The Return ivv-3

by Håkan Nesser

  “You don’t sound too convinced,” said deBries.

  A brief silence again.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve become convinced as the years have passed. After the Marlene murder, and then. .”

  “But you were a witness for the defense at the trial, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you have to say?”

  “Well,” said Moltke. He shook another cigarette from the pack on the table in front of him, but didn’t light it. “I worked for him the following week as well. Monday to Thursday, and they thought I would have noticed something if there was anything wrong.”

  “And did you?”

  “No. He was exactly the same as usual.”

  “As usual?” said Moreno. “Surely he must have reacted to her disappearance?”

  “No. He said she’d gone off somewhere, but he didn’t know where.”

  “Didn’t you think that was odd?”

  Moltke shrugged.

  “People were asking me that ten times a day around then. I can’t remember what I thought, but I don’t suppose I thought much about it. They were a bit unusual, both him and Beatrice. Everybody knew that, and it was hardly surprising that she went off for a few days.”

  Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Moltke lit his cigarette.

  DeBries stubbed his out.

  “That Saturday, the last time you saw her. What was she like?” Moreno asked.

  “Same as usual, her as well,” said Moltke without hesitation. “A touch more sulky, perhaps. They’d been fighting the previous week. She still had a bit of a bruise under one eye, but apart from that there was nothing special. I didn’t see much of her, come to that. She called in at the chicken shed for a little chat, that’s all. On her way back from the village.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Twelve, round about.”

  “And you went home at about one?”

  “Yes. A minute or two past.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “The weather and the wind. Nothing special. She offered me coffee, but I was about to pack in and so I said no thank you.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No.”

  “And she was still there when you left?”

  “Of course. Standing in the kitchen, busy with something or other. I just put my head round the door and wished her a good weekend.”

  DeBries nodded.

  “But when you gave your testimony, if I can come back to that, you didn’t think Verhaven was guilty?”

  Moltke drew deeply on his cigarette and exhaled before replying.

  “No,” he said. “I suppose I didn’t, in fact.”

  “And you still don’t?” asked deBries. “In fact?”

  “I don’t know. It’s easier to live in this village if you think it was him, if you follow me. Is he really dead, like they say?”

  “Who do you mean by they?”

  “The folks in the village, of course.”

  “Yes,” said deBries. “He’s dead.”

  “Ah well,” said Moltke with a sigh. “It comes to us all eventually.”

  “What do we do now?” wondered Moreno. “Time to go back to town, perhaps?”

  DeBries checked his watch.

  “Half past six. Shouldn’t we take a look at the house, seeing as we’re here? You’ve never been there.”

  “OK,” said Moreno. “I have a date at nine, though, and I’d like to have time to powder my nose first.”

  “You’d be all right for me with no powder at all,” said deBries.

  “Thank you,” said Moreno. “It’s good to know that you don’t ask too much of people.”

  “You learn to make the most of whatever you get,” said deBries.

  “A gloomy place,” she said as they were driving back through the trees. “Although it would have looked better in those days, no doubt.”

  “Sure,” said deBries. “It’s been standing empty for twelve or thirteen years. That leaves its mark. . What’s all this!

  Have we time for another little chat?”

  “A short one,” said Moreno.

  DeBries slowed down and stopped beside a man bending

  down by the side of the road, painting a fence.

  “Good evening,” said deBries through the open window.

  “Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”

  The man straightened his back.

  “Good evening,” he said. “Please do. It will be a pleasure to stand upright for a bit.”

  DeBries and Moreno got out of the car and shook hands.

  Claus Czermak had only been living in the blue house for just over a year, it transpired, and he was also too young to have any personal memories of the Verhaven trials. But it was always worthwhile spending a few minutes, just in case.

  “We moved here when we had our third son,” he said, gesturing toward the house and garden, where a couple of toddlers were steering a pedal car down a wheelchair ramp built into the steps leading up to the front door. “We thought it was a bit stifling in town. The country air and all that, you know. .”

  Moreno nodded.

  “You don’t work here in the village?”

  Czermak shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I have a post at the university. History, the Middle Ages and Byzantium.”

  “I see. We’re interested in Leopold Verhaven and his house up there in the forest,” said deBries. “You are his nearest neighbors, so to speak. You and the people opposite. .”

  “The Wilkersons, yes. We had gathered there was some-

  thing going on.”

  “Exactly,” said deBries. “But I don’t suppose you have anything that could be of interest to us?”

  Czermak shook his head.

  “I wouldn’t have thought so. We were still on vacation when he came back here last August. We’ve only heard people talking about him. What’s happened?”

  “He’s dead,” said deBries. “Mysterious circumstances. But don’t call the newspapers tonight, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Oh dear,” said Czermak. “No, you have my word on

  that.”

  “Thank you for your efforts today,” said deBries as he pulled up outside Constable Moreno’s apartment in Keymer Plejn. “A pity you don’t have time for a glass of something. It’s often productive to sit down in peace and quiet for a while and chew over the impressions we’ve had.”

