The G File

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘I know,’ said Bausen, interrupting him. ‘I heard it in the car on the way here. What’s happening in Wackerstraat?’

  ‘They’re busy interviewing the neighbours. Fru Nolan wasn’t at home. That doesn’t necessarily imply anything, but for the moment we have no other clues to follow up.’

  Bausen nodded dejectedly.

  ‘It’s enough, I fear,’ he said. ‘If we take Rooth’s little detail seriously, and assume she in fact only pretended to pass out, well . . . In that case Elizabeth Nolan isn’t somebody to take lightly.’

  ‘It’s only quite a small detail,’ suggested deKlerk.

  ‘Maybe. But that doesn’t matter. We have an either-or situation, as they say.’

  ‘Either-or?’

  ‘Yes. If Rooth was right, we mustn’t make light of it. She tried to give the impression of being in shock, but in fact she wasn’t. That can only mean one thing. The death of her husband was not a surprise to her . . . And the next step isn’t difficult to take either.’

  ‘You mean she killed him?’ said deKlerk.

  ‘We can take that as a hypothesis. For the moment, at least. And that she presumably had good reasons for doing it . . . And so on. No matter how we think about it, it must all go back to that business fifteen years ago. Don’t ask me how. But for heaven’s sake, I’ve got to know Van Veeteren pretty well over the years, and I’ll be damned if he’s the kind of person who just disappears into thin air for no good reason.’

  ‘What do you think act—’ began deKlerk, but was interrupted by the telephone ringing.

  He picked up the receiver and listened. Put his hand over the mouthpiece and informed Bausen in a stage whisper:

  ‘A woman with information. In connection with the S.O.S.’

  He continued listening, asked a few questions and wrote down notes for a few minutes. Bausen leaned back on his chair and watched him attentively – and as it became clear what the call was all about, he began to feel something loosening up inside him. As if he had been holding his breath all morning.

  Or had a firmly clenched fist in the middle of his solar plexus.

  At last, he thought. At last something is being resolved in connection with this damned business.

  But for God’s sake, don’t let . . .

  He never formulated the thought. He didn’t need to.

  ‘I’ve finished now.’

  She stood up from her place on the fallen tree trunk.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  He clambered up out of the grave, stretched his back muscles cautiously and took hold tightly of the spade handle with both hands. Was careful to ensure that the blade didn’t sink into the ground, but simply rested on a tussock of grass.

  ‘I don’t think I want to lie any deeper than that.’

  She examined the grave briefly and seemed to be weighing something up. He checked his watch. It was five minutes to seven. The forest had come to life now. He perceived it in a sort of distant and semi-conscious way: by means of sensual impressions that were so subtle, he never registered them singly. Or bothered to register them. Faint noises, faint smells, faint movements.

  ‘Close to heaven,’ he said. ‘I think I prefer to lie as high as possible. If it were your grave I would dig it a little deeper, of course.’

  She had no answer to that. She just gritted her teeth so that her mouth became no more than a thin streak, and raised the gun.

  ‘May I have one final wish?’

  ‘One final wish? Let’s hear it then.’

  She laughed. A little nervously, despite everything. He cleared his throat and grasped the spade handle even more tightly. Tensed the muscles in his legs and arms.

  ‘A bird. I’d like to see a bird as I die. Can you wait until one appears?’

  He looked up at the pale sky above the trees. He heard her producing a sort of noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh.

  Then he saw that she was also looking up at the sky.

  Now, he thought.

  He took a short pace forward and swung the spade.

  Heard the shot and felt the pain at the same moment.

  A pain so intense that he could never have imagined it. Never.

  Then dazzling whiteness.

  Then darkness.

  52

  Fru Laine was a widow, very old and as gnarled as the fruit trees that surrounded her house at the edge of the forest. When she came out onto the steps to greet them, she looked as frail and vulnerable as a spent dandelion – her transparent white hair formed a sort of halo over a face criss-crossed by a century’s worth of wrinkles. Within a year or two.

