Hakan Nesser - The Return

Ten seconds passed. The bells started ringing in the

Oudeskerk. Hiller clasped his hands on the leather writing pad on the desk in front of him.

“Can you prove that?” he asked.

“No,” said Van Veeteren. “Especially if we drop the case.”

Hiller started rubbing his thumbs together and tried to frown.

“You understand this as well as I do,” he said eventually. “In some circumstances. . In some circumstances we simply have to consider the public good above all else; it’s as simple as that. In the unlikely event of your managing to winkle out a new murderer in this age-old business, who would get any satisfaction from that?”

“I would,” said Van Veeteren.

“You don’t count,” said Hiller. “Consider all the other interested parties and ask yourself if any of them would benefit. Let’s take them one by one. The murdered women? No!

Verhaven? No! The police and the courts? No! The general public and the legal system? No!. .”

“The murderer? No?” said Van Veeteren. “Don’t forget

him. He would no doubt be the happiest of all if he escaped punishment. Three murders, and he doesn’t get arrested. Not bad. Not bad at all!”

Hiller put his glasses on. Leaned forward over his desk and allowed a few seconds to pass.

“There is no other murderer, only Verhaven,” he said eventually, emphatically. “The case is dropped on the grounds of lack of evidence and concrete proof. It’s dead.”

“You mean you are ordering me to allow a triple murderer to go free?”

The chief of police didn’t respond. Leaned back again in his chair. Van Veeteren heaved himself out of the armchair.

Stood with his hands in his pockets, swaying back and forth.

Waited.

“Are you sure about what you’ve said?” Hiller asked after a while.

Van Veeteren shook his head.

“I suspect it,” he said. “I’m not sure yet.”

“And you also think you know who did it?”

Van Veeteren nodded and started to make his way slowly toward the door. The chief of police rubbed his thumbs together again and stared down at his desk.

“Wait a moment,” he said as Van Veeteren took hold of the door handle. “If you. . er, if you really do unearth something that will stand up in court, that changes everything, of course.

The worst thing we could do is to set something in motion that we can’t finish off. Put somebody in the dock, and he’s dis-charged. . You can imagine what that would mean, I hope.

Fourteen hundred journalists, first of all, screeching on about corruption and miscarriage of justice in the Verhaven case, and then incompetence and abuse of power and God only knows what else, when we let the real murderer go because we haven’t got enough convincing evidence. I assume you are clear about that? You can surely imagine what a mess we’d be in?”

Van Veeteren said nothing. The chief of police sat for some time in silence, clenching his teeth and fiddling with his watch. Then he stood up and turned his back on the chief inspector.

“You’ll have to do it all yourself. As from today Munster joins Reinhart’s team. I don’t want to know about anything.”

“That suits me down to the ground,” said Van Veeteren.

“I’m on sick leave, in any case.”

“Yours won’t be the head that rolls; I hope you can understand that as well. I don’t want any unnecessary trouble right now.”

“You can trust me,” said Van Veeteren. “You can go back to your potted plants. We must cultivate our garden.”

“Excuse me?” said the chief of police.

A waste of time, Van Veeteren thought as he left the room.

“Tell me about your illness,” he said.

She lifted the snotty-nosed girl onto her knee and looked somewhat doubtfully at him.

No wonder. His cover story was hardly a masterstroke-a fifty-seven-year-old university lecturer busy writing a disserta-tion on certain types of hip injuries contracted at birth! What a likely story! He hadn’t even bothered to check any details in advance, just tried to give the impression that his method was statistical. A sociomedical approach, he’d explained. He had equipped himself with a form that wouldn’t have withstood a close examination, of course, but even so-provided he kept it concealed inside the folder he had in front of him-it ought to give the suggestion of professionalism.

Or so he tried to convince himself. Who cares if she was confused, anyway? The main thing was that she answered his questions; she could have as many suspicions as she liked afterward.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“When did it start?”

“When I was born, of course.”

He ticked a box on the form.

“In which year was she confined to bed?”

She thought that one over.

“Nineteen eighty-two, I think. Completely, that is. She spent most of her time in bed before that as well, but I don’t remember her ever walking, or even standing up, after Christmas 1981. I left home in June 1982.”

“Did she ever use a stick?”

She shook her head.

“Never.”

“Did you have much contact with her after you’d moved out?”

“No. What does that have to do with your research?”

He bit his tongue.

“I just want to get a few things about the relationship between you pinned down,” he explained and ticked another box. “So you are saying that she was a total invalid from 1982

until her death?”

“Yes.”

“Where did she spend her last years?”

“In Wappingen. Together with a Sister of Mercy in a little apartment. She had divorced my father-I don’t think she wanted to be a burden on him any longer. Or something of that sort.”

“Did you visit her there?”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

She thought for a moment. The girl started whimpering again. Slid down onto the floor and hid away from his gaze.

“Three,” she said. “It’s a long way.”

“And her state?”

“What do you mean?”

“How was she?”

She shrugged.

“The same as usual. A bit happier, perhaps.”

“But confined to bed?”

“Yes, of course.”

Damn, Van Veeteren thought. There’s something that

doesn’t add up.

When he emerged into the bright sunshine, he had a short but intense dizzy spell. Was forced to hang on to the iron railing that surrounded the row of houses while he closed his eyes and recovered.

I need a beer, he thought. A beer and a cigarette.

Ten minutes later he had found a table under what looked like a plane tree outside a cafe. He emptied the tall glass in two swigs and ordered another. Lit a cigarette and leaned back.

Damn! he thought again. What the hell is it that doesn’t add up?

How far could it be to Wappingen?

A hundred and fifty miles? At least.

But if he went to bed early, surely he could raise the strength to drive 150 miles? With stops and rests and all that. It wouldn’t matter if he had to spend the night there. It wasn’t time he was short of nowadays. On the contrary.

He checked the address in his folder.

I’d better ring and arrange a meeting.

Why change my cover story when it seems to be working so well?

Beer number two arrived, and he sucked the froth off it.

What a damned awful story this is, he thought. Have I ever followed a thinner thread?

Just as well that nobody else is involved, thank God for that.

“What do we do in here?” wondered Jung.

“We could have a bite to eat, for instance,” said Munster.

“Sit down and try to look as if you’re at home here.”

Jung sat down tentatively and looked around the austere premises.