  “Sorry about that,” said Moreno. “I promise to plan things a bit better next time. Aren’t you married, by the way?”

  “A little bit,” deBries admitted.

  “I thought so. Goodnight!”

  She scrambled out of the car. Slammed the door and

  waved to him from the sidewalk. DeBries sat there for a while, watching her. It’s Saturday tomorrow, he thought. A day off.

  Damn!

  21

  Van Veeteren snorted as he finished reading C. P. Jacoby’s summary and analysis of the Beatrice case in the issue of Allge-mejne dated Sunday, June 22, 1962. He stabbed angrily at the white button on his bedside table, and after half a minute the night nurse appeared in the doorway.

  “I want a beer,” said Van Veeteren.

  “This isn’t a restaurant,” said the woman wearily, brushing a strand of hair from her face.

  “So I’ve noticed,” said Van Veeteren. “But the fact is that Dr. Boegenmutter, or whatever the hell his name is, has told me to drink a beer or two. It assists the healing process. Stop being awkward and fetch me a bottle.”

  “It’s turned midnight. Shouldn’t you go to sleep instead?”

  “Sleep? I’m busy with a criminal investigation. You should be damned grateful. I’m after somebody who murdered women. And right now you are obstructing the investigation. Well?”

  She sighed and went off, returning after a couple of minutes with a bottle and a glass.

  “There’s a good girl,” said Van Veeteren.

  She yawn
ed.

  “Do you think you can manage to pour it out yourself?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Van Veeteren promised. “I’ll ring if I spill anything.”

  The cold beer trickling down his throat was most invigorat-ing. He had lain in bed thinking about this moment, trying to imagine the taste and indeed the whole experience while reading through the last four or five newspaper cuttings, and now that it had come, there was no doubt that the actual enjoy-ment lived up to expectations.

  He belched contentedly. Divine nectar, he thought. Let’s see now, what do I know?

  Not a lot. A fair amount from the quantative point of view.

  The newspaper coverage of the first trial had been comprehensive, to say the least. He had only read a small portion, but Munster’s selection seemed to have been well chosen and rep-resentative: a wide range of speculation and guesses regarding Verhaven’s character coupled with fairly detailed accounts of court proceedings. And the longer it went on, the more specific the conclusions drawn about the impending verdict.

  Guilty. Verhaven must be guilty.

  There were not many facts available. Just as he had suspected, the technical proof was rudimentary. Nonexistent, to put it bluntly. The case ought to have depended mainly on circumstantial evidence, but there wasn’t much of that either.

  Strictly speaking, there was a gaping void in both those areas.

  No concrete proof.

  Not much in the way of circumstantial evidence pointing toward Verhaven.

  Nothing.

  But he had been found guilty even so.

  After discreet legal proceedings behind the scenes, no doubt, Van Veeteren thought, raising the bottle to his lips. I’d give a lot to have taken part in those.

  But what the hell was it that got him convicted? Obviously, the media and vociferous public opinion had created a certain amount of pressure, but surely the machinery didn’t usually succumb so readily to that?

  No, there must have been some other reason.

  His character.

  The kind of man that Leopold Verhaven was. His past. His behavior in court. The overall impression he had made on the jury and the legal bigwigs. That’s what it was all about.

  That’s what got him convicted.

  Verhaven was an eccentric. Having scrutinized him through the eyes and magnifying glasses of all these journalists, Van Veeteren could hardly come to any other conclusion.

  He was very much a loner, a man from whom it was the easi-est thing in the world to disassociate oneself.

  An odd man out.

  A murderer? It was not difficult to take the short step from the former judgment to the latter, that was something Van Veeteren had learned over many long years; and once you had taken that step, it was not easy to retract it.

  And the role?

  Was that the key? The strange circumstance that practically every journalist had homed in on. The fact that Verhaven didn’t seem uncomfortable with the role of accused. On the contrary. He seemed to enjoy sitting in the dock with all that attention focused on him. Not that he had strutted or swag-gered, but nevertheless: There was something about the way he conducted himself, a solitary and forceful actor playing the role of the tragic hero. That was how he was perceived, and that was how he had wanted to be perceived.

  Something of that sort, in any case.

  Was that the reason he was convicted?

  If only I’d been there and seen him, I would have had no doubt, Van Veeteren thought as he emptied the bottle.

  What actually happened was apparently simple and beyond argument.

  Verhaven had returned home that Saturday, at about five o’clock, according to what he and others said. Beatrice had gone off somewhere, and that’s all there was to it. But that was his version. Nobody else had set eyes on either of them later that day. The electrician, Moltke, had left Beatrice at about one o’clock in the afternoon, and Verhaven had been seen in the village the next day, shortly after six on Sunday evening. That was all. The period between those two sightings was a blank.

  He would have had plenty of time. For all sorts of things.

  One of the medical examiners had been in no doubt that Beatrice had confronted her killer at some point on Saturday or Sunday. She had been strangled and raped. Or the other way around, presumably? Raped and strangled. She was naked; intercourse had taken place, but there was no trace of sperm.

