Hakan Nesser - The Return

“Two of them wanted to let him go,” he said suddenly.

“Excuse me?”

“Mrs. Paneva and that factory owner wanted to set him free. Two out of a jury of five wanted a not-guilty verdict, but we talked them round.”

“Really?” said Munster. “Which of the trials was this?”

But Heidelbluum ignored the question.

“You have to accept the responsibility,” he said, scratching nervously at his temple and cheek. “That’s what some people find hard to understand.”

“But nobody abstained?” Munster asked.

“I have never accepted abstentions in any of my cases,”

said Heidelbluum. “The verdict must be unanimous. Especially when it’s first degree.”

Munster nodded. A reasonable stand to take, he thought.

What would it look like if somebody was condemned to ten or twelve years in jail by a majority verdict of three to two? Hardly likely to uphold people’s respect for the law and justice.

“Were there any other suspects at all?” Munster wondered.

“No,” said Heidelbluum. “That would have changed everything, if there had been.”

“How?” Munster asked.

But Heidelbluum didn’t seem to have heard the question.

Either that or he’s just ignoring anything he doesn’t want to hear, thought Munster. He decided to put a bit more pressure on the judge. Presumably it was best to strike before the iron cooled down completely. It wouldn’t be possible to go on questioning him for much longer, in any case.

“But in spite of everything,” he said, “you don’t think it is impossible that Verhaven was in fact innocent?”

Silence again. Then Heidelbluum sighed deeply, and when he responded, Munster had the impression that it had been formulated in advance-possibly a long time in advance, long before there had been any mention of a visit by the police. A statement, a final, well-thought-out judgment in the case of Leopold Verhaven.

“I thought he was a murderer,” he said. “When there are no clear indications, you have to make up your mind. That goes with the job. I still think Verhaven was guilty. Of both murders. But to say I was certain would be to tell a lie. Such a long time has gone by, and I’m so close to death that I dare to tell it as it is. I don’t know. I don’t know if it really was Leopold 1 5 7

Verhaven who killed Beatrice Holden and Marlene Nietsch.

But I think it was him.”

He paused and took the cigarillo butt from the porphyry ashtray. Looked up and gazed out of the open French doors again.

“And I hope it was him. Because if it wasn’t, he’s been an innocent man in jail for a quarter of a century. And a double murderer has gone free.”

The last words were laden with exhaustion, but even so, Munster dared to ask one more question.

“You are assuming that no matter what else, both murders were committed by the same person?”

“Yes,” said Heidelbluum. “I’m quite certain of that.”

“In that case,” said Munster, “I would suggest that we are in fact dealing with a triple murderer, not just a double one.”

But Heidelbluum no longer appeared to be interested, and Munster realized that it was time to leave him in peace.

When the children were in bed at last, and Munster and his wife were drinking tea in the kitchen, he took out two photographs of Verhaven-one taken at some athletics meeting before the drugs scandal, the other taken a few years later, the afternoon at the end of April 1962 when he was arrested by two plainclothes police officers.

In both pictures the sun was shining into Verhaven’s face from the side, and in both he looked guileless, squinting straight at the camera. And there was a slight trace of a smile on his lips. An air of mischievous seriousness.

“What’s your impression of this man?” he asked his wife.

“You’re usually good at reading faces.”

Synn put the two pictures side by side on the table and pondered them for a moment.

“Who is it?” she asked. “He seems familiar, somehow. He’s an actor, isn’t he?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Munster. “But there again, yes, I think you’re right. Maybe that’s exactly what he was-an actor.”

It took some time to get the stove going, but once he’d shifted a few large chunks of soot from the flue, it took hold. Some smoke belched into the room to start with, but it soon cleared.

He tried the faucets, but no water appeared: he had to fetch some buckets from the spring in the woods instead. He put a large cauldron on the burner, and a smaller pot next to it, for the coffee. The refrigerator merely needed switching on. The electricity was on, as he had requested. She had taken care of that.

When the water was sufficiently hot, he filled a bowl, carried it out to the rickety table at the gable end and had a good wash. The sun hadn’t yet sunk below the trees, and it made him feel pleasantly warm as he stood there in nothing but his underpants. Late-summer bumblebees buzzed around in the mignonette standing three feet tall against the house wall; there was a smell of ripe apples, which had already started falling, and he had the feeling that everything was beginning again.

Life. The world.

Once he’d done what he had to do, he would be able to start living up here again; he’d had his doubts, but this afternoon and evening filled with gentle movement and a spirit of welcome could hardly be mere coincidence.

It was a sign. One of those signs.

He poured the last of the water over his head. Didn’t bother about his underpants getting wet, took them off and went back into the house naked.

He put on a completely new set of clothes. The stuff he’d left in his study and in the wardrobe were pristine; maybe they smelled a little bit odd-a trace of jute or horsehair, perhaps-

but what the hell? They’d been untouched for twelve years, after all.

Just like him. The same period of waiting, of being shut in.

He made his evening meal at about seven. Sausage and egg, bread, onion and beer. He ate it on the steps outside the front door, with the plate on his knee and the bottle on the rail, just like he always did. He washed up, lit a fire in the living room and tried to make the television work. There was a loud buzzing noise to accompany silent pictures from some foreign channel. He switched it off and tried the radio instead. That was better. He sat in the basket chair in front of the fire and listened to the eight o’clock news while drinking another beer and smoking a cigarette. He found it difficult to grasp that so much time had passed since he last sat here; it felt like just a few weeks, a couple of months at most, but he knew of course that this was how life stuttered along. No regular progression, nothing continuous. Ups and downs, to-ing and fro-ing. But all the same, the passage of time was inscribed in one’s body: in the weariness one felt, all those increasingly sluggish movements.

And the anger in the soul. The flame refusing to die down.

He understood that he needed to do what he had to do as quickly as possible. Within the next few days, preferably. He knew what he needed to know, after all. There was no reason to put it off any longer.

He waited until there was only the faintest of glows from the fire. Darkness had set in. It was time for bed, but he needed to pay a visit to the henhouse before going to sleep, just to see what it looked like. He had no intention of starting it all up again, certainly not, but he wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink if he didn’t take a quick look at least.

He took the lantern and went outside. He shivered a little when the cold evening air crept up on him, wondered whether to fetch a pullover, but couldn’t be bothered. It was only forty yards at most and he’d soon be back by the warm fire again.