Hakan Nesser - The G File

If I’d been thirty I would no doubt have made a lunge at her now, he thought.

And become no older. .

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and emptied the glass. And noted that his guess as to the spirit involved was correct.

Rather a good whisky, in fact. As far as he could judge, the tablets tasted of nothing.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Possibly a bit on the smoky side.’

She shrugged. They remained sitting there for several minutes without speaking, and the last thing he registered was that the neighbour had started mowing the lawn again.

‘I have the feeling we’ve missed something,’ said Rooth.

‘You have drunk three beers and a large cognac,’ said Münster, signalling to the waiter that they would like the bill. ‘That’s why you are imagining things.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Rooth. ‘It’s been at the back of my mind since yesterday, there’s something I ought to have thought of. . I’ve had that feeling before, and it’s hardly ever been wrong.’

‘Do you think you could express yourself a little more clearly?’ wondered Münster.

‘More clearly? As I said, I don’t really know exactly what it’s about. . You sometimes get a little nudge like that which just falls down through your brain and ends up in your subconscious. Does it never happen to you?’

‘All the time,’ said Münster. ‘And it usually stays there as well.’

‘Exactly,’ said Rooth. ‘That’s the danger. But in this case I’m determined that it won’t do that. I know that I thought: “That was odd”, or something along those lines. . But I haven’t had time to think it over properly.’

‘No time?’ said Münster. ‘Surely time’s the only thing we’ve had loads of in this confounded case.’

Rooth nodded, and tried to lick the inside of his cognac glass clean.

‘I know,’ he said, abandoning his cleansing attempts. ‘But it would be a plus if I could pin down this particular detail. There are lots of question marks hovering around, after all.’

Münster said nothing for a while. Looked somewhat listlessly around the soberly furnished hotel dining room, and realized that they were the last customers. It was almost half past eleven, and he began to feel it was time to take the lift up four floors, and go to bed.

The final night in a hotel bed. Great. Over the last few days he had really missed Synn and the children: being away from them for a whole week was simply too long.

Far too long, for Christ’s sake. Just a few hours at a time was all he could bear.

But there was something that couldn’t be denied in what Rooth was sitting there and going on about. They had missed something. Or been deprived of something? he thought. Perhaps that was a better way of putting it. G had been buried in some kind of hidden agenda for fifteen years — not so much his own, but the Chief Inspector ’s, of course — and now when they had got wind of him again, then been confronted with his suicide, well, it felt as if. . Hmm, as if what?

As if they had been cheated out of the goodies? Münster wondered. Yes, deprived of something.

Namely the satisfaction of arresting him and making him answerable to his crimes. Of ensuring that Jaan G. Hennan was given the punishment he deserved.

A both reasonable and justified reaction, surely? Feeling bad about it all.

But the fact was that they hadn’t solved that old murder mystery. Just what had happened when Barbara Hennan ended up at the bottom of the empty pool in Linden — that was a secret G had taken with him to his grave. It could be assumed that he had shot poor Maarten Verlangen; but no matter how you looked at it, the Linden murder was still unsolved. And would presumably remain unsolved. For ever.

All things considered, it was hardly a mystery, Münster tried to convince himself while Rooth sat there looking introverted with his eyes half closed. Hennan had hired an accomplice, they had never found him, and with his employer out of this world the actual killer could feel pretty sure that he would never be found.

No doubt it goes with the territory, Münster decided. Some criminals were never nailed, and some questions were never answered. It was annoying, but something you had to learn to live with.

‘I suppose it’s just this berk G who’s annoying me so damned much,’ said Rooth, chiming in with Münster’s thoughts. ‘Do you know what I’d like to do?’

‘No,’ said Münster.

‘As with Jesus.’

‘Eh? Jesus?’

‘Yes. Let him be resurrected for a few days. Interrogate him non-stop and then kill him again. Just to torture the bastard. That’s what he deserves.’

An interesting Bible interpretation, Münster thought, and couldn’t help smiling.

‘A good idea,’ he said. ‘You accept your rock-bottom motives at least — that’s good.’

‘I’m a pretty rock-bottom type,’ sighed Rooth. ‘In fact. I know that my chivalrous behaviour can sometimes dazzle people, but to be honest, the fact is. .’

The waiter arrived with the bill, and Rooth abandoned his confessions. They paid, and left the dining room. In the lift up to their rooms, however, the inspector probed his subconscious once again.

‘That thing that I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘It must be in connection with when we found him. . When we went dashing into the Nolans’ house.’

‘Why?’ wondered Münster. ‘Why must it have been then?’

‘As you said, it’s the only time all week that we were in a bit of a hurry.’

Münster thought, but could think of no comment to make.

Instead he yawned, unlocked his door and wished Inspector Rooth sweet dreams.

He regained consciousness.

Didn’t wake up: the outside world merely shone a thin beam into his brain, no more.

Or perhaps it was not the outside world. Perhaps it was merely reflexes from his own body: fragile, undeveloped signals in the darkness and inertia. His head ached. His tongue was sticking to his gums. The tiredness in his arms and legs was devastating.

He was lying on some kind of hard sofa in a position that was extremely uncomfortable.

On his left side. His hands were tightly bound behind his back. His feet were also tied together. His ankles were rubbing against each other. The rough cover of the sofa smelled of dust, and he felt sick.

Dark. He opened his eyes one millimetre for a fraction of a second, and saw that it was just as black round about him as it was inside him.

He sank back into unconsciousness.

Some time later he woke up properly. His tiredness was still like a lead weight on top of him, but she was standing in a light doorway, talking to him.

Saying something to him, giving instructions.

She came up to him and placed something on a table next to his face.

‘Coffee.’

That was the first word he was able to understand.

‘Sit up now. Drink some coffee.’

He kept opening and closing his eyes. It hurt. He could detect the smell of coffee in his nostrils.

‘Sit up.’

It seemed laughably impossible, but the pain in his backside when he tried to obey the order actually woke him up.

‘I can’t. .’

His voice broke down, and he tried again.

‘I can’t drink when my hands are tied behind my back.’

‘There’s a straw in the cup.’

He leaned forward and drank.

I’m still alive, he thought.

Whatever good that will do me.

He forced his arms to the left and managed to look at his watch.

A quarter past five. In the morning, presumably. A long time must have passed. The room in which he had spent the last sixteen hours seemed to be some sort of lumber-room. A haven for worn-out furniture, but also a link between the house itself and the garage.