by Håkan Nesser
There was not much more than a desk and two chairs in the room, which because of the interpolated wall nearest almost seemed to be edgewise. I sat down and started to explain without further preludes.
‘. . . a woman who in a previous life was named Ewa, that is . . .’ I took out three or four photographs. The only thing I had to go on was a man who drove a blue Mazda with registration number H124MC and who lived in building 36 out in Wassingen. Entry D . . . a man who had a horse face and brown-tinted glasses, who worked at Palitzerstraat 15 and who was the link that could lead to the woman I was seeking . . .
He looked at me and cautiously fingered the pictures.
‘Why don’t you do this yourself?’
‘Don’t have time,’ I explained. ‘But it is a rather simple assignment and if you don’t want to take it, I’m sure I’ll find someone else. I have no desire to spend too much money either.’
I had received Kerr’s promised bonus by mail the same morning; it was a badly needed supplement, without a doubt, but even so there were of course no longer any great margins to speak of.
‘I would like to have an agreement,’ I said, ‘where you promise me this woman’s name and address within a week.’
He smiled.
‘You don’t sign that sort of agreement, even in hell,’ he explained, pushing the photographs back over the tabletop. ‘But I can give you a good price and promise to do what I can. It doesn’t seem to be anything impossible, when all is said and done. You’re sure that he knows her?’
I nodded.
‘And that she is here in the city?’
‘Yes.’
‘Give me three hundred gulden now, and if I haven’t got anywhere in a week, we’ll write off the whole thing.’
I shrugged my shoulders and took out my wallet.
‘Where can I reach you?’
I wrote down my phone number and my address on the pad that was in front of him. He took the money and stood up.
‘I’ll call as soon as I have anything. When can I be sure to get hold of you, sir?’
I thought.
‘In the mornings,’ I said. ‘I often work until late in the evening, but in the mornings I’m at home.’
‘I understand.’
We shook hands and I stepped out into the sharp sunlight on Apollolaan. It was only a five-minute walk home to Ferdinand Bol, but I realized that I had neither reason nor desire to go there.
Instead I started walking south along a canal the name of which I did not know and for which there was not a single sign at any crossing. If I was not mistaken I was heading in the direction of Balderis Park, but it was all the same to me if I ended up somewhere else. Movement as movement. I must get the time to pass, that was all; the day before I had wandered around aimlessly like this for six or seven hours, while I thought about what I ought to do, but it was not until late in the evening, when I had finished my dinner at Mefisto, that I decided to hire a detective again. I immediately rejected the thought of turning to Maertens one more time. So gradually I had settled on this Haarmann, and even if at first he seemed anaemic as anything, I must now admit that after that brief conversation I felt a certain confidence in him.
Whether I felt the same thing about Maertens after our first meeting I could no longer recall.
After about twenty minutes I came to a large, green entrance, which I assumed must be Balderis; I went in through the gates, continued in among the shrubs, among the blossoming trees and the cacophonous birdsong. Here and there people were lying spread out with picnic baskets and blankets; mostly couples and groups of students, naturally, but also an occasional solitary woman my own age, and under other circumstances it is possible – probable, actually – that I would have approached one of these obvious seekers.
Now, however, I kept to my own ways and paths. Crossed the generously overgrown park both this way and that, and in so doing managed to make the whole afternoon pass by. When I again turned onto Ferdinand Bol it was already dirty twilight and I realized that there were only six days left before the trial of Mariam Kadhar and Otto Gerlach would begin.
On 4 May. I think it was just such a date that I repressed; refused to accept that it was fast approaching anyway, because then everything – once again – would be surrounded by new signs and unpredictable conditions. Something that only affected me and that I could in no way protect myself from.
Like a day for surgery. Or separation.
It was only the following morning that Haarmann called and revealed the pursuer’s name.
Elmer van der Leuwe.
Single, but with two children from a previous marriage. For the past eight years employed at the insurance company Kreuger & Kreuger at its office on Palitzerstraat.
And it was only two days later that he explained that it was probably best to take a fourteen-day pause in the work. Van der Leuwe had just left on a charter trip to Crete along with a good friend and would not be back until the sixteenth. At this point Haarmann had not managed to expose any connection to Ewa, and – especially if I was interested in keeping the costs down – it hardly seemed meaningful to maintain a high level of surveillance for those two weeks.
I agreed. When I hung up the phone, I felt a dreadful weariness take hold of me. For several hours I just lay there on the bed, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Beatrice prowled around me and seemed seriously worried about something; at last I was forced to lock her out on the balcony. A little later Janis Hoorne called, but it was only to report that it would be impossible for him to see me in the near future, because there were still some complications with the filming.
So what remained was to wait.
What remained was to drink at the bars and keep my thoughts in check.
Night.
Sit and write and see more and more clearly what a pitiful poor stage play life is. There are no lines. No moral. The actors do not stick to their roles and the dramaturgy itself is tossed here and there like a fragile vessel in high seas.
