The G File

by Håkan Nesser

  Presumably not, he decided when he had finished ransacking his unexpressed hopes. It had proceeded as it had to proceed. If, tomorrow or the day after, the jury were to reach the unlikely conclusion that G was guilty, he would not feel any genuine sense of satisfaction, he knew that. A guilty verdict would never survive an appeal: it would only drag things out unnecessarily.

  No, it was not the mechanisms and abstruseness of the judicial process that nagged away inside him: it was something different. Nor was it his own failure after twenty years of putative success, or his personal relationship with G – there was a third reason.

  A third, he thought. The third factor of the equation? He ought to have become a mathematician instead . . . And he suddenly had the feeling that his woolly thoughts, and the words he was trying to hook and fish them up with, were beginning to become rather abstract – or abstruse. What the hell was he searching for?

  What was it that he was trying to glimpse, but had not yet succeeded?

  He switched off Fauré and turned into the car park outside the cemetery in the village of Korrim. Got out of the car and lit a cigarette. It had stopped raining altogether now, and the sun was beginning to find its way through the clouds once again.

  The accomplice? he thought? The murderer?

  The two known factors of the equation: Jaan G. Hennan and Barbara Hennan. And then the third, the unknown one.

  Was there a third factor, in fact?

  He gazed out over the country churchyard with all its trees and bushes. An elderly man in a blue overall was working away under the dripping braches of the elm and lime trees, raking between the graves. Everything looked so calm and peaceful – and just for a moment he felt envious of the unknown workman. He took three or four puffs of his cigarette as he watched the man raking away, and gave his thoughts free rein.

  I don’t understand, he thought. I don’t even understand the questions I ask myself any longer.

  Then he clambered back into his car, and began the drive back to Maardam.

  26

  He didn’t bother to drive back to Linden on the Thursday to be present at the concluding speeches, and when Münster came into his office in the late afternoon to report on the outcome, he was already discussing another case with Heinemann.

  ‘That bastard got away with it,’ said Münster.

  ‘Hennan?’ said Heinemann.

  ‘Yes, Hennan.’

  ‘It was only to be expected,’ said Van Veeteren.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Münster.

  Heinemann blew his nose ostentatiously.

  ‘Do you know how long the jury were out?’ asked Van Veeteren.

  Münster sat down on the window ledge.

  ‘Less than half an hour, if I understand it rightly. No, it went as you predicted it would. But I can’t help but think that it’s a scandal that he was found not guilty. And Silwerstein declined to comment about a possible appeal.’

  The Chief Inspector closed the file he had been leafing through.

  ‘It would have been an even bigger scandal if he’d been found guilty,’ he said. ‘In fact. And of course an appeal would require some new circumstances to come to light.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Münster dejectedly, ‘you’re right. The investigation never . . . never really got anywhere. We needed to find the actual perpetrator – without him it was never going to be possible to nail Hennan. The actual murder was sort of hovering in the air, so to say.’

  Van Veeteren made no comment.

  ‘I wonder how one goes about hiring a murderer,’ said Münster. ‘I really do think we ought to have discovered some intermediary or other. Surely you can’t just advertise for a professional killer?’

  ‘I hope not,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘But there’s nothing to say that we didn’t in fact talk to an intermediary. Why on earth should they give themselves away just because we come and ask a few questions?’

  ‘Yes, why indeed?’ said Münster.

  Van Veeteren folded his arms and leaned back on his chair. Gazed out of the window for a while before speaking again.

  ‘We’ll have to shelve this case, Münster. We might as well accept that as a fact. Maybe something will crop up in a year – or five or ten years – which will give us a clue to follow up. But not just now, we’ve wasted far too many working hours on G already. Go back to your office and get going on something useful instead.’

  ‘All right,’ said Münster. ‘I’ve got rather a lot of things to deal with, in fact.’

  He stood up, nodded to Heinemann and left the room

  There was silence for a while after Münster had left. The Chief Inspector could see that Heinemann was brooding over something, and in the end he came out with it.

  ‘That G,’ he said, carefully polishing his spectacles with his tie, ‘I never really felt that he was the type.’

  ‘What type?’

  ‘The type who would hire somebody else to do a job for him. I don’t know why, but I’ve had that feeling all the time . . .’

  The Chief Inspector looked at him, waiting for a continuation, but there wasn’t one. Ah well, he thought, opening the file again. Heinemann has always been one to come out with throwaway remarks.

  ‘Shall we get on?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Heinemann. ‘Oh, yes, of course.’

  Verlangen was not sober when Krotowsky rang on Tuesday evening, but it wouldn’t have changed anything if he had been. Although perhaps the dialogue might have been a little different.

  ‘Herr Kooperdijk asked me to ring you,’ said Krotowsky.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Verlangen.

  ‘Perhaps you know what it’s about?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’

  ‘How are you? You sound a little . . .’

  ‘A little what? How do I sound?’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Krotowsky. ‘The director asked me to phone you in any case, and inform you that we are cancelling your contract – we shan’t need your services any more.’