  But her bright eyes indicated that there were wrinkles inside her as well, Münster thought – he was the first to shake her hand.

  ‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ she chuckled, kicking aside a speckled cat that came to rub up against the visitors. ‘I haven’t seen as many people as this at once since my ninetieth birthday! If you want coffee you’ll have to make it yourselves, as I need to take my morning nap shortly. I’ve been on the go since six.’

  Münster nodded and assured her that wouldn’t be necessary. But she was certainly right in that there were several of them. The three cars had arrived at more or less the same time. Bausen and deKlerk from the police station. Himself, Rooth, Stiller and Moerk from Wackerstraat, where they had called off the knocking on doors as soon as they heard about what fru Laine had seen.

  Six of them. Yes, she was justified in her comments.

  ‘So you saw that car, did you?’ asked deKlerk. ‘Whereabouts exactly? I was the one you spoke to on the telephone, incidentally.’

  ‘Down there.’

  She pointed with a crooked index finger towards the edge of the forest. Five pairs of police eyes and a pair of former police eyes stared in the direction indicated. The road that meandered down to fru Laine’s house from the main road continued in diminished form – barely wide enough to allow the passage of a vehicle in fact – across the meadow and in among the tall, gently swaying aspens and beeches.

  ‘I go for a walk every morning with Ginger Rogers,’ she said in a voice loud enough for everybody to hear. ‘Every damned morning. To the sea and back – we both need the exercise. Rain or shine.’

  ‘Your dog?’ wondered Bausen.

  ‘My dog, yes. I recognize you by the way. She’s fourteen years old, and a mixture of just as many different breeds . . . I sometimes have to carry her home – she’s lazier than a priest, damn her . . . She’s fast asleep now in front of the stove.’

  ‘You heard the S.O.S. on the radio, is that right?’ asked Inspector Moerk.

  Fru Laine nodded and adjusted her false teeth with her tongue.

  ‘I always listen to the news at half past seven. But you’ll have to sort it out yourselves now – it’s just a matter of following the road. The car’s a couple of hundred metres into the trees. It’s blue, as you said.’

  Münster shook hands with her again, and thanked her. Fru Laine turned on her heel, went back to the warmth of her stove and closed the door behind her.

  Stiller and Moerk were already twenty metres ahead of the others.

  It was Stiller and Moerk who first came across the car. They paused and waited for the others to catch up.

  ‘Is that it?’ wondered Stiller.

  ‘I think so,’ said Moerk. ‘A blue Opel, registration number—’

  ‘That’s it all right,’ said Münster over her shoulder. ‘Hell’s bells.’

  Rooth opened the driver’s door and peered in.

  ‘The keys are still in the ignition,’ he said. ‘Whatever that might mean.’

  ‘Open the bonnet,’ said Bausen. ‘It might be worth knowing if the engine’s still warm.’

  Rooth put the keys in his pocket, found the right lever under the instrument panel and pulled at it. Bausen opened the bonnet and stuck in his hand. Münster did the same.

  ‘Not quite cold,’ said Bausen. ‘So it can’t have been standing here all night, in any c
ase. What do you think?’

  ‘A few hours at most,’ said Münster. ‘But what that implies, I don’t know.’

  Rooth slammed the door closed.

  ‘Bollocks to implications,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about what to do next instead.’

  Münster looked at the rest of those gathered there. They all seemed to be infected by the same tense unrest, the same suppressed worries that were bubbling away inside himself.

  I’ll never forget this, he suddenly thought. This damned morning in this damned forest will keep on cropping up in my nightmares for the rest of my life. If this were a film I’d leave the cinema now and go home right away – I don’t want to be present when—

  DeKlerk cleared his throat and interrupted his train of thought.

  ‘We have to search,’ he said, gesturing with his arm. ‘If we take this side of the road first . . . fifteen metres in, and, well, let’s keep on searching for ten or fifteen minutes. Then the other side, if we don’t find . . . anything.’

