Hakan Nesser - The Return

“Let’s go and sit in the cafe instead,” David Cupperman had whispered, ushering him out the door.

Now that they were sitting in a secluded corner of the bar, enveloped in the smell of cooking fat, he looked much calmer, Jung felt. It didn’t take very long to explain why.

“I didn’t want the wife to get involved,” explained Cupperman. “She’s a bit sensitive, and she knows nothing about this business.”

Jung nodded and held out his pack of cigarettes.

“No thanks. I’ve given up. Thanks to the missus,” he added, with a slightly apologetic smile.

Jung lit a cigarette.

“You don’t need to worry,” he said. “We’re just calling on a few people and asking a couple of routine questions, that’s all.

Maybe you’ve seen in the papers that Leopold Verhaven has been murdered?”

“Yes.”

Cupperman nodded and contemplated his coffee cup.

“We understand you lived with Beatrice Holden for some time in Ulming. When was that? The end of the fifties, was it?”

Cupperman sighed. It seemed quite obvious that if there was anything in his life that this worryingly prim and proper man regretted, it was that unfortunate affair in his youth.

“Nineteen fifty-eight,” he said. “We met in ’57, and moved in together a few months later. She was pregnant. . Well, then we lived together until February the following year. It wasn’t my child.”

“Really?” said Jung, trying to sound as surprised as he could.

“We. . she had a daughter, Christine, we called her; she had a daughter in August 1958; but as I said, the father was another man.”

“When did you find that out?”

“When she was five months old. He came to visit, and

when he’d left, she told me the whole story.”

“Oh, shit,” Jung said before he could stop himself. “Excuse me, but it can’t have been very pleasant for you?”

“No,” said Cupperman. “It wasn’t exactly amusing. I left her that same evening.”

“That same evening?” Jung asked.

“I just threw a few things into a bag. Took the train.”

He fell silent. Jung thought for a while. Where did you go? was the obvious question, but perhaps that wasn’t so important.

“What about your daughter?” he asked instead. “Her daughter, that is. It must have been hard to leave a child you had thought was your own?”

But Cupperman didn’t reply. He just stared down at the table, biting his lip.

“You hadn’t had any suspicions at all?”

Cupperman shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I ought to have done, of course. But I was young and inexperienced. That was the top and bottom of it.”

“Did you ever meet her again? Afterward, that is?”

“No.”

“Not Christine either?”

“I went to visit her in Kaustin. After the murder. But only once. She was four, living with her grandmother. Beatrice’s mother. She didn’t seem to want anything to do with me, the grandmother I mean, so there didn’t seem to be much point.”

“I see,” said Jung. “And the father? The real father, that is?

Do you know anything about him?”

Cupperman shook his head again.

“He went to sea, I think. I never saw him again.”

“And Beatrice didn’t meet him, after you’d left her?”

“How should I know?”

No, thought Jung after he’d taken leave of David Cupperman. If the police haven’t managed to track down Claus Fritze after thirty years, it would be a bit much to expect his poor cuckolded rival to have done so.

Rooth rang the bell and the door opened so fast that he had to jump backward to avoid being hit by it. Arnold Jahrens had been expecting him, that was obvious.

“Mr. Jahrens?”

“Come in.”

He was tall and powerful and looked at least ten years younger than the sixty-five he was. Or was it sixty? It doesn’t matter anyway, he decided and sat down on the chair provided at the kitchen table.

“Well,” said Jahrens. “I expect it’s about Verhaven again.

And Miss Holden.”

“Exactly,” said Rooth. “I take it you know what’s happened?”

“I’ve read about it in the papers,” said Jahrens, gesturing toward a corner where he evidently collected them in a pile.

Both Neuwe Blatt and Telegraaf, as far as Rooth could see.

“I bet you have,” said Rooth. “To be honest with you, we’re groping around in the dark; and so we’re doing a bit of stock-taking, you might say. Having a chat with everybody who’s been in contact with them and the case, in one way or another.”

“I’m with you,” said Jahrens, serving coffee. “Sugar?”

“Three spoons,” said Rooth.

“Three?”

“Did I say three? I meant one and a half.”

Jahrens burst out laughing.

“I’ve plenty of sugar,” he explained. “You can have three damned spoonfuls if you like.”

“Thanks,” said Rooth. “Anyway, I don’t want to keep you longer than necessary, so I’ll come straight to the point. You used to be a neighbor of Verhaven’s. When did you move away from there, by the way?”

“Nineteen eighty-five,” said Jahrens. “We didn’t have anybody who could take over the farm, and rather than wear ourselves out we decided to spend our twilight years in town. It’s made quite a difference, in fact.”

“Your wife. .?” asked Rooth.

“She died two years ago.”

“I’m sorry about that. Anyway, down to business. I’d like you to tell me what you made of the pair Leopold Verhaven and Beatrice Holden. You must have seen quite a bit of them, and it was you she came to the night before she was murdered, is that right?”

“Yes, of course. You couldn’t avoid noticing a few things,”

said Jahrens. “And yes, she came to us all right. Why are you asking, by the way? Surely you don’t think he was innocent?

They seem to be hinting at that in the Telegraaf. . .”

“We don’t know,” Rooth admitted. “What we do know is that somebody’s killed him. There must be a reason, and until we know what it is, we have to take every possibility into account.”

“I follow you,” said Jahrens, fishing a cookie out of his cup with the aid of a spoon. “You could say they were at each other’s throats, all the time. Not many people were surprised by what happened. . of us in the village, I mean. I’m not saying we thought he’d do her in; but they weren’t especially nice to each other.”

“We’ve gathered that,” said Rooth. “What happened that night when she came and knocked on your door?”

“I must have described that at least fifty times,” said Jahrens.

“But not recently, I don’t think,” said Rooth. “Just one more time; I expect you know it off by heart anyway.”

Jahrens laughed again.

“All right,” he said. “There’s not much to tell. I was woken up by somebody knocking on the glass panel of the front door. I put on a pair of trousers and went downstairs to open up, and there she was. She could have just come in and bedded down on the sofa without waking us up, in fact-we never locked the front door. It was the same all over the village, come to that: Nobody bothered to lock themselves in. It’s a bit different here in town, I can tell you. Anyway, she was standing there, shivering, and she asked if she could come in and sleep on our sofa. That damn bastard Verhaven had beaten her up, she said, and she was going to report him to the police next morning.”

“Was she drunk?”

“Fairly, but I’ve seen worse. Obviously, I asked if we could do anything for her-she had a black eye, all swollen, and a few other bruises; but she wouldn’t hear of it. All she wanted was to sleep, she said, so I let her go and lie down on the sofa. I fetched a blanket and a pillow, that’s all. And poured her a glass of water. Then I went back to bed. It was gone three.”