The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  Barbarotti pondered this sobering truth for a moment. ‘Could it be that they weren’t even registered at a campsite?’ he asked. ‘Even though they were staying there, I mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Leblanc, and gave a shrug. ‘Of course all campers are supposed to show their ID at reception when they pitch their tents or park their caravans, but . . . well, they are probably sometimes a bit lax about it. At that busy time of year there are farmers who open up a field or two to campers, as well, and it is not possible to keep checks on all that sort of thing. Perhaps not desirable either, and who can actually prevent someone putting up a tent on their field?’

  Barbarotti nodded. ‘But if we assume that was what happened,’ he said, ‘they must surely have left some belongings behind them. The tent, their clothes and so on?’

  Leblanc thought for a while.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course someone should have reported this to us anyway. But as I said, I can confirm that nobody did. Unfortunately, and I’m sorry about it.’

  ‘A forgotten tent in a field isn’t exactly a major police priority,’ put in Morelius.

  ‘Not a major one, no,’ said Leblanc with a quick smile.

  ‘But if that hypothesis is correct,’ said Barbarotti with a sigh, ‘then it just means the case is with some prefecture of police elsewhere in the country. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Yes, most definitely,’ said Leblanc.

  ‘Where?’ asked Tallin.

  Leblanc ran a hand over his bare head. ‘That depends entirely on who noticed they were missing,’ he explained patiently. ‘And where that happened, of course. If others did not know where the girl and her grandmother were spending their holiday, for example . . . well, then they would presumably have been reported in their home town. It was Paris, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Paris,’ confirmed Barbarotti. ‘At least if the girl is to be believed. But how did they get here, in that case? Wait a moment. Your people don’t happen . . . didn’t happen to find an abandoned car anywhere near Mousterlin that summer? It’s asking a lot after five years, I know, but . . . ?’

  Leblanc gave a short, gruff laugh. ‘Ha. I can put a man onto it by all means, but I think it would be foolish to expect anything. Maybe the farmer kept that too, for all we know? Why not?’

  There was silence for a few seconds.

  ‘You really think that could be the case?’ Barbarotti asked sceptically. ‘That the two of them were camping on a farmer’s land, and when he noticed they were missing, he simply commandeered their car, their tent and all their things?’

  ‘It’s one theory,’ said Leblanc, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead. ‘I don’t exactly want to believe it, but . . . well, what else are we to believe?’

  Tallin cleared his throat. ‘How did she get to Erik’s place that evening?’ he asked. ‘The grandmother, that is. I didn’t get the impression she was a driver.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Barbarotti. ‘No, she must have come on foot, otherwise her car would have been parked outside the house, and then . . .’

  ‘Then one of the others must have taken care of it,’ Tallin supplied. ‘Well it’s not impossible for them to have done that, is it?’

  ‘No,’ conceded Barbarotti, ‘it certainly isn’t.’

  Good grief, he thought. That could be it. The Swedes had made certain to eradicate all traces of everything. The Sixth Man wouldn’t have been aware of it, because he had left the area the morning after he buried the old woman in the polder.

  ‘But if we assume she came on foot that evening,’ resumed Leblanc, ‘and if we assume she was a fairly old woman, then that would mean they were based somewhere nearby. And we know the holiday houses they were staying in, all the Swedes, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ said Tallin. ‘We had the last one confirmed late last night. Our plan is to visit all three of them tomorrow. But the fact that neither the girl nor her grandmother was reported missing in the area is certainly not something we were expecting. How long will it take for you to check this with Paris?’

  ‘A couple of days, I should think,’ said Leblanc, shrugging his shoulders again. ‘It’s a damn pity we haven’t got their names, but I shall send out a countrywide alert.’

  ‘Troaë,’ Barbarotti reminded him. ‘We’ve got that, at any rate.’

  ‘If that really was her name,’ said Leblanc, putting his glasses on his nose again. ‘I’ve never come across such a name before. Oh well, if they have been reported missing anywhere in France, we should know by next week. Maybe even before you leave for home. Their full names, too.’