  He looked round at them all, hoping for agreement. He found it at last from Bausen in the form of a nod and a curse.

  ‘All right,’ said Rooth. ‘Why not? What have we got in the way of weapons? If it turns out that . . .’

  The rest of the sentence remained hanging in the cool morning air while each of them produced their service pistol.

  ‘I don’t have one,’ said Bausen. ‘But with all due respect, I don’t think that matters.’

  ‘It’s up to you to do whatever you think fit,’ said deKlerk.

  ‘Shall we get going, or are you going to hang around humming and hawing any longer?’ wondered Beate Moerk.

  With a certain degree of ceremony they lined up along the narrow road, covering a length of about a hundred metres, and when deKlerk and Münster gave the signal from each end of the line, they set off searching among the trees.

  ‘Make sure you keep in eye contact with the persons nearest you,’ said the chief of police, ‘and don’t fail to shout out if you come across anything.’

  Münster looked at his watch, and walked round an uprooted tree.

  A quarter past eight. He felt a drop of cold sweat trickling down his brow.

  It took less than five minutes, and it was Bausen who found it.

  After an overgrown area of aspen and birch shoots he came to a small clearing with rye grass and fescue grass, and was confronted by a sight that made him stop short.

  In front of him, only a few metres away, was a grave that had just been dug. There was no doubt about it. The hole was about two metres long and half a metre wide, and lay there like an open wound in the ground. Not especially deep – the dug-up earth was in a neat pile next to one of the long sides of the grave, and the spade was lying in the grass some distance away – but that was not the sight that made Bausen turn away and sick up the simple breakfast he had eaten that morning.

  Only one-and-a-half metres away from the spot where he stood was a human head.

  A woman’s head with dark hair and a wide-open mouth – and equally wide-open eyes, which seemed to be staring at him in a sort of frozen surprise.

  And with a sort of totally grotesque smile. Blood and bloody innards had gushed out of the neck to form a dark pool, and he was reminded fleetingly – but just as grotesquely – of a dessert he had eaten with Mathilde at Fisherman’s Friend a few weeks ago.

  Lemon chocolate sorbet with raspberry dressing.

  Maybe that was why he vomited.

  The rest of the body was two metres away, next to the spade, and it only took a second for Bausen to realize what must have happened.

  How Elizabeth Nolan had been decapitated.

  And then he saw Van Veeteren.

  He was lying at the opposite end of the clearing. On his left side with his knees drawn up a little and his arms and hands pressed tightly against his chest. A sort of foetal position – he must have been able to move a couple of paces before collapsing, if Bausen understood correctly what had happened. And there was a pistol lying in the grass next to Elizabeth Nolan’s outstretched right hand. Yes, the scenario was obvious.

  Just as he came to where Van Veeteren was lying, Münster appeared from another direction.

  ‘Good God,’ he groaned, staring at Bausen, who was now kneeling by the Chief Inspector’s side. ‘What on earth . . . ?’

  Bausen raised a finger, signalling that Münster should remain silent. He leaned even more closely over the motionless body, feeling cautiously with his hands over neck and head.

  Münster closed his eyes and waited. He thought for a moment that the ground was shaking under his feet, but didn’t find that in the least surprising.

  Not at all.

  Good God, he thought. Please make sure that . . .

  ‘He’s alive!’ Bausen exclaimed. ‘Praise be to God, he’s alive!’

  Münster knelt down beside him. Didn’t notice that Beate Moerk and Rooth had just appeared behind him, but did notice that Van Veeteren opened his eyes and that his lips were moving.

  ‘He’s trying to say something.’

  Bausen took off his jacket and placed it almost tenderly over the Chief Inspector. Then he leaned as closely as possible to his face and listened. After a few seconds he straightened his back and looked at Münster.

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  Bausen frowned.

  ‘If I heard him rightly, he says he met fifteen people on the way back.’

  ‘That he what . . . ?

