Hakan Nesser - Hour of the wolf

Somebody he knew.

He stored this insight away in his consciousness as if it were made of glass. Afraid of shattering it, afraid of placing too much reliance on it.

Somebody he knew. Somebody who knew him.

The latter above all. His opponent had known who he was even when he saw him with the dead boy that evening. As he stood there holding the boy in his arms in the rain. That must surely be the case.

Yes, he convinced himself. That must be right.

It wasn’t a matter of having registered and memorized the number of his car. The blackmailer had known straight away. He had driven past without stopping, and then when he had read in the newspapers about what had happened, he had put two and two together and made his move. He or she. He, presumably, he decided without really understanding why.

Yes, that’s how it happened. When he thought about it now he realized how implausible his earlier explanation had been. How far-fetched. Who the hell notices and memorizes a car registration number when they are merely driving past a parked vehicle? In the dark, and the rain? Impossible. Out of the question.

So: somebody who knew him. Somebody who knew who he was.

He noticed that he was smiling.

He was sitting there with a pale-blue letter that could ruin his life in less than a day. He had killed three people within a month. But even so, he was smiling.

But who was it?

It didn’t take him long to run through his sparse circle of friends and exclude it.

Or rather, them: all those who, with a modicum of goodwill, he might consider inviting to his wedding or his fiftieth birthday party. Or his funeral. No, none of those: he couldn’t believe that was possible. Of course there were perhaps one or two whom he couldn’t exclude quite as straightforwardly as the others, but there was nothing that made him stop and think. Nobody he suspected.

And there was another thing. To be sure, he wasn’t exactly a well-known name in Maardam, not a local celebrity; but nevertheless there were a few people who knew who he was and recognized him in the street. That was sufficient, of course. Every day he came into contact with people in town without being able to remember later whether he’d seen them or not; but obviously, they knew who he was. Some of them even said ‘hello’ — and were often somewhat embarrassed when they realized that he had no idea who they were.

One of those. It must be one of those, somebody like that, who was his opponent. He found himself smiling again.

Then he cursed out loud when he realized that the elimination process and conclusions were not much help, given the shortage of time.

No help at all. If he allowed himself to assume that the blackmailer lived somewhere in Maardam, that meant he had reduced the candidates from about 300,000 to 300. Perhaps.

Excluding old dodderers and children: from 200,000 to 200.

A considerable reduction, certainly, but futile even so. The plain fact was that there were still too many left.

Two hundred possible blackmailers? Seventeen hours to play with. Sixteen and a half, to be precise. He sighed and eased himself out of his armchair. Went to check the medicine chest and established that there was enough there to keep him going for another ten to twelve days at least.

In ten to twelve days’ time the situation would be quite different. No matter what.

Game over. A draw out of the question.

Then he phoned the bank. The loan he had applied for on Thursday was still not granted. It would take a few more days — but he needn’t worry, he was assured. It was a mere formality. He was a valued customer, and the bank looked after their valued customers.

He said thank you and hung up. Remained standing for a while, looking out of the window at the gloomy suburban street and the rain. So he wouldn’t have the cash by that evening. In no circumstances.

So something else was needed.

A strategy was called for.

He read the letter one more time, and tried to think of one.

The picture of the murdered Vera Elizabeth Miller became somewhat clearer during the course of Monday.

She was born in Gellenkirk in 1963, but grew up in Groenstadt. She had three siblings — two brothers and a sister — all of whom still lived in that southern province. Her father died in 1982, her mother married again and was now working as a domestic science teacher in Karpatz: she had been informed of her daughter’s death via the school, and was expected in Maardam together with her new husband at some time on Tuesday.

Vera Miller had trained to be a nurse in Groenstadt, and worked there until 1991, when she divorced a certain Henric Veramten and moved up to Maardam. Her marriage to Veramten had not produced any children of their own, but in 1989 they had adopted a little girl from Korea — she died in a tragic road accident the following year. According to Vera’s mother and two of her siblings, the divorce from Varamten was a direct result of the girl’s death. It was not stated in so many words, but reading between the lines it seemed that the husband could well have been responsible for the accident. Directly or indirectly. No official investigation had taken place.

In Maardam Vera Miller had started work at Gemejnte Hospital in the spring of 1992, and two-and-a-half years later she married Andreas Wollger. Neither her mother not her siblings knew anything at all about this second marriage. They hadn’t been to a wedding celebration — didn’t even know that there had been one — and had only been in sporadic contact with Vera in recent years.

Andreas Wollger’s condition was unchanged. At about seven o’clock on Monday evening it had still not been possible to interrogate him any further about his relationship with his wife as he was still in shock after what had happened. However, both Moreno and Reinhart had the strong impression that relations between the two had probably not been of the best.

And probably not second-best either.

What still needed to be done, of course, was to get these assumptions confirmed via conversations and interrogations with people who had known the couple in some connection or other.

And via herr Wollger himself.

As far as Vera Miller’s general character was concerned, it soon became clear that she was a very much admired and liked woman, in the view of both friends and colleagues. Most notably of all, a certain Irene Vargas — who had known Vera since they were both knee-high to a grasshopper down in Groenstadt, and now lived in Maardam — had expressed her shocked sorrow and regret at losing, as she put it, ‘one of the warmest and most honest people I’ve ever known, it’s a bloody tragedy’. Fru Vargas and Vera Miller had evidently been close friends for many years, and Reinhart assumed that if there was anybody at all who might possibly have insight into the darker sides of Vera’s life — possible extra-marital relations, for instance — she was the one.

No such information had emerged from the first conversation with her, but of course there was good reason to talk to her again about it.

Very good reason. By all accounts it seemed that Vera Miller had begun two-timing her husband round about the end of October/beginning of November. According to what she had told her husband, she would be attending a further education course for nurses in Aarlach for several weekends to come, at least eight.

Where she actually spent those Saturdays and Sundays — and with whom — was still an unanswered question.

‘Bloody blockhead,’ said Reinhart. ‘Fancy letting her go off every weekend without checking up on what she was doing. How naive can you get?’

‘Are you telling me that you would check up on Winnifred if she announced she was enrolling for a course?’ Moreno wondered.