Hakan Nesser - The Return

“No,” she said firmly. “He was an introverted and uncul-tured person, but I never felt frightened of him, or anything like that.”

“You knew he’d been found guilty of murder?”

She nodded.

“He told me after our first night. And explained that he didn’t do it.”

“Did you believe him?”

She hesitated, but only for a second.

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t believe Leopold Verhaven would kill a woman like that. He was an oddball, that’s for sure, but he wasn’t a murderer. I explained that during the second trial as well, but nobody paid any attention, of course. He was condemned in advance.”

Munster nodded.

“You haven’t been in contact with him since your relationship came to an end?”

“No,” she said. “Who killed him? That’s what you’re trying to find out, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Munster, “that’s exactly it. Have you any idea?”

She shook her head.

“Not the slightest,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette.

“Will that be all, Inspector? I have a business to attend to.”

“Yes, I think that’s all,” said Munster, handing her his card.

“Give me a call if you remember anything that could be of significance.”

“What might that be?” she asked.

I’ve no idea, thought Munster as he dragged himself up off the sofa.

It had started raining by the time he emerged into the square.

A thin and warm early summer drizzle that felt like a cleansing bath, almost. And a rather pleasant contrast to Leonore di Goacchi. He stood for a moment and let the gentle drops rinse his face, before unlocking the car and clambering in.

A two-hour drive back.

Not an especially productive afternoon, it had to be admitted. But that was how things usually went. In every single case, more or less. Questions, questions and more questions.

A never-ending procession of conversations and interviews and interrogations, every one of them at first glance just as pointless and unproductive as the last, until that important detail emerged. Most often when one least expected it. That link, that little unexpected reply. . That sudden but faintly glowing sign in the darkness that one couldn’t afford to overlook. It was important not to rush past it in this overgrown thicket of irrelevant and tiresome details.

He yawned and drove out of the square.

But surely what he had just been through couldn’t have contained anything important?

Apart from another little support for the theory that Verhaven was innocent, that is. And we’d come to that conclusion already, in any case. Or had we?

He concentrated on the future instead.

Two days ahead, to be precise. That was when Van Veeteren would be released from hospital, if the predictions were to be believed; and even if Munster and Rooth had hoped to clear up this case on their own, by this stage they had waved good-bye to any such aspirations. More or less, at least.

We might as well let time take its course and leave it to the chief inspector to take the case by the scruff of the neck, Munster thought. From Friday onward, that is. It was hard to predict precisely what that would involve, although there had been a few hints. Certain observations he hadn’t been able to avoid making during that last visit.

Only little things, it was true, but clear nevertheless. Also, a sort of glow in the darkness, come to think of it. . The silly and annoying air of mystery Van Veeteren always adopted, for instance. The irritation and touchiness. The humming and hawing and muttering.

The usual signals, in fact.

Only faint indications, but clearly audible and visible to anybody who’d been associated with him for a while.

The chief inspector was at the incubation stage, as Reinhart had put it on one occasion, quite independently of Verhaven and his chicken shed and all that.

Perhaps they should place him under a light? Munster

couldn’t help smiling to himself as he drove.

To speed things up. Wasn’t that what Verhaven had done with his hens, after all?

Or was it simply that being cooped up in the ward was driving him round the bend? Munster wondered. In any case, the staff at the hospital deserved a medal-for putting up with him. For not having thrown him out or dumped him in the dirty-linen basket. He must remember to give them a bunch of flowers when he collected Van Veeteren on Friday.

No harm in improving the image of the forces of law and order. .

But then he abandoned all thought about work. Thought about Synn and the evening off that lay in store. That was a much more pleasant topic.

A visit to the theater and a candlelit dinner at Le Canaille.

Grandma and Grandad doing the babysitting. Their little flat in the town center afterward. Oh, life had its golden moments now and again.

Kiesling’s case for the prosecution at the Marlene Nietsch trial occupied eighteen closely typed photocopied sheets. Van Veeteren read through them all, sighed deeply and then returned to the reconstruction-the attempt to convince the judge, the members of the jury and anybody else who might be interested in what had happened that fatal afternoon in September 1981.

. . and so let me instead move on to describe what happened that Friday almost three months ago, September 11.

At about 7:30 in the morning Leopold Verhaven leaves his home in Kaustin, driving his van, a green Trotta, 1960 vintage, and sets off on his usual round delivering eggs to his customers-a total of ten stores in Linzhuisen and Maardam. His last delivery this morning, also as usual, is the Covered Market in Kreuger Plejn here in Maardam.

As we have heard, Verhaven is very well known to everybody who works at or is otherwise connected with the Covered Market. According to him and several other witnesses, he leaves the market a few minutes after half past nine, when he has seen to everything he needs to do. His van is parked at the back of the hall, in Kreugerlaan, where he had earlier unloaded today’s delivery of eggs, but he doesn’t go straight back to his van, which is his usual practice: Instead he leaves through the main entrance, emerging into the square.

He goes to the newsstand outside Goldmann’s, buys a newspaper and starts walking back toward Zwille.

When he gets to the fountain, he meets a business acquaintance, Aaron Katz, and they exchange a few words. He then continues across the square, and at the corner of Kreuger Plejn and Zwille he bumps into Marlene Nietsch. They have been conducting a sexual relationship for some six weeks; they have met and spent the night together, both at Verhaven’s house in Kaustin and in Miss Nietsch’s apartment in central Maardam.

They stand talking for several minutes, according to Verhaven himself and also several other witnesses, including Aaron Katz. Eventually they set off in a southerly direction along Zwille, then turn into Kreugerlaan where Verhaven’s van is parked. The witness, Elena Klimenska, attests that they were standing beside the van, talking, at some point between ten and five minutes to ten. This is denied by the accused, who also denies that Marlene Nietsch got into the van with him. However, no less than three other witnesses- independently of one another-have noticed Verhaven’s unmistakable van passing through Maardam.

Two of them have stated under oath that there was a woman in the passenger seat beside Verhaven, a woman whose description is very similar to that of the murdered Miss Nietsch. The third witness, Mrs. Bossens from Karnach, has declined to swear under oath that she saw them together, for deeply felt religious reasons, but has nevertheless indicated that she is 95 percent certain that Verhaven was not alone in the van, as he claims.

We have no witnesses of what happened next on that tragic Friday, but it is not difficult to reconstruct the probable course of events. We cannot know, of course, what Leopold Verhaven and Marlene Nietsch talked about in Maardam, or what they say to each other in the van, but we can be quite sure that it is something of a sexual nature. Perhaps the accused tries to persuade Miss Nietsch to agree to some activity she has no desire to indulge in, that she doesn’t feel in the mood for. But that is mere speculation and is in no way relevant to the question of guilt as such.