Hakan Nesser - The Return

The man shrugged.

“You must be joking. How can I be expected to remember that?”

“It’ll be best for you if you make a try. You didn’t happen to be in Kaustin?”

“Certainly not.”

“Had you any reason to be hostile toward Leopold

Verhaven?”

“Hostile? Of course not.”

“So it’s not the case that he knew about things that could be dangerous for you?”

“What on earth could they be?”

“Were you in Maardam on September eleventh, 1981?

That’s the day when Marlene Nietsch was murdered.”

“No. What are you getting at?”

“Is it not the case that you were in the area around the Covered Market that morning? Kreuger Plejn and Zwille and thereabouts?”

“No.”

“At about half past nine, ten o’clock?”

“No, I’ve already said no.”

“How can you be so sure what you were doing and not

doing one day thirteen years ago?”

No answer.

“What about Saturday April sixth, 1962, then? That was when it all started, wasn’t it?”

“You are making insinuations. I would like you to go and leave me in peace now.”

“Did you not call in on Beatrice Holden that Saturday afternoon? While Verhaven was out on business?”

“I’m not going to put up with this utter rubbish.”

“When did your love life with your wife come to an end?”

“What the hell has that got to do with this business?”

“You were forced to satisfy your needs elsewhere, isn’t that the case? After she was confined to bed. There must have been others as well as Beatrice Holden and Marlene Nietsch. .

Why did you kill just those two?”

He stood up.

“Or have you killed others as well?”

“Get out! If you think you can scare me into saying things that are not true, you can tell your superiors that they’re wasting their time.”

Munster closed his notebook.

“Thank you,” he said. “This has been a very enlightening conversation.”

“Yes, it could be him,” said Munster as he sat down opposite the chief inspector.

Van Veeteren parted the curtains.

“Be ready in case he comes out,” he said. “You never know what he could get up to.”

“He won’t be easy to arrest,” said Munster. “I don’t think he’s the type to break down and submit.”

“Damn and blast!” said Van Veeteren. “Although we’ve

only given him the first warning, so to speak.”

Munster knew that was what Van Veeteren had in mind

when he’d sent his assistant in advance. So that he could save himself for a more important, possibly crucial encounter.

Good thinking, of course; but there again, it must give the murderer a chance to prepare his defense. He pointed that out, but Van Veeteren merely shrugged.

“Very possible,” he said. “But it could also be those preparations that trip him up. In any case, he’s not in an enviable position. He knows that we know. Just think about that. He’s a rat trapped in a corner. We are the cats waiting for him to come out.”

“We don’t have any proof,” said Munster. “We won’t get any, either.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

Munster thought that over.

“But he’ll soon realize it, surely. If we know that he has three murders on his conscience, it must seem a bit odd that we don’t arrest him.”

Van Veeteren stubbed out his cigarette in annoyance and let go of the curtains.

“I know,” he muttered. “It’s a bit of my bowels they cut out, Munster, not my brain.”

Silence. Van Veeteren heaved a sigh and put a toothpick in his mouth. Munster ordered a beer and took out his notebook.

“You only asked the questions I told you to ask, I trust?”

said Van Veeteren after a while.

“Of course,” said Munster. “There’s one thing that puzzles me, though.”

“What’s that?”

“How did he know that she’d told Verhaven at the prison?”

Van Veeteren snorted.

“Because she told him so, of course. Just before she died, I assume. According to Sister Marianne, he went to see her that final day at the hospital.”

“She eased her conscience in both directions?”

“That’s one way of putting it, yes. You might think she ought to have kept quiet altogether instead. That would have saved one life, at least. But people tend to get a bit obsessed by the truth.”

“What do you mean?” asked Munster.

Van Veeteren downed the rest of his beer.

“The truth can be a heavy burden to bear,” he said. “It seems impossible to bear it alone in the long run. It would be good, though, if people could learn not to pass it on any old way.”

Munster pondered for a while.

“I’ve never thought of it like that before,” he said, looking out the window. “But there’s a lot of truth in it, of course. He doesn’t seem to have been overcome by panic, though.”

“No,” said Van Veeteren with a sigh. “We may need to take some special measures in this case. But you can go home now.

I’ll sit here for a while and do a bit of thinking.”

Munster hesitated.

“I hope you’ll let me know if I can do anything else to help.

I take it the case hasn’t been reopened?”

“It’s closed and boarded up,” said Van Veeteren. “Anyway, thanks.”

Munster left the bar, and as he crossed the street on the way to his car, he found himself feeling sorry for the chief inspector again. That was the second time in a short period-

only a month or so-so perhaps there was some truth in what people say:

The older they get, the more human they seem to appear.

Mind you, they were talking about mountain gorillas,

weren’t they?

The Club’s premises were in a basement at the end of a narrow alley that started at Cronin Square and finished with a fireproof gable. On all maps of the town, and according to the filthy and barely readable nameplate above Wildt’s anti-quarian bookshop, it was called Zuygers Steeg. But it was always known locally as Butcher’s Alley, after an unusually brutal murder at the end of the 1890s, when body parts of two prostitutes were found scattered over practically the full twenty yards comprising the stunted street. The parts were found by a young chaplain from the cathedral, who had to be locked away in the Majorna asylum in Willemsburg. The murderer was never caught, despite a large-scale hunt.

Van Veeteren seldom managed to get as far as the Club without being reminded of the story, and he didn’t succeed in doing so this evening either.

Perhaps things were worse in the old days, despite everything, he thought as he ducked to avoid hitting his head on the lintel and entered the lugubrious vault.

Mahler was sitting furthest in as usual, in the secluded corner under the Durer print, and he had already set up the pieces. Van Veeteren sat down with a sigh.

“Oh dear,” said Mahler, digging into his tousled beard with his fingers. “Was it as bad as that?”

“What?” said Van Veeteren.

“What! Being butchered, of course! The green men going about their bloody business.”

“Oh, that,” said Van Veeteren. “A mere bagatelle.”

Mahler looked puzzled for a moment.

“Then what the hell’s worrying you? You’ve been resurrected, early summer is at its colorful peak, the whole of nature is squirming with pleasure at the celebration of exuber-ant life that is almost upon us. What the devil do you mean by coming here and sighing?”

“I have a problem,” said Van Veeteren, opening with his queen’s pawn.

“I have a thousand,” said Mahler. “Cheers, and welcome back to the world of the living!”

They drank, and Mahler pored over the chessboard. The chief inspector lit a cigarette and waited. Of all the people he had ever played chess with since he started as a teen-ager, he had never come across a single opponent who played in the way Mahler did. After an introductory period of intense concentration that could last as long as ten or twelve minutes-before the first move, that is-he would then play more than thirty moves without thinking for more than a minute altogether. Then, before the endgame was embarked upon, he generally allowed himself another in-depth analysis lasting for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, then finished off the game at breakneck speed-irrespective of whether he was playing for a win, a draw or an honorable defeat.