A drunk whore in over-sized pumps. Whatever.
This evening the street of moonlight has shrunk to a narrow pavement in the water. Cicadas are chirping, a bit more delicate now in the darkness. An out-of-tune guitar is heard from down on the beach and the air is at a temperature that means you don’t feel it against your skin.
Here there is no striving. No anxiety and no suffering. And the decor! I take a sip of lukewarm, resinated donkey piss and light the fortieth cigarette of the day. The oil lamp smokes as usual. Here there is no electricity. Only the moon and the fires. And the oil.
I write.
Stubbornly I spew these words out of me about these events. I am in despair the whole time, continue anyway without hesitating. This is a prison, a veritable prison with prostituted stage sets that can fool the devil himself. Twelve days have passed since I arrived. I don’t know if I am going to find what I came here for, and perhaps I don’t care either. To hell with Henderson’s pictures! It’s the road that makes the effort meaningless; I am still just one of those soulless actors in this damned play that no one is watching any longer.
That no one has written and no one directed; Gallis says that the nice thing about resinating his wine is that you can basically drink anything at all. I believe him. The bottle and the glass I have in front of me undoubtedly contain pure donkey piss, but I drink gamely anyway.
God knows I’m drunk. Can’t bear to write what I was thinking when I started up an hour ago. I’m going to tear these pages out on the other side of night. My words are going to crawl underground in clear daylight. Ashamed, pale maggots.
And if I had started anyway, I would surely only have determined that:
. . . and furthest to the right sat M.
That is actually the only thing I remember.
Otto Gerlach was sitting furthest to the left. With an irreproachable fresh haircut and shave. In white shirt, tie and double-breasted suit. His hands resting in front of him on the table. A symbol of well-earned success.<
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To his right two lawyers were sitting. First his own, then Mariam Kadhar’s. They each had one, that is, and I did not know if there was any more serious point in that, or if it was calculated simply so that they would be sitting further from each other that way.
. . . and furthest to the right sat M.
Dressed in black. One of those simple, bare-shoulder rags that only a certain sort of woman can wear and which costs a month’s salary. So I’ve been told.
While I stood up and swore the oath, she raised her eyes and looked at me for two seconds. Then she observed the prosecutor’s shoes awhile; he was standing at an angle in front of her on the dark wooden floor and there was no difference in expression between their two gazes.
None whatsoever.
I was asked to sit down and did so. The prosecutor carefully approached. He was a tall man in his fifties. Distinguished face with a sort of demigod-like, classic profile, which he evidently liked to show off. He walked around the witness stand and stood so that I only saw him from his left side, while the members of the jury and most of the audience could observe his right flank. He stood absolutely still and let a few seconds run away.
‘David Moerk,’ he began.
I nodded.
‘Your name is David Moerk?’ he expanded.
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
‘Tell the court why you are here in A.’
I stated my own reason in general terms. It took a few minutes, but he did not interrupt me a single time. Otto Gerlach sat motionless with his hands calmly resting and did not take his eyes off of me for a second. I thought I could see his jaw moving a little and realized that, despite his appearance, he was a prey to conflicting emotions. Mariam Kadhar, for her part, kept her head lowered and seemed considerably more relaxed than her lover.
‘Thanks,’ the prosecutor said when I was finished. ‘Tell us about your translation work. How it progressed and how you started to suspect something.’
I continued. While I talked I started to direct my gaze around the courtroom. Lingered a moment on the members of the jury. Four men and three women, all of whom sat straight with slightly worried facial expressions. I continued in among the ranks of the public, both those who were sitting down on the parquet and those visible in the first rows up in the gallery. It was full, without a doubt. It was the second day of the trial today, the first in earnest. Yesterday – according to what I had read in the newspapers – had mostly been devoted to technicalities and to establishing the points of the indictment.
Murder. First-degree.
Both had denied it. The preliminary skirmishing was over and done with.
The question marks were legion, according to the newspapers. One of the most interesting legal proceedings since the Katz and Vermsten cases, the byline ‘Laocoön’ wrote in de Telegraaf. The evening before the first day of the trial a TV crime magazine devoted the whole broadcast to debating the situation. Or rather to asking questions. I had seen a glimpse of the spectacle at Vlissingen.
Would both be convicted?
Would either of them take all the blame? Who?
What solid evidence did the prosecutor have to present? What did the love triangle actually look like? Would they cite some kind of crime of passion?
Etcetera.
‘Why do you believe Rein wanted the book published in this way?’ the prosecutor asked.
Gerlach’s lawyer protested. Stood up and explained haughtily that the witness was being encouraged to speculate. I kept silent.
‘Overruled,’ the judge decided. ‘The members of the jury should bear in mind, however, that here the witness has been allowed to make his own assessments.’
The lawyer took his seat again.
‘Well?’ the prosecutor said.
