Hakan Nesser - The Weeping Girl

Now she crumbled at last. She had started talking faster and faster towards the end, and Moreno wasn’t caught off guard. She hurried round the table and put her arm round Mikaela’s shaking shoulders. She moved a chair up close and hugged her tightly. She could see in the corner of her eye how a young couple at the next table were looking at them with concern.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mikaela when the worst was over. ‘I just can’t cope with talking about it.’

‘I can understand that,’ said Moreno. ‘But it’s good that you’re doing so in any case. Many people say that’s the best way of coming to terms with horrific experiences. By experiencing them again.’

‘I know,’ said Mikaela. ‘Go and sit down on your own chair again. I haven’t finished yet.’

She smiled bravely, and Moreno returned to her chair.

‘I go in for fencing, have I told you about that?’

‘No,’ said Moreno. ‘I don’t think you have.’

‘Both epee and foil. I’m quite good at it, though I say so myself. So when he attacked me I stabbed him in the eye with the metal rod.’

‘What?’ said Moreno. ‘With the metal rod?’

‘Yes, the pin that was supposed to stabilize the rucksack. It was about this long.’

She demonstrated with her hands. Moreno gulped.

‘About thirty to forty centimetres. Made of metal. I was holding it in my hand, and it was a pure reflex reaction. I didn’t think at all. I just stuck my arm out and stabbed him right in the eye. He fell — fell on top of me, in fact: it wasn’t intentional, it was a purely automatic reaction, but I killed Tim Van Rippe out there on the beach, and it didn’t even take one single second.’

Her voice was trembling, but it held. Moreno could feel that she was getting goose pimples on her lower arms.

‘The rest was panic, sheer panic. I realized straight away that he was dead. It wasn’t all that dark. People were passing by about twenty or thirty metres away from us, but nobody noticed anything amiss. If anybody looked in our direction they presumably thought that we were a courting couple larking about and having fun. So I dug him down. I suppose it must have taken an hour or so, but it was getting darker all the time, and soon there was nobody else around at all. He lost his shoes when I dragged him into the hole, and I threw them away. I took his wallet and his watch as well, I don’t know why. . I threw them away later. When I’d finished, I left.’

‘When you’d finished, you left.’ Moreno echoed her words. ‘For God’s sake, Mikaela, you must have been scared to death.’

‘Yes,’ said Mikaela. ‘I was. I was so frightened I didn’t know what I was doing. It was as if I’d become somebody else. . I walked and walked all night.’

‘Walked?’

‘Yes, all night. Northwards. At seven in the morning I came to a greasy spoon cafe in Langhuijs, where I got a lift in a lorry up to Frigge. I had breakfast and slept in a park for a few hours. All the time, I was dreaming over and over again about how I stabbed Tim Van Rippe in the eye. And how I buried him. When I woke up the first thing I thought was that I should go to the police. But I didn’t dare. Instead, I withdrew all the money I had left in my bank account — just over a thousand, in fact — and bought a rail ticket to Copenhagen. I also nicked another thirty from Van Rippe’s wallet before I threw it away.’

‘To Copenhagen? Why there?’

Had anybody checked with the banks? Moreno wondered. Evidently not. Careless. It shouldn’t have been difficult to track down the withdrawal.

‘I don’t really know,’ said Mikaela. ‘I’d been there on a school trip. I liked the place. And I had to run away to somewhere, didn’t I?’

Moreno didn’t answer.

‘I mean, I’d killed him. Murdered him and buried him. It was obvious I had to hide away.’

Moreno nodded and tried to look neutrally benevolent.

‘So then what did you do? Took the train to Copenhagen, presumably?’

‘Yes. The night train. I arrived the next morning and booked myself into a hotel called the Excelsior. Behind the railway station. A pretty seedy-looking district, but it was the first hotel I came across. Then I wandered around the city or lay in my room until I felt I was going mad. So I rang my mother. I don’t know how many days had passed by then, and I’d hardly had anything to eat from start to finish. I told my mother I was still alive, but I wouldn’t be for much longer if she didn’t collect my father — my real father — and come to see me. I suppose you could say I threatened her, but it was true. I felt absolutely awful. Anyway, they turned up eventually.’

‘Your mum and dad came to your hotel in Copenhagen?’

‘Yes. I don’t know what day it was when they arrived. But it must have been more than a week after I’d killed Van Rippe on the beach. And I killed him again and again every night, as soon as I managed to fall asleep. . I suppose I was out of my mind for several of those days. But when my parents arrived, things became a bit better. And I made them talk to each other. We were together for four or five days, but my dad wasn’t feeling at all well without his medicine and. . well, in the end we drove back. Mum phoned the police in Lejnice every day to ask about how the investigation was proceeding, so that nobody would suspect that the three of us were together. We agreed that we’d continue to say nothing about it, my mum and I. Dad never really understood exactly what had happened, apart from discovering that we knew he wasn’t guilty of the murder of Winnie Maas. It was difficult to talk to him — and then Baasteuwel gave us that horrific piece of news: I feel so heartbroken whenever I think about it. It’s so unfair that-’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Moreno. ‘I’m not quite with you. Where does Inspector Baasteuwel fit into the picture?’

Mikaela blew her nose into her table napkin and continued.

‘We came back from Copenhagen,’ she said. ‘We dropped my dad off not far from the home, then Mum and I drove to Aarlach. We stayed for a few days in Aunt Vanja’s house — she wasn’t at home, but Mum has the keys to her flat. We discussed what we were going to do — with regard to my stepfather, for instance: should we tell Helmut the facts of what had happened, or not? In the end we agreed that we wouldn’t say a word about anything at all, not to anybody. It just wasn’t possible. And so we came home, it was a Monday evening, and the next morning the bell rang — and it was that Baasteuwel standing there. Helmut wasn’t at home, thank goodness, because within an hour Baasteuwel had squeezed the whole story out of us. And then he told us the worst thing of all.’

‘The worst thing of all?’

‘Yes. That he’d spoken to my dad at the Sidonis home, while Mum and I were in Aarlach. I don’t know how he managed to squeeze the information out of my dad — but then, he got my story out of us so I assume he’s pretty good at that kind of thing.’

‘He’s well known for it,’ said Moreno. ‘What was it that your dad told him?’

Mikaela clenched her teeth and tried to blink away the tears that flooded into her eyes.

‘That he thought it was my mum who had killed Winnie Maas. That was why he said nothing. In order to protect us.’

She fell silent. Moreno suddenly felt a burning sensation behind her eyelids, and she took a swig of mineral water to balance it out. Is that possible? she asked herself.

But she could see immediately that it was.

Not just possible. It was logical, and it all fitted together.

‘But of course, it all drove him round the bend,’ said Mikaela. ‘He really did go mad. But he’s always thought it was my mum who did it. All the time. She was the one who received the telephone call from Winnie that night. . And found out about what had happened. She got furious, and went storming out into the night. And then when my dad found Winnie lying dead by the railway line, he thought. . Well, you can understand the situation, can’t you?’