by Håkan Nesser
Havel looked at the clock.
“We have half an hour until lunch. How long does my learned friend require?”
Rüger stood up and took the floor.
“It’s enough. My client is under intense psychological strain, and I shall be very brief. Mr. Mitter, what about the door to your apartment? Was it locked or unlocked that night?”
“Unlocked. We never lock—er, we never used to lock the door when we were at home.”
“Not even at night?”
“No, never.”
“What about the entrance door to the apartment block, the street door?”
“It’s suppose to be locked, but I can’t remember it being locked for as long as I’ve lived there.”
Rüger turned to Havel and held up a sheet of paper.
“I have a signed statement from the landlord confirming that the outside door was not locked on the night in question. Mr. Mitter, isn’t it true to say that anybody at all could have entered your apartment and murdered your wife during the night of October second?”
“Yes, I assume so.”
“If we take it that you fell asleep at, let’s say, ten o’clock or thereabouts, is it not possible that your wife might have left the apartment…”
“Pure speculation!” protested Ferrati, but Havel merely gave him a look.
“…left the apartment without your knowledge?” Rüger asked.
“I don’t think she did,” said Mitter.
“No, but it’s not impossible, is it?”
“No.”
“What other men friends did your wife have?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she must surely have had other men as well as you—I mean, you’d only been together for six months. She separated from her former husband, Andreas Berger, six years ago. Do you know anything about relationships she had in the meantime?”
“She didn’t have any,” said Mitter abruptly.
Rüger looked surprised.
“How do you know that?”
“Because she said so.”
“Do I understand this rightly? Are you saying that your wife had no relationship at all with another man for six years?”
“Yes.”
“She was a beautiful woman, Mr. Mitter. How is that possible? Six years!”
“She didn’t have any other men. Have you got that into your head? I thought you were supposed to be my attorney. My Lord, do I have the right to terminate this line of questioning?”
The judge looked somewhat confused, but before he had time to reach a decision, Rüger was speaking again.
“I apologize, Mr. Mitter. I merely want the matter to be clear to the jury as well. Allow me to take another approach. Everyone agreed that your wife, Eva Ringmar, was a beautiful and attractive woman. Even if she didn’t want to enter into a relationship, surely there must have been other men who, er, expressed an interest?”
Mitter said nothing.
“Before you came into the picture, at least. What about the situation at your school, for example?”
But Mitter had no desire to answer, that was obvious. He leaned back and folded his arms.
“You’ll have to ask somebody else about that, my learned friend. I have nothing to add.”
Rüger hesitated a moment before putting his next question.
“Your quarrel at the Mephisto restaurant, referred to by the prosecuting attorney—it didn’t have to do with another man, by any chance?”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
“Of course.”
Ferrati suddenly intervened.
“Are you jealous, Mr. Mitter?”
“Stop!” bellowed Havel. “Erase that question! You have no right to intervene at this stage, that was…”
“I can answer it even so,” insisted Mitter, and Havel fell silent. “No, I’m no more inclined to jealousy than anybody else. Nor was Eva. And besides, neither of us had any need. I don’t understand what my attorney is getting at.”
Havel sighed and looked at the clock.
“If you have anything else to ask, please keep it short,” he said, turning to Rüger.
Rüger nodded.
“Of course. Just one more question, Mr. Mitter: Are you quite certain that your wife wasn’t lying to you?”
Mitter appeared to be pausing for effect before answering.
“One hundred percent certain,” he said.
Rüger shrugged.
“Thank you. No more questions.”
He’s lying, Van Veeteren thought. The man is sitting there and lying his way into jail.
Or…or is he extending the premise of telling the truth in absurdum?
God only knows. But why? If he doesn’t miss her, why defend her as if she were an abbess?
And as he elbowed his way out through the crowd of reporters, he decided to leave the pyromaniac lying in peace for another half day.
14
Why the mother?
He didn’t know the answer to that himself. Perhaps it was a question of geography. Mrs. Ringmar lived in Leuwen, one of the old fishing ports on the coast. It meant an hour in the car through the polders, and perhaps that was what he needed right now. A lot of sky, not much earth.
He arrived at the precise moment the clock in the little town hall struck three. He parked in the square and asked his way to Mrs. Ringmar’s house.
The air was full of sea.
Sea and wind and salt. If he wanted, he could allow it to remind him of his childhood summers, but there was no reason why he should.
The house was small and white. Wedged in a confusion of shacks, sheds, fences, and net racks. He wondered if there could be any room for integrity in a place like this. People lived in each other’s kitchens, and every bedroom must be surrounded by listening ears.
The higher the sky, the lower the people, he thought as he rang the doorbell. Why did there have to be people in every kind of landscape?
