by Håkan Nesser
‘May I come in?’
She stood there in two minds. Her broad mouth twitched slightly, but no words came out. Rooth coughed in some embarrassment.
‘It’s just a matter of a brief chat, as I said,’ he explained. ‘You don’t need to worry.’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘If you think it will be awkward, you can say no. But it would be very helpful to us if I could ask you a few questions.’
She bit her lip.
‘Are you a police officer, did you say?’
Rooth took out his wallet and handed her his ID. Allowed her to study it carefully for a while, from all angles.
‘Detective inspector?’ she said. ‘What does that mean?’
He took back his ID card and put his wallet back into his inside pocket.
‘If we can go in for a few minutes, I can explain.’
She stared at him for a few more seconds with wide, helpless eyes. Then she stepped back into the hall and allowed him in.
‘I don’t understand what this is all about. I have no contact with him any more. And I don’t feel very well today.’
Rooth nodded and turned to the right into the kitchen.
‘In here?’
‘I don’t know if . . .’
She followed him in, and they sat down opposite each other at a little table with a blue-and-white checked oilcloth. She moved aside a magazine and a half-empty mug of tea with a heart on it.
‘Elizabeth Hennan?’ said Rooth. ‘I take it that’s you?’
‘Yes,’ she said hesitantly, as if that were a secret that shouldn’t become generally known.
‘You have a brother called Jaan Hennan? Jaan G. Hennan?’
She nodded without speaking.
‘You think that this is awkward, I can tell. But I can promise you that we shan’t misuse anything you say in any way.’
What the hell is she so afraid of? he thought.
‘I don’t socialize with him and I know nothing about his life.’
Rooth assumed an understanding expression and waited for a few seconds.
‘You are his only living blood relative, if we have understood the situation correctly?’
‘Yes.’
She looked down at the table. Rooth twiddled his thumbs.
‘What has he done?’
‘Haven’t you read the papers?’
‘You mean . . . You mean that business with his wife? It was his wife, wasn’t it?’
‘Barbara Hennan, yes,’ said Rooth. ‘She died last week, and that’s why we need some information about your brother.’
‘Why? I don’t want anything to do with him.’
‘Fröken Hennan,’ said Rooth seriously, leaning towards her over the table. ‘It will be easier if you don’t ask so many questions. We police have certain routines, we have to collect as much information as possible when we are busy with a case. It’s not always easy to tell what’s relevant and what isn’t – if you understand?’
She thought about that for quite a while, first clasping and then unclasping her hands.
‘What do you want to know?’ she asked in the end.
‘Two things really,’ said Rooth in a friendly voice. ‘Firstly a bit about his general background, as it were. What things were like when you were growing up, and so on. And secondly, what contact you’ve had with him since he came back from the USA.’
‘Can I answer the second question first?’
‘Of course.’
‘I haven’t had any contact with my brother since he came back. None at all. I discovered three weeks ago that he was apparently living in Linden, because a . . . a friend of mine rang and told me about it.’
‘A lady friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s her name?’
Elizabeth Hennan hesitated.
‘Doris Sellneck. She was married to him at one time, twenty-five years ago. It lasted for five months.’
Rooth noted it down.
‘Do you have her address and telephone number?’
‘I want you to leave her in peace.’
‘All right,’ said Rooth generously. ‘We shall respect that.’
It shouldn’t be difficult to find somebody by that name in a place the size of Linden, he thought.
‘And your brother never got in touch with you after he came back here?’
‘Of course not.’
Rooth thought for a moment.
‘I have four brothers and sisters,’ he said. ‘They are not all that keen on me, but they do ring several times a year. All of them. There must be something seriously wrong with the relationship between you and your brother.’
Elizabeth Hennan made no reply.
‘Did you have any contact at all while he was in the USA?’
She shook her head.
‘Why not?’
She unclasped her hands and stared at her palms. A bus came to a halt just outside the kitchen window: it looked as if there was a bus stop there, and a flock of schoolchildren scampered out. Their happy cries and laughter had just about died away when she got round to responding.
‘Jaan and I have not spoken to each other for twenty-six years.’
‘Twenty-six years?’ exclaimed Rooth. ‘Why on earth . . . ?’
‘Not since my eighteenth birthday.’
‘Yes, I understand,’ said Rooth. ‘But you must explain to me why things turned out like that.’
‘I moved away from home on that day.’
‘Really?’
‘My mother died when I was four. I grew up with my father and my brother – I don’t really want to talk about this, and you must leave me in peace when I’ve finished, I’m not feeling well . . .’
She’s using a different voice now, Rooth noticed. He gathered that something was about to burst, and he tried to look like a kind welfare officer or some sort of confessor. It wasn’t exactly second nature to him, but that didn’t matter as she stared hard at her hands all the time.
‘My brother was six years older than I. My father was ill – I didn’t realize that until I grew up and he was taken into a home. They took it in turns to have their way with me from when I was ten onwards. Every evening for five years, every single evening, did you hear that? Ernst Hennan and his son screwed little Elizabeth Hennan every bloody evening for five years! Is it any wonder that I don’t send my brother a New Year’s greetings card? Do you still wonder why I don’t invite him and his bloody wives to dinner? Leave me in peace now, I’ve nothing more to say!’
