Hakan Nesser - The G File

A slight twitch of the mouth suggested that Hiller was indulging his sense of humour. Van Veeteren sat down on the visitor chair.

‘Murder? Manslaughter?’

‘Probably not. She probably fell in by sheer mischance. Or dived in by mistake. But it seems to be not straightforward, and Sachs has asked for assistance. He’s not quite himself after that little haemorrhage he had — no doubt you remember that? He seems to be aware of that himself. But he only has one more year to go before he retires.’

Van Veeteren sighed. He had met — and worked with — Chief Inspector Sachs on three or four occasions. He had no special views about him — neither positive nor negative — but he knew that Sachs had suffered a minor cerebral haemorrhage a few months ago, and that it might have affected his judgement to some extent. At least, that is what had been alleged: but if it really was the case, or if it had more to do with Sachs’s lack of confidence after being a millimetre-thin blood-vessel wall away from death — well, that was difficult to say.

‘When did it happen?’ asked Van Veeteren.

‘Last night,’ said the chief of police, running his fingers over the immaculate knot in his tie. ‘You could delegate it to somebody, of course; but if you’re not too snowed under I think you ought to drive out there yourself. Bearing in mind Sachs’s situation. But there’s nothing to suggest anything irregular, remember that. It shouldn’t need more than a few hours and a bit of common sense.’

‘I’ll go myself,’ said Van Veeteren, standing up. ‘A car drive might do me good.’

‘Harrumph!’ said Hiller.

‘Jaan G. Hennan!’ exclaimed Van Veeteren as Münster started manoeuvring them out of the underground labyrinth that was the police station garage. ‘I can hardly believe my eyes.’

‘Why?’ wondered Münster. ‘Who is Hennan?’

But Van Veeteren didn’t reply. He had received a three-page summary of the case written by somebody called Wagner and including a short statement by the pathologist Meusse. He was holding the documents in his hand and trying to absorb the contents. Münster glanced at his boss and realized that it was pertinent to wait, and meanwhile concentrate on driving.

‘Hennan,’ muttered the Chief Inspector, and started reading.

Wagner’s report revealed that the dead woman was called Barbara Hennan, and that the police had been summoned to the scene (Kammerweg 4 in Linden) by a telephone call (received 01.42) from the dead woman’s husband. A certain Jaan G. Hennan.

The police had arrived at 02.08, and established that the woman was lying on the bottom of an empty swimming pool, and was in fact dead. Hennan had been interrogated immediately and it had transpired that he had arrived at home about 01.15, and been unable to find his wife until he discovered her lying in the said empty swimming pool. Both local doctor Santander and pathologist Meusse from the Centre for Forensic Medicine in Maardam had examined the dead body, and their conclusions were identical in all respects: Barbara Hennan had died as a result of extensive injuries in her head, spine, nape and trunk, and there was everything to suggest that all the injuries had been a consequence of falling into the empty swimming pool. Or possibly diving into it. Or possibly being pushed into it. The post-mortem was not yet complete, so further details could be expected.

The time of death seemed to be between 21.00 and 23.00. Hennan maintained that at this time he was in the restaurant Columbine in Linden; he had seen his wife alive for the last time at eight o’clock in the morning when she left home in order to drive to Aarlach. It was not known when she had arrived back home after that outing, nor how she had ended up in the empty swimming pool. All information received thus far had come from the said Jaan G. Hennan.

Meusse’s brief statement merely confirmed that all fractures and injuries were consistent with the assumption that the dead woman had fallen (or dived, or been pushed) down into the pool; and that the alcohol level in her blood was 1.74 per mil.

‘So she was drunk,’ muttered the Chief Inspector when he had finished reading. ‘A drunk woman falls down into an empty swimming pool. Kindly explain to me why the Maardam CID has to be called out to assist in a situation like this!’

‘What about this Hennan character?’ wondered Münster. ‘Didn’t you say you couldn’t believe your eyes, or something of the sort?’

Van Veeteren folded up the sheets of paper and put them in his briefcase.

‘G,’ he said. ‘That’s what we called him.’

‘G?’

‘Yes. I was at school with him. In the same class for six years.’

‘Really? Jaan G. Hennan. Why. . er. . why did he only have one letter, as it were?’

‘Because there were two,’ said Van Veeteren, adjusting a lever and leaning the back of his seat so far back that he was half-lying in the passenger seat. ‘Two boys with the same name — Jaan Hennan. The teachers had to distinguish between them, of course, and it always said Jaan G. Hennan on class lists or in class registers. If I remember rightly we called him Jaan G. for a week or so, and then after that it was just G. He quite liked it himself. I mean, he had the whole school’s simplest name.’

‘G?’ said Münster. ‘Yes, I have to say that it has. . well, a sort of something to it.’

The Chief Inspector nodded vaguely. Fished out a toothpick from his breast pocket and examined it carefully before sticking it between the front teeth of his lower jaw.

‘What was he like?’

‘What was he like? What do you mean?’

‘What sort of a person was he then? G?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well, you seemed to suggest that there was something odd about him.’

Van Veeteren turned his head and looked out through the passenger window for a while before answering. Tapped his fingertips against one another.

‘Münster,’ he said in the end. ‘Let’s keep this to ourselves for the time being, but I reckon Jaan G. Hennan is the most unpleasant bastard I have ever met in the whole of my life.’

‘What?’ said Münster.

‘You heard me.’

‘Of course. It was as if. . I mean, what does that imply in this context? It can’t be completely irrelevant, surely? If you-’

‘How are things with you and the family?’ said Van Veeteren, interrupting him. ‘Still as idyllic as ever?’

The family? wondered Münster and increased his speed. Typical. If you’ve said A, under no circumstances must you say B.

‘As a man sows, so shall he reap,’ he said, and to his great surprise the Chief Inspector produced a noise faintly reminiscent of a laugh.

Brief and half-swallowed, but still. .

‘Bravo, Inspector,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you a bit more about G on some later occasion, I promise you that. But I don’t want to rob you of the possibility of your forming an independent impression of him first. Is that okay with you?’

Münster shrugged.

‘That’s okay with me,’ he said. ‘And that business of him being the biggest arsehole the world has ever seen, well, I’ve forgotten all about that already.’

‘Of course,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘No preconceived ideas — that is our credo in the police force. In any case, we’ll have a word with Chief of Police Sachs first. Whatever you do, don’t recall the fact that he recently had a cerebral haemorrhage when we meet him.’

‘Of course not,’ said Münster. ‘An interesting call-out, this, no doubt about that.’

‘No doubt at all,’ agreed Van Veeteren.

On Friday Verlangen was woken up by a firework.

It went off inside his own head, and its scintillations were somewhat monotonous — a non-stop battery of glowing white explosions. Let me die, he thought. Please God, let me die here and now.