  ‘Good,’ said Tallin. ‘We’re grateful for that. Extremely grateful.’

  ‘Have you any other questions that I might be able to answer?’ asked Leblanc.

  Tallin exchanged a look with Barbarotti before shaking his head. ‘Not at present. But perhaps we can get back to you if we think of any?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Leblanc, and stretched. ‘Crime must never be allowed to pay. Regardless of circumstances and of country.’

  After these wise words, he turned his head and looked out of the window. ‘The rain seems to have stopped,’ he said. ‘Can I suggest a soupçon of dinner in the old town before we drive you to your hotel? Mademoiselle?’

  ‘Madame,’ Carina Morelius corrected him, and smiled. ‘Je vous en prie, monsieur le commissaire.’

  They ate in the open air, on an unevenly shaped little square called Place Beurre. Even Barbarotti knew what that meant.

  Goat’s cheese au gratin. Moules marinières. Some kind of perfectly tender meat in a white wine and mustard sauce. A couple of cheeses; Roquefort and a well-aged Comté. Crème brulée.

  An Alsace wine and a Bordeaux. A glass of Calvados and a small café noir. The meal took two and a half hours. Barbarotti decided there would be no more hot dogs from the Rocksta Grill for him.

  Commissaire Leblanc kept the conversation flowing. He told them about the town of Quimper. Its artistic traditions, its architecture. Its beauty, particularly that of the old town where they were currently installed, enfolded by the moat and walls. The chequered history of the ancient cathedral.

  But not a word about the case. Not a word about police work of any kind; this was the way to do it, thought Barbarotti. Shut the job out of your mind the instant you shut your office door behind you.

  This was how he had to function in future, in fact, if he wanted to preserve his mental health, and wanted Marianne to put up with living with him. Not the way he was functioning at the moment – and not like Astor Nilsson, who clearly couldn’t even sleep at nights.

  Take an interest in other things, basically get a life, as the young people’s TV programmes always put it.

  Easy enough to say. Harder to put into practice, presumably. Once he got up to his hotel room – only five minutes’ walk from Place Beurre, as it turned out – he unpacked his case and slid his finger into the Bible.

  It was the first time he had ever taken it with him on a trip.

  Proverbs 20: 5. He felt a sudden gratitude at being spared the evil eye.

  Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water;

  but a man of understanding will draw it out.

  Ah, thought Barbarotti. So what’s this telling me?

  Whose counsel? My own or someone else’s?

  He sat on the edge of the bed weighing the words for a while, but the reference to the case felt so blatant that he decided to leave it. That was what he had learnt from Leblanc. He picked up his phone instead. Admittedly it was past eleven o’clock, but in love and war it was never too late.

  ‘Hi there,’ he said. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘No, don’t worry,’ said Marianne. ‘I hadn’t even got to bed. Jenny’s started in a new form and she needed a bit of cheering up, which took a while.’

  Goodness, yes, thought Barbarotti. The start of term.

  ‘What about you, though? I hope you haven’t changed your mind about Friday?’

 
‘No chance,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But I’m in France.’

  ‘In France?’

  ‘I’m looking for the right wine to go with the lobster.’

  ‘What?’ said Marianne.

  ‘Only joking,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I’m here for work. We think we’re getting close now.’

  ‘Yes, I saw the papers today,’ said Marianne. ‘And the evening news on TV. They seem to have had lots of calls to that helpline. Is it . . . is it the murderer, that man with the circle round him in the photo?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Barbarotti, noting that he didn’t feel as though he was lying as he said it. ‘No, I honestly don’t, it’s a bit complicated. But anyway, I wanted to wish you good night, and tell you I love you while I’m at it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Marianne. ‘That was nice of you. I’m looking forward to seeing you on Friday. Make sure you don’t get held up there, that’s the only thing, because we’ve got important things to talk about.’

