Hakan Nesser - The Inspector and Silence

Van Veeteren nodded, and stretched out his legs under the table. It was Monday evening, and he was slumped back in an old leather chair in Andrej Przebuda’s large living room-cum-study. He’d been sitting there for quite a while, sipping an outstanding Chateau Margeaux ’81 and nibbling slices of pear with Camembert. Smoked. Dinner had been eaten in the company of Eisenstein, de Sica, Bergman and Tarkovskij, and only when they had left the table and sauntered over to the armchairs did the conversation turn to the matter that was the chief inspector’s motive for his stay in Sorbinowo.

Which had now been extended by a further day.

‘Presumably it’s the same phenomenon as occurs in connection with new discoveries in the natural sciences,’ said Przebuda. ‘The researcher already knows the answer, he’s seen the final solution before he actually gets that far. Or glimpsed it, at least. If that weren’t the case, he would presumably be in no state to discover it. The bottom line is that we need an advance image of the conclusion. I think Rappaport writes about this, Sartre as well, of course. Pierre and the cafe and all that, you know. It’s another side of the cognitive, that’s all. A sort of… Well, what should one call it? The avant garde of knowledge, perhaps?’

‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘A chain that hangs together despite the fact that several links are missing. I’d like to see the public prosecutor who falls for that kind of thing. But you are no doubt right in principle. God knows, of course I believe in intuition.’

‘And what’s your impression of Waldingen, then?’ Przebuda asked, lighting his pipe that kept going out. Deliberately or accidentally. ‘The problem with smoking a pipe,’ he added, ‘is that it goes out as soon as you talk too much. I have to admit that it happens to me now and again. Well?’

The chief inspector sighed.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll be damned if I can work out what I really think. The people we are dealing with are pretty moronic, and they sort of get in the way and conceal the point at issue. Perhaps some kind of intervention would be justified no matter what – God only knows what rubbish they are drumming into those poor girls. But that falls some way short of actually murdering somebody. I can’t really say I’ve found evidence to suggest that anybody really has disappeared…’

Przebuda was still preoccupied with his pipe.

‘Only a trace of a suspicion.’

The chief inspector leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head; he let his gaze wander around the book-lined walls and was struck by a sudden illusion of being in the middle of an encyclopaedia. Przebuda’s interests seemed to embrace everything from the financial state of the steel industry in the eighties and fishing quotas in the Arctic Ocean to cultural anthropology and Provencal love lyrics. A newspaperman of the old school, obviously; an incorruptible journalist who – given sufficient time – was quite capable of writing an article on more or less any subject at all. Although he tried to exclude it, Van Veeteren had to admit that the setting of this evening’s conversation reminded him of something else as well. The classic crime novel hero – the case-hardened detective who gathers together all the facts in his head and then solves the case while sitting with his pipe in a winged armchair in his library.

Although on this occasion it was Przebuda smoking the pipe. Van Veeteren was smoking cigarettes.

So perhaps it was his host who would come up with the solution, not himself.

If a solution was needed, that is. Perhaps all the goings-on didn’t amount to an equation – wasn’t that the conclusion he had reached? No missing girl, and no case in fact. Nevertheless there was something special about this room; the only thing missing, of course, was a chessboard. But Przebuda had already admitted that chess was a pastime that had never managed to capture his interest.

Something that indisputably made the game even more unique than it already was, Van Veeteren thought. But pastime! Surely that was little short of blasphemy!

‘Needless to say I have a few notes,’ said Przebuda after a few seconds of silence. ‘In case you are interested. I thought I might write half a page last summer when they were last here. The Pure Life

… I suppose I thought I’d try to dig down into the sect itself, as it were. Not just the summer camp. Anyway, I interviewed the shepherd and took a few photographs, but I eventually decided to shelve the project.’

‘Why?’

Przebuda shrugged.

‘I don’t really know. Some jobs you just drop, period. I think it had something to do with the impression they made. I found it a bit distasteful, to be honest. I take it you understand what I mean.’

Van Veeteren nodded.

‘That Yellinek and his four fancy women.’

‘Four?’

‘Yes indeed. There were four women who took care of all the chores out there in the forest. Much younger than he was, and, well, I suppose that gave me cold feet, or however you might want to put it. And I don’t particularly want to give dodgy people like that free publicity. Has he brought the same harem with him this year as well?’

‘Three,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Only three.’

Przebuda burst out laughing.

‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he’s beginning to run out of steam. If they observe other Muslim traditions, maybe they have the right to be satisfied as well. What’s the routine? Two nights out of three?’

‘Every other night, I think,’ said the chief inspector. ‘There are various trends. You don’t happen to have the names of the women who were here last year, do you?’

Przebuda raised an eyebrow, and then his wine glass.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘It’s just a thought that struck me,’ said the chief inspector.

‘All right, I’ll take a look,’ said Przebuda. ‘But first, your very good health.’

‘Cheers,’ said Van Veeteren.

Przebuda stood up and went over to his desk, which was piled high with documents. It formed a triangle in a corner of the room, and must have been over two metres square. He switched on a lamp and began rummaging through a collection of red and green files at least a metre high. After a while he returned with one of them, and took out a bundle of unsorted documents.

‘So, let’s have a look,’ he said, taking a pair of glasses from his breast pocket. ‘I don’t really know why I bothered, but I did actually take a few pictures of them. Yes, here we are.’

He picked out a photograph and studied it critically for a few seconds before handing it to Van Veeteren. The chief inspector looked at the picture. It was obviously taken on the terrace outside the main building. In the early evening sunshine, to judge by the light and the shadows. Oscar Yellinek was leaning against the rail, flanked by four women, two on each side. Despite the fact that they were unremarkable, he had no trouble in identifying three of them. But to the left of Mathilde Ubrecht and with one hand resting on Yellinek’s shoulder was a dark-haired, unknown woman. She seemed a bit younger than the others, and unlike the rest of them had managed to raise a smile, aimed at the camera. Without a doubt she was easily the prettiest of them all.

‘Hmm,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Do you have their names?’

‘Could be,’ said Przebuda. ‘Does it say anything on the back?’

Van Veeteren turned the picture over and read:

‘Fr. l.: Ulriche Fischer, Madeleine Zander, O.Y., Ewa Siguera, Mathilde Ubrecht’

Ewa Siguera? he thought, and took a sip of wine. Sounds like a character in a novel.

Przebuda had managed to light his pipe again, and blew a few puffs of thick smoke over the table.