Hakan Nesser - The Inspector and Silence

‘Yes, they’re going too far now,’ Kluuge agreed.

‘The mob’s taking over,’ said Lauremaa. ‘We really must get this case solved PDQ – you all heard what the psychologist said on the television, I take it? This kind of thing always inspires copycat actions… And we know how pyromaniacs operate, don’t we?’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Reinhart. ‘But bollocks to what’s happening in Stamberg. They have their own police force there, we can assume.’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘And this means that we’ll probably lose about fifty reporters, so perhaps we don’t need to spend all day weeping.’

‘Anyway,’ said Reinhart, ‘I’d like to be informed about what’s been happening. Let’s get the gen first.’

‘Okay,’ said Kluuge, stretching himself. ‘I suppose it could be summed up by saying that all our guesses have been confirmed. Katarina Schwartz had been dead for nearly two weeks when she was found – round about 16 July they reckon. As I understand it, that fits in well with other information we have. Tolltse?’

Inspector Tolltse leafed through her notebook.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘We – Inspector Lauremaa and I, that is – have spoken again to five of the girls, and it seems that Katarina Schwartz went missing round about then. Probably a day or so earlier, the 14th or 15th, but they are all pretty bad at dates. None of them has been keeping a diary, and there doesn’t even seem to have been a calendar out there. Not where the girls lived, at least.’

‘Beyond time and space,’ muttered Servinus.

‘What about the circumstances?’ wondered Reinhart impatiently. ‘We can assume that she disappeared at a certain time of day, surely. Or did she just dissolve bit by bit?’

‘Yes, there were various circumstances,’ Lauremaa confirmed. ‘In the first place they wanted everybody to forget that she’d ever been at the camp. It must have been her disappearance that the anonymous woman phoned about the first time, but right from the start the organizers and the girls denied that there had ever been more than twelve girls at the camp. It’s not easy to understand the motive or the logic in that – personally I reckon it shows more than anything else that Yellinek is as mad as a hatter – but when the girls finally started to admit that there had in fact been a Katarina Schwartz among them until, let’s say 15 July a few more facts began to emerge as well.’

‘What, for example?’ Reinhart asked.

‘Times, to start with,’ said Tolltse. ‘She vanished during the night. Went to bed as usual in the evening, but wasn’t there the next morning.’

‘Is that definite?’ Suijderbeck wondered.

‘Definite,’ said Lauremaa.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ said Suijderbeck. ‘That must mean that whoever did it must have dragged her out of bed, more or less. Doesn’t that narrow the possible candidates down pretty drastically?’

‘Yes,’ said Lauremaa. ‘Unless she went out of her own accord, of course.’

‘Went out?’ said Suijderbeck. ‘Why the hell would she want to go out?’

Lauremaa shrugged.

‘Don’t ask me. It’s not impossible, but it does seem a bit improbable.’

‘There’s not a lot in this case that has any connection with probability,’ said Servinus. ‘Carry on.’

Tolltse turned a page.

‘There’s another little thing,’ she said. ‘It may be of no importance, but you never know. There had evidently been some sort of controversy that Katarina was involved in. Marieke Bergson indicated something of the sort, by the way – the first girl that Chief Inspector Van Veeteren interrogated.’

‘Controversy?’ said Reinhart. ‘What sort of controversy?’

‘Something between her and Yellinek,’ said Lauremaa. ‘She had misbehaved somehow or other. Said something to him; it’s not clear what, we haven’t managed to get the details out of any of the girls.’

‘They’re obviously a bit scared that they might get picked on as well,’ explained Tolltse.

‘Aha,’ said Reinhart. ‘A little rebel in Paradise, eh?’

‘Could be,’ said Lauremaa. ‘Thinking for yourself – critical thinking – wasn’t exactly something encouraged as part of their spiritual education. In any case, Yellinek evidently had a private meeting with her the evening before she went missing.’

Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Then Suijderbeck cleared his throat and leaned forward with his elbows on the table.

‘So both of them… I mean both these poor little girls had strayed slightly from the straight and narrow, is that it?’ he said. ‘Clarissa had said something she shouldn’t have done to the chief inspector, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Kluuge. ‘There’s some common ground there.’

Silence for a few seconds. Then Servinus slammed his fist down on the table.

‘Yellinek!’ he groaned. ‘If I had that fucking creeping Jesus in here I swear I’d have poured boiling lead into his arsehole by now!’

‘Harrumph,’ said Kluuge. ‘Perhaps we’d better move on. Or do Tolltse and Lauremaa have anything more to add?’

‘No,’ said Lauremaa. ‘Except that we think we saw Chief Inspector Van Veeteren in a restaurant. When we were in Stamberg, talking to the girls, that is.’

‘Really?’ said Suijderbeck ‘Did you see what he was gobbling?’

He didn’t get an answer, so he lit a cigarette instead.

‘As for bodily injuries and that kind of thing,’ Kluuge resumed, ‘we’ve already been through that. Nothing new has cropped up. What happened seems to have been more or less the same in both cases. Still, I don’t suppose anybody thinks we’re looking for two killers?’

‘No, nobody,’ Servinus assured him.

‘Then perhaps we should concentrate on the Sunday evening,’ Kluuge suggested. ‘We seem to have got a bit of new information, I gather. Which of you…?’

He looked at Reinhart and Jung.

‘Let Jung do it,’ Reinhart proposed. ‘Otherwise he’ll drop off to sleep.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jung. ‘Well, if we combine my results and Reinhart’s, we can probably draw several conclusions. It looks like Oscar Yellinek went missing from Waldingen quite early on Sunday night. If the information is correct – the stuff we got from that Moulder girl and Ulriche Fischer – it seems most likely that he left the camp shortly before ten o’clock. He talked to the girls for a few minutes after evening prayers, and then left, presumably heading for those rocks where Belle Moulder had left Clarissa Heerenmacht four hours earlier, or thereabouts. After that, nobody seems to have seen him.’

‘What you say seems to contain quite a high proportion of guesses, doesn’t it?’ said Servinus, looking doubtful.

‘Of course,’ said Reinhart, ‘but we usually guess right. Everything depends on how much credibility we give to Miss Fischer’s performance, but if we combine that with what the chief inspector managed to get out of that other woman – what’s her name?’

‘Mathilde Ulbrecht,’ said Kluuge.

‘Yes, that’s right. If we add the two lots of fragments together, they do point in a certain direction: they don’t seem to know where the hell he is.’

‘So all that about him meeting God and being given a mission, and that he was on probation, was just cobbled together by the women?’

Reinhart shrugged.

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘The main aim was probably to keep the girls quiet, I presume. Yes, I think this makes sense.’

Silence again.

‘What about the third woman?’ Tolltse asked. ‘Madeleine Zander. Maybe we shouldn’t forget that there are three of them. It seems a bit presumptuous to lump them together all the time. Of course they give the impression of sticking together, but there’s nothing to say that there aren’t cracks behind the united front. Loads of cracks, perhaps.’