Hakan Nesser - Hour of the wolf

‘Yes. Did he ever hit you?’

‘Hit me?’

The same long line.

‘If you’d rather come to the police station to conduct this conversation, that’s fine by me,’ said Moreno in a friendly tone. ‘Maybe this isn’t the right kind of milieu?’

‘Hmm,’ said Kodesca. ‘Sorry, I was gobsmacked, pure and simple. What do you take us for? I can imagine Pieter being subjected to something, but that he himself would… No, that’s out of the question. Totally out of the question. You can write that down in your little book. Was there anything else?’

‘Do you know if he’d had any new relationships since you divorced?’

‘No,’ said Kodesca, looking out of the window. ‘That’s not my problem any more.’

‘I understand,’ said Moreno. ‘So you have no idea where he might have gone? It’s ten days since he disappeared… He hasn’t been in touch with you at all?’

A disapproving wrinkle appeared between fru Kodesca’s right nostril and the corner of her mouth, and made her look five years older at a stroke.

‘I’ve already told you that we have absolutely no contact with each other any more. Have you problems in understanding?’

Yes, thought Moreno. I have problems in understanding how you managed to find yourself a new husband.

But then, perhaps she hadn’t seen Marianne Kodesca from her best side.

Half an hour later she met Jung in his office in the police station.

‘Liz Vrongel,’ said Jung. ‘Disappeared without trace.’

‘Her as well?’ said Moreno.

Jung nodded.

‘But twenty years ago. She was married to Keller for a year… Well, ten months if you want to be finicky… Then they divorced and she moved to Stamberg. A mixed-up devil, obviously. Took part in all kinds of protest movements, and was kicked out of Greenpeace after she bit a police officer in the face. Joined various sects and is said to have gone to California at the beginning of the eighties. After that the trail goes cold. I don’t know if there’s any point in looking for her.’

Moreno sighed.

‘Presumably not,’ she said. ‘We can start thinking about celebrating Christmas instead and hope Reinhart comes home with something from New York.’

‘Do you think that’s likely?’

‘Not very,’ said Moreno. ‘To be honest.’

‘And what was the former fru Clausen like?’

Moreno wondered how best to put it.

‘A different type from the former fru Keller at any rate,’ she said. ‘Discreet bourgeois fascism, more or less. And not all that discreet, in fact, come to think of it. But she had nothing to offer us, and I don’t think I want to talk to her again.’

‘Rich bitch?’ said Jung.

‘You could say that,’ said Moreno.

Jung checked the time.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘don’t you think we can allow ourselves to go home now? Maureen has started going on about how I ought to get a new job. I’m beginning to agree with her.’

‘What would you become if you did?’ asked Moreno.

‘I don’t really know,’ said Jung, pulling thoughtfully at his lower lip. ‘A cinema usher sounds attractive.’

‘Cinema usher?’

‘Yes. One of those people who show customers to their seats with a little torch, and sell goodies in the intervals.’

‘They don’t exist any more,’ said Moreno.

‘That’s a pity,’ said Jung.

Chief Inspector Reinhart drove himself out to 44th Street in Brooklyn on the Sunday morning. He arrived exactly half an hour late: the night shift had just packed up, but the brown house numbered 602 was not unguarded. Bloomguard had decided to post an extra car there in addition to Reinhart’s — in view of his European colleague’s knowledge of the city that was no doubt a good move.

He parked between 554 and 556, where there was a space, got into the car on the other side of the street — a 3-metre-long Oldsmobile — and greeted the police officer inside it.

Sergeant Pavarotti was small and thin and looked unhappy. Reinhart didn’t know if that was because of his name, or if there was some other reason behind it.

Having to spend a whole Sunday sitting in an old car in Brooklyn, for instance.

‘I’ve considered changing my name lots of times,’ said Pavarotti. ‘I sometimes get to a point where I’d much rather have been called Mussolini. I sing worse than a donkey. How are things in Europe?’

Reinhart explained the situation, then asked if Pavarotti had any special interests.

Baseball and action films, evidently. Reinhart stayed with him for another five minutes, then returned to his own car. He had asked Bloomguard if it wouldn’t look suspicious, sitting behind the wheel of a stationary car for hours on end, but Bloomguard had merely given him a knowing smile and shaken his head.

‘People never look out of the window in the houses out there,’ he had explained. ‘Besides, there are always lots of men sitting alone in their cars — go for a walk round and see for yourself.’

A little later on Reinhart actually did go for a walk around the block, and discovered that it really was true. Oversized cars stood parked on either side of the street, and in every fifth or sixth sat a man chewing gum or smoking. Or digging into a packet of crisps. Most of them were wearing dark glasses, despite the fact that the sun seemed to be further away than the Middle Ages. What’s going on? Reinhart wondered.

It was cold as well, certainly several degrees below freezing, and the same inhospitable wind as yesterday was blowing up from the river.

I don’t understand this society, Reinhart thought. What the hell do people do? What lies are they living that we haven’t discovered yet?

He told Pavarotti to go off for an hour and have a coffee: Pavarotti seemed to doubt if he ought to take an order like that from this dodgy chief inspector, but in the end he did as he was bidden.

Reinhart clambered over the low stone wall surrounding Sunset Park and went to sit down on a bench. There was just as good a view of number 602 from there as from inside the car, and he didn’t think there was any risk of fru Ponczak recognizing him. In his woolly hat, long scarf and old military parka he looked just like any other tramp, or so he told himself: one of those drifters who couldn’t even afford a car to sit in while they were waiting for death to catch up with them.

It was ten minutes to eleven when fru Ponczak came out. Pavarotti still hadn’t returned, even though it was over an hour since he had left. Reinhart wondered what to do, and decided to follow the woman.

She walked down as far as Fifth Avenue and turned left. Waddling gently and with a slight limp, it seemed. For a moment he thought she was going to the subway station on 45th Street… But he didn’t need to decide what to do in that case, as she went into a mini-market on the corner instead. Reinhart walked past and stationed himself on the other side of the street. Started filling his pipe with fingers as supple as icicles.

After five minutes she came out with a plastic carrier bag in each hand. Started walking back along Fifth Avenue the same way as she’d come. Turned back into 44th Street and was home in number 602 a minute later.

Reinhart sat in his car again. Ah well, he thought. That was presumably today’s dramatic high point. Mrs Ponczak goes shopping. It sounded like an English kitchen-sink film.

However, it turned out to be a correct diagnosis. Neither fru Ponczak nor her layabout son bothered to go out any more on this icy cold, windy, December Sunday — and why should they have done? There was always the telly, for instance. No sign of any possible herr Ponczak, and Reinhart guessed that if he existed at all, he was lying down in a back room overlooking the courtyard, reading the paper or sleeping off his hangover. That’s what he would have done if he’d been herr Ponczak.