Hakan Nesser - The Weeping Girl

By the time they got back to Port Hagen and Tschandala it was five o’clock, and a red-haired woman was sitting on the veranda, waiting for them.

‘Oh my God,’ muttered Mikael. ‘I’d forgotten about her.’

The woman turned out to be called Gabriella de Haan, a former girlfriend of Mikael’s, and had come in connection with a cat. This was apparently called Montezuma, and was a lazy-looking ginger-coloured female aged about ten. It seemed to Moreno that there were several striking similarities between the two ladies. Quite a few, she decided after a cursory inspection.

‘Don’t you like cats?’ Mikael wondered when froken de Haan left after less than five minutes.

‘Oh yes, I certainly do,’ said Moreno. ‘I used to have one a few years ago, but it disappeared in mysterious circumstances. But this one. .?’

She nodded in the direction of Montezuma, who was stretched out on her side in the old, faded garden hammock and seemed to have made herself at home.

‘This one, well. .’ said Mikael, looking appropriately guilty for a brief moment. ‘I thought I’d mentioned her. She’s going to live here for a few weeks while Gabriella’s in Spain. I couldn’t very well say no — we got her when we were living together, and Gabriella took her when we split up. She could do with a bit of sea air, poor old Monty. She normally spends all her time cooped up in a flat. . Anyway, she’s unlikely to disturb us. She’s as good as gold, even if she does occasionally give the impression of being a bit prickly.’

He bent down and started stroking the cat’s stomach, which seemed to transport her into feline heaven.

Moreno couldn’t help smiling. She closed her eyes and tried to look into the future. In ten years’ time or so. . How things might be if she made certain decisions and stuck to them.

Her and Mikael Bau. A couple of children. A big house. A few cats.

The image was no more specific than that, but it somehow appeared quite naturally, and on the whole she found it quite acceptable. To say the least.

I’m falling, she thought. I must build up a bit of strength and some defence mechanisms, otherwise I shall just drift along with the current.

That evening they walked to Wincklers, the restaurant furthest out on the promontory at the northern end of the beach with a reputation for good food. They began with fish soup and mineral water, then lemon sorbet with fresh raspberries, and all the time managed to avoid talking about Franz Lampe-Leermann.

Until they were on the way back home and stopped in front of a pile of jellyfish that somebody had fished out of the sea and placed in a hollow in the sand.

‘Scumbag,’ said Mikael. ‘Is this what he looks like?’

Moreno looked down into the hollow with revulsion.

‘Ugh,’ she said. ‘Yes, more or less. But who cares what he looks like. I just wish he hadn’t come out with that last accusation.’

‘Hmm. I thought the detective inspector had something nasty at the back of her mind while we were eating the dessert.’

Moreno sighed.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But let’s face it, how could I avoid thinking about it? Tell me how if you can. No matter how you look at it, it’s an accusation. . an absolutely horrific accusation about one of my colleagues. Somebody I’ve been working with and respected and thought I knew and could rely on. If it should turn out that. . No, for Christ’s sake, it’s just a bluff of course — but the thought is still there, nagging away. Ugh! Can you understand that?’

Mikael said he could. They turned their backs on the nasty heap and started walking again. In silence to start with, but then he took the opportunity of telling her about the day nursery in Leufshejm called The Happy Panda. A rumour started to circulate to the effect that there was a paedophile among the staff. . There was a comprehensive investigation which concluded with a hundred-and-ten per cent certainty that the rumour was false and all the staff were as clean as the driven snow: but nevertheless The Happy Panda was forced to close down after a few months because no parent was prepared to send their child there.

And because all the nine female staff stood shoulder to shoulder with their three male colleagues. That was another way of putting it.

One of the three men was an old childhood friend of Mikael’s. The nursery had been closed for four years now, but his friend’s wife had left him and he was retraining as an engine driver.

‘Nice,’ said Moreno.

‘Very nice,’ agreed Mikael. ‘At least he’s moved on after his suicidal phase. But I think we’re getting away from the point.’

Moreno said nothing for a while.

‘Are you suggesting that it’s sufficient for Lampe-Leermann to have sown the seed of doubt in my mind? That I won’t be able to forget it, no matter what?’

‘Something like that,’ said Mikael. ‘It’s basic psychology. It’s so damned easy to cause irreparable damage. . When even you can’t fend off an accusation like this, how do you think the general public would react if they got to know about it? No smoke without fire and all that. Bloody hell!’

Moreno didn’t respond.

‘Although I wonder what you think, deep down,’ he said after a little pause. ‘Seriously. It would be easier to talk about it if you didn’t feel you needed to protect your colleagues. Could there be any truth in it? Is there any possibility — any possibility at all — that it’s any more than a malicious lie?’

Moreno continued walking, and gazed out to sea in the rapidly descending darkness. It was no longer possible to make out the horizon, but a series of lights from the fishing boats that had just gone out for the night seemed to indicate where it was.

‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘I simply can’t. I’d prefer to approach it from a different angle. Try to understand the motive. . Lampe-Leermann’s motive, that is. How could he benefit from it?’

‘Do you think he’s lying?’

‘Very probably. I want to believe that. Although it could also be that journalist who lied to Lampe-Leermann.’

‘Why would he do that?’

Moreno shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t see the point of saying something like that to somebody like Lampe-Leermann. Unless it happened in a fit of drunkenness. . Which is a distinct possibility, of course. One shouldn’t overestimate the logic and the ability to follow a plan that’s characteristic of those circles. That’s something I’m beginning to realize.’

‘Coincidence?’ said Mikael. ‘An unguarded word?’

‘Could be,’ said Moreno. ‘There’s a sort of grey zone. The chief inspector — the one I was telling you about, the Chief Inspector — he always used to say that everything that happens is an unholy brew made up of the expected and the unexpected. The hard part is deciding the proportion in a given case: sometimes it’s 8:2, sometimes 1:9. . That might sound a bit speculative, but it makes a hell of a difference.’

‘Order or chaos,’ said Mikael, picking up an empty scrunched-up Coca-Cola can somebody had dropped a couple of metres away from one of the green-painted rubbish bins the local council had provided at regular intervals all the way along the beach. ‘And the relationship between them. . Yes, it sounds very plausible. We’ve talked about this before. But in any case, the accusation itself from Lampe-Leermann sounds carefully planned, doesn’t it?’

‘Without a doubt,’ said Moreno with a sigh. ‘Without a doubt. He’s expecting a concrete offer in exchange for the name of his bloody hack. The more I think about it, the more I feel sure that there must be an informant, and that there must be some truth in it. Unfortunately.’