Hakan Nesser: The Weeping Girl

Checked her watch and noted that they were due to arrive in three minutes’ time.

She said goodbye to Mikaela Lijphart in the forecourt outside the station building, where Mikaela boarded a yellow bus that would take her to the Sidonis Foundation, a care home about a kilometre or so north, and a similar distance inland.

Moreno took a taxi, as she wasn’t at all sure where the Lejnice police station was situated.

It turned out to be in a square a couple of hundred yards from the station, and the young driver wondered if she’d like him to take her to the church and back as well, so that he could have something to register on his taximeter.

Moreno laughed and said she would be needing a cab to take her to Port Hagen in an hour or two’s time, and he gave her his card with a direct telephone number she could ring.

Lejnice police station was a two-storey, rectangular building in dark pommer stone with small, square windows impossible to look in through. Evidently built shortly after the war, and flanked by a butcher’s shop and a funeral parlour. Above the less than impressive entrance was a tiny balcony with iron railings and an even tinier flag, wafting in the breeze on something that could well have been a broomstick. Moreno was reminded of a decadent nineteenth-century French colony — or at least a film about such a colony — and when she caught sight of Chief Inspector Vrommel, she had the distinct impression that he preferred that century to the new one that was about to begin.

He was standing in the entrance: tall and lanky, wearing a sort of loose-fitting khaki uniform that Moreno could also only recall having seen in a film. He was about sixty, she decided, possibly closer to sixty-five. Reinhart’s guess that he was red-haired might well have been correct — but that would have been ten years or more ago. Now there wasn’t a lot of hair on Vrommel’s head. In fact, one might say he was bald.

Round spectacles, frameless, a large reddish-brown nose and a moustache that was so thin and skin-coloured that she didn’t notice it until they’d shaken hands.

‘Inspector Moreno, I presume. Pleased to meet you. Did you have a good journey?’

He doesn’t like female police officers, she thought.

‘Excellent, thank you. A bit on the warm side, though.’

He didn’t respond to the invitation to talk about the weather. Cleared his throat and stood up straight instead.

‘Welcome to Lejnice. This is where the powers that be hold sway round here.’ He made a gesture that might possibly — but only possibly — be interpreted as ironic. ‘Shall we go in? That Lampe-bastard is waiting for you.’

He held the door open, and Moreno entered the relatively cool Lejnice police station.

The interrogation room was about six feet square, and looked like an interrogation room ought to look.

Like all interrogation rooms the world over ought to look. A table and two chairs. A ceiling light. No windows. On the table a tape recorder, a jug of water and two white plastic mugs. Bare walls and an unpainted concrete floor. Two doors, each with a peephole. Franz Lampe-Leermann was already on his chair when Moreno entered through one of the doors. He’d probably been sitting there for quite a while, she assumed: he looked fed up, and the smile he gave her seemed strained. Large damp patches of sweat had formed under the arms of his yellow shirt, and he had taken off both his shoes and his socks. He was breathing heavily. The air-conditioning system that served the rest of the building evidently didn’t extend as far as this hellhole.

Or perhaps Vrommel had switched it off.

Thirty-five degrees, Moreno thought. At least. Good.

‘I need a rest and a fag,’ said Lampe-Leermann, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. ‘That heap of shit won’t even let me smoke.’

‘A rest?’ said Moreno. ‘We haven’t even started yet. You can have one half an hour from now at the earliest. Assuming you are cooperative. Is that clear?’

Lampe-Leermann cursed again, and shrugged.

‘Let’s get going then,’ said Moreno, pressing the start button. ‘What do you have to say?’

Mikaela Lijphart got off at the crossroads in the village of St Inns, as she’d been instructed. Remained standing with her rucksack on the grass verge until the bus had disappeared round the long curve to Wallby and Port Hagen.

She looked around. To her left, in a westerly direction, the road ran as straight as an arrow through the dunes to the sea, only a couple of kilometres or less away. She would walk along that later — in an hour or two — in order to get to the youth hostel where she intended to spend the night. But not yet. Now she would be heading eastwards. Away from the sea, along the narrow, winding strip of asphalt that seemed to be almost roasting in the heat between high, flower-covered grassy mounds. According to what she’d been told, it was only about a kilometre to the Sidonis home, but she wished it were even shorter. Or that she’d bought a bottle of water before leaving Lejnice.

Because it was hot. Unbearably hot. It was half past one — no doubt the ideal time for a walk in the sun. If you wanted to catch sunstroke.

That would be all she needed. On top of everything else.

She looked around again. Tried to get an overall picture of the village: it didn’t seem to be more than a dozen or so houses — but something sticking out from one of them looked as if it might be an advertising placard. Perhaps it was some kind of shop. . Maybe she’d be able to get a bottle of water at least. She heaved her rucksack up over her shoulders and set off towards the reddish-brown brick building.

She had better check that she really was on the right road for the home, she thought.

To the home and her father.

Sure enough it was a small grocery shop. She bought a litre of water, an ice cream and a packet of lemon Rijbing biscuits. The plump little lady behind the counter also gave her directions to the Sidonis Foundation: carry on along this road and turn right at the signpost on the other side of the bridge. Not far at all. The lady wondered if Mikaela had a car — if not, she could have a lift there in about half an hour: they’d be delivering a selection of goods to the home, like they did most days.

Mikaela smiled and shook her head, saying she liked walking, and it was such nice weather.

‘Lovely weather,’ said the lady, fanning herself with a magazine. ‘Almost too much of a good thing, you might say.’

As she was walking, she started thinking about what she’d said to the woman on the train.

The truth, but not the whole truth.

Not quite the whole truth. She knew a bit more than she’d admitted, and now she had a bad conscience for keeping that extra bit to herself. A little prick, at least. The woman had been friendly and gone out of her way to help her; she could have told her a bit more, she really could.

But then she hadn’t told her any lies. It really was true that her mum had said very little about the background, no more than Mikaela had told the woman on the train.

Something had happened.

Sixteen years ago.

Something involving her dad.

What? What? Now when she thought back to yesterday’s conversation with her mother, she found it almost more difficult than ever to understand her mum’s attitude. More difficult than when they’d been sitting at the breakfast table but miles apart mentally, and she’d heard the name for the first time.

Arnold Maager.

Arnold? For twelve years she’d had a dad called Helmut. For three years she’d had one without a name. But now he was suddenly called Arnold.

What happened? she had asked her mother. Tell me what happened that was so horrible. Then, sixteen years ago.