  ‘I’ll be there to meet you with roses, milk and honey,’ Barbarotti assured her. ‘And wine, as I said. But you’re welcome to wish me luck down here if you like, as well.’

  ‘Good luck, my love,’ said Marianne. ‘Take care of yourself and you sleep well, too.’

  But he didn’t. Despite his good intentions. As soon as he put out the light, his head was full of everything that had emerged from their afternoon session with Commissaire Leblanc.

  Never reported missing? What the hell could it mean?

  And those speculations that the girl and the old lady could have been camping somewhere unofficial. How credible was that, in fact?

  And how credible was Troaë? That idea the author of the document had had about her being a compulsive storyteller, well, he had undeniably found more to support it in the course of the day.

  And the Mousterlin document as a whole? What was the point of writing it? And letting them read it? Wasn’t that the underlying problem? The question they primarily needed to answer? From amongst the throng of other questions.

  Counsel in the heart of man, in other words.

  Inspector Barbarotti sighed and suddenly found himself thinking of what Axel Wallman used to claim when they shared digs in Lund. That the difference between a Nobel prize-winner and a dribbling idiot wasn’t so huge when it came to it – it was just that the former had managed to amass about one per cent of the sum total of knowledge, whereas the idiot had stopped at a half.

  Some slight consolation, perhaps?

  The final time he was aware of raising his head from the pillow to look at the red digital display on the TV set, it had reached 01.56.

  35

  Leblanc had put a car at their disposal, a black Renault that made Barbarotti think of cognac. They drove out of Quimper at around nine and after half an hour’s ride along winding roads through rich green landscapes, wild and tangled in places, they found themselves at Cap de Mousterlin. The headland protruded into the sea like a nose, with long sandy beaches extending on both sides; it was low tide and the water’s edge was a good fifty to sixty metres from the grass-tufted dune protecting the polder behind it. It was not at all like the Brittany where Barbarotti had spent a few summer weeks fifteen years earlier. He had been up on the north coast on that occasion, Côtes-d’Armor, with its dramatic cliffs, small sheltered bays, caves and distinctive rock formations. The strangeness of the place names suddenly came back to him: Tregastel, Perros-Guirec, Ploumanach.

  But here on the south side it was flat, just as the Mousterlin notes described it. And very warm, or today it was, at any rate; the sun shone from a remorselessly blue sky and the temperature must have been between twenty-five and thirty – even though it was only morning, and even though the schools had gone back in Sweden. The beaches were still virtually empty, but he didn’t doubt they would be covered in people in a few hours’ time. He regretted not having packed a pair of shorts after all, and felt uncomfortably hot in his black jeans – but there was something about police work and shorts that didn’t go together.

  Incompatible, as they said these days.

  To the right, looking west, the beach ended at the little port of Bénodet; to the left, looking east, Beg-Meil could be seen about three kilometres away.

  Barbarotti looked at the clock and Tallin nodded. Time to head to Le Grand Large, the restaurant which, according to their information, would be a couple of hundred metres away, towards Beg-Meil. It was here that the group of Swedes had come with Troaë that day they met her on the beach for the first time. Barbarotti realized it was a hopeless undertaking, and he knew Tallin and Morelius did, too. But they were going to talk to the staff there and give them copies of the pictures. Their business cards too, and a direct number to Commissaire Leblanc – in case their expectations were confounded and someone eventually happened to recollect something.

  They were received with relative friendliness and interest, but also much apologetic shaking of heads. Only one current staff member had been working in the restaurant in 2002, and as she had seen no fewer than eleven summers come and go in this lovely place and, at a guess, somewhere between forty and fifty thousand punters passing through the restaurant and bar, she said she was sorry but she couldn’t actually remember the people in the photograph.

  They moved on to Bénodet and found the restaurant down by the old harbour. It was called Le Transat, and they also located what was in all likelihood the exact table at which the six Swedes had sat one Saturday five years ago, with the wall behind it – and they had quite a long talk to the owner of the place. He was two metres tall, had a brother who was in the Marseilles police force, and loved crime novels above all other things on earth. With the possible exception of his wife and children.