  ‘Don’t ask me. He was walking on a beach and met those people, he says. Fifteen of them. But never mind that now, ring for an ambulance – I think he’s been shot in the chest. And he’s been lying here quite a while. Let’s hope . . . But there’s not much life left in him.’

  Münster stood up, but before he even had time to take out his mobile Inspector Moerk was already in touch with the emergency services.

  He looked up and thought that the almost white sky felt unusually close.

  He rang on her twentieth birthday, and they met a week later. A rainy October evening with smog in the air and yellow leaves on the pavements. They spoke for an hour in a restaurant in the Ku’damm, and when he left she had difficulty in believing that the past hour had been real.

  That he was not just a character from some pessimistic saga or a contorted dream, a sort of shadowy figure she wouldn’t place any belief in on a bright, sunny day.

  Your mother, he had said: I want to talk to you about your mother.

  My mother? Mami?

  Did you call her Mami?

  Mami, yes. Mami went missing. She has always been missing, ever since . . .

  Yes, I know, he said. But you don’t know what happened when she went missing, do you?

  They were drinking red wine. An expensive Italian vintage. They ordered food as well, but she couldn’t force it down. Only a few mouthfuls. It was the same with him: she didn’t know if he put down his knife and fork in order to demonstrate his solidarity with her; but that didn’t matter of course.

  Who are you? she asked. Why . . . ?

  But he merely shook his head, putting her off.

  Then he began to tell the tale. Slowly and elaborately, with long pauses and thoughtful nods. As if he needed to sit there reliving it all while he spoke. As if it had been forgotten for ever and a day.

  And then came that evening when she died, he said eventually. You did know she was dead, I assume?

  She nodded somewhat vaguely. He clasped his hands and rested his chin on his knuckles.

  She died while that film was being shot. Your Mami.

  That’s what happened.

  Film? she thought. So Mami had been a film star, had she?

  Fifteen years ago, he said. She was a great actress, but an accident happened. A series of remarkable circumstances resulted in the accident being hushed up.

  Hushed up? Why?

  What circumstances?

  Circumstances, he repeated, taking a sort of ancient cigarette-making machi
ne out of his pocket. He filled it with tobacco and paper and rolled two cigarettes without saying a word. He offered her one. She didn’t normally smoke, but she accepted it.

  It was a difficult role she had to play, he said. She was a gifted actress, and was just about to break through when the accident happened.

  There was something about his eyes when he said that. She didn’t realize it at the time, but it dawned on her later. Or perhaps she didn’t want to register it when it was happening.

  I’m not telling you the whole truth, said those eyes, but I’m giving you a truth that you can live with. You realize that, don’t you? It’s not always necessary to question everything. Life is a story.

  She didn’t respond.

  Fables and stories are our way of achieving an understanding of the world, he explained. An understanding we can cope with. And if we don’t make stories out of our lives, we can sometimes break down on our journey through life. Are you with me?

  He made a strange gesture with his right arm and shoulder. As if he were in pain, or needed to stretch a muscle.

  She said she understood, and he observed her seriously and at length. Then he wanted to know about her life now, and what she did. She told him that she was a student. That she had been adopted by new parents when she was six years old, and that she had received a good start in life. That she had been lucky. Despite everything.

  She could see that he was encouraged by that – and suddenly a faint voice inside her whispered that . . .

  . . . that maybe she wouldn’t have been so lucky if Mami hadn’t died. And if she hadn’t ended up in that home so that Vera and Helmut could come and select just her. It was a remarkable and unpleasant thought, and she pushed it to one side.

  Who are you? she asked again. How come you know all this?

  I’m a good friend, he said. I was a good friend of your mother’s.

  Where is her grave?

  There isn’t a grave. Her ashes were scattered in the sea, in accordance with her wishes.

  There was that look in his eyes again. She asked no more questions.

  She remained sitting at the table after he had left. Through the rain-drenched window she watched him getting into a car parked outside in the street.