The Strange Case of the Moderate Extremists

by Alexander McCall Smith

  He said nothing. Kitty might wish to talk about her marriage, but he did not. Not really.

  Now it all came out. “I’m fed up with being tacked on to a political party. I’m fed up with the phone going every waking moment. I’m fed up with listening to one side of a long political conversation with some wretched party worker somewhere in the back of beyond. I’m fed up with people coming up to me in the street and saying that they love the Moderate Extremists, or can’t stand them—delete which is inapplicable. I’m fed up with having meetings in the house with all those pathetic bearded men and frumpish women going on and on about policy and votes and electoral tactics. I’m fed up with going to dinner with potential donors and having to listen to self-opinionated businessmen who think that because they’ve made a packet running some grubby business somewhere they’re entitled to call the shots with politicians. I’m fed up with all that. I’m fed up.”

  “You certainly sound fed up,” said Ulf.

  “Well, I am. I’m well and truly fed up, Ulf. Up to here.” Kitty indicated her throat, adding, “And above.”

  They had stopped in front of a shopwindow displaying women’s fashions. Ulf stared at the shoes—Italian, by the look of them, narrow, flimsy constructions in patent leather. Kitty’s gaze was on a russet-coloured padded jacket with large silver buttons.

  “Have you spoken to him?” asked Ulf. “Does he know how you feel?”

  “Of course. I’ve spoken to him God knows how many times.”

  “And?”

  “He says it’ll be different once he’s in government. He says that it’s always tough when you’re building up a political base.”

  Ulf let out a snort of laughter. “Bjorn was always an optimist.”

  “He’s never going to get there,” said Kitty. “I’ve told him that. And he simply says, You’ll see.”

  “Hope springs eternal,” said Ulf.

  They moved on.

  “And now, to cap it all, he’s become suspicious.”

  Ulf stopped in his tracks. “Of you?”

  “Yes. He more or less accused me of passing on political secrets.”

  Ulf drew in his breath. He had not anticipated that Bjorn would reach much the same conclusion as had Anna. “Tell me what he said.”

  Kitty explained that Bjorn had told her that information was being passed to political rivals. Then he had hinted, and not all that obliquely, that this information might be coming from someone who was close to him. “And when he said that, he looked at me, Ulf. He looked right at me, and the inference was obvious.”

  “Did you object? Did you remonstrate with him?”

  Kitty shook her head. “I was too taken aback to say very much. I suppose you could say I was speechless. Why would I pass on information to the Extreme Moderates, of all people? What are they to me?”

  Ulf looked up at the sky, at the glow in the west. Had Bjorn told her to whom the information was being leaked? He decided to ask.

  “So, that’s all he said?” he probed. “Did he say who was getting this information?”

  Kitty shook her head. “No,” she said. “He simply said that it was getting out.”

  And yet, Ulf said to himself, you just mentioned the Extreme Moderates; how did she know that these were the people to whom the information was being passed if Bjorn had not mentioned that fact to her? It was an elementary mistake—the most basic one, in fact. It was the hoary example impressed on neophyte policemen on day one of their training in the methods of detection: often only the perpetrator knows the modus operandi—the weapon used, the means of entry and so on; if, therefore, somebody appears to know these details, that person is likely to be the person you’re looking for.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  She was quite short in her response to him. “Yes. I told you. He didn’t tell me anything else.”

  Her adamant response, uttered without hesitation, gave him pause to think. A guilty person might take a moment or two to reply, might wonder what line of questioning was being pursued, and why; she did not. This may or may not count for something; he would have to consider it.

  Ulf nodded. “And then what happened?”

  “I told him that he should ask you to investigate.”

  This, again, was completely unexpected.

  Kitty explained. “I thought if you found the leak—the real leak—then that would stop him having these ridiculous suspicions about me.”

  “I see,” said Ulf. “And what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to find the culprit. And I can help you to do that.”