  But, thought Van Veeteren, if the killer had been somebody else, that meant it was definite that the murder had taken place on Saturday afternoon-between one o’clock and five o’clock, or thereabouts. Between the moment Moltke had set off for home and Verhaven’s return.

  Or at least that she had been abducted during that time.

  Irrefutable?

  Certainly, he decided. He glared mournfully at the empty bottle, then turned to the transcript from the court proceedings. Day two of the trial. The prosecutor, Hagendeck, cross-questioned the accused, Leopold Verhaven.

  May twenty-fourth. Half past ten in the morning.

  H: You have pleaded not guilty to killing your fiancee, Beatrice Holden. Is that correct?

  V: Yes.

  H: Can you tell us a little about your relationship?

  V: What do you want to know?

  H: How you met, for instance.

  V: We bumped into each other in Linzhuisen. We were at school together. She came home with me.

  H: That first time? You started a relationship right away?

  V: We knew each other previously. She needed a man.

  H: When did she move in with you?

  V: A week later.

  H: So that would be. .

  V: November 1960.

  H: And she has been living with you ever since?

  V: Yes, of course.

  H: All the time?

  V: She visited her mother and her daughter occasionally.

  Stopped over in Elming for the odd night. But more or less all the time, yes.

  H: Were you engaged?

  V: No.

  H: You didn’t intend to get married?

  V: No.

  H: Why not?

  V: That wasn’t why we lived together.

  H: Why did you live together, then?

  [Verhaven’s reply erased]

  H: I see. Did you fall out at all?

  V: Sometimes.

  H: Did you fight?

  V: Now and again, I suppose.

  H: Did you beat her at all?

  V: Yes. She liked it.

  H: She liked you beating her?

  V: Yes.

  H: How do you know? Did she say so?

  V: No, but I know she liked it.

  H: How can you know that if she never said anything?

  V: You can tell. They show it.

  H: What do you mean by “they”?

  V: Women.

  H: Did she hit you as well?

  V: She tried, but I was stronger than she was.

  H: Did you drink a lot of hard liquor together?

  V: No, not all that much.

  H: But it did happen?

  V: Yes. We used to have a few drinks on a Saturday, seeing as I had Sunday off.

  H: Off? Didn’t you have to look after the hens?

  V: Yes, of course; but I didn’t have to go to market.

  H: I see. Can you tell us what happened on Saturday, March thirtieth? The week before Beatrice

  disappeared, that is.

  V: We drank a bit. Fell out. I hit her.

  H: Why?

  V: She annoyed me. I think she wanted a bit of a beating.

  H: How did she annoy you?

  V: She was being difficult.

  H: You beat her so badly that she had to take refuge with a neighbor. It was three in the morning. She had no

  clothes on. What do you say to that?

  V: She was drunk.

  H: But that doesn’t mean she wanted a bit of a beating, does it?

  [No reply from Verhaven]

  H: Don’t
you think that was overstepping the mark, beating your fiancee so violently that she had to flee to a neighbor for safety?

  V: She didn’t need to go. She was drunk and hysterical.

  She came back again later, after all.

  H: What about the following week? Did you beat her

  several times?

  V: No, not that I recall.

  H: Not that you recall?

  V: No.

  H: Why should you forget something like that?

  V: I’ve no idea.

  H: What did you do when you got back home on

  Saturday, April sixth?

  V: Made a meal and ate it.

  H: Nothing else?

  V: Saw to the hens.

  H: Where was Beatrice when you got home?

  V: I don’t know.

  H: What do you mean by that?

  V: That I don’t know.

  H: Shouldn’t she have been at home?

  V: Maybe.

  H: Had you arranged anything?

  V: No.

  H: She hadn’t planned to go anywhere?

  V: No.

  H: To visit her mother and daughter, for instance?

  V: No.

  H: Were you surprised that she wasn’t at home when you returned?

  V: Not especially.

  H: Why?

  V: Nothing much surprises me.

  H: Tell us what you did the rest of the day.

  V: Nothing much.

  H: What, exactly?

  V: I sat around at home. Watched television. Went to bed.

  H: And you still didn’t wonder where your fiancee was?

  V: No.

  H: Why didn’t you wonder?

  V: They come and go.

  H: What do you mean?

  V: Women. They come and go.

  H: Tell us what you did on Sunday.

  V: I was at home. I didn’t do anything much. Saw to the hens.

  H: And where did you think Beatrice was?

  V: I don’t know.

  H: It wasn’t that you knew where she was?

  V: No.

  H: It wasn’t that you knew she was lying dead in the forest, murdered? Nearly a mile into the forest?

  V: No.

  H: So you didn’t kill her, which would explain why you didn’t wonder where she was?

  V: No, that’s not how it was. It wasn’t me who killed her.

  H: But you didn’t miss her on Sunday?

  V: No.

  H: You didn’t check to see if she’d gone to her mother’s, for instance?