  ‘Services?’ said Verlangen. ‘What bloody services? He must have said servitude. You heard wrongly, you fucking lap-dog!’

  ‘Steady on now, for God’s sake,’ said Krotowsky. ‘There’s no need to get so het up. You knew exactly what the situation was, and—’

  ‘Do you know what you can do, you fucking arse-licker?’ said Verlangen, with the wind in his sails now. ‘You can take your big fat director and stuff him up your own damned arsehole – dammit all, do you think I’ve nothing better to do than sit here listening to your moronic drivel?’

  ‘That’s more than enough, for Christ’s sake,’ said Krotowsky. ‘The next time I clap eyes on you, you might just as well—’

  ‘Piss off !’ said Verlangen, slamming down the receiver.

  That sorted that lot out, he thought, with a satisfied belch. He reached for the can of beer on the table, and wondered where the hell the TV remote had gone to.

  The journalist claimed that his name was Hoegstraa, and that he worked for den Poost.

  ‘Why are you ringing me at home?’ asked Van Veeteren.

  ‘I tried to get you at the police station, but they said you had already gone home.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘It’s about the Jaan G. Hennan case. He was found not guilty today, and they say you have never failed to get your man before . . .’ He paused, but Van Veeteren made no attempt to fill it. ‘Anyway, we are interested in hearing what you have to say about that, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘I have nothing to say.

  ‘But if it really is the case that—’

  ‘Are you hard of hearing? I’ve just said that I’ve nothing to say.’

  There was silence for three seconds.

  ‘I see,’ said the journalist. ‘Well, thanks anyway.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Van Veeteren.

  The conversation with Erich took half an hour.

  Or, at least, thirty minutes passed from the mo
ment he entered his son’s room until he left it. Erich was sitting on his bed, Van Veeteren was sitting on the edge of the desk. What was actually said could have been written down on a serviette or in a sonnet, if it had occurred to anybody to record it – but even so, there was a sort of understanding between them.

  He liked to think so, in any case; and as a sort of confirmation of this new and unexpected significance, Erich took the initiative towards the very end of the conversation.

  ‘There’s really only one problem,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s hear it,’ said his father.

  ‘I don’t feel at home in this world,’ said his son. ‘What are you supposed to do if you don’t really want to go on living?’

  At first what Erich had said didn’t sink in; but then the words combined to form . . . to form a clenched fist of ice that slowly sank down inside him and eventually came to a stop just underneath his heart.

  If you don’t really want to go on living.

  His own son.

  An eternity of small, tiny elements of time passed by as the ice sometimes hardened, sometimes thawed slightly, and while both of them, father and son, seemed to be encapsulated in a sort of private, fundamental loneliness. Square one. Or perhaps square zero.

  He could think of nothing to say in response. No words.

  Or rather, he thought of a dozen possible things to say, but a sort of half-hearted would-be-wisdom was inherent in all of them, and he refrained from giving them voice. Instead they just sat there, out of respect to Erich’s words, and to silence. Five minutes passed, perhaps ten. Then he gave his son an awkward hug, and stood up.

  Paused in the doorway.

  ‘Remember that I love you,’ he said. ‘If I believed that there was a God, I would pray for you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Erich. ‘Thank you.’

  He knew that he wouldn’t sleep, so about midnight he went for a long walk with Bismarck. Wandered around in Randers Park for so long that he passed every damned park bench and every damned waste-paper basket at least three times.

  Why would anybody not want to carry on living when they were only sixteen years of age? he thought.

  He tried to remember if he himself had seen life as something one couldn’t cope with when he was Erich’s age, but he couldn’t remember what the facts were in those days.

  We like to believe that children and young people think life is easier than adults do, he thought. It’s a sort of precondition of parenthood – but of course in fact it’s an illusion and a misunderstanding. Yet another one.

  With regard to misunderstandings – totally uninvited – he started thinking again about those wind-blown and would-be-wise theories regarding the equation’s third factor that he had succumbed to deliberating about recently – such as Heinemann’s intuitive comment on G.

  That he wasn’t the type who would employ accomplices.

  That there might not be a third factor.

  I must shelve this, the Chief Inspector thought. For the time being, at least. Otherwise I’ll go mad.

  He lit a cigarette, turned up his collar to keep the rain out, and started walking home.

  Mami had gone away.

  A long way away, they said. Both Auntie Peggy and one-eyed Adam, who had come to fetch her and her things.

  To another country, perhaps. They didn’t really know, but she couldn’t continue living at Peggy’s. A long time had passed. Days and nights and more days. Much more than a week, as Mami had said, she knew that. Maybe two weeks, maybe more. It had been summer all the time. She had slept at Auntie Peggy’s many, many nights, but now Adam had come to fetch her.

  She was going to a home, they said.

  A home.

  No, not to a home where Mami was. A different sort of home – she didn’t know what different kinds of home there were. Adam had a large, green, soft bag into which they packed all her things and her clothes. Auntie Peggy had washed everything at least, there was nothing that smelled of pee any more. Adam was wearing a checked vest, one of those with holes in so that you could see that he was very hairy on his stomach and chest. Some on his back as well, it was disgusting.

