Hakan Nesser - The Inspector and Silence

‘Good morning, Chief Inspector. Slept well?’

‘I was somewhat delayed by the heat,’ Van Veeteren explained as he flopped down onto his desk chair. ‘Well?’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘What do you mean by “Well?”?’ asked Rooth and took another bite.

Van Veeteren sighed.

‘Report!’ he said. ‘What the hell are you all planning to do? Reinhart first. The Vallaste pyromaniac, I assume?’

Reinhart knitted his brow and sucked at his pipe. Nodded rather vaguely. The arson attack in Vallaste had been occupying the police for two and a half years now, and the investigation had been put on ice several times; but when there was nothing else of a serious nature going on, he usually unfroze it again. He had been the officer in charge, and it was his reputation that suffered as long as the culprit remained at large.

There were not many officers left in the force who thought along those lines, as Van Veeteren knew only too well; but he knew that Reinhart did.

‘I have a few loose ends,’ he admitted. ‘I thought it might be worthwhile looking a bit more closely at them. Unless there’s something else that craves the attention of a somewhat bigger brain than the average…’

‘Hmm,’ said Munster.

‘Certain parts of the body swell in hot weather,’ said deBries.

‘No doubt,’ muttered Van Veeteren. ‘Okay start rummaging around among the loose ends.’

He leaned back and contemplated his subordinates with a resigned expression. They were a bit of a motley crew, in outward appearance at least. DeBries had got divorced a month ago, and had made use of his first few weeks of freedom to renew his wardrobe in an attempt to make himself look younger – the result had been something reminiscent of an ageing and depraved yuppie from the eighties. Or a resuscitated and semi-detoxicated rock artist from the sixties, as Reinhart had suggested. The Woodstock Mummy. As for Rooth, possibly as a reaction to the heatwave, he had finally got round to shaving off his straggly beard, and the lower part of his face, now as smooth as a baby’s bottom, stood out in sharp contrast to the tanned cheeks, forehead and whisky-fuelled wrinkles.

He looks like the missing link, Van Veeteren thought.

As for Munster – well, he looked like Munster, albeit with sweaty patches under his arms; and Reinhart had always reminded the chief inspector of what he no doubt really was, deep down: an intellectual docker.

Van Veeteren himself was hardly a thing of beauty. But luckily one has an inner self, he consoled himself, and yawned.

‘And when do you gentlemen intend going on holiday?’ he asked. ‘Take it in turns.’ He might get more sense out of them than asking them to report on their work plans.

‘The fifth,’ said Reinhart.

‘Next week,’ said deBries. ‘I’d be grateful if you don’t put me on some case or other.’

‘Same here,’ said Munster. ‘But no doubt Jung and Heinemann will be able to run the show in August, if something crops up. And Rooth and Moreno, of course.’

‘Naturlich,’ said Rooth.

‘Can you speak French?’ deBries wondered. ‘Maybe you’ve done a correspondence course?’

Rooth scratched at his phantom beard.

‘Fuck off,’ he said. ‘That’s a German proverb. Shall we continue with this hotel burglary or do you have something else lined up for us?’

‘Be off with you,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘But make sure you arrest Pompers and Lutherson. Everybody knows they did it.’

‘Thank you for the tip,’ said deBries.

He and Rooth left the room.

‘People get irritable in this weather,’ commented Munster when the door had closed behind them. ‘It’s not surprising, really.’

‘That’s exactly what I’ve been saying,’ said Reinhart. ‘Is there anything else, or can I leave? You can always phone if anything crops up.’

‘Be off with you,’ said Van Veeteren again, and Reinhart trudged off.

Munster walked over to the window and looked out. Over the town, and the heat trembling over the rooftops.

‘Let’s hope we don’t suddenly find ourselves with a murder on our hands now, or something of the sort,’ he said, leaning his forehead against the glass. ‘Just before the holiday. I remember what it was like two years ago-’

‘Shush!’ The chief inspector interrupted him. ‘Don’t wake up the evil spirits. Incidentally, I’m booked up for the first half of August. Impossible to change it. I shall delegate every corpse that turns up during the next few weeks to you and Reinhart.’

Perhaps for ever in fact, he thought. He kicked off his shoes and began leafing listlessly through the piles of paper on his desk.

‘Fair enough,’ said Munster. ‘I’ll be incommunicado from Monday onwards anyway.’

The chief inspector inserted a new toothpick and clasped his hands behind his head.

‘It would be good if a nice little two-week case were to crop up now,’ he said. ‘Preferably away from town, something I could sort out on my own.’

‘I bet it would,’ said Munster.

‘Eh?’

‘I bet it would be nice,’ said Munster.

‘And what exactly do you mean by that?’

‘Nothing special,’ said Munster. ‘Something by the seaside, perhaps?’

Van Veeteren thought it over.

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘No. I’ll be damned if somewhere by a little lake wouldn’t be preferable. I’ll be off to the Med after that anyway… Do you happen to have your racket handy?’

Munster sighed.

‘Of course. But isn’t it a bit on the hot side for that?’

‘Hot?’ snorted Van Veeteren. ‘On Crete the average temperature at this time of year is forty degrees. At least. So, shall we get going?’

‘All right, since you asked me so nicely.’ Munster sighed again, leaving the window.

‘I’ll treat you to a beer afterwards,’ Van Veeteren assured him generously. He stood up and made a couple of practice shots. ‘If you win, that is,’ he added.

‘I think I can say thank you for the beer in advance,’ said Munster.

He’s in an unusually good mood, he thought as they took the lift down to the garage. Almost human. Something absolutely extraordinary must have happened to him today.

Spili, the chief inspector was thinking at the same time. The source of youth… half an hour up the mountain in a hired car from Rethymnon… the wind blowing through her hair, and all that.

Why not?

And then Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop.

From a purely physical point of view, the morning of 18 July was perfect.

The sky was cloudless, the air clear and still cool; the dark water of the lake was mirror-like, and Sergeant Merwin Kluuge completed his run round the alder-lined shore, nearly seven kilometres, in a new record time: 26 minutes and 55 seconds.

He paused to get his breath back down by the marina, did a few stretching exercises then jogged gently up to the terraced house, where he took a shower, and woke up his blonde-haired wife by carefully and lovingly caressing her stomach, inside which she had been carrying the fruit and aspirations of his life for the past six months.

The terraced house was even more recent. Barely eight weeks had passed since they had moved in – with the kind assistance of his parents-in-law’s savings; and he was still overcome by feelings of innocent wonder when he woke up in the mornings. When he put his feet on the wine-red wall-to-wall carpet in the bedroom. When he tiptoed from room to room and stroked the embossed wallpaper and pine panelling, which still exuded a whiff of newly sawn timber hinting at unimaginable possibilities and well-deserved success. And whenever he watered the flower beds or mowed the little lawn flanked by the trees, he could not help but feel warm and genuine gratitude to life itself.