by Håkan Nesser
“Then my mother died. He was only eight. He and Dad
were the only ones left.”
“In Kaustin?”
“Yes. Dad was a blacksmith. But at that time he was away fighting the war, of course. They gave him special dispensa-tion to go home six months before it was all over, to look after Leo. I helped out a bit, but I was married and had my own children to look after. Lived in Switzerland, so it wasn’t all that easy to drop everything and do one’s bit. My husband ran a company in Switzerland, and I was needed to make a contri-bution there as well.”
Oh yes, Jung thought. A guilty conscience, as usual.
“But you didn’t live in the house your brother eventually bought? Not then, when you were a child?”
“No, we lived in the village. The smithy has closed down, but the house is still there.”
Jung nodded.
“Leopold bought that smallholding when he moved back
there. That was after the athletics scandal.”
“Tell me about it,” said Jung. “I’m all ears.”
She sighed.
“Leo had a lot of problems when he was growing up,” she said. “I think he was a very lonely child. He had a hard time at school, found it hard to get on with his schoolmates, if I’ve understood it rightly. But you can no doubt find out more about this from others. He left school at twelve, in any case.
Helped Dad in the smithy for a while, but then moved out to Obern. Just packed up and moved out: I assume there was some kind of row between him and Dad, but we never knew any details. He must have been fifteen, sixteen. It was 1952, if I remember rightly.”
“But things went well for him in Obern?”
“Yes, they did. He wasn’t afraid of work, and there were plenty of jobs at that time. Then he joined that athletics club and started running.”
“Middle distance,” added Jung, who was quite interested in athletics. “He was a brilliant runner-I’m a bit too young to have seen him, but I’ve read about him. Middle distance and upward.”
Mrs. Hoegstraa nodded.
“Yes, they were good years, in the mid-fifties. Everything seemed to be going well.”
“He held several records, didn’t he? National records, that is. . For the fifteen hundred and three thousand meters, if my memory serves me correctly.”
She shrugged and looked apologetic.
“Forgive me, Inspector, but I’m not very good at sports.
And in any case, he was stripped of them all afterward.”
Jung nodded.
“It was an enormous scandal, obviously. Banned for life- that must have been a bitter blow for him. . very bitter. Had you any contact with him during those years?”
Mrs. Hoegstraa looked down.
“No,” she said. “We didn’t. Neither my brother nor I.”
Jung waited for a while.
“But we were not the only ones at fault. That’s the way he wanted it. He was a loner, always preferred to be on his own.
He was always like that. Obviously, we would have preferred it to be different, but what can we do about it now? What could we have done then?”
She suddenly sounded weary.
“I don’t know,” said Jung. “Can you bear to go on a bit longer?”
She took another sip of tea, then continued.
“He left everything and moved back to Kaustin. Bought that house-he’d evidently managed to save a bit of money, from his work and his running. He was found guilty of taking drugs, and for. . what do they call it? Breach of amateur regulations?”
Jung nodded again.
“I’ve read about it,” he said. “He collapsed during a five-thousand-meter race while going for the European record.
He’d been promised a large sum of money if he broke it, on the quiet, of course. . And they discovered the amphetamine and quite a few other things when they got him to hospital.
He was one of the first athletes to be caught for drugs offenses in the whole of Europe, I think. Ah well, please go on, Mrs.
Hoegstraa.”
“Well, he bought that house, as I said. The Big Shadow, as they used to call it when I was a child, I don’t know why. It’s a bit off the beaten track, of course. It had been empty for a few years, and he got it cheap, I suppose. And then he got going with his chickens. He’d been working in that line while he was in Obern and had no doubt seen the potential. He could be quite enterprising when he put his mind to it. Had a good business sense, that sort of thing.”
She paused. Jung took a swig of beer, then asked:
“And then there was Beatrice?”
She suddenly looked very dejected.
“Do we really have to take that as well, Inspector?”
I don’t know, he thought. Besides, I’m not an inspector yet.
Might never be, come to that.
“Just a few little questions?” he suggested.
She nodded and clasped her hands on her knees. He started to feel for the vocabulary book in his inside pocket, but decided yet again to do without it.
“Did you ever meet her?”
“Not when she was grown up. I knew her when she was a child in Kaustin. They were more or less the same age. In the same class at school.”
“But she hadn’t stayed put in the village either, had she?”
“No. She came back a few months after Leopold. She’d been living in Ulming for a time, I think. Left a man behind there as well.”
Jung pondered. Didn’t really know what he was trying to find out. What it was permissible to ask about, and what the point of it was. Surely this poor old lady couldn’t have anything to do with it? What was the justification for his sitting here and plaguing her with memories she’d spent all her life trying to forget?
There again, one never knows.
“Was she pretty?” he asked eventually, when the silence was starting to become too much for him.
She hesitated.
“Yes,” she said. “From a man’s point of view, she must have been very beautiful.”
“But you never saw her.”
