The Inspector and Silence

by Håkan Nesser

  The chief inspector ignored the joke.

  ‘Do you know what this is all about?’ asked Monsen. ‘What goes on at this place, I mean?’

  ‘I’ll tell you about that later.’

  ‘I bet you will. Do you want to take a look?’

  Van Veeteren sighed and put his hands in his pockets.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to.’

  He walked round the boulder and one of the kneeling forensic officers. Focused on what he couldn’t avoid seeing.

  Leaning against the trunk of a large aspen tree – grotesquely illuminated by the floodlights – was the thin body of a little girl. Van Veeteren had had plenty of time to prepare himself for the sight, but the unedited reality nevertheless hit him like a punch in the solar plexus. The same old punch he’d felt so often before. Here and there – mainly around the groin, the neck and the chest – the pale corpse was stained by large dark patches, and her thighs were striped with dried blood. Her head was twisted almost unnaturally to one side, her tongue was sticking out slightly between her lips, and her eyes were fixed in an expression of pointless terror.

  Clarissa Heerenmacht. He could even remember her name.

  He worked out that it must have been about a day and a half since he’d been talking to her in that large room at the summer camp.

  Then he felt a moment of dizziness before an attack of heartburn returned him to reality.

  There’s something here that doesn’t add up, he thought before turning back into the darkness once more.

  FOUR

  23-28 JULY

  16

  The forest was dense and full of brushwood.

  He saw no sign of any animals or humans, but he could hear church bells ringing in the distance. Perhaps that was meant to give him the guidance he needed. But the chimes were faint and thin; they also seemed to shift slightly from one moment to the next, and the sound of his own steps in the blueberry sprigs and his heavy breathing constantly threatened to drown out the bells. He was forced to stop occasionally, cup his hand to his ear and listen for the peals; and every time he paused it was even more difficult to shake off the feeling that he’d been going round in circles, and was in fact standing on exactly the same spot as a few minutes previously.

  Under the same aspen; that pale body of the little girl with the dark patches seemed familiar, to say the least. Or perhaps the whole forest was full of murdered teenagers, although that seemed undeniably somewhat exaggerated. He wiped the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his jacket, and hurried on his way, stumbling over stones and fallen branches and tufts of grass. At last the bells were beginning to sound louder. A few minutes later he came to the edge of the forest and could see the church in the valley below, by the dark river. The last of the congregation were making their way in; he spurted down the final slope and just managed to slip inside as the heavy door started to close.

  It was his own wedding; nevertheless he could feel no relief at having just made it in time. Only a certain sad feeling of resignation weighing down on his forehead and shoulders as he stood right at the back in the gloom, trying to recover his breath. His bride was already in place in front of the altar, waiting there in her wedding dress of pale, unbleached cotton; but her shock of hair was a promising chestnut-brown colour. He wasn’t sure if this was good or bad, on the whole. The congregation was lost in some sort of prayer, it seemed, and the bells were still chiming loudly as – with considerable dignity – he walked down the central aisle towards his future wife. When he glanced furtively in each direction, he could see that there wasn’t a single person he knew in the pews. Nothing but stern, unfamiliar faces, row after row of them; and nobody paid him the slightest bit of attention.

  He finally reached the altar and placed his hand hesitantly on the bride’s shoulder; she spun round with a start so violently that the cheap wig she was wearing slipped to one side – and he could see that it was Renate. The same old Renate as ever, damn her, and with a sly smile on her lips she hissed: ‘Yesss! Now I’ve got you! This time you won’t get away!’ And when, filled with despair and justified anger, he turned to the priest – who had just washed his hands in a chalice of veined marble and was about to begin the rituals – he saw that the man had long, mouse-coloured hair and taped glasses, and realized he was in cahoots with the bride. There was no doubt about that at all. They were smiling at each other, the priest and the bride, and he had to acknowledge that the game was lost. The whole forest was full of dead girls, he was going to have to marry Renate again under the auspices of this accursed pagan prat, and no matter how desperately he searched through his suit pockets he couldn’t find his police pistol. The fact was of course that he’d forgotten it in some desk drawer in his office at the Maardam police station, as usual, and as he sank down in resignation – in a ridiculously long slow-motion sequence – to kneel beside his triumphant bride, the bells became even louder.