  Ulf waited.

  “I have my suspicions,” said Kitty. “There’s a woman called Olga Hansson. She’s on the council. I’ve seen her with the deputy leader of the Extreme Moderates. I’ve seen them together in a nightclub. She was all over him. I think she’s the one.”

  Ulf raised an eyebrow. “There are other reasons…”

  But not in Kitty’s mind: “For going to a nightclub together? Oh, come on, Ulf. If you go to a nightclub with a member of another party, that means there’s something other than politics bringing you together. And you don’t have to ask what that is.”

  “No,” Ulf conceded. “Perhaps you don’t.”

  But then he thought: no, perhaps you do. The motives that lay behind any human action were hard to fathom, and assumptions as to why we do what we do could lead one up the entirely wrong track. All possibilities should be considered—one of which was that Kitty Varg was lying. If people were prepared to deceive their wives and husbands—and they were—then one should not expect them to cavil at the deceiving of a mere brother-in-law. People kept saying that blood was thicker than water: it wasn’t always so—water could occasionally prove to be extremely thick, and blood extremely thin.

  And if Kitty was lying, then Olga Hansson was innocent, and Kitty was guilty. Of what? Of trying to embarrass her husband in pursuit of some private grudge against Olga? But would Bjorn want to find that out? Ulf thought he would not, but he had asked him to become involved, and when you ask somebody to be involved, you cannot always control the outcome of that involvement. That was axiomatic, thought Ulf: ask a question by all means, but don’t expect to be pleased with the answer.

  Chapter Seven

  Merino Underpants

  He slept fitfully that night, as he often did when he was involved with a particularly puzzling case. Here he was engaged in two rather odd cases, one of which was not even a proper, official investigation but a bit of private sleuthing that he did not really want to undertake anyway, while the other was a bizarre instance of petty goings-on in the world of cat breeding. When the world was in the state it was in, with western civilization crumbling about our ears, should we be worrying about jealousy and squabbling? Ulf thought not. If he was to join the ranks of those who would defend civilized values, should he be spending his time on these unedifying matters? No, he should not, and yet the barricades in this life were rarely in the right place, and you manned your barricade wherever you found it. For him, it was on the unexpected and often unglamorous turf occupied by the Department of Sensitive Crimes. That was his bailiwick; that was his station.

  That acceptance sustained him during the day but did not necessarily put doubts to rest at night, and his disturbed sleep meant that he was tired even when he first arrived at work the following morning. There was a solution to that, of course; Ulf was particularly sensitive to caffeine and a large, skimmed-milk latte, nursed at one of the tables in the café opposite the office, was always enough to sharpen his concentration for the day ahead.

  Ulf scanned the morning paper while he waited for Lars, the café proprietor, to bring his cup of coffee to his table. The news was unexceptional. A ship had been reported missing in the eastern Baltic but had been located with all hands safe. A drone had landed on the spire of a loc
al church and had required the summoning of the local fire brigade; the drone operator had run away but had been described by one witness as being fourteen or fifteen, dressed in a beige top, and having a “rather stupid face.” Ulf smiled at that. The way people described others to the police was often amusing; he recalled a witness once saying to him that the man he saw robbing a bank looked very like his uncle Charlie. It was while Ulf was noting this down that he realised that the bank robber might well have been Uncle Charlie. That proved to be the case; Ulf had innocently asked for a photograph of Uncle Charlie, just to give an idea of what sort of man to look for. He had then, equally innocently, asked where Uncle Charlie lived, and had been given the address by the unsuspecting witness. And that was the investigation concluded. When Ulf and his colleagues went to Uncle Charlie’s flat, not only did they find the gun used in the robbery, but the stolen money as well. Relations between uncle and nephew never recovered, Ulf subsequently learned.