The woman who peered at him through the barely open door was small and thin. Her hair was short and straight and completely white, and her face seemed to be somehow introverted. Van Veeteren recognized the expression from lots of other old people. Perhaps it had something to do with their false teeth…. As if they had bitten into something thirty years ago, and stubbornly refused to let go ever since, he thought.
Or was there more than that to this woman?
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Ringmar?”
“Yes.”
“My name’s Van Veeteren. It was me who phoned.”
“Please come in.”
She opened the door, but only wide enough for him to be able to squeeze through.
She ushered him into the drawing room. Indicated a sofa in the corner. Van Veeteren sat down.
“I’ve put the coffee on. I suppose you’d like some coffee?”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“Yes, please. If it’s not too much trouble.”
She left the room. Van Veeteren looked round. A neat, attractive room. A low ceiling and a degree of timelessness. He liked it. Apart from the television set, there was not much about it later than the fifties. The sofa, table, and armchairs all in teak, a display case, a little bookcase. The windowsill tightly packed with potted plants—to prevent people from seeing in, presumably. A few paintings of seascapes, family photographs. A newly married couple. Two children, at various stages. A boy and a girl. They looked to be similar in age. The girl must be Eva.
She returned with a coffee tray.
“Please accept my condolences, Mrs. Ringmar.”
She nodded and clenched her teeth even more tightly. She made Van Veeteren think of a stunted pine tree.
“There’s been a police officer here already.”
“I know. My colleague, Inspector Münster. I don’t want to inconvenience you, but there are a few questions I’d like to ask you, just to complete the picture.”
“Fire away. I’m used to it.”
She poured
out the coffee and slid a plate of biscuits toward Van Veeteren.
“What do you want to know?”
“A bit about…the background, as it were.”
“Why?”
“You never know, Mrs. Ringmar.”
For some reason she seemed happy with this answer, and without his needing to prompt her, she set off talking.
“I’m on my own now, you know—are you a chief inspector?”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“I don’t know if you can understand, but it’s something I always seemed to know would happen. I’ve always sort of known I’d be the last one left.”
“Your husband?”
“Died in 1969. It was better that way. He wasn’t…wasn’t himself those final years. He drank a lot, but it was the cancer that got him.”
Van Veeteren slipped a small, pale-colored biscuit into his mouth.
“The children didn’t miss him, but he meant well. It’s just that he didn’t have the strength to do what he should have done. Some people are like that, aren’t they, Chief Inspector?”
“How old were the children then? Am I right in thinking there was Eva and a son?”
“Fifteen. They are twins…were twins, or however I should put it.”
She took a handkerchief from her apron pocket and blew her nose.
“Rolf and Eva. Ah well, it was a good job they had each other.”
“Why was that?”
She hesitated.
“Walter had what you might call old-fashioned ideas about bringing up children.”
“I see. You mean, he beat them?”
She nodded. Van Veeteren looked out the window. He didn’t need to ask any more questions. He knew the implications; he only needed to think back to his own childhood.
Locked in the attic. Heavy footsteps on the stairs. That dry cough.
“What happened to your son? Rolf?”
“He emigrated. Signed on with a ship when he was only nineteen. It must have been a girl, but he never said anything about it. He was introverted, a bit like his father. I hope he grew out of it.”
There was something in her tone of voice that suggested…well, what did it suggest, Van Veeteren wondered. That she had already given up on everything, but nevertheless was determined to live life through to the end?
“Do you go to church, Mrs. Ringmar?”
“Never. Why do you ask?”
“It doesn’t matter. What happened to Rolf?”
“He settled down in Canada. I have…I’ve never seen him since that evening he left.”
Even though she had been living with that fact for a long time, she found it difficult to say so, that much was obvious.
“He wrote letters, presumably?”
“Two. One came in 1973, the year he left. The other came two years later. I think…”
“Yes?”
“I think he was ashamed. It’s possible he wrote to Eva. She claimed he did, in any case, but she never showed me anything. Perhaps she made it up, to make me feel better.”
They sat in silence for a while. Van Veeteren sipped at his coffee; she slid the cookie plate in his direction.
“When did Eva leave home?”
“Six months after Rolf. She did well in her school-leaving exams and won a place at the University of Karpatz. She was the bright one, I don’t know where she got it from. She read modern languages, and became a teacher, French and English—but you know that, of course.”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“And then she married that man Berger. Maybe it would have turned out all right, despite everything. After a few years they had a child. Willie. Those were happy years, I think, but then came the accident. He drowned. Our family is jinxed, Mr. Van Veeteren. I think I’ve been aware of that the whole of my life. That’s the way it is for some people…. There’s nothing you can do about it…. Don’t you think so too?”
Van Veeteren drank the rest of his coffee. Thought fleetingly of his own son.
“Yes indeed, Mrs. Ringmar,” he said. “I think you’re absolutely right.”
She smiled wanly. Van Veeteren realized that she was one of those people who have learned to find a certain grim satisfaction in the midst of all the misery. A sort of: What did I tell you, God! I knew You had led me up the garden path from the very start!
