Hakan Nesser - The Inspector and Silence

‘Of course,’ said Fingher, and began shepherding the chief inspector back to the road.

‘Sunday evening,’ he said, fixing the twelve-year-old with his eyes.

The girl, whose name was Joanna Halle, was gazing down at the table and rubbing her wrists nervously.

‘Sound a bit more friendly, perhaps,’ whispered the young psychologist into his ear.

‘Would you like to tell me a bit about what you were doing last Sunday evening?’ Van Veeteren tried again. ‘When you were down by the rock, swimming.’

‘We were swimming,’Joanna Halle explained.

‘I see. Who, exactly?’

‘There was me and Krystyna and Belle. And Clarissa.’

‘And you were swimming?’

‘Yes,’ said the girl.

An intelligent conversation, this, Van Veeteren thought. Gliding along as if on rails.

‘Were you friends, the four of you?’

‘Yes… No, not exactly…’

‘What do you mean?’

Don’t they teach pupils how to speak in school nowadays? he wondered.

‘We were just… sort of.’

‘Really? What time was it when you were there, roughly speaking?’

‘I don’t know, but we were back at six o’clock in any case, that’s when we have dinner.’

‘Did anything special happen when you were down there by the rock?’

‘No – what do you mean, something special?’

‘I don’t know. What did you talk about?’

‘Nothing special.’

‘You didn’t fall out?’

‘Fall out?’

‘Yes. Do you understand what that means?’

‘Yes, but we don’t fall out at the Pure Life, only Other people do that.’

‘Are you telling me the truth?’

‘Clear.’

Clear? the chief inspector thought. I’d better arrest more children so that I can learn how to communicate with them.

But Marieke Bergson and the others hadn’t caused any problems of that kind, so he decided for the moment that it was Joanna Halle who was a bit hard to get through to. Not himself.

‘Were all four of you together all the time?’ he wondered.

‘Can’t remember.’

‘Do you remember how you left there?’

Joanna Halle seemed actually to be thinking for the first time.

‘I was with Krys,’ she said.

‘Krystyna Sarek?’

‘Yes.’

‘So Clarissa and Belle Moulder were together?’

‘I think so.’

‘But you don’t know?’

‘Yes, they were still there when we left. Or at least, Belle was.’

‘But you didn’t see Clarissa when you left the rock?’

‘Yes, she must have been there.’

‘Come on, you must make your mind up. Was Belle on her own or were they both there when you and Krystyna left?’

‘They were both there.’

‘Sure?’

‘Clear.’

The chief inspector sighed and glanced at the psychologist, but she looked as inscrutable as a potato in glasses. Das Ding an sich, he thought grimly. The thing in itself.

‘But you didn’t see Clarissa later on at all?’

‘No… No, I didn’t.’

‘Do you remember if you saw Yellinek at all when you got back here?’

‘Yellinek?’

‘Yes. Will it be easier if I ask every question twice?’

The psychologist glared at him.

‘No, that’s not necessary,’ said Joanna Halle. ‘No, I didn’t see Yellinek until we went to the farm.’

‘So you’re saying you were one of those who went to collect the milk last Sunday evening?’

‘Of course. It was my turn.’

She looked at him in a way he realized was meant to express mild contempt.

‘Who else was there?’

She thought for a moment.

‘Krys and the sisters.’

‘The sisters?’

‘Yes, Lene and Tilde.’

Van Veeteren nodded.

‘Let’s go back to the rock where you went swimming. Did you notice anybody else while you were there?’

‘No, we were the only ones there.’

‘No other grown-ups either?’

‘No.’

‘And nobody else you recognized?’

‘No, I said there was only us there.’

‘How long were you there?’

‘I dunno… Not all that long.’

‘Did you notice if Clarissa was worried at all?’

‘No… No, she was the same as usual.’

‘And there was nothing else about her that made you think?’

‘No.’

‘She didn’t say she wanted to be on her own, or anything like that?’

‘No.’

‘And there wasn’t anybody who was nasty to her in some way or other?’

‘We are never nasty to one another, I’ve already told you that.’

No, you little goose, the chief inspector thought as irritation threatened to get the better of him. But the fact is that Clarissa Heerenmacht met her murderer some time after you’d returned back home – and it could possibly have been you.

‘Are you thinking of leaving this church now?’ he asked.

Joanna Halle’s face turned a deep red, and he couldn’t decide if she was angry or embarrassed. Neither could she, it seemed, and so she burst out crying instead.

‘Thank you, that’s all,’ he said, and hastened out into the sunshine, with the psychologist’s eyes sticking daggers into his back.

It was three-quarters of an hour later, when he pulled into a petrol station just outside Sorbinowo, that he realized the fourth estate had by now caught up with the police.

it said in bold print on the billboards.

He wondered for a moment if somebody had leaked the information to the press, but then he realized that the information must have come from the girls who had already left Waldingen – and perhaps also the Pure Life – behind them.

Ah well, he thought. Time to put on a false moustache and hide away in the woods, I reckon.

There’s a time for everything.

On Friday, when they met to assess progress on the Clarissa Heerenmacht case, the temperature in acting Chief of Police Kluuge’s office was 33 degrees Celsius. And it was still only morning; it was also the first time the whole investigation team had assembled in the same place.

‘We are presumably the only idiots in town who are sitting indoors,’ said Suijderbeck.

‘Presumably,’ said Servinus.

In addition to the pair of officers from Rembork, those present comprised the two female inspectors from Haaldam – Elaine Lauremaa and Anja Tolltse – plus team leader Kluuge and the consultant, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren from Maardam police. Six individuals in all. The team leader was wearing shorts, but that was not obvious when he was sitting at his desk.

‘The media have been making a bit of a meal of it,’ said Suijderbeck, producing a copy of Neuwe Blatt, which devoted its front page and two more full pages to developments in the Sorbinowo forests.

And to the Pure Life. Speculation was rife in all the media regarding the absent spiritual leader and goings-on in the sect. The old lawsuit had been dug up, deserters had expressed their opinions with no beating about the bush, and one of the television channels had come close to flouting its own conventions regarding decency and decorum in a report on one of the girls who had left the camp and returned home – a starkly realistic, high-pressure interview with timid, stuttering parents and a red-eyed tearful thirteen-year-old trying to make their way from their car into their own terraced house on the outskirts of Stamberg.

‘Well, so what, for Christ’s sake?’ said Servinus. ‘Of course they’re going to write about it! What more could they ask for? Summer. Murder. Young girl. Mad priest! If they can’t sell extra copies on the back of a witch’s brew like that, I reckon they might as well throw in the towel, and start devoting their attention to Country Life instead.’