Hakan Nesser - The Return

“Would you like to check on that?” he asked.

“On what?”

“How your daughter reacts to all this?”

“What the hell do you mean?”

Van Veeteren pulled the little pin out of his lapel and held it up between his thumb and index finger.

“Do you know what this is?”

Jahrens shook his head.

“A transmitter. Just as you guessed at the start.”

“So what, damn it?” said Jahrens, interrupting him. “You know very well that I haven’t confirmed the tiniest detail of all this crap you’ve been coming out with.”

“That’s what you think,” said Van Veeteren. “Perhaps

you’ll change your mind when you hear the tape. That’s what usually happens.”

“Crap,” said Jahrens, fumbling for another cigarette.

“What’s this got to do with my daughter? Are you going to play it for her, or what the hell do you mean?”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Van Veeteren, carefully replacing the pin in his lapel.

“Won’t be necessary? And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“She’s already heard it all.”

Jahrens dropped his cigarette and gaped. Van Veeteren stood up.

“These two rooms,” he said, pointing with both hands.

“Number 52 and number 54. .”

Jahrens took hold of the chair arms and started to rise to his feet.

“What the devil. .?”

“Three police officers are sitting in room 52 with a tape recorder. They have noted every single word of our conversation. Haven’t missed a detail, I can assure you. In the other room. .”

He pointed.

“. . in the other room are your daughter, Andrea, and her husband.”

“What the hell. .?”

Van Veeteren went over to the railing and pointed again.

“If you come here you can catch a glimpse of them, if you lean out a little bit. . ”

Arnold Jahrens needed no second invitation, and it was soon all over. Even so, Van Veeteren knew that those brief seconds would haunt him through all the dark nights of the rest of his life.

Perhaps even longer.

When he came out to the car, he could feel that he was much more drunk than he had thought, and there was obviously no question of him sitting behind the wheel. He took off the false beard and wig, put them in a plastic carrier bag and pushed it under the driver’s seat for the time being. Then he nestled down under the blanket on the backseat and wished himself a good and dreamless night.

Five minutes later he was sleeping like a log, and by the 3 0 9

time the ambulance and the police cars started arriving, he was beyond reach of the sirens and the raised voices.

Nobody paid any attention to the slightly battered Opel, somewhat carelessly parked in the darkness two blocks north of Florian’s Guesthouse. Why should they?

“Have you seen this?” asked Jung, handing over the newspaper. “Wasn’t it you who interviewed him?”

Rooth looked at the photograph.

“Yes, it was. What the hell’s happened to him?”

“Fell from the fifth floor. Or maybe jumped. Accident or suicide, that’s the question. What was he like?”

Rooth shrugged.

“Much like everybody else. Quite pleasant, I seem to recall.

Served up coffee, in any case.”

Reinhart sat down opposite Munster in the canteen.

“Good morning,” he said. “How are you?”

“Now what are you after?” said Munster.

Reinhart tipped the contents of his pipe into the ashtray and started filling it.

“Can I ask you a simple question?” he said.

Munster put the Neuwe Blatt to the side.

“You can always try.”

“Hmm,” said Reinhart, leaning forward over the table. “I don’t suppose you happened to be in Behrensee the evening before last?”

“Certainly not,” said Munster.

“What about the chief inspector?”

“I can’t imagine he would have been. He’s still on sick leave.”

“Ah yes, so he is,” said Reinhart. “I just thought I’d ask. An idea had occurred to me.”

“Really?” said Munster.

He went back to his newspaper, and Reinhart lit his pipe.

Hiller knocked and came straight in. DeBries and Rooth looked up from the reports they were writing.

“That was a nasty accident out at Behrensee,” said the chief of police, rubbing his chin. “Is it something we ought to look into?”

“Surely not,” said deBries. “The local boys can look after it.”

“OK. I just thought I’d ask. You can go back to whatever it was you were doing.”

And the same to you, deBries thought, exchanging glances with Rooth.

“You know that we’ve had two phone calls, I suppose?”

said Rooth when the chief of police had closed the door.

“No,” said deBries. “What kind of phone calls?”

“Anonymous. From Kaustin. They don’t seem to be from

the same person, either. One was a man, the other a woman, according to Krause.”

DeBries looked up and bit his pen.

“What do they say?”

“The same thing, more or less. That this Jahrens had something to do with the murders. The Verhaven murders. They’ve always suspected it, but didn’t want to say anything, it seems.

That’s what they say, at least.”

DeBries thought for a while.

“Well. I’ll be damned,” he said. “So he’s got his punishment after all, has he?”

“Could be,” said Rooth. “Mind you, they are probably just a couple of Nosey Parkers who want to make themselves noticed. In any case, it’s not something we need to worry about.”

Nobody spoke for several seconds. Then deBries shrugged.

“No, the case has been dropped, if I understand matters rightly. I think so. We’ve got plenty of stuff to keep our noses to the grindstone.”

“More than enough,” said Rooth.

“May I join you?” asked Mahler, sitting down on the empty chair. “Why are you sitting here, by the way?”

“I sit wherever I like,” said Van Veeteren. “I’m on sick leave, and the weather’s not bad. I like watching people trudging away on the treadmill. Besides, I have a book to read.”

Mahler nodded in sympathy.

“It wouldn’t be so good for you in the sun, perhaps.”

He looked out over the square and summoned one of the waitresses.

“Two dark beers,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Van Veeteren.

They waited until the beer was served, toasted each other, then leaned back in their chairs.

“Well, how did it go?” asked Mahler.

“How did what go?”

“Don’t play games with me,” said Mahler. “I’ve just bought you a damn beer, and given you my poems.”

Van Veeteren took another drink.

“That’s true,” he said. “Anyway, it’s all over now.”

“So he succumbed to your pressure in the end?”

The chief inspector pondered on that for a while.

“Precisely,” he said. “You couldn’t put it more poetically than that.”

In the churchyard at Kaustin there were lime trees and elms, and a few horse chestnut trees, whose extensive root systems had many a time caused the verger, Maertens, to swear out loud when he encountered them with his spade. On

this summer Sunday, however, he had every reason to think otherwise-as did the rest of the group standing around the newly opened family grave. They were grateful for the dense network of branches that provided shade and a degree of coolness during the simple burial ceremony.

If they had been forced to stand in the scorching sun, you could bet your life that some of them would have fainted.

There were only six of them, to be precise. And three of those were part of the team, you might say: Maertens himself, Wolff, the choirmaster and organist, and Pastor Kretsche, who conducted the service. The rest were Mrs. Hoegstraa, the deceased’s ancient sister who evidently didn’t have many years left herself, and two of the Maardam police force. They had been here sniffing around a month or so ago, but needless to say, they hadn’t achieved anything.