Hakan Nesser - The G File

The Chief Inspector raised a smile.

‘What do I mean? I wonder if she was blind, of course. What was her IQ?’

‘What the devil. .?’ Hennan began to protest.

‘Don’t you also think there was somebody who pushed her?’

‘Why should I think that?’

‘No sensible person dives into an empty swimming pool.’

‘Barbara did it by mistake.’

‘That’s what you are trying to make us believe, yes.’

Hennan seemed to be arguing with himself for a few seconds. Then he stood up and pushed his chair backwards so that it toppled over onto the lawn.

‘I’ve had enough of this now,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to sit here and be castigated any longer. Not another word without a solicitor present.’

Van Veeteren stubbed out his cigarette. Then he took a drink of beer. Then he stared at his former schoolmate with astonishment written all over his face.

‘A solicitor? Why on earth should you need a solicitor? Surely you aren’t hiding something from us?’

‘I have no intention. .’

Van Veeteren stuck a warning index finger up into the air, and turned to look at Münster.

‘Do you think herr Hennan is hiding something, Inspector?’

Münster thought for a moment.

‘I can’t think what that could possibly be,’ he said.

‘Get out of here!’ said Hennan. ‘Leave me in peace. This was the damnedest-’

‘I’ll just finish off my beer,’ said Van Veeteren, raising his glass. ‘It wasn’t up to much, but it’s drinkable. Cheers, and I look forward to our next meeting.’

‘Not too bad,’ said Van Veeteren when they were back in the car. ‘Round one to us, all the judges agree.’

‘So do I,’ said Münster. ‘But I don’t really understand what you’re getting at.’

‘Really?’ said Van Veeteren in surprise. ‘And what do you mean by that, Inspector?’

Münster started the engine.

‘Are you suggesting that it’s Hennan who’s behind all this? Or what? Have we forgotten that he seems to have an alibi?’

‘Bah!’ exclaimed Van Veeteren. ‘Alibi? We haven’t had confirmation of anything yet. He could easily have slipped out of that restaurant for thirty or forty minutes. . Let’s wait until we have the staff’s version before we start talking about an alibi.’

‘All right,’ said Münster. ‘I’ll wait for that.’

‘Or he could have had an accomplice,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘He could have hired a gorilla who went to the house and pushed her into the pool.’

Münster sighed.

‘Are you really being serious?’

Once again he received a surprised look from his superior.

‘Münster, I know that Barbara Hennan’s death looks like some sort of accident, and there’s a damned good reason why it should look like that as well.’

‘Really?’ said Münster. ‘And what’s that?’

‘That G wants it to look like an accident.’

Münster said nothing.

‘Surely you don’t think that I’m mistaken?’ said Van Veeteren, winding down the passenger window a couple of centimetres. ‘It seems to be raining now — what did I tell you?’

‘It would never occur to me to question your judgement, Chief Inspector,’ said Münster diplomatically. ‘We don’t have any facts to go on as yet, so it’s okay to speculate as much as you like.’

‘Speculate?’

‘Yes.’

Van Veeteren said nothing.

‘But he seems a hard nut to crack, that Hennan,’ said Münster. ‘I’ll give you that.’

‘Even hard nuts can be cracked open,’ said the Chief Inspector, staring hard at a broken toothpick. ‘Just wait.’

‘It will be interesting,’ said Münster. ‘And those old insights into his psychology that we spoke about. . What was it you said? The most unpleasant bastard. .?’

But Van Veeteren merely gestured dismissively with his hand.

‘Next week,’ he said. ‘Let’s enjoy a restful weekend first. How are Synn and little Bart?’

He drives me up the wall at times, thought Münster.

Maarten Verlangen had an alcohol-free day on Saturday. He changed the bed sheets, washed three machine-loads of laundry, and took all his rubbish out to the communal bins. In the afternoon he went jogging for one-and-a-quarter kilometres in Megsje Bois, then telephoned a woman he knew.

Her name was Carla Besbarwny, and exactly as he had hoped and expected she said he was welcome to visit her if he felt like it. She would need to walk the dogs first, but any time after eight would be fine. He thanked her and hung up. Breathed a sigh of relief. It’s good that Carla exists at least, he thought.

He had known her for rather more than three years: they had met about half a dozen times, and on each occasion had spent more or less all the time in her generous waterbed. He knew that she probably had quite a few other men who came to visit her in similar circumstances, but so what? You couldn’t own women like Carla. She lived at the far end of Alexanderlaan in a large four-roomed flat, together with three dogs, a few cats and an unknown number of small birds, guinea-pigs and Japanese dwarf-mice. Goodness only knew how she made a living, and from a purely clinical point of view she was probably mad.

But that didn’t much matter either. He wasn’t going to visit her that evening for spiritual fellowship. Nor would that be why she received him.

He rang her doorbell at a quarter past eight on Saturday evening, and exactly sixteen hours later left her in an ambivalent state of lax harmony and bad conscience. Exactly the same as usual.

‘Why don’t you get married, Carla?’ he had asked her at one point during the night. ‘A woman like you?’

‘Are you proposing to me?’ she had wondered.

‘No,’ he had answered. ‘I. . I’m not mature enough to get married yet.’

‘There’s your answer.’

He returned to the loneliness and clean sheets of Heerbanerstraat. Thought about phoning his daughter, but put it off. He didn’t want to contact her too often. He didn’t want her to feel that she had a duty to meet him or talk to him. Quality is better than quantity, he used to tell himself. A bitter and somewhat heroic thought, in fact, for surely a certain level of quantity was necessary if any kind of level of quality was to be achieved?

Except in connection with Carla Besbarwny, perhaps?

He shelved all such thoughts and instead tried once again to telephone Villa Zefyr. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to get some instructions about how he should go about his work in future, he thought, and in any case, he still hadn’t delivered his Friday report.

If it was G who answered he could always hang up.

It was G.

As far as Verlangen could judge, in any case. He sounded gloomy. For a couple of seconds Verlangen toyed with the idea of disguising his voice and saying that it was a wrong number, but he decided that to do so would be too risky.

He swallowed, and hung up.

Strictly speaking I don’t actually start work again until tomorrow, he decided. The Sabbath day should be respected — and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, as the Good Book says.

He fetched a beer from the refrigerator and switched on the television.

When Van Veeteren put on Pergolesi’s Stabat mater late on Sunday evening, he had been longing for that moment all weekend.

There had been so many domestic obligations to cope with. Dinner with Renate’s brother and sister-in-law on Saturday evening — and breakfast and lunch with the same dodgy pair on Sunday, since they lived up in Chadow and had spent the night with the Van Veeterens. A serious discussion with Renate about Erich’s situation at school (and in life generally) on Sunday afternoon (but without the main character himself, as he was out with some of his mates), and then — for two hours in the evening — a damned dishwasher he had been promising to try to repair for a month now. It was much more broken when he had finished with it than it had been to start with.