Hakan Nesser - The G File

Even so, it seemed like quite a decent morning. The temperature must have been round about twenty degrees, and bearing in mind that he lived in a city where near gale-force winds blew three mornings out of five and it rained every other day, he couldn’t really complain.

Not about the weather, at least.

What he could complain about was the time. His wife Renate had woken him up with a prod of the elbow, and claimed that Bismarck was whimpering and wanted to go out. Without a second thought he had got up, dressed, attached a lead to the collar of the large Newfoundland bitch, and set off. He was presumably not properly awake until he came to the Wimmerstraat-Boolsweg crossroads, where a clattering tramcar screeched round the curve and scratched a wound in his eardrums.

He was now as wide awake as a newborn babe.

Bismarck forged ahead, her nose sniffing the asphalt. The goal was obvious: Randers Park. Five minutes there, ten minutes examining the plants and relieving herself in the bushes, then five minutes back home. Van Veeteren had been on this outing before, and wondered if the faithful old dog really was all that keen on this compulsory morning walk.

Perhaps she did it to keep the people she lived with happy. They needed to get out and have some exercise every morning, taking it in turns: it seemed a bit odd, but Bismarck did what was required of her in all weathers, rain or shine.

It was a worrying thought: but she was that type of dog, and how the hell could one know for sure?

At the beginning there had been no question of Van Veeteren being involved in the morning exercise. Bismarck was his daughter Jess’s dog, and had been ever since she acquired her eight years ago. After eleven months of insistent pestering.

She had been thirteen at the time. Now she was twenty-one and was studying abroad for a year at the Sorbonne in Paris. She lived in a tiny little room in a student hostel where keeping Newfoundland dogs was not allowed. Nor any other animals, come to that. Not even a French boyfriend was permitted.

So Bismarck had to stay behind in Maardam.

There was also a son in the house. His name was Erich, he was fifteen years old, and liked going out with dogs in the mornings. He was allowed to do that now and again after his big sister moved to Paris, but this morning he was not at home.

God only knows where he is, it suddenly struck Van Veeteren.

He had phoned at eleven o’clock the previous night, spoken to his mother and explained that he was out at Löhr and would be spending the night at a friend’s house. He was in the same class — or possibly a parallel one — and his friend’s father would drive them straight to school the following morning.

What was the name of the friend? Van Veeteren had wanted to know when his wife hung up and explained the situation.

She couldn’t remember. Something beginning with M, but she couldn’t recall having heard the name previously.

Van Veeteren also wondered if Erich had some clean underpants and a toothbrush with him, but hadn’t bothered to pester his wife any further.

Bismarck turned into the entrance of the park, ignoring with disdain a neatly curled poodle who was on his way back home with his boss after a satisfactory outing.

I must have a chat with Erich one of these days, thought Van Veeteren, taking a packet of West out of his jacket pocket. It’s high time I did so.

He lit a cigarette and realized that he had been thinking the same thought for over a year now. At regular intervals.

He had breakfast together with his wife. Neither of them uttered a word, despite the fact that they spent a good half-hour over the kitchen table and their newspapers.

Perhaps I should have a chat with Renate as well one of these days, he thought as he closed the front door behind him. That was also high time.

Or had they already used up all the available words?

It wasn’t easy to know. They had been married for fifteen years, separated for two without having managed to go their separate ways, and then been married for another seven.

Twenty-four years, he thought. That’s half my life, more or less.

He had been a police officer for twenty-four years as well. Perhaps there was a sort of connection, he thought? Two halves of my life combining to form a whole?

Rubbish. Even if you have half a duck and half an eagle, that doesn’t mean that you possess a whole bird.

He realized that the image was idiotic, and during his walk to the police station he tried instead to recall how many times he had made love to his wife during the past year.

Three times, he decided.

If he interpreted the word ‘love-making’ optimistically. The last occasion — in April — didn’t seem to come into the category of ‘making love’.

And to be honest, in no other category either.

That’s life, he thought — and avoided stepping into a pool of vomit somebody had left on the pavement by a hair’s breadth. It could have been worse, to be sure; but for Christ’s sake, it could have been considerably better as well.

On his way up to his office on the third floor he bumped into Inspector Münster.

‘How’s the Kaunis case going?’ he asked.

‘Full stop,’ said Münster. ‘Neither of those interrogations we talked about is going to be possible until next week.’

‘Why not?’

‘One of them is in Japan, and the other is going to be operated on this morning.’

‘But he’ll survive, I hope?’

‘The doctors thought so. It’s for varicose veins.’

‘I see,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ said Münster. ‘Hiller will no doubt be on to you. Something’s happened in Linden, if I understood it rightly.’

‘Linden?’

‘Yes. If we don’t have anything more important on — and we might not have now that-’

‘We’ll have to see,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘You’ll be in your office if I need you, I take it?’

‘Buried under a drift of papers,’ said Münster with a sigh, and continued down the corridor.

Van Veeteren entered his office, and noted that it smelled rather like a working men’s lodging house. Not that he had ever lived in such an establishment, but he had been inside quite a few in the course of his duties.

He opened the window wide and lit a cigarette. Inhaled deeply. Another morning and I’m still alive, he thought, and it struck him that what he would like to do more than anything else was to go and lie down for a while.

Was there anything in the rules and regulations that said you were not allowed to have a bed in your office?

‘Yes, well, it’s that business in Linden,’ said Hiller, pouring some water into a pot of yellow gerbera. ‘I suppose we’ll have to drive out there and take a look.’

‘What’s it all about?’ asked Van Veeteren, contemplating the chief of police’s plants. There must have been about thirty: in front of the big picture window, on the desk, on a little table in the corner and on the bookshelves. It’s beginning to look like an obsession, he thought, and wondered what that was a sign of. Growing roses was a substitute for passion — he had read that somewhere; but Hiller’s display of plants in his office on the fourth floor of the police station was much more difficult to pin down. Van Veeteren’s botanical knowledge was limited, but even so he thought he could identify aspidistra and hortensia and yucca palm.

And gerbera.

The chief of police put down his watering can.

‘A dead woman,’ he said. ‘At the bottom of a swimming pool.’

‘Drowned?’

‘No. Certainly not drowned.’

‘Really?’

‘There was no water in the pool. It’s rather difficult to drown in those circumstances. Not to say impossible.’