Hakan Nesser - The Weeping Girl

So she stretched out her hand and let it stay where it ended up.

At about four they went down to the beach for a swim. There were lots of people around, of course. Summer, sunny and Sunday; mums, dads, children and dogs; frisbees, fluttering kites, dripping ice creams and bouncing balls. For a few black seconds while they were towelling themselves down after their dip, she felt a sudden rush of envy as she watched all these family clusters. These extrovert, happy people, enjoying themselves in these simple, healthy and natural surroundings.

But it passed. She shook her head at the thought of such a naive, tuppenny-ha’penny analysis, and contemplated Mikael Bau, stretched out on his back in the sand.

If she really wanted to find herself in that kind of company, there was nothing to stop her, she thought. Nothing to prevent her from taking that step.

Superficially nothing, that is. Only herself. He had said that he loved her, after all. Several times. She lay down close to him. Closed her eyes and began thinking about her own family.

About her mother and father, to whom she spoke once a month on the telephone. And met once a year.

Her bisexual brother in Rome.

Her lost sister.

Maud. Lost in the backyards of Europe. In the red-light districts of large cities, and in the filthy hopelessness of junkie apartments. In pimps’ beds. Sliding further and further down a long, sleazy spiral. She no longer knew where Maud was.

There were no more postcards. No address, no sign of life. Perhaps her sister was no longer in the land of the living?

A family? she thought. Can you really start living in a family when you’re over thirty and have never had one? Or did all families resemble her own, more or less, when you started to investigate them more closely?

Good questions, as they say. She had asked them lots of times before.

Asked and asked, but always refrained from answering. It was so easy to blame everything on her parents as well. To polish the chip on her shoulder. Much too easy.

‘What did you say his name was?’

Mikael stroked his hand over her stomach.

‘Who?’

‘The scumbag.’

How clever of him to drag her back into the real world.

‘Lampe-Leermann. Franz Lampe-Leermann. Why do you ask?’

He began slowly filling her navel with sand. A thin trickle of warm, white sand tumbling down from his clenched fist.

‘I don’t really know. Jealousy, I suppose. You go to meet him every other day. Is that why he doesn’t come out with everything at one go? So that he has the opportunity of spending more and more time with the most beautiful copper in Europe?’

Moreno thought that over.

‘Presumably,’ she said. ‘But there’ll only be one more meeting. I intend to explain to him that there’ll be no more, no matter what happens. I’ll try to be a bit nicer to him as well, in compensation. Make him a few promises. .’

‘Bloody hell!’ said Mikael. ‘Don’t say things like that. What’s he done, by the way?’

‘Practically everything,’ said Moreno. ‘He’s fifty-five years old, and has been in jail for at least twenty of them. But he has a reputation. Child pornography. Drug barons. Weapons. Maybe even people-smuggling. It’s a bit of a tangled mess, but we should be able to sort out some of it at least. . with Lampe-Leermann’s help. I have no choice but to go through with this. It’s my job to open up this scumbag. But I’m only going to give up one more day to the task, I promise you that.’

Mikael blew away the grains of sand, and kissed her stomach instead.

‘Do you believe in what you’re doing?’

She raised her head and looked at him in surprise.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I say, of course. I wonder if you think it really matters. The fact that you manage to achieve some results as a detective inspector. And that I manage to save somebody or something as a result of my welfare work. Do you think any of that matters when we’re up against the bloody free market and all that bloody hypocrisy and all that bloody cynicism? Look after number one, and the devil take the hindmost. Do you believe that what you do matters?’

‘I certainly do,’ said Moreno. ‘Of course that’s what I believe. Why the hell do you ask?’

‘Good,’ said Mikael. ‘I was just checking. That’s what I believe as well. I’ll carry on believing that even if it’s the last thing I do.’

She wondered why he had suddenly taken up these serious matters just now, in the roasting afternoon sun on the never-ending beach.

And why they had never discussed this before.

‘It’s not just good that you believe,’ he went on. ‘It’s essential. Leila didn’t believe, that’s why we split up. She started clinging on to all the irony and cynicism as if we simply had no choice. . As if solidarity was no more than an outdated concept that collapsed at about the same time as the Wall, and all that was left for us to do was to look after number one.’

‘I thought she was the one who dumped you?’

He thought for a moment.

‘I gave her the pleasure of thinking that. But the real facts were as I’ve just told you, more or less. She gave up, that’s all there is to it. But by now I’ve forgotten her surname and what she looked like. Who cares? All that was over two hundred years ago. . Do you realize that you are the first woman I’ve ever met with whom I’d like to have a child?’

‘You’re out of your mind,’ said Moreno. ‘You’d better go to an insemination clinic.’

‘I’m well known for being clever.’

‘I’m thirsty.’

‘Stop changing the subject.’

‘What subject?’

‘Children. Us. Love and all that stuff. Oh, my longhaired copper, I love you.’

She lay there in silence for a while.

‘Are you hurt?’ she asked. ‘Because I haven’t answered?’

‘Mortally.’

She raised herself up on an elbow to check that he didn’t look too suicidal. She noticed a little tic at one side of his mouth, but he didn’t actually smile. Or cry. He’s putting on an act, she thought. Why the hell can’t I trust him? She stood up and started brushing off all the sand.

‘If we go back to your castle and drink a drop or two of water,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you something. Okay? But I badly need to raise my fluid levels.’

‘Hmm,’ said Mikael, rising to his feet as well. ‘I’m consumed with curiosity.’

‘And desire,’ he added when they had walked over the dunes and could see the roof of Tschandala sticking up over the dwarf pines.

‘Well?’ he said.

Moreno put down her glass.

‘You’re only showing your good sides,’ she said. ‘It’s like going to some sort of an exhibition, dammit! It’s not a foundation to build on. For as long as you keep your cupboard door shut and don’t let the skeletons out, I’m not going to give you so much as a little finger of my future.’

He leaned back and thought that over.

‘I like football,’ he said. ‘I like to go to at least two top matches per year, and to watch one a week on the telly.’

‘I could put up with that,’ said Moreno. ‘Provided I don’t have to accompany you.’

‘You’re not allowed to accompany me. And I want to be left to my own devices sometimes as well. I want to listen to Dylan and Tom Waits and Robert Wyatt without somebody coming to talk to me or turn down the volume.’

She gave him a non-committal nod.

‘I often take my work home with me as well,’ he said. ‘There are some things I just can’t let go of. It’s a bloody nuisance in fact: I’ve considered signing up for courses in yoga and meditation in order to get over it. It’s impossible to get a decent night’s sleep when things are nagging at your mind.’