Hakan Nesser - Hour of the wolf

‘You may be right,’ he said eventually. ‘Yes, if life has to go on it’s presumably necessary to open your cake-hole now and again.’

She suddenly burst out laughing. Threw her arms round him and hugged him so tightly that he wondered if he could be completely confident of winning if he took her on in an arm-wrestling match. If it was going to come to that.

‘I give in,’ he said. ‘Do you think…’

‘Do I think what?’ she said, letting go of him.

‘Do you think we can find a sort of compromise position… somewhere between patient and sparring partner? I think that would be of benefit for our relationship.’

She smiled. Linked arms with him again and started walking.

‘What you are trying to describe is the ideal man,’ she said. ‘But he doesn’t exist. I’ll have to put up with you as you are. Sometimes patient, sometimes sparring partner — but it doesn’t matter. I’ve never expected anything else. Come on, then, let’s go up to Marlene’s and see if she’s found any photographs.’

They had finally got round to visiting her together for the first time, and it didn’t last long. Marlene Frey had been having problems with her stove: the temperature in the flat hovered between ten and twelve degrees, and she was just about to go to a friend’s place for the night.

However, she had dug out a dozen photographs of Erich — some of them featured both Erich and herself, in fact. Obviously she would like to keep some of them — perhaps they could meet on another occasion and come to some agreement. When it wasn’t so damned cold. One could always have copies made if one still had the negatives — and she did have them. Most of them, at any rate.

‘How’s it going with…?’ he wondered, glancing for a fraction of a second at her stomach.

‘All’s well,’ she assured them. ‘He’s still hanging in there.’

It was obvious that she was stressed, and he didn’t think she was quite herself, compared with when they’d met at Adenaar’s. She merely shook hands with Ulrike and gave her a quick smile, and the brief visit left a somewhat insipid taste in the mouth.

‘You mustn’t read too much into it,’ said Ulrike when they had found a table at Kraus’s half an hour later. ‘It’s easy to do that when you’re not on top form yourself.’

‘Top form?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I haven’t been on top form since I started school.’

While waiting for Reinhart he rolled four cigarettes and smoked two of them. Vox wasn’t a place he usually frequented: it was Reinhart’s choice, and he was afraid they might start playing jazz music if they stayed there too long. It had said something to that effect on a poster in the entrance, and there was a little stage right at the back of the dirty-brown, smoke-filled premises.

Not that he had all that much against jazz as such. Reinhart used to maintain that when you listened to — and above all if you could play, of course — modern, improvised jazz, you increased your IQ to record levels. As an exponential function of time, concentration and alcohol intake… or something like that: he didn’t always listen too carefully to what Reinhart said. But not tonight, thank you, he thought. It’s too soon. He had barely felt up to coping with his own music. He couldn’t even stomach William Byrd and Monteverdi, so the barbed-wire tones of saxophones didn’t seem particularly appropriate for the occasion.

He sipped away at his dark beer while waiting, and thought things over. Asked himself just what was happening to his thoughts and his mind nowadays. All the mood swings. It was not pleasant. Grappling with all the different states he found himself in. His usual attitude born of experience: his chastened — not exactly optimistic but nevertheless bearable — belief that there was something logical behind all the darkness. Certain patterns. Positive resignation, to borrow a term from old Borkmann. But on the other hand this new feeling: the totally black resignation. To be sure, he’d occasionally had a sniff of it — especially in connection with his professional life — but it had never been able to retain its grip on him as it was doing now.

Not like this. For hours on end. Sometimes half a day. Incapable of action. Incapable of thought.

Incapable of living?

I must put a stop to it, he thought. I must get a grip. It’s Erich who’s dead, and me who’s still alive. All lives come to an end, some too soon, others too late. Nothing can change that eternal truth. And I don’t want to lose Ulrike.

Reinhart turned up at half past nine, half an hour late.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Joanna has earache. Terribly painful, it seems. Did they have that in your day as well?’

Van Veeteren nodded. Reinhart noticed his half-empty glass, and signalled for two new ones.

‘How’s it going?’ Van Veeteren asked when the goods had been delivered, and each had taken a swig. Reinhart lit his pipe, and scratched his short, greying hair.

‘So-so.’

‘So-so?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What the devil does that mean? Have you been stricken by aphasia?’

‘We haven’t made all that much progress,’ said Reinhart. ‘What do you expect? Do you want me to spell out every bloody detail?’

Van Veeteren tapped a cigarette against the table top, then lit it.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Every bloody detail. Please.’

It took quite a while, and when Reinhart had finished the music had started on the stage. Only a pianist and a dark-skinned lady singing in quite a low voice, so it wasn’t difficult to make oneself heard. Van Veeteren established that his earlier prejudices had been wide of the mark: the woman had a pleasantly low voice that reminded him of simmering velvet (in so far as velvet could possibly simmer, and produce sounds…), and while Reinhart was speaking the singing produced an attractive distancing effect. It seemed to swathe Erich’s death and all the associated circumstances in a sort of soft, almost sensuous shroud. It occurred to him that Erich would have liked that.

Grief and suffering, he thought. We can’t avoid that. All we can do is welcome it with open arms and treat it in the right way. Swathe it in art or rituals or whatever else we have at our disposal. But for goodness’ sake don’t just leave it lying in a corner like a ball of dust.

‘Anyway, that’s more or less it,’ said Reinhart. ‘We’ve got the killer surrounded — that character in the bar. It’s got to be him, everything suggests it’s him; but we don’t have any plausible hypotheses regarding what Erich was doing out there. Or was intending to do. You could speculate about various possibilities, of course: but I’d be misleading you if I claimed there was anything more to it than that.’

‘I understand,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘You’re still pretty keen on our nailing him, I take it.’

Van Veeteren glanced at the singer before answering. She was saying thank you for the sporadic applause, and announcing that there would be a brief interval.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Keener for every day that passes. I didn’t understand it properly at first, but it seems to be more or less rooted in one’s genes… You have to find your son’s murderer.’

‘Rooted in our culture, in any case,’ said Reinhart. ‘And in our mythology.’

‘Bollocks to whether it’s mythology or not,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I want you to catch him. Are you going to do that?’

‘I’ve already promised you I’ll do that,’ said Reinhart.

Van Veeteren thought for a moment.

‘Are you annoyed because I’m interfering?’ he asked. ‘For Christ’s sake say so if you are.’

Reinhart raised his glass.

‘I’d think it was damned odd if you didn’t. Cheers.’