“No, only in photographs. In the newspapers.”
He changed track. Completely.
“Why did you wait so long before contacting the police, Mrs. Hoegstraa?”
She swallowed.
“I didn’t know anything. Believe me, Inspector. I had no idea that anything had happened to him. We had no contact, none at all; you have to understand that.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd that your brother could be dead for eight months without anybody missing him?”
“Yes, I’m so sorry. . It’s terrible.”
“You never visited him when he was in prison?”
“Once, that first time. He made it very clear that he didn’t want any more visits.”
“And you respected that?”
“Yes, I respected that.”
“What about your brother?”
“Yes. He tried once after the second murder. Leo refused to see him.”
“Did you write to him?”
She shook her head.
“But you looked after the house for him?”
“No, not at all. I just looked after the key. We went there twice during the last twelve years. The second time was a week before he was due for release. He sent me a postcard asking me to leave the key there for him.”
“And that was all?” Jung asked.
“Yes,” she said, looking slightly embarrassed. “That was all, I’m afraid.”
Huh, Jung thought as he crossed the street a quarter of an hour later. I must remember to phone my sister this evening.
This is not what ought to happen.
I’d better call Maureen as well, come to that. About the vocabulary book if for nothing else.
He had already driven a few miles before it occurred to him that he’d forgotten to ask about the testicle business; but no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t see that it was significant. In any case, it would be easier to deal with that detail o
n the telephone.
And not to have to be so embarrassingly close, that is.
I suppose I’m a bit of a prude really, he thought, switching on the radio.
16
On the way to Ulmentahl, Inspector Rooth found himself sitting at the wheel while thinking about various geographical circumstances; in retrospect he realized that those thoughts must have been triggered when he drove through Linzhuisen and happened to see the place names Kaustin and Behren on the same signpost.
Kaustin 10. Behren 23.
In different directions, of course. Kaustin to the northwest.
Behren almost due south. If his rudimentary knowledge of geometry had not let him down, that should mean that the distance between the two places was. . thirty miles or more?
Why had the murderer chosen to place the dead body just there?
In Behren. A little town with, perhaps, twenty-five thousand inhabitants? No more than thirty, in any case.
Pure coincidence?
Very possible. If the murderer’s intention had been no more than to dump the body sufficiently far away from Kaustin for the link with Verhaven not to strike anybody, then yes, that was probably far enough. But on the other hand, a greater distance would have been even better for his purpose.
They could take it as read that Verhaven had been killed in his own house. Or could they? Nothing was absolutely certain yet, one way or the other, and perhaps he could have left the house without being seen by Mrs. Wilkerson’s hawklike eyes?
Or anybody else’s?
Of course he could. During the night, for instance. Or through the forest. It was only that road down to the village that had eyes. And the village itself.
So, yes, he probably could have gone to Behren. Or somewhere else. And met his killer there. No doubt about it.
He turned onto the freeway. Next question?
How? How, if that was what happened, could Verhaven have found his way to Behren? (Or somewhere else, as stated.) He didn’t have a car of his own anymore. So bus or taxi, that seemed to be the only. . And if that was the case, it ought not to be all that difficult to look into it.
Eventually, that is. So far they had managed to keep the mass media at arm’s length; that was a blessing, to be sure, when it came to their working conditions and the atmosphere in which the investigation was conducted, but sooner or later, they would need help from the media. And obviously, it was only a matter of time before the echo of jungle drums in Kaustin was picked up a little farther away. Before long the news would be broadcast all over the country, and they would have to take the rough with the smooth. As usual.
Journalists are like cow shit, Reinhart used to say. I’m not especially keen on the stuff as such, but I understand that it has its uses.
So if there was a cab driver, Rooth thought, or a bus con-ductor who could recall a particular passenger setting out from Kaustin one evening in August. . Or early morning, perhaps. . To-why not Behren? Well, yes indeed, that would narrow things down quite a lot.
Concentrate minds a bit.
He increased speed and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.
As things were at the moment, you could ask as many questions as you liked. And every damned question gave rise to another three. Or even more.
Like that Greek monster, whatever its name is.
No, better to worry about something else instead, he
decided, and ran his hand through his beard.
No, not through. Over, rather.
What had deBries said? A dying hamster?
Whatever, another 130 miles to Ulmentahl. He would have to put some life into this case before very long, that was beyond discussion.
Mr. Bortschmaa’s office was light and airy and pleasantly cozy with framed sports certificates and crossed tennis racquets.
The prison governor himself was a powerfully built man in his fifties, Rooth estimated, dressed in a light blue sports shirt, with tanned forearms and youthful, flaxen hair.
The group of furniture where visitors were entertained by the picture window-looking out onto the barbed-wire top of the prison wall and the peaceful flat countryside beyond-
comprised thin steel chairs with eye-catching blue and yellow upholstery and a table made of red plastic. On one of the chairs sat an overweight man with receding hair and sweat stains under his arms. He did not look happy.