She fell silent. Her face was ablaze now. Rooth swallowed. Five seconds passed.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for telling me that . . . And I apologize for having been forced to squeeze it out of you. Can I . . . Is there anything I can do for you?’
Why on earth am I asking that? he thought in confusion. If I can do anything for her. It must be far too late for that.
She stroked her hair to one side, looked briefly at him and shook her head. Rooth stood up, but she made no effort to accompany him to the door.
‘Goodbye, and thank you for allowing me to come in.’
‘Goodbye.’
When he had closed the door behind him, the sun was shining into his face. He did not feel that he had done anything to deserve that.
Maarten Verlangen celebrated his birthday on Thursday. His forty-seventh – he was reminded of this unbelievable but uneven number by his daughter Belle as early as half past seven in the morning, when she telephoned him and woke him up. She sang a snatch of ‘Happy Birthday to You’, congratulated him from the bottom of her heart, and explained that she had to rush off to school now. She hadn’t quite got round to sorting out a present yet – but they would be meeting on Saturday: could he wait until then?
He assured her that he could, and went back to sleep.
The next person to congratulate him didn’t ring until half past three in the afternoon. By then Verlangen had been in his office in Armastenstraat for three hour
s, drunk two beers, smoked about ten cigarettes, and thought so hard about how he might be able to proceed further with the Barbara Hennan case that his head was aching.
A private detective’s resources were somewhat restricted, after all – and he had no particular desire to telephone Chief Inspector Van Veeteren at the police station to discuss the case, or to offer his services. That would have felt presumptuous – but if the request came from the other party, that would be an entirely different matter, of course.
But that did not happen. Nobody at all called Verlangen’s Detective Agency that warm June afternoon – until Bertram Grouwer rang to wish him a happy birthday.
It was probably true, as Verlangen frequently suspected, that there was only one person in the world who would mourn his loss if he were to disappear from the face of the earth (his daughter Belle), but Bertram Grouwer would no doubt attend the funeral at least. Verlangen had the impression that people who remember birthdays usually turned up at funerals as well – although it was not certain that this general rule was relevant in the case of Grouwer. His birthday was on the same day as Verlangen’s, and he was the same age as well.
Apart from that coincidence – and the fact that they had been in the same class at Weivers grammar school – they didn’t have much in common.
Although they were both divorced, and had not signed up to the temperance pledge.
That was why Grouwer rang. He had also been congratulated over the telephone by his children that morning (two boys, aged fourteen and twelve), and was feeling rather lousy. Might it perhaps be an idea, he wondered, to hit the town that evening and share their gloomy thoughts about life and its intolerable brevity while partaking of a beer or two?
Grouwer was a freelance journalist on Neuwe Blatt, and liked to string words together. Verlangen thought for a few seconds, then announced that he thought it sounded like a damned good idea.
They started at Kraus. Devoured an expensive but value-for-money (according to Grouwer) fish soup, drank two bottles of Riesling and a cognac with the coffee. What the hell (according to Grouwer), you only celebrated a birthday once a year, and had an obligation to indulge yourself now and again.
They went on to Adenaar’s, where they sank a few beers and ended up discussing the essential nature of women. Grouwer had been together with a tall, tasty beauty several times over the last six months, but she was a complicated character, it transpired. As beautiful as sin, wonderful in bed, but a bit on the nervous side, it seemed. And she objected to his going to football matches twice a week, and his desire to smoke a cigar with his morning coffee.
Verlangen felt quite drunk when they left Adenaar’s and would have preferred to go home, but Grouwer insisted that they ought to round off the evening with a visit to the jazz club Vox in Ruyders Allé. After a short internal struggle Verlangen agreed, and they headed over there. There was a queue outside the club, and they had to stand for twenty minutes in steady drizzle before they were allowed in. This sobered Verlangen up quite considerably, so when they discovered a couple of seats in a quiet corner, they each ordered a substantial whisky. That was needed in order to squeeze the dampness out of their bodies. Four coloured musicians were playing on the stage, and it was cramped in the smoke-filled room: but it was not long before Verlangen caught sight of Jaan G. Hennan at a table a few metres away. He was sitting with a few other men and women, but they didn’t seem to be a group. There was a shortage of seats, and people simply sat down wherever they could find a vacant chair.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Verlangen, lighting a cigarette.
‘Eh?’ said Grouwer.
‘I’ll be damned,’ said Verlangen again. ‘There’s a murderer sitting over there.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ said Grouwer, looking round.
Verlangen realized straight away that what he had said was idiotic, but sometimes there were things that simply had to be said and couldn’t be suppressed. ‘There’s a murderer sitting over there’ was very definitely one of them.
‘I was only joking,’ he said. ‘Cheers.’
Grouwer didn’t touch his glass.
‘Like hell you were,’ he said. ‘Who do you mean?’
Verlangen took a swig of whisky. I’m an idiot, he thought. He won’t give up until I tell him who it is. Not Grouwer.
