Hakan Nesser - Hour of the wolf

Was it the same person, or two different ones? Who cares? A fury directed at this murderer or these murderers, but also at all killers, whoever they might be… And so the coldest and darkest of all his memories began to stir. The murder of Seika. Of his own girlfriend. Seika, whom he should have married and built up a family with. Seika, whom he had loved like no other. Seika with the high cheekbones, the half-Asian eyes and the most beautiful laugh the world has ever heard. It was almost thirty years ago now: she had been lying in that accursed grave out at Linden for three decades. Nineteen-year-old Seika who ought to have been his wife.

If it hadn’t been for that evil killer, a knifeman on that occasion, a drugged-up madman who had stabbed her to death one evening in Wollerims Park without the slightest trace of a reason.

Or at least, nothing more than the twelve guilders she had in her purse.

And now The Chief Inspector ’s son. Bloody hell, Reinhart thought. He’s absolutely right, it was a long time ago that the Good Lord stopped doing us favours.

‘I went out to Dikken to have a look around,’ said Van Veeteren, interrupting his train of thought.

‘What?’ said Reinhart. ‘You?’

‘Me, yes,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I took the liberty — I hope you’ll forgive me.’

‘Of course,’ said Reinhart.

‘I spoke to a few people at that restaurant. It’s more like a sort of therapy really. I don’t expect to find anything that you lot won’t find, but it’s so damned hard just sitting around, doing nothing. Can you understand that?’

Reinhart paused for a few seconds before answering.

‘Do you remember why I joined the police?’ he asked. ‘My fiancee in Wollerims Park?’

Van Veeteren nodded.

‘Of course I do. Okay, you understand. But anyway, there’s one thing I wonder about.’

‘What?’ said Reinhart.

‘The plastic carrier bag,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘That plastic carrier bag that changed owners. Or was supposed to change owners.’

‘What bloody plastic bag are you on about?’ said Reinhart.

Van Veeteren said nothing for a moment.

‘So you don’t know about it?’

Oh, shit, Reinhart thought. Now he’s put us on the spot again.

‘There was somebody who said something about a plastic carrier bag,’ he said, trying to sound offhand about it. ‘That’s true.’

‘It seems that this Mr X, who is presumably the killer…’ said The Chief Inspector, noticeably slowly and in a tone of voice that sounded to Reinhart painfully like some pedagogue explaining the obvious to ignorant pupils, ‘… had a plastic carrier bag by his feet when he was sitting in the bar. And it appears that Erich was carrying that bag when he left the restaurant.’

He raised an eyebrow and waited for Reinhart’s reaction.

‘Oh, shit,’ said Reinhart. ‘To tell you the truth… Well, to tell you the truth I’m afraid it looks as if we’d missed this. The second half, that is. Several witnesses said Mr X had a plastic carrier bag with him, but we haven’t heard anything about Erich having taken it over. How did you find out about that?’

‘I happened to meet the right people,’ said Van Veeteren modestly, contemplating his newly rolled cigarette. ‘One of the waitresses seemed to recall having seen him carrying a plastic bag when he left the restaurant, and when she said that the barman remembered it as well.’

And you happened to ask the right questions as well, no doubt, Reinhart thought, and felt a flood of deep-rooted admiration surging through his consciousness, removing all trace of anger and embarrassment. Admiration for that psychological insight that The Chief Inspector had always been blessed with, and which… which could cut like a scalpel through a ton of warm butter faster than a hundred riot police in bullet-proof vests could work out the whiff of a suspicion.

Intuition, as it was called.

‘So what conclusion do you draw?’ he asked.

‘Erich was there to collect something.’

‘Obviously.’

‘He drove out to the Trattoria Commedia in order to collect the plastic carrier bag in an agreed location — perhaps in the gents.’

Reinhart nodded.

‘He didn’t know who Mr X was, and it was not the intention that he should know.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘If it had been possible for them to meet without concealing their identities, they could just as well meet anywhere at all. In the car park, for instance. Why mess about with that bloody masquerade if it wasn’t necessary?’

Reinhart thought that over.

‘Mr X was disguised,’ he said.

‘He was going to murder my son,’ Van Veeteren pointed out. ‘And he did so. Of course he was going to be disguised.’

‘Why hand over the carrier bag if he was going to kill him anyway?’ said Reinhart.

‘You can answer that yourself,’ said Van Veeteren.

Reinhart sucked twice at his pipe, which had gone out.

‘Oh, shit,’ he said. ‘He didn’t know who he was. Neither of them knew who the other was. He didn’t know who it was until he saw him with the carrier bag in his hand… He’d be out in the car park, waiting for him, of course.’

‘Presumably,’ said Van Veeteren, rolling another cigarette. ‘That’s the conclusion I’ve drawn as well. What else? What do you think it was all about? Who’s calling the shots, and who’s obeying?’

A good question, Reinhart thought. Who is calling the shots and who is obeying?

‘Erich calls the shots, and Mr X obeys,’ he says. ‘To start with, at least. Then Mr X reverses the roles. That’s why… Yes, that’s why he does it. That’s why he kills him.’

Van Veeteren leaned back on his chair and lit the cigarette. His son, Reinhart thought. For Christ’s sake, we’re talking about his murdered son.

‘And what do you think it was all about?’

The narcotic cloud hung in the way, and blurred Reinhart’s thinking for five seconds: then he hit on the answer.

‘Blackmail,’ he said. ‘It’s as clear as bloody day.’

‘He maintains that Erich had never indulged in anything like that,’ Reinhart explained to Winnifred an hour later. ‘I believe him. Besides, it seems incredible that he’d be so bloody stupid simply to drive out to that restaurant and sit there waiting for the money… Not if he knew what it was all about. Erich was a messenger boy. Somebody else — the real blackmailer — had sent him out there: when you come to think about it it’s pretty obvious. Everything falls into place.’

‘What about this Vera Miller woman, then?’ said Winnifred. ‘Was she behind it all, somehow or other?’

‘It’s very possible,’ said Reinhart. ‘The murderer thought it was Erich who was the blackmailer, and killed him quite unnecessarily. Maybe he got the right person when he killed Vera Miller.’

‘Did Erich know Vera Miller?’

Reinhart sighed.

‘Unfortunately not,’ he said. ‘That’s where it all comes to a stop for the moment. We haven’t found a single little thing to link them together. But there might be one. If we assume that he — the murderer, that is — is a doctor at the Gemejnte, it’s quite possible that Vera Miller had some kind of hold over him. An operation that he made a mess of, something of that sort perhaps. Could be any damned thing. It’s unforgivable for a doctor to make a mistake. He might have killed a patient through sheer carelessness, for instance. She saw an opportunity to earn a bit of cash, and took it. That it turned out as it did is another matter altogether, of course. Anyway, it’s a theory at least.’

Winnifred looked sceptical.

‘And why did she have to go to bed with him? That’s what she did, isn’t it?’