy, I suppose. You go to meet him every other day. Is that why he doesn’t come out with everything at one go? So that he has the opportunity of spending more and more time with the most beautiful copper in Europe?’

  Moreno thought that over.

  ‘Presumably,’ she said. ‘But there’ll only be one more meeting. I intend to explain to him that there’ll be no more, no matter what happens. I’ll try to be a bit nicer to him as well, in compensation. Make him a few promises. .’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Mikael. ‘Don’t say things like that. What’s he done, by the way?’

  ‘Practically everything,’ said Moreno. ‘He’s fifty-five years old, and has been in jail for at least twenty of them. But he has a reputation. Child pornography. Drug barons. Weapons. Maybe even people-smuggling. It’s a bit of a tangled mess, but we should be able to sort out some of it at least. . with Lampe-Leermann’s help. I have no choice but to go through with this. It’s my job to open up this scumbag. But I’m only going to give up one more day to the task, I promise you that.’

  Mikael blew away the grains of sand, and kissed her stomach instead.

  ‘Do you believe in what you’re doing?’

  She raised her head and looked at him in surprise.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I say, of course. I wonder if you think it really matters. The fact that you manage to achieve some results as a detective inspector. And that I manage to save somebody or something as a result of my welfare work. Do you think any of that matters when we’re up against the bloody free market and all that bloody hypocrisy and all that bloody cynicism? Look after number one, and the devil take the hindmost. Do you believe that what you do matters?’

  ‘I certainly do,’ said Moreno. ‘Of course that’s what I believe. Why the hell do you ask?’

  ‘Good,’ said Mikael. ‘I was just checking. That’s what I believe as well. I’ll carry on believing that even if it’s the last thing I do.’

  She wondered why he had suddenly taken up these serious matters just now, in the roasting afternoon sun on the never-ending beach.

  And why they had never discussed this before.

  ‘It’s not just good that you believe,’ he went on. ‘It’s essential. Leila didn’t believe, that’s why we split up. She started clinging on to all the irony and cynicism as if we simply had no choice. . As if solidarity was no more than an outdated concept that collapsed at about the same time as the Wall, and all that was left for us to do was to look after number one.’

  ‘I thought she was the one who dumped you?’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘I gave her the pleasure of thinking that. But the real facts were as I’ve just told you, more or less. She gave up, that’s all there is to it. But by now I’ve forgotten her surname and what she looked like. Who cares? All that was over two hundred years ago. . Do you realize that you are the first woman I’ve ever met with whom I’d like to have a child?’

  ‘You’re out of your mind,’ said Moreno. ‘You’d better go to an insemination clinic.’

  ‘I’m well known for being clever.’

  ‘I’m thirsty.’

  ‘Stop changing the subject.’

  ‘What subject?’

  ‘Children. Us. Love and all that stuff. Oh, my longhaired copper, I love you.’

  She lay there in silence for a while.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ she asked. ‘Because I haven’t answered?’

  ‘Mortally.’

  She raised herself up on an elbow to check that he didn’t look too suicidal. She noticed a little tic at one side of his mouth, but he didn’t actually smile. Or cry. He’s putting on an act, she thought. Why the hell can’t I trust him? She stood up and started brushing off all the sand.

  ‘If we go back to your castle and drink a drop or two of water,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you something. Okay? But I badly need to raise my fluid levels.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Mikael, rising to his feet as well. ‘I’m consumed with curiosity.’

  ‘And desire,’ he added when they had walked over the dunes and could see the roof of Tschandala sticking up over the dwarf pines.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  Moreno put down her glass.

  ‘You’re only showing your good sides,’ she said. ‘It’s like going to some sort of an exhibition, dammit! It’s not a foundation to build on. For as long as you keep your cupboard door shut and don’t let the skeletons out, I’m not going to give you so much as a little finger of my future.’

  He leaned back and thought that over.

  ‘I like football,’ he said. ‘I like to go to at least two top matches per year, and to watch one a week on the telly.’

  ‘I could put up with that,’ said Moreno. ‘Provided I don’t have to accompany you.’

  ‘You’re not allowed to accompany me. And I want to be left to my own devices sometimes as well. I want to listen to Dylan and Tom Waits and Robert Wyatt without somebody coming to talk to me or turn down the volume.’

  She gave him a non-committal nod.

  ‘I often take my work home with me as well,’ he said. ‘There are some things I just can’t let go of. It’s a bloody nuisance in fact: I’ve considered signing up for courses in yoga and meditation in order to get over it. It’s impossible to get a decent night’s sleep when things are nagging at your mind.’

  ‘We could both go to such courses,’ said Moreno. ‘In fact.’

  ‘Not if we have children from the word go,’ said Mikael thoughtfully. ‘One of us will have to stay at home and look after them. You can’t take babies with you to yoga classes. Aren’t you hungry, by the way?’

  ‘Do you mean we’re going to eat today as well?’

  Mikael nodded.

  ‘There’s pie and salad. And wine.’

  ‘I hate wine,’ said Moreno. ‘Besides, I’ve got to work tomorrow.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Mikael with a smile. ‘Come to think of it, I think there’s some asparagus in the pie. I read somewhere that asparagus is the only food that it’s impossible to match with a suitable wine.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Moreno. ‘Long live asparagus.’

  They fell asleep quite soon, having only indulged in a little sexual play, nothing serious. But after only a couple of hours she woke up, and couldn’t get to sleep again. She lay there in the king-size double bed, watching the shadows fluttering around over the walls and the well-
honed body lying by her side. It didn’t really seem real. Not real at all, to be honest: the moon aimed a shaft of light through the open window and the thin curtains, and it felt very much as if both she and her lover (boyfriend? partner? bloke?) were floating around in some kind of surrealistic film developing tank, waiting to be developed.

  Developed to make what?

  I am a free woman, she thought. I belong to the first generation of free women in the history of the world. My life is in my own hands.

  Nobody to be responsible for. No pressing social considerations. No obligations.

  I’m a woman who can do whatever she wants.

  Right now. Here. Today and tomorrow.

  They had talked about this as well. This very thing. Both this evening, and earlier as well. How had he put it?

  If you love your freedom too much, you’ll end up hugging a cold stone for the rest of your life. Tighter and tighter, colder and colder.

  She thought about that for a while.

  Bullshit, she concluded. He’s read that on the label of a video film, or on a carton of milk. Too many words. Tomorrow it’s time for that scumbag Lampe-Leermann.

  But she knew — before the sun had risen to greet a new day, and before she’d managed to fall asleep again for the second time that night — she knew that she would have to make up her mind.

  Presumably she had four weeks in which to think things over. Two together with him. Two on her own. She didn’t think he was prepared to give her any longer than that.

  She stroked her hand gently over his handsome back, and wondered if she knew the answer already.

  Then she fell asleep.

  9

  The youth hostel was completely full. After some desperate negotiations, however, she was allowed to share a room with two young Danish Inter-railing girls and a middle-aged nurse who had been unable to find a double room to share with her husband.

  She met the nurse — thoroughly roasted after a long day on the beach — in the shower; the Danish girls were lying on their beds, writing picture postcards. They were both listening to music on their Walkman cassette players, and both nodded to her without removing their earphones.