‘I need to go to the loo,’ he said. ‘Excuse me for a minute.’
Grouwer nodded.
‘While you’re away I’ll work out who you meant,’ he said. ‘If I guess right, you owe me a beer. If I’m wrong, I owe you one.’
Verlangen stood up and felt that his drunkenness had returned in spades. Glanced at Hennan, who was sitting there smoking and seemed completely absorbed by ‘Take the A-Train’ which was currently being performed on the stage.
‘Go to hell, damn you!’ he said and headed off towards the gents.
When he came back Grouwer was sitting there looking like the cat that got the cream.
‘It’s that bloke in the striped shirt,’ he said, with a conspiratorial wink.
‘Who?’ said Verlangen, looking around once again.
Grouwer signalled with his head.
‘Diagonally behind me. Just beside the stage. Next to that bird in red.’
Verlangen peered in the direction described, and saw the person Grouwer meant. A thin little man in his fifties with neatly combed black hair and an ugly little moustache.
‘Like hell it is,’ he said. ‘You owe me a beer.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Grouwer, grabbing the arm of a waitress who happened to be passing. He ordered two lagers and a tub of peanuts.
‘Well, the least you can do is to tell me who you really meant,’ he said. ‘If I also go to the loo I want to know whether or not I’m standing there having a piss next to a murderer or not. I reckon you owe that to me.’
Verlangen sighed. Thought for a while about the pluses and minuses while Grouwer stared expectantly at him. Emptied his glass of whisky.
Huh, he thought. What difference does it make?
It was a few minutes past half past one when Maarten Verlangen finally collapsed into his bed at home in Heerbanerstraat after his birthday celebrations. He had exceeded his ten-beer limit by quite a lot, he could feel that without any question. But he hadn’t been asleep for more than half an hour before he woke up and felt as wide awake as a new-born babe.
What the hell? he thought as he started rummaging after his address book in the desk drawer. How on earth could I not have thought about that?
He found the number after searching for a few minutes, but when he dialled it and waited for about twenty rings, it dawned on him that he was wasting his time.
Some people get up and answer when the phone rings at two in the morning; others don’t.
15
It was Friday before the report requested from the USA was spat out of the fax machine in Maardam police station.
To make up for the delay it was unexpectedly comprehensive: six densely typed pages written by a certain Chief Lieutenant Horniman of Denver Police District. Van Veeteren was given the documents shortly after ten o’clock, and he immediately shut himself into his office to scrutinize and meditate on them.
He didn’t really know what he had expected – but in any case not, and in no circumstances, this remarkable information, he thought after he had only read half a page. Good Lord, no!
It began with details about Barbara Clarissa Hennan, née Delgado. She came from a little town in the backwoods of Iowa, Clarenceburg, with a population of barely a thousand souls. She was the youngest of eight siblings, the family was deeply religious and members of an obscure sect that Van Veeteren had never heard of: The Sons and Daughters of the Second Holy Grail. However, Barbara had abandoned both her faith and her family and run off with a long-distance truck driver a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday. After that, it seems, she had spent ten years travelling around from city to city and state to state; then she had joined some other du
bious sect around the beginning of the seventies, and disappeared more or less without trace for several years. Probably in California, Horniman thought. Around 1980 she turned up in Denver, Colorado, where she worked for some years at a beauty parlour before meeting Jaan G. Hennan.
They had married in 1984 and lived together in Denver until the spring of 1987, when they emigrated to Europe. Apart from a few speeding tickets and a prosecution for the possession of cannabis, which was eventually dropped, there were no known blemishes on Barbara Hennan’s character.
The same applied to her husband, in fact: but Van Veeteren could read between the lines and sensed that Chief Lieutenant Horniman had serious doubts about G’s honesty.
Hennan had come to New York in the autumn of 1979 with a three-month residence permit. He managed to acquire a work permit that very same winter, had several short-term jobs and worked on a number of different business projects in New York and New Jersey, as well as Cleveland and Chicago. In 1982 he had married a woman by the name of Philomena McNaught and moved to Denver. At some point during the summer of 1983 his wife disappeared while on a car journey in Bethesda Park in the Rocky Mountains: Hennan was suspected of having had something to do with her disappearance, but there was no proof and he was never charged. In June 1984 Philomena McNaught was declared officially dead, and Hennan collected 400,000 dollars from an insurance policy on her life. Both the Denver police (and, judging by the formulation of the report, Van Veeteren guessed that Chief Lieutenant Horniman had been personally involved in the case – deeply involved, it seemed) and the insurance company’s detectives had made a formidable effort to investigate the circumstances surrounding fru Hennan’s fate, but had failed to produce sufficiently incriminating evidence to take Hennan to court. The marriage between Jaan G. Hennan and Barbara Delgado took place a month after the insurance payment was made, and about a year later Hennan liquidated his firm G Enterprises, which had been devoted mainly to the importation of conserved fruit from south-east Asia. The couple continued to live in Denver until they emigrated to Europe in the March of that same year.
Van Veeteren read through the report twice.
Then he stood in front of the open window and lit a cigarette.