  Swelled and contorted themselves in polyphonic variations that would have driven the old master Bach into a state of delirium, and eventually became so bizarre and unbearable that he realized he would have to put a stop to it all if he were not to lose the very last dregs of his sanity.

  He stretched out a hand, lifted the receiver and answered.

  It was Kluuge.

  The chief inspector sat up and cleared his throat so loudly that he missed whatever the sergeant began by saying.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector,’ Kluuge repeated. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you up?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Van Veeteren, as usual, and fumbled for his wristwatch on the bedside table.

  ‘It’s half past eleven,’ Kluuge informed him. ‘I thought we’d better get going, so I’ve summoned the others to a meeting at two o’clock, to run through what’s happened so far.’

  The others? Van Veeteren wondered – but then he began to recall what had happened during the night, and who had been present. A rapid subtraction suggested he could hardly have slept for more than four hours, and how Kluuge could sound so damned bright and cheery was a mystery. He preferred not to think about the possibility of it having to do with age and general condition. Not just now, at least. He cleared his throat again.

  ‘Sounds good,’ he said.

  ‘At the police station, naturally,’ said Kluuge. ‘But there’s something I’d like to consult you about first, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Van Veeteren.

  There followed a few seconds of silence.

  ‘I don’t really know how to put this, but the business of who is responsible and so on . . .’

  ‘Responsible?’

  ‘Yes, I mean who’s going to be in charge of the investigation. Obviously you are the one with the most experience and all that, but even so I thought I ought to volunteer to do it. I mean, I’m the acting chief of police, and so it comes within my remit, so to say . . .’

  Excellent, the chief inspector thought. Carry on, young man!

  ‘. . . So if you don’t object?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Van Veeteren.

  ‘And I think it would be a pity to disturb Malijsen in the middle of his holiday.’

  ‘I agree,’ said the chief inspector.

  One hundred per cent, he thought.

  ‘Obviously I hope you will stay on and give us a hand. I mean, you have so much experience . . .’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘No need to say another word about it. Did you say two o’clock?’

  ‘Yes, two o’clock,’ Kluuge confirmed. ‘And I’ve arranged a press conference for half past four. I’d be grateful if you could be present at that as well, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘If I live that long,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I assume nothing significant has happened during the morning?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ said Kluuge. ‘The women are in isolation at Wolgershuus, as we said, and the youngsters are still at Waldingen. The police nurses have been relieved, and two psycholo
gists are due at one o’clock.’

  ‘And nobody has said anything?’

  ‘No. They’re still staying silent. We’ll probably have to discuss how to interrogate them in future. Or what do you think? It’s all a bit tricky . . .’

  ‘You can say that again,’ sighed Van Veeteren. ‘But let’s hope it’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Kluuge. ‘But it must be easier to break down a teenaged girl than one of those madwomen.’

  ‘Be careful about the words you use,’ the chief inspector warned. ‘It can be a good idea to think before you speak to journalists, if nothing else. They like to quote people. Silence can be golden sometimes, not just for members of sects.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Kluuge. ‘I’ll remember that. I’ll see you in a couple of hours, then.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Van Veeteren.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kluuge once more.

  Madwomen? the chief inspector thought when he’d hung up.

  He didn’t like it, but whether it was the circumstances or the sergeant’s choice of words that should be stigmatized, he wasn’t really sure.

  The thunderstorm blew in from the south-west, from the direction of Waldingen, and as he ate his brunch on the terrace he was able to watch it approaching rapidly over the edge of the forest on the other side of the lake. The flashes of lightning and claps of thunder entertained him for quite some time before the first heavy drops landed on the corrugated plastic roof over his head, and the temperature dropped drastically by at least ten degrees.

