Hakan Nesser - Hour of the wolf

The New Rumford Hospital was rather smaller than the Gemejnte, but even so it employed 102 doctors — 69 of whom were men. With this new group, they were naturally unable to pretend they were simply looking for impressions of the murdered nurse Vera Miller — among other reasons due to the simple fact that nobody could be expected to have any impressions.

With the possible exception of the murderer himself, as deBries very rightly pointed out: but he would presumably not be especially keen to unburden himself simply because he’d been asked a few polite questions. Everybody in the investigation team was agreed on that score.

Instead, Reinhart decided to proceed with all his cards laid on the table. There was information to suggest that Vera Miller might have been having an affair with a doctor at one of the two hospitals: did anybody know anything about this? Had anybody heard any rumours? Could anybody contribute any guesses or speculations?

The latter question was perhaps on the borderline of bad taste, but what the hell? If you asked a hundred people to guess, Reinhart thought, there could well be somebody who guessed right.

For his part Inspector Jung had never counted this type of mass interrogation among his favourite tasks (informal conversations like the one he’d had with Nurse Milovic were an entirely different category, of course), and when he met Rooth for a well-earned coffee break in the afternoon, he took the opportunity of thanking him for the weekend’s stimulating work.

‘A pity you picked on the doctors, of all people,’ he said.

‘What are you on about?’ said Rooth, swallowing a bun.

‘Well, if you’d hit upon a shop-assistant hypothesis instead, we’d have had ten times as many nice interviews to carry out. Or a student hypothesis.’

‘I’ve already told you I don’t know what a hypothesis is,’ said Rooth. ‘Am I not allowed to drink my coffee in peace?’

As had been the case with conversations with Erich Van Veeteren’s friends and acquaintances, all the new interviews were recorded; and when Reinhart contemplated the pile of cassettes on his desk on Sunday evening — especially if he were to combine them with those from the earlier interviews — the material began to acquire a scope comparable to that in the investigation into Prime Minister Palme’s murder.

Borkmann’s point? he thought. The Chief Inspector had talked about that some time ago. Was it not true to say that the quantity of evidence had long since superseded the quality? Without his having noticed. Did he not already know what he needed to know? Surely the answer… or answers?… were contained (and hidden) in the vast mass of investigation material already collected? Somewhere.

Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps not. How could one possibly know? Intuition as usual? Bugger that for a lark.

A little later on the Sunday evening they had a run-through meeting. Reinhart bore in mind Hiller’s insistence that there should be no holding back of resources, and in order to help his colleagues survive had purchased four bottles of wine and two large savoury sandwich layer cakes. Since there were only six officers involved, he felt he had followed the chief of police’s exhortations to the letter.

Not even Rooth was able to eat the last half of the sandwich layer cake.

It was always possible to summarize work done in terms of quantity. And they did just that.

In the course of two-and-a-half days six detective officers had interviewed 189 doctors, 120 of them male, 69 female.

None of those questioned had confessed that he (or she) had murdered Vera Miller — or even that they had had a sexual relationship with her.

Nobody had fingered anybody else as a possible candidate (although it was not clear if this was a result of the legendary so-called esprit de corps). Not so much as a guess, so Reinhart had no need to worry about taking into consideration the ethical aspect of it all. Something for which he was grateful.

None of the six police officers had conceived any direct suspicions in the course of their conversations — at least, not in connection with what they were trying to discover. If Chief Inspector Reinhart wanted to check the judgement of his colleagues in this respect, all he needed to do was to listen to the tapes. On the assumption that he restricted himself to just one run-through of each interview, that would take him in round figures a total of fifty-two hours.

Not counting pauses while cassettes were changed, visits to the toilet and sleep. In the aftermath of the sandwich layer cakes, he thought he might well be able to cut back on breaks for refreshments.

‘It’s not a lot,’ said Rooth. ‘To coin a phrase. The results, I mean.’

‘Never in the history of human endeavour have so few had so many to thank for so little,’ said Reinhart. ‘Hell’s bells. How many have we left?’

‘Twenty-eight,’ said Jung, checking with a document. ‘Five on secondment somewhere else, six on holiday, nine on days off and not in town… Seven on sick leave and one about to give birth in half an hour’s time.’

‘Shouldn’t she be added to the list of those on sick leave?’ wondered Rooth.

‘She’s certainly not on holiday, that’s for sure,’ said Moreno.

There was also another arithmetical sum to be solved, involving rather fewer unknowns. The so-called Edita Fischer trail. Moreno and Jung, who had shared responsibility for the Rumford Hospital investigation, had worked out exactly which day it was that Vera Miller had gone there with the pulmonary emphysema patient. And precisely how many male doctors had been on duty that day, and on which wards. Unfortunately Vera Miller had taken the opportunity of having lunch in the large staff canteen, where she could theoretically have met anybody at all — but the sum of all their efforts had been a comparatively small number of doctors.

Thirty-two, to be precise. Jung was in favour of eliminating all those who had passed their fifty-fifth birthday, but Moreno refused to go along with such a prejudiced suggestion. Grey temples were not to be underestimated. Especially if they were on doctors. In any case they had met twenty-five of this ‘high potency’ group (Jung’s term), none of whom had behaved in a remotely suspicious manner nor had anything of interest to say.

That left seven. One on holiday. Four on days off, not in town. Two off sick.

‘It must be one of them,’ said Jung. ‘One of those seven. It sounds like a film — shall we lay bets?’

‘You’ll have to find somebody else to bet against,’ said Moreno. ‘I agree with you.’

When the others had gone home, Reinhart shared the last bottle of wine with Moreno. Rooth was also present, but had fallen asleep in a corner.

‘This is a right bugger,’ said Reinhart. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve said it during this investigation… Sorry, these investigations!.. But we’re getting nowhere. I feel as if I were working for some bloody statistics institute. If we’d thought of asking them about their political views and drinking habits as well, we could no doubt have sold the material to The Gazette ’s Sunday supplement. Or some public opinion firm or other.’

‘Hmm,’ said Moreno. ‘ The Chief Inspector used to say that one had to learn how to wait as well. To have patience. Perhaps we ought to think along those lines.’

‘He used to say something else as well.’

‘Really?’ said Moreno. ‘What?’

‘That you need to solve a case as quickly as possible. Preferably on the very first day, so that you don’t have to lie awake thinking about it all night. For Christ’s sake, it’s five weeks now since we discovered the body of his son. I don’t like admitting it, but the last time I met Van Veeteren I felt ashamed. Yes, ashamed! He explained to me that the whole thing was based on a blackmailing scam