Hakan Nesser - The Inspector and Silence

‘Oh dear,’ said Przebuda, wafting away a cloud of gnats. ‘Things aren’t exactly stacked in your favour.’

They continued in silence for a few minutes.

‘Why?’ said the editor eventually, having followed his own train of thought to the next halt. ‘Why did he run away if he’s innocent? Doesn’t that suggest he’s the culprit?’

‘That’s very possible,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Although he had good reason to go under cover in any case. He’s been in trouble with the police before, and if girls suddenly start disappearing from his camp he’s bright enough to realize that he’s on the spot. It’s obviously disgraceful of him to run away like that, but by no means beyond comprehension. We must never lose sight of the fact that we’re dealing with an arsehole. A king-size arsehole.’

‘So you’re saying there’s a logical explanation, are you?’

‘Without a doubt,’ said the chief inspector. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and I reckon it would have been odder if he’d stayed around. Especially in view of this other girl that’s missing – remember this is just between me and you: you’re the only editor in the whole country who knows about that – and even more so when you take into account what a shit that Yellinek is.’

‘I see,’ said Przebuda. ‘Although I don’t really get what the implications are. There’s nothing to link Yellinek and his hangers-on directly with these terrible happenings, is there?’

‘No,’ said Van Veeteren with a sigh. ‘No very strong link at least. As far as I can see it’s possible we’re dealing with some anonymous lunatic wandering about in the forest.’

‘With no link to the Pure Life?’

‘No link at all.’

‘Well I’ll be damned!’ said Przebuda.

‘But on the other hand, it’s just as likely that they are the ones responsible.’

‘Of course,’ said Przebuda. ‘One or other of them.’

He paused to light his pipe, then he and the chief inspector immersed themselves in private thoughts as they strolled, at a very gentle pace, side by side along what was in fact the home straight of Sergeant Kluuge’s jogging track. But not even the editor was aware of that geographical fact.

‘Ah well,’ said Przebuda as they approached the built-up area again. ‘Whichever way you look at it, it’s a very nasty business. I hope you can sort it out. But I must admit that I’ve got nothing much to contribute, I’m afraid… Anyway, I think we’re coming to a parting of the ways. That’s Grimm’s down there, as you can see – but if ever you need a Dr Watson again, my tiny brain is at your disposal.’

‘Thank you,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Two tiny brains are better than one, I suppose.’

They said goodbye, but before Andrej Przebuda had climbed even five of the steps up to Kleinmarckt, he paused.

‘Do you think you’re going to solve this case?’ he asked. ‘Do you usually solve your cases?’

‘Most of them,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘But you have some unsolved cases, do you?’

‘One,’ admitted the chief inspector. ‘But let’s not go into that. Every new day brings enough problems, as I’ve said before.’

‘You can say that again,’ said Przebuda, and Van Veeteren thought he could hear his friend smiling in the darkness. ‘Goodnight, Chief Inspector. May the angels sing you to sleep.’

No, Van Veeteren thought grimly when Przebuda had disappeared. Let’s not start thinking about the G file as well. We’ve got enough on our hands without that.

By the time he strode through the milk-white glass doors of Grimm’s Hotel, his dejection had caught up with him.

We ought to have talked about other things, he thought. We ought to have focused on something else.

Katarina Schwartz, for instance. Or Ewa Siguera. Or potential violent criminals in the area. I’m damned sure he’d have been able to come up with something useful if we’d done that!

But perhaps his self-criticism was unfair. In any case, the disappearance of the Schwartz girl was still something they’d managed to keep away from the journalists – after nearly a week under the spotlights. That was probably due more to good luck than good management; and besides, one might ask if there was any point in keeping it secret. Perhaps, perhaps not.

And they hadn’t heard a word from the French police.

Becalmed, the chief inspector thought (although he had only been in a sailing boat twice in the whole of his life – both times together with Renate). For the whole of that Saturday in Sorbinowo there had hardly been a breath of wind, and the case had not moved forward even a fraction of an inch.

Becalmed.

He recalled the potentially meaningful silence up at Wolgershuus the previous day, and realized that there was more to coming to an end and dying than people generally imagined.

Madeleine Zander and Ulriche Fischer! he then thought with a feeling of disgust as he stood at the reception desk, waiting for his key. Were things really so bad that he would have to tackle them as well?

When the night porter eventually appeared, it transpired that there was another woman’s name to frustrate him.

Albeit in a slightly different way.

Reinhart had left a message for him. It was short and sweet: There’s no damned Ewa Siguera anywhere in this country. Shall I continue with the rest of the world?

Van Veeteren’s reply was more or less just as stringent: Europe will be enough. Many thanks in advance.

Ah well, he thought when he had eventually gone to bed, I suppose I might just as well carry on as planned, no matter what.

The second of the victims of the sect murderer – as several newspapers would call the person concerned – was discovered at about six on Sunday morning by a sixteen-year-old boy scout and a fifteen-year-old girl guide who were part of a biggish group on a hike in the forests north-west of Sorbinowo. At the pair’s urgent request, no attempt was made to find out what they were doing some three kilometres away from their tents at that time in the morning, but Chief of Police Kluuge – who was once again the first on the scene – naturally had his suspicions.

The body of the young girl was under a pile of brushwood and dry twigs about twenty metres from the narrow road from Waldingen to Limbuis and Sorbinowo, and the distance to the nearest of the summer camp buildings was no more than a hundred and sixty metres or so. The distance between where the two bodies had been discovered was measured later and found to be about three times that, and perhaps one could reasonably have expected that the police team that had spent two days searching the area after the first murder would have found the body; and perhaps also – Kluuge thought a propos of nothing in particular – the unusually pale colour of the girl guide’s face might have had to do with the fact that she found it hard to forget what she had been doing next to, and even hidden behind, the pile of twigs in question.

In any case, that was the conclusion he drew as the three of them sat on a stack of logs watching the sun rise over the trees to usher in a new day, waiting for the medical team and the crime scene officers to arrive – and he was also aware that these irrelevant speculations only came into his head as a way of keeping his thoughts under control.

When he compared the Katarina Schwartz who had spent almost two weeks in the form of a dead body, reduced to a mass of chemical processes, with the photograph of a smiling young girl with blonde plaits he had in his wallet, there was no doubt that his thoughts needed all the distractions they could possibly get.

I’ve grown old, he thought. Even though it’s no more than a week since I grew up.