  The cloudburst lasted for nearly fifteen minutes, but when it was at its height it seemed to him that the surface of the lake below the hotel, previously so misleadingly calm, had been transformed into a maelstrom, nothing less than a witch’s brew, and the far side of the lake disappeared behind a wall of seething, lashing water.

  The wrath of the elements, the chief inspector thought. No wonder.

  When it had passed over and he had just signed the bill, he could feel how the air had suddenly become more breathable. In big gulps. After a week of suffocating shortages of oxygen in the brain, it was suddenly possible not only to think a clear thought, but to remember it.

  I don’t think I’m made for the Mediterranean, unfortunately, he thought grimly as he left the table.

  It wasn’t difficult to guess what effect the heavy rain must have had on the efforts of the police dogs at Waldingen. If there were any trails out there in the forest, they certainly wouldn’t be any easier to follow after rain like that.

  As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, he suddenly thought. And when they pull the strings, we dance at their beck and call. They send down buckets of rain, and we stand there with freshly washed faces.

  With his briefcase tucked under his arm and two toothpicks wandering around his mouth, he set off towards Kleinmarckt in the centre of the little town. He tried to avoid the rivulets and torrents, but the gutters and grates were not designed to cope with such vast amounts of water, and by the time he reached Florian’s, he was soaking wet well up his shins. But he was surprised to find that this was not an especially unpleasant state to be in – invigorating, rather; and a few minutes later he entered the Sorbinowo police station feeling alert and ready to concentrate. Ready to cope with whatever was thrown at him.

  We shall solve this lot of crap as well, he thought. Sooner or later.

  17

  Servinus and Suijderbeck had evidently been instructed to stay on in Sorbinowo. They were sitting beside each other underneath an oil painting of Malijsen’s predecessor – a certain J. Stagge – and it was immediately obvious to Van Veeteren that they had even fewer hours of sleep under their belts than he had. Possibly none at all. They had all split up outside the summer camp at about six that morning, and it was by no means impossible that the pair of them had been on duty all the time since then. Inspector Suijderbeck was half-lying in his corner with one leg stretched out in front of him at a strange angle, and it dawned on the chief inspector that he must have some kind of artificial limb. From just under the knee, it seemed. The fact that Van Veeteren hadn’t noticed it before bore witness to his being somewhat under the weather.

  Come to think of it, he couldn’t recall ever having come across a detective officer with a wooden leg before, and he wondered in passing about the circumstances behind it. Presumably they were not nice – but this was hardly the time or place to go into that.

  Kluuge was sitting at the other end of the table with a large notepad at the ready in front of him. He seemed just as perky as he had sounded on the telephone, and Van Veeteren realized that the metamorphosis in Kluuge was still continuing. He bade everyone ‘Good morning’ and sat down on the only empty chair.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Kluuge. ‘Okay now we can start.’

  ‘Is this the full team?’ the chief inspector asked.

  Kluuge shook his head.

  ‘No. We have two colleagues out at Waldingen as well. Female inspectors from Haaldam. And then there’s Matthorst at Wolgershuus, keeping an eye on the women. And I suppose that patrol is still combing through the forest; but they’ll have finished by this evening, presumably.’

  ‘Presumably,’ said Van Veeteren, examining his soaking wet shoes.

  ‘Shall we run through where we’ve got to so far?’ suggested Suijderbeck, suppressing a yawn. ‘I really must grab a few hours’ sleep soon. I expect we’ll have to stay here for a few more days? Don’t you think?’

  He glanced at his colleague on the sofa.

  ‘Mm,’ said Servinus before yawning in turn. ‘In any case I’ve no intention of getting into the car and driving back to Rembork just now. This is a bloody awful situation, don’t you think?’

