Hakan Nesser - The G File

‘Not a lot,’ interrupted Sachs. ‘He had no idea why he was supposed to be shadowing Hennan. Apparently he spent most of the time in his car, gaping up at Hennan’s office window. Apart from Thursday evening, that is.’

‘And it was Barbara Hennan who employed him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘He didn’t know, as I said.’

‘I’m not deaf. What did he think?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘No, that’s what he said. .’

‘Stupid berk. Anyway, let’s have his telephone number so that we can sort this mess out.’

‘By all means, here we go,’ said Chief Inspector Sachs, and read out Maarten Verlangen’s numbers, to both his home and his office.

‘Thank you,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘That’ll be all for now, I’ve no more time to waste on you.’

He started with the home number.

No reply.

Then the office number.

No reply — apart from a recorded message regretting that Verlangen’s Detective Agency was closed at the moment, but that they accepted commissions of all kinds at reasonable prices, and that callers could leave a message after the tone.

Van Veeteren thought carefully about the wording of his message while he was waiting for the tone.

‘Maarten Verlangen,’ he growled when the peep eventually sounded. ‘If you are keen to carry on living, for God’s sake make sure that you contact Chief Inspector Van Veeteren at Maardam CID. Immediately!’

He remained sitting there for a while, cursing to himself and contemplating his injured thumb — until the reality behind Chief Inspector Sachs’s revelation slowly but surely calmed him down.

The actual content of the message — the fact that the dead woman, the corpse in a bathing costume lying on the bottom of that confounded swimming pool in Linden, had hired a private detective just a few days before she died.

A private dick who was supposed to keep an eye on what her husband was getting up to. That accursed Jaan G. Hennan!

Van Veeteren rummaged around, produced a cigarette, and lit it. What the hell? he thought. What the hell does this mean? Let’s face it, she must. . she must have suspected something. Isn’t that what it must mean? Come on, ring damn you, you godforsaken gumshoe!

He glared at the silent telephone. Realized that it was barely a minute since he recorded his hard-hitting message, and that one could scarcely expect Verlangen to turn up at his office with such exemplary timing. He inhaled deeply and checked his watch.

Half past two. High time he set off for his badminton match with Münster, in other words. He stubbed out his cigarette, stood up and dug out his racket and his sports bag from the cupboard.

Look out, Inspector, he thought. I’m not to be trifled with today.

On his way down in the lift, it dawned on him that he knew who Maarten Verlangen was. And why he had left the force.

When Verlangen left the police station in Linden, he had had three more or less incompatible feelings inside him.

The first was that it was a relief to have this confounded Hennan business off his back. It was precisely a week since the beautiful American woman had turned up at his office: now she was dead, and what had actually happened was a matter for the police to sort out, not Maarten Baudewijn Verlangen.

The second was that he felt somehow empty deep down inside. As if he had given up something: it was not clear what, exactly, but he could hardly deny that he had somehow failed in his task. If a private detective had any sort of moral function in a society, it was to be able to step in and put things to rights when the police force had failed to do so. That was how he usually justified his existence, at least, when he needed to boost his ego and stiffen his backbone.

His theoretical backbone. You have to take life as it comes, and Maarten Verlangen understood the importance of adjusting his motives in order to cope with it. He was no better or worse on that score than any other so-called honest, upright citizen.

But when it came to Barbara Hennan, he had failed to live up to his principles, that could hardly be denied. She had come to him with a somewhat obscure cry for help: he had done absolutely nothing, now she was dead, and he had shuffled off the responsibility into the hands of the police. Whatever it was, it was not an honourable retreat.

Damn and blast, he thought. I’m a seventh-rate shit.

The third feeling was of a more trivial, everyday kind. He was thirsty. He was absolutely desperate for a large beer, and before he drove back to Maardam he dropped in at Henry’s bar and ensured that, if nothing else, that particular problem was solved.

Every cloud has a silver lining, he thought. One thing at a time.

Director Kooperdijk at the insurance company F/B Trustor was reminiscent of a little bull.

He was also reminiscent of — and indeed could almost have been mistaken for — Verlangen’s former father-in-law, and it was always with a feeling of unease that he tried to cope with the strength emanating from those steel-blue eyes. The man as a whole radiated energy that was so intense, it could not be suppressed. It occasionally forced its way out in the form of aggression or insults. A sort of safety valve, Verlangen used to think. To prevent him from boiling over. Martha’s time bomb of a father had been just the same: if there was one thing about which he had no regrets after the divorce it was the end of the confrontations — and the far from subtle insinuations about his son-in-law’s shortcomings and negligence — at the obligatory monthly Sunday dinners in their large mansion up in Loewingen.

Another case of every cloud. .

But Kooperdijk’s pistol-like gaze over the desk in the luxurious office in Keymer Plejn always reminded him of it.

Like now. It was half past two in the afternoon: Verlangen had arrived fifteen minutes late, and blamed parking problems in the centre of town as it would have been a tactical error to admit that what had actually delayed him was the beer at Henry’s bar.

‘Sit down,’ said Kooperdijk. ‘We have a problem.’

Verlangen sat down in the low armchair in front of the desk. The director’s chair was at least fifteen centimetres higher, which was of course no accident.

‘A problem?’ said Verlangen, popping two throat tablets into his mouth. ‘What kind of a problem?’

‘Two problems, in fact,’ said Kooperdijk.

‘You don’t say,’ said Verlangen.

‘The first has to do with your work.’

‘My work?’

‘The so-called work you do for us. We have begun to reassess the situation. It leaves much to be desired.’

‘My understanding is that my input has been satisfactory,’ said Verlangen.

‘That is debatable.’

‘I don’t follow you,’ said Verlangen. Come to the point, you little twerp, he thought.

‘I can understand that most of what you have done has been satisfactory from your point of view,’ said Kooperdijk, clasping his hands in front of him on the desk. ‘But not always from ours.’

‘For example?’ wondered Verlangen.

‘The Westergaade affair,’ said Kooperdijk. ‘Not exactly satisfactorily concluded. That business with the firm of solicitors. Not satisfactory at all.’

Verlangen thought.

‘You can’t expect me to produce rats when there is no smell of any rats,’ he said.

‘Oh no?’ said Kooperdijk without moving a muscle. ‘That is no doubt a point of view that can be debated. And then there is the matter of your personal conduct.’

‘What?’ said Verlangen, trying to sit up in the chair so that his eyes were at least level with the desk top. ‘My personal. .’

Kooperdijk leaned forward, resting on his elbows.