Rooth and the governor sat down.
“Meet Joppens, our welfare officer,” said the latter.
“Rooth,” said Rooth, shaking hands.
“The inspector would like to ask you some questions about Leopold Verhaven,” Bortschmaa explained in one direction. “I thought it a good idea for Joppens to be present,” he explained in the other. “Please fire away, Inspector.”
“Thank you,” said Rooth. “Maybe you could describe him briefly.”
“Yes,” said the welfare officer. “If there is anybody who can be described briefly, he’s the one. You can have a comprehensive description in half a minute. Or on half a page handwritten.”
“Really?” said Rooth. “What are you implying?”
“I had to do with him for eleven years, and I know as much about him now as I did when I first met him.”
“A hermit,” said Bortschmaa.
“He had no contact at all with anybody,” Joppens continued. “No fellow prisoner, nobody outside prison, none of the warders. Not with me and not with the chaplain either.”
“Sounds remarkable,” said Rooth.
“He might as well have spent all his sentence in solitary confinement,” said Bortschmaa. “It wouldn’t have made much difference. An introspective type. Extremely introverted. But a model prisoner, of course.”
“He never misbehaved?” asked Rooth.
“Never,” said Joppens. “Never smiled either.”
“Did he take part in any activities?”
The welfare officer shook his head.
“Went swimming once a week. Went to the library twice a week. Read newspapers and borrowed a book occasionally. I don’t know if you would call that activities.”
“But you must have spoken with him, surely?”
“No,” said the welfare officer.
“Did he answer if you addressed him?”
“Oh yes. Good morning and good night and thank you.”
Rooth thought that over. What the devil was the point of sitting in a car all day just for this, he wondered. Might as well carry on a bit longer, though. Seeing as he was here, after all.
“No confidants in the whole prison?”
“No,” said Joppins.
“None at all,” confirmed Bortschmaa.
“Any letters?” said Rooth.
The welfare officer thought that one over.
“He received two. Relatives, I think. And he sent a postcard a few weeks before he was released.”
“And he was inside for twelve years?”
“Yes. The card was to his sister.”
“Any visits at all?”
“Two,” said Joppens. “His brother came once, right at the start. Verhaven refused to meet him. Wouldn’t even go to the interview room. . I hadn’t taken up my appointment then, but my predecessor told me about it. The brother sat waiting for him for a whole day. . ”
“And the other?” said Rooth.
“Excuse me?”
“The other visit. You said he had two.”
“A woman,” said Joppins. “Last year, I think. . No, it must have been the year before.”
“Who was the woman?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“But he received her?”
“Yes.”
Rooth contemplated the diplomas and tennis racquets for a while.
“That all sounds a bit odd to me,” he said. “Have you many prisoners like that?”
“None,” said the governor. “I’ve never come across anything like it before.”
“Formidable self-control,” said the welfare officer. “I’ve talked to
my colleagues about him and everybody agrees.
About what he was like on the surface, that is. What was underneath is a mystery, of course.”
Rooth nodded.
“Why are you so interested in him?” the governor wondered. “Or is that classified information?”
“No,” said Rooth. “It will come out sooner or later. We’ve found him murdered.”
The silence that fell in the room felt almost like a power cut, it seemed to Rooth.
“That really is. .,” said the welfare officer.
“But what the. .,” said the prison governor.
“You don’t need to tell all and sundry about this,” said Rooth. “We’d be grateful to have a few days of peace and quiet before the newspapers get on our backs.”
“Of course,” said Bortschmaa. “How did he die?”
“We don’t know,” said Rooth. “We don’t have his head, his hands or his feet as yet. Somebody butchered him.”
“Oh my God,” said Bortschmaa, and Rooth had the
impression that his tan faded noticeably. “Don’t say this is what the papers have been writing about?”
“Yes, it is,” said Rooth.
“When do you think he died, then,” wondered Joppens.
“Quite a long time ago,” said Rooth. “He was dead for eight months before he was found.”
“Eight months?” Joppens exclaimed, frowning. “That must have been shortly after we released him?”
“The same day, we think.”
“You mean he was murdered the very same day?”
“It looks like it.”
“Hmm,” said Bortschmaa.
“Being locked up seems to mean being safe, at least,” said Joppens.
There was a pause, and Rooth was starting to feel hungry.
He wondered why on earth nobody had offered him anything to eat.
“Was he ever let out on parole?” he asked.
“Never wanted to be,” said Bortschmaa. “And we don’t
normally press people.”
Rooth nodded. What else should he ask about?
“And so you haven’t any suspicions at all,” he said as he thought feverishly, “no idea about who might have wanted to kill him?”
“Do you?” asked the welfare officer.
“No,” admitted Rooth.
“Nor do we,” said the governor. “Not the least idea. He didn’t have any contacts at all while he was in here. Good ones or bad ones. Somebody must have been lying in wait.”