  ‘It certainly is,’ said Kluuge. ‘I think we ought to get down to the facts now, don’t you? So, the girl was called Clarissa Heerenmacht, and as far as we can tell she was murdered some time on Sunday evening. The day before yesterday, in other words. All traces of rigor mortis had gone by the time I found her, so the doc says it couldn’t have been later than ten o’clock at night. Probably not before six either, but we can’t be sure of that yet. What time was it when the chief inspector spoke to her?’

  ‘About two,’ said Van Veeteren.

  ‘Pretty rough sexual violence on the lower abdomen,’ Kluuge said. ‘Strangled by extremely hard and prolonged pressure on the larynx, probably not at the location where she was discovered. No clothes have been found. No fingerprints on the body either. Well, that’s about it so far. Any comments?’

  ‘Sexual violence on the lower abdomen?’ said Suijderbeck. ‘In other words, it’s not at all certain that we have a case of straightforward rape. I reckon we should bear that in mind.’

  Van Veeteren nodded. Kluuge wrote something on his pad.

  ‘What are you implying?’ wondered Servinus, looking sceptical.

  ‘I dunno,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘I just think it’s worth bearing in mind.’

  He took out a pack of cigarettes and looked round to see what the reaction was. Kluuge nodded, and produced an ashtray. Van Veeteren indicated that he had nothing against being offered one.

  ‘Have you made contact with the parents?’ asked the chief inspector, having taken a deep drag.

  ‘No,’ said Kluuge. ‘It seems there isn’t a dad, incidentally. Not any longer, that is. The mother is on a coach tour in India, so it’ll probably be some time before we can get in touch with her. But there’s an aunt on her way here – we had a bit of luck in finding her.’

  ‘Luck?’ said Suijderbeck. ‘Why was that lucky?’

  A good question, Van Veeteren thought. Kluuge hesitated.

  ‘Well, identification if nothing else. There has to be a relative in order to make it legal.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Servinus, sitting up straight on the sofa. ‘That detail will no doubt sort itself out. But isn’t it about time we really started to get stuck in? It seems a bit like playing blind man’s buff at the moment, I have to
say . . .’

  Of course,’ said Kluuge. ‘It was a bit much last night. Well, what can one say? Anyway, it all started a week ago when that anonymous woman made the telephone call . . .’

  Van Veeteren leaned back on his chair and closed his eyes while Kluuge recapitulated what had happened before, for the benefit of his colleagues from Rembork Tried to switch off and instead started to wonder how many times he’d been in a situation like this during all his years as a detective.

  All those years.

  It must have been hundreds of occasions, and then hundreds more. But even so he was aware that he could recall each and every one of them. Every single case. Always assuming he had the required time. There was something special about these opening gambits, he thought; something almost unique. At this early stage, when most of the logical structure that was always there behind every act of violence – behind most of what human beings said and did as well, of course – was hidden and inaccessible. Camouflaged and disguised.

  But then it struck him that perhaps the term ‘opening gambit’ was wrong. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to think in terms of the final confrontation? The only thing they had to go on was the final move, and what it was all about was reconstructing from the end-game positions: with the king (the murdered high school teacher, the poisoned restaurant owner, the strangled and raped teenager) surrounded and in check under the spotlight, they had to go back to the beginning and work out all the moves from the very start.

  Until you finally managed to blow away all the mists and the clouds of gunpowder, and concentrate on the chessboard without distractions; work out what had actually happened. And why.

  And then – the final denouement – look up and identify your opponent at the other side of the board.

  The perpetrator.

  Hmm, he thought. A bit overdone perhaps, but nevertheless not a bad image for how things could turn out, a description of the vocation he had made his own. He made a mental note to consider and assess the logic of it all, when the time came – when the time came to write his memoirs. He was finding it more and more difficult not to keep thinking about them. It was remarkable how often they had kept imposing themselves upon his thoughts of late. Was it mere coincidence, mere chance – or was it more than that? A pointer? Time to get out?