  He turned to the arts pages. There was a review of a recently opened exhibition of paintings of the Danish Golden Age. Ulf was planning to see that, and read the review with interest. Painting was his delight, his retreat from the discomforts of modern life, from all the stresses and uncertainty that went with living in the early twenty-first century. In particular, painting from a time when the world was a bit simpler, a bit quieter, appealed to Ulf. How he would have loved to have lived in such an age, although…He thought of the drawbacks. There were no antibiotics then, no anaesthesia, few human rights, no Saabs…Perhaps life in the twenty-first century was preferable after all.

  “Inspector Varg, good morning.”

  Ulf looked up. It was Blomquist, a member of the uniformed branch, though not wearing his uniform now, being dressed in a neat jacket and tie and grey flannel trousers. He had come across Blomquist on a number of occasions, most recently in a counterfeit whisky case—Blomquist’s patch included the market at which fake goods were often hawked by unscrupulous street traders.

  Ulf’s heart sank. There was nothing essentially objectionable about Blomquist, but he did tend to go on and on about all sorts of issues. No conversation with Blomquist was ever a short one, and he seemed to have a particular skill in preventing one from detaching oneself.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” asked Blomquist.

  Ulf did his best to sound friendly. He was a kind man, and he would never want to give offence to somebody like Blomquist.

  “That would be very good of you,” said Ulf. “But I don’t want to detain you.”

  “Oh, I’m in no hurry,” said Blomquist. “I’m off today and I’m meeting my wife in town, but not for an hour or so. She’s going to buy me a new cashmere sweater. She buys all my clothes, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Ulf said.

  “Well, she does. And she’s got a very good eye. Really good.”

  “Wives often have strong views on what their husbands wear,” said Ulf.

  Blomquist smiled. “My wife likes cashmere, and so she thinks I should wear it too. And I’m happy to do so. Cashmere or merino. I’m very fond of merino wool, you know. I have two pairs of merino underpants—no, hold on, three pairs—and they are remarkably comfortable.”

  “I’m sure they are.”

  “Four pairs actually,” said Blomquist.

  “Oh yes.”

  “They’re very easy on the skin,” Blomquist continued. “Especially down there.”

  Ulf took a sip of his coffee. This was too much—it really was. It was beyond him why Blomquist, who was considerably junior to him in the force, should think that he could come and talk about merino underpants at this hour of the morning—or indeed at any time.

  “They’re Australian,” Blomquist said. “They have very large flocks of merino sheep in Australia.”

  “Of course.”

  Blomquist’s own coffee was delivered by the proprietor, and Blomquist, to cool it down, blew over the foamy surface, sending a small sprinkling of white on to the sleeve of Ulf’s jacket.

  “The problem with cashmere,” Blomquist said, “is that moths love it. They go straight for it, if they get the chance. My wife had a very nice Scottish sweater that was one-hundred-per-cent cashmere. She left it in a drawer for a couple of months and when she looked at it next there were large holes in it. They hadn’t touched anything else—just the cashmere.”

  Ulf shook his head. “What a pity. And cashmere’s so expensive, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” said Blomquist. “That’s why I say to her, Forget cashmere—opt for polyester. And you know what she says to that? She says, We’re not polyester people.”

  Ulf glanced at his watch. “I’m going to have to watch the time, Blomquist. I have a rather demanding investigation on the go.”

  It was a mistake, and Ulf realised that immediately. At the mention of an investigation, Blomquist’s eyes widened. “Oh yes? Can you tell me about it, Mr. Varg?”

  He could not refuse. Blomquist, after all, was a colleague, even if a distant one, and Ulf would not want him to feel he was being held at arm’s length. So he told him about the intrusion of the tom into the cat carrier and the unfortunate consequences that followed. Then he told him about the visit to the breeders and his conversation with Nils.

  Blomquist listened intently. Then, when Ulf had finished, he said, ‘Pretty obvious.”

  “What’s pretty obvious?”