‘Will you please repeat the question?’
‘Why did Rein want to publish the book in translation?’
‘I guess it’s obvious.’
‘Explain!’
I looked at Mariam Kadhar. Through the high windows up in the gallery the sun fell in, putting her collarbone in a marble-white light. I thought about her nakedness again.
‘It says in the manuscript that they intend to murder him,’ I explained.
The reply triggered some concern in the gallery and the judge pounded his big gavel a few times on the table.
‘Explain,’ the prosecutor said again.
I told him about the passages in italics, and about what Rein had written about the letters and the sundial out in the Cherry Orchard. There was new life at once among the audience and the judge used his gavel again.
‘Can you tell the court what you did when you discovered these things?’
I started to feel slightly nauseated. It was warm in the room and an odour of expensive aftershave was hanging in the air. I think it came from Otto Gerlach. Yes, in retrospect, I know that it must have been him.
‘I performed a check.’
‘How is that?’
‘I went out to Behrensee and investigated whether it really was as he maintained.’
‘You searched for the letters?’
‘Yes.’
‘You found them in the place he indicated?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you study their content?’
‘A bit later.’
‘What conclusion did you draw then?’
There was protest again, this time through Mariam Kadhar’s lawyer. The judge overruled again. I drank a little water. It was roughly the same temperature that prevailed in the rest of the room and my nausea did not get better.
‘What conclusion did you draw?’ the prosecutor repeated.
‘What conclusion would you have drawn yourself?’ I countered.
The judge intervened and explained that it was my duty to answer questions, not ask them. I nodded and took another sip of water.
‘I drew the conclusion that Otto Gerlach and Mariam Kadhar had taken Rein’s life.’
The dam burst but the judge made no attempt to call for silence. The prosecutor thanked me and went and sat behind his table.
Gradually the commotion ebbed out and the judge gave the floor to Mariam Kadhar’s lawyer, who buttoned his jacket, stood up and approached the witness stand in the same studied manner as the prosecutor a while ago. He did not have the same profile at all, but assumed basically the same position anyway and let the final whispers die out before he began speaking.
‘What is the name of the publisher that gave you the assignment to translate Rein’s manuscript?’
I stated it.
‘Do you know when the book is coming out?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘In the next few days, I would think.’
‘Reportedly today,’ he specified.
‘That’s possible.’
‘How many copies are being printed?’
‘No idea.’
He took a piece of paper from his inside pocket. Fussily unfolded it and observed it with a look of feigned surprise.
‘Fifty thousand,’ he said.
I did not reply. He took off his glasses and started swinging them back and forth while he held them by one arm.
‘Do you have any comment?’
‘No.’
‘Isn’t that an extremely large edition? Considering the genre?’
I shrugged my shoulders again.
‘It’s possible. Rein was a major author.’
‘Without a doubt.’ He studied his paper again. ‘Here I have the sales figures for his latest two books in your country . . . do you know how much they amount to?’
‘No.’
‘Twelve thousand. For the two titles, that is. Twelve thousand . . . what do you say about that?’
I did not reply. He put his glasses on and smiled faintly.
‘Tell me, isn’t this release a pretty good deal for your publisher?’
‘Maybe so.’
He made a little pause while he slowly turned his back to me.
‘Is it not the case
. . .’ He started up again. ‘Is it not the case that this whole affair is pure speculation to make money on an unusually marketable bestseller?’
I drank a little water.
‘Bullshit,’ I said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Bullshit!’ I repeated in a loud voice.
‘May I urge the witness to mind his language,’ the judge objected.
I had no comment on that. Mariam Kadhar’s lawyer sat down. Gerlach’s stood up instead and came striding across the floor.
‘Who is paying for your stay here in A.?’ he asked.
‘My publisher, naturally.’
‘This manuscript that you translated . . . do you have any evidence that it really is Germund Rein who is behind it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How do you know that it was Rein who wrote it?’
I was starting to feel increasing irritation.
‘Of course it was Rein. Who else would it have been?’
‘How did the manuscript get into your hands?’
‘I got it from Kerr.’
‘Your publisher?’
‘Of course.’
‘And how did Kerr get hold if it?’
‘Rein sent it to him.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because he told me, of course.’
‘Kerr?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have no other sources?’
‘What kind of sources?’
‘That can attest that is really what happened.’
I snorted.
‘Why would I need them? What kind of idiocy are you trying to suggest?’
I got a new, and somewhat sharper, admonition from the judge. The lawyer leant his elbow against the railing that surrounded the witness stand.
‘Do you have anything other than your publisher’s word that it actually was Rein who sent him that manuscript?’
‘No.’
‘So it might have been a fraud?’
‘I don’t believe so.’
‘I’m not asking what you believe.’
‘I consider it completely out of the question that my publisher would lie.’
‘Even if that would mean getting the publishing house on its feet?’
‘The publishing house is already on its feet.’
The attorney smiled quickly.