“I gather they divorced after the accident?”
“Yes, it wore Eva down, and Andreas couldn’t cope with it all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the loss of Willie, and Eva turning to drink and carrying on…she was in a home…for six months—I suppose you know about that?”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“Ah well, that’s the way it went.”
She sighed. But there again, it was not total dejection. Only resignation, a sort of stoic calm in the face of the repugnant realities of life. Van Veeteren found himself feeling something that must have been sympathy for this long-suffering little woman. Warm sympathy. It was not an emotion he was normally prone to feeling, and it was totally unexpected. He sat in silence for a while before asking his next question.
“But she got back on her feet again, your daughter?”
“Oh yes. You could certainly say that. I thought her husband could have helped her a bit more, but she pulled through. Oh yes.”
“Did you have a lot of contact with your daughter, Mrs. Ringmar?”
“No, we were never close. I don’t know why, but she had a life of her own. She didn’t turn to me for help, not even then. I think…”
She fell silent. Chewed at a cookie and appeared to be searching through her memory.
“What do you think, Mrs. Ringmar?”
“I think she thought I had let her down. And Rolf as well.”
“In what way?”
“That I could have protected them more from Walter.”
“Didn’t you do that?”
“I tried to, I suppose, but perhaps it wasn’t enough. I don’t know, Chief Inspector. It’s hard to know things like that.”
There followed a short pause. Van Veeteren carefully brushed a few crumbs onto the floor. He had only two questions left, the ones he had actually come here to ask.
“Do you know if Eva met a new man? Before Janek Mitter, I mean?”
Mrs. Ringmar shook her head.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. She didn’t mention anything of the sort, but then she never did. She lived in Gimsen for a few years, she had a post at a Catholic school for girls. I used to phone her once a week, but we never met.”
“Why did she move to Maardam?”
“I don’t know. The job, perhaps. I don’t think she liked teaching only girls. The atmosphere became a bit like a nunnery, I should imagine.”
“I can understand that. And Janek Mitter—what do you think about him?”
“Nothing. I’ve never met him. My daughter sent me a postcard from Greece saying that she’d remarried.”
“Were you surprised?”
“Yes, I think I was. I was pleased as well. But then things went the way they did…”
She shrugged again.
As if life were nothing to do with her, Van Veeteren thought. Maybe that wasn’t such a silly approach.
“So you don’t know anything about their relationship? Eva didn’t tell you anything?”
“No. I think I only spoke to her twice on the telephone since she came back from Greece. Oh, Mitter answered the phone one of those times. I thought he sounded nice.”
When he emerged into the square it had started raining again. A few of the stall-holders were busy pulling plastic covers over their wares: vegetables, an array of fish, some glass jars with what looked like homemade confectionery. They nodded as he passed by, but that was the limit of their contact.
He pulled up his collar and sank his hands into his pockets. Stood beside his car for a while, wondering what to do next. The rain was merely drizzle, not really falling, just floating around in the wind like a damp veil
. Like a caring and sensitive hand stroking the low roofs, the modest, whitewashed town hall, caressing the lonely church spire—the only thing that dared to stand up and challenge the all-powerful sky.
The meeting with Mrs. Ringmar had not really gone according to expectations. It was not easy to say exactly what he’d expected, but he had certainly had expectations….
He left his car keys in his pocket. Glanced at the clock and set off toward the sea. Walked out to the end of one of the jetties, stood at the extreme edge, and watched the choppy waves thudding apathetically against the concrete foundations. The air was a trinity of dampness, salt, and seagull cries. He suddenly noticed that he was freezing cold.
There’s something, he thought. Something compelling me to stay here.
Then he dug his hands even deeper into his pockets, and started walking back toward land.
15
He’d asked for some paper and been given a whole ream.
Right at the top, her name; and then a single line. Nothing else. One line. He stared at it.
How do I not miss her?
It was a peculiar formulation. He underscored “how.” How do I not miss her?
Underscored “not” as well.
How do I not miss her?
Even more peculiar. The longer he stared at the question, the more telling the implications became; not the opposite, which would have been more reasonable. He smiled, concentrated, and did not let go for even a second, neither with his eyes nor his thoughts. Way back in his unconscious, the answers had already begun to form.
In the same way as I don’t miss the past.
In the same way as I don’t want things that happened in the past to happen now.
When I am found not guilty, or let out on parole, he thought, I shall go to her grave and sit there. Sit there with cigarettes and wine.
Guilt, punishment, mercy. Guilt, punishment, mercy. What did it matter if you were punished for something else?
Sentence me! Sentence me harshly, but be quick about it!
He threw the pen away. Curled up on the bed again, with his knees drawn up and his hands tucked away, just like a little child. He closed his eyes and the images came floating into his head.
June 25, a Thursday.