Hakan Nesser - The Return

What components would have been there?

The usual ones? Presumably.

Narrowness of outlook. Suspicions. Envy. Wagging tongues.

Yes, that was about it, generally speaking.

Verhaven’s outsider status?

He seems to have been an odd character, and an odd character was what was needed. The ideal murderer? Perhaps that is what it looked like.

How about proof? He tried to recall the circumstances, but he couldn’t remember much more than a series of question marks that he hadn’t been able to sort out.

Had they managed to resist all the half-truths that must have emerged? There had been a bit of a manhunt, he remembered. Quite a lot of insinuations in the media about the competence of the police and the courts. Or rather, incompetence.

The police had been under pressure. If they didn’t find a murderer, they were condemning themselves. .

What about the forensic proof? It had been a case of circumstantial evidence, hadn’t it? He must get down to the court records that Munster had brought him, that was obvious. If only he could get something nutritious down himself first. Certainly there had been one or two shaky points. He had only talked about the case once with Mort after it was all over, and it had been obvious that his predecessor had not been too happy about discussing it.

He was slightly better informed about the other business, the Marlene case. Hadn’t that investigation left quite a lot to be desired as well? Van Veeteren had actually been involved in it, but only on the periphery. He’d never been in the courtroom. Mort had been in charge on that occasion as well.

Leopold Verhaven? Surely this was a chapter in legal his-tory that would not stand up to meticulous rescrutiny?

Or was he merely imagining things? Was it just a matter of him needing something more or less perverse to occupy his mind as he lay here flat on his back, waiting for his intestine to heal properly again? Screened off and isolated from the outside world, where the only thing demanded of him was to lie still and not get excited.

Something really messy. An old legal scandal, like the one in that crime novel by Josephine Tey, whatever it was called.

Why was it so difficult to let your mind lie fallow?

What was it that Pascal had said? Something about all the evil in the world being caused by our inability to sit still in an empty room?

Shit, what an existence, he thought. Hurry up and wheel in the food trolley, so that I can get my teeth into a good old spinach soup!

“Quite a few stories were circulating about him,” said Bernard Moltke, lighting another cigarette.

“You don’t say,” said deBries. “What kind of stories?”

“Various kinds. It’s hard to tell which ones dated from before Beatrice and which ones came afterward. Which ones are authentic, if you like. It was mainly during the trial that gossip was rife. We’d never met up so much in the village as we did during those months. Afterward, things quieted down, somehow. As if it were all over. Which it no doubt was.”

“Can you give us an example of the kind of story you are talking about?” asked Moreno. “Preferably an authentic one.”

Bernard Moltke thought for a moment.

“The one about the cat,” he said. “I certainly heard that one much earlier, in any case. They say he strangled a cat with his bare hands.”

DeBries could feel a shudder shooting down his spine, and he saw Constable Moreno give a start.

“Why?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Moltke. “But anyway, he’s supposed to have wrung its neck. When he was ten or twelve years old.”

“Ugh,” said Moreno.

“Yes. Maybe somebody dared him to do it. I have an idea that was it.”

“Was that supposed to be a sufficient reason?”

“Don’t ask me,” said Moltke. “Lots of people say that’s what he was like.”

“What do you have to say about Beatrice Holden, then?”

Moltke drew deeply on his cigarette, seemingly searching through his memory.

“A damned good-looking woman,” he said. “A bit on the wild side, that’s true, but Good Lord. . Ah well. Same color hair as you, miss.”

He winked at Moreno, who remained stony faced, to

deBries’s great satisfaction.

“Why was she in with Verhaven, then?” she asked instead.

“He can’t have been very attractive to women, surely?”

“Don’t say that,” protested Moltke, poking his index finger into his double chins. “Don’t say that. You never know what’s going on inside a woman. Isn’t that right, Inspector?”

“Absolutely,” said deBries.

“What about Marlene?” asked Moreno, totally unmoved.

“The same type of thoroughbred, I take it?”

Moltke burst out laughing, but soon turned serious.

“You bet your sweet life she was,” he said. “A bit older, that’s all. A goddamned scandal that he killed the pair of them.”

“You saw Marlene Nietsch as well, then?” asked deBries.

“Only the once. They hadn’t met all that much before. . it was all over.”

“I see,” said deBries. “I understand you were a witness at the first trial?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was your testimony about?”

Moltke thought for a while.

“I’m damned if I know,” he said. “I was up at Verhaven’s quite a bit around the time it happened, that’s all really.

Helped him with the lighting inside the chicken sheds. He was experimenting with daily rhythms and there was some wiring job he wasn’t up to.”

“So that’s it,” said deBries. “Were you there on the Saturday she disappeared? Well, if you believe what he said, that is.”

Moltke nodded solemnly.

“Yes, I put in a few hours that Saturday. Finished about one, roughly. I was the last person to see her alive, I suppose.

Apart from the murderer, of course.”

“The murderer?” said Moreno. “You mean Verhaven?”

“Yes,” said Moltke. “I suppose I do.”

“You don’t sound too convinced,” said deBries.

A brief silence again.

“Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve become convinced as the years have passed. After the Marlene murder, and then. .”

“But you were a witness for the defense at the trial, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“What did you have to say?”

“Well,” said Moltke. He shook another cigarette from the pack on the table in front of him, but didn’t light it. “I worked for him the following week as well. Monday to Thursday, and they thought I would have noticed something if there was anything wrong.”

“And did you?”

“No. He was exactly the same as usual.”

“As usual?” said Moreno. “Surely he must have reacted to her disappearance?”

“No. He said she’d gone off somewhere, but he didn’t know where.”

“Didn’t you think that was odd?”

Moltke shrugged.

“People were asking me that ten times a day around then. I can’t remember what I thought, but I don’t suppose I thought much about it. They were a bit unusual, both him and Beatrice. Everybody knew that, and it was hardly surprising that she went off for a few days.”

Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Moltke lit his cigarette.

DeBries stubbed his out.

“That Saturday, the last time you saw her. What was she like?” Moreno asked.

“Same as usual, her as well,” said Moltke without hesitation. “A touch more sulky, perhaps. They’d been fighting the previous week. She still had a bit of a bruise under one eye, but apart from that there was nothing special. I didn’t see much of her, come to that. She called in at the chicken shed for a little chat, that’s all. On her way back from the village.”

“What time was that?”