Hakan Nesser - The G File

A malignant tumour in the brain.

He shook his head and sat up straight. He could feel pains coming on at the bottom of his spine, and decided that a short walk was called for. Just a little stroll to the square and back: that was no more than fifty metres or so, and he could do that without even letting his prey out of his sight.

In any case, if Hennan was really interested in shaking him off his trail, it would be the easiest thing in the world. All he would need to do was to nip out of the rear of the building and vanish. No problem.

But why would he want to do that? He didn’t even know he was being watched.

And the man keeping him under observation had no idea why he was doing so.

Good God, thought Maarten Verlangen as he closed the car door. Give me two reasons for staying sober in this world we live in.

At half past twelve Jaan G. Hennan went out for lunch. Verlangen left his car once again, and followed him over the square and to a restaurant called Cava del Popolo. Hennan chose a window table, while Verlangen sat down in a booth further back in the premises. There were not many customers, despite the fact that it was lunchtime. The shadow had a good view of the person he was shadowing, and optimistically ordered two beers to go with the pasta special of the day.

Hennan sat there for forty minutes, and all that happened was that he read a newspaper, ate some kind of fish soup and drank a small bottle of white wine. Verlangen also managed a coffee and a cognac, and it was with a pious hope of being able to sleep for an hour or even an hour-and-a-half that he walked back to his car.

And that is exactly what happened in fact. He woke up at about half past two when the sun finally forced its way through the clouds and found its way in through his dirty windscreen. It was like an oven inside the car, and he noticed that his intake of alcohol had begun to hammer nails into his skull. He checked that Hennan’s dark blue Saab was still parked where it had been before, then walked down to the kiosk in front of the town hall and bought a beer and a bottle of mineral water.

When he had finished drinking them it was ten minutes past three. The sun had continued to dominate the afternoon, and his clothes were clinging stickily to his body. Hennan had appeared in the window again for a few seconds with a telephone receiver apparently glued to his ear, and a traffic warden had been snooping around in the hope of being able to allocate a ticket. But that was all.

Verlangen took off his socks and put them in the glove compartment. Living felt slightly easier, but not a lot. He lit his twenty-fifth cigarette of the day, and wondered if he could think of something to do.

After number twenty-six, the building had still not exploded and it had not become any cooler. Verlangen walked as far as the telephone kiosk outside the butcher’s and phoned his employer. She answered after one-and-a-half rings.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘It’s good that you’ve rung. How’s it going?’

‘Excellent,’ said Verlangen. ‘Like a dance. I didn’t think there was much point in ringing the first morning. He’s in his office, and he’s been there all day, in fact.’

‘I know,’ said Barbara Hennan. ‘I’ve just spoken to him on the telephone. He’s coming home in an hour.’

‘You don’t say?’ said Verlangen.

‘Yes I do. That’s what he said, at least.’

I see, thought Verlangen. So why the hell should I hang around here, waiting for death to knock on my door?

‘I think you can pack it in for today,’ said fru Hennan. ‘We’ll be together all evening, so it will be okay if you start keeping an eye on him again tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Tomorrow afternoon?’

‘Yes. If you are in place after lunch tomorrow, and keep an eye on what he gets up to during the afternoon and the evening. . especially in the evening. . Well, it’s especially important for me that you don’t let him out of your sight then.’

Verlangen thought that over for two seconds.

‘I’m with you,’ he said. ‘Your wish is my command. I’ll give you another report the day after tomorrow, will that be okay?’

‘That will be fine,’ said Barbara Hennan, and hung up.

He stayed for a moment or two in the stuffy telephone kiosk, then noticed that the female traffic warden’s funereal grey uniform was approaching, and he hurried off to his car.

Life, where is thy sting? he thought, switched on the engine and drove off.

Although he had more time than was available in the forecourt of Hell, Verlangen chose not to drive back to Maardam. The alternative of clean sheets was too tempting, and at a quarter to five he checked in at the Belveder, a simple but clean hotel in Lofterstraat, behind the town hall.

Between seven and eight he had dinner in the sepia-brown dining room together with a swimming club from Warsaw. Some sort of ragout that reminded him vaguely of his former mother-in-law. Perhaps not so much of her as of the Sunday dinners she used to prepare, and it was a memory he could have done without. He bought two dark beers to take up to his room, managed to overcome an increasing desire to telephone his daughter, then fell asleep in the middle of an American police series some time between eleven and half past.

The sheets were cool and newly ironed, and even if the day ended up being somewhat less alcohol-free than originally envisaged, at least he was not quite up to the limit of ten beers a day.

Quite some way short of that, in fact.

The restaurant was called Columbine, and after two swigs of beer it looked like any other restaurant in any country of the world.

It was evening at last. The old Maasleitner clock hanging over the bottles of whisky at the bar showed twenty-five to eight. On this completely cloud-free Thursday Hennan had stayed on at the office until seven o’clock, for some damned reason or other. Verlangen had been feeling worn out since about four.

But he was used to exhaustion. It had been his constant companion for the last four years, and sometimes it felt as if it was time — nothing else — that got on top of him. A sort of old, smelly item of clothing that he couldn’t wait to cast off. To sleep off the hangover, wake up to something different and at long last put on a new era. In which the seconds and minutes actually tasted of something.

But there was never a new era the following morning. Just the same old unwashed garment that clung stickily to his skin, day after day, year after year. There was nothing he could do about it, and the few evenings he dared to go to bed in a sober state it was always impossible to get a wink of sleep.

He drained his glass and looked over towards Hennan. There were only two tables between them, but sitting at one of them was an unusually loud and exuberant group: four chubby young men aged around twenty-eight, each with a moustache, who repeatedly broke out into roars of laughter, leaning back on their chairs and slamming their fists down on the table. Judging by their broad accents Verlangen concluded that they came from somewhere down among the southern provinces. Groenstadt, most probably. Or Balderslacht, somewhere of that sort.

There were quite a lot of other customers, so a certain degree of concentration was needed in order to keep a close eye on the object of his surveillance. Despite everything. But on the other hand, it seemed fairly obvious that Hennan intended to have a meal and stay put for quite some time. He had hung his jacket over the back of his chair, and was working his way through the menu while sipping away at a colourless drink — presumably a gin and tonic — and seemed to be in no hurry at all. Perhaps he was waiting for somebody: the seat opposite him at his table for two was empty. Maybe a woman, Verlangen thought. That would be the most likely possibility, after all. And that was the outcome he had predicted from the start.