  Mami would no doubt come one day, they said. Come and fetch her from that home, but not just now. Just now she was away somewhere, she had a lot to do and she didn’t have time to come and look after her.

  It would be great at the home. There’d be other children to play with, she’d have her own bed and a cupboard to keep her things in. Even a little lake to swim in, that was right next to the home – there was a jetty from which you could jump into the water, and it was still summer.

  They would drive for a few hours in Adam’s car. They’d be there by the evening, and she’d be able to have dinner and meet her new friends.

  Auntie Peggy lifted her up and gave her a big hug, with her big titties and nasty smell. Adam adjusted the black patch over his right eye, and told them to hurry up for God’s sake, or they’d never get away.

  And pack those bloody dolls away in the bag as well.

  She unfastened the zip and packed away Trudi, but she kept Bamba under her arm. Bamba was not a doll you could hide away just anywhere, but neither Adam nor Peggy understood that. Adam picked up the bag and they went out through the door.

  She didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad. It felt odd, and it would be many days before Mami came back, she realized that. But she would never sleep at that damned Peggy’s place again.

  Never ever.

  2002

  APRIL–MAY

  27

  He dreamt that he was sitting asleep in an antiquarian bookshop.

  In the winged armchair in the inside room cum kitchenette, of course, with an open book on his knee, a mug of coffee in the holder on the chair arm, and with the rain drumming away on the metallic sill of the window overlooking the alley.

  April, presumably: the cruellest month. It was late afternoon, and if there was a shortage of customers he was seldom able to keep awake for a whole hour between five and six – there was nothing he could do about it, and of course there was no reason why he shouldn’t allow himself a little snooze for a quarter of an hour or even half an hour: no reason at all, at his stage of life . . .

  The doorbell rang, and he woke up.

  He was sitting in the inside room of the antiquarian bookshop with Nooteboom’s book on Spain open on his knee. An empty coffee mug was standing in the holder on the chair arm, and rain was drumming away on the window led—

  What the hell? he thought. Am I dreaming or am I awake?

  Have I just woken up or just fallen asleep?

  He shook his head and shivered. What did it mean when reality and dream were identical? Was it the ultimate indication of inadequacy, or was it something else? Something radically different?

  He heard somebody closing the door behind them in the main room of the shop. The rustling sound of a raincoat being taken off. A slight clearing of the throat. He decided that he was in fact awake.

  ‘Hello? Is there anybody there?’

  He heaved himself up out of his armchair and admitted that he existed.

  The woman was blonde, and seemed to be in her thirties. He only needed a quick glance to ascertain that she was not intending to buy a book, but was on some quite different business. It was not clear what. And not clear how he realized that. He waited while she wiped the water from her spectacles with the aid of a blue-grey jumper sleeve.

  ‘Van Veeteren? I’m looking for somebody called Van Veeteren.’

  ‘On what business?’

  ‘Is it you who . . .?’

  She smiled uncertainly.

  ‘It’s not impossible. Why don’t you tell me what you want, then we can see. Would you like to sit down?’

  Later – three or four or five months later – he would like to think that even then he had some sort of a premonition. That as she stood there, trying to find somewhere to put her wet raincoat, he had an inkling of what was to come. Of what – for the last tim
e? – he would become involved in.

  Yes, it really would have to be the last time.

  But this was later, looking at everything in the rear-view mirror – we understand life backwards, but we have to live it forwards, he had read in Kierkegaard – and now, as he took her red jacket and hung it over the chair behind the substantial Hoegermaas desk with the catalogues and the newly arrived but as yet unsorted piles of books, with the receipt book and cash box, the ashtray and the old, faded bust of Rilke . . . well, to be honest, there was no significant gap in the veil that protected the future. A narrow beam of curiosity, perhaps. A sort of hope, but nothing more.

  But you only see certain things afterwards. No doubt that is just as well. He showed her into the cramped kitchenette, she took a seat on one of the wicker chairs, and he sat down opposite her.

  ‘It was Intendent Münster who sent me here.’

  ‘Intendent Münster?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And . . .?’

  ‘At the CID section of the police station. I spoke to him yesterday on the phone, and he suggested that I should get in touch with you – assuming you are in fact Chief Inspector Van Veeteren?’

  He waved a deprecating index finger.

  ‘Both and, fröken.’

  ‘Both and?’

  ‘Yes and no, but mainly no. Once upon a time I really was a chief inspector; nowadays I am merely herr Van Veeteren, a saviour in times of distress but normally just a seller of second-hand books. That Intendent Münster can’t get the facts of the situation into his head . . . But I think it’s high time you came out with what it is that you want, fröken – or is it fru?’

  ‘Fru, in fact.’

  ‘Of course. Why should a woman as beautiful as you are be running around on the loose?’

  She smiled, and he realized that his words were closer to reality than he had originally intended. She was not a striking beauty, but she was good-looking and there was a warmth and a glint of steel in her eyes.