  “The wife wants the husband to think the former girlfriend is doing something spiteful to harm her—to harm the wife, that is. He’ll think that and break off relations with her—the former girlfriend, that is. It’s all set up.”

  Ulf was silent.

  “You see?” asked Blomquist. “The wife herself would have put the tom in there. Kittens born on the wrong side of the blanket would just be collateral damage, so to speak.”

  Ulf thought about this. “That’s all very well,” he said. “But how would one prove it?”

  “Oh, you can’t prove things,” said Blomquist. “Or, hardly ever.”

  Ulf sighed. “Well, that’s a great help.”

  “But,” Blomquist went on, “what you can do is shame the real perpetrator into confessing. What you need to do is to arrest the innocent party—in this case the husband. Charge him and then see the wife’s reaction. She’ll be very unwilling to be responsible for her husband’s false conviction, and she’ll come clean. It works. I’ve done it, you know.”

  Ulf stared at Blomquist in complete astonishment. He was about to remonstrate with him, when the other man looked at his watch and sprang to his feet. “Is that the time,” he exclaimed. “I thought it was a good deal earlier. Must go.”

  Ulf said goodbye, and watched as Blomquist scuttled out of the café. The policeman had given him advice that he could not possibly follow, although, now that he came to think of it, there was a certain logic to it. He smiled. Blomquist! What would Anna say when he told her of what had been said?

  * * *

  —

  “Blomquist?” said Anna. “Our Blomquist? From the uniformed branch?”

  Ulf nodded. “The very same.”

  “And what did you say?”

  Ulf felt slightly embarrassed. He had said nothing to Blomquist, although he had fully intended to remind him sharply that in no circumstances was it ever acceptable to arrest a person whom one knew, beyond all doubt, to be innocent. He had not done this because Blomquist had suddenly dashed off, and he now told Anna that. “I was going to take it up with him,” he said, knowing he sounded rather lame, “but I didn’t have the opportunity to say anything.”

  He had imagined that Anna would be disapproving, but she was not. “It’s not a bad idea,” she said. “I wouldn’t have expected Blomquist to come up with something like that, but it’s worth trying.”

  “But we can’t arrest him on no grounds at all,” protested
Ulf. “That would be an abuse of process.”

  “Yes, it would,” agreed Anna. “But I would say you don’t have to actually arrest him. You ask him in for questioning. That’s legitimate enough. Then you tell her—the wife—that her husband has been picked up. You don’t use the word arrest, nor indeed the word charge, but she’ll read those terms in. You’ll get the same response.”

  Ulf looked up at the ceiling while he thought about this. He remembered something that Nils had said to him—that he was going to spend the next day helping Linda Pahl with the construction of a feed bin for her ducks. That would mean that Nils and his wife would be separated from one another—she would be at home and he would be at Linda’s farm. Conditions would be ideal, then, for the arrest of one and the encouragement of the other.

  He told Anna that Nils would be spending the day at Linda Pahl’s smallholding. She looked thoughtful. Then she said, “Let’s try.”

  Ulf was always prepared to be led by Anna. If it had been solely up to him, he would not have yielded to the temptation. But Anna made all the difference. “All right,” he said. “I’ll go to the Pahl place and bring him in. While I’m doing that, you go to Julia and tell her that her husband has been taken down to police headquarters. Be careful as to what words you use.”

  “I shall,” said Anna.

  “Tell no lies,” cautioned Ulf.

  “I shan’t,” said Anna.

  “When shall we do it?” Ulf asked.

  “Mid-morning,” Anna suggested. “That’s the best time to do something slightly unethical.” She paused. “Except this isn’t really that at all.”

  “It just feels that way?” asked Ulf.

  “Yes. Perhaps. But clever ploys often seem to be marginal when in reality they aren’t.”

  That gave Ulf comfort. He had never willingly broken the law nor the code of police conduct, and he had no desire to start doing that now. Anna’s judgement was good, and he felt that if she considered this to be acceptable, then that was enough for him.