  But despite all that, he was unable to help them. He studied the photographs of summer 2002 very thoroughly for a long time but, thought Barbarotti, even if he had had a sudden flash of inspiration and remembered that party of people and that Saturday, five years ago – what would they really have gained from it? Unless the Sixth Man had happened to leave his driving licence on the table or had trumpeted out his identity in some other way, they would be no further forward. Not necessarily right back at the starting line, but the finishing tape was definitely still nowhere in sight.

  The owner asked them if they would at least stay for lunch, but since it was only half past eleven, they decided to leave that for their third restaurant of the day.

  Le Thalamot in Beg-Meil.

  This is where I’d live if I was rich, thought Gunnar Barbarotti as he was getting out of the car. And if I spoke French.

  Well, not at Le Thalamot itself, but nearby. In one of the big stone houses, hidden behind tall garden walls, that seemed to constitute the heart of the Beg-Meil community. Turrets and towers, blue shutters and deep foliage; splendid isolation and the sea just a few metres away.

  But I never will be rich, he thought. And I’ll certainly never be able to learn to speak French. You’d have to be married to a cyclist from Lyons to pull that off.

  They presented their questions and were answered for the third time with apologetic smiles and shakes of the head. They ordered salads and omelettes and, since they were there, took the opportunity of sampling the local cider, too.

  It tasted like old apple juice that was starting to ferment. Barbarotti remembered it had been just the same on the Côtes-d’Armor fifteen years earlier, and none of them asked for a refill.

  ‘The names match, at any rate,’ said Tallin once the coffee had arrived. ‘The places and the restaurants do exist. And the people, it all tallies. We’ve no call to doubt the story itself.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Barbarotti. ‘You’re right that everything seems to be where it should be. But there are a young girl and an old lady buried out in the marshes, too, and they seem to have vanished without anybody giving a damn. It’s a bit frustrating. That’s what I think, at least.’

  ‘We haven’t heard yet whether Leblanc’s appeal for information
has yielded any results,’ Morelius pointed out. ‘With any luck, we’ll have their names by tonight or tomorrow.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Tallin.

  Barbarotti noted that even the doughty detective inspector was starting to look tired.

  ‘Troaë,’ he said. ‘Leblanc said he’d never heard that name before.’

  ‘I’ve never heard it either,’ said Morelius.

  ‘The Root of All Evil,’ sighed Tallin. ‘Christ, too right.’

  ‘Anything new from back home?’ asked Barbarotti, changing the subject. ‘There hasn’t been a peep out of my mobile since last night.’

  Tallin drained his coffee cup and looked as though he was making an effort to buck up. ‘Yes, I spoke to Asunander this morning,’ he said. ‘Four hundred and fifty-five names, just yesterday. That must be a record, and about ten of them are going to sue us for defamation. But they’re busy sorting through them all, so we’ll have to see what we end up with.’

  Barbarotti nodded. ‘Hope they’ve whittled it down to seven or eight by the time we get home. That would be a bit more manageable.’

  ‘No harm in hoping,’ said Tallin. ‘Right then, shall we pay and venture out for a look at the property market?’

  This, too, proved to match the Mousterlin document, as they had somewhat reluctantly started to call it. The house the Malmgrens had rented through the agent in Gothenburg was a few hundred metres west of the cape of Mousterlin, just inland from the dunes. They had not arranged with the owner to search the place, mainly because it was not in the same hands as five years ago. Monsieur Diderot – that sounded somewhat familiar, Barbarotti thought – who had rented out his house to the Swedish couple, had died in 2004, and it had then passed to his heirs and been sold to a Swiss banker.

  But there it stood, a pleasant whitewashed house surrounded by a low stone wall. Slate roof, like almost all the roofs in the region, a large terrace, a few cypresses and lots of rhododendron bushes and hydrangeas. Barbarotti didn’t feel entirely au fait with the flora, but Morelius put even that into Swedish for him.